Marissa Adams, IEDS

My path to this work wasn’t a straight line. It was a series of detours, dead ends, and moments where the map I was handed just didn’t match the terrain I was actually on.

I entered eating disorder treatment as a young person and quickly learned that the systems designed to help me weren’t built for someone like me. I was autistic in spaces that didn’t recognize neurodivergence. I was intersex in spaces that didn’t have language for my body. I was labeled “complex” and “treatment-resistant” in ways that felt more like dismissal than clinical observation. I kept showing up anyway — and eventually found pockets of care that actually fit.

That experience is what drives everything I do now. I’ve spent over a decade advocating for intersex individuals and their families — co-coordinating youth programs, supporting people through identity and medical decisions, and showing up at the tables where decisions get made about people like us. Alongside that, I’ve spent the last four years working in the eating disorder field through peer support, research collaboration, and organizational work — learning how to translate all of that into something that actually helps people right now.

I bring lived experience and rigorous training to this work in equal measure. I’m not a therapist, and I’m not trying to be. My role is to be the guide who has walked some of this terrain before — who knows where the trail is unmarked, where systems will push back, and how to keep moving anyway.