Hunger is a Language of Desire
In the foreword of The Gastronomical Me, M.F.K. Fisher wrote, “our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think about one without the others.” She added, “so it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it.” In 2019, more than seven decades after she wrote those words, their truth began to crystallize in my own life as I started peeling off the layers of the harmful behaviors that had plagued me in the years after my divorce, and at that time still had the powerful capability to pull me under its spell at any given moment.
I didn’t spend much time on it in my book and barely spoke about it on the podcast—because there were so many ways I was hurting myself back then, and I was still scared and ashamed to talk about it—is that during the early days of my divorce, I was caught in a relentless loop of cleanses and restrictions. I was desperately trying to shrink into someone “better,” someone less visible, less complicated, more desirable. My divorce left me raw and unmoored, and I thought if I could control my body, maybe, hopefully, I could control the pain.
I remember one evening, I was standing in my small Paris kitchen and my body was starting to contort with hunger, but I refused to eat. Instead, I was sipping on a bitter herbal tea, another cleanse to “detox” the mess I felt inside. The hunger pangs were sharp and the silence around me was heavy and sad, buried under piles of my own self-denial. Deep down, I believed I didn’t deserve to feel satisfied, or to want pleasure, or even to just be full.
Now, looking back, I’m so sad for that version of myself. I was so comfortable starving my body and soul. I was denying the very part of me that craves connection, comfort, and joy. Hunger wasn’t the enemy during that time of my life; shame was. I was starved of a sense of self.
But as I’ve continued this Dinner for One journey, and as I’ve relearned to love myself again, I can clearly see that my hunger was a language, a conversation, between my body and my heart. Every growl, every craving, every pang was my body asking for care, and my heart deciding whether or not to listen.
Relearning to listen to that language and have a healthy conversation that led with compassion instead of punishment was a scary act of self-trust. Could I do it? Would I survive? Am I worthy? Eventually, I started telling myself that if I could make this dinner, if I could do this nice thing for myself, I’d be okay. I’d figure it out. I’d be whole again. Every dinner for one I made, in my own way, was a refusal to silence my desires and the full messy spectrum of what makes me a (flawed) human being.
As my solo dinners became a part of my daily ritual, I finally found what I was craving. Cooking became my way of showing up for myself without judgment. I learned to honor my appetite as a compass guiding me toward healing and peace. My dinners became shameless moments of pleasure that celebrated my softness, my strength, my confusion, and set a foundation for what was to come.
And eventually, I stopped with the cleanses and starving myself.
No more cleanses meant no longer erasing my hunger or my feelings. I was learning to say yes to food and a new life. It meant accepting the right to enjoy, to savor, to take up space with my appetite and my desires. And what I felt deep down started to change, I knew eventually I’d find happiness again.
Today, I’m many years past my divorce, but every meal I make for myself is still a little middle finger to the shame that tried to shrink me. Divorce stripped away so much, but it also created space to rebuild my relationship with myself and my body.
Sure, sardines on toast might look humble. But those sardines, that chili crisp, and that naughty little knob of butter are my way of saying I am here, I am worthy, and I deserve to be fully nourished, satisfied, and loved no matter what.