Waitsfield Author Explores the Role of Food in her Quest for Mental Health

Erika Nichols-Frazer’s just lately revealed memoir, Feed Me: A Story of Meals, Love and Psychological Sickness, didn’t initially give attention to meals. The Stowe native had been working for near a yr on a manuscript about her lengthy wrestle with undiagnosed bipolar dysfunction when she landed a two-week summer time residency at Vermont Studio Heart in Johnson.

“I used to be sitting at my desk, buttering a chunk of bread for lunch with these little Cabot items of butter in aluminum foil,” Nichols-Frazer, 34, recounted in a cellphone interview from her Waitsfield house.

The butter prompted a Proustian second that despatched her again to per week she spent at an area hospital when she was 13. On the time, the five-foot, four-inch teenager barely weighed 80 kilos. Her dad and mom, at their wits’ finish, had introduced their daughter to the teenager psychiatric ward hoping to jolt her out of an consuming dysfunction.

Each meal was intently supervised by hospital employees. “They made me eat these little pats of butter,” Nichols-Frazer recalled. “I bear in mind attempting to get away with consuming a muffin or roll with out the butter … A nurse would watch me and demand that I eat each calorie on the plate.”

The reminiscence was a troublesome one, however it prodded Nichols-Frazer to contemplate how meals threaded by means of her life in each adverse and optimistic methods and the way studying to feed herself had contributed to her psychological and bodily wellness.

“Feed Me is all about sustenance and nourishing oneself … by way of taking good care of your physique in addition to your thoughts,” Nichols-Frazer defined by cellphone. “Every part sort of comes again to the thought of sharing meals and creating meals as a part of the group — and the way that has the capability to heal oneself.”

Nichols-Frazer, who works as a contract editor and employees author for the Valley Reporter, mentioned writing has all the time helped her work by means of feelings and life occasions. “From a really younger age, I might write journals. I might write poems. I might write to sort of make sense of issues,” she mentioned. She earned a bachelor’s diploma in liberal arts with a focus in inventive writing from Sarah Lawrence Faculty in Yonkers, N.Y., and a grasp’s in tremendous arts from Bennington Faculty.

It was at Bennington that Nichols-Frazer first spoke overtly about her 2018 bipolar dysfunction prognosis, which ultimately enabled her to search out efficient remedy. It was gratifying, empowering and “a weight off my shoulders,” she mentioned, to find that sharing her story helped individuals who’d had comparable experiences.

“It took me a very long time to get to a degree the place I used to be writing for the general public about my very own psychological well being,” she mentioned, “however I’ve discovered that to be a very essential side of me dealing with psychological well being points.”

From a really younger age, Nichols-Frazer writes in Feed Me, “darkish moods had already turn into acquainted guests, wrapping their heavy arms round my small physique,” however it was many years earlier than she knew they have been brought on by bipolar dysfunction. One of many methods Nichols-Frazer coped was to manage any side of her life that she may, together with meals. At age 9, motivated by the conclusion that she was consuming residing creatures, she turned a vegetarian, which “put me answerable for one thing, nonetheless small,” she writes.

As a younger teen, she developed anorexia. The e-book starkly juxtaposes her excruciating want to manage each calorie towards food-filled visits to her aunts in New York Metropolis. They launched her to puffy poori bread at Indian eating places, spinach gnocchi in Gorgonzola sauce at a stylish Italian spot and grilled child artichokes dipped in hollandaise. “By no means had I tasted something prefer it, the tang of the artichokes, the brilliant acidity of the wealthy sauce,” she writes.

Her aunts, considered one of whom had been knowledgeable chef, taught Nichols-Frazer make the finicky French sauce — lush with yolks and butter — and to poach eggs completely. That mastery on the range helped the younger lady begin to construct confidence and a optimistic sense of management over meals.

“There was nobody particular second the place meals turned one thing that would carry pleasure as a substitute of simply problem and ache,” she instructed Seven Days, “however an enormous a part of that course of was visiting my aunts.”

To today, Nichols-Frazer usually makes eggs Benedict for herself and her husband with contemporary eggs from their small flock of yard hens. “It does sort of spoil different eggs for you,” she remarked.

One other recipe in her common rotation is a chunky vegetable and lentil soup that she describes making for associates within the e-book. “Cooking is what I do after I have to relax, to offer me one thing to give attention to as a substitute of my frantic ideas,” Nichols-Frazer writes. “The method of chopping and sautéing and stirring is cathartic, and feeding others offers me function.”

Feed Me additionally illuminates the flip aspect of feeding family members — being fed by them. Nichols-Frazer describes returning house from considered one of her MFA residencies to search out that her husband had cooked a favourite meal utilizing lots of the greens he cultivates of their yard gardens. “The kitchen smelled like soy sauce and Dylan’s scrumptious, mushy fried rice,” she writes.

However Nichols-Frazer was in a psychological well being disaster on the time. Annoyed by her husband’s incapacity to supply the help she wanted, she refused the meal, “reject[ing] Dylan’s try and feed me, to look after me.”

Whereas it may be re-traumatizing to write down about painful experiences, Nichols-Frazer acknowledged {that a} larger problem in crafting Feed Me was making public what had been largely non-public. Particularly, she reveals unvarnished particulars of her mom’s alcohol use and attracts parallels together with her personal psychological well being struggles.

“This e-book may be very trustworthy about myself,” Nichols-Frazer mentioned, “and I felt like I needed to be trustworthy about my relationships with different individuals in my household.”

Relating to her anorexia as a teen, Nichols-Frazer writes, “I did not assume I deserved meals. I did not assume I deserved to exist.” Later within the e-book, she observes of her mom: “She drinks to erase herself.”

As Nichols-Frazer matures, she realizes she should grapple together with her demons, whilst her mom stubbornly resists discussing her ingesting. “She does not know feed herself within the methods she wants,” Nichols-Frazer writes with resignation.

Feed Me depicts the failure of Nichols-Frazer and her brother to influence their mom to acknowledge her drawback. The creator mentioned she believes her mom understands her daughter’s have to share the complete story.

“I defined to her that these are issues that so many individuals and households take care of,” Nichols-Frazer recounted. “It will possibly save lives to have the ability to speak about and destigmatize plenty of habit and psychological well being points. It was a chunk I felt like I needed to lay naked — simply inform the reality — as a result of I do assume that’s how we heal.”

The roughly chronological memoir consists of 26 chapters grouped in three sections with culinary headings: Simmer, Boil and Relaxation. The ultimate part’s title refers back to the really helpful observe of resting cooked meat earlier than slicing it, though Nichols-Frazer admitted she does not use that method a lot as a longtime vegetarian. Her model of “relaxation,” she mentioned on the cellphone, got here when, at age 29, she obtained her prognosis and commenced to glimpse mild on the finish of an extended tunnel.

For this reader, it was onerous to detect that glimmer till the previous couple of chapters — when, geared up with a medical clarification for the intense swings of her bipolar dysfunction, Nichols-Frazer begins to search out equilibrium with remedy and drugs. Whilst late as Chapter 23, she shares descriptions of the mania she endured, which evoke the feeling of being stalked by an insatiable beast intent on consuming one alive.

It is violent. On hearth. It is ravenous; it’s going to swallow you entire. It buzzes with ferocious vitality. It is stressed — cannot cease transferring, cannot decelerate. Quantity up too loud. Ideas pinballing, by no means touchdown or connecting or making sense. It is a determined want to maneuver, to take motion with out considered consequence. It is a reside wire, spitting sparks. It rattles you, strips you, overfills then empties you.

On Monday, January 30, on the Spherical Fireplace Café & Market in Stowe, Nichols-Frazer will give a studying and serve a number of dishes featured in Feed Me, together with lentil soup, jalapeño mac and cheese, and grilled hen salad. She may even carry chocolate chip cookies, her husband’s favourite. They will not be damaged or served on a shattered plate, as they seem on her e-book cowl.

That picture, Nichols-Frazer defined, was true to her story and the way damaged she felt at her lowest factors. With the passage of time and remedy, she mentioned, she will now see that, although “I felt like I used to be breaking,” surviving the depths “made me stronger.”

If you could discuss to any person about your psychological well being, assist is on the market 24-7 by dialing 9-8-8 or texting VT to 741741. For extra assets, go to mentalhealth.vermont.gov.