'When my 14-year-old daughter started cooking with me, it was a sign of something sinister.'

In crisp white sheets, I lay in the folded down armchair beside her hospital bed. She sleeps gently beside me. I can hear the feeding tube whirring on and off as it drips a beige substance through her nose and directly into her stomach.

It's 2am. The nurse has increased the rate. I know she will wake up crying soon, begging me to ask them to turn it down. Because this tube is feeding her - and my 14-year-old daughter has anorexia.

I didn't understand anorexia. To me, it was something other people had. Something I read about in Dolly magazines when I was a teenager, something traumatised teens had. Not part of my life, I mean, I run camps for women where we delve deep into body image and self-esteem. I'm body positive. I'm all about nakedness and adventure and eating lush food. I always speak positively about my own body and other people's bodies.

I kept my daughter away from social media until she was 14. I made sure she always saw what real bodies looked like. I model freedom and following your dreams. And mealtimes at our place have always been fun. So, I never even considered that anorexia would show up in our home, not for one second did that cross my mind. And especially not with my adventurous, cheeky, mud-loving daughter.

Watch: Girls and teens aged 6 to 18 years old share their thoughts about body image. Post continues after video.

Oh, how smug I was in my carefree little world. Here we are though. Here we are with the ECGs, the monitors, the urine tests, the nasal gastric tube, the daily weighing, the blood tests and the tears… so many tears, mostly mine.

I sound calm now, but I'm really not. My nervous system is dysregulated. I have spent the last few months in a state of panic. Running on adrenaline, just like my daughter. Waking up at 3am every night with my heart beating so fast, knowing something is very, very wrong but not knowing what to do. We'd been getting help from the GP, dietitian, naturopath and experienced friends, everyone saying different things.

Mealtimes were no longer fun, every meal had become plagued by tense arguments about meal size, and we were all so awkward and emotional, you could cut the air with a knife. Her non-confrontational father and our son were left dodging bullets and walking on eggshells, and my entire existence had become about coming up with new meals she would feel safe eating.

Before I realised there was a problem, I loved the way she cooked with me every night. We would sit and excitedly read recipe books; she would point out meal after meal that she wanted to cook as we sat snuggled on the lounge. She started baking almost daily. She was always in the kitchen. Cleaning and organising. She was very engaged with food. She would eat smallish portions but nothing of concern. But I didn't realise she wasn't eating breakfast, and she wasn't eating lunch. She was obsessed with food because she was starving, she was baking because she was starving. She was cooking with me so she could keep an eye on everything she consumed.

When I went grocery shopping, she would complain that I bought too much food. She said she was trying to save me money. I thought it was unusual, but I didn't know this was a sign.

She trained diligently for athletics, even in the rain. I didn't know it was another sign.

She was up early and very organised every day, her grades were perfect. She had a big friendship group, a good job, and she loved school. Everything looked perfect on paper. She was a bit snappy at home and spent extra time on her appearance but… she was 14, I'd expected that.

I didn't expect this. I never expected this.

When it all finally sunk in, I was sick with guilt and queasy from fear. So sick I couldn't eat. Oh the irony, the irony.

A few months in and I've already lost so many layers of who I thought I was. Who I've always known myself to be. Not the way they usually come away though. They usually peel off like paperbark, to be washed gently down the river, revealing the fresh 'new me' bark underneath. This time it felt like I was being flayed. As all the ideas I had of myself as a good parent were stripped from my body, revealing raw nerve endings underneath. The assurance I felt about my relationship with my daughter was being ripped from my womb. My certainty that I was a good, grounded person suddenly felt unfounded. And I could no longer find the earth with my feet, I was caught in a swirling flood of my own issues, and fear for our daughters' life.

I have had to fully own the stigma, judgement and superiority I had around eating disorders. I honestly didn't realise it was there, but there it was, right there on the assumption that this wouldn't happen to us. And the smugness, oh the smugness that wrapped me up in a fluffy "I'm a good parent" blanket. I really didn't want to let that go, but I'm glad that's gone. That can f**k right off.

Underneath all of that I found humbleness, rawness, love, and dedication. I still waiver in and out of fear and trepidation about the journey ahead, but I'm OK with that now. I understand that this doesn't mean I'm weak. It just is what it is. It is truth. And the truth is that I sit in my car and cry every day, and this releases the stress I need to release, so that I can walk back into the hospital and be present with her tears again.

At home, through the guise of negotiation and safe foods, we didn't really see much of the eating disorder inside our daughter. But now we have a team of psychologists who are poking the disorder and challenging it with big meals. And out it comes like another entity. Sometimes I watch her crippled and completely frozen in fear and anxiety about the meal size. And sometimes I watch it use her body to fight and argue with a team of professionals in a snarky, b**chy way I've never seen before. Part of me is dumbfounded, and another part of me is proud that she is not intimidated by these people.

I raised her to fight the system and trust herself, and now I'm telling her she must trust the system and that she can't trust her own perception? It's confronting and it feels so very wrong. I'm so sorry to do this to my beautiful daughter. But it's the truth, and here we are.

They are teaching us to separate the eating disorder from our child, "they are not one and the same", they say. The eating disorder is like a big patriarchal bully that has made a home inside our daughter, telling her that the only thing worth being is skinny, or dead. Telling her that if she eats, she's weak. My daughter has always been strong, and the eating disorder has used this stubborn strength against her, and so she holds out.

One psychologist, while trying to prepare me for the future said, "You are going to walk through hell, an eating disorder is like a vortex whirlwind that rips through your family and wreaks havoc in your entire life". And that's exactly what it feels like.

The eating disorder was one step ahead of me for so long, speaking sweetly like my daughter. Manipulation at its finest. Manipulation I never expected from my honest daughter.

Even in the hospital, she tries to negotiate. She gaslights. She lies. She is like an addict, but her drug of choice is starvation. On and on her negotiations go, round and round, pushing the same topics at me, over and over. Her perseverance is unwavering. She is relentless, and I am tired. "She'd make a good lawyer," the staff joke. But they looked at me with pity in their eyes as I lay there night after night. I rarely go home, you see; my gut churning anxiety is so much worse when I'm away from her. And the thought of her in this stark room with only her eating disorder to talk to increases my heart rate 10-fold. My intuition senses danger.

They say to someone with anorexia, telling them they must eat regular meals is like asking them to jump into a terrifying pit of snakes six times a day for their own good.

"How can this possibly be for my own good?" they think. And so she trusts us less. She trusts me less. She is scared and confused. And I feel the eating disorder like a big claw around her. And my heart breaks.

If she doesn't eat, she feels like she's let us down, but if she does eat… the eating disorder makes her feel so guilty and disgusting and worthless, that I've actually watched her collapse from the weight of it. She cries for hours and hours after every single meal.

Listen to No Filter where Mia is joined by human rights lawyer Anne Tonner to talk about teenage girls and anorexia. Post continues after audio.

Never argue with the eating disorder. You will never win, they say. Just speak lovingly and encouragingly to your daughter… sounds easy, I can assure you it is not.

I want to scream, but I breathe instead.

There is nothing easy about it. It's all consuming, and it goes against all my previous beliefs. It goes against everything that I am.

Oh, my f**king god, I miss my wild, free, fun-loving, quirky daughter. I miss her curiosity, her jokes, her mess.

It's not all bad though, and there are glimpses of her. She's on bed rest, so between meals we do puzzles and embroidery and origami, and we laugh. But mostly we play cards hard, really hard. We do this, giving our frustration at each other an outlet by smashing one another at cards. It's good, it works. And we both know what it is.

We've been in hospital for months. The guilt has dissipated, and my partner and I have settled into the fact that this long road is ours to walk. This is the next journey, and it will probably be the hardest, most gut-wrenching climb we will ever do. But it is ours. And I am a better person because of it.

We can no-longer parent the way we once did, giving our daughter freedom and autonomy. We have to learn a new way now. We have to fight for her, and fighting for her looks different than I ever thought it would. Fighting for her looks like controlling her. We have help though. We will be doing family-based therapy. There is lots of support, and lots of books on this subject. I've read a few now, and they don't sugar coat it. The road out of here is all consuming, full of deep potholes, and we will probably lose the wheels off the carriage many times.

When we make it out to the other side, I'm going to make it my mission to educate as many people as I can about eating disorders. Because if I can stop even one more child from having this experience, I will. And if I'm honest, I'm clinging desperately to the idea of finding a way to make this whole shit-show feel like it has a purpose, to feel like there is a bigger picture. And I know there is.

We will do whatever it takes, we won't stop until our daughter is free, free to eat and laugh and run, and be with her friends again. And so we attempt to find the balance between deep surrender and holding firm to the task. I'm sure it will make her stronger in the end, it will make us all stronger in the end, and so I hold dear the vision of my wild adventurous daughter travelling the world one day.

For help and support for eating disorders, contact the Butterfly Foundation's National Support line and online service on 1800 ED HOPE (1800 33 4673).

Feature image: Getty.