Dear Diary Blog
Share your story on The Diary Healer
The Diary Healer offers a safe and supportive environment in which to share your story. Sharing your story can help you to develop a sense of belonging and connectedness with self and others. Stories that provide a message of hope in coping with life challenges are especially welcome. Share your story today.
Detachment writing and how it helped me to reclaim my voice
I recently wrote a short story about a little girl. I wrote about her pain and confusion. I wrote about her loneliness and, also, about glimmers of hope and happiness she carried in her heart. I wrote about her amazing..
Learning from lived experience: rating items for body image questionnaire
People with lived experience of an eating disorder are being called on to help researchers understand and measure core body image disturbance in the illness. Body image as a concept is much more nuanced than typically considered, and several aspects..
The Longest Match: defeating an eating disorder in midlife
“Eating disorders.” Most of us instantly picture a teenaged or college aged girl when we see those words. After all, doesn’t age immunize women from the body image, weight concerns and eating disorders that plague the younger years? Truth is..
The dark side of fitness culture
Many fitness narratives on social media feature people purporting to be role models by seeking to inspire us to live a healthier life. They do this by presenting what they consider a desired physique, through sharing images and footage on..
Turning eating disorder thoughts into visual works of art
Eating disorders (ED) are one of the deadliest mental illnesses that continue to be severely underestimated and under resourced. Too often, people living with an eating disorder continue to be brushed aside. Since my discharge from The Geelong Clinic in..
Diaries a lens for eating disorder memoir
From eating disorder shame to ‘an open book’ A silver lining of the COVID-19 pandemic was the gift of time to embark on the incredible journey of writing my memoir. A project of this magnitude always seemed too daunting but..
When Mother’s Day hurts
Mother’s Day is often a bittersweet holiday for the many of us who struggle with mother loss. And mother loss wears many hats. Just recently, 36-year-old Lara came into my office in tears. “I went to buy a card for..
Labelled a waste of resources and incurable – where else can an adult with an eating disorder go?
What would you say if you learned a chronic illness was spreading silently through the population, affecting some of the country’s best and brightest people? Hospital beds are scarce, waiting lists are growing longer, and people are getting sicker. Some..
Waiting… for doctors to listen or for my heart to stop
Ask me no questions, I will tell you no lies. I am honest, trustworthy, loyal and fair. However, a part of me lurks in the shadows. A part of me that I try not to release and remain terrified that..
Fictional life story helps self-healing from eating disorder
“Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.” Sigmund Freud A series of events inspired me to write A Dangerous Daughter. Firstly, in 2015, I was invited to take part in an international study on eating disorders, the Anorexia Nervosa..