Listen free for 30 days
-
Unbearable Lightness
- A Story of Loss and Gain
- Narrated by: Portia de Rossi
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wish list failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for $25.24
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
You may also enjoy...
-
Wasted
- A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
- Written by: Marya Hornbacher
- Narrated by: Marya Hornbacher
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Precociously intelligent, imaginative, energetic, and ambitious, Marya Hornbacher grew up in a comfortable middle-class American home. At the age of 5, she returned home from ballet class one day, put on an enormous sweater, curled up on her bed, and cried because she thought she was fat. By age 9, she was secretly bulimic, throwing up at home after school, while watching Brady Bunch reruns on television and munching Fritos. She added anorexia to her repertoire a few years later and took great pride in her ability to starve. Marya's story gathers intensity with each passing year. By the time she is in college and working for a wire news service in Washington D.C., she is in the grip of a bout of anorexia so horrifying that it will forever put to rest the romance of wasting away. Down to 52 pounds and counting, Marya becomes a battlefield: her powerful death instinct at war with the will to live. Why would a talented young girl go through the looking glass and slip into a netherworld where up is down, food is greed, and death is honor? Why enter into a love affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Marya Hornbacher sustained both anorexia and bulimia through 5 lengthy hospitalizations, endless therapy, the loss of family, friends, jobs, and ultimately, any sense of what it means to be "normal." In this vivid, emotionally wrenching memoir, she recreates the experience and illuminates the tangle of personal, family, and cultural causes underlying eating disorders.
-
-
Beautifully written, honest, and engaging... wish it wasn’t abridged.
- By Tracy on 2018-11-23
Written by: Marya Hornbacher
-
Empty
- A Memoir
- Written by: Susan Burton
- Narrated by: Susan Burton
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For almost 30 years, Susan Burton hid her obsession with food and the secret life of compulsive eating and starving that dominated her adolescence. This is the relentlessly honest, fiercely intelligent story of living with both anorexia and binge-eating disorder, moving past her shame, and learning to tell her secret.
-
-
Brutally Honest
- By Amazon Customer on 2022-12-14
Written by: Susan Burton
-
Good Girls
- A Study and Story of Anorexia
- Written by: Hadley Freeman
- Narrated by: Hadley Freeman
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1995, Hadley Freeman wrote in her diary: “I just spent three years of my life in mental hospitals. So why am I crazier than I was before????” From the ages of 14 to 17, Freeman lived in psychiatric wards after developing anorexia nervosa. Her doctors informed her that her body was cannibalizing her muscles and heart for nutrition, but they could tell her little else: why she had it, what it felt like, what recovery looked like. For the next twenty years, Freeman lived as a “functioning anorexic,” grappling with new forms of self-destructive behavior as the anorexia mutated and persisted.
-
-
Beautifully Written
- By Amazon Customer on 2023-06-23
Written by: Hadley Freeman
-
Wintergirls
- Written by: Laurie Halse Anderson
- Narrated by: Phoebe Strole
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lia and Cassie are best friends, wintergirls frozen in fragile bodies, competitors in a deadly contest to see who can be the thinnest. But then Cassie suffers the ultimate loss - her life - and Lia is left behind, haunted by her friend's memory and racked with guilt for not being able to help save her.
-
-
Heartbreaking but amazing
- By Pamela on 2021-03-27
Written by: Laurie Halse Anderson
-
Elena Vanishing
- A Memoir
- Written by: Elena Dunkle, Clare B. Dunkle
- Narrated by: Lauren Fortgang
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Seventeen-year-old Elena is vanishing. Every day means renewed determination, so every day means fewer calories. This is the story of a girl whose armor against anxiety becomes artillery against herself as she battles on both sides of a lose-lose war in a struggle with anorexia.
-
-
pretty good
- By Samantha on 2020-04-02
Written by: Elena Dunkle, and others
-
Hungry for Life
- A Memoir Unlocking the Truth Inside an Anorexic Mind
- Written by: Rachel Richards
- Narrated by: Rachel Richards
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this painfully moving memoir, take a firsthand look at anorexia through the eyes of a young girl. Even in kindergarten, Rachel Richards knows something isn't right. By leading us through her distorted thoughts, she shines a light on the experience and mystery of mental illness. As she grows up, unable to comprehend or communicate her inner trauma, Rachel lashes out, hurting herself, running away from home, and fighting her family. Restricting food gives her the control she craves. But after being hospitalized and force-fed, Rachel only retreats further into herself.
-
-
Honest Account of Anorexia
- By Amazon Customer on 2023-06-26
Written by: Rachel Richards
-
Wasted
- A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
- Written by: Marya Hornbacher
- Narrated by: Marya Hornbacher
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Precociously intelligent, imaginative, energetic, and ambitious, Marya Hornbacher grew up in a comfortable middle-class American home. At the age of 5, she returned home from ballet class one day, put on an enormous sweater, curled up on her bed, and cried because she thought she was fat. By age 9, she was secretly bulimic, throwing up at home after school, while watching Brady Bunch reruns on television and munching Fritos. She added anorexia to her repertoire a few years later and took great pride in her ability to starve. Marya's story gathers intensity with each passing year. By the time she is in college and working for a wire news service in Washington D.C., she is in the grip of a bout of anorexia so horrifying that it will forever put to rest the romance of wasting away. Down to 52 pounds and counting, Marya becomes a battlefield: her powerful death instinct at war with the will to live. Why would a talented young girl go through the looking glass and slip into a netherworld where up is down, food is greed, and death is honor? Why enter into a love affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Marya Hornbacher sustained both anorexia and bulimia through 5 lengthy hospitalizations, endless therapy, the loss of family, friends, jobs, and ultimately, any sense of what it means to be "normal." In this vivid, emotionally wrenching memoir, she recreates the experience and illuminates the tangle of personal, family, and cultural causes underlying eating disorders.
-
-
Beautifully written, honest, and engaging... wish it wasn’t abridged.
- By Tracy on 2018-11-23
Written by: Marya Hornbacher
-
Empty
- A Memoir
- Written by: Susan Burton
- Narrated by: Susan Burton
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For almost 30 years, Susan Burton hid her obsession with food and the secret life of compulsive eating and starving that dominated her adolescence. This is the relentlessly honest, fiercely intelligent story of living with both anorexia and binge-eating disorder, moving past her shame, and learning to tell her secret.
-
-
Brutally Honest
- By Amazon Customer on 2022-12-14
Written by: Susan Burton
-
Good Girls
- A Study and Story of Anorexia
- Written by: Hadley Freeman
- Narrated by: Hadley Freeman
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1995, Hadley Freeman wrote in her diary: “I just spent three years of my life in mental hospitals. So why am I crazier than I was before????” From the ages of 14 to 17, Freeman lived in psychiatric wards after developing anorexia nervosa. Her doctors informed her that her body was cannibalizing her muscles and heart for nutrition, but they could tell her little else: why she had it, what it felt like, what recovery looked like. For the next twenty years, Freeman lived as a “functioning anorexic,” grappling with new forms of self-destructive behavior as the anorexia mutated and persisted.
-
-
Beautifully Written
- By Amazon Customer on 2023-06-23
Written by: Hadley Freeman
-
Wintergirls
- Written by: Laurie Halse Anderson
- Narrated by: Phoebe Strole
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lia and Cassie are best friends, wintergirls frozen in fragile bodies, competitors in a deadly contest to see who can be the thinnest. But then Cassie suffers the ultimate loss - her life - and Lia is left behind, haunted by her friend's memory and racked with guilt for not being able to help save her.
-
-
Heartbreaking but amazing
- By Pamela on 2021-03-27
Written by: Laurie Halse Anderson
-
Elena Vanishing
- A Memoir
- Written by: Elena Dunkle, Clare B. Dunkle
- Narrated by: Lauren Fortgang
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Seventeen-year-old Elena is vanishing. Every day means renewed determination, so every day means fewer calories. This is the story of a girl whose armor against anxiety becomes artillery against herself as she battles on both sides of a lose-lose war in a struggle with anorexia.
-
-
pretty good
- By Samantha on 2020-04-02
Written by: Elena Dunkle, and others
-
Hungry for Life
- A Memoir Unlocking the Truth Inside an Anorexic Mind
- Written by: Rachel Richards
- Narrated by: Rachel Richards
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this painfully moving memoir, take a firsthand look at anorexia through the eyes of a young girl. Even in kindergarten, Rachel Richards knows something isn't right. By leading us through her distorted thoughts, she shines a light on the experience and mystery of mental illness. As she grows up, unable to comprehend or communicate her inner trauma, Rachel lashes out, hurting herself, running away from home, and fighting her family. Restricting food gives her the control she craves. But after being hospitalized and force-fed, Rachel only retreats further into herself.
-
-
Honest Account of Anorexia
- By Amazon Customer on 2023-06-26
Written by: Rachel Richards
Publisher's Summary
“I didn’t decide to become anorexic. It snuck up on me disguised as a healthy diet, a professional attitude. Being as thin as possible was a way to make the job of being an actress easier . . .”
Portia de Rossi weighed only 82 pounds when she collapsed on the set of the Hollywood film in which she was playing her first leading role. This should have been the culmination of all her years of hard work - first as a child model in Australia, then as a cast member of one of the hottest shows on American television. On the outside she was thin and blond, glamorous and successful. On the inside, she was literally dying.
In this searing, unflinchingly honest book, Portia de Rossi captures the complex emotional truth of what it is like when food, weight, and body image take priority over every other human impulse or action. She recounts the elaborate rituals around eating that came to dominate hours of every day, from keeping her daily calorie intake below 300 to eating precisely measured amounts of food out of specific bowls and only with certain utensils. When this wasn’t enough, she resorted to purging and compulsive physical exercise, driving her body and spirit to the breaking point.
Even as she rose to fame as a cast member of the hit television shows Ally McBeal and Arrested Development, Portia alternately starved herself and binged, all the while terrified that the truth of her sexuality would be exposed in the tabloids. She reveals the heartache and fear that accompany a life lived in the closet, a sense of isolation that was only magnified by her unrelenting desire to be ever thinner. With the storytelling skills of a great novelist and the eye for detail of a poet, Portia makes transparent as never before the behaviors and emotions of someone living with an eating disorder.
From her lowest point, Portia began the painful climb back to a life of health and honesty, falling in love with and eventually marrying Ellen DeGeneres, and emerging as an outspoken and articulate advocate for gay rights and women’s health issues.
In this remarkable and beautifully written work, Portia shines a bright light on a dark subject. A crucial book for all those who might sometimes feel at war with themselves or their bodies, Unbearable Lightness is a story that inspires hope and nourishes the spirit.
What the critics say
What listeners say about Unbearable Lightness
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- B K
- 2024-02-04
Heartbreaking but insightful
It is sad that such a beautiful person had to go through all of this. I am grateful that she has recovered and is able to share her story with us. I truly appreciate it that she took the time to read it to us herself, telling us her own story as it is meant to be heard.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 2022-04-21
I didn’t want this book to end.
The book was raw, honest and heartbreaking but what I wasn’t expecting was that Portia is such a great storyteller.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Raccoon
- 2021-03-05
Eye opening!
What an honest account of life behind the glamour of glossy pages, bright flashing lights, and the in-crowd!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 2020-04-30
Heart breaking and honest
The story is so relatable. I appreciate her honesty. It kept me enthralled until the end.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- jessicalauren
- 2018-02-13
It’s painful to read, but very telling.
I only took one star off because recovery is more difficult when you don’t have the money or connections.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!