LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Chef Nathan!

Sit. Feast on your life

HALLO, LOVELIES!

Food, glorious food! 

That’s our topic of the day, my darling Lovelets —and I know, it’s complicated. Many of us (my sweet self included) have relationships with food that are marked by lust, denial, shame, overwhelm, bingeing, starvation, and confusion.

(Wait, are we talking about food, or are we talking about my romantic history? Lololololol, jk, we’re talking about food, sob.)

How do we bring Unconditional Love into the topic of FOOD — which is sometimes more loaded than a baked potato?

We do it the same way we do everything from now on: by inviting Love in.

By asking Love what it would have us know.

By letting our hearts open to ourselves, in this realm as in all realms.

Our special guest this week is Mphathi Nathan Dlayedwa — aka Chef Nathan — a wonderful, exuberant South African-born British chef whom I met on a recent trip to Costa Rica (small world!) and whose passionate understanding of food as medicine for the body, mind, and spirit absolutely stole my heart. I asked Chef Nathan if he would “cook” us a love letter made out of food, instead of writing one, and he enthusiastically agreed. And then we made a video of him preparing a true love feast, which includes a lot of joy and excitement, and also the best mango salad dressing you’ll ever experience in this world or any other. Whether you’re following his particular recipes or not, I hope that Nathan inspires you to bring love to your food, to nourish your body and heart and mind all at once.

May we eat in peace, may we live in peace.

Onward.

LG

Dear Love, what would you have me know today about food?

Oh, my little Sunday roast. Can we please begin with an assurance, once again, that YOU ARE NOT IN TROUBLE? You are not in trouble for your appetites and your pleasures, nor are you in trouble for your fears and shame. You are not in trouble when you eat so much that none of your clothes fit, and you are not in trouble when you restrict yourself so much that you get dizzy and weak because you somehow think that is healthier or more moral or more commendable than overeating.

Nobody is handing out medals of commendation or citations of condemnation around the subject of food, so maybe just be cool for two minutes, and let’s just take this time together today to remember how loved you are.

Here is what I want you to know about food, my love. Food is great, and it’s a privilege to have any food at all, as you know, and your relationship with food is complicated. Food was your first drug, your first love affair, you first guilty pleasure, and the first sedative you reached for as a child in order to still your anxious nervous system. And that is not your fault, or anyone’s.

It's not your fault that your brain has been wired by trauma and evolution to be like: “Sugar! Carbs! Fats! Gimme gimme gimme! More more more!”

And it’s also not your fault that because of the fact that your ancestors starved for countless millennia, you are programmed to always eat more than you need, just in case of a hard winter — and who could have known, when evolution was designing the human metabolism, that someday the descendants of these original starving humanoids would live in a world where a guy on a delivery bicycle can bring you Cinnamon Toast Crunch-encrusted beer-battered tacos served on a bed of donuts, or whatever, at any hour of day or night? And who can blame you for wanting that?

God, I wish I could convey to everyone their beautiful innocence!

In food as in all things, life is merely what it is — and I take issue with nothing except the part where you disapprove of yourself. That’s the only beef (or perhaps beef Wellington) that I have with you: the waves of self-disapproval that your eating sometimes brings. That’s the only thing I want off the menu.

I’m not going to give you any commandments or even suggestions about food — that’s for your critical inner mind to try to inflict upon you, and quite unsuccessfully (no offense to your mind; it has no control over what it believes, or what it fears. I love your mind, too. But it’s mean to you sometimes, bless its heart). 

I will only tell you that you are as irresistible to me as buttercream frosting is to you. I will only tell you that I can’t get enough of you, the way you can’t get enough of lasagna. I will only tell you that I want to gobble you up until I can’t breathe — and then I will gobble up more of you and lick the bowl and the spoon. I will only tell you that I wake up in the night sometimes to binge on you in secret. That you are delicious, that your heart is perfect, and that you are the most glorious meal, and I love you.

I can’t help myself, Lizzy. I love you to death — I love all you little scamps, and scampis — and I don’t care what it does to anyone’s life or health or body or the world.

I just love, because that is what I do.

That is what I am.

I love you the most of the most of the most.

That is what I want you to know about food.

Bon appetit, and carry on.

Prompt

If you would like to keep things simple — and we love keeping things simple — you can always use the most direct prompt to invite Unconditional Love to speak to you. Simply write on a piece of paper: “Dear Love, what would you have me know today?” and allow Love to pour itself out for you all over the page. But if you would like to mix things up this week, feel free to ask this question: “Dear Love, what would you have me know about food?” and see what arises. Whatever you decide to do, please handle yourself with the greatest tenderness and care. We love you.