Posts Tagged “Book Q&A”

**Content warning: This is one person’s story; everyone will have unique experiences in recovery and beyond. Some stories may mention eating disorder thoughts, behaviors, and symptoms. Please use your discretion when reading and speak with your support system as needed.

Heather Palmer is a 500-hour yoga teacher, mother of four, and author. Her book, Gold-In Cracks, is a memoir about resilience, recovery, and rebuilding one’s life in the face of hardships. Heather helps others reconnect with their bodies, find stillness, and rediscover their gold within. Follow her on Instagram (@Heather8888). You can purchase Gold-In Cracks here.

**Content warning: This is one person’s story; everyone will have unique experiences in recovery and beyond. Some stories may mention eating disorder thoughts, behaviors, and symptoms. Please use your discretion when reading and speak with your support system as needed.

Cate is a writer from Edinburgh, Scotland. She regularly publishes articles on her own blog—Wee Scottish Diaries—where she shares stories about bonnie Scotland, her life with a cat, and her passion for baking.

Being affected by mental health issues herself, she wants to use the power of words to raise awareness and reduce the stigma around eating disorders. You can buy her poem collection, I Am Fed Up: My Eating Disorder Recovery Diaries, here.

Episode description:

In this episode of Peace Meal, we sit down with Mallary Tenore Tarpley, journalist, professor, and author of the forthcoming book Slip. Mallary opens up about her personal journey with anorexia, her path to treatment, and her concept of the “middle place” in recovery—a space between acute illness and full recovery that is rarely discussed but widely experienced.

Mallary shares how her early experiences with grief, media influences, and cultural messages about food and bodies contributed to the development of her eating disorder. She also talks about the power of persistence, small steps toward healing, and the importance of support and community along the recovery journey.

**Content warning: This is one person’s story; everyone will have unique experiences in recovery and beyond. Some stories may mention eating disorder thoughts, behaviors, and symptoms. Please use your discretion when reading and speak with your support system as needed.

Nicole Byars’s (she/her) multi-years of experience as an accomplished trauma-informed yoga specialist and best-selling author has given her the unique tools to help others step into transformative thinking, creating optimum outcomes both professionally and personally. With 500 hours of training as a registered yoga teacher, she is also the visionary behind the well-respected Honest Yoga Studio in Plymouth, Minnesota.

Through overcoming her eating disorder and physical and emotional setbacks, Nicole has discovered the power of recognizing and reframing limiting beliefs and the importance of beginning each day with a grounded and empowering mindset. From tragedy to triumph, Nicole has become a motivational and inspirational guide–helping others align to elevate, taking them to a whole new level in their relationships and business. She is a respected thought leader in her field and educator for those searching for answers to improve their ability to live mindfully, productively, and joyfully. Nicole currently uses mindful movement to help addiction and recovery centers, domestic abuse shelters, and veterans.

**Content warning: This is one person’s story; everyone will have unique experiences in recovery and beyond. Some stories may mention eating disorder thoughts, behaviors, and symptoms. Please use your discretion when reading and speak with your support system as needed.

Abby Anderson (she/her) is from the Twin Cities area and underwent treatment at The Emily Program following her anorexia nervosa diagnosis in the spring of 2018. After graduating from business school in 2020, Abby worked in corporate retail and consulting before eventually finding her passion in healthcare. Today, Abby works in a job that blends her skillset with her vested interest in eating disorder treatment, research, education, and accessibility. Abby spends her free time hanging out with friends, doing yoga, listening to podcasts, taking long walks outside, and, of course, writing.

If you are interested in connecting with Abby, don’t hesitate to reach out! You can follow Abby’s personal Instagram or her writing platform. You can also send her an email at eaten.alive.a@gmail.com. To learn more about Abby’s recovery story, listen to her on our Peace Meal podcast. Abby’s book can be purchased here.

In this blog, Abby tells us about her new book, Eaten Alive: Anorexia: Learning to Thrive after Living to Survive, how writing her memoir supported her healing, and why others should join her in pushing back against societal misconceptions of health.

**Content warning: This is one person’s story; everyone will have unique experiences in recovery and beyond. Some stories may mention eating disorder thoughts, behaviors, and symptoms. Please use your discretion when reading and speak with your support system as needed.

Rachel Havekost is the bestselling author of Where the River Flows, Write to Heal, and The Inner Child Journal. Along with her other titles, The Self-Healer’s Journal and The Grief Workbook, Rachel has single-handedly built an online social media presence with a combined 300k+ individuals devoted to de-stigmatizing mental health. 

Courage, community, and connection are at the heart of Rachel’s work. After 18 years of therapy for an eating disorder, depression, sexual trauma, suicide attempts, and divorce, Rachel strives to use radical transparency as a window into her mind and heart so that others might not feel alone. 

Her current work is centered in life after suffering: asking questions about embracing humanity, living with uncertainty, and allowing for ease after periods of strife. She is quickly amassing a readership on her Substack publication, “The Messy Middle,” where she writes weekly newsletters about living imperfectly and showing up messy.

Recently, Rachel has completed her master’s degree in psychology, attended Harvard’s first Mental Health Creators Summit, and was recently featured for her writing and advocacy in The New York Times. She is grateful and honored to be able to share her story and support others on their journey to joyful living.

**Content warning: This is one person’s story; everyone will have unique experiences in recovery and beyond. Some stories may mention eating disorder thoughts, behaviors, and symptoms. Please use your discretion when reading and speak with your support system as needed.

Ally Rae Pesta is a yoga teacher, run coach, eating disorder recovery coach, speaker, and published author. She’s been in recovery for ten years. Her passion is to empower individuals to find purpose beyond their body and reclaim their relationship with their body, movement, and food. Her memoir, Beyond My Body: Recovering From a Complex Eating Disorder, Reclaiming Movement, and Finding My Worth, launched on World Mental Health Day, October 10th. Visit her website allyrae.co to learn more or buy her book here. 

Why did you write Beyond My Body?

I have always loved to write. Since I was five years old, I dreamed of writing a book one day. Fast forward to 17 years old, lying in a hospital bed, where I wrote in my recovery journal that one day I would write a book about this. Although it took me ten years to finally write and publish my book, my truest why still remains—write it for my 17-year-old self who wanted so badly to feel seen, heard, and understood. 

**Content warning: This is one person’s story; everyone will have unique experiences in recovery and beyond. Some stories may mention eating disorder thoughts, behaviors, and symptoms. Please use your discretion when reading and speak with your support system as needed.

Melissa L. Johnson is a licensed marriage and family therapist, adjunct professor at Bethel University, and the founder of Impossible Beauty, a blog and podcast dedicated to redefining beauty as “the life of God at work in us and among us” (impossible-beauty.com). Melissa’s writing and podcast interviews seek to uncover what true beauty is, what it is not, and how we go about finding beauty in a broken world. Melissa is releasing her debut book with Bethany House publishing in June 2023, entitled Soul-Deep Beauty: Fighting for our True Worth in a World Demanding Flawless.

In this blog, Melissa tells us about her new book, Soul Deep Beauty: Fighting for Our True Worth in a World Demanding Flawless, how her eating disorder inspired her to reconsider her definition of beauty, and how others can join her in deconstructing harmful societal beauty ideals.