BECOMING JANE
Written by Jane Zeltser
The first show on television I remember watching is Punky Brewster. I felt a kinship with Punky; she was an orphan and I was an “alien”, according to my Green Card. We both had dark hair and eyes, olive skin with freckles and felt different from our peers. What I don’t remember is how I went from “Zhenya” (short for Yevgeniya) to Jane. My entire family unit of twelve (three generations) fled Kyiv, Ukraine in December of 1989 as political refugees. I remember understanding at a young age that communism, anti-semitism and living through and near Chernobyl were the reasons for coming to the States.
I was terrified of everybody in kindergarten finding out what my real name was. I got my name legally changed to Jane in fourth grade. I remember people asking me where I was from when they heard my parents’ thick accents. “Europe.” Sometimes, I even said France because the early 90s weren’t that far away from the Cold War. Not all Americans were trusting of those that came from the USSR. I’m not sure I was trusting of the USSR by how they treated my family and all Jews alike.
What I remember most about my childhood is wanting to appear as the typical American girl. How could I be typical if everyone in my family had accents and ate smelly food? Hearing my parents butcher the English language in front of me pushed me to tears.
I quickly realized that the only thing I could control was not eating the ethnic food that my mom made three times a day. Every meal became a fight; the open kitchen and dining area were the battlefield.
I was the ungrateful daughter. How dare I turn my nose up to food when there are starving people back in the USSR? How dare I say no? How many jobs was my father working so the family could eat and why can’t I just eat!? I felt physically ill even seeing or sometimes talking about pretty much all food except for ones I could name on less than one hand. I knew that if I ate like my family, I would throw up and I would be sick. It had everything to do with the smell and the look of the food. I couldn’t understand how anyone could even eat any of that food, let alone eating it myself.
My parents told stories of having to wait in incredibly long lines at 6 am only to get rotten fruit. It would be a joyous day for them obtaining oranges once a year and giving them to me and my brother to enjoy. They told me that before I came to the States, I ate these little fish that my grandfather would catch and fry up. I never thought that was true because how could I have possibly enjoyed seafood? I barely enjoyed the handful of foods that felt safe now. I felt angry that my mom would say these things - they felt taunting and false. I was constantly being compared to my brother who ate everything that was put in front of him. To add salt to the wound, he was tall and naturally thin. I was short and stockier like my father but not “overweight” per the BMI scale.
Within a couple years I became aware of my stockier build and not only did I already have a bad relationship with food, but now I also felt bigger than my peers and began picking on every part of my body. By middle school, the self-loathing really escalated and I remember beginning to sit with my backpack in front of my stomach so no one could see how big it was. This new habit continued until I graduated my senior year. My pediatrician never diagnosed me with disordered eating or anything of the sort. I was actually told each year that my BMI was in the 75% percentile and therefore, I was bigger than 25% of my peers. I specifically remember my doctor telling me that I had swimmers’ thighs - a thicker build. My mom told him about my eating habits and the at least three times daily fights over meals. She told him how I was completely unreasonable and relentless when it came to meal times. He wasn’t concerned because I wasn’t “underweight”.
I know now, through being a student at Carolyn Costin Institute, I had ARFID (Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder) in my childhood. It morphed into ED-NOS (Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified) by age 16 when I began purging by all means necessary and then morphed again into Bulimia Nervosa. I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 19 years old and it was too late. Following my diagnoses, I admitted myself into two inpatient hospitalization programs (I relapsed after the first). When I called my mom from the first hospital and told her to bring me a week’s worth of clothing and my make up bag, she was incredibly confused. Except for my childhood, I was able to hide my eating disorder and my family had no clue that I was suffering so much inside because the outside looked “normal.”
Immigrants from the USSR didn’t know about eating disorders because every scrap of food was so important that they couldn’t imagine somebody denying food. I recall my maternal grandparents visiting me at the hospital and still not understanding why I was there.
To this day, almost two decades later, my remaining grandfather still doesn’t get it or understand what I’m in training for.
In a few months, I will be a Certified Eating Disorder Recovery Coach. I want to work with marginalized individuals in the eating disorder community and turn my endured suffering into something beautiful by helping others be successful in their recovery journeys. To me, nothing is more beautiful than recovery. On July 13, 2022, I celebrated 17 years of recovery from my eating disorders. I continue to challenge myself with trying new foods that I avoided my entire life. While I still don’t have the stomach for my particular cultural foods, Jane enjoys every other cuisine you can think of - and continues to challenge that Ukrainian-American palate as often as possible.