How the experience of anorexia can nourish social work

This paper draws on the autobiographical experience of anorexia of the two authors and on some of the steps that shaped their course of care, in order to reflect critically on social work, the two authors' field of work. The research methodology is duo-ethnography, characterized by a critical, dialogic and multivocal tension in which the differences in meanings that the two researchers bring are entangled in narratives that try to open new windows on experience. The social worker's competence drawn on their experience of fragility can become a resource for recognizing the invisible spaces of the possible in complex and painful life stories. The act of caring took the form of new words and images that accompanied both authors to nourish their bodies with new sensations and to feel differently, albeit in different ways. This sensitivity, however, is not only witness to stories of suffering but also carries a different professional awareness.