The Opposite of Butterfly Hunting: A powerful memoir of overcoming an eating disorder

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I was aware of Evanna Lynch only because she had starred as one of my favourite HP characters, Luna Lovegood, in the movie adaptation, and she did such an admirable job of bringing Luna to life. I had heard that this memoir dealt with her struggles with anorexia, something I hadn’t known about before. And I had assumed that this struggle started as an aftermath of her success in moviedom, as a result of the pressure to look well all the time. But I was wrong in this last point. Her battles with anorexia began when she was eleven, long before many kids even know what the word means. Absolutely incredible. Lynch writes beautifully and brutally honestly about her childhood with anorexia and her relationship with her body. This was so impactful that I am not sure how I can justly summarise it in a few sentences, so I will instead include two quotes from the novel and highly recommend that if you are in a healthy place, you also read it: The melodramatic and often boastful chapter chronicling the tragic downfall of a poor young girl as she whittles herself away, disfigured by her own self-hate, becoming a mere shadow of her former vivacious self! As if we all should weep bitterly over the fact that one self-obsessed, cosseted young girl is flinging a plate of lovingly prepared lasagne out the bathroom window where the cats will slurp up the evidence.“

This book, and my recent dive, accompanied by my therapist, into the deepest parts of myself I have been scared to uncover for over a decade, have challenged the way that I view myself. I know my ways of thinking are not fully changed yet, and this journey will likely be lifelong, but I can’t help feeling monumentally encouraged by Evanna’s words. I feel like for the first time I am starting to appreciate my body for what it is, not criticizing it for what it is not. I am finally beginning to understand that my body is not who I am. My body, this vessel where my personality lives, does not define me any more than the house I live in. Nor does anyone’s body define them. Book Genre: Adult, Autobiography, Biography, Biography Memoir, Health, Memoir, Mental Health, Mental Illness, Nonfiction, Self Help

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It’s soul-crushing whilst being redemptive and forgiving. It shows the worst but delivers such hope and love that you feel liberated and seen.

I believe in the kind of fairy-tales that have depth, complexity, profundity and moments of darkness that birth a fiercer belief in the light’ To Evanna Lynch herself, on the offchance that you ever actually visit this subreddit (in which case I hope you haven't ever found anything here in bad taste), thank you for sharing your story and I hope your self-love and self-acceptance only grows from here. You're making the world a brighter, spanglier place. That is how Evanna’s striking authenticity personally reached me: as a grounded, lucid whisper — from within the darkness and beyond it — that there is meaning, wisdom, and significance to your suffering even when you cannot yet perceive it.

Evanna Lynch writes beautifully, her emotions unflinching honesty and truth ripping into my innermost psyche. And maybe I will live a happier, wilder, more colourful and unpredictable life if I can finally abandon the debilitating and brutal pursuit of perfection. If I can learn to love butterflies from afar, and watch them fly away.” Even then, I could perceive in Evanna's delivery something that impacted almost beyond the message: an assured, compassionate, lived-through quality which emanates out of those who possess the extraordinary forbearance to make it through dark nights of the soul. And here, in her memoir, that spirit gleams. This time, with achingly profound dimensions. A raw and compelling new memoir from actress and activist Evanna Lynch about the battle between perfection and creativity.