Slip

Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery

Mallary Tenore Tarpley

• Publisher: S&S/Simon Element
• Year: 2025
• Topic: Psychology
• eBook ISBN:
  9781668035030
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Psychology

Winner of the Association of American Publishers' 2026 PROSE Award for Excellence in Biological and Life Sciences

Written by journalist and professor at the University of Texas-Austin Mallary Tenore Tarpley, Slip offers a groundbreaking framework for understanding eating disorder recovery and interweaves poignant personal stories, immersive reporting, and cutting-edge science.

When Mallary Tenore Tarpley lost her mother at eleven years old, she wanted to stop time. If growing up meant living without her mother, then she wanted to stay little forever. What started as small acts of food restriction soon turned into a full-blown eating disorder, and a year later, Tarpley was admitted to Boston’s Children’s Hospital. With honesty and grace, Slip chronicles Tarpley’s childhood struggles with anorexia to her present-day experiences grappling with recovery.

This book tells Tarpley’s story, but it also transcends her personal narrative. A journalist by trade, Tarpley interviewed and surveyed hundreds of patients, doctors, and researchers to provide a deeper understanding of eating disorder treatment. She draws on this original reporting, as well as cutting-edge science, to illuminate what has changed in the years since she was first diagnosed.

As Tarpley came to learn, “full recovery” from an eating disorder is complicated. And that idea provides the basis for the groundbreaking new framework explored in this book: that there is a “middle place” between sickness and full recovery, a place where slips are accepted as part of the process but progress is always possible.

With new insights and an uplifting message, Slip brings much-needed attention to an issue that affects many. It offers a beacon of hope with its revolutionary perspective on recovery. This inspiring and life-affirming book is a must-read for individuals with eating disorders, their loved ones, educators, medical professionals, and anyone seeking to understand eating disorders and the path to recovery.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Author’s Note
• Chapter One: The Trigger
• Chapter Two: The Spiral
• Chapter Three: The Disorder
• Chapter Four: The Treatment
• Chapter Five: A Higher Level of Care
• Chapter Six: The Possibility of Recovery
• Chapter Seven: Slips
• Chapter Eight: Relapse
• Chapter Nine: The Middle Place
• Chapter Ten: Love, Sex, and Marriage in the Middle Place
• Chapter Eleven: Pregnancy in the Middle Place
• Chapter Twelve: Motherhood in the Middle Place
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Endnotes
• Further Resources
• Index
• Copyright