And so the third year of my blog draws to a close...

584 posts on, I am just about to come to the end of the third year of my AnorexiaBoyRecovery blog! Around this time, three years ago, I knew I wanted to start writing about my experiences of helping my teenage son overcome anorexia, but I was really nervous about setting up a blog and making our struggle public.

The 2nd letter I would never send to Ben's friends

Back in March, I wrote a letter which I would love to have sent to Ben's friends, but of course never did. Instead I wrote it down here, in this blog. Now I feel that it's time for a second letter which I also will never send, and here it is...

Here's to hope for your Christmasses yet to come

If the 'me' of Christmas 2009 could have looked into a crystal ball and seen our family Christmas of 2013, I would have positively exploded with hope. Christmas 2009 was the first Christmas that ED, the eating disorder demon, sat alongside us, uninvited, at Christmas Dinner (and all the other Christmas meals and festivities). Yesterday, on Christmas Day 2013, I can proudly say that the eating disorder was nowhere to be seen. And I hope that our experience of emerging from an eating disorder, will offer other families hope for the future.

The wrong kind of library is demanding my books!

This has happened with all my books. First I get a request from Edinburgh to mail five copies of the book to the legal depositories of the five UK and Ireland non-lending libraries. Then I have to do the same for the non-lending British Library. This exercise costs me around £50 every time I have to do it, for each book. Yet all they do with these books is to store them in some deep, dark vault for ever and ever. They are of no use to anyone whatsoever. So, in effect, the royalities of the first 25 copies of every book I publish go to fund this pointless exercise. In a digital day-and-age this practice is ludicrous. But it is British law, so I have to go along with it.

To all those of you who are finding this Christmas difficult...

Christmas 2009 was a nightmare for our family. I spent Christmas Eve in floods of tears, listening to Carols from Kings on the radio, something I used to do on Christmas Eve with great joy. Christmas 2010 was a nightmare, too. I remember cooking Christmas dinner in tears - the result of a screaming match between Ben, his dad and me over some food issue. Christmas 2011 was better. It was also my friend Sue's last Christmas and, unable to raise the energy to cook a meal for herself, she spent the day with us. Thankfully last Christmas, at my sister's house, Ben tucked into a big Christmas dinner. The cat came along, too, for the day and we had a fantastic time. As for this Christmas?

Triggers...

Talking about PTSD triggers... Just when you think you've got your head round what's going on inside your head, you get triggered by something. Yesterday's trigger was a link someone had put to a report on Sky News about a university rugby team and their latest star player. Guess who this player turned out to be? If you've read my book, Please eat..., you will know him as Ben's friendly rival, Kieran. Ben's friend and rival on the rugby and sports fields, and in the classroom. Whoosh! A kind of unpleasant explosion went off inside my head.

A curiously liberating week, all in all

Firstly, this week seems to have gone better than expected for Ben at university. He's been socialising and he's been working hard at re-gaining those few lost kilos. His team even won the uni Christmas Quiz at the student union on Thursday night. The week ended with Ben inviting me to take him out for lunch at Nando's where he ate a large plate of chicken salad with pitta bread and olives on the side, followed by two large helpings of chocolate frozen yoghurt, followed by snacking on a large tub of popcorn all the way home. Ben's mood was up and his Monday session with a new counsellor (to work on depression / social anxiety) seemed to go well. The only downside is that his weight has only gone up very slightly. So this week, he is intent on eating even more in a bid to get up to the weight he needs to be at 20-years old. His birthday is a week tomorrow.