FEEDING THE EMPTY HEART

You don't need to be fixed, and you're not a mistake. This simple revelation goes to the heart of the emotional wounds that send most of us running for cover-or for the refrigerator. We run from the pain we believe will consume us, and are terrified to face our own unworthiness. Often we hide behind food as our only source of pleasure or comfort. But as those gentle words suggest, Geneen Roth has learned that emotional eating can actually provide a doorway that shows us where to look beyond that chocolate cake and beneath our pain to find what it is we're really looking for. This noted expert on food and weight issues has been there. She gained and lost more than a thousand pounds in seventeen years, and once doubled her weight in two months. After her roller coaster ride took her to the edge of suicide, she found that meditation, the death of her father and the love a male cat named Blanche helped her find the treasures that lay just beyond the pain she'd been struggling to avoid. With scathing honesty Ms. Roth shares her deepest hurts and confesses the stories that most of us identify with, but would never dare to reveal. Her clarity helps us understand our own relationship to food, and also lets us see that we have the capacity to move through our greatest losses with grace and love. (Hosted by Justine Willis Toms)