< 'I think of my body as a teacher,' says Marine who struggled with disordered eating

TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley. And my guest today, Bailey Williams, has written a new book that gives a vivid and at times brutal look at being a woman in the Marine Corps while struggling with disordered eating. During her three years of service as a military linguist, Williams writes about how she pushed her body to extremes to prove her strength - running for hours a day, starving herself, binging and purging, which caused damage to her body, including her esophagus.

Williams signed up for the Marine Corps at 18 partly to escape her strict Mormon upbringing. But she'd come to realize the military was similar to her experiences growing up Mormon, a culture of secrecy, especially for enlisted women, who she writes were told to stay quiet about the sexual advances from superiors and fellow servicemen.

Williams' story is one that we don't hear often. Women only make up about 9% of the Marine Corps. And still, of the five military branches, it has the highest percentage of eating disorders, according to the National Institutes of Health. Bailey Williams is a writer and yoga instructor who lives in Alaska, and her book is called "Hollow: A Memoir Of My Body In The Marines." Bailey Williams, welcome to FRESH AIR.

BAILEY WILLIAMS: Thank you so much for having me.

MOSLEY: Bailey, let's start off with this really staggering statistic. Why does the Marine Corps, from your view, over-index with people suffering from eating disorders?

WILLIAMS: There's a significant overlap in values that you'll see in someone who is committed to an eating disorder and someone who is committed to being a good Marine - a level of competition, a level of bodily self-denial and the belief that self-mastery comes in the form of physical prowess. I think everyone's experience of an eating disorder is unique. I think we are all a confluence of a lot of different factors. But I do feel that some of the rhetoric that goes into the Marine culture, especially in recruiting, might even appeal to people who have certain grand desires of themselves and the really embodied sensation of wanting to be good and wanting to succeed and wanting to challenge themselves. And those values make really good Marines and pretty solid chances of developing an eating disorder as well.

MOSLEY: I think it's so interesting you use the word values. Is there a difference between, say, the Marines and the Army and the Navy? Does each of these branches kind of have their own standard for women's bodies?

WILLIAMS: Yes and proudly so. Within the different services, there's different ways of perceiving ourselves, but Marines are very proud of our reputation. We are the few. We are the proud. We are the smallest branch, and we are fiercely proud of having the highest physical standards. There were just so few of us women. There was a certain weight and expectation of needing to meet male standards.

MOSLEY: You grew up in West Virginia. When you turned 18, as I mentioned, you dialed up your local Marine Corps recruitment office and signed up basically on the spot. Why were you so eager to join the Marines in particular?

WILLIAMS: I enlisted as a Mormon girl and had a very particular perception of what the military was and what it was I would be doing. I - growing up, we had a copy of an oil painting that I absolutely loved. It was a depiction of General George Washington kneeling in the snow at Valley Forge and praying. And in Mormon culture, if not doctrine, there's this understanding that all of world history, all the affairs of human enterprise were divinely set up the way they were to ultimately accumulate in a 14-year-old boy named Joseph Smith, being in Palmyra, New York, to receive these golden plates that were then translated into the Book of Mormon. And so in this conceptualization of the cosmos, I understood the United States as the promised land - that we spoke of it as the promised land, and it's sometimes referred to as the cradle of restoration.

Now, that narrative has started to change within the Mormon Church as that church has become much more global in nature, but it was certainly something I grew up with. So from that lens, joining the military was an act of safeguarding the promised land, very grandiose concept. And if I was going to do it, of course I was going to go for the most stringent, most demanding, most - in my opinion - honorable branch.

MOSLEY: You know, this is really interesting because one of the things that also stood out to me, and I think a lot of people who come from a deeply religious background can understand this, is that you actually grew up trusting men more than you trusted women, including yourself.

WILLIAMS: Yes. And that was such a powerful aftershock of an all-male clergy and the whole conversation of men having an inherent discernment that, as a woman, it was my job to support and facilitate and follow but not to question. And that definitely set me up to be very susceptible to some of the baser sexism that I encountered in the Marine Corps.

MOSLEY: You, as a young person, in thinking about how you would leave your home - you grew up in West Virginia. You wanted to leave. You wanted to find your way, and you chose the military. You could see the similarities, even if it was unconscious. What did you know about the Marines before you enlisted? Like, did you have in pop culture or in movies or in your environment at home images of the military that really made you feel like this was the place that you would belong?

WILLIAMS: I knew nothing. I somehow had picked up just in the social ether that the Marine Corps was, like, the hardest core or the most demanding. In line with being raised in a very conservative household, I never heard any criticism of the military. I was blindly unaware that there was any, actually. I was unaware that we'd been anything other than wildly successful in all of our affairs abroad and had only ever heard hero worship.

MOSLEY: I think it was a recruiter you met when you enlisted who said to you, the thing about being a Marine is that we don't really care who you were before. Once you become a Marine, what is behind you is irrelevant. And I want to dig a little bit deeper into what you were trying to get away from, because what identity were you trying to shed, the thing that you were running from?

WILLIAMS: I knew that some of the stories, the narratives that I had been told of what it meant to be a girl and what it meant to be a woman, did not feel right in my body. I really struggled with some components of Mormon culture that I experienced as a reprimand, to be smaller, to be quieter, to be a follower and not a leader. I knew that I didn't want that, but I still had these - you know, just, like, the imprint of that incredibly patriarchal upbringing that made it very hard for me to even understand that there was another way to live. I assumed somebody needed to be in charge of me. I needed some structure, some leadership, some degree of - something I could plug into some organization where I could feel like I was a participant. And the Marine Corps was - you know, I described it - it was another religion for me.

MOSLEY: When you enlisted, you went in having experienced issues with disordered eating, is that correct?

WILLIAMS: Yes.

MOSLEY: Was that something that they asked you about when you signed up?

WILLIAMS: Yes. Yeah. Well, actually, I openly disclosed it 'cause I wasn't sure if it would disqualify me.

MOSLEY: And what did the recruitment officer say to you? How did they handle it?

WILLIAMS: About the same thing that I heard any time I tried to get help from my eating disorder once it resurged and became significantly worse once I was in, which is, well, you're not really skinny enough to have an eating disorder, so it's probably not that bad. The recruiter said something pretty similar. Well, you look fine.

MOSLEY: That becomes an ongoing theme throughout the book. And I would love to have you read a passage that expresses your state of mind and some of what you did while serving. And before I have you read this section, I want to note that there is the use of the word - that's C-H-I-T - which means going on leave. Is that right?

WILLIAMS: A chit is a medical order from a doctor that exempts you from physical duty to some degree. For example, if you're on chit, you might be on chit to not run for a while while your ACL is mending - something like that.

Here's a neat little tip from a misinformed corporal during a nutrition briefing - so nearly entirely wrong. It felt like being sandpapered. If you want to lose weight, pick your goal weight, and add a zero to it. And that's how many calories you should eat in a day. Intriguing. That allotted me 970 calories a day. If you want to mess up your head even faster, run 16 miles and still only eat your goal weight plus zero calories. Then you, too, can wake up in the middle of the night with hunger kneading your stomach from the inside.

I gnaw at my knuckles in my sleep. I woke up with blood on my pillow, noting with mild interest I was resorting to self-cannibalism. I turn the pillow over. I routinely slept with ice packs on bare shins. The frostbite blended in with other scars modeled like blue bark. Damn, Williams, you must be the first marine to get frostbite in Monterey, an NCO laughed. I laughed along - hilarious. If no pain, no gain, then I was Rocky. Every time someone implied it was characteristic of females to be fat and broken, I furiously clocked another mile, right hip clicking along.

When rumor circulated, a female was malingering for going on chit, I flew out the door, shoelaces double knotted, shouting at my injury to go on, hit me. And when she was asking for it, or she's lying, she wanted it, I protested by running long hauls along the gray coast. I rarely cried. Sometimes, though, in the gray cocoon of oceanic fog, miles alone up the coast, hunger cracked into something else. Then I slowed on the sand, dropped my hands to my thighs and took shuddering breaths.

MOSLEY: What's so powerful about the way you write about your eating disorder is the language that you use. It's at times relentless. Your writing almost put me inside of your body, the relentless way you withheld nutrients and exercised. It was very much for me the first time that I got a real lens into the hell of having an eating disorder. And I'm really curious - how long did it take you to write this book, to be out of your illness, to be able to write about it with such clarity?

WILLIAMS: Well, first, thank you so much for your kind words. The hope with how unflinching the writing is was to show what that space was like, simply because when I had an eating disorder, people who really loved me and were really trying to be kind would just say the worst things. (Laughter) I was like, maybe I can illustrate, like, what this looks like from where I'm standing. And hopefully it'll help other folks who have eating disorders or love people who do. I worked on this book for nine years. The bulk of it was written by the time I was about 26 or 27, and the writing coincided with recovery.

I have spent the last decade in, like, the meditation and mindfulness space. I've been a yoga teacher for - that's been my major way of supporting myself for years. And for me, you know, the events in the book, it's just my increasingly deranged quest to make myself fit in by being smaller because that's what I feel is being asked of me. And I use the term deranged really intentionally. I believe it comes from the French, to be removed from the land, deranger, to have a lack of relationship with land.

And so for me, writing was the accumulation of a lot of miles spent walking. I left the Marine Corps with an injury that really hurt, and what helped for me was movement. And I started walking and started backpacking and spent most of my 20s backpacking as much as I could, as frequently as I could, and building up this new story in my body. Because the story in "Hollow," I feel within my own body that I am inherently weak. And over the years of writing it, I was actively working on cultivating this new story in my body, which is actually I'm really strong, and I'm very much capable of holding this younger self that didn't have me, didn't have that sense of value and self-worth and strength.

MOSLEY: Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest today is Bailey Williams, a Marine Corps veteran and the author of the new book "Hollow." We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF JAKE MASON TRIO'S "THE STRANGER IN THE MIRROR")

MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. And today I'm talking to Bailey Williams about her new book, "Hollow: A Memoir Of My Body In The Marines." At 18, Williams enlisted in the Marine Corps, partly to escape a strict Mormon upbringing. But what she found was an environment similar to the one she grew up in, one that required her to keep secrets about sexual advances and overtures from her superiors and other Marines. And to prove her worth, Williams pushed her body to extremes, running for hours a day and suffering from a debilitating eating disorder. She was honorably discharged in 2011 after three years of service, and her memoir details her experiences and how she found her way out.

It's so interesting because even your younger self in the Marines at 18, and for those three years that you served, there's the desire to be small, as you said, but there's also this simultaneous desire to be strong.

WILLIAMS: Yes. Yeah.

MOSLEY: One of the ways to do that, of course, is through nutrition - fuel in, fuel out. I want to get a sense, though, what was your disordered mind telling you about the impact of the binging and the purging and the starving yourself, and what that was doing to your body in this world where being strong is such a value?

WILLIAMS: This is the heart of the paradox, right? Like, an eating disorder weakens you. An eating disorder weakens you, but you don't see it that way when you're in it. I knew that what I was doing was harming me. I could feel it, especially in the end when I was very sick indeed. Like, I could feel, like, these warning lights dimly going off in my body of, like, this is not - like, something is very wrong internally. And yet I always found this mental acrobatics to justify my eating disorder as the only thing that would fix it. The problem, for example - OK, so binging and purging - that felt awful. It was just a horrible experience. So obviously, the answer was I needed to just not eat, right? Like, that's going to fix it - which is not at all true. It was so inconceivable to me that to feed myself would actually strengthen me.

I think this really speaks to how inherently unsustainable an eating disorder is because, effectively, you are crippling your energetic force, right? Like, you're taking your life force, and you're trying to constrict it and say, I can live on less. And then I can live on even less than that. I can live on - I felt like I was drawing my life closer and closer within me and, like, wrapping it as close as I could around the bones because I felt like somewhere really, really deep inside, if I just kept this archaeological expedition, somewhere, some deep-down layer of me was good and worthwhile. I just had to find it. And that mindset is inherently crippling compared to, you have worth and value exactly as you are, so feed yourself.

MOSLEY: What type of feedback were you getting from those around you, from your superiors, your fellow servicemembers who would see you go on these long runs for hours a day. And they would also share meals with you.

WILLIAMS: Oh, admiration and approval, definitely. In fact, I once or twice heard men stand up for me because they saw me running so much. There was one time I dropped into a colleague's barracks room to borrow a book, "The Psychology Of Killing." I remember that distinctly - went in, borrowed this book. And at that moment, the NCO on duty walked by. And my being in a male room was grounds for punishment. And so he definitely, you know, chewed us out, and then he said well, I'm going to let you off this time because I see you running all the time. I was like, well, OK.

And so that kind of thing was in my mind. When I was tired and wanted to take a day off, it was like, well, my reputation, my entire sense of selfhood really revolves around being the endurance runner. So as long as I'm doing that, I don't know, like, I'm doing something to claim my place within the Marine Corps. No matter how tiny it is, it makes me feel like I'm doing my best.

MOSLEY: You have this quote from Marya Hornbacher at the top of one of the chapters. It's just so powerful. She's the writer of the book "Wasted." And "Wasted" is about a woman struggling with an eating disorder. And the quote says, when a woman is thin in this culture, she proves her worth. We believe she has done what centuries of a collective unconscious insists that no woman can do, control herself. A woman who can control herself is almost as good as a man. How much of your compulsion to have control over your body was also you trying to prove that you were as good or as equal as the men around you?

WILLIAMS: All of it. I enlisted - one of the greatest appeals of the military was the promise of meritocracy, that I would be judged on my character and my effort, what I could control and not my gender, which is something that no one gets to control. It's just how you are. And that was just simply not the experience I had. My gender was so aggressively - I was sexualized from the first day, and that never really ended until the last day I left the Marine Corps. Like, someone managed to say something reminding me I was a girl and that that was inherently problematic effectively every day of my enlistment.

There were times as I worked on this book for nine years, where I really hoped that some of the messaging had become irrelevant. I am fortunate enough that many of my girlfriends who've chosen to have children and the young women that I do see in my life have so much more empowered messages of what it is to be a girl. They're proud of their strength. They're here for it. They stand up for themselves, and it's so cool to see. And I kind of had this hope that maybe this work and some of the things I'm talking about of, like, the casual sexual harassment and misogyny, maybe this is the last generation. Maybe this is going to, you know, be more of a historical reflection of a certain point of time.

And since the recent election, I kind of have felt this really familiar fire under my skin. Trump's nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, is saying that women are incompetent and that their presence in the military causes love triangles and drama. And the conversation about women in combat is a really charged one. And it distracts from the fact that ostensible leaders saying that kind of dismissive, reductionistic language is going to seep down through the ranks.

It is going to affect women like me who are nowhere near combat but are still going to be hearing this language of, inherently, your value within the Marine Corps, your value within the military is less than a man's because you are not as mission critical. Where it really matters, where push really comes to shove, that's not you. It's me. And that kind of othering dismissed the heck out of the contributions of women who have been leaders in the military and who have been smashing all these barriers as long as they've been in.

MOSLEY: My guest today is Bailey Williams, a Marine Corps veteran and the author of the new book "Hollow: A Memoir Of My Body In The Marines." We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tonya Mosley, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley, and today I'm talking to Bailey Williams, author of the new book "Hollow: A Memoir Of My Body In The Marines." Williams served for three years in the Marine Corps, where she pushed her body to extremes while suffering from a debilitating eating disorder. At 18, Williams enlisted in the Marine Corps, partly to escape a strict Mormon upbringing. But what she found was an environment similar to the one she grew up in, one that required her to keep secrets about sexual advances and overtures from her superiors and other Marines. Williams was honorably discharged in 2011. She's currently a storyteller and a yoga teacher who lives in Alaska. And I want to give a warning to our listeners. Bailey and I will be talking about disordered eating and sexual assault.

Bailey, I want to talk about the infamous archetype that you talk about in the book of him and her. And to do this, I want you to read another passage from the book.

WILLIAMS: (Reading) Boot Marines became fluent in how we spoke of him. We would often speak of him. Everything the Marine Corps does is for the lance corporal in the froline with his rifle, we echoed - a mantra training our attention outward to our brothers overseas. Everything we did was for the infantrymen, always the infantryman. Infantry was exclusively men. The pinnacle of actual Marines in the actual war meant forever and always he. You, Marine, are learning a language to support him. When you are tired or Arabic irregular verbs make no sense, you need motivation. You need to remember him. You do not have it as bad as him here in cushy Monterey, California, and so you can run another mile or stay up an hour later.

(Reading) Marines also spoke of her, too - a warning. She was a phantom - the female Marine accepted as the standard, an allegory. She was an overweight non-deployed corporal. She spent half her life on chit nursing some made-up injury. That she was sexually repugnant yet slept with everyone, which would mean everyone slept with her also - no? - confused me deeply. Males had their standard to prove. Be like him. Females had our standard to prove. Don't be like her.

MOSLEY: Thank you for reading that. I mean, it sounds like that's a culture that's been set up over time way before you became a part of the Marines. How did you interpret the way your male counterparts viewed you? Did you think that they saw you as equals?

WILLIAMS: I think there were a lot of people who had their heart in the right place. There were a lot of Marines who did have kindness to them. I think also, very, very few - I can think of so few examples when when someone was saying - you know, it was always joking, right? It was always intended - well, I actually don't know the intention - but it was always portrayed as, oh, we're just joking. Williams just takes things too seriously. She's just too sensitive, you know, like females are - that kind of thing.

Very rare would someone say, hey; maybe we shouldn't talk about our colleagues that way, or like, hey; not only do we work together. We all live together. There is no separation between our professional and personal lives. And maybe we don't need to be sitting here and speculating about our colleagues' sexual lives while they're right there.

And I don't think I ever heard anybody - and part of it is a maturity thing. We speak so much about men and women in the military. I enlisted the week of my 18th birthday. A lot of us were under 21. I think our leadership, who we looked for to mitigate some of our scuffles, were, like, 23, 24, 25. Like, we were kids and didn't necessarily have the mentorship or maturity that maybe should have corrected some of the behavior that we had.

MOSLEY: It's so interesting you say that 'cause when I was reading this, I couldn't help but think, like, all of these little quips and things that are being said to her, they sound like middle school boys.

WILLIAMS: And it's another one of those things where with retrospect, it's like, wow, that was really childish. But I was 18, and I had just left the Mormon Church. I had no idea when to push back and say, like, hey. That's inappropriate, knock it off. Never said that, ever. I, again, believed in this kind of inherent superiority in men. And if that's how they saw it, then it must be so. And thank God not every woman who serves has my - had my background and my kind of training and subservience, but nor do I think that was an entirely unique thing either, where I think many girls and women are conditioned to make allowances for the boys and men around them.

MOSLEY: Some of the things that you heard other women experience in the Marine Corps and some of the things that you experienced, they weren't just snide comments, middle school talk. There was a real sense that you had to guard yourself and your body and kind of work in a real strategic way to not - I mean, just to say it flat out, to not be raped or sexually assaulted.

WILLIAMS: The language was the path to normalizing the greater sexual violence. Because first you learn to be quiet when you hear things that are cruel, that are just jokes, right? They don't mean anything. And if you raise your voice and say, hey, I didn't like that, then you're sensitive, and, you know, maybe you shouldn't be a Marine because you can't hack it. First, I was conditioned to understand that, you know, basically anything I heard, the appropriate or - the thing to do that would best convey that I wanted to be on this team was silence. It starts there.

And then there's the casual touching, like the men who just, like, find an excuse to stand behind me and put their hands around my waist or who would move me physically with their hands - just joking, just joking. Never mind that it was in the barracks where I lived, never mind that I had an eating disorder, and never mind that I wasn't consenting. You know, you're a woman among men. Again, why are you making a big deal out of this? So then that's the second level of conditioning.

And then you learned to not believe other women. That - you know, the first platoon I was in, there were women who had had a sexual violation. I don't know the details fully, but I do know that the perpetrators were back in our platoon. They'd been to some, you know, slap on the wrist, some degree of being removed, and then they were back. And I learned to question when women said, you know, this thing happened to me, because I was hearing, well, what were you wearing? Had you been drinking? Were you supposed to be there? What did you expect? And that kind of horrible, just heinous, victim-blaming language I feel was very prevalent.

So now you are isolated from feeling like you can speak up for yourself. You are disconnected from other women who could be your allies, but you're trying to be like the guys by distrusting them. You've kind of normalized that men will sometimes touch you in a way that you don't love, but, like, you don't want to make a big deal out of it 'cause you don't want to complain.

And then, you know, when I was sexually assaulted, I was, like, this great numbness because there was a sense of, I knew this was going to happen. It's hard to explain that, but it was like, all of the quieting of the lesser evils made the greater evil - it allowed it to happen in silence. There was nothing to say at that point, I felt. Of course, that's not every woman's experience. Again, there are women who fight very, very hard for justice. But in my experience, it was just, like, almost inevitable.

MOSLEY: You were sexually assaulted. You were raped. And even in your own experience, you were fearful of telling a superior what happened to you.

WILLIAMS: I at no point seriously considered reporting that assault, in part because I lacked the language to name it and secondly because I knew it wouldn't be taken seriously, or at least I felt that it would not be taken seriously. I saw and heard for years how we spoke about women who did report sexual assault, and I knew that it would somehow be my fault. I was there, wasn't I? I hadn't been drinking, but I was there. And I knew that people would - I knew I was perceived as a kind or a nice person because I was so eager to please. And I suspected they'd be like, oh, you know, Williams. He's an idiot. He probably thought she was leading him on, and he probably thought she was interested. But you can't really blame him for that, you know?

And I just so absolutely anticipated that the response would be, but did he really? That I just - you know, the fact of the matter is that, to say it simply, that rape hurt my feelings. Like, it was violating and painful and sad. And it was like, I don't want to expose this to scrutiny and to doubt. That was just how we spoke about - gosh, I wish that wasn't true. And I would love to believe that that's changed or is changing, but I can definitely speak to my own experience and feeling like there was never - for not a second did I consider reporting because I knew it wouldn't be taken seriously, and if it was taken seriously, it was going to be my life that got harder and not his.

MOSLEY: Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest today is Bailey Williams, a Marine Corps veteran and the author of the new book "Hollow." We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF KEITH JARRETT TRIO'S "CONCEPTION")

MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. And today I'm talking to Bailey Williams about her new book, "Hollow: A Memoir Of My Body In The Marines." At 18, Williams enlisted in the Marine Corps, partly to escape a strict Mormon upbringing. But what she found was an environment similar to the one she grew up in, one that required her to keep secrets about sexual advances and overtures from her superiors and other Marines. And to prove her worth, Williams pushed her body to extremes, running for hours a day and suffering from a debilitating eating disorder. She was honorably discharged in 2011 after three years of service, and her memoir details her experiences and how she found her way out.

Bailey, your superiors did, in their own way, try to help you. But it was almost like tell me you're OK, versus are you OK? Is that how you interpreted their concern?

WILLIAMS: I think the kindest among them, yes, very legitimately, wanted to be good leaders, wanted to take care of me. I did feel that sense of people did care about me as a person, some people. However, there was just a complete confusion over what an eating disorder was and a complete skepticism of its severity. There was also a remarkable lack of holistic care. So I would go to medical for all the different components of having an eating disorder, you know, the ulcers and the blood, and the Raynaud's and the anemia and, like, all these different things. But at no point was there a comprehensive continuity of care of anyone saying, you know, all these things together, these are all indications that this person is really struggling with an eating disorder.

MOSLEY: There's this moment in the book where you do meet with a dietitian. And I'm bringing this up because I also would love to delve into what might have helped you, like that wraparound care that you talk about. But also, when you met with this dietitian, she gives you the all clear, and you clock it that she actually has an eating disorder, too.

WILLIAMS: (Laughter).

MOSLEY: What was it about her interaction with you that made you think that?

WILLIAMS: So I went to a nutritionist who asked me what I ate in a day. And I described my day, which included about 900 calories, which is starvation levels of food. I described that, and she goes, oh, that sounds great. Oh, you eat so clean. You eat so well - and that kind of rhetoric around good and bad food. And, you know, she told me, you know, most of her clients were on BCP, indicating most of her clients were people who were overweight or prescribed to be overweight by the military's standards. And then she was helping them lose weight.

So she's like, but you won't have to worry about that if you eat like this. You eat even better than I do. And so, yeah, I diagnosed her as a fellow orthorexic, which is - part of my eating disorder was this kind of obsession with eating well. Eating clean is another way you hear that a lot. And for me, it extended to every bite of food I ate. Did this harm anyone? Did this harm the planet? I was, you know, vegan for a lot of my time in the military. I really sought to eat locally. And just, like, anything you can think of of what makes food good, I exhaustingly tried to follow those protocols.

MOSLEY: You started fasting at 7. Was it part of a religious practice? Was it like lent or like a, yeah, Ramadan type - yeah.

WILLIAMS: Yeah. So in Mormonism, the first Sunday of each month is set aside as Fast Sunday. So you fast for 24 hours without food or water. Now, it's considered a covenant, a two-way promise with God. It's meant to renew the vows you take when you're baptized of, you know, following Christ and living a life that's sanctified. And, you know, it's considered a very tender time and a time to connect, again, with spirit - again, by denying the body, right? So that message was there. And technically, your baptismal covenants, Mormon children are baptized at the age of 8 because presumably by then - that's the age of accountability because at 8, you can make your own decisions, apparently. But I was precocious, and I wanted to prepare for my eventual baptismal covenant. So I started fasting, yeah, before I was baptized when I was 7.

MOSLEY: Do you remember the feeling when you were praised for being precocious and praised for being ahead of everyone else and fasting at that young age?

WILLIAMS: Mm-hmm (ph). And that was - those were in the years after my mother had died. And I really was seeking some degree of safety in the world and feeling, like, held by my father and brothers and just the - being good. I am certainly not the first daughter to feel like if I'm good, then I will, you know, be filling my role within the family.

MOSLEY: You write so beautifully, and it's so heartbreaking about your mother's death. And I don't want to spoil the book by going into great detail, but your mother died when you were very young. And this is a pivotal point for you and you trying to take control over your body.

WILLIAMS: Yes, it was.

MOSLEY: When did you become aware that that's what it was for you?

WILLIAMS: You know, we were speaking earlier about eating disorders as a function of seeking control in a world that inherently you cannot control. I feel too that the root of that is a desire for safety. And my mother's sudden and violent death was - it felt like being uprooted, that I lost the sense of safety in the world. I lost the sense that you can reasonably expect to live through the day.

WILLIAMS: And I think many people have that at some point in their lives, like, that understanding of your own mortality and your understanding that this is finite. And I just happened to have that when I was 4 years old. And I think that it's actually left an incredible - again, you grow, and you adapt, and you kind of become - grow around the things that shape you. And then sometimes you are able to see with perception of, like, oh, it is - that has shaped me in a certain way. I tend to be slower to form a relationship. I tend to take my time. I tend to hesitate in some ways because you don't know if someone's always going to be there. You know they're not, actually. That's just, like - just one of the funny - not funny, but one of the strange shadows of losing a parent so young, I think.

MOSLEY: Yeah. Do you feel comfortable in your body today?

WILLIAMS: Oh.

MOSLEY: You know, I imagine you hiking in the backwoods of Alaska, enjoying nature, enjoying life. I mean, that's what I'm hoping for you.

WILLIAMS: Yeah, no, I really appreciate that. And, you know, I tried to fit in a little bit of optimism at the end of the book because the years since leaving the Marine Corps have been so beautiful. I have been outrageously blessed and just have had a really great last decade or so. Yoga was very transformative. I've practiced and taught for almost a decade and just learned different perspectives of feeling like my body is an ally and not something to subjugate but something, like - I think of my body as a teacher and, like, a very good teacher and a profoundly wise and intuitive teacher.

And I know this book is quite dark. I know I worked with some really dark elements within it. But I also would name that I feel so much joy within my physical being and within my relationships and within my family. And I know in my heart that some of that joy I would not feel in quite the same way had I not known the alternative. So, yes, I feel great joy in my body and a gratitude that comes from recovery and knowing that there was a different way to live in my body that is no longer my story.

MOSLEY: Bailey Williams, thank you so much for this book and for this conversation.

WILLIAMS: Thank you so much for having me.

MOSLEY: Bailey Williams' book is "Hollow: A Memoir Of My Body In The Marines." Coming up, critic-at-large John Powers reviews the new TV drama "Landman" starring Billy Bob Thornton. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF ALLISON MILLER'S BOOM TIC BOOM'S "SHIMMER")

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