Calling diary and journal writers with experience of an eating disorder

Calling diary and journal writers with experience of an eating disorder

Hop on board a new literary adventure by sharing excerpts of your diary writing in a book to be called  The Diary Healer. In this book I am setting out to demonstrate how writing a diary or journal can help us understand, inspire, heal and liberate our self and at the same time provide a tool to educate others – such the health profession – on what the inside story of an eating disorder, what living with this illness, is really like. 

The Diary Healer – Using Writing as a Resource to Treat Eating Disorders (the working title), to be published by Routledge (London) provides an opportunity to share your ‘evidence of life experience’ to educate and help others.
Amazingly, sadly, the process of diary writing remains a largely untapped resource in health care professions, in helping people to heal and ‘know who they are’ at every life stage, and evidence-based research particularly in the field of eating disorders, is sadly lacking. This book aims to inspire correction to this imbalance.
Diary writing is particularly helpful in helping us to understand who we are, and cope with challenges such as mental or physical illness, emotional pain and trauma.   The Diary Healer will draw on diary writing and eating disorder experience, together with evidence-based research, to explain why and how the process of diary writing can assist in recovery and in maximizing life quality and potential. While this book’s primary healing focus is on eating disorders, it offers guidance for all who seek to be more in touch and in tune with their true self.

Getting in touch
The Diary Healer will show how writing about our life, especially what we consider the important issues, can increase our self-awareness and help others to understand us.  It will show how writing can help us to get in touch with who we really are, and to define our place and purpose in our personal relationships, in our family and workplace, and in the world.
Writing a diary can help us feel understood when ‘nobody out there’ seems to care, and when ‘everybody out there’ seems to think we are a bit loony; writing a diary can help us feel safe, when the outer world seems to be full of pot-holes. Writing a diary can help us define and separate our self from the eating disorder.

Sharing a moment in time
I welcome interest particularly from people who have had, or have, an eating disorder, and also carers (families, partners, siblings) and health professionals (clinicians, therapists, social workers) who have found journaling or diary writing a comfort and an effective way to sort feelings and thoughts, to debrief and connect with oneself. You might be 20 years old or 90 years old, your diary may cover a week or 50 years, it does not matter. You might have recorded your thoughts and feelings with notebook and pen, on a lap top, or Smartphone App. It does not matter what format you have recorded your diary. What matters is that you have recorded your thoughts and feelings at a moment in time.

Email today
If you have kept a diary while recovering from, or caring for someone with, an eating disorder,  email: june@junealexander.com to find out how you can contribute to The Diary Healer.
I will  email you a selection of questions relating to chapters in the book. I look forward to hearing from you. Your voice counts. Hurry-scurry as the manuscript deadline is August this year.