October | 2017 | Geneen Roth

Published October 26, 2017

I was at a dinner last week in New York …

with some business women and thought leaders and the subject of enough came up. One woman told me that she was convinced that having a baby was going to fill the not-enough place inside her heart. This, despite being in a relationship with someone she loved, having a job about which she felt passionate and having enough money to shelter and food and pleasure. Then she said, “Although I do love having a baby, it didn’t do what I thought it would do.” It struck me again that enough isn't a quantity and that it’s so challenging to really understand that. And of course, losing all our money in the Madoff debacle woke me up to what enough was and is. I say this a lot but I wouldn’t go back and change anything about that because when we lost everything, I was able to see how much scarcity I transpose onto the world and how that can change in an instant when I question my age-old beliefs.

Here’s something from "Lost and Found," the book I wrote about our relationships with food and money (and how they are almost replicas of each other). And because this is a topic so always close to me, the first chapter of “This Messy Magnificent Life,” called Manna, starts with the deep dive into what actually satisfies the heart.

On December 10, 2008, the day before Madoff confessed, Matt and I had sufficient money in our retirement accounts and I didn’t believe that it was enough. Twenty-four hours later, on December 11, we had nothing, and after the first few days of feeling devastated, I knew what enough was because, for the first time in my life, I had it.

Before we lost our money in Madoff, I’d been complaining about our house. Built as a vacation house in 1960, it was drafty and cold and the plumbing didn’t work. We sometimes had to take showers outside, even in winter. After Madoff confessed, I couldn’t believe my good fortune to have a house for that day and the day after, even if we might not be able to keep it.

Before Madoff confessed, I didn’t like the way Matt chewed his cereal, wore ankle socks, was insistent on focusing on the positive. After Madoff confessed, I couldn’t believe I’d ended up married for more than twenty years to man I adored. I remembered again how much I liked his face, his laugh, his walk, the way he rolled his eyes.

Before Madoff confessed, I’d peer at my life from the holes in my psyche. I looked at myself and saw the emptiness of the eight year old with the sagging neck of a fifty-six year old. After Madoff, I was grateful to have a body, hair, eyes, legs that functioned.

Optimists get on my nerves and I’ve never counted myself in their club. I’m not a person who believes that things work out for the best; lemonade from lemons is not my style. I don’t believe in angels or the God that most people call God or that justice always comes around. I believe in disaster, that everything that can go wrong, will, and that I’ll end up lonely and fat with moles on my chin that have bristly hair sticking out. So it is a bit out of character that losing every penny from thirty years of life savings did not send me spiraling into depression or hysteria or Paxil.

But even I couldn’t ignore the obvious: I’d spent years saving for a future that was never coming to protect myself from a past that already happened. I was convinced I didn’t have enough when I had so much. And the money I thought I had I didn’t actually have because Bernie Madoff stole it the second we opened our first account. Ten years of statements, 8% returns, and dozens of hours calculating what we would someday do with what we would someday have—all of it was based on a lie.

When you are suddenly confronted with having nothing and you realize that you once had so much and treated it as if it was nothing, you see that the very beliefs on which you construct your life are totally, 100% of the time, in your head, and have nothing to do with reality. If I could believe that we didn’t have enough when we had a million dollars and then lose it and believe that we did have enough—what or where is enough?

If it really was something out there--a definable quantity--then everyone who had that quantity would know they had enough. And since we know that’s not true (the anorexics believe they are too fat, the ultra-wealthy believe they need more money), we also know that enough can’t be out there. Enough cannot be in something we can touch or buy or have like money or a thin body or UGG boots. Enough isn’t an amount; it’s a relationship to what you already have. But each of us has to find this out for ourselves.

Published October 24, 2017

When I first walked in to editor-in-chief Peg Parkinson’s office, …

I was trembling. I’d never had a book published and was shopping the proposal for "Feeding the Hungry Heart" around. Peg had a stuffed pencil hanging above her desk.

Although I said I had a whole book, I only had a book proposal. Or maybe I said I could write the whole book in a few months, I can’t remember now. All I know is that I was excited and terrified and had to keep pinching myself that I was actually sitting in the office of a editor in a New York publishing house. A year before that, having a book published was a dream that I wasn’t sure I could ever realize.

When I devolve into believing my mind (mostly in the middle of the night) and its stories are those of someone who was never supported or loved or wanted (oy, such stories), I try to remember Peg. She started calling me every few weeks after that meeting and coaxed that book out of me. At one point, I was so blocked, I couldn’t write a word.

After I gave up writing all together and told her I’d been lying to her and that I didn’t have enough written to show her and I didn’t care if I ever wrote another word — I couldn’t stand the pressure
— she told me to call her anytime. Said she knew I could do it. Gave me her phone number at home. Three weeks later, I had the manuscript for "Feeding the Hungry Heart." I wrote it on Peg’s wings.

When she died years later, her partner asked me if I wanted anything of hers. Yes, I said, that pencil. And now it hangs in my writing studio. Living proof that like every one of us, we have had such support, such love to get where we are. If you are like me, you forget that. Sometimes you focus on the ones who didn’t or don’t support you. Sometimes it’s possible to feel desperately alone in a big, scary universe. If you are like me, you forget and then you remember and then you forget and remember again. Here’s to remembering the good. And remembering. And remembering.

Published October 16, 2017

I’m still soaring from the workshop at Kripalu …

these past three days. There’s just nothing like sitting in a room with a group of people who want to dive into what’s keeping them from living their own version of a messy magnificent life. From owning their bodies, disengaging from the crazy aunt in the attic, being unbelievably kind to themselves. I am always wowed and awed at the humor and resilience and the utter devotion that comes through.The passion of the life force, the desire to take their lives back from food or whatever keeps them constrained.

A moment from the workshop: We were working with disengaging from that crazy aunt, and I asked people to write down 10 criticisms they’d made of themselves since they walked in the door. (A favorite exercise of mine. It’s so telling, so astonishing to see the way we talk to ourselves). Then I asked someone to read her criticisms aloud in exactly the voice in which she talks to herself. (Try this sometime. That voice drips with disgust, condemnation, shame). What’s staggering about talking to ourselves this way is that we would stop anyone from talking to our children or our best friends like this, but we tolerate it 24/7 from ourselves.

So, a brave woman stood up and began her list.

I shouldn’t have come here.
I’m the fattest one here.
I didn’t condition my hair.
I don’t have cute rings.

And of course, I had to laugh at the rings statement. Everyone did. (And let’s not even mention the hair conditioner. Seriously. Or the other, meaner statements). That crazy aunt will pick anything, ANYTHING, to shame you about.

The thing, of course, about this process, is that we don’t even know we are believing the crazy aunt until we say it out loud and have people witness the tone, the meanness. At that point, we can disengage. At that point, we can realize we’ve been under the thumb of cruelty—and we can stop. Blessed relief.

Published October 13, 2017

An update on the fire that keeps burning and burning:

Thank you all for your many responses. At this point, the air quality is so bad that people are walking around outside with masks. When you look to the trees, you see them shrouded in smoke and the sky is grey. It’s difficult to take a deep breath (and not advisable). So many people have lost everything. And so far, 31 have lost their lives. (The photo below is CNN's, not mine).

In our neighborhood, 90 miles away from Sonoma and Napa, the smell of smoke and the raining of ashes is everywhere. And people are doing the best they can because as always, there is nothing else to do. We donate time, money, towels, bedding, food. And then we keep putting one foot in front of the other, taking in the goodness with each (short) breath.

When we lost our money in 2008, I realized it was possible to lose everything and keep focusing on what I did have, not what I didn't have. I realized that so much of the frightening part of losing everything was what I told myself, the stories I kept repeating, what I was going to do in the future. The I-can't-manage-this story.

Because here’s the thing: It’s another day on planet earth.

We woke up!!

We get to see, hear, taste, feel. Those are things to revel in.

Published October 12, 2017

When I wrote my first book, …

“Feeding the Hungry Heart,” no one was writing about issues around women and food, including breaking out of the cycle of shame, deprivation and self-torture. The prevalent wisdom at the time was focused on dieting. I suggested another way, which struck many as completely radical.

With “Women Food and God,” I challenged the common approach of relegating women’s issues around food, body and weight to will power and how much sugar you eat or don't eat. I broadened and deepened these constructs by saying: “How you eat is how you live.” If you want a reflection of the beliefs that drive you in your day-to-day life -- about relationships, your work, your children, about every single thing in your life -- all you have to do is take a look at the food on your plate.

In my new book, "This Messy Magnificent Life," I am now exploring cultural concepts of beauty and aging, as well as issues with food and body. Again, I’m broadening and deepening these themes because I’m also talking about the ownership of women’s bodies and how women have internalized misogyny in our culture.

I am asking the questions: How are you limiting yourself? What is the internal misogynistic relationship that you have with yourself? How do you talk to yourself?

Of course, we find, it all starts within.

Published October 10, 2017

We live in a rural area surrounded by trees, …

and fire is always a concern, and so when I woke up yesterday morning at 2 am smelling smoke, I walked outside to see if there were visible flames. None. Then we called the fire department. Many fires — 12 of them all together — burning in Napa and Sonoma counties. Matt and I had just returned from a few days away in Calistoga, and that was on fire too.

As of this morning, 11 people have died in the 12 fires that have consumed 60,000 acres and is not yet contained. No rain in sight. Thousands of people have lost their homes. Tourists in the wine country have had to flee for their lives. Our house is filled with smoke and the air is dark. Ashes are raining down everywhere you look. The sun, when you can see it, is dark red.

The first chapter of my upcoming book "This Messy Magnificent Life" begins: I am making a cup of tea in my favorite purple-flowered mug when I smell smoke. I look through the windows behind me and see plumes of flames through the trees. I call the fire department and they tell me there is a fire down the road, that it’s not contained, and that we might have to evacuate our home.

Further on in TMML, I write about my friend Lauren whose house burned down two years ago in a fire and who stayed with me for days after the fire. I didn’t write about my friend Sarah who lost her house a few years earlier, or our friends Ken and Margie whose house burned down a few years before that. The fact and the danger of fire remains a constant while living in California. It’s a desert here. It’s dry here. The reason why so many people love living here is the daily cost of living here. The two go together. But the truth is there no safe place. Every place has its dangers. After the 1989 earthquake, my mother implored me to move to New York. After 9/11, she stopped asking.

Today, with the mountains and the sky shrouded in smoke, I am packing suitcases for just-in-case evacuation. What to take. What matters. Clothes? My father’s watch? Papers, computers, our wedding album. Izzy, of course. What does a life comes down to.

As we are not yet being evacuated, but many people have been— I am so aware of the kindness of other people. A friend drove to Santa Rosa to bring medicine to her friend who’d lost his house in the fire. We’ve opened our community center with cots for people who have no place to sleep. When someone posted on our community board that there were 52 horses in Napa that needed evacuating immediately, someone with a trailer volunteered to get at least some of them. The web of human life and the life force itself is unstoppable. The kindness is immeasurable and uncontained.

For years — it’s been 19 now since we moved here — I have been concerned about fire. When the rains come, I am always happy and relieved. And still, all that concern (or worry) boils down to this moment. What matters to me. How can I help those people who need it.

The realization that everything is so temporary. Everything. The place where Matt has led his summer retreats burned down yesterday. It seemed so solid. So utterly, irrevocably and forever there. So did his friend Jerry who died a few weeks ago.

What to do. Pack the suitcases. Be ready to evacuate. Plot out the escape route. Do all the tree work around the house that will keep a fire from leap-frogging to the roof. And then and always: live, appreciate that I still have a house now. That I can still breathe now. That I still have a body now. Love what can be loved, show up for what is needed, and continually ask myself what is not wrong right now. Because underneath the smoke, the sky is still and forever blue.

Published October 7, 2017

It’s happening. It may be happening slowly, but it’s still happening: …

Women are beginning to speak up and the power structure is beginning to crack. I’m thinking of this as I read the latest news of the latest men who harassed women because they could. Because they had the power. The list keeps growing. Politicians, priests, teachers, presidents, movie moguls, rock stars, spiritual teachers. And women are speaking up.

It may not be so obvious now because the power structure is still very much in place, but it’s an ancient edifice and it’s crumbling, brick by brick, wall by wall. Woman by woman.

Now is the time to stand in our own two shoes. Now is the time for women to come forward and to speak up — not for what we are against but what we are for. Meeting hatred or misogyny with more hatred and fury is more of the same. It’s meeting war with more war. And although I understand that fury is part of the package here — and totally understandable — it won’t lead to change. We’ve already tried that. It hasn’t worked.

Real change, and I know I’ve said this a hundred thousand times, happens from the inside out. When you know your value like you know your name and you refuse to be silenced. When you know that the size of your body has nothing to do with the size of your life. When speaking the truth and being authentic is more important to you than anything else. Anything else.

How do you do this? By remembering your body. By coming back to it, over and over again, many times a day. By checking in with it—what am I sensing? Do I have a queasy feeling in my stomach when I listen to this person? Do I feel a big NO even though I am saying yes? By listening to what you find out.

And you do it by disengaging from what my friend Catherine Ingram calls The Crazy Aunt in the Attic. The voice that never shuts up about what will happen and who you will lose if you tell the truth.

By remembering what you know that you don’t want to know. And then, by saying it out loud.

We’ve been silent for decades, centuries, eons. It’s time for a change—and it’s already happening. We thought that the babies in charge knew what they were doing and that somehow, we were going to be saved. But no one is coming. We’re it. And, in a line from my new book, This Messy Magnificent Life: “When we realize we’ve had duct tape over our mouths for decades, there is only one thing to do: tear it off.”

Published October 4, 2017

I’ve been away for a few days and …

am just reading about the Las Vegas mass shooting. Matt’s brother and his extended family — eight people — live there. They seem to be fine, but many people aren’t. And we are all, every one of us, deeply affected by what’s going on. As a not-so-effective political activist, I am not going to write about gun laws and automatic weapons here, but I do feel moved to write about the fear that is infecting and affecting us all.

We swim in it these days. We breathe the air of it. We ricochet from one story to another. Nuclear bombs, mass shootings, hate crimes, hurricanes. And last week, I read two articles in the paper about surviving the apocalypse. One was about where to go (Tasmania and New Zealand are favorites of people who can afford to buy up land there), and the other was about what to have in your house in case — things like taser guns, pepper spray, iodine tablets in case you’ve been exposed to radiation. We are living in an upside-down world where fear rules. Fear first. Fear in most all headlines. And I know I keep saying the same thing, but it’s the same because it’s perennial wisdom and it’s true all the time, no matter what: the importance of practicing what my friend Catherine calls “mind-management.”

I do this all the time because my mind is insane. I don’t try to fool myself about it or pretty it up. My mind, when left to its own devices, ricochets from one scary story to another. From one person who did me wrong to the next. And if there is no scary news event that particular day, I dredge one up. But these days, it’s enough to simply read the news. And the stories that come from the news. Get taser guns? Buy iodine pills? Have enough food to last a month? Go live in an underground hut?

The atmosphere of fear and dystopia that we are living in and its effects on our brains, hearts and nervous systems cannot be exaggerated. It’s as if we are breathing poisoned air and deciding that if we only ate a low-carbohydrate diet, we’d be fine. While eating what nourishes our bodies makes a profound difference — and seriously, if anyone believes that, I do — it doesn’t affect the air we’re breathing and the non-caloric “food” we are swallowing. It’s crucial that we open our eyes and take in the level of panic and fear-mongering that is going on because it affects every moment of our lives. Every interaction, everything we say to our children.

Here’s what I practice many times a day and what I recommend to you:

Use your body as a signal. When you notice the signs of fear — pounding heart, stomach tight, contracted body — listen. Listen to the stories you are telling yourself. Remind yourself of the one thing in your life you CAN control — which is not your thoughts, but your reaction to them.

Everyone has a crazy mind. Everyone has thoughts that go wildly from the past to the future. Bring yourself back by the simplest things: what you already have. Your senses. The sounds you are hearing in that exact moment. The sights you are looking at in that exact moment. What your foot is touching. The feel of the chair beneath you. The color of the sky. Come back. Break the trance.

Treat your thoughts lovingly, as you would a small child who is throwing a tantrum. Be fierce and strong, but be loving as well. Judgment and shame are not your friends. They never, under any circumstance, lead to long-lasting change.

Stop listening to the news all day long. Stop reading the headlines more than once a day. Stop listening to talk radio incessantly. Headlines and talk radio are still threaded with people’s opinions.

Make it a practice to ask yourself what is not wrong right now. List five things immediately. I woke up today. I’m breathing now. I can hear a bird outside my window. The person across from me just smiled at me. This allows your nervous system to relax. From that relaxation, you can decide what to do. When you speak and act from fear, you spread fear. When your heart is open, you spread benevolence. You remember what you love. That’s a good thing.