So on a different topic this week, “ healthy eating”.
Have I mentioned before that I think I have “ food issues” . I turn the thought around and around in my mind, like a large cinnamon bun, I look at the swirls and the top and the bottom but remain reluctant to take a bite! Don’t most women have food issues to some extent or another?
One of my close family had a go at me recently about this and at their insistence/ encouragement I got in touch with a counselling service and have gone on their waiting list for some sessions. I’m still ambivalent on the topic. My interest / obsession with healthy eating and living began when my step father was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. It was my way of trying to take control of the situation, I couldn’t make him better but I was going to make myself ( and everyone close to me) as healthy as possible.
A few years on, I still have a strong interest in it. It is a hobby with me and I now try to keep my close family healthy although they are all quite resistant to my persuasion!
Some of it is fine, although I am capable of being over the top in anything I do, my piano teacher is always sighing over my tendency to take every instruction too far and it needing re correcting in the next lesson. But at the back of this I also recognise unexamined food issues that I know relate to my mum. This thought came to my mind unprompted
“IS FOOD LOVE ?
IS LOVE FOOD?”
So I think my interest in healthy eating is not really the issue, it is just me as usual, taking things a bit far at times and needing to know when to rein in. No, I think my food issues are far more subtle and less obvious than that. They are more to do with the meaning of food, food cooked for me, food given to me and food I cook for others. In every day life I manage to skirt these issues with a workable day to day routine, but I do run into problems in certain situations. A small example, I am a reluctant hostess, I really struggle to feed others. I get round this by my husband doing the cooking and I do the entertaining and chatting. I loathe cooking and avoid it if at all possible.
Is this a waste of time to unpick? I am aware of an extreme sense of discomfort around the topic, a strong desire to veer away from it, I guess I will have to wait and see when they get back to me.