Nancy Manther

Writing my story and sharing it with anyone feels a bit risky and involves a certain amount of bravery. I imagine others feel the same about sharing a narrative hitherto private. Life Stories Diary seems like the perfect place to take this risk. The private Self-Paced Life Stories Course within Life Stories Diary feels like..

Mirrors have been part of my life since puberty, when I started getting acne and wearing makeup. Mirrors didn’t rate before then. What a wonderful time that must have been! In my early 20s, a friend suggested I get a fun house mirror that made me look thinner (I frequently asked, “Do I look fat?”..

Almost three years have passed since I began to recover from anorexia nervosa. In July 2020, my 65th birthday was coming up and I could not remember a time without eating disorder thoughts and behaviors. Eating disorders are devious and sneaky; mine defied discovery for decades. Now I know better, and I’m sharing my hard-won..

Utopia: a place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions (Merriam-Webster Dictionary) In sixth grade, my class was asked to write a paper entitled Utopia. The year was 1966-67, when the United States was embroiled in the Vietnam war, peace protests and race riots. My class was studying World War II, so..

The start of a new year traditionally comes with resolutions and promises to improve or do better in some way. Before I was deeply entrenched in an eating disorder (ED), my go-to resolution was to lose weight. This was the popular thing to do, and still is, according to the weight loss advertisements that litter..

Dear Friend, I’ve been wanting to write this letter for a long time, to explain how an eating disorder (ED) managed to weave itself through all my life stages, without me realizing it. That’s one of the most disturbing things about eating disorders — you think what you’re feeling is “normal,” that everybody feels the..

For 55 of my 67 years, I have struggled with an eating disorder, namely anorexia nervosa. I wasn’t formally diagnosed until age 65, about which I can only say, “Better late than never.” Because I didn’t shrink my body enough to cause alarm, I was able to fly under the radar for years. I wonder..

There is no wrong time to begin recovery from an eating disorder but embarking on that journey during a global pandemic was not ideal. My appointments with a physician’s assistant had to occur in person, but therapist and dietician sessions were held remotely. Thankfully these video visits didn’t hamper recovery and I felt an instant connection with..

As human beings and social creatures, relationships are an integral part of a healthy, happy life. For most of us, our first relationships are with our parents and siblings and gradually that circle expands to include friends, classmates, teachers, and so on. Some people have many relationships and others may have only a few. I’ve..

In August 2020, as the world became immersed in the COVID-19 pandemic, I began a journey to recover from an eating disorder. This was a journey I never expected to be on; I assumed that at age 64, my life was meant to be consumed with an obsession with the scale and a pathological fear..