Geneen Roth: Feeding The Empty Heart

"You don't need to be fixed, and you're not a mistake." This simple revelation goes to the heart of the emotional wounds that send most of us running for cover-or for the refrigerator. We run from the pain we believe will consume us, and are terrified to face our own unworthiness. Often we hide behind food as our only source of pleasure or comfort. But as those gentle words suggest, Geneen Roth has learned that emotional eating can actually provide a doorway that shows us where to look beyond that chocolate cake and beneath our pain to find what it is we're really looking for. This noted expert on food and weight issues has been there. She gained and lost more than a thousand pounds in seventeen years, and once doubled her weight in two months. After her roller coaster ride took her to the edge of suicide, she found that meditation, the death of her father and the love a male cat named Blanche helped her find the treasures that lay just beyond the pain she'd been struggling to avoid. With scathing honesty Ms. Roth shares her deepest hurts and confesses the stories that most of us identify with, but would never dare to reveal. Her clarity helps us understand our own relationship to food, and also lets us see that we have the capacity to move through our greatest losses with grace and love. (Hosted by Justine Willis Toms)

Geneen Roth is a pioneer in the anti-diet movement who teaches workshops throughout the United States to help men and women understand and change their approach to food. Her books include When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull up a Chair (Hyperion 1998), and The Craggy Hole in My Heart and the Cat Who Fixed It: Over the Edge and Back With My Dad, My Cat and Me (Harmony 2004).

New Dimensions seeks out the most innovative and creative people on the planet and engages them in spontaneous, deep dialogues. Its mission is to deliver life-affirming, socially and spiritually relevant information, practical knowledge and perennial wisdom through the voices and visions of those who are asking new questions and are looking at the world in positive and inspiring ways. It is through the exchange of ideas and information that we can be empowered and enabled to meet the future with greater energy and clarity.