Trigger warning: This article discusses topics that may be triggering for some readers, including eating disorders and mortality. Reader discretion is advised.
In the early spring of 2025, as a board member of Variety BC, a charity mandated to help children with disabilities and complex health needs, in support of her volunteer role, Penny Greening began to independently unravel the various organizations in British Columbia affiliated with child mental health. She began to examine how these organizations connect to one another, if at all. After some research, she found several exist in their own bubbles.
Living on the North Shore, she also started to pick up on conversations in her community that poked at these bubbles. In her parental purview, teenagers expressed issues around body image and self-worth. She reflected painfully on her own experience growing up with an eating disorder, asking herself, “How is this still happening?” and reassuring herself that by now, “There must be education in high school.”
Back at her desk, she began a deep dive into uncovering eating disorder resources in Canada and learned that’s not the case. Far from it, in fact. Results showed a year-plus waitlist for treatment in Canada for adolescents struggling with eating disorders. Even more concerning is the mortality rate of this “mental illness,” ranking second behind the opioid crisis in terms of psychiatric disorders.
Underfunding plays a vital part, Penny learned. “Canada’s eating disorders picture is far less funded… Federally and provincially, Canada has a very small footprint in terms of what current funding supports for each organization involved.”
Penny believes this is in part due to pre-existing stigmas around mental illness, and partly due to the complexity of eating disorders, historically and largely a female health issue, though she acknowledges it’s growing across all genders today. She also pointed to emerging research from the United States as of last fall, where neuroscientists are forging links between the brain and eating disorders. An exciting turn of events, but a long road ahead.
She also unearthed a joint report by the BC Ministry of Education and BC Children’s Hospital which cites a NEDA (National Eating Disorders Association in the U.S.) study finding that “being fat is more frightening to some girls than cancer, nuclear war or even losing their parents.”
Putting boots on the ground since last May, Penny spoke with several organizations such as NEDIC (National Eating Disorder Information Centre in Canada), asking intentional questions that may lead to some answers. Then she asked, “Do you see there’s a gap in parent education, and eating disorders literacy, that could lead to prevention or early intervention?” One by one, the organizational leads agreed.
Penny thought, “If it’s so heavily loaded downstream, then why are we not getting ahead of it upstream, and where can that happen?” After assessing the current available educational resources, which fell short on various levels, Penny took measures into her own hands, paving a road for upstream parenting awareness in BC, starting with Metro Vancouver.
That’s where Penny’s lived experience comes in and the inception of the emerging nonprofit, Reframe Voices Society, which she launched with a board and cross-section of experts she hand-selected to start. To Penny, “pulling it apart to understand the different pieces and then educating at the very minimum, parents of school-aged kids,” is an urgent matter.
Perhaps the harshest reality comes from one of Penny’s sharpest observations and founding missions to educate, first, on a parental level. “Who has a child and thinks, my child might have a mood disorder or depression? You typically think, and hope that your child will be healthy since you’re going to do what’s best for them.”
Although visionary, her nonprofit didn’t spring up overnight. Neither did her drive. Penny’s background is filled to the brim with creative pursuits. At the age of fourteen, Penny dreamed of animating movies for Walt Disney. On her mother’s encouragement—her mother was a teacher—she hopped on the phone with the company that year and asked what she needed to do. They told her to obtain an animation degree. So, Penny did just that.
After graduating with a bachelor’s degree, Penny entered the entertainment industry as an animator. She realized early on that “I wasn’t prepared, coming from a sensitive childhood, to deal with the egos.” At the end of two years in the field, she felt as if her “heart and soul were crushed.” In hindsight she realized, “That whole childhood side of me that wanted to work in animation was an adolescent looking to escape into a world of magic.”
She’d later find herself on the precipice of the internet boom, helping to evolve the ever-expanding world of web development from coding to design, including educating other adults. These early contributions led her to work in a large marketing team, then various ad agencies. Simultaneously she began to familiarize herself with different local nonprofits, since Penny recalls that “I volunteered in nonprofits outside of office hours to fill the emptiness in my heart, while trying to make a living.” At the end of the day, she “just wanted to make people happy,” as she had with her cartoons.
Penny’s vision for Reframe Voices grew out of this love of giving back to her community, though it also stems from her personal relationship with food and her decades-long struggle. “When I was eight, I had a binge eating disorder, but didn’t know it.” Then, at thirteen, a different eating disorder kicked in. “It happened so fast, and within three months, it was noticeable to others.”
It’s reported that less than six per cent of those diagnosed for treatment are actually underweight. One of the biggest issues, she said, when reflecting on her journey, is that “As a child, I was overweight based on BMI tools.” Then, “As a tween, I lost enough weight in a quick period of time based on my restrictions, not knowing that’s what I was doing. But after achieving my new social status, I accepted that restriction had to be my path forward.” This would begin to function as a coping mechanism for her.
That’s when, for Penny, “the sort of social status sensation of, ‘oh, now I can be accepted and loved, maybe I’ll be part of the group,’” kicked in. She added: “That being implemented in a child’s brain during puberty and childhood development is the danger.”
Penny lived with what’s known as atypical anorexia, which occurs in individuals whose weight is within or above the normal range despite significant weight loss. The fear of regaining weight lost becomes all-consuming. A subclinical branch of the disorder, which Penny explains, is harder to spot and diagnose, “because the adolescent living in it is living in shame.”
It would take Penny until college to realize her teen self lived in this state of food restriction to control her fears of rejection. Years later, Penny welcomed home her firstborn. In postpartum, in the overwhelm and stress of new motherhood, Penny had her first relapse, slowly falling back into old patterns.
Then came cancer. “I had breast cancer at 42, and after I ended up going through recovery, I just for fun thought, how cool would it be to see all these muscles I’ve got underneath?” In her first bodybuilding show, Penny medaled across all categories. Two weeks later, however, losing her grip on what she was warned would be an unsustainable peak physique, she suffered an intense binge session and subsequent panic attack that left her in hysterics. The urge to control food intake, at all costs, came next. This period would mark her third relapse.
“Once you start to achieve that look, society approves of you differently, because suddenly you’re ‘healthier.’ So what happens if you lose it? The fear of failure is extreme.”
“I cycled through these shows three times over five years, until I finally acknowledged, ‘oh my god, I have an eating disorder.’” Although never clinically diagnosed, she would later validate this in counselling.
This disorder functions case by case, meaning it can take many shapes and forms. She emphasized that her journey is not how every person has or will fare, and that this is not the exclusive template for eating disorders or the pathology behind it, but an example of what it can entail, and why they are so complex.
Penny’s next “aha” moment came one day in her bathroom. Looking at her newly diagnosed ADHD medication container, she learned that it is also used to treat binge eating. “It all came full circle.”
Co-occurring mental health conditions are common, she shared. “For many, it’s the control piece or the sense of not belonging, or fear of judgment, or fear of losing control that actually comes from potentially other co-occurring conditions,” whether it’s anxiety, stress, trauma-related disorders and/or neurodivergence, among other possible things.
The reality is, recovery takes a long time. Penny said, “I know from my background in the fitness industry, listening to people, and observing human behaviour, it takes a long time to change a habit.” It is estimated that only 25 per cent will ever seek or receive treatment. This is largely in part due to the shame attached to coming forward. This can also shake an individual’s perceived sense of control.
“To suggest that you have this problem is to potentially lose the control you believed you had over your own perceived social value, or other distorted sense of self,” said Penny. Even when people do come forward, it often takes three to seven years to fully recover with proper counselling, psychoeducation and nutrition. On the cost side of things, recovery expenses accumulate over time from thousands to tens of thousands of dollars.
“If it’s caught and it’s not fatal, then for the rest of those of us who have lived through one, it can be chronic. And if it’s not caught, it can be chronic and debilitating,” said Penny.
When asked what the future of Reframe Voices looks like in the next five to ten years, if everything goes as hoped, Penny responded, “It will.” Committed to serving her community and beyond, she hopes to eventually spread the word to neighbouring municipalities and other Canadian provinces.
“The more that we’re able to get the word out, the more people who come to us, whether it’s parents who are presently concerned and want to learn more. Or whether it’s a parent who comes up after a workshop who wants to chat about where they can find more resources because they’ve been worried, we’re becoming a conduit to those downstream resources. And more youth are courageously asking to be part of our volunteer group, because they want to provide more social proof to parents of children growing up today that this problem is very real.”
“When people hear that it’s a psychiatric problem, they tend to shut down the notion that this is about parenting at all. But it’s not just a mental illness. It’s a bio-psycho-social illness,” Penny said. “So I’ve started using the term ‘social illness’ upfront.”
Aside from expanding geographically, Reframe Voices Society has plans for cultural expansion. “We need to increase impact by scaling outreach to be able to present multilingual, multicultural workshops.”
Penny knows, from years of fighting and now advocating, that “eating disorders don’t discriminate. They don’t discriminate by gender, body type, race, nationality or socioeconomic background.”
To learn more, visit ReframeVoices.ca.
