Category: mental health

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...

Home sweet home. The suitcase and backpack are back on their shelf; a Japanese cat magnet grins on the fridge. The weeping cherry in the front garden is bursting into blossom, and the cats—fresh from their holiday at the Cat Cave—are auditioning for extra snacks. Travel expands me, yes—and coming...

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...

About six weeks from now, I will be 70 years old. 70! That feels like a big number, signifying that I have been on this planet for seven decades and entering the eighth. I can hardly believe it! I certainly don’t feel that old, whatever that means. Ten years ago...

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...

Professor Kim’s reply had arrived in my inbox the previous evening, but I couldn’t bring myself to open it right away. When I opened it the next morning at my desk, I felt relieved. Prof. Kim wrote: It feels like [the eating disorders field is] several decades behind compared to...

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...

Growing old isn’t a privilege I take for granted, but it isn’t easy in today’s youth-obsessed world. When I was in my 40s, I heard, “The golden years aren’t so golden.” I vowed never to say that and, at age 69, I’ve kept that promise. This doesn’t mean, however, that...

‘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....