Author Archives: Natasha Holme

World Health Day takes place annually on 7th April—each year focusing on a particular aspect of health. The focus for 2012 is Ageing and health: Good health adds life to years. With this in mind, and having just listened to a mother speak of the death of her nineteen year old daughter Melissa from bulimia in 2009 (audio, 12 minutes), I wanted to take a look at the risk of death from bulimia.
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The ninth annual Equality Walk, held in Brighton, to help tackle homophobia in British schools, is supported by American Express. Meet at midday in Brighton Royal Pavilion Gardens. Celebrities Jane Hazlegrove and Harry Derbidge are hosting this family fun day, which includes a 10k walk, entertainment, post-Walk party and amazing fundraising prizes. For more information, see the official website.

The second North Wales Mardi Gras will be held at the Beaumaris Centre, Beaumaris, Anglesey. This will be the largest gay event ever in the History of the North wales Gay Community. Tickets are £5 (plus £2 p+p). For more information, see the official website, or contact Alan Jones on 07917 770 643.

Book cover of Unbearable Lightness, by Portia de RossiOK, not a diary. … This book is a memoir, however it receives an honorary mention for being an eating disorder autobiography written by a lesbian. In this gripping bestseller, celebrity actress and now wife of Ellen Degeneres, Portia de Rossi, recounts how suppressing her sexuality for fear of ruining her acting career helped foster her startlingly negative self-image which, in turn, fuelled her eating disorder.

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Book cover of Diary of an Eating Disorder, by Chelsea Smith and Beverly Browning RunyonWritten in diary entries, this book tells of how Chelsea’s parents’ divorce and sexual abuse by a neighbour result in the negative self-image that lead to her anorexia and bulimia. There are many Christian references in the text.

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Book cover of The Anorexia Diaries, by Linda and Tara RioI love the angle of this book: a mother’s and daughter’s diary entries published side-by-side from a time when the daughter was suffering from eating disorders. Tara is angry with her mother for focusing on her career and turns the anger on herself by developing anorexia and bulimia. The book also includes retrospective comment from both mother and daughter.

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Book cover of Diary of a Recovered Bulimic, by Martha M.A memoir interspersed with diary entries, this book spans twenty years. Martha M. is devastated by her parents’ divorce. She starts throwing up her food at age thirteen. When she reaches twenty-six she realises that, if she doesn’t stop now, the ‘well’ part of her life will become a fraction. She starts watching others’ eating patterns to work out a normal relationship to food.

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Book cover of Mealtimes and Milestones, by Constance BarterWritten in diary format, this book tells the story of Constance Barter’s anorexia from the age of thirteen. Constance eats half a yoghurt and a cherry tomato a day, and exercises until she collapses. At age fourteen she spends seven months in hospital, keeping a diary record of her journey to recovery.

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With the BBC film adaptation of Anne Lister’s diaries in 2010 and their subsequent reprint as The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister, these amazing journals are now a household name.

BBC adaptation of The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister

Tib and Anne Lister, played by Susan Lynch and Maxine Peake, share a kiss.

Book cover of Helena Whitbread's No Priest But LoveHelena Whitbread’s second book, No Priest But Love, first published in 1992, is the lesser-known follow-up to the 1988 publication of I Know My Own Heart (republished in 2010 as The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister).

This portion of Anne Lister’s diaries covers the years 1824 to 1826. The book begins with Anne’s stay in Paris, where she wins the affections of a widow whose social standing and financial worth do not meet Anne’s aspirations.

Whilst continuing her affair with the love of her life, Mariana Lawton (married to Charles Lawton), Anne seeks a suitable life partner who will also allow her to climb the social ranks. She manages effortlessy to seduce a number of willing young women and writes freely in her diaries of her desires and of meeting those desires. About one sixth of Anne’s diaries–the encoded parts–cover this area of her life.

“As a document of one woman’s revolt against convention and as a celebration of love between women, this is an uplifting book.”–The Independent