Chris Prentice
Professor Wendy Parkins was professor of literature at Kent University in the UK before returning recently to New Zealand. Her newly published memoir, Every morning, so far, I’m alive, offers an intimate and honest exploration of living with depression, phobias and OCD, and how these conditions have affected her in personal, professional, family, and social life. The title comes from American poet Mary Oliver’s 1986 poem, “Landscape”, and is a resonant epigraph for Wendy’s story. Her book is a gift to those who might find support in recognising shared or similar struggles, and at the same time to those who’ll appreciate its broader concerns with how to live in the world, and to live well. It’s also about how to place ourselves in the world, and how place shapes our ‘selves.’
Parkins’ interest in everyday life — in how people live — had informed her earlier academic cultural studies book, Slow Living (2006), co-written with Geoffrey Craig, about the Slow Food movement. They refer to slow living as an “attempt to live in the present in a meaningful, sustainable, thoughtful and pleasurable way”; and to “slow arts of the self” as processes whereby “we can ‘desanctify’ parts of our self-understanding”. In Every morning, so far, I’m alive, the process of ‘desanctifying’ self-knowledge isn’t an intellectual enterprise, or a conscious life-style choice, but an intimate challenge.
I’m from Christchurch. On my 
As a child of the 70s and 80s I was raised with the idea that women could (and did) do anything, and always eschewed the ‘traditional’ feminine trappings of makeup, skirts and heels. As I got older I became aware that this slogan was frequently understood to mean that women should do everything, including juggling work and family, but it was not until I started thinking about whether – and if – I wanted children that I fully realised the extent to which social attitudes towards motherhood remain among the most potent and pervasive constraints on female (and male) identity and freedom.
As a nutrition student, I have developed an immense appreciation for food and have become infinitely grateful for the role that nutrients play in keeping us alive and healthy. So I was very surprised when my younger sister fell ill with anorexia nervosa. She had watched a set of emotive health documentaries and had read numerous articles that slam key dietary components such as sugar, while promoting healthy eating and weight loss. This prompted her to follow a so-called “healthy diet” with the aim of losing weight. This shocked me because my sister already had a slim figure and had never been one to care about her health.