Author Q&A with Jordan Lee Knape, author of Best Body Memoir

Written when she was 23, Best Body Memoir is a true story about girl meets eating disorder that disposes the myths surrounding eating disorders and depression to reveal a path towards recovery for all of us.

Q.  What did you think about while writing Best Body? 

A.  First disclosure is Best Body is a memoir, which means I wrote while crying — essentially.  It’s not easy looking back at a time you’d much rather forget but I like memoir, I devour memoir, and I believe that reading memoir is important. Go figure I’m a (huge) Joan Didion fan and that essential line, that “we tell ourselves stories in order to live,” I believe with a full heart.  Even when it hurts to read, even when it hurts to write, even if and when you’d rather not look back. If you lived through something so difficult you consider yourself a survivor… honesty is what I’m after. Because it makes all of this hurt worth something.

Q.  How did you come up with the title? 

A.  You have to read chapter two! Best Body is not a random title. Actually I had another title I was going with for years — I’ve been working on Best Body Memoir for eight years now — but then another, Really Big Deal Writer took the title — of course without knowing — all I had going for me with the title was the name in a Word Doc. That’s reminder #1 for a writer: You can take 8 years but eventually you’re going to have to hand the writing over. I learn that again and again in my day job as a copywriter. These stories and ideas don’t belong to anyone. I’m certainly not the only woman who has recovered from her eating disorder, certainly not the only person still standing after they’ve hit rock bottom too many times to count. I don’t mean to say that our individual stories don’t matter — I write memoir — but I think there’s huge value collectively. You don’t just write for yourself.

Q.  Do you recall how your interest in writing originated?  

A.  I never wanted to be a writer per se, I wanted to act. But I was always much more writer than actor, writing is a sort of performing where you don’t have to wait for your agent to get you an audition, you don’t have to wait to be told “Action.”  Writing feels attainable, for me, and when I finished school and quickly had to support myself, I quickly became a freelance copywriter. I don’t know if you ever think of yourself as a writer, it’s more what you are, what you’ve committed to doing with the time you have. At parties I say I’m a writer, so there’s that.  I know I’ve always written and I require stories daily, writing, reading, watching — as long as I get in my daily Triumphs Over Darkness, or what have you, I’m good. 

Q.  What are the top 5 messages in your memoir that you want readers to grasp? 

A.

1. Eating disorders like anorexia, bulimia and binge eating are not passing phases… they require treatment and are serious indicators of problems that need to be addressed, problems much bigger than thigh gaps and calorie counts.
2. Eating disorders are the #1 cause of death for all mental illnesses and yet only 10 percent of people with eating disorders ever find treatment — meaning we have some work to do in recognizing how serious eating disorders are.
3. Eating disorders aren’t about privilege, class or skin color… but they are about high expectations and feeling as if you can’t live up, which is becoming increasingly universal. What’s more, eating disorders run in families. Like alcoholism, you don’t just have one anorexic in the family… there’s a big genetic factor.
4. Recovery is possible, but it’s not what you think. Being recovered from a mental illness like eating disorders requires daily, ongoing work. People with eating disorders have a tendency to think in terms of black and white. But recovery isn’t black and white. I did recover fully from my eating disorder, but that’s because I’ve committed to a lifetime of saying no to the disease. There’s not some rainbow you reach with recovery where the frustrations subside. Recovery takes work.
5. Don’t be so afraid of hardship! Looking back, there are many things that I would change about my life thus far, but not my eating disorder. As long as you don’t let them kill you — as long as you learn your lessons — eating disorders are a life experience just like any other hardship and the suffering and eventual recovery has only made me stronger. There’s a tendency to push eating disorders away, especially in high-performing families and schools, as if you can make the disorder go away by not thinking about it. But that’s not possible. That’s why eating disorders are so deadly. On the positive side, I’m just a 26-year-old copywriter and I’ve already been able to write a book and I’m well-traveled, on my own dime; these are things I couldn’t have dreamed of when I was sick… I credit the work I did in my teens and early twenties with the life I have now. 

Q.  Your book spans your life from age 13 to 23.  What challenges are there in chronicling a decade of time in your life?   

A.  My commitment to staying honest. Honest to how I feel, which, well, feelings aren’t so easy to pin down. Feelings change, they change minute by minute, which makes writing tricky when you’re trying to be honest to a certain time and place that was real for you. You have to learn how to pluck out the flesh to get to the bone. Because it doesn’t help to reveal a kind-of truth or a half-way truth. Truth hurts, I think. And it’s violent — violent to yourself because you clearly have to divulge information that any sane person would rather keep secret, and because you have to tell stories that aren’t yours to be told. You can’t write a memoir without throwing in the people you love (— and don’t). It’s one-sided, because you’re not writing their truths, your writing them in a light that was true for you.

 It’s also a total gift — there’s no one side to the story but because I’m the only person to date that’s written about what happened in my eating disordered-life, a life that included many other’s, I get to pretend that my story is the most true. So selfish!

 But in all seriousness, I think the specifics matter. That dedication to cut to the heart of the matter, even when it hurts.

Q.  Please speak a bit about the process of recovery. 

A   Full recovery from an eating disorder, from severe depression and anxiety, from addiction… it is entirely possible — no matter how sick you are.   The thing is we forget how much work is required to recover. I’ve met a lot of young women and men who have stayed sick. But I’ve also met incredible people who once had eating disorders, incredible people who recovered from drug addictions…. our reward is a full life with lesson’s learned from everything we had to face. But it doesn’t come without a price. I think of it as staying “in remission.” You work on it every day.

Q.  What were the challenges in bringing Best Body Memoir to life? 

 A.  I’m still so close in years to all of this. This is not me looking back after many years have passed, this is all still raw for me — my eating disorder, my family collapse, the fact that I could have this very tragic life instead of the one I’ve clawed out for myself. I hope that the timing helps readers. I don’t think I truly recovered from my eating disorder until I was about 21 or 22…. I wrote the final draft of Best Body at 23, completed editing at 24. The book is a bit of an open wound, because I had to pick at something that was still so fresh for me.

I’ve learned that there is real value in suffering… suffering is where we find our humanity and where we learn the lessons we need to learn to grow, hopefully the real suffering in Best Body can be seen for what it is: Something I had to face and work through in order to be able to call myself recovered.

It’s not easy recovering from an eating disorder and I don’t think we should take the term “Recovered” lightly! There’s a responsibility, in recovery, to stay recovered. 

Read more about Jordan at  www.bestbodymemoir.com   Follow her @LeeKnape   Connect with Jordan on Facebook - Pinterest - LinkedIn 

The first book in the Lynn Dayton series is 13 Days: The Pythagoras Conspiracy, followed by the newly-released Strike Price. 

Strike Price was recognized at the Texas Book Festival in Austin a few weeks ago as the Texas Association of Authors’ 2014 First Place Award winner for Best Mystery/Thriller. Starks is writing the third book in the series.  Strike Price draws on Oklahoma and Cherokee history. Its primary settings are Tulsa and Tahlequah. The energy business background of these thrillers is a global one, so other scene settings include Paris, Florence, southern England, the Czech Republic, and yes, Dallas.

Q. What was the motivating factor(s) to write Strike Price?

A. I grew up in northern Oklahoma appreciating the rich cultural history of its thirty Native American tribes. Second, it is no accident that two of my primary characters are tribal finance executives. The prosperity generated from casinos has led the tribes into other businesses. So it was a short step to introduce this new, significant player—the diversifying Native American nation—to the fast pace of a global energy thriller.  Third and most importantly, this book is dedicated to the memory of my younger sister. Linda died from a virulent, difficult-to-detect form of metastatic breast cancer. I stopped writing for about two years to spend time with her and after her death, it was difficult to resume writing. I pushed through to completion because I’d promised myself this was her book. In the first book in the series, 13 Days: The Pythagoras Conspiracy, there was one character my sister felt deserved a different fate. I took that into account when I wrote Strike Price.

Q. How did you come up with the title? 

A. I picked Strike Price partly for its direct connotation of violence. Another reference is its options market definition. In options trading, the strike price is the price at which an option is exercised. Futures and options trading, especially around oil prices, is an easy way for most of us to lose money and yes, that’s a clue to the plot. Generalizing, the strike price is the point at which action occurs.

Q. You are a chemical engineer and an energy investment professional.  Explain how that career dovetails into your thriller writing.

A.  Excellent question. Engineering and finance share with writing a need for precision: the correct word can be as important as the correct number. It was Mark Twain who said, “The difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.”  I grew up in a town in which everyone, men and women, became engineers and scientists. So chemical engineering coupled with finance was a natural career choice. Yet in that same small town, I was also a constant reader. When I had the chance to write a novel, I took it. Writing thrillers and analyzing energy risk share many similarities: high stakes, a global environment, and conflict. There is the same frame, and the same fascinating people. There is the same identification of risks—what could go wrong, and why? Indeed, conflict is the engine of plot. Of course, thrillers are character-driven while energy analysis is data-driven. And the assessment of risk is different: if something bad can happen in a thriller, there is a 100% chance it will. Back in the real world, that true probability is closer to 0.1%.

Q.  What are you reading now? 

A.   One of the best thriller authors writing today is Dallas’ own Taylor Stevens. After reading The Catch and her novella, The Vessel, I will be reading The Doll. I am also looking forward to Dallas author Harry Hunsicker’s new book, Shadow Boys. I read many other thriller and mystery authors, including Alex Berenson, Marc Cameron, Ben Coes, Deborah Crombie, Antonio Hill, Michael Connelly, and Daniel Silva. In my TBR stack is The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Vincente Blasco Ibanezand Chelsea Cain’s One Kick. In nonfiction, I recommend Alfredo Corchado’s Midnight in Mexico and Jim Dwyer’s More Awesome Than Money. 

Q.  Tell us about your latest book, STRIKE PRICE.

      When several people involved in bidding for an oil refinery are murdered, the situation becomes far more than a billion-dollar business deal.

      A self-made woman in the oil industry, Lynn Dayton fights to save lives as escalating attacks reveal a hired assassin’s plan to disrupt oil trade, wreck world economies, and draw another global power into dangerous confrontation with the United States.

      Are the killers rogue civil servants challenging the Cherokees’ financial independence, Sansei operatives again wreaking violence, or sinister investors swapping the bidding war for a real one?

            Lynn Dayton and Cherokee tribal executive Jesse Drum must learn to trust each other so they can find and stop the killers. Can sobering up really be fatal? How have so many of the deaths been made to appear accidental?  Who’s creating weapons with modern poisons and ancient Cherokee arts?

Q.  Beside “writer,” what else are you; what is your “day job”?

A.  I grew up in the energy business and worked in engineering and finance for well-known oil companies. I continue to consult, speak, and teach on the subjects of energy economics and investing via my company, Starks Energy Economics, LLC (SEE). In addition to writing articles for the SEE website, my articles have been chosen for and published on the investor website Seeking Alpha.

Q.  Were books an important part of your household when you were growing up?

A.    Yes, and they still are.  An area in which I’ve made a big time commitment the last few years has been as first, board treasurer and then, investment chair of the Friends of the Dallas Library. FoDPL is a fund-raising and advocacy group that supports the 29 branches of the Dallas Public Library. This involvement stems directly from my affection for the summer reading programs at my hometown library when I was growing up.

Continue the adventure by visiting  http://lastarksbooks.com   Connect with L.A. Starks on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and follow her @LAStarksAuthor

Q & A with Psychotherapist Denette Mann 

Q:  You recently taught a class on Restorative Meditation at SMU - Continuing and Professional Education.

      What type of feedback did you receive from the adult students as to their reasons for taking this class?

A:  Most felt they needed to learn how to take better care of themselves. They had stressful lives and wanted to experience something completely different from their everyday experiences. 

Q.  As a working professional, how have you kept abreast of the positive impact of meditation on human lives?

A.   I’ve seen incredible differences in my own life through a meditation practice. Because of my intense interest I have traveled around the U.S. taking courses from the best including Jon Kabat-Zinn, Saki Santorelli, Kristen Neff and Christopher     Germer and Bonnie Badenoch. I’ve also seen the positive impact meditation has on the therapeutic work with my clients. Meditation, when practiced outside of sessions, speeds up the process of change.

Q.   We often hear about meditation discussed with mindfulness.  Please give us a quick synopsis on the meaning of each word.   Is one a prerequisite to achieving the other?

A.   Mindfulness is having an awareness of your life as you are living it as opposed to the more common experience of being in your head worrying about something in the future or past or planning or reminiscing. Mindfulness allows you to enjoy the moment of experience as you are having it.  Meditation is a discipline by which you can train your mind to be in the moment, to be mindful.

Q. Explain how you put some of these practices into your own life?

A.  I have a regular, personal meditation practice. I choose whatever form of meditation I think I need in the moment such as loving compassion meditation, walking meditation, breath meditation, self-compassion meditation among others. I read    books to increase my awareness and understanding of how to live a more full life through mindfulness. And I incorporate it in my private practice with clients who are interested in including it as part of their therapy. 

For more education on this topic, please consider joining Denette for a complimentary documentary screening.  

THE CONNECTION: Mind & Body will be shown on Tuesday, November 4th at 7:00 pm, Studio Movie Grill located at Royal & Central Expressway.

Questions?  Would you like to attend this event ?   View the movie trailer below and RSVP to Diane Feffer at 972-670-7078 or Diane@DianeMarketing.com 

Opening the door into an Artist’s Life

H. Carl Trimble III

Stained Glass Artist – MFA, University of North Texas

“Stained Glass transforms light the way that the gospel can transform the souls of men,” responded Carl Trimble.

I’m always intrigued with how an artist connects with a particular medium and was curious why Carl chose to pursue stained glass art as his profession.  His statement provoked an ah-ha moment in me.  Have you ever been at a religious service and caught yourself looking through the window at just the right moment when the sun magically makes the stained glass light up?   Carl helps make this simple pleasure possible through his artistic talent.

Carl’s journey towards finding his passion was as unique as any other artist.  He served in the Navy on the USS Somers and still uses his electrician skills within his craft today.  When the navy ship would dock at San Diego, Carl remembers that his recreation activity was atypical of other servicemen as he would spend hours at an art studio situated across from Balboa Park.  He thoroughly enjoyed watching artists draw, paint and was particularly interested in stained glass art.

He eventually returned to his hometown of Tyler and followed his father’s footsteps as an Insurance Salesman.   He recalls being fascinated with  a stained glass window on an Episcopal Church in downtown Tyler

that he would periodically pass on the street as he was making sales calls.

His tipping point came in 1967 when he read a small article in a  magazine that spelled out a three-point procedure on how stained glass art was created.  He thought to himself, “I can do that.”   From that point on, Carl closed the door on his insurance career and opened up the window to perfecting his craft as a Stained Glass Artist.  He has been gracing North Texas with his stained glass creations.  You’ll see his stained glass art pieces at The Petroleum Club in Ft. Worth, C.R. Smith Museum at American Airlines Training Center, Glen Eagles Country Club, Park Cities Club, Criswell Center of First Baptist Church in Dallas, St. John The Apostle Catholic Church in North Richland Hills, Baha’i Center of Lewisville and The Mansion at Turtle Creek. Outside of Texas, you’ll see distinct pieces of Carl’s work in various states from New Jersey to Florida.

His work has been shown in AIA ‘Retrospect’: the only non-architect that has ever been displayed in this annual exhibition held at Northpark Mall.

Trimble Studios, located at 10031 Monroe Drive #202 in Dallas is the only stained glass artist studio that is a professional affiliate of AIA Dallas. 

You can view their photo gallery of stained glass creations at www.trimblestudios.com

For more information, contact Carl Trimble at 214-350-3794 or  carl@trimblestudios.com

Mental Health America of Greater Dallas

2014 Prism Awards

Thursday, October 23, 2014—6:00  to 8:00 p.m.— Frontiers of Flight Museum       

            Mental Health America of Greater Dallas will present the 2014 Prism Awards paying tribute to the following community leaders who have made a difference in the North Texas region on behalf of individuals with mental illness, as well as those who have worked to improve awareness of mental health issues.  Mental Health America of Greater Dallas (MHA) was established in 1947 and has been consistently serving the people of Dallas and surrounding communities for over 60 years. The mission of Mental Health America of Greater Dallas is to lead the community in improving mental health through advocacy and education.  Terry Bentley, attorney and mental health advocate will serve as emcee for the 2014 Prism Awards.  Dr. Harriet Boorhem is one of the PRISM Award honorees.  She will be presented the

Lightner Sams Foundation Child Advocate Award

Honoree: Dr. Harriet Boorhem – President, Promise House

Dr. Boorhem was appointed President of Promise House in 2001. During her tenure, Dr. Boorhem expanded access to care by instituting a counselor training program in collaboration with area universities. The result last year was 3840 hours of service provided to the community. Additionally Dr. Boorhem has worked to raise awareness and educate officials in Austin and Washington DC on children and adolescent mental health and homelessness. 

Admission to MHA PRISM Awards Ceremony is $75.  Ticket price includes valet parking and pre-event reception.

Visit www.mhadallas.org  or contact Matt Roberts at mroberts@mhadallas.org.  Tickets may also be purchased by calling 214-871-2420 ext.109.