Description
Asking for help is only the first step.
Jennifer can’t go on like this–binging, purging, starving, and all while trying to appear like she’s got it all together. But when she finally confesses her secret to her parents and is hospitalized at the Samuel Tuke Center, her journey is only beginning.
As Jennifer progresses through her treatment, she learns to recognize her relationship with food, and friends, and family–and how each is healthy or unhealthy. She has to learn to trust herself and her own instincts, but that’s easier than it sounds. She has to believe–after many years of being a believarexic.
Using her trademark dark humor and powerful emotion, J. J. Johnson tells an inspiring story based on her own experience when she was hospitalized for an eating disorder as a teenager. The innovative format using blank verse and prose, changes in tense and voice, and forms, workbooks, and journal entries mirror Jennifer’s progress toward a healthy body and mind.
In 1988, when she was fifteen, JJ Johnson was hospitalized for treatment of bulimarexia, a combination of bulimia and anorexia. During her ten-week stay, JJ had to eat everything on her tray, and took classes like Assertiveness Training, Depression Management, and Body Image Workshop. She gained weight, but her path toward health was a constant struggle. In her heart, JJ knewshe knewthat she would be a happy, healthy adult one day. But how? Instead of a clear path, there was a black abyss. She needed a guide, a mentor, someone who knew her inside and out. So, one morning, just before weigh-in, JJ closed her eyes and made a deal with herself: I promise myself that when Im grown up, and happy, I will come back here, to these months. Healthy me will guide bulimarexic me through this. This book is that promise, kept.
Peachtree Publishing Company
Juvenile Fiction
Girls & Women, Juvenile Fiction
Edition: Social Themes
Keywords: Girls & Women, Juvenile Fiction
