The day Jen Kamerman-Jenkins finished her memoir of surviving anorexia nervosa, she almost stopped surviving it at all.
Good things can sometimes come on a Monday. It was a cold November morning in 2008 when I found out that my first book, a memoir of two decades with anorexia nervosa called The Vanishing Point, was accepted by a publisher. It was also the day that it occurred to me that I was dying, and that something needed to be done to break the cycle of starvation and pain. What would the future hold? A drive that almost led me off a cliff, a suicide attempt, a locked ward...and then a lifeline in the form of inpatient treatment. Would these months remake me, or would I simply burn up in the flames that were meant to heal me? This second memoir details my attempt to rise like the fabled Phoenix, in the burning phase of my life.