A Conversation With Geneen Roth
discussing a piece of my heart
Over the years, my writing has focused on our family's attention to simpler living, growing our own food, and giving our kids a more free-range upbringing living on our 6-acre homestead. What is not broadly known about me is that B and I have spent years advocating and supporting our daughter, Rhi, through struggles with mental health and anorexia since she was 13 years old (now 24). This topic is very near and dear to my heart, and it felt like a beautiful synchronicity when a couple of weeks ago, I was contacted by the PR firm for Geneen Roth, asking if I would be interested in collaborating on a post discussing her upcoming book release! I was honored to be asked, nervous and excited. Who was I to be having a conversation with a pioneering author on disordered eating who had been once interviewed by Oprah!? They were interested in my idea of the Wise Woman Road and how aging changes our growth and perspectives.
Without further ado, my conversation with Geneen Roth
Amy: Love, Finally is your new book that is coming out on April 21st. I actually got a sneak peek of it. I finished reading it yesterday, and I loved it. It really touched my heart as both a mother and a daughter. I've read a couple of your books, and you write very much based on your life experiences. Some of those experiences have led you to struggle with disordered eating and trauma. How did menopause, or did menopause, affect bringing some of those buried mother-daughter issues to the surface?
Geneen: Well, you know, I would say, in a very roundabout way, that it did, but when I say roundabout, I went into an instant menopause at 42. I had my period one month, and the next month I didn't have my period. And that was that. When I talked to my doctor about this, what she said, and this is kind of the long way into your question, was that all those years of eating disorders really affected my whole system, bleeding, fertility, and things like that. And so it just wasn't a regular, normal progression from bleeding to menopause, hot flashes, things. There was no transition. No transition.
Amy: Wow, that's amazing. So you talk a lot about overeating in your books. Can you tell me a little bit about your anorexic experience? My daughter has been struggling with anorexia for the last 10 years, and went into the hospital for the 1st time at age 14. So I've been her advocate. She's stable right now, I'm just curious what your experience there was, especially since you were coming from kind of a binge. process, correct?
Geneen: Right, I was. By the time I was anorexic, I guess I was already in my early 20s, and I had been binging and dieting since I was 11. And so, let's say, it was about 12 years, maybe even longer. I would say the self-loathing and the self-judgment about my body were so pronounced, and the belief that if I were thin, if I were thinner, always, if I just could be thin, I would be better, it would be better. I would not be suffering like that. It just felt like being thin was the answer to everything.
Amy: In This Messy, Magnificent Life, you discuss the idea of ghost children. I love the metaphor of that, reinforcing these long-standing patterns of self-rejection and hunger; they're almost like your alter egos. Has your relationship with those ghost children changed as you've gotten older?
Geneen: What changed was my understanding that I had interpreted certain things about myself. This is what I ended up writing Love, Finally, about. Mostly, my relationship with my mother, that I had taken her unhappiness, her unhappiness with my dad, and the chaos and violence that we, my brother and I, lived in and amongst, I had interpreted all of that; I really took that in and believed those things. I came to certain basic conclusions about myself. based on how I interpreted what was said and done.
I don't call those ghost children anymore, but I would say that what has developed since This Messy, Magnificent Life is a sense of realizing that there were certain places in my development that just got halted, and almost shrunken. Based on this belief that I was damaged, I was unlovable. I didn't belong. Something was wrong with me, things like that.
Amy: I know you've done masses of different things, from following Pema Chodron and Eckhart Tolle, spending time in India, trying to find every way possible to make sense of and come to terms with yourself. I've got to say I absolutely love Coco in Love, Finally! She sounds like the most amazing, feisty woman you can know. Do you think that it was through your work with her that you really were able to start to separate what you used to think of as the ghost children and process those parts of yourself?
Geneen: Well, a couple of things. I think, without all the work that I had done before, I’m not sure I would have even recognized Coco. You know, or have been able to receive anything she had to say. I think it’s always standing on the shoulders of the people who have come before. I still considered myself a victim. I was the victim of an abusive and violent mother. And so I continued to blame other people. I, at no point, really [was ready], until I met Coco, so that was where I would say the catalyst was, for me to turn towards myself and realize that it was about me. It was about the conclusions that I was making: I’m wrong, I’m damaged, I’m bad, I’m unlovable, through which I continue to see every situation that I encountered in my life.
Amy: One of the things that I really appreciated from what you wrote about on learning from Coco was gently exploring those conclusions. The conclusions that you, or that we all make about ourselves, are based on how the child inside of us reacts to whatever's coming at them. I think that a lot of that is where we, as aging adults, we as the wise women, are learning. We begin to evolve and learn from these things more at this point in life than at any other time. Would you say that that's fair?
Geneen: I would say that with enough experience, trying so many things, and having many of them not dismantle the suffering. When I met Coco, my best friendship of 20 years had just ended, [she] had basically stopped talking to me on the day I got back from radiation for breast cancer. I was crushed. I blame myself for that. I mean, of course, there were moments where I was blaming her, but I felt ashamed of myself. And she [Coco] immediately started pointing me back to myself. by asking me what the first lie was that I told myself about her, Christine. This woman, and it infuriated me that she was pointing me back to myself. Now, if somebody had done that, this vis-à-vis your question about getting older and being wiser... I'm not sure I could have heard that 10 years ago. I'm not sure I would have been into that at all. I think there's something about aging, and about getting older, somehow realizing that a lot of my life is behind me. And now's the time. It's like now or never, sweetheart. Do you want to live fully? Do you want to let go of blame? Do you want to somehow reach your higher [self]?
Amy: What would you like to express to people about your book Love, Finally?
Geneen: One thing I would say is that everything is healable. There is nothing that is not healable. And that it's that we keep seeing our lives, ourselves, and the world through things that were developed before we were 3 or 4 years old. So there's a distortion in the way that we see things, and it's possible to take those lenses off and to see clearly. So I think this is the time to name those lenses, to name what you see in the world, as I wrote in Love, Finally, when you see the world through shattered lenses, the world looks shattered. We see the world based on our wounded conclusions about ourselves. I don't think most people realize that. I think there is an automatic default. I don't think we realize how affected our experience is, how affected it is by the particular conclusions that we make. We're filtering [the world] through our own conclusions, lenses, wounds. And, when you start clearing those, the amount of clarity and ease, and joy, and spaciousness, happiness, that's possible, is limitless.
A huge thank you to Geneen for taking the time to speak with me earlier this week. I felt like I was having an intimate conversation with a friend, and her openness has inspired me to begin taking on some of those difficult topics and conversations so that others do not feel so alone in their experiences. Thank you, Geneen! You can find Geneen on Substack here: Cookies and Consciousness
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Until next time,
Hello friend! My name is Amy. I am so happy you have stopped by 🍃 If you are new here, a warm welcome to you! This space is where I am learning to walk the wise woman road by returning to my true self through seasonal living, reflective writing, nourishing food, intuition, and resilience. Rooted in the rhythms of the earth and my lived experience, these writings are an invitation to slow down, listen inward, and remember what nourishes us. If this resonates with you, I invite you to subscribe and walk the seasons alongside me.