Author tells personal story of eating disorder in new book

Jena Morrow, the author of "Hollow," a book about her personal struggle with eating disorders, started showing signs of a negative body image at the early age of three. 

"It started really early on, but the word anorexia wasn't tossed around until I was about 11," said Morrow. At 12, she went into treatment and "grew out of it" by age 13. She struggled with her body image all throughout high school, and when college came around she saw it as the perfect opportunity to relapse into her old habits.

"Out from under the watchful eye of teacher[s] and parents, I sort of figured that if I leave college with a degree that would be a perk but my real goal was to get thin," Morrow said. "I saw being away at school as being the perfect opportunity to lose weight, and that was my goal in college."

After only two months of being away at school, Morrow went from 120 pounds to 80 pounds. With no one there to encourage good eating habits and monitor her weight, she found it easy to shed pounds. 

But that much weight doesn't disappear and go unnoticed. "When you lose weight people will automatically compliment you, whether you needed to lose weight or not. But it soon turned into people being concerned," Morrow said.

Her roommate was the first to ask about her drastic drop in weight and that quickly spread to the girls on her floor, and then eventually to her professors who sent her to the school's counseling center. 

Morrow found little help at the counseling center, where they simply interviewed her and gave her a business card for a therapist, but she knew that she had to do something to quell the concerns of those that were worried about her. 

"So I just played the game," Morrow said. "I was just treading water and making everyone happy. But I knew I wasn't going to give it up."

Morrow was eventually forced to drop out of school and go into a yearlong program at a residential treatment facility. But from the start, Morrow had decided she was not going to snap out of her disorder. She had decided that, once again, she would play the game and then descend back into a relapse. But Morrow wasn't anticipating the level of care she would receive at the facility.

"I wasn't prepared for the people I would meet there, or for the scriptural truth they would introduce me to," Morrow said. 

While there, Morrow also learned what it was like to feel normal. After years of battling with eating disorders, she had no method of comparison to decide whether or not she even liked being anorexic. 

"After getting out of rehabilitation, I had emotions, I didn't feel numb and a felt close to God. I just realized that I felt better when I was normal," Morrow said.