Kitty Thatcher

About Kitty Thatcher
While studying a masters of family therapy at the Universidad de Chile in 2019 in Santiago, Kitty met a 17-year-old “Hermione” who would change her life. A Harry Potter fan and lover of English literature, Hermione was bright, funny, kind, creative, and was also battling to free herself from anorexia. So began their earnest attempts to form a support network around them which included contacting a fledgling League coordinated by Andrés Villafaña in La Serena in the North of Chile. While in training with Kay Ingamells, David Epston and Tom Carlson in the narrative apprenticeship, David introduced Kitty to Dani in Brazil. Enthralled by Dani’s passion and sharp intellect which she used unwaveringly in the pursuit of social justice, Kitty was thrilled when letters began to circulate between the Chilean and Brazilian leagues. And so began the poetry owl post. Kitty lives in Australia and is soon to begin work at Headspace, a national youth mental health foundation in the town of Grafton, NSW.

About Dr Daniela Araujo
Dani first came across narrative therapy through anti-anorexia in 2007, while doing a PhD about life histories and eating disorders and working as one of the co-founders of the outpatient eating disorder’s unit at the State University of Campinas. As an anthropologist and an eating disorder survivor she was mesmerized to find an approach that addressed the role of gender and power relations and the cultural issues involved and framed eating disorders as a justice issue. Her enthusiasm for narrative therapy drove her to train as a family and community therapist. Dani’s academic career took her elsewhere (always with one foot on anti-anorexia) and after focusing more on mindful eating and mindfulness, she decided it was time to dive deeper in narrative therapy again. She joined an apprenticeship program after learning about it from David Epston in 2019 when he came to Brazil to teach. She and her clients had started the Brazilian League for Anti-Anorexia, and shortly after, David introduced Dani to Kitty and her creative approach to anti-anorexia. They were soon circulating therapeutic documents in the form of poems.