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Let’s explore our food stories
Dear Creatrix,
In the last lesson, we started looking at our topic for this moon phase, to open up to what we will be working on and with, and we became aware of the relationship between food, care and nourishment.
And as this is so incredibly important, I’d like for us to dive a little deeper into this today.
Because it will also help us to better understand some of the choices we are making right now.
And for that, I would like for us to travel back to our childhood.
What was your relationship to food when you were growing up?
And what was your relationship to love and care?
Did you feel supported emotionally? Were your parents able to regulate their emotion and to guide you to learn how to regulate yours? Or were emotion suppressed? Or thrown around. Were there doors banging, hurtful words said?
Or was there peace and the idea to work through problems together?
But let’s start with food.
I’m one of those 80s kids who grew up with lots and lots of sugar.
I grew up in a tiny house with my parents and brother. My grandmother and great-grandmother each lived in a separate flat on the same piece of land, so I visited them regularly – and they each had a sweetie bowl – which honestly was often the reason why I went to visit them.
There is one remarkable (and well, I would say embarrassing, but then it is what it is) video of me, when I was five or six years old, and had just entered the backyard after visiting my grandmother – and as I was wearing a skirt and had no pockets, I kept the candy I collected from the candy bowl in my nickers.
When my dad got out the camera, I climbed on a bench to perform a song, my brother, three years younger than me, so barely able to stand, got jealous and climbed on the bench as well to then try to push me down the bench, while I was happily, dancing, singing, not reacting to him and lifting my skirt every now and then, to get out and eat one piece of candy after the next, while singing. No adult intervened or found this strange in any way.
Chaotic times.
My mum was a great cook, however, and other than having access to a lot of sugar, I grew up with regular and well-balanced meals.
One strategy my mum used, when I was growing up, was that we had to try everything once.
We didn’t have to eat it if we really didn’t like it, but we at least had to try it, and I actually quite liked that because I did discover a few things I surely wouldn’t have tried because of the way they looked, even though it turned out they tasted quite well and that I actually liked them.
I kept that sentiment, and I will try everything once, because I know and experienced, that the taste might be different from what something looks or smells like.
So this is the first question you can ask yourself about food as well. How open are you to trying new things?
What do you like and don’t like? Try and not try? How often do you explore new tastes? New foods? Or do you generally just eat the same things and find it stressful to have to eat unfamiliar things? What are the things you don’t eat and why?
All answers are valid, just use this to get to know yourself better.
There are a few things I just don’t like, and really have a hard time eating, such as intestines, or squid. It’s mostly a texture thing for me. But as I lived and travelled across the world, I learned to swallow without tasting too much.
Because for me this is about prioritizing.
I remember I stayed with a host family in the south of Spain for a while, while I was learning and practising Spanish, and they made Paella (with seafood) every day. For some, this might be exciting, for me, it really wasn’t – but I wanted to have a good time, without causing too much trouble, and I could see that this was only a limited number of days that I would stay there, and so I ate it without chewing and tasting it too much.
The intestines in Ukraine were a little bit more difficult, because I stayed there for a whole year too, and after a while I had to say that while I love all their food, that one I just can’t eat, and that was OK too.
But again, I would always prefer to be respectful as a guest, and overcome my own preferences than to hurt someone else’s feelings, especially being aware of the power dynamics at play, when I come from a ‘rich’ western country and my hosts offer me all they have – as to request something according to my standards, might put them in a tricky situation, when hospitality is an important cultural element.
Which leads us to the next topic to explore: self-control.
