Women's Roles

As little as two generations ago women were washing clothes by hand in the Western world. Women with large families, maybe five or more children and men who were working hard in the fields, or in mines, or  some other  manual labour. If you have ever washed heavily soiled material by hand you know it is no joke.

We now so easily take for granted our automatic washing machine. It is a luxury and a great blessing in truth, and if we take a moment to be thankful ,really thankful and grateful for the differences and ''moving on'' that us women of this generation have that our mothers, and their mothers, and their mothers did not have, it would bring a dawning of a movement of improvement. Yet we must break the shackles of past conditioning.

When I was discovering the way to heal my habit of 'eating when full' when I was nineteen, I also read a good bit about feminism. I found it interesting, and certainly found some of its attitudes and wisdom empowered me. However something was missing. In the 1970's it seemed women were so angry (and rightly so) that fighting a way out seemed to be the only option. Talking to, or having open and honest dialogue with their male oppressors simply was not going to happen because the patriarchal system of mainly Narcissists was not going to let them. The patriarchal males simply were amused by, and fed off the Feminists anger. So although the anger fuelled wisdom and drew attention to the very real issues at hand (women were not even being paid the same just because they were women) was it really going to further create change in the world and in individual women's lives? There lay the key word to carry them forward ''CREATE.'' We, as women had to mature by honouring our wisdom, integrate our anger and  CREATE the new and better, the authentic, and quite frankly, what we never experienced before - love and respect from a man and from society, the media and life. It had to start within ourselves. We realised that change first comes from within and then the outer changes in compliance with that inner emotional healing that had to be done. And so the self-help support groups were born.

When I first walked into The Women's Therapy Centre in London, I felt like I had come home. I knew this was to be my life's work - helping women overcome compulsive eating. I was there by a quirk of fate that allowed me to sit in on a nine month support group for compulsive eating women as part of my independent research into  eating disorder recovery; and as a prelude to setting up my own self-help support groups, which I did the following year.

For more information on Sofia's work Text 07530 531 655 (UK) or Email sofia2227@gmail.com

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