Geneen

I originally created this blog to acknowledge and work through the issues I've had with emotional eating over the last twenty-something years. Somewhere on the path, I lost touch with the purpose of this particular blog and began using it to vent about all the "stuff" in my life.

And somewhere on the path, my struggles with food re-surfaced, significantly, and began to overflow into other areas of my life.

One of my favorite authors on the subject of emotional eating is Geneen Roth. She's written several books, all of which I've read, and I went to see her speak back in 2001, when I first moved to Sacramento.

Recently, she published a new book, entitled, "Women, Food and God."

The book made a media splash. A big one. Oprah had Geneen on her show and also featured her in O Magazine. Big authors, many of my favorites - Ann Lamott, Annie Dillard and Christiane Northrup - spoke out on the significance of addressing spirituality and food together.

I'll spare you the details but I needed to get my hands on this book last month. I should have bought it much earlier. A downward spiral that only accelerates with the passing days is not a good place to be in. Thankfully, Target had lots of copies and I had some time each night to read.

There's so much to this 198 page book. I read it and I re-read it. Now, I'm going through with my highlighter. Eventually, I should probably get my journal out.

Right off the bat - on page 2 - Geneen drives it home. Here is what she writes:

Our relationship to food is an exact microcosm of our relationship to life itself. I believe that we are walking, talking expressions of our deepest convictions; everything we believe about love, fear, transformation and God is revealed in how, when and what we eat. When we inhale Reese's peanut butter cups when we are not hungry, we are acting out an entire world of hopelessness, of faith or doubt of love or fear. If we are interested in finding out what we actually believe - not what we think, not what we say, but what our souls are convinced is the bottom-line truth about life and afterlife - we need to go no further than the food on our plates. God is not just in the details; God is also in the muffins, the fried sweet potatoes, and the tomato vegetable soup. God - however we define him or her - is on our plates.

This passage made me cry. It made me realize how my eating directly affects my spirituality and ultimately, my connection to God. It made me see that every time I eat when the last thing I need is food, I am expressing hopelessness and loss of faith. I am doubting love; and I am in constant fear. And when I really stepped back and looked hard at those areas, I could acknowledge that yes, indeed, these are incredibly painful topics and that yes, indeed, I need better coping strategies.

So I'm going through the book for a third time. And using this blog as it was intended. At least for now.

More to come.