The answer to, “I have no idea how I am going to get through this” is: You allow yourself to sob, to heave, to feel as if your heart has a boulder crashing through it. You sit with your father. You listen to his sorrow. YOu get help from your friends. And you notice that at the end of every day you are still alive. And you notice that when you don’t use food [or shopping, or alcohol, or work, or gambling] to shut yourself down, to leave your body, you actually feel more alive. That feeling anything, even grief, is different from what you thought it would be. That when you don’t leave yourself, a different life is lived. One that includes vulnerability and tenderness and fragility and changes the landscape–makes it verdant, wider, breathtaking–of life as you know it.
Geneen Roth
Women Food and God
as a response to a daughter’s whose mother is very suddenly and very completely incapacitated
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