About the book

“Raviv’s openness and clarity in sharing her experience with anorexia offers a unique opportunity to gain empathy and understanding for the living of an eating disorder.”

—Dr. John Dennino, eating disorder clinical psychologist and adjunct faculty in counseling and health psychology, Bastyr University

“Shani Raviv is a great inspiration to the many millions out there struggling with eating disorders. Being Ana is honest, sensitive, witty, brutal, and so much more.”

—Graham Alexander, eating disorder clinical psychologist, director of Crescent Clinic Eating Disorders Unit

“Raviv did an amazing job of showing how her eating disorder kept her unconscious of the underlying issues while in the depths of it, showing readers how her behaviors, thoughts and feelings were directly related to those issues.”

—Susie Roman, MA, former program director, National Eating Disorders Association

“Beautifully bold and authentically told Being Ana is the best autobiography I’ve read about a young woman’s struggle to find herself and to learn to love the self she finds, as is.”

—Joan Krakowiak, eating disorder therapist, MSW, LICSW

“Raviv shares her story with genuine honesty, courage, and heart. Being Ana gives an in-depth look at the struggle and victory over this horrific disease. Raviv is living proof that you can overcome anorexia.”

—Michelle Smith, former program director of The Victorian, an eating disorder treatment center

From the back cover:

Shani Raviv is a struggling adolescent living in an eccentric female household in Johannesburg, South Africa. At fourteen, influenced by her clique, she gets hooked on dieting. Over the next decade, she tries to find self-worth in sex, happiness in drugs and alcohol, comfort in cutting, and above all, salvation in starving. A spiritual epiphany one night awakens her to the fearful realization that she has lost her sense of self to anorexia (Ana)—and has to decide whether to surrender and risk losing Ana to go in search of nourishment and her true self in a sober world.

 

WINNER of 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards in the Memoir category.

WINNER of 2011 National Indie Excellence Awards in the Women’s Health Category.

FINALIST in 2011 National Indie Excellence Awards’ Memoir and Addiction & Recovery categories. 

FINALIST in 2010 Foreword Reviews Book of the Year in the Memoir & Women’s Issues categories.

FINALIST in 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards in the Women’s Issues category.