Recovering from anorexia and bulimia in my 50s
In this personal essay, writer Amie Newman opens up about the struggles of eating disorders in midlife.
A native New Yorker shaped by decades in the Pacific Northwest, Amie Newman has built a career as a storyteller first and foremost. With a deep and abiding passion for uplifting the voices of women of all backgrounds and identities, her work as a storyteller has always centered the intimate, complex truths of our bodies — truths so often silenced by stigma, shame, and structural neglect. From reproductive health to motherhood, abortion to aging, Amie writes not just about these issues, but through them — braiding her lived experience as a woman with other women’s experiences into a broader narrative of resistance, reckoning, and repair.
Amie served as Managing Editor and Senior Staff Writer at the UN Foundation’s award-winning RH Reality Check (now Rewire News), which won a Planned Parenthood Maggie Award in 2010 under her editorial guidance as well as nominations for Webby Awards for Best Political Website and Best Health Website, where she covered reproductive health policy, access to care, and maternal health — writing extensively about issues from abortion politics to breastfeeding equity to the intersections of human rights and reproductive health.
Amie’s writing has been cited in numerous books on reproductive rights, childbirth, violence against women, and public health.
Her articles and personal essays have been published in Truthout, Lillth Magazine, Ms. Magazine, Entropy, Role Reboot, Rewire News, Our Bodies Ourselves, Bright Magazine, Midstory Magazine, The Manifest Station, and Kveller among other publications.
Amie contributed to the 2011 edition of the seminal book Our Bodies, Ourselves and was the site’s staff blogger, covering topics like racial disparities in maternal mortality and the realities of pelvic organ prolapse. She’s also helped shape digital storytelling at the Gates Foundation, co-creating content for the blog Impatient Optimists to amplify global health initiatives.
Amie is also a member of The Midst Founder network of entrepreneurial women over 40.
In this personal essay, writer Amie Newman opens up about the struggles of eating disorders in midlife.