3 years ago
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Lennon has starred for Armagh in addition to playing soccer for Northern IrelandWhen Aoife Lennon was 23, she just wanted to get away from it all for a while.
For 10 years, Lennon had used sport as a coping mechanism after losing her father to suicide when she was 13. While she flourished at Gaelic football and soccer, her grief remained somewhere deep inside, contributing to her burnout.
Her dad John had been her best friend and biggest supporter. He was the one who encouraged Aoife to get involved in sport from a young age.
She did exactly that - and did pretty well too, turning out for Armagh and Northern Ireland as well as captaining Newry City Ladies in the Champions League against Benfica.
But by the time 2017 came around, Lennon decided she needed time for herself and booked a one-way ticket to New Zealand.
Lennon had always wanted to travel, and the idea of being far away in New Zealand, where people wouldn't constantly ask her about football, excited her.
But somewhere along the line before heading to New Zealand, Lennon became obsessed with healthy eating and over-exercising. She used to get on the treadmill at 06:00 every morning and wouldn't get off again until she had burned 1,000 calories.
Her diet was mainly porridge, apples and light dinners, when she was in New Zealand, she received a real shock as she got weighed immediately before doing a bungee jump, one of the things on her bucket list.
"I got on [the scales] and the woman said 'you're 53kg - brilliant, away you go'. I said 'could you weigh me again because that's not right'," Lennon told The GAA Social.
"I got back on and she said 'no, you're definitely that'. So I was the last person to do the bungee jump.
"And meanwhile, because I hadn't been training, I was waking up every day looking in the mirror and going 'I've put on weight, I'm so out of shape'.
Lennon recalls how she packed her own food when she travelled with Northern Ireland"But I knew I didn't have the energy to go training. I had to accept that yoga and walking was the place for my body, but even walking down the road was tough.
"I had brain fog all the time. If you had told me something I would have forgotten it an hour later."
Even before going to New Zealand the signs had been there. When Lennon travelled with the Northern Ireland squad, she would pack her own food and smoothie maker to stick to her ultra-strict diet.
But with alarm bells now going off Lennon went to the doctor, who diagnosed her with anorexia and told her to go home immediately to avoid a three-month wait to get treated in New Zealand.
"You know what, it was the greatest relief because I realised that everything I was doing had come to a head," recalls Lennon.
"If that was my reason for going to New Zealand, I was thankful because finally there was a reason to stop this, that I had to deal with the anorexia and stop doing all this to myself because this to me now is like self-harm because of what I was doing to my body."
'I am in control'
For Lennon, her anorexia stemmed from a deep-seated inferiority complex brought on by not knowing why her father had taken his own life.
"From 13 I have thought that I'm not good enough.
"That has been my belief as a young girl because my dad died. I thought 'is it something to do with me? That I'm not good enough'."
Now, though, Lennon's state of mind is much clearer. She is still battling through her recovery journey, but the steps she has taken have helped her achieve clarity.
"I've realised that I'm separate from that. That was my dad's pain and that was nothing to do with me.
"We're all good enough. We've all been brought into this world good enough, but society tells us we're not good enough.
"We're brought up in this world where we're told we need all these things to be happy. The happiest moments in my life are when I'm sitting by the beach, connecting to nature. That's when I feel alive."
Lennon concedes that she may never fully overcome her anorexia battle. But that is something she is comfortable with, because she now feels in control.
"I am not allowing it to take over my life. I am in control and I'm giving my power back to me. I gave my power to the eating disorder for far too long and that made me sick.
"But I can't do that anymore and can't see someone else go through that. That's my message for people. I want to help them. If I can do it, you can do it.
"We need to raise awareness. This is not going on in just females, it's also going on in males."
English (US) ·