A Commitment to Nourishment

Food is medicine. And when there is something that ails me, first and foremost, I look to food to provide what I need for healing to occur. This has been a learned practice over the last 10 years of my life and has brought me through many cycles of healing, into a deep state of health and wellness.

Yet I still find myself reaching for the cookies when I am feeling melancholy. Seeking a piece of chocolate for a quick energy fix. Craving macaroni and cheese when I want to be comforted. The psychological roots of food are deep. And even though I have made tremendous shifts in my diet and have learned to listen deeply to what it is that my body needs, it doesn't always mean that I give it what is best.

I have the blessings of a full and abundant life - one that requires me to juggle the priorities of many things and people that I love. Beyond my propensity to leave my dishes on the sink for the night so that I can gain an extra twenty minutes of sleep, the space where it is easy for me to fall short, is the place of feeding myself the most deeply nourishing items available to sustain the rhythm of my life.

Most days, I fare well even when I falter, choosing a vegan sandwich from the local co-op for breakfast on a busy morning, or bone marrow broth and rice for a quick-fix dinner. Yet I see regularly how I fall into patterns around what I eat or perhaps forget to eat at all for the duration of a long and occasional day at home. This past May, I found myself with a set of health problems that were inflamed by the presence of wheat, dairy, eggs, and sugar in my diet. So for a period of months, I went through an intense initiation into the land of how to feed myself outside of the spectrum of what I was comfortable with or what was known. While I had experienced these sensitivities before, they had never caused the current alarming inflammatory reaction. So there was no choice except to commit to life without these foods, to give my body time and space to heal.

This experience sparked an incredible learning around the depths of what my body needed. In many ways, I had more energy and felt stronger than I had in years. And in being human, once the symptoms began to ease, I allowed the once restricted foods back to my diet on a more regular basis. I immediately noticed the difference in my digestion, mood, energy, and overall sense of wellness. I was intrigued.

So for this 108 day cycle I am committed to the exploration of what it is that I need in order to deeply nourish my sacred self. This will come in many forms - exploring new recipes, taking note of how certain foods make me feel, raising my awareness as to when I choose to eat for emotional reasons and releasing those patterns, choosing foods as close to the earth and as minimally processed as possible, engaging the world of spices in my cooking, and taking great care to prepare my own food regularly.

I am looking forward to this journey with my arms outstretched to the depths of what I will learn and to the places where I will be challenged and transformed.