A Woman’s Hunger
May 2025
Whack! Strike after strike, I whittle away at another thick root that’s made it’s home in my garden. This appears to be a theme, unearthing old root systems before I can sow new seeds, replace what has become withered and straggly with a young plant intent on blooming. More and more, I witness life itself as a symbolically rich event, the ordinary and extraordinary become hard to separate.
Taking up spiritual seeking in your early 20’s is a peculiar thing. The recognition that there is clearly something I don’t know, a secret about life or humanity that aches beneath the cultural rhythm of go, go, go, but what is the secret? What is the “something more” that itches me incessantly, why do I feel so bent on finding a purpose, and meaning, and understanding, when everyone around me is happy to go, go, go? These questions over time can paralyze the compulsion to follow along, and instead route me on a separate quest, one that digs beneath the surface, rather than building me up.
But there is a special crux about asking these questions at a young age- what I consider today is how so many of these questions, and things I hope to understand, can really only come with time, and age, and lived experience. At times, I’ve felt myself wish my life away, wanting to jump ahead to the part where I can relax, take a deep breath, because I finally understand. Wanting to be anywhere other than where I am, lets me know I still have a long way to go.
I am discovering a certain yearning that awakens in the life of a woman. It is not only the spiritual kind, but a longing for the marrow, the sustenance of the human experience. We desire depth, intimacy, expression, and a largeness that often disrupts the tidy little spaces we’ve made for ourselves as young girls. But how do we then break out of our habitual smallness, how do we explain ourselves to the world that has taken for granted our agree-ability, our “wonderful ability to compromise”?
The questions themselves can barrel their way into our lives in such a manner that it seems as if our yearning is a destruction of a tidy, well put together life. That the question is a menace, or evidence of a short coming, or even worse, a symptom of our insatiability, never enough-ness. Once I was asked, “couldn’t you be happy just being here, working a regular whatever job?”
No, I said. My hunger is too large for that.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes, “we all begin the process before we are ready, before we are strong enough, before we know enough; we begin a dialogue with thoughts and feelings that both tickle and thunder within us. We respond before we know how to speak the language, before we know all the answers, and before we know exactly to whom we are speaking.”
The hacking away at the roots, the struggle with my hunger (both physical and existential), the prolonged renovation of my kitchen, feel in no way separate from the life of art I am making. The circumstances are their own canvas where some alchemy unfolds, at a level that I do not pretend to understand. On my hands and knees, scrubbing at the original linoleum floors picked our by Grandma Lenhart, is this not spiritual too?
Setting out to become, to understand, inevitably we begin a journey to a place that we do not yet know. Like the musk deer called out into the forest in search of the intoxicating aroma, it is a quizzical and unbearably gorgeous wandering back into ourselves. Could the musk deer have ever known from that first smell, that what she was desiring most, was herself? Or rather, is that unshakable trust in her own splendor hinged upon the seeking, the questioning?
Some days it feels as if I have just awoken to myself. The twisting pain in my stomach that had been familiar for so long, now screams at me, “wake up, wake up!”
My favorite books I’ve read in the past year, are often about a woman’s hunger, a desire, and a lavish feeding of herself. A year ago I bought myself a little gold pendant, a tiny little Lakshmi to wear around my neck. Hoping that I could coax her into taking up a seat in my heart, leaving her trail of beauty all throughout my little life. What I understand of her, what little glimpse I have, is that abundance always begins with hunger. The question is, then, will I feed myself?
In India our meals were known as “seva”, to eat is a service we offer to our body, day in and day out. We chant a prayer, and remember that the food is the divine, the body is the divine, the digestion is the divine, the whole thing is itself, a dance of godly forces. How sweet that we have been praying all this time, living a ritual life under our noses.
I’m learning that this feminine hunger is satisfied by many riches. Good food, great friendships, laughter, deep sleep, great sex, moving art, good books, time in nature, wise teachers, beautiful clothes, personal style, a great album, money in the bank, on, and on it goes. My younger self was intently focused on a singular solution to the problem of my womanness. Convinced, there would be just one thing that relieved the tension of my confusion.
A teacher I know sometimes talks about the modern seeker needing to be a “spiritual omnivore”, someone who eats from lots of traditions. I don’t necessarily agree, but rather see that sentiment placed perfectly in the realm of my own feminine longings. As women, I am increasingly suspicious that satisfaction can come when we learn to eat the world. To receive sustenance from the divine in all her many forms. That delight, wisdom, creativity, beauty, truth, come from countless directions, and infinite flavors. To gorge myself only on spiritual teachings inevitably will not be enough, because I was born into a body that loves scented candles, fashion shows, tattoos, books, 90’s hip hop, museums, horses, big hoop earrings. I am awakening to the possibility that loving many things is in fact, its own prayer.