We saw so few movies when we were growing up that the ones we did see stick in my mind, like the 1968 film, “Oliver!” a musical adapted to screen, based on the classic Dickens novel, Oliver Twist. The bits I remember about it were how the boys, victims of child slave labor, shared beds, where one slept during the other’s 12-hour work shift, and then they switched, and the song “Food, Glorious Food!” The boys were so hungry they dreamed of food and sang joyously about what they craved. I remember a bittersweet feeling about that song. Although food was certainly plentiful enough in our house, it was, to me, anything but glorious. It was more on the order of a protracted, hideous, recurring nightmare.
I was always “dickkopf” (fathead) and a “bad eater.” Right from the start I did not like meat, which made for an ongoing power struggle. Now I am not a “formal” vegetarian, meaning I have no ethical, political or spiritual rationale, simply my age-old distaste/preference to avoid meat.
Meal times were not much fun, anyway. Our dad, who had been a chef before becoming a cantor, repeatedly told Mom with a smile, “I did not marry you for your cooking,” but really, it was no joke. When he cooked, he required a fair measure of adulation for the uppity French dishes he made, which were never my taste, apart from the meat issue. There was also a truly unsavory period of at least several years that I think of as the “Kosher wars.” Our dad wanted to keep a kosher kitchen, and Mom wouldn’t do it. He lived on nightly Hebrew National hot dogs until she finally relented with “OK, I will cook what you buy.” I don’t remember how they resolved the part about two sets of dishes. Mostly I remember the long and bitter tension that hung heavily over our family table. No great surprise when my trauma expressed itself via, among the many other symptoms, a near-fatal anorexia that spanned my adolescence, but really much more. In 1967, anorexia and eating disorders in general were even less understood than they are now. There was no treatment to speak of, and I was simply viewed as a “bad girl”, creating headaches for my parents. I somehow got to a healthy-ish weight eventually, but the agony of obsession persisted for decades.
After many years and all sorts of somatic approaches alongside my depth psychotherapy, I can say food is one of the truly glorious and great pleasures of my life. I love it and am grateful to say I eat whatever I want. I love making food, too. I am a home cheesemaker, a sourdough baker, and I aspire to grow vegetables when I can make the time. On a particularly bad day at the office, I might rant to my ever-patient partner, “I’m done! I am going to retire, be a cheesemaker!” until I calm down. We do, however, love our food.
After many years and all sorts of somatic approaches alongside my depth psychotherapy, I can say food is one of the truly glorious and great pleasures of my life. I love it and am grateful to say I eat whatever I want.
When I was in the throes of my eating disorder, our dad would rail at me that the word “companion” emerged from the Latin com panis, sharing bread. Eating together was a natural and human way to connect. Ideally, that would be true. My not wanting to was somehow “inhuman.” For so many who grew up in a household of trauma and neglect, this was sadly far from true, and disordered eating is a not-so-uncommon expression of dysregulation.
I was interested to learn that, in a strange way, the whole category of “com panis” and food culture became a mechanism of social control and an attempt at cultural change in the Soviet Union. I heard an interesting story, “Dissident Kitchens”, on one of those wonderful late-night Public Radio programs. After the revolution in 1917, food was scarce. The new Stalinist government set about industrializing food, essentially dictating what was to be eaten by everyone. The new housing, small apartments where everyone lived, was built without kitchens. Rather, there were large communal kitchens, and people broke their bread in dining halls with 500 comrades. The Bolsheviks were not interested in the tradition or the aesthetic of food. First, food shortages devastated all that, but further, private kitchens were considered “bourgeois.” The foods to be eaten were determined by the government, and everyone ate the same. Apparently, and understandably, the people hated that and sorely missed cooking and the ritual of sharing intimate family mealtimes.
When Kruschev replaced the Stalinist regime in 1953, in addressing the housing shortage he had apartments built once again with small kitchens, which became a place for families and friends to gather. Now, cookbooks and programs reflect the slow and steady revival and reclamation of traditional Russian foods. And although Russia is currently alienating many of us, its food story is informative, and reminds us how very elemental the family table is. Eating together in harmony is on the order of a birthright. And the way it is corrupted in micro and macro forms of trauma is a crime against nature as far as I am concerned!
The dysregulations of trauma and neglect that manifest as disordered eating are some of the most persistent and challenging to heal.
One of my favorite books of all time is Michael Pollan’s epic Omnivore’s Dilemma, which approaches food from myriad directions: psychological, emotional, nutritional, environmental, political, cultural, ethical, aesthetic, historical… what else? Long before he became a harbinger and champion of psychedelics, Pollan wrote brilliantly and prolifically about food and its many meanings, which span quite a universe. There is even now an emerging sub-field of “culinary medicine,” which makes a lot of sense to me. Here in San Francisco, food is virtually on the order of religion, which can be both a pleasure and an embarrassment.
The dysregulations of trauma and neglect that manifest as disordered eating are some of the most persistent and challenging to heal. I have worked with survivors who suffered disordered eating of every stripe, not to mention my own. I do not pretend to know how to treat eating disorders effectively, and I have yet to see programs that do. Please prove me wrong! The best thing I know, which is the best thing I know for trauma in general, is the combination of depth, attachment-oriented psychotherapy, and neurofeedback. If I had had that 50 years ago, who knows if my own healing would have required less than the multiple decades it did?
Whatever we can do to get the shame out, even better. And whatever we can do to break the intergenerational transmission not only of trauma, but also the agony of interference with the natural development of food and eating tastes and habits, better still. It is my wish that “enlightened feeding,” becomes an aspect of “enlightened parenting.” Although I am not a mother, I am indeed a proverbial “Jewish mother” in that I love to make and give food, although certainly not to foist unwanted food on anyone ever! Far be that from me! But for me, it can be an exquisite show of love and care, as long as (like with any gift!) the recipient is truly seen, known, and considered.
Our mom used to say “Mahlzeit!” before we ate. I never knew what it meant, thinking it was “mouse-ite.” I picture a little family of mice enjoying their dinner (maybe cheese?) It is a form of greeting and celebratory marking of mealtime. We later evolved into singing a Hebrew grace before meals. Although I have long since given that up, I do like the ritual of feeling and acknowledging with gratitude before we eat. My husband graciously does all the grocery shopping, buying those things that I am not able to make for us myself. My little ritual has become a hug and a loud exclamation, “I love you! Thanks for the food!” What’s yours?
Enjoy your dinner!
Today’s song:
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
In 1968 I almost died of anorexia. I was 13. We now know that the whole spectrum of eating disorders are desperate attempts at self-regulation, and rife among survivors of all manner of trauma. We have a bazillion dollar eating disorder treatment industry and literature, although from my jaundiced view, none are very effective. Back then, I had a huge stash of books stolen from the library, (stolen because I was too ashamed to check them out,) about food, weight loss and nutrition. Only one was “psychological” in any way, and not much help in understanding what I was doing. That was Eating Disorders by MD Hilde Bruch, a rather psychoanalytic spin on all eating “pathologies,”. It had one page about anorexia nervosa, with strange pictures of a skeletal young girl, naked, with a blacking out of her eyes to make her unrecognizable. I would sit and stare at that frightening, frightened child. That is all I remember. (I did stealthily return the books through the library return slot, about 20 years later.) At 5 feet 4 and 79 pounds, I took my anorexia pretty close to the edge too, but somehow I did not die.
I was massively relieved and grateful for not dying, not because I was glad to keep living, but because I felt so guilty for nearly squandering life, and for distressing my parents. They seemed mostly, pretty mad about it, and the “treatment” was primarily what I would call “duress eating.” It was a nightmare, as eating or not eating continued to be, for about the next 30 years. Through desperation, unrelenting tenacious determination, and the blessing of renewed chances, I am pleased to say, that after years and decades of effort, the advances in understanding trauma, the brain and nervous system regulation; and my dad’s now famous words, I have a delightful and joyful relationship to food, I eat whatever and how much I want, and passionately bake, and make artisan cheese. I even have a pretty darn good relationship with my body, although I don’t like aging too much. My dad’s words, for any who have not heard them yet are: “You should always go to sold out concerts. You will get in!”
So one great lesson that I learned was that miraculously the body heals and returns to or discovers a healthful homeostasis, with some intention and knowledgeable assistance. I learned this again, when I had a serious and nearly fatal systemic and nearly septic infection that landed me very suddenly in the hospital for a week, truly believing I was dying; and again when my beloved sister came back from a bout of stage four cancer with a full head of new hair and a rich story to tell. I was terrified we would lose her, and well aware that not everyone, of course is so fortunate.
In 1980 iconic couple John Lennon and Yoko Ono came out with a favorite album of mine, Double Fantasy. Like many struggling couples (like so many of the traumatized,) they were known for the sentiment “Can’t live with her/him, but, can’t live without her/him.” The album was a collection of songs about emerging from that terrible morass into connection. My favorite song is the one called “Starting Over,” with its whimsical refrain “…when I see you Darling, it’s like we both are falling in love again, it’ll be just like starting over, wa wa wa wa…”
It is another kind of reminder of the miracle of second, third or however many chances we might have, after truly believing all is lost: relationship repair. The story of my re-incarnated relationship with my father will be another book in itself, that is on my list. Again, not everyone is as fortunate as I, and I also was one of the ones who tended to believe, “things like that just don’t’ happen to me…”
I have referenced before, that my first book was a sorry child of neglect. When it was published, I was too mired in my own dysregulation and shame, like many a parent, to do what was necessary for it to thrive. When I first hatched the book, I had been quietly developing the ideas for many years. Finally I had the gumption to attempt to put them out there. I approached a small publisher that was suggested to me by a sex therapist colleague and submitted my proposal.
At the time, on a frequent walk in the neighborhood of my office, there was a jewelry store. I loved to look in the window when I passed by. On one of those routine walks, I happened to spot a pair of earrings. I had never bought jewelry for myself before, but these lovely earrings were peridot, my birthstone, and somehow for the first time, I went inside. I spoke to a kindly young woman named Sonya, and I told her, that I had just submitted the proposal for a book I hoped to write and publish. I wanted to put a deposit on the peridot earrings, and if my proposal was accepted, buy the earrings. Sonya set that up with me, and when the proposal was accepted, I was rewarded and delighted times two. I set to work on the manuscript.
Somehow, I don’t know how it happened, I lost one of the earrings. Losing earrings is a hazard of moving too fast and not being mindful enough, or of a disconnected “vestibular system” and losing awareness of where one is in space, another common trauma symptom. I was sad, but in some sort of superstitious way I was spooked. I thought “Oh no! Perhaps that means the book will fail!” Not usually superstitious, I was rather haunted and fearful, and not without shame, I talked with my wise consultant about it. She said, “Well, how about talking with Sonya about getting another one made?” What a concept! All was not lost, and Sonya arranged with the artist to make a perfect new mate for my earring.
But the story did not end. In a way the book did “fail.” Or I failed like the parent of a neglected child. In my own private paralysis, I failed to support it in growing and going out into the world, so it languished and floundered and really did not venture out very far. Those who read it seemed to get a lot from it, but that hardly helped my shame. Some of my closest friends and supporters said, maybe as we launch the new book, re can resuscitate the first book. It really does merit a better chance. For the new book, learning from experience, I followed my own best advice and got the best help money can buy to help me, to be the midwife for the new book. And she has worked to help the first book, Coming Home to Passion, to find its place in a larger world. Like the child of neglect, with help, it is finding a voice and a spine. And the earrings have a new meaning to me.
In 2018 the volcano Kīlauea erupted on the Big Island of Hawaii. It was this volcano’s largest eruption in many hundreds of years and a fierce and fiery trauma to the surrounding area. Many were forced to relocate and a huge rescue effort was successfully waged to rescue animals, and of course humans in the vicinity. As trauma will be, it was a huge disruption. When we went back in 2020, the beloved Volcano Art Center was thankfully up and running again and the grateful artists were there to tell the story.
One of the artists told me, when I was admiring some peridot jewelry pieces in the store, that when the volcano erupted, it “rained peridot”. Apparently, some chemical reaction on the lava, produces the lovely pale green gemstone. Out of the ravages and roaring rage of violence and destruction, these dainty but tough sparklers scatter wildly. They are nature’s design. One earring disappeared, a new one came to take its place. I got expert help and the first book is finding its voice in the world at last. John and Yoko, as far as I know, spent their final years in connection and love until John met his tragic end. Many a traumatized client after a long and trying road finds regulation and joy; equilibrium and ease. I like to think it is nature’s design, if not without effort. And sometimes a big bang is what gets things moving.
In AA they say “Pray to God and keep rowing to shore.” And one needn’t believe in God, to understand that some of this mysterious process is organic and spontaneous, some is the sweat and grit of tenacious and relentless, persevering work. Hope and faith are required, at least some of the time, and we do have to get ourselves to the concert! Wa wa wa wa…
Have a listen!
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” is out on Tuesday September 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.