Life TV

Stephanie


When doctors said that Stephanie would not live past 18, she made a decision to get help for her eating disorder. From hearing about a girl called hope, Stephanie chose to commit to the program and has learnt tools to care for herself and the value she has.

Transcript
I grew up in Zimbabwe Africa. Youngest of three. So got a sister and a brother. We came to New Zealand because of the danger in Zimbabwe. It was no longer safe for my parents to raise us there. I’ve always been a very shy person so I found it really hard to make friends. Especially coming to a new school and everyone’s got their friends. So the lack of confidence led to me being bullied, specifically by a group of girls. They bullied me physically. They would follow me around school and throw food at me even sometimes. They would insult me from the way I dressed and the way I looked. They called me fat a lot. They really just made my life miserable. Yeah. I felt really angry towards my parents for a while for bringing us here. It took me a long time to realise that what they did was actually amazing for us but in the moment it was hard and I felt completely alone. I ended up getting involved with a very bad crowd at high school with drugs and alcohol. I ended up being drunk most of my school days. Eventually that got so bad that I was just losing so much weight and was so unwell that I left school. By that stage I was fully bulimic so was just binging three times a day and purging. And that got up to 16 times a day, every day which lasted for good three years. I tore some of my oesophagus which i’ve had surgery for recently. At my worst I lost about half my hair so I had a lot of bald patches. I had a doctor, my GP, tell me that he really didn’t think I was going to make it to 18. I think the bullying started my self destructive path where I just didn’t like who I was. I didn’t think other people had liked who I was. That’s when I stopped caring for myself. After multiple hospitalisations I think i’d just reached a point where I was like there’s just nothing else, I can’t give anymore. And I can’t describe it in any other way than I found a girl called Hope looking online and I just decided to apply. I was able to sort things out from my past. I was able to learn that actually I deserve a future and gain an understanding of what I actually wanted for my life. So it gave me just freedom really.
Living in the moment for me is acknowledging that there will be hard times but walking through it with God I think for me is the biggest thing.

Watch next story

Abbey - Dealing with Self Harm

I grew up in a christian family with a younger sister, an older brother and two ...

Related Stories

Abbey - Dealing with Self Harm

I grew up in a christian family with a younger sister, an older brother and two ...

Adrian

One day i'd be really happy and then another day i'd just notice that something ...

Alex

So when I was growing up I was an only child and when I was around 5 years old m...

Amelie & Nicole, part 1

There was nothing really in my teenage years that were kind of out of the ordina...

Amelie & Nicole, part 2

I don't really think I had any other choice. I think it came to that crossroads ...

Amy

My parents couldn’t have children of their own so my aunty offered to be a surro...

Angelica - Give It To God

I grew up in what I thought was a typical island family. I have six brothers and...

Ben

I grew up with my family in Sydney to begin with, I have an older brother whose ...

Ben

The first time God spoke to me, I was 6 years old. I heard my name called, Ben ...

Bev

My father was an alcoholic and I grew up in that kind of environment. My brother...

Bex

I had a great childhood, I loved school I loved all of that. And then probably i...

Bex

Well we were never really in one place for long. I often find it quite difficult...

Chloe

My name's Chloe and I'm 19. I grew up in New Plymouth and moved to Christchurch ...

Christina

I was born in California in the United States, i'm an only child and I have two ...

Christine - Suicide Attempt Stories

Growing up I had two parents who were the complete opposite ends of the spectrum...
All Topics

Topics