What do you think of when you hear this word? How does it make your body feel? Do you feel desire? Shame? Excitement? Think of your own hunger; for food, passions, addictions, transformation, spirit, chocolate, pleasure, soul truth and the list goes on.

Recently I have been thinking about the experience of hunger. I have been asking, ‘What am I hungry for?’ Getting to the root of this question, the very center of it requires a great deal of quiet listening.

I am curious about our relationship with hunger, particularly as women. When a hunger arises what is your first response? What thoughts appear? Is the hunger satiated or immediately pushed aside? And then what? Do we have ancestors that lived through famine, went hungry? Of course I am speaking of food and also all the places hunger arrives in our lives.

Listen to what the hungry beneath the hungry might be calling for.

Listen with attention and see where your hunger is calling you. This is an invitation to eat what you are hungry for in revelry. Each bite, a celebration of being a human in a body on this earth, alive and awake to the searing pleasure of bitter dark chocolate ganache, a summer salad. In gratitude, not shame, not guilt but actual gratitude. As I write I am calling myself to attention. I’m going to step this up a notch in my life. Attune that much more to the cycle of hunger and consumption.

When I speak to my friends and acquaintances I don’t really want to ask, ‘how are you?’ I don’t always want to ask ‘how is your heart?’ though of course I care. What I always want to ask you is…’What are you most hungry for, right now?’ With a sense of urgency. It feels so important. Because I believe the center of our hunger is what is calling us to our soul’s grandest expression. And that, my friends, is delicious.

There’s a tiger in me.

She is pacing.

Pawing at my gut and tracing all the steps that left me quiet.

The places where I freeze.

She has come to roar in holy dominion and lick the old wounds rising to be cleaned.

I can barely take the strength of her power.

I’m squirming out of my skin.

I keep expecting my golden glinted cat eyes to be seen.

Her rippling muscles speak.

They show me where I am not free.

By her presence she opens me to the hidden places I had long since surrendered.

Let the constriction of everyday living paralyze me.

In her wildness I feel my own heat.

I hear,

Plant your feet deep.

Legs thick and sturdy.

Pillars to the holiest of temples.

In the center of me.

Where new worlds are opening.

The way she breaths,

She shows me all my tensed ways that keep my blood from pulsing,

From the quaking power of this divinity.

I tell you,

The terror that comes when you feel her rising.

It makes me giddy really.

The ancient knowing and beat the ground growing,

Roll in dirt,

Make love with the earth,

Kind of profundity.

That comes with her release.

She is hungry.

With so much love,

Jamie

PREVIOUS
7 Tips for Igniting your Creativity - (P.S They Won't Hurt Your Sex Life Either)

NEXT
Blessing