Be Comforted

Comfort Food. Using food as comfort. If these phrases conjure up some negative associations in your mind, you are not alone, especially in the many health food and dieting circles and the raw foods movement. I've often read that food should not be used as a comfort, should not be eating to soothe the pain, that we should not eat for emotional reasons. That it is unhealthy and we need to do whatever we can to rid ourselves of the crutch of food and start eating for purely nutritional reasons. Once we can do that, we will be free of that ball and chain of FOOD and on the path to purity and paradise.

I've read that I need to wean my baby from nursing himself to sleep and from waking in the night to eat mother's milk. Because he is only doing it for comfort. For emotional reasons. He is using it as a crutch. Other moms tell tales of listening to their babes cry through the night as these mothers cover their own ears and cry themselves to sleep all in the name of yanking away that crutch of food, teaching their babes to get through the night without their comfort food.



Here I tried to find a picture that wasn't too severe in order to illustrate some thoughts that are going through my head. I hesitate to say "illustrate my point" because I don't think I hae one, just a feeling, an impression. That there is something not right about being so afraid to be comforted by food.

(This isn't Sebastian. This is an image I took from the web. )

Those of you who have ever nursed a hungry baby, you know what it means to comfort someone. It is a primal and intense feeling, and if my imprints serve me I can only imagine the depth of the comfort that the babe is feeling each time they come to the breast to eat. When I am breastfeeding my baby, I can't imagine anything more natural and normal than he fill his belly and be comforted. So then, how does this feeling get convuluted as we grow, to turn into a neurosis that we must cure ourselves from through discipline? Why are we projecting this onto our tiny little ones, those who have not even been out of the womb as long as they were in?

I say rethink comfort. Rather than try to divorce that feeling from the act of eating, which--if it is so ingrained in our very cells through all human history, as I do suspect it is--embrace it! Use food as a comfort. How can we not? How can we feel that hunger and that need and then upon satisfying it say that there is no comfort in that act? How can our core not quiver with the memory of hunger and being comforted by the mother's milk (for those of us who were so blessed)? -- crucial, life-sustaining, comforting food. Like trying to fix your relationship with water through purposeful dehydration. Impossible.

I am a fan of juice cleansing and fasting. In fact, I can't wait to do one once the babe is weaned. I mean, I am so excited I am planning it now -- years out. But, the next time, I am looking forward to approaching the experience as a mother, as a nourisher and as a comforter. In the meantime, when I do eat, I intend to give thanks to my own mother Gaia for sustaining me with her bounty of food, comfort and love.