Slip: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery

(Hardback)

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Written by journalist and professor at the University of Texas-Austin Mallary Tenore Tarpley, Slip offers a groundbreaking framework for understanding eating disorder recovery and interweaves poignant personal stories, immersive reporting, and cutting-edge science.

When Mallary Tenore Tarpley lost her mother at eleven years old, she wanted to stop time. If growing up meant living without her mother, then she wanted to stay little forever. What started as small acts of food restriction soon turned into a full-blown eating disorder, and a year later, Tarpley was admitted to Bostons Childrens Hospital. With honesty and grace, Slip chronicles Tarpleys childhood struggles with anorexia to her present-day experiences grappling with recovery.

This book tells Tarpleys story, but it also transcends her personal narrative. A journalist by trade, Tarpley interviewed and surveyed hundreds of patients, doctors, and researchers to provide a deeper understanding of eating disorder treatment. She draws on this original reporting, as well as cutting-edge science, to illuminate what has changed in the years since she was first diagnosed.

As Tarpley came to learn, full recovery from an eating disorder is complicated. And that idea provides the basis for the groundbreaking new framework explored in this book: that there is a middle place between sickness and full recovery, a place where slips are accepted as part of the process but progress is always possible.

With new insights and an uplifting message, Slip brings much-needed attention to an issue that affects many. It offers a beacon of hope with its revolutionary perspective on recovery. This inspiring and life-affirming book is a must-read for individuals with eating disorders, their loved ones, educators, medical professionals, and anyone seeking to understand eating disorders and the path to recovery.

Reviews

InSlip,Mallary Tenore Tarpley carves out a "middle place" between acute sickness and full recoveryforthose of us with eating disorders. Tarpley is the perfect guideforthis conversation, as she seamlessly blends memoir, reportage, and research. At all times,Slipremains accessible, realistic, and hopeful about the messy and maddening process of recovering from disordered eating. This tremendous book will comfort, inspire, and educate readers. We are lucky that it exists.Christie Tate,New York Timesbestselling author ofGroup
This is a must-readforanyone affected by the devastation of an eating disorder.Those who have suffered themselves will find a redemptive narrative to guide their recovery. Loved ones will understand more about how to support recovery without expecting perfection. And clinicians, educators, activists, and policy makers may decide their narrative should be less about eradicating eating disorders and more about elucidating them. We need to make space in the middle, in the shadows, where recovery becomes possible, just as Tarpley has shown us.Margo Maine, PhD, clinical psychologist
There is no single image of eating disorders in the United States, but so often, we think about eating disorders as a linear journey with a neat and happy ending. Mallary Tenore Tarpley beautifully disrupts this narrative withSlip, an erudite memoir that moves us into a new generation in which were not defined by our disorders. Itsan essential addition to a canon of memoirs that shift paradigms and push us toward a new idea of what it means to recover and to fully, completely live.EvetteDionne, author ofWeightless: Making SpaceforMy Resilient Body and Soul
Slipis a gorgeous, paradigm-smashing bookthat explores the liminal space between sickness and health where so many of us live. Blending memoir and reportage,Slipdefies tidy narratives to show us we are not alone when we struggle, when we strive to get better, when weslip.EmiNietfeld, author ofAcceptance
"Candid, courageous and meticulously researched, Slip is a game-changing addition to literature on disordered eating from the perspective of someone in committed recovery. Tarpleys quest to exercise control in a turbulent world is meaningful and timely, and this book is a necessary read for anyone trying to understandor grapple withthe dark side of perfectionism."Courtney Maum, author of The Year of the Horses

Author Bio

Mallary Tenore Tarpley is a journalism and writing professor at the University of Texas at Austins Moody College of Communication and McCombs School of Business.Her writing has appeared inTheNew York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times,and The Dallas Morning News, among other publications. She is the recipient of a prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant, which helped support her research and writing. Mallary graduated from Providence College and has a masters of fine arts in nonfiction writing from Goucher College. She lives outside of Austin, Texas, with her husband and two children.Slipis her first book.