I am surrounded by 10 family members inside the National Library of Australia, Canberra. We are in a private reading room to visit my diary ‘family’, the early years of which are spread before us on a long table. Emotions bubble within—I feel exposed, unclothed, with my mind, heart, and soul bared for others to see and read for the first time.
My diaries, which served as a survival, coping and recovery tool in my long tussle with anorexia nervosa, have taken on a new role — that of helping my family to bond and learn together and providing a resource for researchers to understand more about eating disorders.
My diary entries for 6th, 7th and 8th January 2025 explain:
Monday evening, 6th January:
Everything about our family visit to the National Library today was more special than I could have imagined.
My diaries are safe ‘forever’, and my children and grandchildren now know where my story is being cared for…forever.
After being imprisoned in my eating disorder for 44 years, to emerge and 20 years later be sharing my inside story with my family and the world is truly special. I hope my story will help researchers improve the treatment approaches for anorexia nervosa and help children get their lives back on track quickly.
I did not understand I had anorexia at age 11. In adolescence, I wondered why I couldn’t be carefree like my friends. The clues were hidden in my private diaries, which increasingly became a refuge. When my mother asked, ‘Why can’t you be like the other girls?’ I had no answer; I felt weak and deficient. Neither my mother nor I knew an illness was raging in my brain. The tussle between the tiny thread of a healthy self and the monstrous anorexia, which in early adulthood I visualised as a black octopus squeezing the life out of my brain and eating holes in my soul, would take me to the brink of madness.
Luckily, in my early 30s, I met a psychiatrist who, over the next 25 years, patiently guided me in reconnecting with my healthy self. The losses associated with long-term anorexia can affect close others, and recovery came too late for my family of origin. They had moved on with their lives. I had to look forward rather than back. My children became my greatest source of strength and inspiration, and the arrival of my grandchildren added fresh impetus. Today, watching my children and grandchildren embrace life to the full is like being shown how wonderful life can be without an eating disorder. For me, this is the best tonic and reward of all.
I hope my diaries will help researchers find better ways to assist parents and other caregivers of children and adolescents with anorexia nervosa. This is a family illness, and everyone needs support. Without support, the family can disintegrate as my family of origin did.
Tuesday, 7th January:
More about yesterday’s memorable event at the National Library…
Everyone arrived by 10.15am, and Jemma, the library’s curatorial and collection research coordinator, and her assistant, Michelle, met us in the foyer. Jemma, with whom I have been communicating since 2023, escorted us to a private reading room. A selection of my diaries, from the first diary in 1963 until 1976 (I chose this range to share with family because a) the period covers my age at the age of my five grandchildren (12 to 18) today, and b) the births of my four children) were spaced out like dinner plates around the rectangular-shaped table. The diaries had been eased out of individual white paper sleeves from a cardboard folder box. Everything was carefully indexed and tagged.
I stood back and chatted with Jemma while my family took up her invitation to open the diaries and explore the contents. These younger generations of my family quietly moved around the table, gently and intently turning the pages of the diaries and, with them, the pages of my life. This was moving to observe.
I had no idea what my family’s reaction would be. Both my children and grandchildren became absorbed in looking at photographs and other paraphernalia inserted within the pages, occasionally turning to Jemma or me for clarification.
Before my family began to turn the pages, I explained the diaries were deeply personal; they were not written with a reader other than myself in mind, and this needed to be kept in mind while reading them.
At age 11, upon receiving a diary as a Christmas gift, I immediately felt a strong affinity for it. My diaries were written in an effort to make sense of my world, but I didn’t know that at the time.
I didn’t know I had developed anorexia nervosa and that my diaries would document my struggle to get my healthy self back over the next 44 years, but this is what happened. There are not many accounts sustained over such an extended period as mine.
This is what makes them worthy to be acquired by the National Library. My family, on the other hand, are more interested in parts of my life and my observations that they can more readily identify with and my descriptions of them while they were growing up, and in the case of my grandchildren, are growing up today.
My daughter Amanda asked if the diaries would stay in the National Library or be transferred to the National Archives. Jemma assured her the diaries would remain in the National Library “forever”.
This reassurance makes my heart sing.
Wednesday, 8th January:
I feel a bit lonely with all my family returning safely home after a very fulfilling pilgrimage to visit my diaries. I am very appreciative of my beautiful family for their support…I will be glad to get home, too. However, I could happily spend many days in the National Library, researching and writing, writing, writing….
My diary collection was acquired by the National Library of Australia (NLA) in 2024. A prime factor in making my private diaries public has been the Library’s view that making the diaries available through the Library’s collection can help progress important work, especially increasing awareness and understanding of eating disorders and encouraging the development of better treatments for sufferers.
At 74, I feel a guarded compassion for my eating disorder – in my early years, it developed as a coping tool for a very anxious little girl. Years later, when my life was hanging by a thread, I would learn the harsh truth that this way of coping was self-harming and deadly.
The truth that the eating disorder’s way of coping would always fail was scary to accept; acceptance involved acknowledging and letting go of the only identity I knew and establishing a healthy self. I had to learn, through trial and error, who I was without the eating disorder. New thoughts had to be developed and practised until they over-rode the illness thoughts. My diaries record this fraught and bumpy time. Out of belated developmental experimentation, healthy thoughts and coping skills gradually emerged, with my diary a practice ground for this self-restoration work.
In my mid-fifties, I achieved the milestone of restoring more than half of my healthy self. Self-healing accelerated after that, and, for the first time, I publicly shared the intensely private battle I’d been waging within myself since childhood.
The diaries have provided a rich repository of experiences on which to draw in advocating greater awareness and support for people who develop an eating disorder. They became a significant resource for writing my memoir, A Girl Called Tim. They inspired my PhD, which I undertook in my sixties and led to the publication of the book Using Writing as a Therapy for Eating Disorders.
My diaries have found a public role in these ways and more. They have validated my experience and through sharing my story, others have been encouraged to share their story. This illness thrives on secrecy, shame and stigma and wants to isolate and conquer those in whom it develops. Sharing our stories through our diaries and other forms of reflective writing can help our researchers understand and treat eating disorders. I’ve long believed that anorexia cannot survive in the open. Exposing it by talking about it, researching it, and reading stories of lived experience help to reduce its power. In the National Library, it cannot hide.
As manuscript material, my collection (restricted and non-restricted parts) is accessible through the National Library’s Special Collections Reading Room, a specialised space with a higher level of staff monitoring to ensure that material is used appropriately.
With these arrangements, especially following my family’s visit to Canberra, I feel at peace about the National Library acquiring my diaries.
I’ve penned a letter to greet prospective readers. It opens with:
Dear Reader, As you embark on the journey through the pages of my life, documented diligently from age 11, I extend a warm welcome and a word of guidance. This collection, spanning more than six decades, is an intimate chronicle of my personal experiences, observations, and the evolution of my thoughts and feelings through my life’s myriad stages and struggles.
In summary, if you are a diary writer, keep writing. If you haven’t been keeping a diary, get a notebook or download an online app and start writing your story today. Our stories matter!
Further reading
My diaries have a new home in the National Library of Australia