Andrea’s Voice

This page is a dedication to Andrea Smeltzer. She died at the age of 19 after only one year of bulimic behaviors. Andrea’s Voice Foundation was subsequently created to promote education and understanding toward the prevention, identification, diagnosis and treatment of disordered eating and related issues. Andrea’s Voice Foundation is no longer in operation. The Body Positive is sharing Andrea’s story and poetry here.

About Andrea

Andrea Lynn Smeltzer was trained in opera, enjoyed the theater, was an avid dancer, a masterful jewelry-maker and poet. After studying in Spain for a year as an Exchange Student at 14, she spoke Spanish fluently. At the time of her death she was proficient in German and planned on mastering Japanese next.

Prior to college, Andrea was elected president of her high school’s Amnesty International group and was an outspoken advocate for human rights. She was the representative chosen to present the student petitions to the Guatemalan consulate in San Francisco. At Pitzer College she was awarded the prestigious Fletcher Jones Scholarship, worked as a dorm hall Resident Assistant and Mentor, dual majored in Languages and International Business & Politics—and looked forward to saving the world. She died tragically, at the age of 19, after only one year of bulimic behaviors.

Andrea’s Voice: Silenced by bulimia—The Book

Andrea Smeltzer had the world at her feet: she was vibrant, talented, strong, and beautiful. But after a one-year struggle with bulimia, Andrea died in her sleep at the age of 19, catapulting her mother, Doris, into a journey of self-discovery and realizations about her daughter and herself. By combining Andrea’s poetry, letters and journal entries, both mother and daughter tell the story together, capturing the bond that connected them. Paperback, 304 pages. (Gurze Books, 2006)

Your local library may have a copy or you may order a copy for the cost of shipping by emailing Doris at doris@andreasvoice.org or purchase via any bookstore or Amazon.

Andrea’s Poems

Andrea often called her writing her “free therapy.” She chose to express her joy, her fears and her pain through journal entries, poetry and letters to loved ones. In these pages we share a small selection of her poetry. If interested in reading more of Andrea’s words, please check out the book mentioned above.

Andrea’s poems may be copied for educational purposes only, with credit given to her as the author. For permission for additional uses, please write to doris@andreasvoice.org.

I Have An Eating Disorder

I have an eating disorder
it is not had or did or used to
it is present tense

I am Learning
it is learning to love myself

it is learning to let others love me
it is surviving when they don’t
it is that I damn well deserve that love

I am Trying
it is trying to listen to my body
it is about ups and downs and all arounds
it is trying to give myself what I need
it is letting others give me what I need
it is trying to recognize needs of others without hurting myself

I am Going Slowly
it is being patient and gentle with myself
it is going through the day hour by hour,
sometimes minute by minute
it is not being everything to everyone not even myself

I am Accepting
it is accepting drugs as a way to heal myself
it is accepting the words depression, anorexia,
bulimia as tools to describe, not label
it is accepting the help and care and fear of others
it is accepting food as a necessity not an enemy

I am Beautiful!
it is beauty irrelevant of size or number or grade

I am Alive
it is fighting to remain that way

I am Pain
it is trying not to hurt myself

I am on a Journey
it is laughing, crying, cartwheeling, eating.
It is o.k.
I am o.k.

–Andrea Smeltzer, 19
© Andrea Smeltzer, 1999. All Rights reserved

A Plethora Of "Ands"

It is not necessarily either/or
Can’t I be a mess and still be wonderful?
Eat and still be beautiful?
Cry and still be strong?
It seems to depend on whose eyes I am reflected in

My eyes.
How am I reflected in my eyes?
two thin lines on my wrist
a reminder of the danger in self perception

A new life
I do not look in the mirror
I do not look at the scale
I do not look for my reflection in other’s eyes
I look at those two thin lines
and I wrap myself in my arms
and hold onto this gift to the world
A gift that is mine to give but not my right to destroy

Easing back into the current
a surprising fear of being swept away
This time I hold on to the shore
until I can move deliberately,
with Thought and Purpose
slow down to a crawl

I no longer hurtle into life
without brakes or cares or bumpers
I move with slow caution
like a blind grandmother
drawing her version of the world close
not to get lost in someone else’s maze
tapping her path.

Deep Breath
dig ten toes into the sucking, receding sand
current flows
take my own steps
contain myself as my own separate current
not to be swept Away

I can eat, I can laugh, I can dance
I can cry, and play, and Love
I can Live
without condemnation, without reprimand
without regret
The Incredible Dichotomy of Being

It is no longer either/or
I am a plethora of ands

Andrea Smeltzer, 19
© Andrea Smeltzer, 1998. All Rights reserved

Dolor (Pain)

I want it to be over don’t I?
this delicious private pain I cause myself

Once so attractively seductive.
Punishment, Pain, Control, Despair
The four horsemen

stirring up my belly, flying forth from my mouth
Quema*

Their swords covered in my blood
Their silent tiny wounds only I can perceive
Did they win?
Is there an enemy besides myself?

Pain, the best anesthesia
self-absorbed, thinking only of itself
Get lost in this pain, this Dolor
you created him
has he usurped his creator?

He whispers, insidious and provocative:
I am important, comforting
only me!
was there ever something more worthy to
remember?

I am a jumble, a fractured prism
reflecting, confusing, refracting
self-anesthetize
It is so easy

The seductive one
all encompassing
he taunts me, beckons me
Only in Dolor is there clarity
he erases all else
giddy – I am coming!

I can control him, my creation
all else irritates, hurts and confuses me
not him
Dolor cuts off outer feelings
floating, I cannot focus or fight

The beauty!
of condensing all confusion and chaos into this one thing
the cunning Dolor that I can grasp
Exhilaration!
the simplicity of only one evil
one foe that is so often my friend

Dolor,
He strokes me and cuddles with me and lets me hold him
My creation that needs my nurturance and protection
So dear to me
At once smaller and larger than me
Hide you from the world so they cannot harm you
Hide you so no one sees as you take my power for yourself

A fascinating trap
An ingenious maze
the perfect self-constructed self-destruction
No one else can see him
and what mother could reject her own child?
wanting it to end, holding fast to what you control

Such perfection!
Such Dolor

*Quema: the Spanish word for fire, burning

Andrea Smeltzer, 18
© Andrea Smeltzer, 1998. All Rights reserved

Great Sequoia

Earth song
Heart song
My song
Nature’s endless basin
Outstretched beneath my swinging feet

Fill the chest, expand the lungs
Life, rushing in and out on the breeze
Up here I am endless,
Up here I am strong
Somehow

Standing next to this Great Sequoia
I am mighty
These trees do not dwarf me with their majestic power
They teach me of my own

Towering up, massive red stalk
Largest Living Thing on Earth
Deep forces coiled within
It fights back when struck

You see the ferocious limbs
Whipping back at the wind
Resolute in the freeze
And yet …

With the right breeze,
The right moisture
And a slurping sucking burp!
Pulled out of the Earth
Crashing and splintering
Force turned against self

All that Power, Strength and Size
With roots too small and shallow
To support it in its fury

I am small
I am near the ground
I am soft
I do not have mass to protect me

Some days I bow and stoop
My forehead trailing the ground
Some days I bend and fall
But I am not uprooted

My roots are small but wiry
Thin but deep
Spreading out in a weave through the earth
Deep tendrils into the molten core

I stand with my cheek
Pressed against the cold bark
Listening … and I hear

And I know that I am as strong as this tree
Even more resilient
Than this Giant

Great Sequoia
Largest Living Thing
And me.

Look Carefully

So few of my writings are happy
A worrisome discovery
If someday these were the only remaining accounts of me
What picture do they paint?

Bleak and Midwinter Gray

Though I know this life to be good,
Happiness and joy are no strangers,
That is not reflected on the white lines of immortality
Which hold my blood and tears

When there is Pain, when there is Madness,
Then there is Inspiration to dissect and ponder.
When life is good no questing need be done.
“Happy” is depth enough,
Living replaces Analyzing

Only the moments of anguish,
Hurt, confusion, and anger
Are trapped by my pen,
Moments of searching,
Desperately seeking order and happiness in words.
Explanations and Hypotheses,
Epiphanies.

Troubling.
BUT – the joy is in there.
Between questions, between lines
A story of learning and awareness of life
A fluid story
A half told story and not entirely mine.

Stories of the Journey
Contain infinite joy,
A joy that pierces and burns and pains.

Stories of the Destination
Contain only peace.
But these stories are rarely told
There is no need, all is understood, the quest is done
Those are not my stories.

Look carefully
Judge kindly
Read under and between lines
The Journey is never so clear as the Destination
And the telling is more confusing still.