Advice for Parents by Doris Smeltzer

Words of wisdom and words of power

Last month I heard from a young woman, Alex Smith, who asked if she could interview me for her web site, Raw Recovery. She asked some thoughtful questions about my experiences with eating disorders (EDs) and I've been working steadily at answering them. One question in particular, though, brought up a lot of memories for me so I wrote and asked her if I could quote her here. This request is actually preempting her post (at least on one of my answers), but she kindly gave permission.

Alternative ways to comprehend

As those of you who have read our book know, at the young age of 14 Andrea spent a year living in Spain as an exchange student. She had two host families while there: the first one, a nightmare, the second, a dream come true. The two host brothers from her second family have spent time time living with us (one while Andrea was still here, the other, two years after her death), yet their parents had never visited the US ... until last week. They came to visit us in Napa at the start of a month-long whirlwind tour of the parks and natural sites of the northwest.

Three free gifts...Happy Mother's Day!

Two years ago I wrote a post titled, "Look for the grey."  In it I spoke of the value of Suzanne Ricklin's Concept Cards.  At the conclusion of our IAEDP talk in March, Suzanne (former educator, now therapist) introduced herself to me and made an incredibly generous offer. She wanted to provide the readers of this blog, free of charge, three of her powerful Concept Cards. I was beyond delighted and immediately told her, "Yes!"

Happy International No Diet Day (INDD)!

May 6th (since 1992) has been set aside as a day to celebrate, albeit briefly, the joy of living in our bodies without the torment that dieting brings. So what are the tenets of INDD (and here I borrow from Dr. Deah Schwartz's guest blog on FierceFatties):