My friend Maroushka Monro, who has died aged 78, was a writer, poet, counsellor and at one time an agony aunt.
In the booming magazine world of the 1980s, her writing talent earned her a job assisting Katie Boyle, the agony aunt at TV Times. Then she was headhunted by the teen magazine Just Seventeen, where for three years, from 1988 until 1991, she put heart and soul into her role as their agony aunt. She would typically receive up to 800 letters a week, and would frequently respond directly and personally to her readers.
Maroushka was forced to relinquish her job because of illness, in the form of the highly debilitating condition spasmodic torticollis, which caused her head to turn rigidly to one side. Instead she focused on writing, and her book Talking About Anorexia – How to Cope With Life Without Starving was published by Sheldon Press in 1992 to considerable acclaim.
Born in Carshalton, Surrey, to Jewish parents, Beila (nee Cohen), a civil servant, and Israel (“Dick”) Collett, a traditional East End tailor, she was originally named Maureen, but her “Boobah” (her Yiddish term for Grandma) preferred the more endearing “Maroushka”, and that stuck. She went to Burlington junior school, and at secondary level she excelled at athletics, representing her county at long jump and running in the early 1960s.
She attended the College for Distributive Trades in London (now the London College of Communication), and her interest in style and fashion brought her work dressing Oxford Street windows. With her beautiful thick hair, she was often used as a model in Vidal Sassoon’s Bond Street salon. Her marriage in 1969 to Jeff Monro later ended in divorce.
The wonderful poetry that Maroushka began writing in her 30s highlights her playfulness and makes references to an over-ordered childhood, then rebellion later on, but not to the anorexia that dogged her life and which, ultimately, was a factor in her death.
She shared her writing at Survivors Poetry, a space specifically run by and for survivors of mental distress. A collection, A Pearl of Wisdom from Fritz, was published in 2000.
In 1993, despite the torticollis, Maroushka qualified as a counsellor and began to co-run groups from home. Meanwhile family and friends funded an invasive neurological operation in Montreal. This brought considerable relief, but the time spent recovering from it meant that she was unable to pursue her counselling career further.
Maroushka was always most fulfilled when being creative and helping others, but worsening health and the death of both her parents in close succession caused her long-term distress, and her creative contributions were limited to highly imaginative clothes design ideas and letters to friends.
She is survived by her sister, Sheila.
