As a child, Mushky York (now Rosenfeld) suffered from severe anxiety which affected her social, academic, and general wellbeing. Eventually, her anxiety got so bad that she suffered from constant nausea and couldn’t keep food down and began losing weight.

Soon, Mushky began receiving compliments and comments on her body changes. While that lifted her mood, it also meant she felt better and was able to eat more--which led to weight gain, which led to less compliments, which led to anxiety and depression, which led to weight loss, and so the vicious cycle continued. At the age of 11, craving that validation that had come with her weight loss, Mushky began obsessively focusing on losing an extreme amount of weight.

The obsession with weight, body image, and fitness spiralled quickly and Mushky’s weight-consciousness quickly morphed into Anorexia. At the age of 13, Mushky collapsed while exercising and was brought to the hospital, where the nursing staff told her parents that she might have only hours left to live.

Mushky entered years of in-patient treatment, where she also began taking medication to treat her previously undiagnosed anxiety. With lots of ups-and-downs and learning experiences along the way, she began to recover and enter a healthier mindset.

Today, Mushky resides in Crown Heights with her husband and children and manages her own business. While she still struggles with her anxiety and remnants of her eating disorder at times, she now has the tools, awareness, and emotional insight to manage her tendencies and live a healthy, happy, and meaningful life.

We’d like to thank Mushky for her bravery and openness in sharing her story with us!