Category: memoir

As my 75th birthday approaches at the end of December 2025, I find myself standing at a gentle crossroads. It’s time to loosen my grip on one chapter of life so I can step more freely into the next. Eating disorders have been woven through my life since I was...

Curating almost 900 posts into themed e-books you can keep close If you’ve been with me a while—some of you since 2008—you know Life Stories Diary has grown into a gathering place: for people living with eating disorders, for families and health professionals, for life story writing, and for anyone...

I am often asked if I plan to write another book.  My answer is, “No, I’m living my next chapter.”  Four years have passed since the publication of my memoir, The Longest Match: Rallying to Defeat an Eating Disorder in Midlife.  Now is a good time to write about that...

For almost 20 years, I have been writing about eating disorders, recovery, and self-discovery. I have drawn on my experience and the voices of many others who have travelled the same path. This week, I’m writing about something different. At 74, I am preparing for something that feels as new...

For many years, anorexia was my protector. For many years, from age 11, I did not know I had an illness called anorexia. I mean, I thought I was me. Period. Sure, I’d been feeling very anxious about things happening around me; things beyond my control. And then what seemed...

There was a time when I didn’t know who I was. Not really. Not in the way that lets you walk into a room, make a choice, or even sit with your own thoughts and trust that they’re truly yours. Anorexia nervosa took hold of me when I was 11...

When I reached 55, after 44 years under the iron grip of anorexia nervosa, something inside me shifted. For the first time, I felt emphatically that I had crossed the threshold to a “51 per cent healthy self.” That moment wasn’t a magic cure—it was the hard-won payoff of decades...

‘Grandma, when you were in the hospital last year, were you really sick?’ The year is 2016. My eldest grandchild, aged nine, and I are walking home from the local shops, enjoying a little ‘us’ time, when he pops this question out of the blue. I pause in my step....

I’m unexpectedly underweight again. The 45-year-old me doesn’t want to expose my bare limbs to others’ eyes. This casual and comfy look I’ve long been attached to was something that emerged—and kept evolving—to protect myself from severe depression. When I started working as a novice account executive at an advertising...

I was born on January 1, 1968, with my feet turned backwards—a physical reminder of a drug that changed the course of thousands of lives. That drug was thalidomide. Thalidomide was introduced in the 1950s and early 1960s to help pregnant women with morning sickness. It was affordable, available without...