cracking the seed

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self, so therefore, trust the physician and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility. Kahlil Gibran

The remedy... The remedy is paying attention to what goes into my mouth. It's not losing track of the sundried tomatoes I'm scarfing as I fry potatoes. It's not wolfing the sweet-potato, sesame and garbanzo crusted vegan pizza without paying attention to what that mix and those veggies were going to be doing to the tummy. I've been doing a lot of strange mixing lately, none of it helped by my lack of motivation to drink my green smoothie in the morning.

My skin will look better, my tummy will feel better and my energy will be better.

A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.

Below you'll find the veg pizza and some zucchini, tomato and avocado salad. Yum!

Fighting against or fighting with

I'm lucky to not be the only one in the family with food sensitivities. The curse of it is that when either of us is having a bad reaction (which happened a lot before we cut out the garbage) we are at each others' throats. This was ugly when we lived together.
The beauty of now is that we're on the same page and support each others decisions. While she's still at the stage where she really wants normal food, I completely understand that- I went from eating pizza for lunch three+ times a week to tomato pie and pizza frite binges and it's been four months since I've had pizza dough now. I know that I can make the veg version of it. I have Brendan Brazier's book and when I have three days to plan and two hours to blend and bake, his food is phenomenal. My issue with this and the opportunity I've found is that the rut and the hanging onto things that we think are a part of us is most of the problem. The great part: I have the blessing of being able to invite her over for a sibling cooking date where we eat, chat and I send her home with something new or a new favorite.
It's nice to have a partner in crime and it's been helpful in educating our enormous and very close family (who love parties and feeding everyone) of what we need or what we're going to be bringing along for for them to try.
The trickiness that's left is with dating. I've been to enough conferences and nights out with family and friends to know that most people love to either ask questions or judge what you're eating. I've become so accustomed to eating first if I can and ordering a salad with the balsamic cruet on the side that it's nothing for me...but what is he going to think? I'm on a diet. I'm a picky eater. I'm a snob?
Truth is, I've eaten things that very few people have eaten. That how many of the 100 foods to eat before you die thing on Facebook? I'm at over 90- beating the pants off of my friends. Why am I so worried about what some dude will think?

In the middle

I'm very tired today.
I've spent the last couple of weeks dealing with things that don't fit.
Clothing that was too big (yippee!) is in the trunk-some destined for the tailor and more for donation.
Some people have been told that they no longer have a seat at the table and some have been welcomed back in. I still have a few people micromanaging "for my own good" who are being politely reminded that it's my life, not theirs to live vicariously through.
Cleaning out mental and physical spaces... Adding and reconfiguring patterns that have been so entrenched for so long is full of emotion. I vacillate from anxious to excited to doubtful to committed to oh shit.
The petulant little kid in me who is digging in her heels against any of this is still angry that her vision for what my life should look like hasn't worked out. Despite the fact she never planned and never followed through. The pleaser in me can't believe my audacity for putting myself and my health and needs first. She wonders who I think I am. They're both punishing me. Awful food choices (chips, too many grains, to much fat, sugar and bingeing) have my body completely out of whack right now. I'm not sleeping at night, but can't keep my eyes opened after lunch. I'm snappish and I have had a series of stomach craps over the last few weeks that I've never felt before. They would say that me feeling awful is just a sign that I shouldn't be trying to change things. I disagree. If anything the upheaval means I'm doing something right.
The only question is how to stop the damaging behavior, because I don't know if I can outlast them.