Powerful Goddess Portraits

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well,

if one has not dined well.

Virginia Woolf

I envy people who love cooking, people who create magic in their kitchen with gourmet meals and  homemade desserts–sure magnets of warm conversation, laughter and conviviality.  When such a cook looks like the Goddess in this photo series, you can triple my envy.    I used to be torn between thoughts like ” I want a mother like that!” and “I want to be a mother like that!”  until I surrendered to the fact that my talents lie elsewhere–like eating the amazing food they make! 😉

When in the company of passionate gourmands, may we savor everything their table offers and skip talk of our latest diet.   Geneen Roth, author of  “Women, Food and God” and “Lost and Found” wrote in “When Food is Love:”

A diet is similar to an oppressive, authoritarian parent who tells you what to do and when to do it.  Diets perpetuate the child in each of us who was treated with mistrust and restrictions.  Diets keep us focused outside ourselves–on what we are allowed to eat, when we are allowed to eat it, and how much of it we are allowed to have at one sitting.  Diets keeps us dependent on a source outside ourselves for our sense of well-being and self-worth.  With a diet, the anger and humiliation stay forever self-directed, we spend our lives punishing ourselves for not being good enough.

In breaking free from diets and the ensuing self-punishment, we make a choice to stop being a victim.  It creates an awareness of how our culture encourages us to define our self-worth according to externals–what we look like, how much we weigh, how much money we make.  In paying attention to what our body wants instead of imposed rules, we learn that our body is our ally, our instincts are wise, we have many choices, and we can rely on our wisdom to live compassionately with ourselves.

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© 2011 Sharon Birke

www.PowerfulGoddess.com

Photography for the Goddess in Every Wife & Mother

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