A cradle of transformation
It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” – Henry David Thoreau
If you feel stuck in a compulsive relationship with sugar, food or your body, feel frustrated about not being able to fix it, and long for a more compassionate way of relating to your struggle, you’re in the right place.
What is growing human(kind)ness?
Growing Human(kind)ness is a place of becoming. Here you’ll learn how to foster a change of heart – a new way of seeing and relating – to your food, body and sugar struggles. This change in understanding, and this change in relationship leads to transformation: where you can unwind what drives your food compulsions, and find a space of true refuge instead. You’ll find articles, videos, books, and do at home courses to foster ease and healing with sugar, food and the body.
Growing human(kind)ness means several things – to grow into the full measure of our humanity; to foster kindness for our human struggles; and to embrace the depth and richness of the human journey. It is fundamentally a place of mercy, a fiercely loving space that is the womb of growth.
The heart over hand is a symbol of this mercy, of bowing the thinking mind to the sensing heart.
What you’ll learn
At growing human(kind)ness, you can receive help in three key areas:
- Sugar, food, and body compulsions can be outgrown, and here you’ll learn a relational, developmental approach to support this transformation.
2. Change how you relate, and how you see – change how you frame your very struggles with food. Rather than seeing them as shameful or disgusting personal failures, we’ll help you see them for what they are: an opportunity, a privilege, and a necessary and beautiful labor – how the most human aspects of you come into form. Learn how to respond to this call from the soul, the invitation to grow into a full, rich, deep human being.
3. Move from shame, isolation, and separation into relationship, community, and connection. Your journey with sugar, food and your body offers profound ways to foster intimacy with yourself and with others – a pathway to becoming deeply connected to life, and to the greater human family.
Connection + compassion + community + service + labor + relationship work together to create an opportunity to embody your deepest desires, to love in ways your heart has dreamed of – to “walk this world with hearts on fire.” (Michael Green)
And – who knew? – this opportunity arises through this messenger called sugar, or the body, or food.
How growing human(kind)ness began
I’m Karly Randolph Pitman, the midwife of this adventure. It was birthed through my own wrestling match with 20 years of multiple eating disorders – and an equally lengthy and passionate wrestling match with chronic anxiety and depression.
I came to see that our relationship with food, sugar, and the body touches on many other relationships – our relationship to our neediness and inherent dependence; our relationship to grief, sorrow, loss, and pain; our relationship to belonging – home, family, love, our mothers and fathers, and to any who have mothered or fathered us; our relationship to our human frailty, health, beauty, sexuality, and mortality; and our comfort with emotion, especially those that arise dark and mysterious.
All these things arise in our relationship with sugar and food, and all of these things are asking for consideration, contemplation, and integration – to be taken up in relationship rather than overcome or outcast. In short, food, and sugar, and the body are ensouled, helpful messengers, and beneficient teachers.
The gift of embracing your food struggles
This wrestling match – your very struggle with food – is not proof of your doing something wrong, or something you should’ve averted, but the maturation process itself: an invitation to take up the mantle of your life. What is often seen as a “loss” (food suffering) is, in fact, a profound and deep compassion, a way to belong to our shared human experience. Through sugar, through food, you join both those who’ve walked before you and those who come after who also wrestle with this task of being human, who have failed to live up to the penumbra of perfection, and who have become the better for it.
Through “failure” you come to rest, find a deeper belonging with others, and relief: this belongs, too.
To focus solely on “cutting out,” eliminating, or overcoming the food compulsion is akin to avoiding this initiation (and avoiding all the emotions that arise in your relationship to it), flattening the struggle and its inherent tension, the push and pull of opposing forces. This push and pull is uncomfortable, yes, and it is the very soil of growth and depth. I invite you into this wrestling match rather than trying to top or avoid it – no matter how sophisticated or compassionate or spiritual your strategy to avert it.
Likewise, the attempt to “figure out all the answers beforehand” and find the “right, best” diet (only to follow it perfectly) is another way to avoid the transformation process – because this messy mix of back and forth, of attempts and failures, of trial and error, is how we learn, how we grow and how we become.
The importance of grief
Growth itself is preceded by the catalyst of transformation, the grieving process. From death, and from grief comes new life – growth. Through the grieving process, things are lost, yes, and things are gained, and things are birthed anew.
Finding ease
It sounds counterintuitive, but an approach of loving relatedness offers greater connection, ease and rest than relying on “selfing” – trying to fix yourself, make change happen, or work on yourself. The selfing, individualist path can lead to weariness, heartbreak, frustration, isolation, competition, arrogance, overresponsibility, shame, and self absorption.
Likewise, viewing your food struggles as a form of initiation – something to deepen you, not to harm – heals the separation that drives so much of the painful striving that characterizes our culture’s path to healing.
Join us to be led through a merciful approach that invites you to open, connect, feel, grieve, and grow.
Receive support for both the upward journey of growth and the downward journey of depth and meaning.
Learn how to open to the gifts of your food journey, trust the deeper mystery that is being writ through your struggles, and allow growth to unfold through you, at its own timing, its own pace, and guided by your heart’s wisdom.
Find the ease that comes with letting go of control of the healing process and trusting its mystery.
Since 2006, thousands from around the world have responded to this “heart over binge” approach.
May your heart be nourished here.
Where to start
- To get a sense if we’re a good fit for you, we have a free course, Sugar Addiction 101.
- We also have a free course on Overeating.
You can also explore these introductory pages, which give an overview of our approach to healing:
- on understanding a sugar addiction
- how to approach cravings,
- and healing what drives overeating and binge eating.
You’ll find helpful links to blog posts, introductions to other experts, and an overview of what you’ll find here.
You may also enjoy reading these blog posts:
- Why we need to stop viewing overeating as a “moral failure”
- Healing the shame of craving
- Why food compulsions are healed in relationship
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