(bright music) - [Announcer] Tonight on "Rhode Island PBS Weekly".

- [Narrator] Betsy Brenner was shocked to be diagnosed with an eating disorder in her 40s.

- How could I have anorexia?

I was hardly emaciated.

I'm in my 40s, mother of three, high school tennis coach.

To have anorexia, don't you have to be a young white teenager or young adult?

I had a lot to learn.

(gentle music) - When I see back on my life, it's not sad.

I am only thankful to God.

He gave this experience, this chance to live.

- So every time someone handed me a notebook or just gave me that advice, "I hope you're writing this down" or "please write this down" or "you'll feel better if you write about it", I could just shake my head because they didn't understand that I couldn't read a sentence in People Magazine.

(bright music) (bright music continues) - Good evening.

Welcome to "Rhode Island PBS Weekly".

I'm Michelle San Miguel.

- And I'm Pamela Watts.

We begin tonight with a story about something an estimated 29 million Americans may suffer from in their lifetime.

- We're talking about eating disorders.

It's a serious mental illness that is prevalent and frequently misunderstood.

And there's a misconception that eating disorders are a lifestyle choice.

But those struggling with the illness know it's about a lot more than food.

And in its severest form, it can be deadly.

- My diagnosis came as I was headed down a very dangerous path.

I had to learn that the illness wasn't my fault, that it was accumulation of many factors in my life.

- [Michelle] For Betsy Brenner, tennis has long been a way of escaping from the stress of life.

It's fueled her self-confidence and given her something to look forward to.

From a young age, she says the tennis court was also a way of coping with the emotions she was forced to suppress.

- I never allowed myself to feel negative emotions of any kind, sadness, anger.

It was all about focusing on all the positives in my life.

Nobody really knew the depth of the emotions that were stuffed inside me for decades.

- [Michelle] It all started when she was seven years old shortly after her baby sister was born.

She says the innocence of her childhood was shattered.

- My father just completely out of the blue told my mother he no longer wanted to be married to her.

It turned out he was having an affair with someone else in the community, and in those days, well-respected lawyers and people like him didn't just walk out on their wives and two young children.

But my mom went on as if nothing happened.

- [Michelle] As a young girl, Brenner says she learned that when something traumatic happens, she was to go on as if nothing happened.

She writes about her experience in her memoir, "The Longest Match".

Journal entries from her childhood reveal a preoccupation with food.

- [Betsy] I ate so much.

I want to go on a diet for real.

I have been eating a lot lately.

I don't wanna gain weight, but I don't wanna be preoccupied with calories either.

At a restaurant lunch, I had a salad so I could eat lots of breadsticks.

- [Michelle] By the time she was 33, she had lost both of her parents to cancer, but she says she couldn't properly grieve.

- I didn't know it was okay to feel sadness.

And when relationships are complicated, grief is complicated.

So I couldn't have begun to even explore what I was feeling and instead thought I was just supposed to go on being, you know, wife, mother, part-time hospital attorney, and again, just focus on the blessings that I was given.

- [Michelle] She's been married to her husband Jeff for 32 years and raised three children in Barrington.

But the emotions she was hiding even from them came to a head in her 40s when she was diagnosed with asthma.

- My eating disorder really had always been like a pot of water simmering on the back burner.

But when the perfect storm hit in my 40s, it was as if that pot of water was now coming to a rapid boil on the stove.

- [Michelle] When her asthma kept her off the tennis court, Brenner began restricting how much food she was eating.

- If I was gonna look like I was eating normally at dinner with friends, I had to make sure I got in a significant amount of vigorous exercise.

- [Michelle] It was a doctor who noticed Brenner's weight loss and diagnosed her with anorexia in her 40s.

- How could I have anorexia?

I was hardly emaciated.

I'm in my 40s, mother of three, high school tennis coach.

To have anorexia, don't you have to be a young white teenager or young adult?

I had a lot to learn.

- All right, ready?

$2.80 for the pork, $3.50 for the buttered noodles, $1.50 for the roll, and $0.75 for butter.

- [Michelle] For decades, the media have portrayed people with anorexia as being young, white, and oftentimes wealthy women.

But it's a disorder that affects women and men of all races, body types, and ages.

Dr. Amy Egbert is a clinical psychologist who works with people who have eating disorders.

She says the stereotype of someone with an eating disorder has hurt people of color.

- If somebody comes into your office and they look a certain way and your kind of conceptualization of an eating disorder is that you have to be thin, you have to be white, you have to be female.

If somebody doesn't fit that mold, you're not even gonna think to ask them those questions.

- [Michelle] Egbert says that ultimately means they're less likely to be diagnosed or to receive treatment.

- So if research is being done from clinics, guess who's not a part of that research?

Those groups.

- And as a result, they suffer, - Exactly, as a result, they're not included.

As a result, they may not even know that what they're struggling with is an eating disorder, and as a result, they're getting sicker and sicker.

- You do a lot of sit-ups.

I'm not going to treat you if you aren't interested in living.

- [Michelle] And while young women tend to be the subject of movies about eating disorders, Egbert says someone can develop it at any age.

- There are many different things that happen within life that might lead someone to change the way that they eat, to feel uncomfortable with their bodies.

And so although we used to think of eating disorders, like you said, in people who were only teenagers or very young, we are starting to realize that many people who don't fit into that group are suffering.

- There's so much shame and secrecy with any mental health issues, but I think for a woman in midlife with an eating disorder, there's even more shame and secrecy because so many people don't understand it's a disease, it's an illness, it wasn't my fault.

- [Michelle] And Brenner knows that had she not reached out for help sooner, she could have put her health at risk.

More than 10,000 people die of eating disorders every year in the United States.

Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of all the eating disorders - I didn't have 10 pounds to lose.

I always had a very small frame.

But getting back into tennis again after 20 something years, I developed this intense fear of gaining weight.

So then when I couldn't play tennis to ease that fear of weight gain because the asthma made me feel so sick and short of breath and out of control, the eating disorder was a way of feeling in control.

But it was actually the eating disorder that was in control, not me.

- [Michelle] Through therapy, she discovered the trauma she suffered as a child eventually led to her eating disorder, and she's hardly alone.

Studies show people who've experienced trauma are more likely to develop an eating disorder.

- We see that when it comes to eating disorders that the under root is anxiety, depression, trauma, your environment, your chemistry, your biology, and the eating disorder really is the symptom of those.

- [Michelle] Randi Beranbaum is the founder and director of Be Collaborative Care, an eating disorder recovery center in Providence.

- I think trauma and eating disorders have this co-occurrence because at the core of it, it's down to the identity of that person and sort of how they are able to get through this traumatic experience, that they're able to get through this trauma by numbing themselves out, by focusing, hyper-focusing on food and body.

- [Michelle] More than 90% of people who have an eating disorder are at a medically normal weight or higher.

But Barenbaum says diagnosing someone with an eating disorder is about much more than the number on the scale.

- If you are somebody who has been 170 pounds and all of a sudden you're 130 pounds, even if that 130 pounds is technically considered healthy, if that was achieved by not eating, preoccupation with weight, the level of restriction that is causing so many other health complications, that person's anorexic.

- [Michelle] After years of meeting with a dietician and a therapist, Brenner says she's grateful she no longer has an eating disorder.

Her frequent walks along the beach in Barrington give her time to reflect on how far she's come.

- It's always been my place whether I'm really happy or really sad or if I have a big decision to make or I'm feeling anxious, and it just always brings me peace, brings me joy.

- [Michelle] Brenner leads a support group for people in midlife who have eating disorders.

She wants them to know recovery is possible.

- I think when we get to this stage in life, there's nobody who hasn't been through something.

And I want everyone to know, no matter how long it's been or no matter what you've been through, it is possible to heal from past trauma and become healthier in mind, body, and spirit.

It's hard to get there, but if I can do it, anyone can do it.

- Up next, it's been 14 months since Russian forces embarked on a major assault of Ukraine.

Tonight we take a second look at the war's impact closer to home and introduce you to one man and his family who lost nearly everything in the war-torn nation.

They have been rebuilding their lives one step at a time in Rhode Island with the help of life's universal language, music.

(choir tuning) (choir tuning) - My name is Oleksandr or Alex Kreshchuk.

I came here from Ukraine.

(bright choir music) (bright choir music continues) - Good evening, and we're coming on the air at this hour with breaking news.

After the US warned all day of a full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine that it was imminent, Vladimir Putin has just addressed the Russian people moments ago announcing what Putin called the start of a military special operation, in his words, to de-militarize Ukraine.

- First plan was to stay in our house and we want only children left.

But in the first minutes, we understood it's very serious solicitation and everybody must fled.

So we very quickly jump in our car.

We went on the road, the road was packed, this car, and very slowly we came and we had no idea where go.

First idea was go to Poland border and to Lutsk and to Warsaw.

But we get news Russian rocket bombed Lutsk also.

So we turned left on the Chernivtsi area and to Romanian border.

And when we came there, a crowd of people, mostly women and children crying.

It was very cold, it was terrible stage.

Many times I'm saw on TV what happened in Syria or in other countries when refugees left countries.

But I cannot imagine, I can see myself what's happened.

I'm standing in this crowd and crying and I saw my kids, I saw on my grandchildren and have no idea what will happen.

(gentle music) Our house was crowded with kids, teenagers, especially New Year's Eve or Christmas or birthday celebration, all time our house was full with music, kids and joy and preparing food.

(bright music) (bright music continues) Before war, it was very active life.

Now I was involved in music ministry in Ukraine and music education.

So my main point of my life was training, choir conductor and conduct choir, organize different choir, and also serve in the church.

(bright music continues) - [Announcer] 5,000 people have been registered in the choir coming from many republics throughout this vast country.

Their songs stirred the people and particularly this national song entitled "Over Our Homeland" which they had been forbidden to sing for many years.

Let's listen.

(choir singing in foreign language) (gentle music) - In five or six weeks after we left, we get news.

Russian army left Europe.

And next hour we get a picture and all our family crying because it was absolutely all destroyed, bombing and everything was burning.

And big library, good collection of music instrument, and all photos of what we collect during last 35, 40 years.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (family chatting in foreign language) (family chatting continues) Every day we're crying and praying about them because they have no apartment, no house.

They stay in one apartment.

But Russian rocket came and destroyed near electricity station near the house.

It's very difficult, difficult time.

- Did you read, Sasha?

Alex, did you read this news this morning?

- [Alex] No.

(family chatting) (car motor running) (no audio) (bright music) - And I visited many countries and it's one sight when came this concert or came as a tourist, but another way to come as a refugee.

I met a very deeply compassion and people with deep love and with open heart.

I never met angry people and they said "why you ask me something?"

Everyone I met, very good.

- [Interviewer] Does it make you sad to think about your former life?

- If to say I'm sad or not sad, I understand the life is a journey on the way from day of birth to till day of death.

And we must come through different events in our life.

And when I see back on my life, it's not sad.

I am only thankful to God.

He gave this experience, this chance to live.

And now I understand it's a new period of my life.

And even I need to start from zero level, I will do it.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) - When Providence-based and New York Times bestselling author Ann Hood lost her daughter two decades ago, the overwhelming grief took over her life.

Tonight she gives us her take on coping with grief and how people can help someone going through such a devastating loss.

- People do lie about grief.

They tell you time will heal.

They tell you God only gives us what we can handle.

They tell you all those platitudes that really don't apply and that really don't help.

My name is Ann Hood, and this is my take on coping with grief.

April of 2002 was an incredibly unusually hot month for New England.

And what I didn't know but would later learn is that spike in temperature did something strange to the strep virus, the one that you usually get strep throat from and that kids did get strep throat from.

My son had it, I had it, my daughter Grace had it, but hers was the virulent kind that they call galloping strep.

And she spiked a fever.

So I rushed her to the emergency room.

But within hours, I found myself in the ICU with a doctor looking me in the face and saying "your daughter's not gonna make it".

She was in the hospital for 36 hours before she died on April 18th.

Part of what writers do is make sense out of chaos, whether we're writing fiction or non-fiction.

But when Grace died, I couldn't make sense of it.

And writing required that, requires it of writers.

So every time someone handed me a notebook or just gave me that advice, "I hope you're writing this down" or "please write this down" or "you'll feel better if you write about it" I could just shake my head because they didn't understand that I couldn't read a sentence in People Magazine.

I couldn't pay attention to a movie.

I couldn't follow the plot.

My brain was not processing the way it had for my entire life until that time.

I think people, wonderful people want to fix everything.

You know when you call a friend, you have a broken heart, or you don't know what to do about your job, or any kind of thing that happens in your life, you call someone for advice and they wanna help you.

They wanna fix it.

They wanna come up with a solution to make your life easier and better.

But when you lose someone, and I have to say, losing your five year old daughter maybe in particular, they can't fix it.

No one can fix it.

I always say that six months later when I learned how to knit, it brought my concentration back because I'm not very crafty and I had to think so hard to get seven stitches done correctly.

But that kind of allowed me to start reading again because I was training my brain how to think and concentrate again.

And slowly, slowly, I began to write again.

And so I wrote an essay called "Comfort" that became my memoir "Comfort" about the lies people tell you when you're grieving.

And I wrote it with my responses to them, the things I wished I had the courage or the nerve or the energy to say, but I just couldn't.

So as a writer, I wrote them down instead.

For me, and I think for many other people, your brain is like an old VCR stuck on replay where it keeps replaying the hours leading up to what happened.

And for me, those hours began in the emergency room.

And I would start there and I would just replay it, replay it.

And of course, the end of that loop is Grace dying.

And as much as people had told me "write it down, it might help", it did help to explore grief.

And after I wrote "The Knitting Circle", the novel, I started writing about grief in my fiction so that I was writing and exploring different aspects of grief with distance.

And that distance kind of opened the door.

Now when I think of her, I almost never think of the hospital.

I always think of her as she was.

My advice to someone who's grieving, perhaps just started grieving, is that there's no rulebook for this.

There's no roadmap to follow.

You know what you feel and you know what you need.

And don't try to please the people around you by doing what they think you need.

It's really, really important to understand what will help you.

And I know there are times you feel like nothing will help you.

And in those times it is okay to give in to crying or avoiding people or whatever you have to do.

Don't fall into the misleading idea that there's a way out, that everyone has the same way out of this.

My advice to someone who wants to help a friend or a relative who's grieving is kind of twofold.

Do something extraordinary and do something small.

Something extraordinary, I have a friend in New York City who just felt so terrible that she wasn't near me after Grace died, that we had all these miles between us.

And one day she just drove those three and a half hours and showed up with lunch for me.

And it made me feel good for days that someone did that extraordinary thing.

Another friend stayed away, respectfully, didn't call, but she sent me a card every day for 30 days.

So every day I knew that she was thinking of me.

Show up in whatever way you can and don't expect anything from the person who's grieving.

Do those things that are comforting.

We all know how it is to be comforted in what we need.

Think of that and do that for them.

My name is Ann Hood, and this has been my take on coping with grief.

- And now a sneak peek at an upcoming "Art Inc" story that takes us out to the steel yard where students and their mentors are turning firearms into works of art.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) - I am Diana Garlington.

I'm the mother of Essence T Christal who unfortunately I lost in a drive-by shooting in 2011.

Once this happened, they gave her a number on a list as an unsolved murder homicide.

She's not just a number.

Her name is Essence.

- I'm Scott Lapham.

I'm an artist and an educator.

Four of my students were lost to gun violence.

One Gun Gone came about as positive response to the idea that so many people were taken out of our lives by gun violence.

So I wanted to have a space that literally and figuratively could talk about how we felt about gun violence.

Since I'm an artist and a visual artist, the idea of having an art project made the most sense because having an art project is a way to have a conversation.

We wanted to make a project where the art is more valuable than the gun.

- You can see the entire story right here on Rhode Island PBS on Monday, April 24th at 7:00 PM or anytime at ripbs.org/artinc.

And finally tonight, we have some very exciting news to share.

Rhode Island PBS has shattered its record for New England Emmy nominations, earning 12.

And we here at "Rhode Island PBS Weekly" have also beaten our previous record, earning nine.

Winners will be announced in June.

And that's our broadcast this evening.

Thank you for joining us.

I'm Michelle San Miguel.

- And I'm Pamela Watts.

We'll be back next week with another edition of "Rhode Island PBS Weekly".

Until then, follow us on Twitter and Facebook and visit us online to see all of our stories and past episodes at ripbs.org/weekly or listen to our podcast, available on your favorite streaming platform.

Thank you and goodnight.

(gentle music)