I’ve been ‘laxing and eatin’!
Guess what?
It’s working!!!!
I feel like a different person. After slowing down and gettin’ down on the kale and miso, my energy level has kicked up a bit and my focus has returned.
What a lesson and what a tough lesson to remember: slow down and chew the life that you’re living.
I made a pact with my friend Renee the other day – NO sugar of any type and no more coffee!
The sugar I can walk away from BUT the morning coffee has been a tough one, even though I drink organic coffee (by the way this is a MUST do, if you consume nothing else be sure to make it organic coffee – it has the heaviest pesticides of all the crops) with 3 parts rice milk and 1 part coffee, I know that the 1 part coffee is 1 part too many. Eliminating all acid-making substances from my body is most necessary.
So Renee and I are going for 40 days in the desert without dessert!
Last night was the first and boy was it rough! Bella’s school held a wine and cheese social for parents and the spread they put out was something fierce! I had to step away from the sweets but dang, they were calling my name. Everytime I thought I was safely tucked in conversation with someone, I’d get a glimpse of a hunky chocolate brownie or a gorgeous piece of exotic cheese and then the whispering came, “Come on just one bite, that’s all you need, a sweet little fix, it’s not breaking the commitment to health… just a dibble if you would.”
Then I shifted my view and turned my back to that acid-inducing table! Ha ha…

STOP: Lola has been walking around here complaining of a giant boogie that she can’t reach. So I grab the bottle of baby saline spray and shot some up there, I swear her face was slightly blue! Still, she complained. A few minutes later she came back to me, “Momma look at this, it came out of my nose.” It was a big ‘ole snot covered raisin!
Yikes! Or should I say Yuck and Thank goodness it came out!

So back to the NO sugar deal, please don’t feel bad for me that I can’t eat all this stuff. I actually view myself as lucky because I’m learning what I am about – nutrition and food!
How lucky I am that this illness has forced me to change my lifestyle.
The other day Bella had a playdate and the momma of the playdate came over. She told me of a distant cousin in her family who is 9 years old has been suffering terribly with Crohnes disease. The little girl’s parents met with a food counselor (like Ginny) to try to avoid the hardcore drugs but once they found out that their little girl wouldn’t be able to eat mac and cheese, pizza, candy, ice cream, hot dogs, lunch meat, white bread, soda, fries, meat loaf, bacon etc… they were “too saddened for her future loss”. How tragic to HAVE to feed your young child broccoli, brown rice, carrots, greens, soups, fish, beans etc. No, it’s less tragic to feed them some chemical concoction that does not offer a cure but promises headaches, anxiety, bloating, insomnia, joint pain (leading to joint replacement after a few years) and possibly cancer.
Wow, at least they can rest better at night knowing that at she was able to have her chicken nuggets and fries without a problem.

This morning, I hit “Happy Son Of My Peoples” table. I have a red irritation on the sides of my face and he said it’s my gallbladder because the gallbladder and lungs both process grief.
It looks like my grief is finally finding an exit via my face.
It makes sense to me that if our grief is not released and processed it finds a seat front in center – first showing up as grief, then hardened into anger. Grief steals our beauty if we allow it, taking the pretty from our vision. I think we’ve got it all wrong, it’s not about being pretty in someone else’s eyes but rather it’s about being able to see beauty everywhere we look.
When our grief is contained inside, it taints our vision of the world and our human experience. Our vision rots and decays.
Beauty comes from our own eyes, not the eyes of another.

I am astonished how I failed to see the connection between emotional experiences and my physical body. We believe on a whole that the two have NOTHING to do with each other. Sadly, this separate thinking has spread to our relationship with food. Regardless of the fact that we know that we are what we eat, we still eat FAKE food.
Everytime I sit in the Chemo ward to get my iron transfusions, I turn into a journalist, asking each person:
Where did you grow up?
What type of food were you raised on?
Was there much sadness in your life?
The answers are amazing, most people shut down and don’t want to figure it out. They feel self-judgement or outside judgement or guilty for what is happening to them. Instead of asking questions, they look the other way and say things like, “We are all gonna die anyways” or “There has always been illness/cancer – now we just know about it.” They think that if they dig out loud, someone will point a finger.
The good news is that there is always one person sitting there hooked up to chemo that is thinking about it all. Maybe they don’t have the language to express it the same way but once the conversation is opened up they are all over it, thrilled that there is someone to explore with them.

I always watch the “shut-downer” in the corner, listening to us and taking it in for his or her alone time thoughts.
When faced with death, you are having SOME thoughts on living.
The word “environment” trips people up because we think environment means “outside in the air, river, ocean, rain or dirt.”
Environment is the energy in the home we grew up in, the home we currently live in, and all the places in between. Environment is the food in our fridge, the feelings put into our food (meaning if a crabby cook cooks your food you eat their feelings- just like a baby in the womb eats the feelings of the mother carrying them), the paint on the walls, and the furniture stuffed with who knows what. Environment is not only about the toxins in our human life but about love too.
I understand this response, a few years ago I was hospitalized with a partial bowel obstruction. At the time, the docs didn’t know what caused it. However, one doctor came by my room, took one look at me and said, “you’ve got IBD, it’s caused by stress.”
I was so offended that my “Hi I’m Good Enough” blocked my hearing and left me to hear through her insecure filters. She heard, “You are so wack that you can’t even handle life/stress.”

For someone like me, who’d done nothing but swinging it most of my life, this was crippling and the character that comes from this struggle was “Hi Did I Tell You How OK I Am?”
“Happy Son Of My People” summed it up best: “Mee you have never been gentle with yourself before, you have pushed and pushed regardless of what ailed you. You are now finally showing yourself the same love that you do for your girls.”
It’s true; I hold them with such gentleness yet I’ve never held myself with these same hands.
Hmmmm… Chewin’ my food.