How often do you think about your relationship with your body, and with your food? We nourish our bodies daily, but how often do we actually consider the connection between what we put into it and how we see ourselves? Reclaiming the Black Body is an invitation to explore these vital relationships, especially for women and femmes whose bodies have been constantly vilified over time. Growing up, I did not think much about my relationship to food, or that my body was something I could relate to in a kind or loving way. I viewed food as a necessary means of survival, and occasionally a guilty pleasure. I thought of my body as something that needed to be changed in order to fit into mainstream, white-centric definitions of “fitness,” “health,” and “beauty.” This idea that somehow I needed to be fixed was rooted in a deeply ingrained culture of punishment and conformity. As a Black girl growing up in a very religious household in the rural South, forcing my body into submission was expected as a means of safety, belonging, and dignity in my community. The shape and size of my body was connected to my worth.  Eating issues have become so normalized that many of us deal with them but do not view our relationship to food as disordered. This is especially true in communities of color, largely because eating disorders have long been mislabeled as something that only impacts thin, white cisgender women. It wasn’t until I went to pursue a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling that I learned about eating disorders, and subsequent body dissatisfaction. From then on, I began to connect the dots about my own relationship to eating and my body.  In reality, my relationship to food was heavily disordered—or as I prefer to say now, imbalanced. During my teenage years I was consistently undernourished. I regularly restricted my food intake in an attempt to alter my body to be slim but thick in all of the “right” places. This period of restriction was often followed by eating foods that were considered “bad”—then came the guilt, and the feeling that I had to punish myself by withholding food again because of my “poor” choices. My attitude toward food was dictated by control and rigid rules, rather than being seen as a source of joy and nourishment. As I began to do more digging into this dynamic as an adult, I came to realize that the root cause was part of a much larger, much deeper story.  ​ What we put into our bodies is greatly impacted by our global ecosystem. For Black people experiencing eating imbalances, then, it’s critical to examine the systems that have fundamentally disrupted their relationship to their bodies and nourishment: Colonization, capitalism, enslavement, Jim Crow laws, and much more have contributed to this disconnection, powerfully shaping who—and how—we are.  ​ While eating disorder awareness and treatment has been amplified in white communities—particularly among cisgendered able-bodied white women—practitioners, scholars, and researchers estimate that Black communities experience higher rates of eating disorders and disordered eating than the overall population. We know that Black women and femmes tend to experience a disproportionate amount of trauma, violence, marginalization, discrimination, and adverse childhood experiences, compounded by misogynoir and racism—all of which can amplify eating disorder symptoms by increasing imbalanced eating behaviors and stress. We also know that social factors can create disparities in our relationship to food—things like: a lack of access to affordable and diverse food options based on our zip code, lack of access to clean water, stress, lack of sleep, socioeconomic status, illness, a family history of food scarcity, or a lack of affirming body movement options. These kinds of personal experiences have a direct correlation to the development of eating imbalances in Black communities. Clearly, there is some real unpacking to be done here—and the stakes couldn’t be higher.  ​ When I first got started in this field I was one of only five Black eating disorder practitioners in my state of North Carolina. As you can imagine, there were very limited conversations about eating imbalances in Black communities. From the beginning of my career, I have been vocal and committed to shifting that representation for myself, my colleagues, and all human beings who feel that the treatment of eating imbalances are not inclusive of their own experiences. We deserve to feel safe and seen, and to be able to show up in these spaces as our whole selves.  ​ Due to the impact of generations of trauma, many of us have learned to disconnect, ignore and suppress our bodies' communication signals. Reclaiming the Black Body is an invitation to restore that connection while healing ourselves holistically. I have spent years looking into the historical, ancestral, energetic, cultural, embodied, systemic, psychobiological and land patterns that have gotten us to where we are now, while getting to the root and origin of the wound associated with the eating imbalance condition. Throughout this book, we will take our time to unwind each thread of disconnection and allow those threads to lead us to a space of contending with the truth. By acknowledging this truth, it is my hope that readers are offered a powerful opportunity to rejoin themselves, integrating all of the information, medicine and wisdom gathered within the book’s pages to foster more awareness, liberation and healing within our bodies, communities, and culture.  I believe that the healing we do within ourselves begins to ripple into the collective body, and shifts the world and ecosystems to be more sustainable and regenerative. This is the medicine that is so needed in our world right now.  Alishia McCullough, LCMHC