From NICU Nurse to Eating Disorder Survivor: Sarah’s Story

Sarah is a NICU nurse who spends her shifts caring for some of the smallest and most vulnerable patients. When an eating disorder made intensive treatment necessary, time away from work created another crisis: how to keep paying for rent and groceries while staying in care.

A grant from WithAll’s Recovery Support Program helped ease that pressure so Sarah could focus on treatment. Today, she is back in the NICU, playing piano, planning future travels, and feeling hopeful again.

Caring for Others Was Part of Sarah’s Life

While much of the world sleeps, Sarah may be checking vitals, adjusting monitors, and caring for babies born too soon. As a NICU nurse, she is used to being there for people during vulnerable and uncertain moments.

Her work is important to her, but it is only one part of the life she had built. Sarah loves music and plays piano. She looks forward to traveling. She had a home, responsibilities, and people and animals she cared about.

Then an eating disorder began taking more and more of that life away.

“Before treatment, my life was quickly going downhill,” Sarah shares. “During treatment, I was stabilizing medically, but was growing increasingly concerned about money, which was distracting me from my recovery.”

Getting Treatment Created Another Crisis

Sarah had reached the point where she needed intensive eating disorder treatment. Entering care gave her the opportunity to stabilize medically and work toward recovery, but it also meant stepping away from the long nursing shifts that normally helped pay her bills.

Her income changed. Her expenses did not.

Rent still had to be paid. Groceries still had to be bought. And the longer Sarah remained away from work, the harder it became to focus only on getting well.

She was caught between two choices that no one pursuing recovery should have to make: remain in treatment while her financial situation became increasingly unstable, or return to work before she was ready and put the progress she had made at risk.

A Grant Gave Sarah More Room to Recover

That is where WithAll’s Recovery Support Program came in.

Sarah received a grant to help cover essentials such as rent and groceries. It did not replace treatment or pay a medical bill. Instead, it addressed the everyday financial pressure happening around treatment, the expenses that can make staying in care increasingly difficult.

That distinction mattered. Sarah was already doing the work of recovery. The grant helped make it more possible for her to keep doing it.

“They [eating disorders] are all-consuming and can affect anyone,” Sarah says. “The prolonged intensive nature of necessary treatment is often prohibitive without external monetary support, especially for adults, because the cost of living doesn’t stop just because you are no longer working in order to seek treatment.”

For someone who had spent so much of her professional life caring for others, the grant offered Sarah something simple but important: support when she was the one who needed it.

What a Recovery Support Grant Does

Back to the NICU and Back to Her Life

Today, Sarah has returned to the NICU and the work she cares about. Once again, she is helping tiny patients and their families through some of their most vulnerable moments.

Outside work, other parts of life have returned too. She is playing piano again. She is thinking about where she might travel next. And when she comes home, her cats, Charlie and Oliver, are waiting for her.

Those details may sound ordinary. After a period when Sarah felt her life was quickly going downhill, ordinary life is something worth getting back.

WithAll has now awarded more than 1,200 Recovery Support Program grants. But donations still cannot fund every eligible person. Grants are awarded through a monthly lottery because demand exceeds the funding available.

Sarah received help when financial pressure threatened to interfere with her recovery. Someone else is facing that same pressure now. More funding means more people can receive support while they stay focused on getting well.

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