At birth, no child says they plan to devastate their lives, but as time, circumstances, and the stressors of life mount, the pressures can become overwhelming. For Lena, nowhere was that truer than in her life. What began as a seemingly innocuous effort to quiet the chaos and gain control of one tiny facet of her life, soon spiraled into something bigger, much more harmful. When the anorexia could no longer maintain control, bulimia became the next best option, but that too, eventually fell victim to chaos. “Shamefully Vanished: A Memoir of a Girl Out of Control” chronicles the downward spiral of a young woman who looked for solace in all the wrong places, with potentially deadly vices, and found herself in and out of treatment, psychiatric facilities, and countless emergency rooms. Though this is a memoir, it is also a cautious, yet familiar, tale for anyone who has ever struggled with an eating disorder, a loss of control, high anxiety, depression, or any other seemingly impossible situation. Lena’s story is written as both a cautionary tale and a glimmer of hope for anyone who has ever felt like the world forgot about them, or has gone to drastic measures to forget about themselves and their own lives.
