This month marks ten years since I first started this blog. The place has become a bit dusty, there are a few cobwebs here and there and I’m not sure if anyone ever stops by these days considering I pretty much shut up shop nearly a year ago.
A lot can happen in a year.
But I’m back in the room because I wanted to mark this day on this blog, the first place where I started to write since becoming a mum.
I’ve written a book.
BODY HAPPY KIDS: How to Help Children and Teens Love the Skin They’re In, published by Vermilion, is being published on 1st April 2021 and is available to pre-order now.
It will hold your hand as you learn how to dismantle diet culture around kids, giving practical tools, expert insight and evidence-based advice to raise children and teens who are friends with their bodies. Accompanied with beautiful illustrations by Stacie Swift to highlight key concepts in the book.
Featuring wisdom from more than thirty academics, educators, scientists, activists, nutritionists, doctors, therapists and health first fitness and movement experts from around the world, along with decades worth of academic research, Body Happy Kids brings a broad perspective to a vast and nuanced subject.
From the impact of body ideals, self-objectification and gender stereotypes to social media, emotional literacy and the power of words when we speak about bodies, to the inevitable health question, to joyful movement, to happy eating, to TV, to clothes… and more, the book gets into it all.
Diet culture is stealing our children’s childhoods and, with this book, you’ll be empowered to do something about it.
Apparently pre-orders really matter because they give retailers the confidence to actually stock the book, so if you can, please do pre-order. The book’s available to pre-order everywhere including Amazon, Waterstones, Hive and Bookshop.org.
It’s written for any adults who are ever around children – parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, teachers, youth leaders, dance teachers, Brownies, Scouts and Guides leaders… the lot. If you care about cancelling diet culture around kids and reversing the epidemic of body shame the current generation of children is growing up with, then this book is for you too. Everyone is welcome.
And if you know someone who you think may benefit from the book then please do share the news. Over the next couple of months over on Instagram I’ll be sharing some previews from the book, we’ll have interviews with some of the people who’ve contributed to it, I’ll share some behind the scenes of how it all came to be (writing a book during a global pandemic wasn’t the original plan!).
The world is a very different place from the one that I wrote the initial book proposal in. I got the book deal three weeks into lockdown when I was homeschooling my two children while working full time across multiple different projects – which I continued to do while I wrote the book. The alternative was for the book not to exist and that was never an option.
I probably won’t be here that much in the future. My purpose since starting the blog ten years ago has changed and I’m working on so many things away from this corner of the internet I can’t give it the love it deserves. But I might pop in from time to time to dust off the cobwebs, say hello and remember a time when I used to write about sleep deprivation and breastfeeding, motherhood guilt and post-baby relationships. This was the place where it all started.
For now though THANK YOU for being here and, if you’ve supported my work around body image over the past few years THANK YOU for that too. It often feels like pushing water up a hill but it’s a push worth doing because my kids – and yours – deserve better.
OK, let’s do this.
