In This Body with Meghan Rothenberger, MD
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What early memories does Megan share about feeling disconnected from her body?
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This is The Nocturnist Conversations. I'm Emily Silverman. Today, I'm joined by Dr. Megan Rothenberger, an infectious disease doctor whose story we first heard live on stage at Intersections, a storytelling event produced by the Center for the Art of Medicine in Minneapolis in 2024 through our program, The Nocturnist Satellites. In this conversation, Megan opens up about her adolescence, her struggle with disordered eating, and how her path through medicine helped her rediscover a sense of wonder and gratitude for the human body. We talk about the confusing and taboo messages around puberty, body image, and food, her experience in a restrictive eating disorder program, how studying anatomy and physiology reshaped her relationship with her body, the transformative power of pregnancy, and how her lived experience informs her empathy and care for patients today.
Megan is one of the most talented storytellers we've ever had the pleasure to feature on this show. So I hope you'll take a listen to her story and enjoy the conversation. Here's Megan.
Roses are red. Violets are black. Why is your chest as flat as your back? This lovely poem was written just for me. I'm 13 years old in seventh grade. The poet is a boy named Tony. Now, rather than writing the poem on a piece of paper and handing it to me like a normal person, he decides to shout it from the chairlift at our local ski hill. I'm in the chair right behind him. He turns around his body to face me as he recites the poem. I can see his blue eyes. Even though it's 10 degrees and windy as hell, I'm wearing jeans carefully tucked into my ski boots. I'm also wearing a mint green ear band so my bangs won't get crushed. I'm trying so hard to fit in. After Tony recites the poem, he turns back around to face up the hill so I have to stare at the back of his stupid hat the rest of the way.
I feel sick to my stomach with shame and embarrassment, but also oddly like I deserve such treatment, because in reality my chest is as flat as my back. This memory came to me because I've been thinking a lot recently about my relationship with my body. Maybe it's because my daughter is 10 and I think about her entering adolescence, or maybe it's because I finally started cleaning out my old room, a task I managed to avoid for over 30 years because I never felt quite ready to face whatever artifacts were left over from my teenage years. Regardless of the reason, I spent many hours over the last few months trying to piece together the story of myself, my body, and where things went wrong. I go back to when I'm a little girl.
As this little girl, my body is not separate from me. It is me. I trust it. I eat when I'm hungry. I rest when I'm tired. I swim and I dance and I ride my bike. But then in later elementary school, things start to change. I'm in fifth grade, Mrs. Klinkhammer's class. That's her real name. I look like a child, but there's a new girl in the class, and she looks like a woman. I cannot stop staring at her. My mind is, like, blown. Like, how can we be members of the same species at the same age? Like, it just doesn't even compute. And at some point, the boys and the girls are separated, and us girls look at this really creepy plastic pelvis model, and there's these fallopian tubes sprouting like mutant flowers from a pink uterus.
And we learn about periods and breasts and pads and tampons. And I'm terrified. Like this is going to happen to me? And the worst part is no one can tell me when. It's like I realize I'm living in a ticking time bomb that will at some point turn on me. It'll start to bleed. It'll get acne. And hair will grow in places other than my head. It's around this time that I have one of my usual play dates with my best horse friend.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What early memories does Megan share about feeling disconnected from her body?
0:00–6:02
2
How does the ski‑lift poem illustrate Megan’s adolescent body image struggles?
6:02–11:46
3
What role did puberty education and the plastic pelvis model play in her confusion?
11:46–18:58
4
Why did Megan begin restricting food at age 15 and how did control factor in?
18:58–24:21
5
What was the experience like in the “anorexia camp” treatment program?
24:21–30:26
6
How did studying anatomy and clinical medicine change her relationship with her body?
30:26–36:23
7
In what ways did pregnancy and motherhood shift Megan’s view of her body?
36:23–42:21
8
How does Megan view modern body‑positivity movements in light of her own journey?
42:21–47:52