Julia Tannenbaum's Blog

Food Frustrations and Query Preparations

I sometimes feel as if I’m destined to always have a dysfunctional relationship with food.

Granted, growing up my relationship with food was pretty typical–and there was a period in my early twenties, shortly after I went vegan, when I genuinely enjoyed food and reaped the benefits of a nourished body and mind. But I don’t really remember the former, and the latter lasted so briefly that, in the scheme of things, it seems like a mere drop in the ocean, a fleeting taste of what could have been–an...

Surviving the Summer with Chronic Illness

I recently read Thomas Mann’s 1924 classic, The Magic Mountain, which tells the story of a young German man’s prolonged stay at an international sanitorium at the turn of the 20th Century. The sanitorium is located high up in the Swiss Alps: a beautiful setting that boasts fresh, clear air and peace of mind. It got me thinking how much I’d like a Magic Mountain to which I could retreat during the summer, in particular, and forgo the insufferable heat and humidity of the flatlands for a relaxing ...

The Flight of the Eastern Phoebe Fledglings

One of my favorite aspects of living in Vermont is the wildlife. Unlike in the suburbs, where overdevelopment has forced nature into uncomfortably close proximity with the ultimate invasive species–the homo sapiens–here, there is ample space for animals to lead a more private and peaceful existence. In the vast and uncharted woodlands behind our new house live deer and bobcats and red squirrels and groundhogs as well a host of bird species both familiar and novel.

Among the latter is the eastern...

Weight Gain with Gastroparesis: A Catch-22 Situation

I’m no stranger to having to restore weight. In the various eating disorder treatment facilities I was in as an adolescent, restoration typically involved consuming thirty-five-hundred calories a day of high-fat, calorie-dense foods: milkshakes, protein bars, rich pasta dishes, desserts that sent my mind into a full-blown panic. Worse than the food itself were the GI symptoms that often accompanied these periods of rapid weight gain, namely bloating, fullness, and constipation.

Suffice to say, w...

Finding Our Unicorn and Moving to Vermont

The rain that has been steadily falling for the last several days has momentarily let up. Sunlight shines down upon the saturated green grass, which slopes downward toward a thicket of larch and cedar trees. The dense branches are alive with a chorus of birdsong, which is interspersed by the sporadic cock-a-doodle-dooing of a neighbor’s rooster. In the distance, and just barely visible through the dissipating fog, the aptly-named Green Mountains rise majestically into the blue-gray sky.

This bre...

Catheters, Colonoscopies, and Radioactive Oatmeal

As I set out to write this post, I’m simultaneously working my way through a bowl of Cream of Wheat with bananas and pureed strawberry compote. Although Cream of Wheat is among the list of approved foods on the new diet I’ll be adhering to for the next month, if not longer, I’m struggling to finish my modest portion. The nausea I woke up with has yet to dissipate, and my upper stomach, a place I commonly experience discomfort, already throbs with pain.

These symptoms–along with bloating, early f...

The Frustrating Reality of Trying to Make It as an Author

I’ve known I wanted to be an author since I was in my early teens. Initially, writing was my salvation; it helped pull me out of the clutches of an eating disorder and gave me purpose and hope at a time when I felt I had nothing to live for. Writing was something that came naturally to me, and was always with me; even when I was away from my computer, I’d continue to spin stories in my head, to the point where I was often disengaged from the real world. I’d always been a voracious reader, and th...

How My Life Has Changed Since I Quit Social Media

I belong to the last generation who didn’t grow up with social media; in fact, it wasn’t until I was in middle school that social media began to take off. I joined Instagram in 2013, at the age of thirteen. At the time, it was an app to post low-resolution selfies with friends or silly pictures of your pets. No one really tried that hard, and that was what made it enjoyable; there wasn’t the pressure to present the “best version of your life,” to get the angle and lighting perfect, or to generat...

New Year, New Diagnosis

As those who have been following my journey are aware, I began to struggle pretty significantly with my health last summer, after years of things not feeling quite right with my body. In late July, the worst joint pain of my life led me to seek the assistance of a rheumatologist, who diagnosed me with fibromyalgia, a condition characterized by unexplained widespread chronic pain and fatigue. I was so desperate for answers–and validation–that having a diagnosis, any diagnosis, was a huge relief; ...

The Best Books I Read in 2024

As I wrote in my last post, 2024 was a difficult year, one that challenged me in more ways than I could have ever anticipated. On the positive side, being forced to slow down and rest more meant that I was able to read more books than any previous year–over ninety in total. There was so much incredible literature I consumed this year that it was hard to choose just ten, but here they are:

Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro

Never Let Me Go is a beautifully-written work of literary science-fiction t...