turning snakes into ropes

For the past 20 days I've been nearly unable to stop eating. Or at least to make good choices about what I eat. It's been very clear that my body doesn't want all that food - it's not pleased. But my head was (and still is to some degree) convinced that food will give it enough space in time until it is safe to feel what there is to feel. I could see the compulsion as a compulsion, but not drive away from the DQ. 

Hearing all that, UberCoach loaned me a copy of Women, Food and God - I'll write a full review when I'm done, but in the meantime I wanted to share this tidbit (so far I've wanted to share about 40 tidbits, and I'm only 100 pages in) that had me release a HUGE sigh in the bath just now:

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To the degree that my feelings are familiar, that I've felt them before in similar situations - the willingness to allow them offers a completely different scenario than the situations in which they first developed.

Recurrent negative feelings - those that loop in the same cycles again and again without changing - are unmet knots of our past that got frozen in time for the precise reason that they were not met with kindness and acceptance. 

Can you imagine how your life [or the life of those you love] would be different if each time you were feeling sad or angry as a kid an adult said to you, "Come here, sweetheart, tell me all about it. ... I want to know every little thing. I'm here to listen to you, hold you, be with you." 

All any feeling wants is to be welcomed with tenderness. It wants room to unfold. It wants to relax and tell its story. It wants to dissolve like a thousand writhing snakes that with a flick of kindness become harmless strands of rope.

Here's to the kind of magic that turns snakes into rope. I hope you experience that ... and share it with someone else.