The Longest Match

Rallying to Defeat an Eating Disorder in Midlife

By: Betsy Brenner

Narrated by: Betsy Brenner

"Eating disorders." Most of us instantly picture a teenaged or college aged girl when we see those words. After all, doesn’t age immunize women from the body image, weight concerns, and eating disorders that plague the younger years?

The truth is that over 15 percent women at midlife and beyond suffer from eating disorders, surpassing the number affected by breast cancer! These are serious, life threatening, and heartbreaking illnesses at any age. This story needs to be told and Betsy Brenner does just that.

The Longest Match: Rallying to Defeat an Eating Disorder in Midlife is a beautifully written and heartfelt memoir illustrating the trajectory from early childhood, through adolescence and early adulthood, to midlife when eating disorder thoughts and behaviors took over the author’s life. Journal entries reveal occasional negative thoughts about her weight or food in younger years, but the stressors of midlife knocked this high functioning woman off her feet.

“Like adolescence and young adulthood, midlife is full of tricky transitions. Unlike earlier in life, however, no one is there to catch you when you fall or to coach you back on your feet. Today women feel pressure to do it all and do it perfectly, constantly multitasking at home, and outside of home, taking care of their children and marriages, their extended families, ill and aging parents, all while trying to maintain an identity of their own."

Eating disorders can devour a woman at any age, but Betsy Brenner rallied, using every resource she had. Thank you, Betsy, for being painfully honest about your experiences and your pain, and for explaining the many factors that make a woman vulnerable to eating disorders during midlife. Thank you for finding the courage to access help, for trusting the treatment process and for inspiring other midlife women to believe in themselves. Thank you for telling your story so women struggling with an eating disorder at midlife will know they are not alone and will see a path to recovery.

©2021, 2022 Betsy Brenner (P)2022 Betsy Brenner

Struggle to get through

I have never left a review for something that I did not like but I honestly struggled with this one. I really wanted to hear about the challenges and solutions for addressing an eating disorder in midlife but this was not it. It was painful to hear that an adult woman blamed her mother for devastating her and breaking her emotionally when she did not get tucked in at 24 and that she no longer had a bedroom in her childhood home during law school. I get it, we all have our issues but this was a stretch.

a

It sounded like a memoir. Naration was good. A review needs at least fifteen words.

It’s a memoir

It’s memoir—real life events. It’s not a novel. So for people to rate it as such is not fair. I have an eating disorder. I am 35 and it re-emerged after having one in my teens. Typically people think only teens suffer. It’s false. Adults suffer too. And it’s much harder as the author rights. Though I didn’t have a privileged life as the author, her struggles just as everyone else is very real. Have compassion.

Bit of a slough.

More of a memoir than a book about eating disorders. Repetitive. Reader was monotone and dry.

Very dry

I usually love memoirs. This one was the most chronologically focused one I’ve ever read. The story was really lacking for me. It didn’t feel deep. It felt very much like reading a diary (much of it was from her diary) and did not feel very insightful or thorough. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this if you like memoirs because it doesn’t read like a typical memoir. It’s more like a simple depiction of events without much color or emotion.