Emotional Eating - Overeating Help - Compulsive Eating Disorders

This morning, my friend Liz told me about this archery class she went to last night. When I asked her what benefits I could get from it, she told me that this class was about learning to live from the heart. I became filled with longing and excitement, seeing myself with a bow, an open heart, and a beatific look on my face. I imagined finally being free from suffering and from lowly human problems. Unfortunately, I found out the class cost money so I quickly dropped the subject.
But the subject wasn't going to drop me quite as quickly. My 14 year-old daughter came home from camp today. I was so happy because I had missed her, so I cooked her home-made gnocchis, got two movies, and envisioned a girls' evening filled with love, sharing, and laughter.
It didn't quite happen that way. She did not like the gnocchis that I had spent two hours making (nor did I, if I am really honest). She did not like the movies I got. And she spent the better part of the evening in her room, catching up with her friends and singing.
Unwilling to give up my dream, I eventually went up to her room and plopped into her big comfy chair, absolutely convinced that we would now have an intimate moment. She stopped what she was doing (looking at herself in the mirror I think), looked at me, and told me to please leave her room as she didn't like it when people came and used her furniture. With my head down, I silently walked out of her room, hoping that she would realize she had hurt my feelings and tell me to come back. Didn't happen.
For the first few minutes, I sat in my room absolutely convinced that I had been wronged and that my daughter was to blame. Didn't she realize I had spent two hours cooking for her ( I NEVER cook; my husband does)? Didn't she understand that I had hand-picked the two movies just for her viewing pleasure (okay, Patrick Swayze in tights could possibly be my own viewing pleasure)? What about the girls' time in her room? Hadn't I bought all the furniture anyway? Did she really have the right to throw me out?
I thank God that I've done enough personal work to stop when I create such misery for myself. When I checked with reality, I realized that the only thing that had happened is that I had had a beautiful impulse for contact; that she didn't experience that same impulse; and that those two truths were perfectly okay.
So I challenged myself to see if I could go back to her room and NOT act all victimy, which I did. She apologized and told me that she gets into these moods she doesn't always understand (you are FOURTEEN, my poor one) and that she loved me. And I told her from the bottom of my open heart that it was okay. And I fully meant it.
The moral of the story? We don't need no archery classes to teach us to open our hearts. If we are willing to take on the challenge, life will bring it right to us.

PermaLink posted by Isabelle @ 9:19 PM 0 comments

Friday, June 16, 2006