Hungers I No Longer Ignore

Tending to that which aches

I’ve been waiting impatiently the last couple of days for the birds to start coming to our feeders again. The feeders are a hassle. Each morning, we put them out, fingers crossed the squirrels won’t rob the birds of their bounty. Bringing them in each night, knowing that as the sun sets, the raccoons come to swing from them, empty them carelessly, and poop all over our deck. Thieves in the night, they are.

But I knew the birds’ spring hunger would bring them back to us. It always does. That’s the thing about hunger. It waits, quietly or wildly, until it’s fed.

As I hear the bird song through the window, I imagine them telling each other “They put the feeders back out, guys! They’re here, let’s meet for brunch.” And we watch, like little weirdos through the glass, binoculars in hand, hoping for glimpses of them doing the most natural thing we all do - tending to their hunger.

I’ve reckoned with hunger much through my life. It’s represented various things at various times. It’s only in the last several years I’ve come to understand how desperately we can hunger without ever involving our bellies.

There is body hunger, and there is soul hunger. And for some of us, those wires cross often and inescapably. Part of what led me to my work in helping people reclaim their relationships with their bodies was this intersection, and diet culture’s villainous ways of insisting that one must be either body hungry, or something else. We were also told that if we thought we were hungry, we were probably just bored, thirsty, tired, or lonely.

While there’s some merit to that idea, there’s also a fair bit of bullshit. Reality is that we are often hungry in multiple ways, all at once. We are lonely, heartbroken, ashamed, tired, and we also need to eat a real meal that tastes good and is enough food.

The hungers I’ve found myself reckoning with include spiritual hunger, emotional hunger, relational hunger, creative hunger, and even sensory hunger. Maybe you’re thinking of all the ways you hunger. Maybe you’re reading this and noticing the longings and aches within you that need to be fed.

I believed for a long time (as one is conditioned to believe) that having hungers at all made me inconvenient. When Michael lived in the Netherlands and our relationship survived on Facetime calls and my trans-Atlantic travel to see him, we were both hungry. And for part of that time, we both pretended we weren’t as hungry as we actually were. To admit how hungry we were - for each other, for nights that didn’t end in packed luggage, for an ease of life that didn’t have to be so scheduled around an 8 hour time difference. To admit that, to ourselves or each other, might’ve let the ache blaze like wildfire.

But then we did. We found ways to say “I’m hungry for you, and for me too. I’m hungry for life and for togetherness, but independence too.” We fed the hunger and we created a life around it.

I have been spiritually so hungry in the last several years. After renegotiating my relationship with the church and coming to conclusions for myself that my attendance there was not the best way for me to embody Divine Love, I felt untethered. My bones ached for clarity and alignment. For a set of rules that could tell me what a good person does. And doesn’t do.

So I fed my Love. I fed my draw to people in the margins. I listened, as well as I could, to voices and experiences that differed from mine. I looked for God, for the Divine, through my senses.

In feeding the hunger of my Love, I found more Love, and I met Divine Love in ways I never have before.

It was a hunger that brought me here to Sated Soul. My writer was hungry. I’d fed her bits and pieces here and there, but never the amount she needed to sustain herself, to grow her muscles, and to trust me that I wouldn’t let her starve. And here she and I are, more than a year later, and it’s her rhythmic creative hunger that draws me back, week after week. Writing, and then wiping the creative juices from my lips, satisfied and smiling.

There are practical hungers I no longer ignore, and I’m so much better for it. The hunger for being seen without shrinking or over explaining. The hunger for pleasure that isn't performative, earned, or apologized for.

The hunger for non-doing. To simply exist without producing. The hunger for spaciousness. In my schedule, in my body, in my thought.

The hunger for nourishment. Food that feeds me, not a fantasy. (and that currently includes delicious Kerrygold butter on homemade sourdough toast, and plenty of strawberry jam.)

The hunger for play, silliness, softness, even when the world feels heavy and for joy that doesn’t need to be justified.

The hunger for meaningful work, not just productivity.

The hunger for grief’s rhythm, not hurrying past it and for honest connection, even when it asks for vulnerability.

The hunger for nature. Wide sky, wild things, bare feet and the hunger for rest that is not a reward, but a right.

There are so many hungers and longings that ache, it can be hard to know where to feed first. Here are a few questions I’ve been musing over lately that you may find helpful too.

What is the hunger?

Now, deeper still, what is the hunger?

What does this hunger ask for?

How patient can you be in getting this hunger fed, and how will you know when you’re full?

How welcoming will you be when the hunger returns, because it will, and it should, and it must.

How will you show your hunger it can trust you?

This is the shape of living. Hungers rising, falling, rising again.
Not every hunger is urgent. But each one is worthy of our listening.

May you trust your hunger. May you feed what’s true.
May you welcome the ache, knowing it will guide you home again and again.

And may your soul leave the table satisfied, at least for now.