Feeding the elusive emptiness

Do you ever feel like you have this empty space in your stomach that keeps crying to be filled up? Do you feel that if you just treat yourself to your favorite comfort foods that you will feel warm, fuzzy and content? Eat and all will be well! Eat and the world will become safe and non-threatening.

As women, we have been socialized as the meal provider for the family from planning the meals, shopping for quality foods, preparing delectable, healthy meals, creating a warm secure environment around meal time, to cleaning up. We are taught to not only show our love for others by preparing food, but to receive our self worth by meal preparation. As Susie Orbach states in Fat is a Feminist Issue, “women are all tied up with food because it is our cultural imperative to feed everybody”.

“Men’s nutritional and emotional needs have been met by women since birth”, states Christiane Northup, M.D. Underneath all our tribal scripting, women feel that only the man is worth the effort! As I explored my programming, I realized that although I have a husband who will gladly grocery shop, prepare the meals, and clean up, I still feel that somehow I am neglecting my role as a woman if I slack off. Pretty scary! Pretty deep programming! With two income families where the woman is spending as much time in the work force as the man, duties need to be shared! However, I know many working women who also have to grocery shop and prepare meals after long days at the office! It is this old scripting that the marriage exists to support the man. It is buried deep within our cells.

With all of these underlying messages that food equates to love, no wonder so many people have weight issues. We are attempting to fill up our emptiness with food. I became painfully aware the other day that my love of certain foods that trigger my mom and the warmth of her home with fresh baked goods, plays right into this scenario of full belly equals love. Mom filled us up with food not only because it was her duty, but because it was the only way she knew to express love. My belly was full of food prepared from a heart space. My emptiness was for a heart connection with my parents to be appreciated and loved for who I was, not for who they wanted me to be or who they were comfortable around.

I now know that it is my responsibility to identify and to fill these needs. I know that I need to ask myself what is eating me. I need to crawl into this bottomless, black void and listen. Not all hungers are for food! Is it my emotional hunger that needs addressed? Have my physical hungers been met? What about my mental, social, and sexual hungers?

We must address all of our hungers. As I age, I need to identify new ways to create physical exercise to achieve the movement my body craves for wellness. I no longer have the desire to spend time in the gym. My body is craving something else. I also start to spend more time at home in the hot Arizona summers making social functions a rare occasion thus sabotaging my communal hungers. To feed my spiritual hungers, I need to be pursuing my dream of empowering women and my movement of “journey of a million hearts”. I need to be interacting with others facilitating empowerment and change in the collective. To feed my sexual hungers, I need to allow my creative juices to flow in my approach to life and with my business. It is amazing when I address all my needs and attend to them, food takes a back seat.

Are all of your hungers being fed? Are you eating out of boredom? Do you need to make some changes in your life? Are you eating out of fear? Is it too scary to make the changes that you need to make in your life to move ahead? Do you eat to numb your feelings because they are too painful too deal with? Do you eat to mask memories of abuse to hide under layers of fat so no one else will ever violate you again?

Deal honestly with what the emptiness says to you. Food will only numb the issue. Being overweight is not about food, but about dealing with buried emotional issues. We cannot successfully address weight issues with diet and food control. We need to focus on the bottom line. What anger or pain are you attempting to bury under layers of food?

Look deep within your soul to see what you have been numbing with your comfort foods. What is eating you? Journal, create ceremony, & get professional help to deal with deep emotional issues. Know that they can be dealt with once you decide to identify them and take action.

The emptiness in your belly is crying out for you to love and accept yourself just as you are now. It is saying, “please no more food!” Your body needs something that you are capable of giving to yourself that requires nothing more than a shift in perception; to love yourself unconditionally just as you are now and to know that you are a special being with unique gifts for the collective. Know that you are not alone with this issue. This is only one addiction people use to bury pain. It crosses all economic barriers, all genders, and all body types. Body weight is not a determinant in food addiction. Even thin and average weight people can be using food to suppress emotional issues. Make this the year to identify and to fill all of your hungers!

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