Remember that celebrity who lied about being sick? Or the one who actually was sick, and wrote a brilliant book about it? These are familiar stories. What about the fraudster personal trainer whose con was revealed over YouTube? Or your best friend’s diaries after losing their husband? Possibly unfamiliar. Private and public narratives denoting health, wellness, death, demise, dominate our contemporary conscience. This talk is concerned with health and wellness narratives and those who falsify them to the detriment of their audiences. It also considers the function of healing in grief and loss memoir and explores the positive and negative aspects of restorative writing.