Food as a Healing Force after Divorce/Death

[Rebel Rose]

I was wondering if any one else here has turned to food as a way to connect with friends and neighbors after a divorce or separation.

As many of you may know, after a separation, the couple's friends tend to split up according to their loyalties. In my case, the ex kept the house and business, and as most of 'our' friends were industry associates they've gravitated to him, and I stopped seeing or hearing from friends just when I needed comfort the most.

However, through a friend here on eGullet who started a monthly dining group in my hometown and invited me, I have met some really REALLY interesting people, been offered wonderful opportunities, and had the chance to unload some woes on kind ears. I can't wait for our next meeting this month.

Has anyone had a similar experience?

[Alex]

This isn't quite analogous to your situation, but our best friends unexpectedly split up last year after 25 years of marriage, 20 years of friendship with us, and at least 200 terrific dinners at one house or the other. I was terribly saddened by it for months and still haven't quite gotten over it, for several reasons. Ms. Alex and I are doing our best to maintain both friendships, but a dinner for three just isn't quite the same; the spirit of the absent partner still hovers, so to speak. The silver lining, such as it is, is that we now can add seafood and ocean fish to our ingredient list; one menber of the severed couple is severely allergic to them. We also get to drink more wine now that the bottles are split among three diners instead of four.

[Beebs]

I don't have much personal experience in this, but I read a recent article in the Globe and Mail relevant to the topic on hand. The article is titled "Cooking as therapy". The quick run-down on the article - those who face various adversities in their lives (grief, divorce, illness, dislocation, etc.) see cooking as therapeutic for a number of reasons. For instance, cooking is a means of creative expression (much like art or music therapy); as a means of getting affirmation from others; because it fills a void; because it can be numbing; and as a way of recreating past memories and experiences.

For myself, although I have not yet had to face adversities such as divorce or the death of someone very close to me, I see cooking (and eating) as a way of dealing with the everyday stresses in life - work, family, etc. It's meditation for me what yoga is for others.

[Lindacakes]

I was awake at 3:00 in the morning trying to be with my grief when I turned on the T.V. and saw an old rerun of Julia Child. For me, it was connecting with a talent I'd had from childhood and never taken seriously. I have been obsessed ever since, although less so than before. The entire researching, shopping, cooking, eating, researching, shopping, baking, eating cycle fascinated me and there wasn't an aspect I wasn't fascinated in.

I've always found baking to be very meditative and calming. I enjoyed being able to create happiness for myself and my friends and have a focus.

[Special K]

...our best friends unexpectedly split up last year after 25 years of marriage, 20 years of friendship with us, and at least 200 terrific dinners at one house or the other.

The exact same thing is happening here right now, and it's ugly. However, in our case, the absent person (whose idea it was to split) wants us all to get together as a foursome anyway! Awkward much? (Yeah, she's nuts - no, we're not doin' it.)

As to the original question, no doubt about it, we've kept our friend going - I don't think he'd eat anything at all if it weren't for dinners at our place. That's how we knew there was something wrong, in fact - we hadn't seen either of them in a while and then he showed up at our door, alarmingly thin. Making sure he gets fed has been good for all three of us.

[judiu]

I'm surprised that none of our more Southern members have not chimed in here! It's well known that in the south (the deeper the more so) that if a person (or a family) is going through a traumatic situation (of any kind) the knee-jerk, automatic response is to feed them. Casseroles, roasts, cakes, pies, fried chicken, (actually, chicken in most any guise) congealed salads, green salads, macaroni and cheese, potato salad, etc. etc. etc! Traumatic situations can include, but are not limited to, a death in the family, the loss of a favorite animal, the moving way from home of a child, teh moving back into the home of a child, loss of a job, getting a new job that will reque a (non-local) move, weddings, divorces, and just about anything else that might necessitate an attack of the "vapors" The cooking comforts the cook, and the food comforts the traumatised.

[Special K]

Judiu, I may live in Seattle now, but I'm a Southerner through and through! You are exactly right, of course.

[abooja]

The therapeutic benefits of cooking and baking were never more clear to me than last summer, when my mother was diagnosed with cancer, and later sent home on hospice leave shortly before she passed away.

After the diagnosis, and before anyone knew how sick she was, I was cooking up huge batches of soup, and baking bread and cookies to bring to my folks in Brooklyn whenever I would visit to drive my mother to chemotherapy in Manhattan. Once she was sent home, and we spent nearly a month with nurses and visitors running around the house, waiting for the inevitable, I became even more immersed in baking, in particular, even dragging my second Kitchen Aid standing mixer to Brooklyn to help out. Everyone thought I was nuts, but were it not for the ritual of weighing ingredients, creaming butter with sugar, cutting parchment paper, and hovering near the oven to make sure I turned things around halfway through, I would have had a nervous breakdown. It was the single most upsetting thing I have ever experienced, yet I survived it thanks to both my wonderful husband and my love for baking.

One moment I will never, ever forget was when I set out to make lentil soup for my mother, according to her specifications. She was always quite particular about how her food was prepared, and was less than happy with the last batch I had made her, since it contained rice, not pasta, and prosciutto. I know the basics of how my grandmother, my mother's mother, had always prepared lentil soup, but wanted some specifics from my mother, who was was sleeping in the living room on the same floor. Every few minutes, I would drag the pot over to my mother, who was sitting up at the moment, asking for her input. "A bag and a half of lentils", she would say. "No garlic!" Her friend, Gerri, thought this was great, because it kept my mother involved, and us interacting about something we both enjoyed. For a brief moment, life was almost normal. For those of you who have been in similar situations, normalcy is a major achievement. Food is what got us there that day.