"Learning To Be Me tells the true story of my twenty-three-year battle with, and ultimate journey into recovery from, an extreme form of bulimia. I have lived with Bulimia for 23 yrs from the age 13. In the intervening years I have experienced first hand the basest of humiliations examining my own vomit for traces of everything I had eaten, and abusing so many laxatives for so many years to the point where I no longer had control over my body and slept in my own filth until my body finally gave up and I lost my large intestine forever. Gone, not because of an accident but because of what I had done to myself, deliberately and systematically for years.
Nobody told me it was going to be like this.
“Learning To Be Me” tells it like it is. It is my story of twenty-three years of horrible self-abuse, and the environmental factors that helped contribute to the incubation and growth of this disease. I have chronicled the development of my struggle from the insecurities of early childhood, through dysfunctional family dynamics and the stunted emotional growth that led to destructive choices during early adulthood. It is at once a cautionary tale and a story of survival. It demonstrates the insidious and deceptive nature of the disease, the paradox of it being a survival and comforting mechanism that is simultaneously destroying and slowly killing your body.
My book will educate parents as to how quickly and quietly the disease can grip their child. What factors contribute to and nurture it. It also serves as a timely reminder to them of the potential negative results of their own actions in relation to their children or family environment, however well-meaning or born out of ignorance they might be. Through recounting my experiences I am seeking to save a child and arm a parent with knowledge, encourage a teenager to reach out and a mother to embrace, help a wife and mother celebrate the precious relationships that eating disorders can so quickly eclipse.
This is a multi-dimensional book, part memoir, part cautionary tale, part self-help, but always inspirational and encouraging. It also includes a chapter written by my husband that offers unique insights and advice to those surrounding the sufferer."
Jocelyn Golden
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