What is your name?

Hunger is non-negotiable. It’s a primal force hard-coded into our DNA: we get hungry to eat, we eat to survive. Yet, as women, we’re so frequently told to curb our appetites or food, for love, for want hat our hunger often turns against us. What if we learned to love it, instead of locking it up in the deepest dungeons of our collective psyche? What if we let our appetites grow as big as the biggest monsters in the world, engulfing whatever holds us back into our raving, craving depths?

What do you do with a monster inside yourself?
In fairytales, before you can slay it, you have to learn its name.
And the monster doesn’t want to give it up.
Namelessness is its forte; darkness is its shining armour.
My monster is a bottomless well.
Every day I stare into its depth, and I tell it I love it.
That’s the only thing that works against it, see.
Knowing that, no matter what, I’ll be back with my bucket full of love.
Every day, the monster has a different name.
Every day, I learn new words to call it out.
The first time we met, its name was hunger.
It was more scared than scary, wearing my face from the day I was denied a snack for not fitting into a dress as a little girl.
I didn’t love it then. So I tried to kill it.
The more I tried, the more it hurt.
I had to tell it I loved it a million times before it believed me.
But that’s the only thing that works, you see.
So I’m here now.
I love you.
What is your name?