How you eat reflects everything you believe about being alive. What a blessing. What an opportunity. Join Geneen this May for a front row seat to her LIVE online deep-immersion retreat. For six days, you will be with other women with the same longings, the same challenges, and together begin to see what is keeping you from living the fullest, most alive life possible. CLICK HERE for more information. […]
Part 125: I was just about to write a Cancer Chronicle today, as I get ready for the third-year post-lumpectomy mammogram, and then I found this, that I wrote exactly a year ago, when I was getting ready for the second mammogram. I’d been noticing this week that fear has come up, what if there is recurrence, what if I need more surgery (a radical mastectomy), what if what if what if. […]
For many years, I was convinced that by changing my body, I would change my life. Because I was certain that my suffering was due to my size, I believed that when the weight disappeared, it would take old wounds, hurts, and rejections with it. I thought that changing the shape on the outside would alter the feelings on the inside. Silly me. […]
When my husband and I eat at an outdoor restaurant these days, his meal always looks better than mine. I’m not sure why, since we don’t usually like the same kinds of food — but within three minutes, my fork finds its way to his side of the table. …
How you eat reflects everything you believe about being alive. What a blessing. What an opportunity. Join Geneen May 16-21, 2023 for a front row seat to her LIVE online deep-immersion retreat. For six days, you will be with other women with the same longings, the same challenges, and together begin to see what is keeping you from living the fullest, most alive life possible. Act now … it’s filling quickly. […]
Back in the last century, I weighed almost twice as much as I do now—and I desperately wanted to be thin. So desperately that if a genie had appeared (and I’m not exactly proud of this fact) and offered me one wish, it would have been to wake up thin the next day.
Kate and her mother spent years dieting together. They joined Weight Watchers, went on Atkins, tried the Master Cleanse together. They suffered together over the size of their thighs. But six months ago, after Kate came to one of my retreats, she decided that she didn’t want to diet anymore, didn’t want to punish or deprive herself. […]
People usually come to my retreats because they want to lose weight. They want to stop suffering. They want to be happy. I talk to them about trusting themselves and about listening to their bodies. Once you do that, I say, everything — your relationship with food, yourself, your body — tends to fall into place. […]
When my friend Ed wanted to stop smoking, a Zen master told him that he needed to love smoking first. “Create a ritual each time you smoke,” the teacher said. “Take a cigarette and wrap it in a beautiful cloth.
A few years ago, I drove into a nine-story parking garage in San Francisco, and after I finished my errands, I couldn’t remember where I’d parked. My husband, who was in Antarctica at the time, had called just as I pulled into the space, and I was so happy to speak to him that I didn’t write down the floor or space number. […]
My friend Molly told me about a fifty-year-old friend of hers who’d been a member of a sewing circle for ten years and was now dying of brain cancer. “I labored and sweated over my crooked stitches,” the friend said. “And I always felt ashamed for not making the right-sized or shaped stitches. As if […]
I’ve been thinking about chocolate cake recently, even, maybe especially, during the pandemic. To be precise, I’ve been thinking about what happens when a piece of bittersweet flourless Chocolate Decadence Cake arrives at a table where a few friends and I have agreed to share the dense, sweet dessert. Eyes light up. […]
During an interview that lasted almost two weeks, Joan Brunwasser and I roamed the world of eating, writing, and living. During our conversation, we went back and forth, deeper and deeper into the heart of emotional eating and what prompts it. Take a look. […]
When I first heard the Buddhist description of hungry ghosts — beings with stomachs as big as caves and throats as narrow as pins — I was positive I was going straight to hell as a hungry ghost. After all, this was an exact description of my experience with food. And not just with food, but also with life. […]
A friend of mine once asked a 6-year-old girl what she wanted to be when she grew up. “A person with really long arms,” the child answered. “Why?” my friend asked.” “So I can reach across the table and eat all the chocolate chip cookies before my brother gets any.” […]
Imagine this: You are walking in a meadow on a fresh autumn day. The leaves are turning a burnished gold and red. You come upon a long table covered in a white linen cloth with vases of flowers at perfect intervals. Then you notice the food. […]
When I was a child, I loved my father so much that I was convinced that when he died, I would die. Even after I got married, I continued to believe that my father was the one person who loved me unconditionally, and that without him, love would disappear. […]
It’s never been true, not anywhere at anytime, that the value of a soul, of a human spirit is dependent on a number on a scale. We are unrepeatable beings of light and space and water who need these physical vehicles to get around, and when we start defining ourselves by that which can be […]
of what someone once told me. I wish I could remember who it was, but anyway, what she said was: Everything counts. So often in my life, I’ve thought: “Well, just this once, I’ll do it. And it won’t matter because I’ll do it another way later or tomorrow or next week.” So often, I’ve […]
The million-dollar answer to the question of why weight loss is so difficult to maintain, is that along with the exaltation of being thin come less positive feelings. The lightness that accompanies an unencumbered body feels vulnerable. And if we’ve used our weight in any way, even unconsciously, to keep us safe, the joy of […]
