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It's the nature of hearts to break. It's in their job description. When a heart is doing what it's supposed to be doing, it holds nothing back. And sometimes it gets broken.
GENEEN ROTH, Good Housekeeping, Dec. 2008
People come and go, pain comes and goes. But so does joy. And if our hearts are closed because we don't want to suffer, they won't be open enough to recognize the joy as it flies by.
GENEEN ROTH, Good Housekeeping, Dec. 2008
You are not a mistake. You are not a problem to be solved. But you won't discover this until you are willing to stop banging your head against the wall of shaming and caging and fearing yourself.
GENEEN ROTH, Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
You cannot spend your life wanting to be someone else, snipping off pieces of yourself you don't like, and suddenly expect, upon reaching a goal, to be confident, self-accepting, rooted like an oak tree in your being.
GENEEN ROTH, Appetites: On the Search for True Nourishment
The problem with fantasy is the greatest benefit of fantasy: it prevents us from living in the present moment. But the present now is different from the present then.
GENEEN ROTH, When Food Is Love: Exploring the Relationship Between Eating and Intimacy
No matter how developed you are in any other area of your life, no matter what you say you believe, no matter how sophisticated or enlightened you think you are, how you eat tells all.
GENEEN ROTH, Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
Meditation is a tool to shake yourself awake.
GENEEN ROTH, Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
Real change happens bit by bit. It takes great effort to become effortless at anything. There are no quick fixes.
GENEEN ROTH, Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
Our relationship with food -- how, when, what and why we eat -- is a direct expression of our underlying feelings, thoughts and beliefs about ourselves. It has to do with stances we take that get reflected not only in our relationship with food, but in all our relationships. It just so happens that the relationship with food causes enough conflict, grief, shame and hurt that we're willing to look at it.
GENEEN ROTH, "Geneen Roth on Dr. Oz, Food and Body Image," Huffington Post, Sep. 26, 2012
Being exaltingly thin was, of course, the foundation for the visibility, the man, the adornments of this life-to-be; it was the prerequisite that made the rest of the dream possible. And since no matter how thin I got, I was frightened that I could wake up tomorrow and be fat again, the rest of the dream was forever ten or twenty pounds away.
GENEEN ROTH, Appetites: On the Search for True Nourishment
I think we all have a hunger that's hard to name. A lot of people who come to my retreats have never named it before, or else they've named it in church, but they can't actually see the connection between what they're doing with food and this yearning. I call it "the flame" that they have: They yearn for big answers to live a big life. But they have to start with the most basic fears.
GENEEN ROTH, interview, O Magazine, Apr. 2010
How you eat is how you live. How you do anything is how you do everything.
GENEEN ROTH, interview, Origin Magazine
We have ideas about what we should and/or want to look like in order to value ourselves. Those ideas often don't have to do with our particular bodies. When there's a separation between our ideas and what we actually look like and feel like, we see ourselves through the filter of our judgments. It's our willingness and quickness to judge ourselves, not just our bodies, but on almost every other level. Many of us are most aware of our bodies [and how they don't measure up.] It's so cruel, harsh and unforgiving, but it's the tendency to be cruel, harsh and unforgiving to ourselves that we need to pay attention to.
GENEEN ROTH, "Geneen Roth on Dr. Oz, Food and Body Image," Huffington Post, Sep. 26, 2012
Hell is wanting to be somewhere different from where you are.
GENEEN ROTH, Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
No matter what we weigh, those of us who are compulsive eaters have anorexia of the soul. We refuse to take in what sustains us. We live lives of deprivation. And when we can't stand it any longer, we binge.
GENEEN ROTH, Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
What is pronounced these days is staying on the Internet for hours. It’s really about distraction. We are living in such an over stimulated culture. There’s a nervous energy of always having to be focused out there. People have a hard time just being happy, settled, and content. We’re not taught how to just be by ourselves, be present. We always want to change the channel in our minds because we don’t like what’s going on. It’s uncomfortable.
GENEEN ROTH, interview, Origin Magazine
Meditation develops the capacity to question your mind. Without it, you are at the mercy of every thought, every desire, every wave of emotion.
GENEEN ROTH, Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
My friends with children say it's the quality of love that is so unique, the fact that you surrender yourself to love, and through that surrendering become transparent to your deepest feelings. Perhaps it's not having a child that is so striking, but that unconditional love, joy, happiness exist and finally, through the child, have a chance to be expressed. To finally, irrevocably love without holding anything back. Perhaps the magic--the love, happiness, fulfillment--existed in us all along like an underground river, but we could never see it or know it because we kept looking for it outside, in accomplishments, body sizes, and other people.
GENEEN ROTH, Appetites: On the Search for True Nourishment
GENEEN ROTH, Appetites: On the Search for True Nourishment
After initial needs are met—enough food, shelter, comfort—there is no correlation between money and happiness. That’s a difficult thing for people to believe.
GENEEN ROTH, interview, Origin Magazine
The promise of a diet is not only that you will have a different body; it is that in having a different body, you will have a different life. If you hate yourself enough, you will love yourself. If you torture yourself enough, you will become a peaceful, relaxed human being.
GENEEN ROTH, Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
But replacing hunger for divine connection with Double Stuf Oreos is like giving a glass of sand to a person dying of thirst. It creates more thirst, more panic.
GENEEN ROTH, Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
No act of love is ever wasted.
GENEER ROTH, Feeding the Hungry Heart: The Experience of Compulsive Eating
I live between fearing doom and wishing for it.
GENEEN ROTH, Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
If there are any cages in this marriage, it is I who have built them. And I who hold the key to their locks.
GENEEN ROTH, Appetites: On the Search for True Nourishment
And if you worry that not finishing the food on your plate is a slap in the face of all the hungry people everywhere, you are not living in reality. The truth is that you either throw the food out or you throw it in, but either way it turns to waste. World hunger will not be solved by finishing the garlic mashed potatoes on your plate.
GENEEN ROTH, Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
When you believe without knowing you believe that you are damaged at your core, you also believe that you need to hide that damage for anyone to love you. You walk around ashamed of being yourself. You try hard to make up for the way you look, walk, feel. Decisions are agonizing because if you, the person who makes the decision, is damaged, then how can you trust what you decide? You doubt your own impulses so you become masterful at looking outside yourself for comfort. You become an expert at finding experts and programs, at striving and trying hard and then harder to change yourself, but this process only reaffirms what you already believe about yourself -- that your needs and choices cannot be trusted, and left to your own devices you are out of control.
GENEEN ROTH, Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
It's never been true, not anywhere at any time, that the value of a soul, of a human spirit, is dependent on a number on a scale. We are unrepeatable beings of light and space and water who need these physical vehicles to get around. When we start defining ourselves by that which can be measured or weighed, something deep within us rebels.
GENEEN ROTH, Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
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