An article by Geneen Roth, "Cherish the Crooked Stitches..."

Found this article in a Kripalu newsletter in my inbox this morning. It is too pertinent to what I've been writing about to not repost!


cherish the crooked stitches: learning to love your body
and your life

by Geneen Roth

A groundbreaking author and workshop leader, Geneen Roth was one of the first to explore the pivotal links between emotions, eating, and spirituality. Her seven books include the New York Times best-seller When Food Is Love and her latest, The Craggy Hole in My Heart and the Cat Who Fixed It. Geneen believes your relationship to food, money, and love is a perfect reflection of your relationship to life itself, and that the way to transform those relationships is to be open, curious, and kind to yourself.


My friend Catherine recently told me about a 50-year-old friend of hers who’d been a member of a sewing circle for 10 years and was now dying of brain cancer. “I labored and sweated over my crooked stitches,” the friend said. “And I always felt ashamed for not making the right-sized or -shaped stitches. As if making straight stitches actually meant something about me or my life. Now, the doctors say I have six months to live and when I think about the time I wasted worrying about those crooked stitches…” Most of the people I see spend most of their lives worrying about their own versions of crooked stitches—the size of their thighs, their hips, their abdomens. As if those things mean something true or real about their lives. As if when we get to the end of our lives, a number on a scale will mean anything at all.

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