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Mothers play a significant role in shaping their daughters’ perceptions of beauty and self-worth.

Studies suggest that when mothers directly encourage their daughters to lose weight, it is linked to the development of bulimic symptoms. In fact, mothers who merely talk about dieting and body dissatisfaction are more likely to be diagnosed with an eating disorder (Hillard et al., 2016).

By role-modeling healthy behaviors, using positive body talk and communication, and forging a strong connection with their daughters, mothers can play an integral role in laying the foundation for a healthy body image (Goslin & Koons-Beauchamp, 2022).

For more than four decades, Geneen Roth has helped people step out of the exhausting cycle of control, shame, and self-judgment, and discover something far more lasting—peace. Her latest book, Love, Finally, explores her relationship with her mother, her body, and food.

Heather Rose Artushin: Share a bit about your background and what inspired you to write Love, Finally.

Geneen Roth: My background: I have a Ph.D. in compulsive eating, having gained and lost the equivalent in pounds of a baby grand piano or a small horse. I was wild, hysterical, and consumed by self-hatred for years, until I realized that I was trying to get through to myself in the only way that seemed to get my attention—pounds lost and gained.

After making peace with myself around food, I taught workshops and retreats for 30 years, focusing on the reasons—the ways we talk to ourselves, the ways we shame ourselves, the ways we deprive ourselves—we turn to food, and how to emerge from that inner war.

Although I knew that my relationship with food and, consequently, the ways I turned on myself were connected to my mother, I didn’t realize how thoroughly I had internalized her judgments about my face, my thighs, my way of living until I met my........

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