I wouldn’t call myself a hoarder. But I have what probably most of us have: an ordinary case of messy-itis. Underneath my bed you would find a collection of old books I’ve been meaning to read and a stack of unread old magazines or two. But after nearly tripping over a glossy mag the other day, I finally decided to face the music and deal with the growing clutter under my bed. The first thing I grabbed was a copy of O magazine’s April issue. ”Not bad,” I thought. Until I saw it was circa 2010. Yikes!

Anyway, as I randomly flipped through the issue I found an excerpt from Geneen Roth’s book Women, Food and God. It’s a book already beautifully covered by associate editor and Weightless blogger Margarita Tartakovsky here. So I’m not going to get into the details. But there is one passage by Roth that sort of changed my life.

“Can you imagine how your life would have been different if each time you were feeling sad or angry as a kid, an adult said to you, ‘Come here, sweetheart, tell me about it?’ If when you were overcome with grief at your best friend’s rejection, someone said to you, ‘Oh, darling, tell me more. Tell me where you feel those feelings. Tell me how your belly feels, your chest. I want to know every little thing. I’m here to listen to you, hold you, be with you.’”

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