BEHIND THE FACADE

A school trauma leads to overindulgence in comfort food, dieting, overwork, and an eventual mental health crisis in this memoir.

In middle school, Bartleson experienced such vicious bullying that it damaged her self-image for the next two decades. The opening lines set the tone of her journey from pain and self-hate to recovery: “The first time I noticed my weight was in fourth grade.” A group of the most popular girls in her class rejected her request to join them in a sidewalk game, shaking their heads “no” and “snickering.” Things got worse in seventh grade, when her friend’s boyfriend apparently made it his mission to harass her daily, calling her a “fat pig,” a “whale,” and other names. By the time she entered high school, she was consumed by feelings of inadequacy: “Instead of confronting these emotions, I pushed them down further and further, donning a mask, and becoming who I assumed other people—my parents, perhaps—wanted me to be: an overachiever.” In her 20s, after repeated attempts at dieting, she embarked on a weight-loss program she’d considered several years earlier, tracking her progress on Instagram and her laurenliveshealthy blog. Bartleson’s eloquent memoir meticulously documents the subsequent years, during which she became focused on healthy eating, marathon running, blogging, and maintaining her full-time marketing job, all while being treated for an autoimmune disorder. Her commitment to detail results in some riveting sections, such as moment-to-moment descriptions of terror and exuberance during the Alcatraz Challenge—an arduous 1.5-mile swim from the island followed by a 7-mile run across the Golden Gate Bridge. At other times, though, this tendency becomes exhausting, as when she takes almost three pages to precisely describe how she prepares her morning decaf expresso. Nonetheless, the narrative offers a solid document of bullying, its aftermath, and recovery from trauma.

An emotionally raw account of a personal healing journey.