I began my struggle with food at age 29 when I became pregnant with my son, my second child. I wanted another child and was unhappy in my marriage, so I made the choice to have a child and used food to bury the conflicting feelings. I said it out loud at my then-sister-in-law’s apartment on Christmas Eve 1979. “I’m eating for two now,” I heard myself say, as I popped another dunkin’ munchkin in my mouth. I gained 60 pounds during that pregnancy and was shamed for the first time when, a month after my son was born, I met someone who had been in our childbirth preparation class with his wife and he asked me when I was due. He was as mortified as I when I told him my son was a month old. I was still wearing maternity clothes.
I lost that weight and more, reclaiming my slim self, but it was the beginning of an ongoing struggle in my relationship with food. Today I'm choosing to awaken to the fact that, recently, I’ve been using food again to not feel my feelings. As I sit in the dark, quiet pre-dawn of this Sunday morning I’ve decided to listen. I hear myself guiding me as I guide my clients, deep inside to the place of spirit, the place in which I am most connected with my truth, to the wisdom and compassion of the universe as it moves through me. I feel the pain of the loss of connection with deep experience and realize how efficiently food keeps me from that place within, from myself and the life I passionately want to create. I am moved in the knowing that all I need do is be quiet, present, listen, to reconnect. How clear and easy it is to be guided when I’m willing to be here.
This may sound hokey and new agey to some, and to those who are willing to slow down and wonder what it might be like to listen deeply, it’s a path with heart. There is a space in which we connect with so much more than our immediate needs and wants, and we need to allow ourselves the time and quiet to enter that space to hear where we are and the steps we need to take to move to where we need to be, even when we don’t have a clear knowing of where that is.
Namaste.
