Recovery Is Worth It: Jordan Kernen on Eating Disorders and Asking for Help

Jordan Kernen had what she describes as a great childhood. She grew up playing sports, close to her family, the kind of kid who put the pressure on herself to be the best. Nobody was talking about mental health, and she had no reason to think she would ever need to. Then two traumatic events hit within a month of each other during college, and the ground shifted under her.

In this episode of Success, Rewritten, Jordan sits down with Emily LoMenzo Washcovick to trace the full arc of her mental health journey: anxiety, depression, OCD, and anorexia, a two year struggle before she accepted treatment, a medical crisis that nearly took her life, and the long rebuild at Rogers Behavioral Health. Jordan is a third grade teacher and a mental health advocate, and she is honest about the part most people leave out. Recovery is worth it, and it is also the hardest thing she has ever done.

Where recovery actually began

When her mom's breast cancer diagnosis and her brother's severe car accident landed almost on top of each other, everything felt out of control. Food and exercise became the one thing Jordan felt she could control, and with her all or nothing personality, that control took hold fast. As she describes it, everything felt so out of control, and "food and exercise was what I could control."

She didn’t know what an eating disorder was. From the outside, a lot of the behaviors looked like being healthy, which is exactly what makes disordered eating so hard to name. As Jordan puts it, we live in a society where the culture of thinness is so prevalent that restriction and over-exercise get praised as discipline. The line between disordered eating and an eating disorder gets blurred, and the person struggling is often the last to see it.

The warning signs loved ones can look for

Jordan is clear that catching it early matters. As she puts it, "you don't realize how bad it is until it's terrible," and once it is, "it's even harder to come back from." The red flags she names are not about a single meal or workout. They are about a hold that is hard to let go of: when someone starts to rearrange their life around food and exercise, when they refuse meals or stop showing up to see the people they love. If you are worried about someone, that worry is worth voicing, even when it is hard to say out loud.

The crisis that changed everything

For about two years, Jordan's care team told her she needed to go to Rogers. She kept meeting the weight targets, kept powering through, finished student teaching, earned her college degree. Then she went in for a routine weight check, stood up to have her blood pressure taken, and blacked out. Her blood pressure had dropped to around 60 over 20. She was, in her words, on death's door. She spent six days in the hospital, and it was there that she made the decision herself: "I need to go to Rogers. If I go home, nothing's gonna get better."

What treatment actually looked like

Jordan went from the hospital to inpatient, then to residential, where she spent three months. She does not romanticize it. "It was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life." For the first week she cried constantly and wanted to go home. What shifted things was realizing she was not alone. Seeing other people fighting the same thing, and getting through it, made her believe she could too.

Exposure therapy became the turning point. Jordan learned to recognize an anxious or disordered thought, name it, and choose the opposite action. She learned to challenge the thought and ask what was actually real, and to look for the gray area instead of living in black and white. Those are the same tools she uses today. Recovery, she is honest, did not mean the eating disorder disappeared. She has accepted she will "struggle with an eating disorder my entire life," and holds onto the line that steadies her: "It doesn't define me, but it will be a part of me."

How recovery shows up in her classroom

Jordan's dream was to become a third grade teacher, a dream she had held since she was in third grade herself. Now that she’s living it, her own recovery shapes how she talks to kids about food, bodies, and feelings. In her classroom, all foods fit. She doesn’t sort snacks into good and bad, and she does not allow comments on other people's bodies. When a student calls a food unhealthy, or uses the word fat, she redirects to who a person is rather than how they look.

She is also watching a trend that alarms her. Eight and nine year olds are talking about calories. Parents are putting young children on diets. Jordan sees firsthand how much kids absorb from the adults around them, whether or not those adults realize it. "Whether you realize it or not, they are watching everything you do, everything you say, every choice you make." Her message to any adult guiding young minds is to let kids feel their emotions and let them be themselves, rather than shaming the feelings or shaping the child into something else.

The message she wishes she had heard sooner

If there is one thing Jordan wants people who are currently struggling to hear, it’s the thing she says at the very start of the episode. "I wish I would've asked for help sooner. I wish I would've accepted help sooner." Admitting you need help is terrifying. It is also, in her experience, freeing. "Once you get help and realize that you have people in your corner, recovery starts to become a possibility."

And Jordan would know! If you had told her, in the depths of her eating disorder, that she would be standing in her own classroom today, she would have said you were crazy. You are not alone in this. Find your people, find your support, and take the hard first step.

Resources

If you or someone you love is struggling, support is available. Jordan points to the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA), which offers a chat, a screening tool, and the annual NEDA Walk held in major cities including Milwaukee. She also recommends Rogers Behavioral Health for anyone near one of its locations, and any organization that provides mental health care in your area.

Watch the full interview on YouTube, or listen on any podcast platform (here’s Apple Podcasts and Spotify).