Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything

And since mothering is our first preverbal template for an existence in which we feel welcomed or rejected, loved or abandoned, many of us have fused our relationship with our mothers with our concepts of God.

“The relentless attempts to be thin take you further and further away from what could actually end your suffering: getting back in touch with who you really are. Your true nature. Your essence.”

“And looking at your plates, decide what you want to eat first and take a few bites. Notice how the food feels in your mouth. If it tastes like you thought it would taste. If it does what you thought it would do.”

“It seems as if there is something even better than food: touching what you considered untouchable and viscerally discovering that you are bigger than your pain.”

“Now, take some time and notice what you put on your plate,” I say. “Notice if you were hungry when you chose the food. If you weren’t physically hungry, was there another kind of hunger present?

Compulsive eating is a way we distance ourselves from the way things are when they are not how we want them to be.

that what will kill her is wanting another life than the one she has,

Overeating was my way to punish and shame myself; each time I gained weight, each time I failed at a diet, I proved to myself that my deepest fear was true: I was pathetic and doomed

if compulsive eating is anything, it’s a way we leave ourselves when life gets hard.