#51 – Robin Clare: Feast & Famine#51 – Robin Clare: Feast & Famine
Recovery Survey
Spiritual author and recovery coach Robin Clare shares her decades-long struggle with bulimia and her view that addiction is rooted in an attachment to suffering. She outlines a spiritual path of surrender and grace, along with practical tools and trauma work to support ongoing recovery from food-related addictions.
35:20•24 Feb 2021
Feast, Famine and Grace: Robin Clare on Food Addiction and Suffering
Episode Overview
- Food-related issues such as bulimia and obsessive compulsive food disorder can function like any other addiction, even if they’re often labelled as ‘disorders’.
- Robin frames addiction as an attachment to suffering, with substances and behaviours acting as outlets rather than the core problem.
- Her spiritual model of healing follows four stages: recognising pain, acknowledging suffering, reaching genuine surrender, and allowing grace.
- Long-term recovery benefits from professional trauma work, inner child healing and an ‘examined life’ approach.
- Practical tools like tracking food intake and using writing to process trauma can support accountability and emotional healing.
“There’s actually only one true addiction on the planet, and that is to suffering.”
How do people find strength in their journey to sobriety? This conversation between host Brett Morris and guest Robin Clare shines a light on a form of addiction that often gets overlooked: obsessive compulsive food disorder and bulimia. Robin, a spiritual author and recovery and writing coach, talks about her book *Feast & Famine: Healing Addiction with Grace* and shares how her 40-year struggle with food addiction became the doorway into a much deeper spiritual journey.
She explains how, in her view, there is "only one true addiction on the planet" – addiction to suffering – and everything else, from food to meth to social media, is just the chosen outlet. You’ll hear Robin describe moving from self-love as a child into self-loathing through repeated trauma and humiliation, including being put on a diet at seven years old. She connects these early experiences to her bulimia, which she calls a form of self-persecution.
Her rock-bottom moment, complete with intense physical pain and a stark warning from a medium channelling her grandmother, becomes a powerful turning point: "If you don't bury your bulimia, your family will bury you." There’s plenty here for anyone dealing with addiction of any kind. Robin outlines what she calls Sophia’s divine path to healing: pain, suffering, surrender and grace.
She explains surrender as that moment of being utterly "done" and grace as the small and large helps that appear – from a podcast episode to a supportive friend – once someone is ready to accept them. Practical tools also show up, like tracking food to stay accountable, doing trauma work with professionals, and using writing as a way to "live an examined life" and process buried pain.
For anyone who’s ever swapped one addiction for another, or who wonders if food can really be an addiction, this conversation might spark some honest self-reflection. Could it be that underneath it all, the real issue is how much suffering you’re willing to live with?
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