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As in 1998's Wasted, where Marya Hornbacher's anorexia, bulimia, and exercise addiction were fueled by her parents' implicit orders to excel, Bullitt-Jonas was born into a family of extreme overachievement. Her father ("the rapscallion, the charmer, the rogue"), a covertly alcoholic English professor at Harvard, and her chronically depressed mother, a trustee at neighboring Radcliffe, maintained a miserable home atmosphere. Her father called her "a failure in life even before you've begun to live." Bullitt-Jonas reacted by addictively overeating in her desperation to sate an emotional hunger she couldn't quite identify.
Holy Hunger is her way of answering the question: "How did my desires go so awry?" She started as a child: "So who knows what I felt, who knows what I was really longing for.... I had no idea what it was--a compulsion, a desire, an unspoken something or other--that caused my small hand to dart out, reach for an extra slice of bread, then slip it quietly, unseen, into my pocket." Bullitt-Jonas's overeating spells through her adolescence and early adulthood are, as expected, devastating. But she manages to save herself through faith in the Higher Power she defers to in her Overeaters Anonymous meetings; her prayers for help; the almost eerie assistance she finds by reading Alice Miller. She transcends her desperation, offering a valuable lesson in the power of spirituality.
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. A wrenchingly honest, eloquent memoir about true nourishment that comes not from [eating] but from engaging on a spiritual path."Los Angeles Times In this brave and perceptive account of compulsion and the healing process, Bullitt-Jonas describes a childhood darkened by the repressive shadows of her alcoholic father and her emotionally reclusive mother, whose demands for excellence, poise, and self-control drove Bullitt-Jonas to develop an insatiable hunger. What began with pilfering extra slices of bread at her parents' dinner table turned into binges with cream pies and pancakes, sometimes gaining as much as eleven pounds in four days. When the family urged her father into treatment, the author recognized her own addiction and embarked on the path to recovery by discovering the spiritual hunger beneath her craving for food. In an honest, eloquent memoir, Episcopal priest Margaret Bullitt-Jonas describes a childhood darkened by the repressive shadows of her alcoholic father and her emotionally reclusive mother, whose demands for excellence, poise, and self-control drove their daughter to develop an incredible addiction to food. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780375700873
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