Where the River Flows: A Memoir of Loss, Love, & Life With an Eating Disorder

Rachel is incredibly brave telling this story, her honesty is courageous. This book is more than just a story or memoir, it’s poetic, insightful and introspective. The analogies and images with which she narrates her story through are beautiful. While telling her raw account she also touches on the mental health system as a whole and the spectrum of eating and mental disorders that may not always fit under traditional diagnoses. As hard as it was to read at certain times, it gives you a very raw and real lens for which to understand these issues from. I commend her for putting herself out there and telling her truth.

Wonderful book about Rachel’s life and struggles. I could relate to almost every word of this book even though my experiences are much different. Buy it!

This book is so incredibly written...from the very first page I knew it would be great. She is so raw and vulnerable. I can't wait for her next one!

This is an important book for anyone who's been doing their own work. Rachel has a way of sitting you in the discomfort of change. Sometimes it shows up as her discomfort and sometimes as your own. Where the River Flows will make you really feel all of the feelings, not just the good ones. And maybe that's why I find it to be an important read.

I'm not done reading but it's so compelling. The writing pulls you across the page. You can and will find parts of yourself in the writer's words. Can't wait to continue reading. A must read.

I finished this book in 2 days and it's been on my mind since I stopped reading. I had to take some time to just sit with the feelings.This book is incredible. I've never read something so honest, so raw. It's so personal to the author and yet, so relatable it is to the reader. (At least this reader!) I cried. I learned. I realized ways that my childhood/early adulthood traumas were manifesting themselves that weren't clear to me before. It helped me to assess my relationship and communication with my parents. It helped me to cope with some of my own sexual history/trauma. I've never personally struggled with an eating disorder, but the grip of the feelings at the source of the author's ED is, again, relatable.The way the author paints these pictures with her words makes you feel like you were there. Like you were a fly on the wall witnessing her first ED Treatment Meeting. Like you were in the hospital, or in Peru, or on the floor with her in her brother in law's basement. Through all of the hurt, there is so much hope. This book shows you it's possible to hit your absolute breaking point and have the courage say something and to start again.Every reader has something to gain by cracking the pages of this work.

When reading Where the River Flows, I could not help but see bits of my soul throughout this book. It is a powerful book and incredibly meaningful and brave that the author wrote this memoir. Taking some of her deepest darkest secrets and memories and sharing them with the world in the hopes of helping just one person feel not so alone.There were times when reading this book that I needed to take a minute and process my emotions. I saw so much of myself in the author that it was hard to distinguish my memories and emotions from similar events from the authors. That sounds weird writing it out, but I just felt that I saw myself. It was like all the feelings that I had growing up were validated that I was not alone.I think this is a powerful and essential book for others to read, regardless if you have an Eating Disorder or not. There is so much more to this book that I genuinely think it will help so many people feel heard and seen.I highly recommend this book.

This book came at just the right time in my life and I am very thankful that it did. Rachel Havekost has a gift for capturing the raw moments of human experience that most of us shy away from even in our own thoughts. The vulnerability in this book is refreshing, as the author truly offers up her own experience as a lens through which we can view our own. As a person who has struggled with mental illness, an eating disorder, and a history of invalidating my own feelings and experiences, Rachel Havekost's perspectives in this book have been extremely valuable in helping me navigate my own journey. I strongly recommend this book to any introspective person ready to deal with what has been holding them back.