Eating in the Light of the Moon

This old African folktale is about a girl who lived in a village at a time when life was very hard. The crops were not growing. Food was difficulty to come by. People had to trap birds, dogs, even lizards and rats just to stay alive.

“There was only one Tutu bird in all of the snares, “she replied, “and it sang the sweetest song I have ever heard, a song that filled me with such joy, that I felt compelled to let it go.”

“We have no use for a girl like you!” the angry villagers yelled. And in the throes of their rage, they dragged the girl out into the bush where they built a small hut around her, a hut made of strong thorn branches that had neither windows nor doors. There they left her.

The frightened girl cried and cried as she sat alone in the dark hut, not knowing what her fate would be. When she had no more tears to cry, she began to sing. She sang the most beautiful song, a lament to the sweet-singing Tutu bird, whose life she had saved. She sang this song over and over and over.

When she stopped singing, she sat in the dark silence of the thorny hut and listened. She heard a little sound that was like a faroff bird cry and then a fluttering that seemed like wings, followed by the rustling of what might be a mouse. She looked upward to the top of the hut where the sound came from, and there she saw a small hole with a shaft of light coming through. She was surprised when a small fruit dropped from the hole and landed at her feet. It was sweet, juicy, and delicious!

After a time, she heard the sounds again, and another fruit fell to her feet. When she glanced up she noticed the hole was a little bigger and she was able to see the Tutu bird hovering above. The girl thanked the bird profusely. Then the bird sat on the roof of the hut and sang the same sweet song that had compelled the girl to free her.

For many days it continued like this. The bird dropped sweet, juicy fruit down to the girl, the girl sang thank-you songs to the bird, and the bird sang ever so sweetly in return. Each time the bird sang, it made the hole a little bigger, bringing light into the hut.

To celebrate, all the birds of the forest joined the Tutu bird in making a great feast of delicious fruits and nuts for the girl and for the people of the village. The villagers who had been so cruel to the girl were surprised at how well nourished the girl looked, for they remained thin and miserable. They praised the birds and welcomed the girl back to the village, in hopes of benefiting from her good fortune.

A woman’s song is her truth. The expression of her innermost thoughts and feelings is the sweetest song she can sing and it should not be muted. Unfortunately, there are those that cannot appreciate the beauty of this truth or recognize its need to be expressed freely.

Many women who struggle with disordered eating fail to hear the sweetness of their own song because they are too busy listening to the singing of others, whether it be the voices of their parents, lovers or husbands, women friends, colleagues or class-mates, or the chorus of the culture they live in. Rather than searching for the essence of who they are and expressing it in their own unique voices, they allow others to define how they should be, what they should look like, what they should do, what they should want. Unable to hear their own inner voices they feel a vague but ever-present sense of alienation that is hard to bear. Longing for a sense of inner connectedness and finding the estrangement from their true selves intolerable, they fill their minds with thoughts of food and they eat the way they live, as if in a trance, not conscious of what they truly want.

Because they feel so disconnected from themselves, they cling desperately to their relationships with others, hoping to get the attention, love, and support they are not able to give themselves. As they become increasingly dependent on these relationships to provide them with the nourishment they need, they become overly protective of the relationship itself. Cautious of anything that might be disruptive, they are quick to discard their own ideas and values whenever conflict arises. They see their own personal song as threatening to their relationships, as a nagging tune they must get out of their minds. And once again, they turn to food to distract themselves from speaking their truth, from daring to sing out loud.

Unbeknownst to those around them, these women are starving. By failing to respect and respond to their own needs, they become depleted rather than nourished in their relationships. They have become so adept at listening to the needs, wishes, and values of others that they have forgotten their own. Much of the time, they are unaware that they once had a voice that is now lost, a voice that could sing a song so sweet that it could fill their hearts with joy. And so they look for joy in eating or in losing weight.

To find her inner voice, a woman must recognize her need for self-nurturance, for a period set aside for quiet reflection. By learning how to take time out from her relationships with others and sit quietly with her own thoughts and feelings, she can be nourished. She can find her feelings, her values, her rhythms. She can hear the beauty of her song.

To be in a relationship with another in a way that nourishes rather than drains her, a woman must be able to listen to others without losing her own voice. She must learn to find a balance between her relationship with herself and her relationship with others.

In the ocean, the lobster and the eel are very close neighbors. The eel makes its home deep in a hole in the reef. The lobster lives at the mouth of this hole. With the lobster there to guard the entrance from intruders, the eel can live quite comfortably. The lobster, however, must remain alert not just to predators from without but from within as well, because eels eat lobsters. It must simultaneously keep one of its antennae pointing outwards and the other facing inwards.

Just as maintaining this delicate balance in awareness is essential to the lobster’s survival, a woman seeking freedom from disordered eating must maintain a balance between her need to be in relationships with others and her need to remain true to herself. She must remain aware of her inner thoughts and feelings even while interacting with others. To do this, she needs to change the questions she asks herself. Instead of asking questions like

Most women feel deeply moved by the feminine principle concerned with harmony and relationships. They value the human connections they have with their friends, lovers, coworkers, mates, and children. The feeling of community, of being connected, of belonging, is an important part of every woman’s sense of identity and self-worth. Striving to create nurturing, supportive relationships is an important aspect of a woman’s life.

Valuing and appreciating harmony in relationships is one of the inner feminine’s greatest gifts. Sometimes, however, a woman can over-identify with this principle. In an attempt to create harmony and connectedness, she assumes total responsibility for her relationships, for making them happen, fixing what’s wrong, making everything all right. It becomes she who does all the compromising, she who sacrifices what she wants to keep things agreeable, she who sings someone else’s tune to keep the peace.

Many women who struggle with disordered eating find themselves surrounded by others who do not share equally in the responsibility for nurturing a relationship. These women frequently find themselves feeding and supporting others who do not feed and support them in return. They have women friends who talk but do not listen, coworkers who expect favors but do not give them, parents who criticize everything they do, husbands or lovers who try to convince them that they are out of tune whenever they sing a song they don’t want to hear. Discouraged, they stop singing. No more beautiful songs of joy, sweet songs of sorrow, lively songs of change and freedom. They turn to food instead to give them the pleasure they once got from singing. And their relationship with food becomes the most important relationship in their lives.

For a woman to be free of disordered eating, she must bring the masculine principles of separateness and autonomy into her relationships. She must be able to say no. She must assert her individuality within the relationship and say, “That may be okay with you, but it is not okay with me. I understand you want me to do that, but it doesn’t feel right to me. I don’t share your perspective. It may not be important to you, but it’s important to me. I feel differently than you do about that.” Like the girl in the story, she needs to say no when others treat her poorly for not doing what they want and appear to value her only for what she can do for them.

In order to be free from disordered eating, a woman must realize the beauty of her song and refuse to sacrifice it, even in times of scarcity, even when others insist that she be silent. She must refuse to participate in relationships with those who do not value her voice and who would abandon her or imprison her for failing to destroy or silence it. She must beware of those who would punish her for not attending to their needs and who would refuse to nurture her if she sings freely. She must recognize that it is her song, the expression of the truth of who she is, that can nourish her and free her.