The Opposite of Butterfly Hunting: The Tragedy and The Glory of Growing Up; A Memoir Paperback – October 19, 2021 by Evanna Lynch

Description

Author: Lynch Evanna

Color: Black

Package Dimensions: 25x203x358

Number Of Pages: 480

Release Date: 19-10-2021

Details: Product Description

From actress and activist Evanna Lynch comes a raw and compelling memoir about navigating the path between fears and dreams.

Evanna Lynch’s casting as Luna Lovegood in the Harry Potter films is a tale that grew to almost mythic proportions—a legend of how she faced disordered eating as a young girl, found solace in a beloved book series, and later landed the part of her favorite character. But that is not the whole story.

Even after recovery, there remains a conflict at her core: a bitter struggle between the pursuit of perfection and the desire to fearlessly embrace her creative side. Revealing a startlingly accomplished voice, Lynch delves into the heart of her relationship with her body. As she takes the reader through a personal journey of leaving behind the safety of girlhood, Lynch explores the pivotal choices that ultimately led her down the path of creativity and toward acceptance of the wild, sensual, and unpredictable reality of womanhood.

Honest, electrifying, and inspiring, this is a story of the battle between self-destruction and creation, of giving up the preoccupation with perfection in favor of our uncharted dreams—and how the simple choice to create is the most liberating action a person can take.

About the Author

Evanna Lynch is an actress and writer. Her professional career began at the age of fourteen when she played the role of quirky misfit Luna Lovegood in the
Harry Potter film series. She lives in London, where she divides her time between acting, writing and animal rights activism.
The Opposite of Butterfly Hunting is her first book.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Foreword

‘Is this perhaps a bit cruel?’

This was the note that repeatedly cropped up in the margins from everyone who read or worked on the early drafts of this book—from my friends, family, editor, copy-editor, lawyer, doctor and also, very often, from myself. The cruelty of the words I’d written unsettled me but did not surprise me. And despite my own and my editor’s most mindful and considered efforts, this book remains, at times, kind of mean. So, I wanted to prepare you for that.

I knew it would be impossible to write a memoir about my journey towards self-love and acceptance without also writing an in-depth exploration of my self-hate. Too often in life—and in stories—we rush to find the happy ending, even if that ending is an artifice. We have this compulsion to turn every story into a fairy tale. People want to believe in fairy tales, I get that, and that childlike insistence on believing good things will happen is beautiful, and the ability to find the light in the midst of darkness is the mark of a truly resilient spirit. Absolutely, there is something admirable about our capacity to smile and present a brave face even when we are hurting. But I think there is also something else going on here, something a little bit sinister and concerning about our refusal to admit to anything other than perfect happiness, and I think it’s because we’re afraid of our own darkness. We’re afraid that if we fully surrender to our darkness, we’ll never come back from it. We’re afraid our darkness will go on and on and on, that there
is no end to it and that we will get lost in it. We’re afraid that if we show these ugly, unpalatable parts of ourselves, it will be too much for others; that nobody will love and accept us, and we’ll be left alone with only the worst parts of ourselves for company. So, we don’t let ourselves get too deep into self-hate—at least, not in public. We hurry to slap on the happy ending and construct a heroic tale before the healing has even begun.

The thing is, I don’t believe this coping mechanism is the healthiest way of dealing with darkness. I’ve read articles depicting my life as a fairy tale even as I sat at home consumed by darkness, and those stories only compounded my feelings of isolation and disillusionment. And what I’ve found out is that darkness is n