LONG-time readers of this column will remember my predecessor, June Alexander, who filled these pages with many stories of personal challenges and achievements for 11 years until 2004.
June, a Gippslander by birth, will return to Yarram to address a forum for women on March 18-19.
Paula Constant, who walked from London to Morocco, including across the Sahara Desert, and June are the keynote speakers at the New Me New World Women's Forum.
Though it's designed as part of Wellington Shire's fire recovery (the shire's February 2009 fire toll included 15 houses, 14 hay sheds, 37 machinery sheds, hay, tanks, livestock and fruit trees and up to $30m of plantation timber), the line-up might entice others from elsewhere to attend.
Workshops include strategies for relieving and managing stress and stressful situations and taking care of one's self, plus a guide to finance and legal matters such as wills, powers of attorney, welfare rights and consumer affairs and nutrition for a healthy lifestyle.
Forum organisers including the Yarram and District Health Service and the Wellington Bushfire Relief Committee deliberately chose the smaller town to host the forum because they see it as a way of supporting smaller communities.
"There are benefits of small towns working together to support each other," says Yarram and District Health Service health promoter Jenny Feist.
She's hoping people from all corners of Victoria will attend.
Paula is a Mansfield native who, in 2004, trekked 5000km with her then husband across Europe.
The following year she walked another 12,500km alone across the Sahara desert, from Morocco to Egypt in an attempt to traverse Africa from west to east.
Her book, Slow Journey South. Walking to Africa told how the journey ultimately destroyed her marriage.
June will talk about her book, My Kid is Back, co-written with a University of Chicago professor, which describes a family-based treatment for the eating disorders, anorexia and bulimia, and includes case studies.
My Kid is Back is a title that recognises June's own path to wellness.
June says her interest in mental health stemmed from age 11, in 1962, when she developed anorexia nervosa, which evolved into bulimia nervosa.
Chronic anxiety and depression came with it.
"I was not correctly diagnosed until age 32," she says.
At the age of 47 she met dietitian Belinda Dalton of The Oak House in Melbourne, which provides treatment for eating disorders, who encouraged her to distil and separate her own thoughts from those of her illness.
Now, after years of practising mindfulness and with support from her former husband, her children and friends, she says she can recognise triggers that in the past set her negative self-talk going and often led to over or under eating.
"It's a matter of knowing what I am worth myself and not what others think I am worth," she says.
Now completely medication-free after 47 years, June is dedicated to raising awareness of mental health, especially eating disorders, associated body image and obesity issues, as well as depression and anxiety.
- For details about the New Me New World forum, phone (03) 5182 6995. Childcare is available.
