Lived experience leadership.

Our advocacy features people with lived and living experience as the experts of our own stories. We aim to foster connection, mutual support, and compassionate care while respecting autonomy, boundaries, and safety.

Fighting for Change

We’ve met with politicians, government representatives, service providers, clinicians, activists, and peers to advocate for adults struggling with eating disorders on Vancouver Island:

• We shared our lived experiences at conferences, educational in-services, and numerous advisory boards. 
• We helped inform educational curriculum, program guidelines, and best practices.
• We studied current research, wrote essays and letters, shared our personal stories, and fiercely defended the ethical reporting of eating disorders in the media.
• We provided public education and awareness on social media, participated in annual awareness campaigns, attended community events, and maintained a fulsome repository of resources and information on our website.
• We actively ran several public campaigns in response to service cuts during the Covid-19 pandemic and hosted three virtual town halls, two rallies, and a letter-writing campaign.
• We wrote policy briefs, recommendations for change, pilot projects for community programs, and collaborated with local organizations.
• We spoke at city council, were introduced at the Legislative Assembly, and actively tried to collaborate with service providers and multiple levels of government ministries locally, provincially, and federally.

Although we did all the right things, spoke to all the right people, and fought the good fight, very little has changed to improve the lives of adults living with eating disorders on Vancouver Island.

Our Collective Grief

We continue to experience severe burnout. We have suffered, and we have been witness to great suffering. We have watched our peers die needlessly because of an apathetic government and systemic failure in healthcare.

We are reduced to a handful of volunteers. We do this work while also juggling our own personal struggles and life circumstances. We recognize that much of our work and the way we have accomplished it is unsustainable, as we constantly navigate the fluctuating capacity of our members.

But we never gave up the dream for a better outcome. We are determined to carry forward what brings our community hope in the face of challenge.

Partnering with CMHA BC

In the spring of 2025, we partnered with the Canadian Mental Health Association of BC and were selected as a recipient for the Victoria Foundation’s Vital Stream Grant.

This is a significant moment for us, as we have largely been supporting our work through our own personal contributions and the generous donations from our community. This partnership will give us the opportunity to support our basic operational needs and expand services to our peers. 

On January 26, 2026 we officially registered again as a non-profit Society in the province of British Columbia. Our very small leadership team started the enormous task of setting up our initial founding governance policies and establishing the Society. When we have our framework in place, we will be recruiting new members and looking for ways we can better support our community.

Imagining Together.

What does Building a Community of Care mean to you? How can we take better care of ourselves while we support others in our community? Where do we find hope when the future is uncertain?

There is no singular solution that can make things better for those living with and healing from eating disorders, but there are a thousand tiny ways to ease the suffering. It is our collective willingness to engage with others as human beings, to listen, feel, share, problem-solve, plan, hold space, create, and hope… that will help move us towards a better life with kinder realities.

“Let this radicalize you, rather than lead you to dispair.” — Marianne Kaba