Health Beyond the Blog: : Mallary Tenore Tarpley’s “Slip”

Tarpley’s new book describes the experience of having an eating disorder as a “middle place” between illness and recovery.

by Michelle Arauz

Journalist and author Maryn McKenna interviewed Mallary Tenore Tarpley about her new book, Slip: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery, on Feb. 18, 2026, for the Health Storytelling live Q&A from the Center for the Study of Human Health.

Mallary Tenore Tarpley is a journalist, author, and assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin. At the young age of 18, she began drafting iterations of her nonfiction memoir, Slip: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery, but she felt that she needed to be fully “recovered” before finishing and publishing it. It was not until her essay in The New York Times that she realized the world needed an honest story about what it is like to live in the midst of an eating disorder, and then she worked on the memoir from 2021 to 2025.

The book explores topics including eating disorders, the recovery process, mental health, and the lived experience of being in the “middle place” of recovery. In the memoir, she frequently refers to herself as being in this “middle place”, describing life with an eating disorder as continuum between illness and recovery. It is an in-between space that people often experience, where they may not be acutely ill but they are also not fully “recovered”.

Tarpley’s honest and transparent language about eating disorders shines throughout her interview. She does not sugarcoat the experience of living with an eating disorder and communicates both her own struggles and the experiences of people she interviewed who also live with eating disorders. She describes the disorder as almost dormant yet quietly present in the background of one’s life. Her choice to avoid black-and-white language makes the conversation feel authentic and reflects the reality that healing is not always linear, but instead messy and ongoing. Her approach helped me see recovery not as an endpoint, but a lived process where vulnerability, truth, and setbacks coexist. 
 
Tarpley goes on to explore this theme of recovery, emphasizing to her audience that the “middle place” can remain with a person even after they have healed, as recovery is not simply tied to weight or eating habits. She explains that people often continue to experience cognitive disorders even after improving their eating behaviors, shedding light on how mental patterns and processes are not always considered when defining full recovery. She advocates for more research on these mental challenges that many individuals face both during and after their eating disorders, before anyone considers them fully recovered. 

Tarpley’s idea that recovery includes more than just the eating behaviors highlights the ongoing challenge of healing mentally, as well as managing the long-term effects of eating disorders over time. 

Slip: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery is available on Bookshop.org. The Health Storytelling Author Q&A series is available on YouTube and continues at 6pm on Mar 19, 2026 with Tom Freiden, MD, MPH. Please RSVP here for Freiden’s Q&A on his book THE FORMULA FOR BETTER HEALTH: How to Save Millions of Lives–Including Your Own.