how i learned how to eat

my mom taught me my way into the world.

she was my first step

she was my first word

and she was my first bite.

She fed me constantly, always making sure I had more than enough.  Pumpkin and banana bread, lasagna, spaghetti and meatballs, every possible Italian delight.

It wasn’t until much later in life that I noticed that she fed me well but starved herself.

that my serving was twice as high as if to make up for the fact that she wouldn’t eat.

What does love look like if the person loving doesn’t love themselves?

-it looks like a never-ending gush of water that flows so hard you don’t get a chance to look past the water and see the person behind it.

my spaghetti was piled SO ENORMOUSLY on my plate that I couldn’t even see that her plate was empty.

What does affection look like from someone who has not healed from the abuse of their body?

-it is fast and hurried: a kiss that is also a jab, fast and pointed, leaving me with a bright red kiss mark, but no lingering warmth.

What does food taste like if the person who made it is afraid of eating?

is afraid of food?

--

I never doubted her love. She was/is an amazing person and mother, but how could she not feed me the fear that she was raised on?

All she wanted to give me was love and nourishment, but she inadvertently taught me that being skinny is more valuable than anything else.

I ate well and unselfconsciously all those years that she starved herself. It wasn’t until college that I was faced with the hardest challenge of all:

feeding myself.

From age 18-28 everytime I ate was a source of extreme anxiety.

As I would carry the fork to my mouth an underlying voice would cry:

“please don’t make me fat.”

“please don’t make me ugly”

“I want to be loved, but eating this food makes me fat, ugly, and unloveable.”

Everytime I ate the voice in me was ingraining that fear into my body.

If I had a choice I would rather not have fed my body at all. I just wanted to be beautiful, desired, and loved, and eating threatened any hope for that.

From age 23-25 I was in my first deeply loving and attentive relationship. This was the first time I was able to relax around food.  We cooked great meals together, spent hours in eachother’s arms, and practiced music all day long side by side.  I had never been shown so much affection and care in my life.  I was slowly learning through his gaze that I was loveable.

but my wall of self-hate was hard to erode.

I remember numerous times when I was getting ready near the mirror and he would come in and say:

“Mariel, you are so beautiful.”

and I would just stare into the mirror trying to see myself as he did.

trying to see beauty.

but there were too many things in the way for me to see my reflection, and his voice felt miles away.

When the relationship ended I was devastated.

The only person I had ever truly trusted and fully opened up to had given up on me.

and so, I in turn wanted to give up on my life.

If he, the only person who showed me I was loveable stopped loving me, then I was clearly undeserving of love forever.

Somehow I picked myself up enough to make it to a farm in Southern Oregon to volunteer at.

My first week there I spent a lot of time ferociously weeding, writing endlessly in my journal, playing sad piano improvisations in the barn, and cradling myself in my tent, listening to the lonely cries of the hyenas at night hoping they would cover up my own grief.

At the farm was where I first learned

how to take care of plants

how to water

how to harvest

how to plant seeds and starts

how compost works

how to spend all day with my hands and body caked in mud, streaked with sun, helping to nurture the plants that would in turn nurture and help heal me.

Every activity at the farm centered around food and honoring life. 
We’d either be weeding, tilling, planting, harvesting, cooking, eating, or cleaning.

and everything done 
was done TOGETHER.

in a group

all working together to fill ourselves with sustenance.

How have we, in our modern world, traveled so far away from such a simple way of feeling connection...

connection to our bodies

to the earth

to eachother.

My fear and panic around eating the right thing (but NOT TOO MUCH) came from a 
HUGE disconnection from food...

as it comes slowly into the world...

forming its own miraculous and beautiful life.

and when you’re eating food in community it’s less about

how much to take

but more about

how much to share

and when you’re sitting around a long table laughing at stories from the day, it’s really hard to think that if you eat the food that you’ll become ugly and unloveable

because THERE-YOU-ARE eating,

being held by the community, doing what everyone must do

because this simple act is how we remain alive!

and it was then that I decided that I wanted to live

and it was then that I knew how I wanted to live

with others.

always.

There were still many years after that glimpse of life-wisdom where I battled vicious self hate, depression and food anxiety. I was an avid exerciser, and I remember only feeling like I was justified in eating if I had run for 3.5 miles every day.

EVERYDAY

EVERYSINGLEDAY!

because otherwise I would feel a tremendous amount of guilt putting anything into my mouth.

In 2008 I was filled with such anxiety and despair I fled back to Oregon to work on a different farm to try and revisit that sense of belonging and trust.

At the farm I milked goats every morning, had fresh milk and eggs for breakfast, snacked all day long on sorrel and wild blueberries, and for meals would cook, eat, and clean collectively with the other people on the farm.

There were people of every generation all working together, sharing different skills and life experience.

It was at this farm that I realized (again) that the love I came here to find had to come from me.  
I could thrive off a beautiful community and be surrounded by loving energy, but in order to fully heal-- 
I had to love myself unconditionally.

I remember one night in particular I was fighting myself about food and was feeling pain in my stomach from all the anxiety. I lay in the middle of the field under the stars and just stroked my belly over and over again

and told it

“I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you…”

into the night

~I loved myself to sleep.

When I came back from Oregon I started the collective in Brooklyn where I still live now. 
Through this house I have created so many joyful memories centered around food and gardening.  My roommates cook and laugh together all the time.  
Now when I think of food, I think of friends, conversations, and self-love.

I think of Mochi and egg mornings with Julia, or enormous kale salads with Abigail and chocolate bars with Liz.

How do we let the women in our lives know that they are worthy of eating?

that food is SACRED

and the act of putting something into our bodies so that we can feel more alive is a BEAUTIFUL thing.

This simple miracle happens all the time!

I want to feed my mom all the love that I have learned how to experience.

I want to take every girl or woman who thinks that she has to starve in order to be loved to the farm and show her the wonders of Seed- to- Sprout- to -Plant- to -Dish.

I want to take all the girls who struggle with food fear and eating disorders and sit them around 
a long table...

sharing stories...

helping one another...

learn how to eat.