How exciting. I have a visitor to my page! Not just any visitor, but a wonderful Woman who is the author of not one but two books highlighting the experiences of caring for a child with Anorexia. I am very honoured to have my first guest blogger, Bev Mattocks talking about her new book, 'When Anorexia Came To Visit,' which I have recently purchased and am reading through teary eyes.
Introducing Bev Mattocks
The cupcake queen gets a
sneak preview of my new book: “When Anorexia Came To Visit”
By Bev Mattocks
.
“How do I know you? How did you become my ‘friend’
on Facebook?” I asked the red-haired stranger in the pub where we were sharing
a couple of cold drinks on the hottest Sunday of the year. I was en-route to
the south coast and had asked if I could meet up with her for a chat.
“Probably via the Men Get Eating
Disorders Too website?” she suggested. “Or your blog? To be honest, I’ve no
idea!”
But anyway, there we were,
chatting as if we’d known each other for ages. And in a way we had,
‘virtually’, through Facebook and so on – and, of course, through her wonderful
book The Cupcake Queen Bites Back which I bought and reviewed the
moment it was published.
I gingerly pushed another book
across the table; the final printed proof of my new book When Anorexia Came
To Visit: families talk about how an eating disorder invaded their lives.
Jackie was the first person I’d showed it to and I’m always a little nervous of
first impressions.
It’s my second book. The first was
Please eat… a mother’s struggle to free her teenage son from anorexia,
published in March 2013, which describes our own story of dealing with an
eating disorder. Following on from this I was keen to see how it overlapped
with other families’ experiences. So I put a few feelers out there via my
various online networks. 20 families came back to me almost immediately, each
happy to be interviewed for this new book, families with boys as well as girls
and from all areas of the UK.
Within the pages of When
Anorexia Came To Visit you will read many positive and inspirational
stories of hope - of excellent GPs and healthcare professionals working with
parents to get the child well. But you will also read stories where families
have battled with, and in some cases are still battling with, inadequate
services and treatment, especially evident once a child reaches the age of 18
and no longer qualifies for adolescent services.
The primary purpose of this book
is to help parents to identify the warning signs of an eating disorder and take
prompt action – and to empower them to demand the best, evidence-based
treatment for their child while drawing on the strategies that these 20
families found most helpful.
The other purpose is to highlight
inconsistencies in the way eating disorder treatment is delivered across the UK
– and to draw attention to the problems encountered at GP level where there is
often a low awareness of the complexities and symptoms of eating disorders.
I was delighted when Professor
Janet Treasure OBE agreed to write the Foreword for When Anorexia Came To
Visit. Becky Henry, whose book Just Tell Her To Stop: Family Stories of
Eating Disorders is the US-equivalent of mine and which inspired my book, volunteered
to write the Preface. And Laura Collins, Founder of F.E.A.S.T. (Families
Empowered And Supporting Treatment of Eating Disorders) and author of Eating
With Your Anorexic has written the Introduction.
Getting a son or daughter through
an eating disorder is one of the toughest and most distressing things parents
will ever do. But re-visiting painful memories is unbelievably tough, too. Yet
each of the families I interviewed for this book willingly volunteered to come
forward and describe their own struggles.
Not only did they agree to talk
frankly about their experiences, they agreed to read through the various drafts
I sent through for checking. In other words, being involved in this book meant
having to re-visit distressing memories not once but several times over. This
takes courage and commitment. It also demonstrates how much these families care
about others - families they have never met who will read this book and
hopefully draw inspiration, strength and hope from its pages.
Both of my books are available on
Amazon and as Kindle downloads.
Bev Mattocks
is the author of Please Eat… A mother’s struggle to free her teenage son
from anorexia http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0957511809
Her second
book When anorexia came to visit: Families talk about how an eating disorder
invaded their lives http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0957511841 has just been published, with a Foreword by Professor Janet Treasure OBE
Both are
available on Amazon and as Kindle downloads
Visit Bev’s blog AnorexiaBoyRecovery http://anorexiaboyrecovery.blogspot.co.uk/
