Marni: Real Words Real Life

Description

"Marni" is the powerful true-life story of one girl's painful relationship with her father following her parent's divorce, her turbulent adolescence resulting in depression and homeschooling, and her ultimate discovery that she suffers from a relatively rare and misunderstood stress disorder called trichotillomania, which causes people to pull out their body hair. In "Marni", author Marni Bates powerfully shares her journey, from the roots of her anxiety which was caused by her parents' messy divorce when she was eight, a dysfunctional relationship with her sister and father, and feeling like such a misfit that she convinced her mom to let her drop out of middle school to be homeschooled, to having her emotional turmoil give birth to trichotillomania. The urge to pull out all of her hair felt as uncontrollable and natural as breathing or cracking her knuckles. Unfortunately, her new habit led to social embarrassment, crushingly low self-esteem, and years of therapy.

Marni Bates is a freshman at Lewis & Clark College. She wrote her first novel, That's Debatable, between filling out college applications and is currently looking for an agent. She loves writing and hopes to do it professionally throughout her life. Marni was recommended for this series by the The Oregon Writing Project at Willamette University.