Right after baby #4 was born, my midwife was doing the raw thing and it seemed like I could eat this way and control this overwhelmament of postpartumness. Only I’d breastfed three babies so easily, taking it for granted, and all of the sudden at his 6 week appointment, my son hadn’t gained any weight in two weeks, and that was enough to get me bargaining with deities, I’ll take a pooched belly and sagging breasts, but let the kid be healthy. So for two weeks I did nothing but eat and sleep and nurse, and it got better, and I had permission to slow down, take care of myself, take care of him — and it was food and life, really elemental. And I had to deal with postpartum stuff being overwhelming in other ways besides quitting eating.

Anne Lamott describes learning to make herself throw up from the teen magazine articles warning of the dangers of bulimia… the thing about eating disordered thinking is how contagious it gets — you mention the specific number on the scale you’re at in your blog and I start in shame at my own number much higher. You’d think there would be a way to be supportive about it, and yet, again and again I am surprised at the amazing women (like my midwife) I meet with weird food/body issues. And you can never just say “But, damn, you’re gorgeous and wonderful, and it’s who you are that makes me happy, and I really don’t think the size jeans you’re wearing makes the slightest difference.” Because 1) I don’t want to dismiss your feelings 2) if it were me being addressed so (and it could be) I wouldn’t believe it and 3) I really have no clue how to get there. I was looking for information about the gorgeous and talented China Forbes and found http://www.edibleportland.com/pages/articles/win06/portlandFridge.htm which has the lovely line “I’ve always been on a diet.” I hate the idea of life spent dieting.

Little radio snippet I heard today praising M.F.K. Fisher threw out “Food isn’t a metaphor for life, food is life.” The woman I want to be embraces life, embraces food, is healthy. And by healthy I don’t mean so correct in her eating habits that the Vatican is considering a new sort of canonization based entirely on the virtue of eating right, no, I mean balancing the nutritional and pleasurable meanings of food and happy with the body that that results in, no mean thoughts or flagellation.