Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything

and everything changes. You used to feel guilty about the treats you ate because it felt like you were “cheating” on your diet, or you mindlessly ate it up so fast it barely registered, or you lost control and overconsumed,

Food freedom happened when I took the time to ask myself what I really wanted and made a conscious, deliberate decision in the moment.

Finally one day came a shifting-into-place, an awakening: not “right” compared to what? Oh, my word, I’d been trying to make canned Pillsbury biscuits! Then came an exquisite moment of actually tasting my biscuits without comparing them to some (previously hidden) standard. They were wheaty, flaky, buttery, “sunny, earthy, real” (as Rilke’s sonnet

Caught in the trance of unworthiness, our desires fixate on soothing, once and for all, our anxiety about imperfection. We strive to tie up all the loose ends and to avoid making mistakes, even though we know both are impossible. We want to feel “good enough” all the time in our work, parenting, relationships, health, appearance, and life. We want