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   ← CHAPTER OVERVIEW

Welcome to a New Chapter in the CREATRIX School

Dear Creatrix,

I’m well aware that I say this every month, but it is also true, each time: I’m so excited about exploring this extra yummy chapter of the CREATRIX School, with you in the next four weeks.

In the last chapter, we talked about friendships and how to consciously open up to new connections. We looked at old friendships and what we wish for new ones, and we looked at how working with archetypes and the Wheel of Colours can help us when opening up to new supportive friendships. And we even started our own CREATRIX Crews, so we will have reliable support systems in place from now on.

In this chapter, we will focus a bit more on ourselves again, and how we would like to nourish our bodies, by looking at what we eat and when and by looking at our kitchens, as well as what we might need to heal or learn to start creating healthy eating habits for ourselves and then for our families and communities as well.

As always, we will start slow so that we can take some time to really feel into this new topic and what we are looking for. We are each on our own journey, and you know best what is going on in your life and what you’d like to change.

So take a moment to feel into that.

Like I said in the introduction, I don’t think I know one person who does not have a traumatic story to tell when it comes to food and eating habits. How about you? And are you aware of your own food story yet?

The complicated relationship most of us have with food comes from a complicated relationship with nourishment and care, and because of this, this is where we will start our exploration.

Like we do with each topic in the CREATRIX School, we will start this first week by having a look at our current eating habits and routines and what we like and don’t like about them, and then we will begin to think about what we would like to create instead.

To create lasting change requires looking at ourselves and the stories we tell ourselves about food and about our eating habits, though, which often originated at a time that we don’t even remember.

If you don’t feel completely happy about your eating habits yet, there’s a reason for it.

And the problem isn’t you.

The biggest problem is that we were raised to doubt ourselves. The biggest problem is that we were raised to rush, to overwork, and we weren’t taught the value of taking time to create healthy meals, to trust our bodies to guide us and tell us what we need, or to know how to use spices and legumes and vegetables to keep us healthy and happy.

But whatever we don’t know yet, we can learn now. Whatever wounds were created in the past, we can heal now.

Because to create a sacred kitchen, to make eating a sacred event again, and to change our food stories, will help us to be confident in the kitchen and loving towards ourselves and all others.

So, today, we will look at why this is so important.

In her wonderful book, Mother Hunger, Kelly Mc Daniel writes:

“When a baby is hungry or lonely, she cries. While crying, she experiences a rapid increase in heartbeat and release of adrenaline. Adrenaline, or epinephrine, helps start nature’s fight-or-flight response. In adults, this looks like driving to a restaurant, foraging in the refrigerator, or calling a friend to talk.”

More often than not, we try to soothe ourselves with food, we use food to compensate for the difficulties we experience in life or the pains we feel because that connection has been there from the first days of our lives.

But we can equally use food to punish ourselves, if we think that we don’t deserve a well-balanced meal, prepared with love, because we are not loveable and worthy of that or used to being treated like the immensely valuable, beautiful and important person we are.

Like the crying baby, deep down we equate food with love.

Our body releases adrenaline when we are stressed, and it releases serotonin when we eat and nourish ourselves. So if we don’t know how to love and soothe ourselves, it feels like we need food to do that for us.

Which is why it is so essential to bring this to our awareness, if we want to change the way we eat and our relationship to food.

Because then we can make eating a pleasurable event and food our medicine that helps us to strengthen our body, that delights our soul and that eases our mind.

To quote Kelly McDaniel again:

“When we are helpless infants, hunger pains drive us toward our mother. She is our relief. Completely dependent on her care, we “talk” to her with our whole body—we squirm or whimper or cry. This is nature’s way of bringing Mom close. When she responds with milk and warmth, all is well. Milk and mother bring pleasure, and we learn that a full belly, our mother’s touch, her voice, and her smell are the same. This is how human connection gets associated with pleasure so that we want more of it. Hunger and bonding are inextricably biologically linked.”

But often our realities and experiences were different.

Our mothers were underresourced, impatient and not there to give us the physical and mental nourishment that we would have needed. And so our expectations around food and, possibly, what we deserve or don’t deserve changed accordingly.

Again, this is no one’s fault. Our parents couldn’t give us what they didn’t have. And they still gave us enough so that we are able to break this circle now, something that they weren’t able to do.

And we will explore how to do that in this chapter, in every way. We will look at the tools we use, we will look at herbs and how to use them, we will look at portion sizes, how often to eat, what to eat and how and how to start creating a really loving and joyful connection to our food.

Because food is not just a substitute for love and human connection, it can also be love in action.

And to start exploring this, you can ask yourself every time you feel a craving or like you NEED to eat something: “Am I hungry or am I craving something else?” – because this will bring you closer to your emotions and what they would like to tell you.

Often, tiredness can also feel like hunger as well. So it’s important to recognize what is actually going on with you when you feel hungry and to start naming it.

The other thing that I encounter all the time when it comes to food and eating consciously is that people, don’t know what’s right and wrong any more and how to choose the best foods and diets for themselves.

We will make this a lot easier in this chapter.

Keto, vegan, vegetarian, high protein, high fat, low fat, Ayurveda, Mediterranean diet, etc. – the options seem endless.

And as you know me, I won’t be telling you to just follow any specific diet – because what’s good for me might not be best for you – we all have to work with our unique circumstances, regional availabilities, and physical needs.

Yet, we will look at what the people do who live healthy lives, so we can learn from them, what the latest studies say, as well as ancient wisdom, and we will look at a few simple food rules, that will help us to make things easier for ourselves.

We will also start a collection of go-to healthy recipes, so we will always be prepared from now on.