One morning I started crying after I fed a treat to dog that came up to me asking for its owner to give me one. It was a day when I was meditating about how much sharing food with others is a bonding agent in relationships.
Emotionally I was processing times when I’ve felt my desire to nurture through sharing food with another had been rejected and probably something even deeper about how I drank goat’s milk as a baby because I was allergic to my mother’s breast milk. Perhaps I was the first one to do the rejecting. At the same time, I was recognizing it was more about individuation than rejection. I was born ready to be a freely loving and sovereign soul, but had forgotten about some of these human relational things.
That morning I was reflecting on food as a bonding (and sometimes control) agent in families, relationships, geographically, culturally. Like when people feel nostalgic for that dish their mother made as a child, or traumatized by something they were forced to eat that they didn’t like. Also how certain dishes must be had on certain holidays (which gets really interesting when families mix). The first Thanksgiving I decided to spend alone, I had cacao instead of the traditional dinner, which brought up feelings betrayal, yet it was ultimately freeing. I felt so much more full of love than sick to my stomach from too much food, and the following year I was actually able to enjoy choosing and find a healthy balance.
Finding a healthy balance with food has allowed me to recognize when I get caught in addiction, control, and needy manipulation loops. Addiction being where I use food to feel better and/or escape. Control being where food is involved in a certain code of conformity within family, societal, economic or religious contexts. Manipulation being where I need to be needed so I try to use food to get someone to receive love from me. In a healthy balance, food is inspired, nourishing, and sharing it with others is a creative act that benefits all with more vitality. And it is prepared with love flowing through it.
An infinite amount of love simply is available as a birthright to flow through each and every individual and relationship. Sometimes though our more human parts that are based in survival have forgotten how to allow it to flow.
Food is just one example of where the survival mechanisms of the brain are exploited to distract from love. Here are some other ways, which all have merit by the way. Reoccurring thoughts are created through trauma and wounding as a form of protection. They often drive from deep in the subconscious, so this list is an invitation to notice with love what’s happening within you and also to allow love to rewire yourself into healthy balance.
Some things that block love:
- Deprivation energy
- Thinking you’re too much or not enough
- Perfect ideas of how things should be
- Expectations
- Not recognizing ways in which people share love with you
- Confusing trying to get it with simply allowing it to be
- Taking care of everyone else and forgetting to love yourself
- Orienting around someone else’s idea of love
- Believing that you’re not worthy
- Putting rules around what, how, and when you can receive it
- Using someone else as your source because you’ve forgotten that you are love
Wild love,
