“…don’t let the fear of what other people think of you change who you are.” - Clio Chazen

Clio Chazen talks about her eating disorder and the death of her brother in this Story From the Heart.

If I were to come across a ten-year-old me or a ten-year-old in a similar position to me, I would tell them not to let someone else dictate how they live their life. Be true to who you are, and don’t let the fear of what other people think of you change who you are.

My name is Clio Chazen and I am a student. Ballet started out as just something super fun and I just latched onto it, fell in love with it. I started doing more and more as I got older, and eventually began training to go the professional track. That looked like not going to school, going to school online so I could train six hours a day, six days a week, doing performances, and being in the practice studio pretty much my whole life for ages 13-18.  

Ballet is a very aesthetic art form. You have to be a certain way, you have to look a certain way, and therefore you have to try to please everyone and that can be very hard, especially when you’re a girl growing up, going through puberty. Eventually, I started to struggle with food and developed an eating disorder. 

I had a brother who was born with cerebral palsy and my parents were his primary caregivers. Very early on, I realized that his needs were life or death and my needs weren’t. I learned to be perfect and easy so my parents could deal with him because I wasn’t going to die if my needs were not met, whereas he would.

My brother passed away when I was 11. He was 14, and when he passed away I had to kind of keep my parents together. They were grieving tremendously and I was, like, the strong one. I had to keep my composure so I never really grieved my brother, and that really transferred into my obsession with ballet and then my obsession with food, my body, and the eating disorder.

When I was 17, in my senior year of high school, I moved to Sarasota to dance with the Sarasota ballet. I was in their training program to eventually make my way into the company, so I was on track to become a professional. I came home for Christmas break after the first few months in Sarasota, and I started having panic attacks about going back in January. One day I realized I didn’t have to go back, so I didn’t go back. I stayed home in January, I went back to Sarasota to get my stuff from my apartment, and never went back to ballet after that.

I started therapy in February 2020, I go to therapy every other week. I started seeing my dietician once a month, and it’s still a struggle. There are statistics about recovering from an eating disorder could take 5-7 years, and I’m not even two years in. It’s definitely still at the forefront of my mind, but it’s also, I feel like my life is so much more now. It used to be just food and ballet, and now my life is social, with college and a really great group of friends. I have a major that I love, I have faculty mentors, and I’m involved with a bunch of clubs. My life is just so much wider, and food and my eating disorder take up such a small percentage of my brain space now that I have such a fuller life.