Free To Stay
When Geneen Roth’s Women, Food, and God came across my desk, I thought, “Interesting, but probably not a real candidate for an Author interview.” I put it aside without opening it. Then I saw Geneen on Oprah and realized what a mistake I had made. And no, not because Oprah was now championing her book as the only way to understand one’s struggle with weight, nor because the book went on to become a huge bestseller, but because Geneen talked about eating the way I thought about writing. As she put it, everything we do is a portal to how we live our lives. When I saw she was coming back through Seattle, I jumped at the chance for an interview, and the result leads this month’s issue. What surprised me was how beautifully written the book was, and how Geneen had as much to say about the writer’s life as she did about bulimia and dieting. For instance, Women, Food, and God is Roth’s eighth book. At one point in her career, however, she looked up and realized it had been six years since she had written a book. This puzzled her, but she understood that she had to make peace with the fact that maybe she wasn’t a writer anymore.
I know it is said that you’re a writer if you have to write, and as a rule I would say that this is true. But I think it is equally true that we must be willing to consider the possibility that we don’t want to write. At my lowest point, when my work was bringing no money and very little happiness, I asked myself, “Do you actually want to do this?” It was the first time since I’d begun that I’d dared to allow “no” to be an answer to what was really an un-askable question.
I think some of my trouble to that point was never permitting myself to say no. As if that is all I’d ever been looking for – a way out. As if I had not chosen to write because I loved to but because it was the best I could come up with and having already invested so much time and energy there was no longer an option of turning back. In this way, I had allowed myself to become a slave to something I loved. So I opened the door, and asked, “Do you want to leave this place called writing?” And so, finally free to leave, I was finally free to stay.
If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual and group conferencing.
