Being Hot Fudge Sundaes

Michelle Fairchild

Here is another excerpt from Geneen Roth’s new book Women Food and God. I have ordered this book and am looking forward to its arrival. When I read the first paragraph of this section of her book entitled Being Hot Fudge Sundaes it reminded me of something I had written myself about being defined by numbers and yet how we are so much more than our physical bodies.

Being Hot Fudge Sundaes

“It’s never been true, not anywhere at anytime, that the value of a soul, of a human spirit is dependent on a number on a scale. We are unrepeatable beings of light and space and water who need these physical vehicles to get around, and when we start defining ourselves by that which can be measured or weighed, something deep within us rebels.
We don’t want to eat hot fudge sundaes as much as we want our lives to be hot fudge sundaes. We want to come home to ourselves. We want to know wonder and mystery and possibility, and if instead, we’ve given up on ourselves, if we’ve vacated our longings, if we’ve left possibility behind, we will feel an emptiness we can’t name. We will feel as if something is missing because something is missing—the connection to the source of all sweetness, all love, all power, all peace, all joy, all stillness. Since we had it once–we were born with and as it–it can’t help but haunt us. It’s as if our cells remember that home is a resplendent and jeweled palace but we’ve been living as beggars for so long that we are no longer certain if the palace was a dream. And if it was a dream, then at least we can eat the memory of it.
During the first few bites, and before we get dazed by overeating, everything we want is possible. Everything we’ve lost is here now. And so we settle for the concrete version of our lost selves in the form of food. And once food has become synonymous with goodness or love or fulfillment, you cannot help but choose it, no matter how high the stakes are. No matter if your doctor tells you that you won’t live another month at this weight. Because when you are lost, when you are homeless, when you’ve spent years separated from who you are, threats of failed hearts or joint pressure don’t move you. Dying does not frighten those who are already half-dead. The most challenging part of any system that addresses weight-related issues is that unless it also addresses the part of you that wants something you can’t name—the heart of your heart, not the size of your thighs–it won’t work. We don’t want to be thin because thinness is inherently life-affirming or lovable or healthy. If these were true, there would be no tribes in Africa in which women are fat and regal and long-living. There would be no history of matriarchies in which women’s fecundity and pulchritude were worshipped.

We want to be thin because thinness is the purported currency of happiness and peace and contentment. And although that currency is a lie—the tabloids are filled with skinny miserable celebrities—most systems of weight loss fail because they don’t live up to their promise: weight loss does not make people happy. Or peaceful. Or content. Being thin does not address the emptiness that has no shape or weight or name. Even a wildly successful diet is a colossal failure because inside the new body is the same sinking heart. Spiritual hunger can never be solved on the physical level.”

Women Food and God

Michelle Fairchild

Official Description of the book Women Food and God by Geneen Roth

“No matter how sophisticated or wealthy or broke or enlightened you are, how you eat tells all.

If you suffer about your relationship with food — you eat too much or too little, think about what you will eat constantly or try not to think about it at all — you can be free. Just look down at your plate. The answers are there. Don’t run. Look. Because when we welcome what we most want to avoid, we contact the part of ourselves that is fresh and alive. We touch the life we truly want and evoke divinity itself.

Since adolescence, Geneen Roth has gained and lost more than a thousand pounds. She has been dangerously overweight and dangerously underweight. She has been plagued by feelings of shame and self-hatred and she has felt euphoric after losing a quick few pounds on a fad diet. Then one day, on the verge of suicide, she did something radical: She dropped the struggle, ended the war, stopped trying to fix, deprive and shame herself. She began trusting her body and questioning her beliefs.
It worked. And losing weight was only the beginning.
She wrote about her discoveries in When Food Is Love, her first New York Times bestseller. She gave huge numbers of women their first insights into compulsive eating and she changed huge numbers of lives for the better.
Now, after more than three decades of studying, teaching and writing about what drives our compul-sions with food, Geneen adds a profound new dimension to her work in Women, Food and God. She begins with her most basic concept: The way you eat is inseparable from your core beliefs about being alive. Your relationship with food is an exact mirror of your feelings about love, fear, anger, meaning, transformation and, yes, even God. But it doesn’t stop there. Geneen shows how going beyond both the food and feelings takes you deeper into realms of spirit and soul to the bright center of your own life.
With penetrating insight and irreverent humor, Roth traces food compulsions from subtle beginnings to unexpected ends. She teaches personal examination, showing readers how to use their relationship with food to discover the fulfillment they long for.
Your relationship with food, no matter how conflicted, is the doorway to freedom, says Roth. What you most want to get rid of is itself the doorway to what you want most: the demystification of weight loss and the luminous presence that so many of us call “God.”
Packed with revelations on every page, this book is a knock-your-socks-off ride to a deeply fulfilling relationship with food, your body…and almost everything else. Women, Food and God is, quite simply, a guide for life.”
Click here to watch a short video of author Geneen Roth talking about the book.

Earth Day – April 22nd

Michelle Fairchild


Reflections on Earth Day

This Earth Day may you take some time to close your eyes, breathe, feel the sun on your face, a light breeze caress your hair, the vibration of the living earth beneath your feet, and your life force flowing and beating strong within your body. Whether you dig in the dirt, lie on the grass, swim in a lake, walk through a forest, take the time today to connect with Mother Earth. Feel and recognize how she supports all of us Earth children with the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink. This planet we all come home is a miraculous creation, as are we all.

This planet and the beauty of her nature have left me with feelings of awe again and again. Nature has also been a place for me to turn when life has been difficult and painful. Sometimes rooting myself in nature has been the best kind of encouragement. Even in the middle of turmoil I find that my problems will fade for a spell when I work in the garden, dirt embedding itself underneath my fingernails. Working the soil and planting seeds or bulbs always holds the promise of new growth, new life and beauty yet to come.

In my neighborhood there is this one bush that is ablaze with yellow blooms for a short time frame every spring. Every year I admire it’s beauty and this year I was struck by a deeper meaning to it all, which was recognizing the eternal optimism of nature. Every year the flowers bloom again. No matter what has come to pass throughout the year we can always count on there to be new sprouts and new blooms. It reminds me that even though there are ups and downs to life that we just have to remember that spring will always show up and the flowers will always bloom. We can count on it.

A Letter From the Future

Michelle Fairchild

Dear Me,

How ironic that I am writing to you just a couple days away from your 40th birthday. Just imagine – in 40 years you’ll be my age – a whopping 80 years-old.

I am writing to share some thoughts with you. This isn’t advice – because really advice isn’t always worth much. You really just need to trust yourself and your inner intuition. Follow your heart and listen to your gut.

What I want to share first is to take care of your self, so that you can experience the joy of good health for as long as possible. Trust me, you want to be able to still be active and doing things forty years from now. So if you want to be active in your future you need to be active NOW.

I am also going to tell you something you already know, which is that you are in touch with something greater, that something that connects us all. It is a web of magic that permeates the universe. Stay open to new experiences, to magic and special connections. Synchronicity happens because you draw those experiences to you. You are indeed powerful.

Don’t be afraid. Don’t let fear control you. Just stare it down, hop over it, walk by it or smack it out of your way. And failure. Ha! Laugh at that one. It is an illusion. There really is no such thing as failing. In fact what people often discover is the old cliche that when one door closes another does indeed open and what is through that next door is so much better than what you left behind.

What about all your creativity? So what if someone doesn’t like what you write or paint. Ask yourself what it does for you and your spirit. If it brings you joy, a sense of fulfillment or completion, then keep on doing it. Odds are someone else will probably like it too anyways.

Dance more. Don’t be so serious. Laugh, laugh, laugh and then laugh some more. Be happy. Enjoy the ride of life. Always stay in touch with your inner child because she is still in there. Play!!!!!

Trust in this great big amazing swirling spiraling universe and always be open to loving and being loved in return.

If you were to write a letter from your future self at the age of 80 to your current self, what would you write?

The Looking Glass

Michelle Fairchild

Just some food for thought that I offer up today…

Excerpt from Sacred Circles: A Guide to Creating Your Own Women’s Spirituality Group

“There could hardly be a hotter topic for a group of women then beauty. most of us are obsessed with how we look and how far we deviate from how we think we would like to look. Addicted to perfection, we have become merciless self-critics. We have heard a million times the old adage that “beauty is only skin deep,” but we have never really internalized it. Instead, we believe that our self-worth is directly correlated to our waist size or the amount of cellulite in our saddlebags. What other adages and myths concerning beauty are we under the spell of?

It can be very liberating to hear other women share their obsessions, thoughts, and feelings about beauty. We begin to hear ourselves in others—others we know to be perfectly beautiful. only then do we see a glimmer of the absurdity of our self-delusions. Bettie is our bonafide college beauty queen—Hopskinsville, Kentucky, 1952. To hear this still gorgeous sixty-plus-year-old woman describe her negative feelings about her body is to see the real insanity of the obsession. Listening to her discuss this un-winnable dilemma of never-thin-enough, never-young-enough, never-(place your favorite self-recrimination here)-enough makes us all want to wriggle free of our old skins—too tight now, too made up, too coiffed—and enjoy the gift of who we really are. Truly, there is no ugliness in a circle of happy women, especially when lit by candles!”
Do you think you can wriggle free of your un-winnable obsessions? Wouldn’t it be empowering and liberating to just enjoy ourselves how we are right now? Why can’t we? What is really standing in our way?

Prayers of the Cosmos

Michelle Fairchild

I attended a workshop/talk with author Susan G. Wooldridge this week. She wrote the books Poem Crazy and Foolsgold (which I posted an excerpt from just a few days ago. It was a wonderful workshop, though much, much too short. I could have spent a much longer time hearing more from Susan about writing and it would have been delightful to have had more time to play more with words and learn more about the other attendees.

Susan spoke of many things last night in the short time frame and in my notes I jotted down several titles of books that were recommended. There was one in particular that drew my attention. It was called Prayers of the Cosmos.

Susan shared briefly how the author had gone back to find the original Lords Prayer in Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus and the people of his time in that part of the land.

Susan knew part of the prayer in Aramaic by heart and it simply sounded so beautiful to hear the words spoken aloud. I went in search of finding the whole prayer and it was available for viewing on Amazon.com.

First I will share here the Aramaic version, then the translation direct from Aramaic and lastly the King James Version. Comparing the King James version side by side with the Aramaic translation is fascinating. One would think that they couldn’t possibly be translations from the same document. Yet that is the case.

The Lords Prayer in Aramaic
Abwoon d ‘bwashmaya
Neth qadash shmakh
Teytey malkuthakh
Nehwey tzevyanach aykanna
d’bwashmaya aph b’arha
Hawrlan lachma d ‘ sunquanan yaomana
Washboglan khaubayn (wakhtahayn) ay kana
daph khnan shboqan l ‘ khayyabayn
Wela tahlan l’nesyuaa
Ela patzan min bisha
Metol dilakhie malkutha urahayala

wateshbukhta l’ahlam almin.
Ameya

Aramaic to English Translation

~ Our Birth In Unity ~

O Birther! Father-Mother of the Cosmos,
you create all that moves in light.

O Thou! The Breathing Life of all Creator
of the Shimmering Sound that touches us.

Respiration of all worlds, we hear you
breathing – in and out – in silence.

Source of Sound in the roar and the whisper in the
breeze and the whirlwind, we hear your name.

Radiant One: You shine within us out side us
– even darkness shines – when we remember.

Names of names our small identity unravels
in your, you give it back as a lesson.

Wordless Action – Silent Potency — where
ears and eyes awaken – there heaven comes.


O Birther! Father-Mother of the Cosmos!

King James Version

Our Father which are in heaven
Hallowed be they name.
Thy kingdom come
Thy will be done in Earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our debts,
as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory, for ever.
Amen

What do you think?

Thoughts on Emptiness

Michelle Fairchild

I wanted to share a brief excerpt from a book called foolsgold by Susan G. Wooldridge.

“The creative, it seems, is spawned from emptiness. Giving over to silence, waiting, allowing, listening. Coming to emptiness may mean coming through grief. Something has been lost, a marriage, a child, a house, a city, a world. An idea of who we are. Whatever seems familiar, tried and true.

In the emptiness we might get an inkling—as if something lights up and twinkles—of how we’ll begin to form and open to who we’re becoming, who we most truly are. We need to leave space both for what we’ll discover and what will emerge to discover us.”

At the end of this particular chapter she shares a thoughtful poem by Rumi.

The human being is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes as
an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who sweep
your house empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you our for some new delight.

Letting Creativity Unfurl

Michelle Fairchild
I am working on a series of paintings. They are for a special long-term project. Long-term because I think it will take me a while to complete the whole series. I keep telling myself to just take it one step at a time, or in this case, just one painting at a time. I also remind myself that the joy comes from the journey and the act of creating and painting. Sometimes I am not quite sure what will appear on the canvas. I just start and let the creative process unfurl and take on a life of its’ own. I am reminded of an affirmation that says “Creator, you take care of the quality and I’ll take care of the quantity.”

I am still not quite finished with Trust.
I have let this one sit for awhile.
It doesn’t feel quite finished to me yet
so I am awaiting that final inspiration.
The swirls and the flowers just don’t seem quite right to me.

Trust

Here is my mandala style painting called Divine Connection.

Divine Connection
I also have some touch up work to do on Turiya,
which I began painting just last night.
Turiya is the elusive fourth level of human consciousness.
It is supposed to be a state of pure consciousness.
This too is a mandala painting.


Turiya
Lastly I also included the sketch I have ready for the next one
called Ahimsa, which is a Sanskrit term that means “do no harm.”
I traced my left hand as well as each of my daughters left hands.
I am hoping to have some time today while my
daughters nap to begin painting this one.

Ahimsa