Dear Susie Orbach,

I´m launching my book: “And Were They Thin and Happy Ever After? The Ways Out of Compulsive Eating”.

Everything started in 1988. I was on vacation, at the beach, with another diet going wrong, when I found a book with a weird name: “Fat is a Feminist Issue”. When I read it, important issues of my life got new meaning as I´ve always struggled with food and body issues.

I was already a Psychologist and Psychoanalyst and realized that besides personal gains, your knowledge would help so many people. So I wrote a letter to you and you answered it! This still makes me emotional! And then a long exchange of letters followed, in which I wrote my questions and you patiently, generously and accurately answered me.

You also referred me to your friends and colleagues, from “The Women´s Therapy Center” of London, like Mira Dana, Marilyn Lawrence, Birgitta Anderson, Mary-Jane Rust,  and Lela Zaphiropoulos, Jane Hirschmann, Carol Munter, Susan Gutwill, Andrea Gitter, Luise Eichembaum, Carol Bloom, Anne Leiner, Jenny Lehman, from “The Women´s Therapy Centre” from New York. With all of them and many other that I ask forgiveness for not being able to mention, I´ve had the opportunity of friendship and learning that are very meaningful to me. I consider a privilege to have shared with this special and bright women my dilemmas and elaborations.

Most of what I present in my book is based on the work of Susie Orbach, specially the still revolutionary “Fat is a Feminist Issue”, “Overcoming Overeating” from Hirschmann and Munter (which I´ve had the privilege of writing the preface of the Brazilian edition and “Kids, Carrots and Candy” from Hirschmann and Zaphiropoulos.

My integration with the ideas of the people mentioned above is so great that I´ve often felt it difficult to separate what is theirs and what's mine. As much as I've taken care of, I apologize for any possibility of not giving proper credit in the book.

Dear Susie, always intrepid woman, ahead of our time, now offering us the www.endangeredbodies.org, to which I am proud to belong as a member of the São Paulo group:

You made it all possible, my eternal love and gratitude.

Author: Elisabeth Wajnryt, Psychoanalyst, member of Endangered Bodies Sao Paulo, Brazil (Group Body & Culture)