We often experience or hear about eating disorders. We talk about them–often behind closed doors–as if they’re something to be ashamed of and ignored. Yet eating disorders–like all mental issues–are complex, highly challenging, and often resistant to change. They deserve our attention. And for anyone who’s been mired in an eating disorder or has had a friend or family member struggle with this issue you know how devastating they can be. And in every case I’ve seen, the road to recovery is not a straight trajectory–it’s a wobbly path filled with hurdles, small steps forward, and plenty of slips along the way. Yet, with perseverance and support, people may ultimately recover from–or at least get a good handle on–this serious issue that significantly impacts both mental and physical health. Dr. Carla Manly is joined by author, journalist, and assistant professor Mallary Tenore Tarpley, who offers a groundbreaking paradigm to help those living with–and recovering from–eating disorders. Topics discussed include eating disorders, eating disorder recovery, mental health issues, bulimia, anorexia, anorexia nervosa, physical health, binging, purging, disordered eating, healing, recovery, addiction, depression, anxiety, mental health support, college, life changes, stress, support groups, individual therapy, eating disorder specialists, psychotherapy, and family support.

Please note that this episode contains sensitive material; listener discretion is advised.

Emergency Assistance Note: If you or someone you know needs immediate support, please call your emergency services. In the US, 24/7 help is available by calling “911,” “988” (Suicide and Crisis Hotline), or SAMSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) at 1-800-662-HELP (4357). Support/informational links are in the show notes.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: No expert is offering medical or psychological direction or advice; the content is purely informational in nature. Please consult your physician or healthcare provider before undertaking any new regimen or procedure.

Books by Dr. Carla Manly:

Joy From Fear: Create the Life of Your Dreams by Making Fear Your Friend

Date Smart: Transform Your Relationships and Love Fearlessly

Aging Joyfully: A Woman’s Guide to Optimal Health, Relationships, and Fulfillment for Her 50s and Beyond

The Joy of Imperfect Love: The Art of Creating Healthy, Securely Attached Relationships

Oracle decks by Dr. Carla Manly:

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The Messy World of Eating Disorders and Recovery with Expert Mallary Tenore Tarpley

The Journey through Eating Disorders and Recovery

Addressing Eating Disorders: Understanding the Complexity

We often experience or hear about eating disorders. We talk about them often behind closed doors as if there’s something to be ashamed of. Yet, eating disorders, like all mental health issues, are complex, highly challenging, and often resistant to change. They deserve our attention. For anyone who has been mired in an eating disorder or who has had a friend or a family member struggle with this issue, you know how devastating they can be. In every case I’ve seen, the road to recovery is not a straight trajectory. It’s a wobbly path filled with hurdles, small steps forward, and plenty of slips along the way. Yet, with perseverance and support, people may ultimately recover from, or at least get a good handle on, this serious issue that significantly impacts both mental and physical health.

Today, we’ll focus on this listener’s real-life question. “My daughter is in college. She’s home on a break. She was always a good weight, average trim, but now, she’s very thin and pale. I heard her vomiting in the bathroom last night, and I have found cookie and ice cream containers hidden in the trash. I think she’s bulimic or anorexic. I tried to bring up the issue of her weight gently, but she shut me down. I suggested counseling, but she stomped off. How can I handle this without making it worse?” With that issue as the focus of this episode, I’m Dr. Carla Marie Manly, and this is Imperfect Love. Please note that as this episode contains sensitive information, audience discretion is advised.

I’m joined by a delightful guest, Mallary Tenore Tarpley. She’s an author, journalist, and assistant professor at the University of Texas. Mallary brings us the groundbreaking new book, Slip, which offers a much-needed framework for understanding and recovering from eating disorders. Welcome to the show, Mallary. It’s such a delight to have you with us.

Thank you so much for having me. I’m looking forward to the conversation.

Thank you for writing such a tremendous book and bringing it to us. For those who are affected by either having an eating disorder themselves or working with someone, like a family member, friend, roommate, or partner, who has an eating disorder, this book offers a wonderful new approach for addressing eating disorders.

Thank you. I do hope that it will be a helpful resource for people with lived experience, but also for caretakers, medical providers, and others.

Navigating the Conversation: Supporting a Loved One

Thank you. Before we launch into your new book and the question of the day, could you tell our audience a little bit about what makes you, you?

I am a mother of two young children, a 7-year-old boy and a 9-year-old daughter. I think a lot about my identity in terms of being a mother, but also being a professor, a wife, and a writer. Much of how I make sense of the world is through my writing. I’ve written a lot about my own personal experiences and have learned how to be vulnerable through my writing with the hopes of helping other people. I see that as being a big part of who I am and how I live in this world.

Unveiling “Slip”: A New Perspective on Recovery

Thank you for sharing that. I appreciate how you use your lived experience of an eating disorder and eating disorder recovery to help people understand and move through. Eating disorders are not easy. We hear questions about, “Is it bulimia? Is it anorexia?” Anorexia is known for being extremely resistant. Anorexia nervosa is often known for having the worst possible outcome in many cases. Before we go down that road, can you tell us a little bit about your book, Slip?

My book, Slip, is a book that I’ve been working on in different iterations. For most of my life, I always knew I wanted to write a book, but it was in the past few years that I worked on this latest iteration. It blends together my own lived experience with anorexia alongside insights from other people with lived experience, clinicians, and researchers.

I had initially conceived of this book as being a straightforward memoir that would look at my own experiences with having lived with an eating disorder and my ongoing recovery from it, but I realized that in many ways, I fit the stereotypical mold of someone with an eating disorder. I’m White. I’m a woman. I do live in a smaller body. I am middle to upper class. There are so many other people who struggle with eating disorders who don’t fit that stereotypical mold. I was curious to hear more of their stories and shed light on them.

I ended up surveying 724 people with lived experience of eating disorders from 44 states and 37 countries. I surveyed them, and I interviewed 175 survey respondents, clinicians, and researchers to be able to broaden my own scope of understanding around eating disorders, but also help others to do the same.

A big part of what I explore in the book is what I call the middle place, which is this liminal space between acute sickness and full recovery. Many of the books that I’ve read about eating disorders have been helpful to me, but most of them have been written from the perspective of someone who’s fully recovered. I felt like in reading those books, there was a lack of a mirrored image because I didn’t see my own narrative reflected in those as a woman who is better, but not all better, and as a woman who is in recovery but not Fully Recovered.

In talking with so many people for the book, I realized there are so many other inhabitants in this middle place, and yet it’s not talked about. I want to help people who find themselves in this space to feel seen and heard, and also to recognize that even though they may not have reached full recovery, they can still continue to make meaningful progress.

Embracing Imperfection: The “Middle Place” of Recovery

That is a lot. I appreciate it. Eating disorders do have their own place in mental health disorders. It is a sacred place from my perspective. There are many mental health issues that people feel embarrassed about making public or having known. With eating disorders in particular, there’s so much shame. It’s so difficult.

There are many mental health issues where there isn’t a full recovery. That’s part of why I love talking about imperfect love. It’s the name of the show and the name of my fourth book. It’s the idea that when we’re trying for this perfect mental health, perfect physical health, or perfect anything, because it’s impossible, we’re constantly clawing and trying to get there. That can cause or exacerbate already pre-existing mental health or physical health issues.

I appreciate that you’re talking about this and this middle ground. I agree with you. There are many people who live in the middle ground of all types of addictions, whether it’s alcohol, other substances, gambling, food, or whatever it might be. They feel bad because they think, “I should be 100% recovered.” Even for someone who considers themself fully recovered, we are all one day and one moment from slipping.

That’s so true. For me, for a long time, I did think of full recovery as a perfectionistic ideal. I didn’t believe there was a space in between full recovery and acute sickness. I was petrified of slipping. I thought, “If I make one wrong move in my recovery, I am going to immediately slide back into dangerous territory.” A big part of my recovery ultimately was reframing my thinking around it and not seeing those slips as grounds for failure, but rather as opportunities for growth.

Thank you for saying that. I don’t think we can emphasize it enough. The moment we believe that a slip is a complete failure, there’s a big chance that we give up on anything. Our slips are not failures if we learn even one tiny thing. “What caused it? How did I feel? What did that look like for me? How did it affect me?” It could be one tiny thing, and then get up and continue on. It’s about getting up and continuing on. There’s so much courage. I have so much respect. We all slip in one way or another. I have such respect for the people who have the courage to get up and give it another go.

Thank you for that. I do, too.

A New Paradigm for Recovery: Beyond Fullness

When we look at your approach, this paradigm for facing recovery, moving through, and doing our best to get a handle on it, what is your approach like? How is it different?

A lot of people within the eating disorder field tend to talk in terms of full recovery. Certainly, there are people who identify with those words. I interviewed people for the book who consider themselves to be fully recovered. What’s interesting is that if you look at the research, there are almost as many definitions of full recovery in the eating disorder field as there are studies about it.

There are studies that look at full recovery solely based on body mass index. There are some that look at full recovery in terms of seizing of behaviors, coupled with weight. There are some, though not as many, that look at the cognitive distortions and whether or not those are still present. There are a lot of different definitions of full recovery, and it makes it confusing for people who are trying to reach this full recovery because they don’t know exactly what that means. Even the field itself is still trying to work through what that means when we talk about full recovery.

I do think that there’s a lot of power in recognizing that recovery is possible, but I don’t think that it is necessarily beneficial for everyone to think that full recovery is the only way to be in recovery. In the eating disorder field, there are these terms quasi-recovery and pseudo-recovery. Those describe this in-between space where you may have gotten treatment and you’re better, but you still contend with the disorder in some ways.

Those terms, from my own experience and talking with other people, can be quite pernicious because they can make people feel like they are faking their recovery, or that their struggles are somehow not real. For me, I always thought that I needed to be fully recovered to the point where even when I relapsed after having been in treatment for many years, I still told everyone I was fully recovered. I was too afraid of being labeled as someone who was a fraud or someone who was in this quasi-recovery. I thought, “I don’t want that. I want to be the perfect, fully recovered girl. I want to be the poster child for full recovery.”

Since there is so much black and white language around eating disorder recovery, it leaves people feeling stigmatized and ashamed when they do find themselves in this space where they’re better, but not all better. Part of this middle place framework tries to expand the lens beyond these two black and white terms of acute sickness and full recovery and tries to explore the gray spaces, nuances, and imperfections of what recovery looks like. It recognizes that recovery can be ongoing.

Sometimes, there’s this tendency to think that if people are in this middle place, then they’re somehow settling for stagnation, or if they’re in this middle place, then they should only be there for a brief period before they get to full recovery. In my experience and in talking with so many other people, many of us live out our lives in this middle place. It doesn’t mean that we’re settling. It means that we live our lives recognizing that the eating disorder is still a vulnerability. We recognize that slips are going to happen, but we try to learn from those slips and think about how we can prevent those slips from turning into uncontrollable slides.

Part of this framework is helping people to give themselves more grace, no matter how far along they are in their recovery. I wish that I had this framework accessible to me when I was in the early stages of my recovery. I hope that it can be helpful for other people to think about how they can reshape their own thinking around what it means to be in recovery. I say in recovery as part of this framework as opposed to recovered because I like to think about recovery as being something that you’re actively working on and thinking about, as opposed to it being a fixed state that has a finish line.

Beautifully said. With eating disorders or disordered eating and many mental health issues, we’re human. It’s that awareness that we’re all human. We’re going to shift and change. We will face challenges. Even if we think that we are in a category of being fully recovered or something like that, what happens when there’s a big life stressor? We often go to that weak link or that weak place. That is how we’ve learned to cope with something. Somebody may binge. They may starve themselves. That might be their natural way of handling it. That’s so hardwired into their way of being. They will maybe have a little relapse. It is knowing how normal that is.

I like to look at it as if we have a necklace that is made of these links. Once you’ve broken one of those links, and we get many of our links broken in this journey of life, ideally, we get support and psychotherapy to help weld those and heal them, but they may be the most susceptible areas when we’re under stress. It’s knowing that that weak link may break, but if you face it, if you’re not ashamed of it, and if you get the support, you can do whatever is necessary to make it functional again and move on.

It’s such a grace-filled way of working with mental health issues of all types, but particularly anything like an eating disorder, where the internal shame and pain are so heavy. It’s not a perfect comparison, but it’s like somebody who has suffered from depression. They’ve done work, and they’re off antidepressants, but are they never going to get depressed again? Somebody who works with social anxiety, are they never going to be socially anxious again? Of course not. We’re humans.

When we accept that and say, “This is my weak link or one of my weak links,” it makes the path so much easier because we’re not having that hammer of shame, blame, and self-loathing constantly pounding down. Thank you for that. I’d love to pivot, if you don’t mind, to the question of the day. This sounds like a very distraught mother whose daughter is home. It sounds like she’s concerned about her. If you were able to support this individual, what are a few things you might say?

I appreciate this listener’s question. I can empathize with them as a mother. I would say that it’s important to acknowledge that you are seeing these behaviors and to talk with your daughter about them. Oftentimes, we don’t know how to broach these difficult conversations, and we end up avoiding them. Particularly with eating disorders, we know the research shows that the earlier someone receives care and treatment, the better the prognosis will be. The longer someone struggles, the harder it is going to be to recover because this eating disorder takes hold of people very quickly.

I would recommend that the mother sit the child down, and not in an accusatory way, but in a loving and caring way, say, “I’ve been noticing that there are some changes in your behavior. I think that you’ve been going to the bathroom after you’ve been eating. I’ve noticed you’ve been withdrawing yourself. I’ve noticed that you haven’t been wanting to engage in meal times.” Whatever the changes may be, it is acknowledging those from a place of love and care and letting the person or the child know, “I’m here for you. I care for you. I want to chat with you about what might be going on.”

Also, come at it from this place of curiosity, so that you’re opening up avenues for storytelling. The moment that parents become accusatory, that can shut people down. It’s not that parents are intending to do that, but sometimes, when they are concerned, it can come out a little bit differently than they had planned on. Even rehearsing what you want to say to your child ahead of time can be quite helpful.

It’s important to recognize that there’s often a lot of denial around eating disorders. Particularly with children and teenagers, they may say, “Nothing is wrong,” or “I’m not hungry,” or “I just had a tummy ache,” or whatever it might be. It’s important to trust your instincts and to say, “It seems like there’s something else going on here. I want you to know that you can talk to me about it. I want you to know I’m concerned, too.” It is working through that, seeing what the child is able to offer up in terms of details and information, and beginning to look to see if there are eating disorder clinicians whom you could turn to for help.

Often, people who are struggling do need to have specialized care. There are a lot of treatment providers. Unfortunately, they don’t all take insurance, but there are lots of treatment providers who do specialize in eating disorders. Getting a child into the right hands of a medical provider can be quite helpful because that person can then make a diagnosis.

It may be that the first stop is the medical doctor, but one thing I would say is that research shows that medical doctors typically get between 0 and 2 hours of training on eating disorders. That is mind-boggling when you consider the fact that 30 million Americans will struggle with an eating disorder. I mentioned that because even when I was a teenager, my father had taken me to the pediatrician, and the doctor didn’t know anything or much about eating disorders and dismissed it as a passing phase.

Even though there are so many amazing doctors, many of them don’t necessarily get proper training. Sometimes, as a result, if there are children who don’t look the part of someone with an eating disorder or fit that stereotypical mold, they may not necessarily, right off the bat, get the care that they need. It’s important for parents to recognize that.

If there is a doctor who may not necessarily give you the feedback or the help that you feel your daughter needs, then seek treatment elsewhere or go to a different provider. Eating disorders tend to be very enigmatic for parents and even, in some cases, for clinicians. There can be a lot of hurdles, but that first step is having that conversation with the child and seeing where it takes you.

The Social Media Influence: Eating Disorders in the Digital Age

I agree with everything that you’ve said. I agree that eating disorders can be confounding for clinicians, the individual in the throes of the eating disorder, and for friends and family. Food is what we go to as our primary comfort, in many cases. It is our primary sense of feeding ourselves and taking care of ourselves. In your case, I realized there was a connection to your mother having passed away early on in your life. I’m sorry about that. For some people, it’s heading off to college and trying to fit in. For other people, it could be dysfunctional home dynamics. They try to become invisible and handle things by binging or completely avoiding food. There are many aspects that make it tough to detangle it.

For a young adult or a child, it’s tough because they’re trying to form their identity and move through life, especially with social media showing all of these images that make it look like our bodies are not what they should be. On college campuses, because I work with students in that population as well as older adults, there are the kinds of eating disorders that are rampant and that are being modeled.

They’re everywhere. They used to not be quite as common as they are now. They’ve always been around, but they’re common now, and increasingly common across every gender. There used to be more women. For those who identify as male and those who are somewhere in the middle, eating disorders are, unfortunately, increasing.

I appreciate you also touching on how important it is, even though it’s uncomfortable sometimes. A kiddo, a friend, or a partner will push back because they don’t want to talk about it. They’re ashamed of it. It’s important to talk about it in a nonjudgmental and non-threatening way. Open that door and offer resources. Maybe do some homework ahead of time. This isn’t something that every clinician works with. Some clinicians do not specialize or have no knowledge about this. Whether it’s an MD, a PhD, or whatever it might be, they may have no experience with it. Keep slogging through until you find someone, because they are tricky to work with.

The Healing Power of Storytelling: Sharing Your Journey

You said something I find very interesting. There were two of my favorite words you used, which are curiosity and storytelling. It’s so important to be curious. When we’re curious and we ask questions in a very respectful way, we’re opening doors, and storytelling. Could you tell us how that fits into the storytelling? As an author and journalist, please share.

Many people feel as though they can’t necessarily share their story, or that their story is not worthy of being told. I always get saddened by that idea because we all have a story that is worth telling. Sometimes, because of the stories that often get elevated in the eating disorder field, we tend to mostly hear stories about people who are fully recovered and who have made it. They tend to reflect what I like to call these redemptive narratives, where we have these protagonists who prevail, and they come out the other side victorious.

As a society, we, in some ways, like those stories because we like to hear about people who have made it, but people who haven’t made it feel like, “I can’t share my story because I haven’t crossed that finish line.” For a long time, I thought I couldn’t write my book and share my story until I was fully recovered. I kept waiting for that moment, that day, or that period where I would find myself in this fullest expression of recovery. It hadn’t arrived, and it still hasn’t. Part of what was healing for me was recognizing I still had a story to tell, even though I hadn’t prevailed over my disorder.

I like to think about my own story and the stories of other people in the middle place as being more of what I call restorative narratives. Restorative narratives explore the messy middles. They look at how people make meaningful progress in the aftermath of acute sickness, trauma, or tragedy. Those stories look at nuance. They look at gray spaces. They look at imperfections.

Ultimately, I’m finding that those stories tend to be more relatable, whereas these redemptive or restitution narratives can seem very aspirational. The restorative narratives open up more entry points for relatability. I have certainly seen that in interviewing lots of other people who find themselves in this middle place. Many of them have said, “I never had the words to describe where I was in my journey. Therefore, I didn’t share my story.”

When I’ve told people about my own experiences in the middle place, it has opened up avenues for them to then share their story. It has given them permission, in some ways, to do so. Not that they needed that permission in the first place, but it gives them the freedom and that outstretched hand to say, “ Grab on. This is a safe place to tell your story.” I hope that in writing my own story, my book will no longer just be my book, but our collective book, where people can see themselves reflected in it. Hopefully, they use it as grounds for inspiration to share their own stories as well, imperfect though they may be.

What you’ve said is so beautiful. I’m such a believer in the power of story. When we think about Grimm’s Fairy Tales, especially before they were romanticized, they come with so many lessons in them, sharing depth and vulnerability. That’s the part of every human’s stories, the ones in your book and the listener’s story. She gave us a story about a snippet in her life and how precious that is. What courage it takes to share our stories.

It’s so lovely to look at our own stories, tell our stories, and hear our partners’ stories, our kids’ stories, and our friends’ stories. I listen to clients’ stories every day of the week, pretty much. Think of how amazing it is that somebody trusts you with the story of their life and what’s going on. This mom perhaps can come at it from, as you were saying, a story approach, and looking at opening the door for her daughter to share. “What’s going on? Tell me a little bit about college. Tell me a little bit about what it’s like. Tell me about your roommate. Tell me what your classes are.” It sounds like the daughter was doing fine at home, but there’s something in this shift to college where there are stressors.

I agree with you so much. The sooner we face and catch any mental health or physical health issue, for that matter, the sooner we lean into it with no judgment. Judgment has no place. It could be like, “What’s going on? Let’s figure it out. Let’s get you the support.” In a way that is filled with such grace and compassion. I believe that is where recovery begins, and also connection. Let’s imagine it’s a son, a partner, a friend, or whoever is on the other side. They’ll never forget how the door was opened. Was it opened loud and wide with screaming and yelling, or was it opened gently with, “Please tell me what’s going on for you.”

I love that way of thinking about it. That’s so important. Letting people know that there is a doorway and perhaps a pathway out or a pathway toward receiving help is so important, especially when you consider how isolating eating disorders can be.

Eating Disorders: Not a Choice, but a Complex Reality

Mental health issues, in general, are so alienating. It’s one of the things where we think about getting support, whether it’s a support group or a psychotherapist. I say all the time on this show that I’m a huge believer in individual therapy, but also support groups. The power of hearing other people’s stories and knowing that other people are imperfect and that other people struggle just like you. I’m saying like me as well, because we all struggle. We’re all imperfect. It’s our denial of that that can make it so much tougher than it needs to be. What are some other pieces of your book or this listener’s question that you would like to dive into a bit more?

It’s important to understand that eating disorders are not a choice. No one wakes up one morning and says, “I want to have an eating disorder.” As I look back on my own family’s reaction to my eating disorder when I was younger, I’m struck by how maddening it was for them. I had a very loving father whom I’m still close to. I had a loving grandmother who has since passed away. My father and grandmother tried to help me so much.

I’ve talked about this with my father. We’ve talked about how hard it was for him because many times, he would say, “Why can’t you just eat?” or “You’re so smart. Why can’t you figure this out?” or “Step on the scale and you’ll see that you’re losing weight.” I know that, ultimately, those did come from a place of love, but they were also hard to hear. I kept thinking to myself, “I can’t just eat,” or “I’m smart, but I don’t know why this disorder has taken hold of me. I don’t feel like I can escape it.” I didn’t have easy answers to those questions.

The research on eating disorders has evolved a lot since then. That was the late 1990s. We now know so much more about eating disorders. We know that there are genetic components. We know that eating disorders also have neurobiological components, so there are brain-based alterations that do occur. There has been a lot of research, particularly on anorexia nervosa and the shrinkage of brain size that accompanies that disorder. There’s a lot of fascinating research about this that I delve into in the book.

For me, reading about this research and learning more about it enabled me to have more empathy for my younger self because I was able to look back on young Mallary and realize that it was so hard to get beyond this disorder. It was so hard to get out of these cognitive ruts because there were so many alterations that were happening to my body, my mental health, and my brain. There were so many things that felt outside of my control that I couldn’t contend with without a higher level of care and support.

It’s important to understand how complicated and complex these disorders are. As no one chooses to have an eating disorder, there is a level of choice and desire that does play into recovery, but you can’t just choose recovery, and then all of a sudden, think you’re going to be fully recovered. There’s a misconception that if you haven’t fully recovered, then you’re not choosing recovery. You’re choosing to be sick.

I choose recovery every day of my life, but it’s still a vulnerability. The disorder is still a vulnerability. It still takes up some space in my life. It doesn’t take up all the space like it once did. This aspect of choice is important to consider when we think about eating disorders. I would share those reflections, particularly for people who are struggling, or for parents and caretakers who are trying to wrap their heads around these very complicated disorders.

Thank you for bringing up the critical piece about choice. I have heard that so much. It is maddening for me as an individual and a clinician when people think that a mental health disorder, in this case, an eating disorder, is something that the person is doing intentionally. I agree with you. There are changes in the brain.

Think about when you’re starving your body or you’re binging. You’re doing so much damage to your body, not that you are choosing to do the damage. With anorexia, you’re damaging your heart, which is one of your body’s critical muscles. We think about all of these things that are occurring that the person isn’t choosing. They’re not saying, “I’d love my body to waste away. I’d love my heart and my brain to deteriorate.” It’s something that’s happening to them, within them, and, in some ways, around them.

I have such compassion on a personal and professional level. Thank you for the wisdom that you have offered, as well as the incredible grace and vulnerability. Mallory’s beautiful book is titled Slip. It is a beautiful and well-written book. It’s gorgeous. Thank you for bringing this book into the world. Where can our readers find you and your book?

Thank you for those lovely words. It makes my heart happy. I would love for your audience to read the book. They can find out more about me on my website, which is my full name, MallaryTenoreTarpley.com. I also have a weekly newsletter where I write about storytelling, and that is Mallary.Substack.com. Those are two places where you can find me. My personal website does have a contact form. Readers are welcome to reach out. I do respond to every email. I love hearing from readers and folks who want to talk more about eating disorders and recovery. I’m happy to be a resource.

Thank you. I have a feeling you’re going to get an influx of questions, comments, and all that sort of thing because the work you do is incredible. Thank you for opening the doorway to such a healthy, honest conversation about a topic that is very precious and important to me and to many people. Thank you again for joining us. It has been such a joy and an honor.

Thank you so much. I loved our conversation.

Thank you, and thank you to our readers for tuning in, sharing your time and energy, and trusting us with such important pieces of your life and your journey. This is Imperfect Love.

Important Links

• Mallary Tenore Tarpley
• Slip
• Mallary Tenore Tarpley on Substack
• Mallary Tenore Tarpley on X
• Mallary Tenore Tarpley on Instagram
• NEDA | Eating Disorders Support, Awareness, and Recovery
• Get Help for Eating Disorders: Screening & Support | NEDA
• NAMI HelpLine
• Carla Marie Manly, PhD
• Dr. Carla Marie Manly on Instagram
• Dr. Carla Marie Manly on X
• Dr. Carla Marie Manly on Facebook
• Dr. Carla Marie Manly on LinkedIn
• Dr. Carla Marie Manly on YouTube
• Dr. Carla Marie Manly on TikTok

About Mallary Tenore Tarpley

Mallary Tenore is an assistant professor of practice at The University of Texas at Austin’s School of Journalism and Media and McCombs School of Business, where she teaches writing and reporting courses for undergraduate and graduate students. Mallary specializes in a variety of topics, including longform feature writing, creative nonfiction, solutions journalism and nonprofit journalism.

A longtime journalist, Mallary’s articles and essays have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Dallas Morning News, The Tampa Bay Times, Harvard University’s Nieman Storyboard and more. She also maintains a weekly newsletter, Write at the Edge, where she shares writing tips and best practices.

Mallary’s debut nonfiction book, “SLIP: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery,” will be published by Simon & Schuster’s Simon Element imprint and is now available for pre-order. The book blends immersive reporting, emerging science and social history around eating disorders alongside Mallary’s own harrowing journey from a childhood with anorexia to her present-day reality as a mother in recovery. While working on the book, Mallary received a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to support her reporting and writing.

Previously, Mallary was the associate director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at UT, where she oversaw the Center’s staff, programmatic work, events, fundraising, and more. Prior to that she was the executive director of Images & Voices of Hope (ivoh), a media nonprofit, where she oversaw the ins and outs of the organization and helped develop a storytelling genre called restorative narrative — stories that show how people and communities are finding meaningful pathways forward in the aftermath of tragedy.

Mallary started her career at the Poynter Institute, where she became managing editor of the institute’s world-renowned media news site, Poynter.org. In this role, she wrote, reported, and edited daily news stories about the media industry, as well as stories about best practices in newsrooms. She also taught in Poynter seminars geared toward helping journalists use social media as a reporting and writing tool. She remains an adjunct faculty member for The Poynter Institute and has led writing/reporting trainings for journalists around the world.

Mallary holds bachelor’s degrees in English and Spanish from Providence College, as well as a master’s of fine arts in nonfiction writing from Goucher College. She lives outside of Austin with her husband and two young children.