Growing Human(kind)ness by Karly Randolph Pitman

Foster a change of heart

When sugar is a call for praise

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Friends, here we find ourselves in the last month of the year, deeply immersed in the holiday season and all the rituals, traditions, and celebrations that the season brings.

This often includes many opportunities for the festive partaking of food and delicious treats. If you’ve wrestled with any kind of overdoing with food, this time of year can bring up the most dread or fear.

It can feel really, really vulnerable.

Our minds and hearts are so tender. Because of our tenderness, this softness at our core, we may guard ourselves from things that we believe will bring discomfort or pain.

So when sugar cravings arise, or when you come upon a particularly fantastic dessert, it’s easy to tighten up and tense, as if awaiting a foe. You may feel a sense of danger, or alarm, and even frustration or disgust. I often hear this when people tell me they ‘hate sugar.’

Whew – there’s a deep well of vulnerability underneath these feelings.

A ‘sign of the love we bear for ourselves’

In truth, our humanity is both tender, and intelligent, and resilient.

As an Indian sage, Sri Nisargadatta, said, our pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain “is a sign of the love that we bear for ourselves.”

So when we experience pain or discomfort, our minds and brains – being problem solving machines – are quick to think of solutions – what they think will stop or protect us from pain.

If sugar has worked to soften our pain in the past, it makes sense that when we feel some tingle of discomfort, that the impulse to eat sugar can co-arise alongside these uncomfortable sensations and feelings.

On some level, we’re thinking – “Sugar is the solution to my problem, what will make this pain and discomfort go away.”

Slowing down to see what’s there

This is where it’s helpful to slow down our process, to invite curiosity, and to ask with a ‘willingness to be surprised,’ as one of my teachers says.

For if we can pause and be with the longing for sugar, we may discover that it’s pointing to something different than what we think it is.

When sugar is asking you to feel

Sometimes we use sugar to numb or distract ourselves from pain or some anxiety that feels too much to bear. In this case, we’re using sugar to not feel something.

But at other times we can use sugar as a way to feel something. Often, it’s not sugar itself that we’re needing – rather, we’re longing for the quality that sugar evokes in us.

When I began studying the Sufi qualities – the 99 qualities of the Divine – I was struck by the quality Shakur, which I’ve heard translated as ‘thankful’ and ‘grateful.’ Etymologically, the roots of the word Shakur are also kin to the words sugar, praise, gratitude and acknowledgement.

This made me wonder – perhaps a craving for sugar is a longing, a messenger, a carrier for this quality of Shakur. When sugar cravings arise we may mishear or misunderstand this hunger, misinterpreting its message as a literal call for sugar.

But in truth, our hunger may be for something else:  for praise, appreciation, and grateful love.

“Everythings wants to be loved”

What in your life longs to be loved? What in your life is asking for appreciation – perhaps starting with your own tender self?

While I was writing this article, my son paused in his weekend chores and peeked over my shoulder. He began reading the words aloud to me, in a teasing, light tone.

In that moment I had a choice:  do I view his pause as an interruption? Or do I honor this moment and my son, taking this opportunity to connect with him here on this December Saturday?

I know I can forget to appreciate the Gift and gifts of life and love. It’s easy for me to put my head down and do what needs to be done – to keep on cooking the meals and running the errands and answering the emails, tending the fires of life, but forgetting to savor its inherent sweetness.

When I spend too much time in this ‘doing’ mode, I start to feel dry and barren; anxious, and irritable. I can feel irritated by my loved ones’ interruptions and by my body’s craving for sugar. I feel off.

The craving is a cry for connection

The irritation, the cravings, the dryness:  they are all signs of thirst, they are all cries for connection.

Sugar cravings are not here to do us harm:  they are an opportunity for intimacy. They whisper to us, “Come closer. Sit beside me and put your arm around my shoulder. For I have much to tell you.”

Then they whisper their secrets to us, and they remind us:  look around. Love what surrounds you. See what is really here.

The piercing beauty of life

I remember, about seven Christmases ago now, when I was visiting my parents’ Ohio home for the holidays. My brother and his family were there, too, and my children and his children – seven in all – were piled together in the basement craft room, in a giant bed we had made on the floor for all these little ones.

The room was a sea of blankets and pillows and cuddlies and clothes – various stuffed animals and blankies and socks and night lights and the special fan my nephew uses to sleep.

As I watched them settle into sleep from the doorway, my heart was pierced by this scene and all these accoutrements of love – the ways each of these children expressed their being in the world – and all these things – like this particular moment in time – that I knew would pass, and has.

As Shug Avery says in The Color Purple, “Everything wants to be loved.”

Come close

This holiday season, when sugar cravings call and call and call, rather than fearing their presence, turn towards them, and honor their invitation.

See if something in your life is longing for that sweet, sweet presence of noticing, of appreciation and gratitude.

Perhaps you begin or rekindle a ritual that embodies this presence – whether it’s lighting a candle, or saying a blessing over a meal, or singing praise to your loved ones, or simply slowing down to savor the small moments of a particular day.

To deepen this experience, you can invite others to join you in this ritual – or bring them into ritual with you, by honoring the memories and relationships and people that are a part of you.

See if honoring the cravings for sugar as a craving for connection both softens the fear of sugar, deepens your pleasure when a dessert or treat is called for, and heightens your joy, your appreciation for the soft, tender, sweetness of life.

Moving from self criticism to “This is difficult”

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When we’re facing challenges and difficulty, it’s easy for the inherent frustration of the situation to turn inwards, towards ourselves. This can arise as self criticism, self attack, and self judgment.

In the wake of this frustration, you may experience feelings, thoughts, and inner dialogue that sound and feel like this:

Ouch – it can be so painful.

When conscientiousness leads to self criticism

I’ve found that self criticism can often arise in those of us who are highly sensitive, earnest, hard working, or conscientious.

In highly sensitive people, there’s often an underlying hope, belief, or desire that because we’re hard working, conscientious, or sincere that we should be able to effect more change or make things different.

This can inflate our sense of power – as if our good intentions should be a protection against life’s difficulties, problems, or even our own fallibility. It can create a lot of pressure and feeling of responsibility.

The poignancy of self attack

Then, when problems do arise – when we experience a setback or go through a challenging time, when our dreams, ideals or expectations fall short, or when we make a mistake, we may turn against ourselves: “Why didn’t I prevent this from happening?”

It can easily send us into a place of collapse or a feeling of depression – a chronic sense that ‘I should be doing better.’

This pathway is understandable. Our hearts care, they love, they feel, they long to embody the ‘better angels of our nature.’

It’s painful to face our limits, it’s painful to face our reactivity, it’s painful to find ourselves in situations that are hard and difficult and lonely and challenging.

Of course we want to feel empowered to make things less painful or difficult!

It’s ironic and poignant – how our desire to protect ourselves, or our desire to protect our hopes and dreams can turn into aggression, into an attack against ourselves.

The shift from self criticism to self compassion

It’s a radical and powerful shift when we move from “Why am I not doing better?” t0 “Oh, this is really hard.” In this movement, we soften self blame and self criticism and lean into compassion, understanding and acceptance.

There’s a deeper embrace for how it really is right now – “Ah, yes, this is hard.”

It’s a big picture integration that takes in all the parts, all the players, all the complexity of being human.

This integration is a movement from fear – the sense that, “Something’s wrong, something’s terribly wrong!” – into love – “This is so tender and difficult. Oh, how it needs care and support.”

‘Touching the ground of our being’

In this turning from fear to love, we also turn to humility – what was once called ‘touching the ground of our being.’

Humility isn’t beating ourselves up – rather, it’s a warm, tender, wide and wooly embrace of our limits and of the complexity of being human. It reaches up and around and claims us as our own, as beloved, as rooted, as belonging.

In my own life, ironically, it was in my failures – my wrestling with eating disorders and food addiction, my wrestling with depression and anxiety – that I finally found the belonging I had sought in trying to ‘be better.’ The more I opened to my own humanity, the more I felt connected to others’.

I found my heart becoming tenderized towards my flaws, towards others’ foibles and failures, and more forgiving to both.

In my failure to achieve some mentalized ‘ideal’ I was connected to others, not separate from them.

Joining the human family

Through “failure” we join the giant umbrella of the human family:  every other being who has also failed to meet their own expectations, every other being who’s wanted to ‘do better.’

In this place of ground – ah, how human of us to make mistakes, to err, to experience difficulty – we find home:  a place open to us all.

And in this place, we find connection and support. When we move from “I should’ve done better” to “this is hard,” often the next step is, “I think I could use some more help.” Rather than trying harder, or beating ourselves up, we open and reach out.

We ask for help, we share our difficulties with another, we expose our vulnerability. Ironically, the hard time and the challenge gets easier, because we’re no longer trying to do it alone.

How beautiful – that it is through humility, compassion, ground – “Oh, this is really hard” – that we find a deeper connection – to ourselves, to others, to life.

To the ground of your being, and to the ground that holds you on this good day,

Karly

Wanting more hands on help?

If you want to read more about softening self criticism and self attack, you may enjoy this essay on practicing self compassion – “I will not make war against my own heart.”

You may also enjoy this post on softening the frustration and fear of overeating.

Nourishing your hopes for healing

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One of the most devastating consequences of shame, trauma, and loss is that we can internalize feelings of powerlessness or collapse – where we feel hopeless and impotent to effect any positive change in our lives.

You may feel stuck in a prolonged ‘freeze’ response, where you feel powerless to change, heal or grow. You may feel overwhelmed by feelings of rage, loathing, and frustration – frustration that often gets directed towards yourself and to your hurt and vulnerable parts that self soothe with food.

This can lead to feelings of despair, hopelessness and a sense that we’ll never heal – that our lives will never feel good or whole. It can be so painful and ‘sticky.’

The refusal to live a living death

The feelings are familiar. If you’ve been a reader of mine, you may have heard me share that alongside my years of eating disorders, I’ve also had a long journey through depression.

One of the greatest challenges with my depression is how I’ve felt trapped by it – as if I would never break free from the despair, darkness, and pain that engulfed me. I wondered if I would ever feel like ‘myself’ again.

I had an epiphany one day while listening to an On Being podcast, where Quaker writer, teacher, and educator Parker Palmer had this to say about his own journey through depression, and the difference between ‘true’ and ‘false’ suffering:

“I do not believe that the God who gave me life wants me to live a living death. I believe that the God who gave me life wants me to live life fully, and well.”

I felt all the hairs on my neck and arms stand up at attention as I acknowledged that I, too, wanted to live fully, and well.

Building the foundation for the new life you long for

It was about this time that I began creating my Book of Love. I didn’t know it at the time, but later, I realized that creating my book was a tangible way of stepping forward and claiming this wish:  that I refuse to live a living death.

Making my book became an important piece of my foundation for healing and growth.

I think that’s what happens when we begin to ‘play’ with our dreams in some tangible way, whenever we act on those desires of the heart – whether it’s in creating a book, writing, dancing, joining a group, taking a class and learning something new, or reaching out for help.

It begins to build a foundation towards the new life we long for.

Reclaiming your birthright

Every time I worked on my book, I was like the barren Queen of folk tales of old, who yearns for a child and dreams of this yet to be born one: breathing my desires into a cup, reaching towards my hopes and longings, planting them, and giving them life. (If you want to hear a gorgeous telling of this folk story, I invite you to listen to troubador Martin Shaw’s version here.)

These places that hold our dreams are like midwives – birthing and breathing new life into the tender and precious desires of the soul, desires that may feel buried, hopeless or forgotten.

What longs to be born in you?

You may be walking through your own hopelessness. You may be wrestling with depression, or traveling through a journey of grief, loss, or transition.

You may wonder about feeling joy again, and you, too, carry dreams and longings within you.

My book was a love letter to joy and new life. But your book may be different. Your book may be a love letter to hope.

Your book may be a love letter to a relationship that’s beginning, or ending; a love letter to the parts of yourself that have become lost; a love letter to a new desire – to write, to teach, to paint, to dance – that longs to express itself in the world; a love letter to a desire for a partner, a beloved; a love letter to heal a painful past; a love leader to a cause or passion or thirst for justice.

I encourage you to seek out and claim those things, places and people who support you in birthing these hopes and dreams. And if The Book of Love feels like one of those places, come on in and join us.

Class begins this coming Monday, October 22nd, which is also the last day to register.

You can read all the nitty gritty about what’s included here.

Should you have any questions or wonder if this class is the best fit for you, or questions on payment plans, please reach out – we’re here to help.

I’ll close with this thought from Joan Mills: “I’ve gone through life believing in the strength and competence of others; never in my own. Now, dazzled, I discover that my capacities are real. It’s like finding a fortune in the lining of an old coat.”

To the fortune in your coat,

Karly

Using play to support healing with food

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Today I want to write about an overlooked, but crucial tool on the journey of healing – play. I learned about play from my mentor in developmental psychology, Dr. Gordon Neufeld, and Hand in Hand Parenting.

Play brings to mind many things – delight, joy, physical movement, creativity, silliness and laughter. Yes, it is all those blessed things, and more.

In a healing context, play is using movement, creativity, joy, and expression to move the energy that is stored underneath overeating and binge eating.

Play helps you in a few, key tangible ways:

  • It reduces the load on the limbic system, calming the emotional brain and connecting you with your higher brain. This makes it easier to think, manage impulses and emotions, and pause in the face of a craving.
  • It reconnects you with joy, celebration, and delight – so important in any long term challenge or struggle
  • It nourishes resilience and growth, the new life you long for, that sense of “I can”
  • And play moves you out of the painful energy of collapse, despair and powerlessness that can arise with trauma or any long term struggle

Why we work instead of play

Play is so powerful, crucial for the healing journey, and often feels really good – yet it’s easy to overlook, because of its simplicity.

Most of us tend to work at healing – working on ourselves, our stuff, our development, our obligations. Most of us know how to work, and how to work hard, particularly those of us in Western cultures.

And when we’re caught in fight or flight – when we’re under stress, feel scared or threatened, or feel overwhelmed – all feelings that can arise with overeating – we tend to fall back on our typical habits, do what we’re already good at, or what we already know.

So we work!

It’s counterintuitive, but what’s often needed in the face of overwhelm is not more work, nor more of what we’re already competent at, but to turn towards those things that are more tender and young within us, those things that feel simple or small or less important.

I’m reminded of so many spiritual traditions that invite us to ‘be like a child,’ to come, play and rest.

Using play to support healing from trauma

The last benefit of play – moving out of collapse and despair – is crucial if you have a history of trauma. I have a trauma history myself, and understand and empathize with its pain.

One of the most painful and frustrating aspects of trauma is how disorienting it can feel when it takes over the mind, body, and nervous system.

When this happens, we can collapse into a sense of powerlessness – a feeling that we can never change, life can never change, and that new life and healing is impossible.

We can fuse with the feelings of trauma and believe they are us, rather than a reflection of something that happened to us.

I remember how one healer put it to me:  all emotional pain comes from a feeling of powerlessness.

Play is a powerful way to move through this energy of collapse, to move the emotions, and to healthfully separate out from the trauma (where you no longer identify the trauma or trauma response as ‘you’) – and in a way that feels safe, deeply respectful and inviting to the tenderness and vulnerability that lies under our traumatized parts.

Respecting the fierce, tender soul

In my experience, a playful approach feels much more supportive, collaborative, and respectful than a ‘beat down our defenses’ or confrontational approach to healing. We make room for all of ourselves, and all of our parts.

Through play, through compassion, through tender holding, we come to re-embody ‘the deeper story’ that lives underneath the surface stories we tell about ourselves – the story viewed through the eyes of wholeness, and Love.

The Book of Love – reconnecting with your deeper story

It’s something to wonder about, this idea of play. You might ask yourself – what if I brought more play into the journey? What if I worked less on myself? What might that feel or look like?

If you’re wanting group support and a structured way to bring play into your relationship with food, loss and grief, depression, or any long term challenge, you might like my upcoming course, The Book of Love.

The Book of Love is different than other courses I’ve offered as it’s intentionally designed to be playful, experiential, and to gently support the healing process. (You can read about my experience in creating a book of love here.)

The 5 areas of separation and reconnection

In this course, you’ll be making your own personalized book of healing – a collage or scrapbook of meaning that is personal to you. I have stories, poems, and images to share – and you’ll also be finding your own, what makes your heart sing.

You’ll explore and play with the five main areas where we experience separation and stuckness in the wake of grief, loss, food compulsions, depression, or other life challenges:

  • connection to our hearts and to those parts that have been outcast
  • connection with others – with the greater community and the greater world
  • connection to grief, to those places that have known loss
  • connection to our gifts, dreams and longings
  • and connection to beauty, joy and celebration

Approaching these tender things in a spirit of play – one step removed – often brings insights and emergence that may be hidden if we’re working on ourselves. It is a mystery what gives the soul the safety to arise, and speak.

Learn more about The Book of Love

If this interests you, you can learn more about the course details and watch a helpful video here.

There’s a mysterious alchemy that arises whenever the heart takes the leap and commits to something it feels called to. Something begins to take seed, and to grow. I’ve found this to be true in many of my healing journeys.

In that spirit, may your heart lead you to the many ways that play, and tenderness, and refuge are calling to you, and to your embodied humanity.

The love that is up to the challenge

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You can trust where and how the river is carrying you.

Seeing with ‘soft eyes’

This week I got an email from a reader, Emily, who spoke about the transformation she’s experiencing in ‘seeing her eating disorder with self compassion, with kind eyes’ – not an easy thing to do.

Any place where we feel stuck, reactive, or compulsive can bring up shame, self loathing, or criticism.

But underneath overdoing, underdoing or any kind of compulsive ‘doing’ with food lies something tender:  places where we felt shamed, overwhelmed, scared, hurt, or neglected – and all the myriad coping strategies that we erected in an attempt to keep ourselves safe, to care for our pain, and to manage the emotional turmoil that arose as a result.

Fostering compassion and safety with art and story

Sometimes it can feel impossible – or difficult – to access this tenderness towards ourselves and our human frailties. I often find that this tenderness arises in surprising ways, and often when we’re not ‘working’ directly on the food.

In fact, I encourage folks not to spend so much time or effort working on the food. In my experience, as we begin to access a greater sense of compassion, and as we have a safe, loving container to ‘hold’ the stored feelings under the food – like fear, anger, grief, or shame – the feelings flow and unfold, the compulsive behaviors begin to fall away, and our natural leadership, competence and confidence arises.

There are many ways to foster compassion and create safety. One of my favorites is through art and story.

Making art, watching movies or TV shows that move you, listening to music, dancing, singing, creating, playing, moving the body physically, and even lovemaking can be ways to both access your inner wellspring of compassion and to move the stuck feelings that live in the body and nervous system.

In today’s post, I share how this process has unfolded for me through an art project. I hope it inspires you as you find your own ways of creating, discovering, and unfolding into your ‘soft eyes,’ into the vulnerable parts of your being.

When Our Fears ‘Bless and Keep’ Us

This year I’ve been creating what I call “The Book of Love.” The title is a nod to a Peter Gabriel song (I’ve loved Peter Gabriel’s music since high school) and to the book’s contents – a blank book that I’ve filled with poems, bird feathers, leaves, buds, shoots, seeds and other offerings from the animals and foliage around my home, quotes, cards, photos, images, and art – anything, really, that moves and speaks to me and asks to be enfolded into its pages.

I began making the book this winter in a whim of inspiration while watching one of my favorite TV shows, Call the Midwife. In case you haven’t seen it, Call the Midwife is a BBC historical drama that takes place in one of the poorest parts of London in the 50s and 60s, where nuns and midwives deliver and care for the babies, children, women and families of the neighborhood.

It is an understatement to say that I love the show and its compassion, humor, and keen embrace of the human experience.

In one episode, a nun quotes Hildegard of Bingen, a mystic from the 12th century – “God hugs you. You are encircled by the arms of the mystery of God. You shine so finely it surpasses understanding” – that left me crying on my couch, stunned.

I realized I wanted to write it down, and that I wanted to read it regularly.

So I decided to create a book.

When grief comes calling

The quote, and my book, were timely for me. Historically, the winter time is often the hardest time of the year for me, as I often experience some winter depression.

But there was something different about this year – perhaps it was the changing seasons of my teenage children leaving home, or the scandals and #metoo movement that touched some of the scars underneath my own relationship with food, or a low thyroid that needed rest – that led to a more pronounced pain and fatigue.

With the depression, grief had come to visit. It asked, and asked, and then asked again for my care and attention. It asked for me to enter it fully. And it asked for me to trust where it was taking me.

In this landscape of sorrow, sadness and loss, The Book of Love became my way of singing my grief song.

Falling into beauty

So I gathered quotes. I put in a holiday card I got from a dear cousin who has suffered tremendously from schizophrenia. I put in a note my Dad sent along with a check for a child’s birthday gift. I put in a shopping list my mom left on the counter the last time she visited. For whatever reason the sight of that list – ziploc baggies, sponges, kitchen scrubby – things I am often out of when she comes to visit, and things she often picks up for me – leaves my belly soft and tender.

I put in something I had written to my college magazine about struggling with depression and loneliness as an undergrad.

I put in snippets from favorite novels.

As I filled my book’s pages, I felt something moving and shifting inside: an expanding awareness and heightened insight into my own being, like shining a light in a dark room. If you’d asked me, before making this book, I’d have told you that I’d entered this room many times before, and that I knew its landscape well.

I thought I’d entered this room enough – at least enough to metabolize the major griefs of my life so far. I thought that the particular shape, mystery and landscape of my grief were sufficiently known to me.

But these past few months, I’ve come to know its contours and contents with a new intimacy. It was like learning the landscape of a lover’s body – where you learn and love its particulars, what makes this body, this body; how it likes to be held, or touched, or not; and what makes this heart, this heart.

And like a lover, I fell. I fell hard into beauty.

Touching the body of pain with reverence

All of a sudden I could see:  all the ways I have felt so particularly – of this specific thing, of that – and unparticularly – afraid; how deeply I felt that I had to do everything right without any help; the rigidity that arose from this fear; all the ways I thought I should’ve known better; all the ways I blamed myself; all the ways I withdrew from fear of criticism, or shame; all the ways I have been afraid to trust; all the ways I have held myself back or believed that I had to do or be more.

Wave after wave, my eyes were opened. I saw and saw and saw. I was astounded again and again in wonderment – “Oh my goodness! Do you see this? And this?” – touching the body of my pain with tenderness, reverence, and awe.

So many soft spots.

Fear will ‘bless and keep you’

Meditation teacher Tara Brach says that when we directly touch our suffering and sadness, our natural response is compassion. Something in us cracks open – and this ‘something’ holds us in a warm embrace. You feel a tenderness – kind eyes – towards your own being.

It is tender, poignant, malleable, soft.

It is astoundingly beautiful.

Here’s another quote from “The Book of Love,” courtesy of poet William Stafford: “What you fear will not go away; it will take you into yourself and bless you and keep you.”

Before this winter, if you would’ve asked me if fear or grief could bless and keep you, I don’t think I would’ve agreed. But I came to experience this blessing for myself. And through it, my pain – or rather, how I see my pain – has changed.

The deeper story

When people share their food stories with me, I feel the tenderness that lies underneath the food. I see the beauty, courage and strength. I invite them to trust the deeper story – the one that is writ underneath the bingeing, the diets, the obsession with food. I invite them to trust their soft spots.

I think we can trust the way the soul guides us into this deeper story. The journey may arise through some uncomfortable messengers – grief, fear, anger, sadness are common ones – and also through art, through telling our story, and through listening to another’s story and seeing ourselves in it.

No matter what form it takes, when we touch our wounds directly, when we dress and tend to them like something precious – something beloved – we come to a new intimacy and understanding. We realize that they are not what we think they are – and that neither are we.

Perhaps this is the doorway to forgiveness.

I don’t know where my book and the grief will ultimately lead me, for the end has not been written. But I do trust that they are leading me somewhere. Like a river, I yield to the movement of the waves, to the current, to the ebb and flow, to the up and down, to the intimacy, the heartache, and to the shore.

As a friend of mine said, “I trust where you’re being led. I trust Her.”

I’ll end this note with one last quote from my book.

This is from Kate Braestrup – a writer, chaplain, and community minister who, when suddenly widowed with four small children, fulfilled her husband’s dream of becoming a minister, eventually serving the game wardens of Maine:  “You can trust human beings with grief….Walk fearlessly into the house of mourning, for grief is just love squaring up to its oldest enemy. And after all these mortal human years, love is up to the challenge.”

To your deeper story, and to the love that is up to the challenge,

Karly

‘Breathe and push’ – transforming food pain into new life

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When I have a spacious weekend afternoon, I enjoy taking a few hours to clean and care for my home. There is something about dusting what is dirty and beautifying my space that is deeply nourishing to me – offering a physical expression of my gratitude and love towards the home where I live and to the objects that I treasure.

Likewise, lately I have been tinkering with tasks of mending and repairing – sewing missing buttons, repairing a ripped seam on a pillow that’s been leaking stuffing in my living room, and taking larger repair projects to a local seamstress to be patched and put back together again.

Like cleaning, there is something deeply nourishing about repairing what had once been broken, and breathing new life into that which had been unused, perhaps over used!, or cast off – especially in a society so fixated on acquiring the new, buying more, and throwing out what is no longer ‘good.’

Mending as an expression of love

Cleaning, repairing, mending: these things are not just tasks or chores, but qualities – expressions of love.

As expressions of love, they can shed light on how we approach anything that needs repairing or that feels no longer ‘good:’ how do we care for own wounds, for those things that need our care, warmth, and tending?

How do we approach our own opened seams and missing buttons – the tears in the fabric of our being? How do we approach each other’s?

Walking into the deeper story

Right now, a person very dear to me is struggling. It is painful, and at times alarming to walk beside them.

But while my heart breaks to see their suffering and pain, I do not see my loved one as troubled, or broken, or damaged, but merely a beloved soul who is feeling overwhelmed, suffering, and needing more support – as anyone might feel or need when experiencing pain.

When my heart is open, I sense the deeper story: their being is being birthed into a greater fullness and wholeness. As my friend Ashley says, something is being born here in the dark. Or, as activist Valarie Kaur, founder of Revolutionary Love puts it – “Breathe and push.”

“Breathe and push”

When something hurts, and when we are in pain, it is our natural, normal human response to feel broken and to then move to fix it – or to fix whatever we believe is its cause, like ourselves.

But if we can trust that something is being born when we are in pain or distress, then we can make room for our experience exactly as it is. Our experience, our pain isn’t wrong. There is room for it to exist, and for it to give birth to whatever it is giving birth to.

As poet John O’ Donohue said, it is a ‘reverence of approach.’

Curduroy and coming home

One of my favorite examples of this ‘reverent approach’ can be found in a children’s story, Corduroy, by beloved children’s author and illustrator Don Freeman.

Corduroy is a curious stuffed bear who lives in a department store downtown – back in the days when many cities had a multi story, downtown department store where you could buy a Sunday dress, sheets for your bed, and yes, a beloved toy, all at the same place.

One day, a young girl, Lisa, sees Corduroy and wants him to be her very own bear. When she shares this with her mother, her mother says no, that she is tired of shopping, that it is time to go home, that Lisa has plenty of stuffed animals – and besides, one of the buttons on Corduroy’s overalls are missing.

Thus ensues an adventure as Corduroy searches for his missing button – for he so wants to be taken home, played with and loved. Ah, don’t we all?

And don’t we all have moments upon moments upon moments when someone has told us in certain terms that we have missing buttons – all the ways we’re not good enough, or are too much, or should be different; all the ways our bodies or our feelings or our needs are not okay – buttons we search and search and search to find or fill or fix, for we so want to be taken home and loved.

In the morning, Lisa comes to buy this little bear, missing button and all.

One of the most poignant moments in the story is when Lisa, after bringing Curduroy home to her apartment, sews on his missing button. She says to him: “I like you the way you are…But you’ll be more comfortable with your shoulder strap fastened.”

So simple, so true.

When our pain becomes bread and water

This story has long struck me as an example of how to approach those things that are small, tender, and vulnerable in ourselves – those things that long for welcome – those things in need of repair, healing, and care.

We are loved just as we are. We are not irrevocably damaged or broken because we need help, support or care: repair, healing, a sewn on button, or when, like the velveteen rabbit, we become shabby and worn from good use.

And like Corduroy, and like my loved one, and like our relationship with food, we may feel more comfortable with two working shoulder straps instead of one.

It’s a question of kindness – attuning to what is needed, and caring for what hurts or chafes or is ill fitting – not of worth.

In my experience, it is through grief and forgiveness that the shrill, hard edges of “I’m broken” start to shift, moving us into a place of softness, where we can see and touch and feel and taste and become intimate with our pain and heartache without the layers of blame, judgment and “I should’ve known better.” It’s what enables us to relate differently to those missing or broken buttons.

We know – deeply know – and it sinks in how much it – we – have hurt.

In this alchemy, our pain becomes bread, and food, and water – a meal that leads us to the table of the sacred within ourselves, the Love that resides at the core of our being. It is a gateway to tenderness, to care, and when needed, to lovingly and tenderly sew on the button on our shoulder straps.

I’ll end with a quote that a student once shared in a class, and one that I think you may like, too. This is from Matthew Brensilver.

“Self compassion is about gently opening to the exquisite tenderness of being human….In the moment of self harshness, we are confronted by our imperfections, our foibles, the limitations of our control and will – and in this confrontation, our heart closes. We forget that in these moments, we’re actually seeing something important and universal about the human condition. Moment by moment, life either softens or hardens the heart. We’re training ourselves so that in these moments, the heart relaxes and we learn something important about being human.”

Wanting more hands on help with food?

If you’re needing hands on help with food, here are ways I’m offering support this month:

The Heart of Food:  this is a new, foundational course to soften anxiety, shame and self judgment with food. If you’ve been interested in my work, but were unsure where to start, this course may be a great fit for you. It will help you in 3 key areas: softening shame, self judgment and blame around your food struggles; gaining understanding and practice in caring for the key emotions and needs that drive you to food, and growing resilience, where you feel more capable, and less victimized, by food.

This do at home course includes monthly Q&As where you can ask questions, connect with others, and get support. The next Q&A is September 19.

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