The Thing I Can't Quite Explain

Why our daily calls matter more than I can put into words

If you asked me to describe what happens on our Magic Membership calls, I might tell you we talk about the weather. Motion sickness. Eye surgery. Grandchildren learning to read. The price of dental work in Australia.

And you'd probably wonder what any of that has to do with food dysfunction recovery.

That's the thing. It has everything to do with it. And almost nothing. And that's exactly the point.

What Happened This Week

This week, we weathered a snowstorm together—some of us literally, watching 12 inches pile up outside windows in upstate New York and Ohio. Level 3 emergencies. Roads closed. The kind of isolation that used to send many of us straight to the pantry.

Instead, we logged on.

One member shared that she'd gained back weight after losing 75 pounds, and rather than performing the shame spiral so many of us know by heart, she said it out loud. To people who didn't flinch. Who didn't offer diet tips or disappointed sighs. Who asked, "What do you think that regain is trying to tell you?"

Another member had a breakthrough about her default mode network—that part of the brain designed to scan for threats and keep us "safe" by keeping us small. She realized that the discomfort she felt when trying new things wasn't danger. It was just... newness. And slowly, her relationship to food, to relationships, to herself began to shift.

Someone else navigated a difficult conversation with a friend that had been brewing for a year and a half. The conversation went well—not because she had a script, but because she'd been practicing being herself in this space, week after week, until it started to feel possible everywhere else.

A member's estranged daughter showed up unexpectedly at her door. After years of distance. After doing the work of understanding her own patterns, her own mother wound, her own tendency to abandon before she could be abandoned.

We talked about motion sickness—the science of it, actually. How it happens when your brain receives conflicting signals, when what you see doesn't match what you feel. Which led to a conversation about the vagus nerve. Which led to breathing techniques. Which led to someone feeling prepared for a sailing trip she would have declined a year ago.

One member is helping her aging mother navigate assisted living decisions. Another is worried about her husband's medical care and wondering how to advocate without overstepping. Another is facing a financial conversation with her sister that feels impossible. Another shared, with quiet courage, that she's struggling with depression and wasn't sure she could even show up to the call.

She showed up anyway.

The Part I Can't Explain

Here's what I struggle to convey to people who haven't experienced it:

We're not a support group that talks about food.

We're a community that talks about life—the whole messy, complicated, heartbreaking, beautiful thing—and in doing so, we slowly unhook food from its job as our primary coping mechanism.

When someone shares that they're scared about their mother's memory loss, we don't pivot to meal planning. We stay with the fear. We stay with the grief of watching a parent fade. We stay with the impossible question of how to care for someone who cared for us.

And something shifts.

Because so many of us learned early that we were too much. That our feelings were inconvenient. That we needed to handle things ourselves, quietly, preferably with the pantry door closed.

These calls teach us something different.

They teach us that we can feel the fear and not eat over it. That we can sit with sadness and not numb it. That we can be angry, disappointed, anxious, lonely, overwhelmed—and still be welcomed. Still be seen. Still be accompanied through it.

The Rules That Make It Work

We have an unusual agreement in this space: no unsolicited advice.

Someone shares that their husband won't take care of his health, and we don't rush in with articles about heart disease or suggestions for sneaking vegetables into his meals. We say, "That sounds so hard. What's that bringing up for you?"

Because we've learned that most of the time, people don't need our solutions. They need our presence. They need to feel less alone in their struggle.

This is revolutionary for many of us. We spent years being told what to eat, when to exercise, how to portion, what to track. We were drowning in advice. What we were starving for was resonance—the feeling of being truly understood.

Why It's Hard to Explain

When I try to describe this to someone outside our community, I watch their eyes glaze over. So you... talk on Zoom about your feelings? And that helps with food?

Yes. Sort of. It's more than that.

It's showing up, day after day, and practicing being human with other humans who get it. It's building new neural pathways not through willpower, but through connection. It's learning that the thing we were using food to do—regulate our nervous systems, manage unbearable emotions, fill the void of aloneness—can actually be done through relationship.

Real relationship. The kind where you can say "I gained back 75 pounds" or "I'm struggling with depression" or "I'm terrified my mother is disappearing" and the response is not judgment but recognition. Me too. I understand. You're not alone.

This Week's Quiet Miracle

A member who's been doing this work for eight years mentioned that she's still actively working on her journey. A newer member expressed surprise—she'd assumed that after a certain point, you arrive. You're done. You've figured it out.

And one of our longer-term members responded with something that stopped me in my tracks:

"Ongoing growth and self-awareness are signs of being alive and actively working towards personal goals."

This isn't a destination. It's a way of living.

The calls aren't about achieving some perfect relationship with food and then graduating. They're about building a life where we don't need food to do what it was never meant to do. A life where we have places to bring our grief, our fear, our joy, our questions. A life where we're accompanied.

An Invitation

If you've been curious about the Magic Membership, if you've wondered what actually happens on these calls, if you've felt that pull toward something different than the diet programs that left you more broken than when you started—

You're welcome here.

We might talk about the weather. We might discuss the neuroscience of motion sickness. We might share stories about our grandchildren or our gardens or our stubborn roosters who crow too loud.

And somewhere in all of that ordinary life, something extraordinary happens.

We become people who don't need food to survive our feelings.

We become people who can sit with discomfort and not run.

We become people who know, in our bones, that we're not alone.

That's the thing I can't quite explain.

But you can experience it.

The Magic Membership offers connection calls five days a week, three times a day, for 30 minutes each—plus Saturday Deep Dive sessions. These calls have been pivotal in my own understanding and study of food dysfunction, both my own and others'. No matter where you are in your journey, you're welcome.