Appetites Quotes

“The most painful thing about the woman whose mother did not want her was not her mothers lack of love, but that in seeing herself the way her mother saw her, she cut herself off from her own love.
We believe that because being wanted and being seen and being loved once depended on someone else, they still do.”
― Geneen Roth, Appetites: On the Search for True Nourishment

“When you sneak food, you perpetuate the belief that you are too ugly, too needy, too intense to be seen and loved for who you are...
You give yourself the message that who you are is not acceptable, and that you must pretend to be someone else to be loved.”
― Geneen Roth, Appetites: On the Search for True Nourishment

“I kept becoming larger in her presence, kept returning to who I would have been without the pretense of who I thought I should be.”
― Geneen Roth, Appetites: On the Search for True Nourishment

“We need friends who can be with us in our loneliness, not people who will cheer us up so that we don't feel it. We need friends who get furious with us when we are not being real or true to ourselves, not who get angry when we don't do what they want us to do. We need friends who are not afraid of our pain or our joy. We need friends who are not invested in the way we look, what we do or what we feel, who are willing to see us without reference to themselves.
We need to become those friends ourselves.
The questions are always these: does this friendship lead you toward a fuller life or does it confine you? Does it bring you closer to your heart or take you further away? Does it open you or does it close you? Does it allow you to trust yourself further or does it make you frightened of yourself? Does it enlarge your life or does it make your life smaller?”
― Geneen Roth, Appetites: On the Search for True Nourishment

“What we are looking for is who is looking”
― Geneen Roth, Appetites: On the Search for True Nourishment

“For a few minutes it didn't matter what anyone thought of me.
I have created something that didn't exist the day before, from a place that didn't belong to anyone but me.”
― Geneen Roth, Appetites: On the Search for True Nourishment