Explore my poems, articles, blog posts, and excerpts from my upcoming book, When Food is Your Mother, below.
Articles from the When Food is Your Mother substack
Having a safe space to land
What if cravings are prayers in disguise - a plea from a part of us, asking for help?
Our nervous systems are always looking for a safe space to land – for the ‘most nourishing relationship that they can imagine’ – a place where we can come down and connect with others.
This is especially true when we’re feeling distressed. Our nervous systems attune to subtle signals in others – tone of voice, a feeling of warmth, body posture, soft eyes – looking for someone to accompany us.
Poems from O Nobly Born: The Letters of Growing Humankindness
Picking Up the Pieces
Sometimes you wish your life were as tidy
as a jigsaw puzzle, where each piece fits
and finds their place. You want to feel the release
as the jumble of colors come together
into an ordered whole. But it's tension, not ease,
that holds the pieces together – a puzzle needs
enough difficulty to be fun. You think
a piece fits here but it lives somewhere else.
You get stuck, swap two pieces, and the puzzle
flows again. When there's an odd shaped piece
you get confused, wonder if it's in the wrong box.
But as the picture takes shape you discover how
even this stray piece belongs. This fills you with delight,
how something you thought was wrong turns out
to be right, how the puzzle needs every piece
to make sense. After the puzzle's done these
strange pieces are the ones you remember,
not the ones you assembled quickly out of the box.
As the pieces click into place you wonder about
everything sideways in your life, the disordered
pieces that can't possibly fit. You wonder
what picture they're creating, what whole
they complete, and how you might fit, too.
You live the puzzle of your life and wonder
what beauty will appear as each difficult,
mysterious, unloved piece finds their home.
This is a collage I made about healing
Blog articles
Accepting where you are
There's something so vulnerable about accepting ourselves where we are – especially when 'where we are' isn’t a place we’d like to be.
Often we want to be over there – wherever ‘there’ is. 'There’ is often a future time when we feel more peaceful, more at rest, or free from feelings of shame, fear or sadness. And we can try so hard to get there!
The pressure to perform, to create a different experience for ourselves, or to ‘meet a standard’ is one of the most painful side effects of being on a healing journey ... Finish reading here
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