I am a hands-on learner.

There it sat on the plate. Steaming and taunting me with it's warm crunchy yet chewy goodness, with melted butter flowing gracefully over the side. "Eat me" it whispered in a seductive tone that only I could hear. "NO!" I answered, "you aren't good for me...I broke up with you last week, it's over!" "But you love me, and I love you. How can you leave me like this?" was the whiny, drool inducing answer. It went on like this for five minutes. I argued with it. I berated myself for not realizing it would show up here. But it wore me down. "OH FINE!" I huffed, as I bit into it. It was toasty, and delightful, and heavenly. Toast. White sourdough toast. Oh. My. Gawd. It has never tasted so good. I didn't even used to like white bread. Endorphins relished in the pleasure, and coursed through my veins.

Five hours later. It's so over. Again. My stomach has not hurt this bad since I can't remember. All from one lousy piece of bread that came with a fruit salad. Who the F puts bread with fruit salad? Oh, yeah. My favorite coffee shop in town. That's who.

Will someone remind me of this next time I wonder whether cutting out gluten is REALLY that necessary?

With this whole new adventure into integrative nutrition, I get to meet with a health counselor, so there is loads more intentionality being poured into how I treat myself. I consider myself a healthy person, and pretty knowledgeable when it comes to food issues, and I think that because of this, I take for granted that I feel good. Or, really, that at one point, treating myself or feeding myself a certain way, made me feel good. And once I start taking it for granted, I quit paying as much attention to what my body is telling me. Now that I have this permission that the universe and I have granted myself to pay attention to ME ME ME, I am noticing things I was not aware of before. My goal for the last two weeks, set by my health counselor and I, was to focus on breakfast. Make time to make it, to eat it, and to feel it. While, it has been hard getting up a little earlier in order to make this happen, it has been a wonderful experience. First off, the cliche sayings about breakfast being the most important meal of the day are so true! Who knew that eating something before setting myself in go-mode would make me so much less grouchy and impatient? Secondly, with an exercise called the breakfast experience, I have finally been forced to recognize that I have a gluten intolerance.

Now, as a short background, and a child and teen, I battled a number of health issues, a lot of them dealing with my digestive capabilities, or lack there of. In treating myself for these issues (such as Candida) I had to cut out a gigantic portion of everyday foods. I was horribly bitter about this deprivation, and was positive that it was ridiculously unfair. I was so jaded by my resentment that I had no room to appreciate how being so much healthier felt. I celebrated the day I could again eat pizza. So, over the last year, as I have quietly noticed my low energy levels, the sore throat I get when eating white bread, or any number of things, I would shove the thought out of my head and refuse to entertain the possibility of cutting out gluten because what a pain in the ass, right?

So, this breakfast experience, I was forced to look straight at the fact when I ingest high gluten content foods, I am miserable. I may not notice the smaller symptoms at first, but the more I eat, the worse I feel. Here all along I was afraid at how much work being gluten free would be. But I bit the bullet and did it. I have been gluten free for about a week now and oh my goodness, what a difference. I have more energy, no more waking up with sore throats, I am not constantly and slightly congested. The energy boost alone is enough to make up for the effort it requires. And, I am even enjoying the effort that this is all taking.

So, yay for listening to myself, and honoring my needs.

my happiness project

Lately I have felt this pull towards something I cannot define or see. It's an urgent kind of tug, on my heart. It's not scary. It's just there. So much of my life is focused on "doing". Doing homework, doing the endless amounts of housework, making lunches, helping Em do homework, doing work that might in the long run make me money, doing what I said I would, doing what I feel like I should. What happened to just being? I feel like I worry so much about getting things done that I am missing what really matters to me most. What is scary is that sometimes, when I stop to think of those things, I don't remember what some of them are. I feel like I start to lose myself in this to-do list that the world around me never stops contributing to. It isn't that I am unhappy with my life, quite the opposite. I am more happy now than I have been in a really long time. I just feel like I could appreciate it more. Or take more time to actually see the things in life that are beautiful to me. I want to stop being so focused on what I have to do next so that I can take time for what is in front of me right now. Too often, I push those things aside.

So, here I am, sitting with this feeling, and I happen upon a book. The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. And it is all about what I had been feeling, organized by a slightly OCD writer (I mean that in an envious I-wish-I-could-lay-it-all-out-like-that kind of way). I start to read this book and it is so much what I want to do with my life. There is so much awesome right now, I don't want to just glaze over it anymore. I don't want to settle for hoping my loved ones know how much I appreciate them anymore, I want to hold myself accountable for enriching those relationships and seeing that they know I love them. I am tired of my mental and physical clutter holding me back from enjoying life more. And, as if you hadn't guessed already, I am starting my own happiness project. In the book, Gretchen Rubin picks 12 areas of her life that she wants to boost happiness in, or appreciate more. One for each month. She even has little bullet points in each area that are specifics of WHAT will make that happen, and she lays them all out on a little chart so she can give herself check marks or X's at the end of the day to rate her progress. How organized can one person be? Anyhow. My happiness project. I don't really know what it is going to look like yet, or how it will play out, but I do know that I would like to be living my life and conducting myself with more intentionality than I have been. God bless the inventor of auto-pilot, you were a genius, it's just not how I want to live my life.

I am excited about this. I am kind of a nerd for organizing things, even if my household disarray doesn't reflect that all the time.

Emily Tells a Story:The Girl in the Sunshine

The little girl in the sunshine.
The little girl went to the sun. She saw a beautiful flower! Aaand. She couldn't believe her very own eye! She saw a hill of butterflies, flowers shaped like butterflies, and they were actually butterflies! She saw pens and two ballerinas. And her name was Rosie Antella. And she, her other friend, her last name was I and her first very name was Olla. And she had a cousin name AUNTIE NESSA! She didn't have wings but she was a fairy godmother. And this little fishy swam by and she saw this beau-tee-full ring and a little tiny monkey that said "oooh oooh, ah ah, I'm the fairy godmother, I'm the fairy godmother!"

AND. She saw a little green, BIG BIG thing. And it was her daddy. Her daddy was named Jordan. And a little girl said "Oh!" Her name was Sami. And she saw a purple pillow in the chair and keys on a cottage door. She turned it and undid the door knob and saw three lovely bowls of bacon and soup. She tried the very big one. "OOOoh, too hot!" She tried the bacon "Oooh too cold." SO she tried the mommy's soup and it tasted like monkey's butt. And she tried the Momma's bacon and she said "Oooh, too corny." And she tried the baby's soup "Oh, just right!" And so was the bacon so she ate it all up.

Then the three lovely rainbows came back. And the Papa rainbow said "Someone has been trying my soup with bacon!" And the Momma said "Oooh, someone has been tasting my bacon and my soup". And the baby said "Well, someone ate up all my soup and my bacon. And my cupcake that had a dog shaped like Tonee. My very lovely dog." And she said "Oh! Oh! Oh!"

And the end.
Emily and mom

Angsty parenting crises...almost.

I had one of those moments today. You know, one of those 'strapped for cash mother of a female growing up in this materialistic superficial society' moments that I have known was coming but also dreading it. I just thought that I had a few years before it got here.

Emily and I were in the car driving home from school. It was sunny, the birds were out and singing, spring was showing budding signs of it's glorious return, and then she said it. "Mom, I want to wear fashionable clothes". *Insert sound of record scratching here*

Me: *cough* *think quietly before opening my mouth* "Well...honey...what are fashionable clothes?"

Em: "You know, like, skirts and cute shirts, and tights!"

Me: "You have all those kinds of clothes don't you?" *thinking to myself 'ohmygawdpleasesayyes'

Em: "Yeah, you just don't lay them out for me."

I can't tell you how relieved I was at this revelation here at the end. No, this isn't the beginning of the battle with my child about how me and my broke ass are the reason she isn't popular and has no friends, it's just that I don't pick out the right clothes from her closet.

Me: "Well, I would love it if you got up in time to pick out your own clothes in the morning!"

Em: "But you don't wake me up!"

Me: "HAH! I spent about 45 minutes trying to wake you up this morning..." (My child is famously NOT a morning person. At family camp this year, after a night of karaoke, when I tried to rouse her for breakfast, she literally threw her pillow at me. I am lucky she has lousy aim.)

So you get the point. Crisis adverted, for now, and hopefully for at least two more years.

Spiritual Nourishment.

The following post is from my NEW blog that I will writing, in addition to this one, and referring people interested in health counseling to. I really liked it so I decided to cross post, as I will probably do from time to time. If you want to check out the other blog you can find it at:

http://gracefulexistence.wordpress.com

Anyhow, enjoy!

To live content with small means;

To seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion;

To be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich;

To study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly;

To listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart;

To bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never.

To let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common.

This is to be my symphony.

-William Henry Channing

This has been my favorite quote for a very long time. I remember the first time I read it, it gave me chills. A few years ago my daughter and I took a very large piece of cardboard and painted on it with finger paint using our hands and feet, and then I painted the above quote on it. It has been on my wall for years, in all it’s DIY, frayed edged, crayola paint glory. It wouldn’t be considered a fine work of art by anyone outside of my home, but to me, it is one of the most exquisite pieces I have ever seen. And not only for the emotional attachment and memories this calls forth when I look at it. But also because each of the lines of this poem is such a concise and gentle reminder to me to be present in my life. Today, the last line is what has stuck in my mind. “To let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common.”

Rarely do people think of spirituality when thinking of nourishment or nutrition. And often, when hearing that word, people think of church. But I want to challenge us all to remember that spirituality is not necessarily equivalent to a brick and mortar church, or even a certain religion. It is something much more personal than that, something that not anyone but you can identify. What is magical in your eyes? What is something you see, do, hear, feel that calms your mind and leaves you feeling happier, less burdened, or lighter? For some it may be a church, but for others it could be yoga, meditation, dancing, cooking, drawing, or so much more. It is something they do regularly, something they look forward to as a moment they take for themselves. They do it because they want to, not because they feel they have to. I urge you to find what in your life provides you with this.

You may be wondering what this has to do with nutrition and wellness. When we have something meditational or comforting to fall back on, it gives us the opportunity to care for ourselves instead of seeing to our other responsibilities. It is so rare that busy people take a moment to stop and focus on their own body, how they are feeling, and what they are needing, let alone meet those needs and indulge themselves in something lavishly rejuvenating. Having a spiritual/meditational/comforting practice in our lives also helps us reduce our stress levels, free up space in our minds and hearts to meet all the other needs we have, and helps us love ourselves and those around us more. When there is something that we do in our lives to help ease the burden or weight of the day, we sleep better, we digest our food better, our mood is better and this all in turn improves our health.

So what will you do today that brings you solace or rejuvenation?

I am embarking on an exciting journey. For the last year or so I have been searching for a path that would allow me to fulfill more of my needs and I am beginning to walk down a new road that I feel will do just that. I love the feeling of excitement, curiosity, and unfamiliarity that is overflowing with possibility. Today is the first official day of my program with the Institute of Integrative Nutrition. For roughly the next year I will be learning how to make better choices with my life, change the way I eat, and the way I live, in order to feel better. I will also be learning how to help other people do the same for themselves. Just thinking about this new journey gives me the chills, in a good way! There have been so many people in my life that have supported me, cradled me, loved me, pushed me to listen to what I want to do and then help me get there. I know I have said this before, but I am truly blessed.

Here's to a new adventure...