Years ago I read a book that had sat on our bookshelf for years without my ever touching it because I thought it was about food, dieting and food issues. Wrong! In spite of its title, When Food Is Love, it is not simply about food but about childhood and what we do to survive, which could include nurturing ourselves with food, the stories we need to tell ourselves in order not to die of pain, and the beliefs we form to protect ourselves. The author is Geneen Roth, workshop presenter and author of many books. The book tells of her own struggle with food and how she changed her life. If you have food issues, this book is a must. If you have any issue this book is a must because it is not really all about food. It is about the cravings of our childhood that leave an indelible pain in our hearts and psyches and interfere with all our relationships whether with people, food, or any other compulsion.
It is particularly insightful about love relationships, intimacy, and how we unconsciously play out our fears sabotaging what we want most, repeating the same old dramas, and staying stuck in bodies or relationships that do not serve us, please us or make us happy.
The book was first published in 1991 and is as relevant today as it was then. It is about 200 pages and is written in a very easy style with the author telling her story and the stories of others whose painful childhoods imprisoned them in overweight bodies or dead end relationships. She offers great insights and maps out what we do from childhood to adulthood that allows this to happen. It is absolutely inspirational to read how she transformed herself and the very simple yet effective way she teaches others to transform their bodies and their lives.
It is most important in relationships to take responsibility for what we bring from our childhoods. Often, in relationship issues, the crisis, pain or anxiety is so dominant and the issue seems to be so much about “the other” and what s/he is doing that it is difficult to pause and imagine that we have anything to do with it but we do. It’s always a dance of wounds between us because we are energetically and unconsciously drawn to people who will trigger our deepest fears and we, theirs. It is the Universe’s way of giving us an opportunity to heal the original wound.
Even though we are “adults” taking care of ourselves in an adult world, we all have inside of us the little guy or little girl who was wordless or powerless in the face of abuse, shame, neglect, silence, or any other form of behavior that diminished our essence and our innocence. In the face of that pain and terror we formed beliefs that gave us the power and the control to protect ourselves. The beliefs served us well as children and kept us from feeling the full pain. “Mommy needs me to be a good little girl, so I’ll take care of her” is a whole lot more soothing to a child than the truth that “Mommy is so drunk she doesn’t know or care that I exist today.” We learn how not to hurt so much, how not to be terrified. We learn to pretend and we learn to soothe ourselves.
“Compulsion” Roth writes, “is what we resorted to when we felt we didn’t matter to people who mattered to us.” The adult beliefs, attitudes and behaviors that don’t serve us usually start in the relationships of childhood and throw a shadow over everything we touch as adults….until we are ready to banish the shadow.