Step by step, each foot is carefully placed on the scale. The circular motion of the pixels loading on the screen seems to last forever.
Then, a number appears.
Numbers.
They disguise themselves as dictators, holding monopoly over your mind, whispering in your ear, telling you to obsess.
What size? What weight? How many calories? Who is looking? When is the next meal?
More than 30 million people in the US alone suffer from an eating disorder, with Anorexia Nervosa being the most deadly mental illness and 3rd most common chronic illness.
Battling with Anorexia and being a survivor herself, senior Nina Collard came up with a way to reach out to others who were working to overcome their own eating disorders.
In addition, as the USPS has been experiencing unexpected change in funding, there have been many movements attempting to support the USPS in order to prevent its collapse.
With both a passion for helping others and the USPS, Collard created a pen-pal program for people with eating disorders.
“After learning that the USPS was being defunded, I knew I had to do something to help,” Collard said. “ The fact that it is an election year where many people will be voting through mail in ballots only made the need to help more pressing. I knew I wanted to do a pen pal campaign and the idea of marketing it to solely eating disorder survivors just kind of came to me on a whim.”
Starting this campaign has allowed for Collard to develop her own personal way of helping the USPS.
“By creating a program that requires letter writing rather than email or something else, we are supporting the postal service,” Collard said. “Essentially each letter sent is another stamp purchased directly from the USPS.”
Using her personal experiences, Collard made sure to prioritize her program, Survivor to Survivor, as a safe space for participants.
“I want the people who signed up to have someone to confide in that will truly understand what they are going through,” Collard said. “Eating disorders are an extremely isolating disease and I want them to know that they aren’t alone. I want to give a sense of community to anyone struggling with any type of eating disorder.”
So far, Collard has had 200 people sign up using a google form and has gained participants from all over the world.
“I created a google form for people to sign up on that included a few different questions to answer,” Collard said. “Then I went through the list of people and paired them up based on their interests, which took forever, but was totally worth it.”
Currently being caught up with managing the campaign and its success in the first round, Collard has hopes for more letters to be sent between participants in the future.
“I’m not directly paired with anyone, but I do plan on sending handwritten thank you notes to everyone for participating,” Collard said. “The original form I created closed on September first. However, I would absolutely love to be able to do another round of this campaign and I will if I feel that there are enough people interested.”
Collard was extremely thankful to have received such positive feedback for her program, and even got endorsed by Project Heal, an organization working to educate and on the reality behind eating disorders.
“I spread information through my personal social media and I also reached out to various organizations that focus on spreading awareness about eating disorders,” Collard said. “I was lucky enough to have an amazing organization called Project Heal share my campaign on their social media pages which I definitely attribute a huge amount of my success to. I also have to give an enormous shout out to all of my friends who gave me so much love and support all while helping me spread information about this project.”
Receiving such grateful support from so many people has been rewarding for Collard, causing her to be reflective on her own journey with an eating disorder.
“Everyone I’ve reached out to has been super excited about participating and I have already made some new friends,” Collard said. “I am so grateful for the outpouring of love I have gotten. I was officially diagnosed in 2016, but I had been struggling with various forms of disordered eating for pretty much as long as I can remember. For a long time I was terrified to share that part of my life with even my closest friends. I was ashamed of myself and I worried what people would think and say about me.”
With strength, and admirable determination, Collard decided she wanted to make a change in her life and work towards recovery.
“About two years ago something just clicked,” Collard said. “I decided that if sharing my story could help someone else in any way at all, then I would share it, and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.”
Adding to her list of outstanding achievements, Collard also worked as an intern with creator of the Research and Development League of San Antonio, Kate Kinnison.
“The focus of this internship was to work on each person’s leadership skills,” Collard said. “Every week of the program we listened to a speech from a different speaker on different aspects of leadership. My small group leader Beau Anderson was also incredible, he really brought the program to life for me”
With this great opportunity, Collard was able to learn things she didn’t know before about growing into a mature and thoughtful leader.
“Before this program I thought I had a good grasp on leadership and what it takes to be a great leader,” Collard said. “However, I learned so much more about leadership and what qualities leaders should strive to have.”
Having such powerful dedication to whatever project she sets her mind to, whether that be helping others with eating disorders, creating a program to support the USPS, or participating in an internship with local government officials, Collard has remained consistent in striving to be a beacon of light for the many people struggling with the same hopelessness which comes with an eating disorder that she once faced herself.
“There are a million things I wish I could say to everyone who has an eating disorder, said Collard. “I think the first thing I want them to know is that there is no shame in having an eating disorder, it doesn’t mean that there is something wrong with you. It just means that your brain works a little differently than other peoples and that is okay.”