Feeding Ourselves

We were the girls of margarine tubs and Tab soda. Snackwells cookies. Special K for dinner. Nair for girls who wear short shorts. The Jordache jeans that required us to lie down on our beds to zip up, then stand up stiff as a board and say they fit.

We became the women who pinched the soft part of their stomachs in fluorescent dressing rooms and said I have to lose weight. I'll start tomorrow.

Tomorrow has been going on for fifty years.

I want to let go of this.

Feeding Ourselves is my ongoing writing project—an in-depth revision of the blaring loud story that my body has never been good enough to rest.

50 years of feeling like I needed to change my body before I could feel good in it? That is ending now, as I slowly unravel—one essay a week—why I've always heard so much food noise and held my breath while I sucked in my stomach.

I use the structure of the hero's journey—that universal roadmap for the inward journey—to unravel my stories. I'm writing particular, focused essays about each step of the journey—the call, the refusal, the crossing, the long middle where nothing is certain, and the slow return—as I reach it.

Some weeks I feel free. Some weeks the old voices get loud right. I write it all down. Every time I have published an essay, I am letting go of something that no longer serves me.

I am doing hard work, writing my way through the journey. I would love to have your company. I have a feeling this might be your journey too.

The first four essays are free. After that, the essays continue for paid subscribers only — five dollars a month.

First essay: Feeding Myself

Second essay: The Slow Way

Third essay: On Why I am Writing This

Fourth essay: Weight Watchers, 1984