My name’s Meg Burton, I am the founder and leader of the Southern California chapter of Project HEAL.

Project HEAL is a nonprofit and our main mission is to help fundraise money to send people to treatment for eating disorders. On top of that we have a new program called Communities of Healing which is in various cities throughout the U.S. where we have free weekly support group meetings as well as mentors and mentees.

What I want people to know about this week who might be having a hard time is like it’s totally cool if you’re having a hard time. There definitely, like through my own eating disorder recovery journey, there have been years where it has been overwhelming and I’ve definitely just needed to disengage from social media, and then there’s also been some years where I’ve been a little over it too.

While it’s still very important, it’s OK to hold all emotions and basically take care of yourself. Like maybe it’s the year that you feel comfortable enough to speak out to your experience and maybe it’s the year where you need to just take care of yourself.