Using writing as a therapy for eating disorders: The Diary Healer and the process of using personal diary excerpts to assist people with eating disorders

The story behind this research project begins in 1962 when, at age 11, I developed an eating disorder and began to keep a diary. The themes and threads that bind the story together, however, began to weave a pattern almost as soon as I was born. In early childhood, the world through my eyes comprised a small, beautiful valley adjoining the Mitchell River National Park in Victoria, Australia. I lived on a dairy farm with my parents and sister. For my first 11 years, my home had no electricity, television or Internet, but my days were full. The farm, river and adjacent bushland provided a natural outdoors playground, seeding my imagination. Indoors, on rainy days and at night by lantern-light, at the solid oak kitchen table, I would ask my mother for pen and paper and write a note or two about my day. A friendship with words was already taking hold.