Big blazer, but a blazing success all in all...

Today was Leavers' Day - when the Upper Sixth Form leave school to start exams - and Ben managed everything OK, I am delighted to say. Photographs, buffet lunch, headmaster's speech and so on... he stayed the course.

“Get help before they turn 18.”

This is what one mother said when her (recovered 20-something) daughter asked what the "biggest piece of advice she would give another parent" going through what she and her daughter had been through together. "Get help before they turn 18."

He almost made it to the Arts Dinner last night...

It had been hard work to get him there. Several invitations from peers and members of staff, in fact I know the staff really, really wanted him to be there. And he made it as far as the dinner venue itself, in the school hall. I dropped him off and went to the supermarket on the way home. Then he called me. He couldn't handle it and needed to leave quickly...

Farewell dear friend...

I hate that part of funerals. You know, when they carry the coffin or casket into church and place it at the front. Knowing that my dear friend was in that coffin made it doubly hard, as did standing at the front of the church mid-way through the service, with her right beside me, as I talked about the difference she had made to our lives.

A sunny start to a difficult day...

Today is my friend S's day, the day when we 'say goodbye' to her earthly body, the body that let her down in the end and imprisoned her, so I imagine that wherever she is, she's pretty darn glad to be rid of it. It's a sunny day, and listening to the Beach Boys 'Surfing USA' on the radio, I wish I could believe that she is surfing somewhere, on some amazing blue ocean, her long hair streaming out behind her. (She always longed to grow her original long blonde hair back...)

Bypassing the small talk and getting to the heart of the matter

When an eating disorder like anorexia is dominating your life and thoughts 24/7, it's really hard to focus on anything else, let alone 'small talk' or trivia. Yet so often, as a desperate parent of a child with an eating disorder, you're forced to suppress this about-to-erupt volcano of emotions to talk about the weather, who won the X Factor or some other similarly mind-numbing tat.

Walking and talking with Ben in the countryside

Along with the anorexia recovery contract, walking and talking is one of the most important things Ben and I have done over the past couple of years. Back in the days of 'high anorexia' we'd do umpteen walks in the local countryside and parks, especially when he was off school semi-permanently. We'd walk and talk once, twice or three times a week, through spring, summer, autumn and winter. Initially, and for a heck of a long time... almost a year... I might as well have been talking in Chinese...