2016-07-27
I'd like you to consider what a friend of mine, June, told me... "I've realized, for the first time in my life that I had a range of emotions that I never knew I had. I was Happy June for many years. I would smile and laugh, yet I could be really seething inside and I didn't even know I was angry. I had to learn what anger was. And it was by hearing other people talk, and feeling I had a right to talk that I would start crying or feeling angry or having a sense of the strength in being able to experience your emotions. What I was told by people who were wiser than me at the time, which was very, very useful, is that if I would allow myself to experience the pain, the anger, the joy -- little steps of it -- instead of jumping into food, which was my habit, then I would really know who I was. That center in me would well up and get bigger and bigger and bigger. And it’s the truth. It’s absolutely the truth." June is a full person now, and has been abstinent from compulsive overeating for over 25 years. She learned to express her feelings from hearing other people do it at support group meetings. She could be herself there, because everyone promised to keep each other's secrets and anonymity, too. She's taken it day-by-day.

- Norris Chumley

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