The road to “Finding Artemisia”

After my first visit to a community of traditional Aboriginal women in the middle of the Australian desert, I couldn’t stop thinking about how different the women were to modern women.

I’m a psychologist, specializing in anorexia and it occurred to me that these Aboriginal women had never heard of eating disorders, or psychology for that matter. 

At the time I was also facilitating workshops in New York State and people were asking me about the Aboriginal culture and as I began talking about how different it was, I thought I should write about my time there, as well as my professional experiences with eating disorders.

Because they were such extreme opposites I wanted to put them together somehow, and that’s how “Finding Artemisia: A Journey into Ancient Women’s Business” began.

It’s an inspirational book, in that takes the reader into an image free world where women value each other for who they are and not what they look like. Not like the modern world of women: booby-trapped by the dieting, plastic surgery and body shaping industries.

It’s not an academic book, (there are already many on the subject of eating disorders), but it is an experience, a transformational and nourishing journey for women and their families, because its about its about matters that deeply affect them: food, sexuality, body image, and relationships. It’s a journey book that takes readers into a world they would otherwise not experience, that of ancient women’s culture. It also takes them into the hidden world of anorexia. 

AND it honors the special relationship between mother and daughter. No matter how difficult that relationship might be, all women have mothers, and if they can’t be at peace with that relationship, they will rarely find peace within themselves.