THE DIRTY ON WHOLE 30.

I’ve done a Whole30 before. It’s everything you’ve heard: time consuming in the kitchen, withdrawals that may cause you to lash out at loved ones, and significant weight loss accompanied by an eventual energy gain. And, when that thirty days is up and you engulf an entire sleeve of Oreos (what?! They were organic!), you will think your body is destroying itself from the inside out. A full week of comfort eating will be the only way to feel normal again.

On top of that, those extra pounds that took 30 days to lose, BAM! They’re back, helped along by sudden access into the land of quick and easy carb-options for dinner (pizza anybody?). And the worst part, after my body adjusted to 30 days without processed sugar and white flour, I gave myself eczema by returning to my old eating habits so quickly. The eczema lasted for over a year! And I had it on my face! Ugh. Whole 30. Worst ever.

So, why in the hell am I on day fourteen of another Whole30?! It’s the caveman diet. No, literally, you can have the thinking skills of a paleolithic man while eating this way. I am not counting calories or portion controlling my meals. I’m just cooking with the options that I have and making sure I feel full. I don’t even have to scan ingredients, because I know anything that comes packaged is basically a no-go. Am I in the kitchen cooking for the majority of the day? You would think yes, but I have tweaked this Whole30 to fit my agenda.

First of all, my husband is joining me this time around. It was actually his idea. Twelve years ago I quit smoking cold turkey because John suggested we both kick the habit, strength in numbers. Also I wanted to impress him... I am still the same girl.

We begin our day with a can of sardines. I can’t even call this breakfast because it feels wrong. This is something John has done for awhile. I chastised him for his disgustingly fishy smells while I wolfed down syrup-laden pancakes (what?! They were homemade!). But, I LOVE simplicity and nothing requires less effort than pulling open a can and eating. Bonus reward, no extra dishes to wash afterwards. Perfection. We pair our sardines with a hot cup of coffee, complete with a dollop of coconut oil. I feel satiated and have energy that pushes me through to mid-day, which means I’m not heating up the cold coffee left overs in the Chemex to keep my eyes open.

At lunch time, I make us a meal fit for a caveman-Thanksgiving. It is all combined in a single bowl and tastes like heaven . That is the saving grace; roasted squash (spaghetti, butternut, pumpkin, crookneck) or potatoes (sweet, yams, yukon) used as a base. Slow cooked tomatoes with artichoke hearts, mushrooms, bacon, eggs and herbs dumped on top, with a handful of fresh kale, chard, or arugula. It’s easy to mix it up and also to prepare an abundant amount of base carbohydrates for next day’s lunch. John comes home for his break and we feast.

Dinner is being completely disrespected. We juice the crap out of some veggies and suck it down through a straw, while distracting ourselves with a video game. Realistically, it’s not that bad tasting, but attaching it’s consumption to Ms. PacMan tricks me into enjoying the process. We use celery, cucumbers, lemons, and green apples as a base. We change the leafy green depending on what we have on hand: kale, chard, collard greens, spinach. That was the hardest part in the beginning, I guess because dinner feels like more than a habit. It is our custom, or what is left of our accumulative cultures, that seems to flourish as we share a meal together. If I hope to successfully keep some of these new habits after our Whole30 has ended, I will have to incorporate that feeling of family camaraderie during lunch as opposed to dinner.

The deal breaker for me will be sugar. As a steadfast rule, I should be saying no to sweets in all forms right now. By meeting my cravings for simple sugars, with protein, I am rewiring my brain (or so I have been told). But, I have already caved on this, by freezing ripe bananas and blending them with coconut milk and unsweetened cocoa. Mondays are our once a week family movie night, which includes eating ice cream. As I write this with Monday looming, I will make an extra effort not to let my cravings command me, and skip the fake ice cream until after our Whole30 is up.

The ultimate goal (for me) is feeling better. After eliminating so many foods that I ordinarily eat, I have an opportunity to introduce things back into my diet and gauge how I feel (dairy, grains, legumes). I am not quick to judge a food based on one day of reactions. I have frequent headaches, bloating, and mood swings, so I know that my gut is not happy about a lot that I am ingesting. After kicking my two main food evils out (processed sugar and flour), I hope to have a clean enough slate to determine if anything else is messing with me.

After all this is said and done, I hope to make great strides towards addressing my adrenal fatigue. Please read Angi’s brilliant previous post, "If you're a woman, you probably have adrenal fatigue. Here's how to fix it.". I know that we as mothers are faced with the insatiable needs of others and can’t imagine giving up on life’s small pleasures to carry us through the day. I have found myself in tears this past week when I realized that I couldn’t resolve my frustration over a bowl of cold cereal or drown my emotions in a glass of wine (I don’t actually drink that horrible stuff, but writing “glass of bourbon” sounded too raging alcoholic…). Crazy thing is, not having a crutch to rely upon made me deal with it, right then and there. It blew my mind how conscious that choice felt; be a pissed off mess or have power over my response.

Whole30 is not long term. To me, it is an extreme elimination diet that I am using to expedite detecting what foods mess with me. It isn’t a sustainable lifestyle. If anything, it sucks bad enough that once I reintroduce rice or beans, I might get that pleasure release I need to continue making better eating choices. I would kill a man for a taco right now, but I’m looking ahead. Once I can eat the things that make my body thrive, I have goals: I would like to begin a yoga practice (Tara) and begin supplementing the vitamins and nutrients I can’t get from my diet with other methods (Angi). I am so thankful for my Mindful + Mama women and this chapter in my life that I get to share with others (not to mention the accountability that just might keep me away from the cookies this time).

-Emily

ROAD TRIP- PART 2.

On the first full day away from my kids, the bewildered task of determining what I could do came at me in waves. I awoke from a foreign thing, something called “adequate sleep,” and slowly stretched from inside the confinements of my warm sleeping bag. My eyes slowly adjusted to the colorful art adorning Athena’s walls in her Cottonwood home. I rolled onto my belly to meet the gaze of Charity. She looked as leisurely perplexed as I felt. We crawled from the well rested embrace of our beds and embarked on a day of self. Breasts were tended to, and hot coffee was drunk in marvelous silence. We ate breakfast al fresco, at an adorable cafe, and meandered around the shops downtown until it wasn't too early anymore to have a beer. It felt oddly familiar, this continuity of independence. I could almost reach out and touch a person I had been, but she had known so much less than I did now.

Gratitude lifted with the elevation as we headed toward the hills of Jerome. We found treasures in the local shops and ducked into historical landmarks and sipped cool beers and stood in the wind on a ledge overlooking the growing twinkle of lights in the city below. I snuck away on several walks or fell behind in a store while the girls went ahead. I basked in moments of complete un-needed-ness.

Later that night, the pinnacle of our trip would be born on the lips of a drunk man. On the patio of a bar back in Cottonwood, we heard described a rarity called Childs, a hot spring hidden away down a dusty, beaten-up road. We took mental note of the obscure landmarks he mentioned and headed out early the next morning, eyeballs peeled for any recollection of what the old guy had spoken of. We rounded a bend, and felt sure that the road to our right, jagged with ravines and strewn with broken glass and shattered tumbleweeds, had to be the way to the Hot springs. We crawled along over the bumps and dips at a steady 5 miles per hour. As the landscape, unchanging, rolled past, Charity and I scrambled from the confinements of the car and ran ahead down the road like wild coyotes. We howled at the wide open spaces and kicked dust up as we jumped from tiny boulders sticking out of the dirt. Sara halted behind us at a particularly deep gouge in the road. Charity and I scrambled back to the car and went to work, filling the voids with rocks, to even out the way forward. The sun was just beginning to feel hot against our bare skin, as Sara maneuvered her Forester through another patch of rough road. We were too excited and the day was too young to feel exhausted. We eventually returned to the car, music blaring from opened windows, as well as a succession of feet, arms and faces. Anticipation filled each of our chests as we inched on. Suddenly the road veered to the right, our chins raised to see what lie ahead… We were back on the same stretch of highway we had turned off of an hour ago. Tears of laughter, ran over our dusty cheeks. We had gone nowhere and everywhere on what we deemed “the training road”. Afterwards I felt sure that the only way to Childs was making the mistake of that road before getting to the correct one. Which we did.

On the (real) road to Childs, a sheer drop off at our right provided ample views of buttes strewn with neon yellow flowers and a densely hidden gorge wedged between mountains. We stopped to peek over the cliff and move around. My dear friend, Athena, insisted that I paint. I was reluctant but try not to question the brilliance of this woman who seems to have an omniscient knowing about most things. She set me up with a water coloring picnic and let me be. No one rushed me or bogarted my supplies, or upturned my water. I painted the landscape before me and felt filled to the brim with peace, quietly inspecting the minute shapes of leaves as I attempted to replicate them. The girls clambered back from nowhere as I packed up and we continued on our way.

Two hours later we approached the camp area of Childs, a friendly sign alerting us that clothing was optional gave us a moment to reflect before Adam and Eve approached us from the shade. She had huge grapefruits (no, actual grapefruits...) to share with us. “Just follow the piles of rocks,” she said simply, pointing her tanned arm up beside the Verde river and into the great unknown. We set off, a bit behind schedule after our journey, but practically there. The river poured past us like green velvet. The light bounced off of rock cliffs illuminating the depths of those dark luscious waters. It was breathtaking.

We spotted our first cairn of rocks and picked up our pace. The second pile was off the beaten path but we trudged over large river rocks in search of our destination. We reached a second road that cut back up into the mountain toward the campsite. We had missed it somehow. We doubled back to search, the four of us spread out. Nothing. The sun had just ducked behind a mountain, stealing with it what was left of our day. I panicked. I headed out alone to brave the wild trees lining the shore, always keeping the river in view. Feeling beat, and tired, I almost gave up when a shamble of colors peeking through the thick mesh of willow trees caught my eye. I shoved forward through the dense plants and there, sitting on the shelf of a cliff directly across the river, was the hot spring. “I found it!!”

The girls appeared within minutes. We were discussing where to forge the river when a gentleman came striding out of the thigh deep torrent of water ahead. This was it. The water was freezing. We piled shoes and bags onto our heads and clutched to skirts and dry clothes and free hands as we painstakingly inched across the water. We followed a narrow trail along the cliff, back down the river, and rounded a corner until we were on a wide ledge. On our left, fifteen feet below us, the Verde river tore past. Up ahead an ample gash in the exposed rock cliff was filled with steaming water. I suddenly felt the (literal) weight of my insecurities as clothes were excitedly peeled off.

A brick room with an exposed ceiling, sat furthest at the back of the ledge. Voices and more steam lifted into the air above. I hopped into the warm water with bra and underwear on, feeling like a trespasser in this natural world. But the four of us together, buoyant bodies pleasurably embraced in nature, were quick to forget our cares. A baby’s faint cry pierced the air from the inner dwelling, followed by a man’s calm voice and the tinkling laughter of a woman.

Another traveler joined us in the hot spring and commented that the hottest spring was found within the tiny building. Just then a noise caused us to turn our attention towards the cliff. The woman had emerged. Her naked body strode to the ledge where a bucket was. She met our gazes with a friendly acknowledgment before bowing and lifting the bucket to her chest. Ogling, we watched as she poured the cold contents of the river over her. Exposed to the vast world, ample curls of dark hair flourished from beneath her arms and between her legs. The freezing water halted the mist veiling her body. Haphazardly she wiped the droplets clinging to her. I could not hide my riveted attention towards her. It was that red carpet moment, when the limo door is opened and out of it the most beautiful woman in existence commands all eyes on her. Only she is twisted and pinned, and picked. She is shaved, primered and dyed. She is stuffed, detached and packaged. My eyes were overwhelmed by the full force of this woman taking up space in a world that only seconds ago I felt I needed to shrink in. Confidence seems a meager word to describe the herald of this woman; not apologizing to anyone for her imperfections or lack of adherence to social norms, she was filling every corner of her own body with complete abandon. I’ve never been more impressed by someone’s beauty.

I think she may have changed all of us a little on that trip. After their departure, the four us took up residence inside. The walls were riddled with a mix of painted colors, quotes, doodles, and other offerings of art. I sunk into the shallow scalding water and imagined my insecurities vaporizing into the air with each wave of steam. Athena called us back to reality in time to make it home through the growing dark. Arizona gifted me the permission to feel beautiful by a different standard. I had traveled down the wrong road for the majority of my life to get to this place, and now I can return to it by heart, anytime I want. Emily

GUILT OR PLEASURE, ROAD TRIP Part 1.

I was intent on ruining my good time as we crested the hills of Tehachapi. For the first three hours of our journey I felt sick to my stomach, a passenger during a drive where I could have contented myself with conversation amongst friends, or enjoyed music. I spent my time instead glancing out at sad dairy cows and tilled-up acres of farmland, consumed with wallowing in my own guilt. I didn’t belong here. I said it over and over. My 15 month old would need me. I had abandoned my family to deal with her misery.

With her natural disposition as an independent woman, and her joyful propensity for adventure, it was Sara’s firm conviction that life would continue on without me, I only had to go. We were now in route, three friends on their way to Arizona. Sara sang along softly to the lyrics as she drove. The wind coming in through a cracked window picked up strands of her golden curls and tossed them freely about in the air.

But I was intent on thinking about John, the kids clambered about him like a tiny mountain as we pulled out of the driveway. “Have a good time.” He had said it endearingly, like he knew the cost of my absence, but my enjoyment would make it a worthy expenditure. I was letting him down. We were headed to Cottonwood, Jerome, Sedona and ultimate freedom. He would have to do it all. The cooking, the cleaning, the butt wiping, the peace making.

The giant white windmills droned silently through the sky and led us to the valley below where we stopped to stretch our legs amongst the Joshua trees. I flung open my door and headed straight out to nowhere. The sand sunk into the backs of my shoes as I walked. I stopped in the thin line of shade provided by a sad excuse for a tree. My breasts ached, filled to capacity with nourishment that my daughter would never receive. I trudged back to the car and grabbed by handheld breast pump. I almost grabbed a container to collect the milk, but of course, there was no need. I popped out a boob in the evening desert air and watched as the white liquid trickled off the end and straight into the sand. This might have sent me over the edge if it wasn’t for another very dear to my heart friend. I watched as she tucked her hands over her own swelling breasts. She asked “Can I use that when you’re done?”

The desperateness that we were both feeling in that moment, she a mother to a year-old child just as I was, I realized we could wallow in our self loathing together, or we could mirror each other’s strength. We both began to laugh at the terrible situation, our liquid gold squandered to the earth like a splattered sacrifice to the journey ahead. Breasts resolved, we looked around us at the alien landscape. It was all here for me, right now. I was suddenly aware of the vacancy that unrelenting responsibility had left. What did I want to fill that space with? That day, absorbed in the now, I chose joy. We darted through the sand past the crooked giant hands of Joshua trees, reaching up out of the ground. We dragged sticks behind us leaving swirls and circles in the sand. I promised not to waste the gift that my family was giving me with this trip. And after that moment, it was an easy promise to fulfill.

As a woman I experienced a plentitude of wealth on that trip; rediscovering the delicacy of solitude, identifying and calmly challenging my social vulnerabilities, and restoring the awareness of my natural beauty by a hippy woman along the shores of the Verde River, (but that’s another story!). My family invested in me, and I returned to them as a more complete person, ready to resolve disputes, slice apples, hose off muddy feet and be loved by my favorite people in the world.

-Emily

PREGNANT AND THINKING.

Eleven years ago, on a hot June night, my daughter was passionately conceived (her middle name is June for a reason). I skipped a period, freaked out, made haste to my local grocery store for a pregnancy test and had half a second to knock over a box of cereal inside my cart to hide the 99.9%-accuracy label before I ran smack into my future mother-in-law (I kid you not.) I went home to my apartment where I was nightly sharing a bed with John for the past two months (a time I now refer to as the ‘courtship-quickie’) and found out that I was in fact harboring a fetus. I quickly pounded a glass of wine so I could secretly wrap my head around the abortion I would be scheduling in the morning.

I was twenty-five, not vehemently attached to any ideal for my future, but wise enough to know that babies needed 100% of what you had to give. I hadn’t had any aha moments confirming that I was actually even a grown-up yet. There were only two options: be miserable and have a baby, or don’t think about it and have an abortion.

The thoughts confirming that pregnancy yields misery were readily available; I would be a disappointment to my new boyfriend. I would be sabotaging our careless nights of drinking, and whimsical weekend warrior trips. I would resign my body to be transformed by pregnancy in every way that society dictates women shouldn’t be: fat, hormonal and unattractive. In the long run, I would be alone raising a baby, committed to giving up my life as an individual, poor and on welfare. These were the only thoughts I could conjure, because this is what I had witnessed in my community of women.

In retrospect, there was another community of women that existed; the ones who had pruned despair out as quickly as it had sprouted. Society didn’t promise them any favorable support as a single mother. Society sexualized them and packaged them, and one unplanned pregnancy later, they were left without any headspace to visualize themselves as successful mothers. So in some instances, terminating a pregnancy can be a choice, or it can be something that you do without ever being able to think about it. Not thinking, is assuredly the quickest way to give up your liberty as an individual woman.

In my terrified attempt to save my individuality, I would have hastily made a choice, and then had a lifetime to think about it, after the fact. I am whole heartedly speaking from my own perspective. And although I did not have an abortion eleven years ago, I am no stranger to the effects that an unthoughtful abortion may have on a woman’s psyche. My two sisters and I were fertilized eggs in a time and space that encouraged my mother as a successful pregnant woman. But before us, and multiple times in between us, there was no abundance of support. And I watched my mother deteriorate as a woman after each successive termination.

That night as I crawled into our shared bed, John put his arms around me and held me in the darkness. I couldn’t stop the thoughts. I had no idea that I was a brave, grown woman, capable of doing difficult things. The revelation that I existed when others had not, would have led me to the obvious answer if I’d only known I could ask it; did I want this baby? I wasn’t able to get there. I was shutting down. That is when John’s whisper broke the silence.

“Emily, are you pregnant?”

“Yes” I responded, “I’m sorry. You don’t have to worry, I’m not going to keep it.”

“Why don’t you want to keep it?” He said, “We could have a baby.”

In that moment I realized “we” could maybe do it. Once I knew I wasn’t alone, every rational thought of success flooded my veins, filled my heart and poured life into my growing baby. This was my aha moment. I was physiologically vulnerable now that I was pregnant, but any lack of confidence I may have had about how this world would receive me was null once I knew that I wasn’t alone.

My story has a happy ending. And the reality is that many women won’t find a safe space to ask themselves what they want. I recently read an article by Sherronda J. Brown, White Women in Robes, that shed light on the so called choices that many pregnant women are given in regards to their pregnancies. I stand by reproductive rights with my ladies, but I can clearly see how “pro-choice” for many unsupported pregnant women leads to only one choice. If you have time to give it a perusal, I would love to hear what you think. https://werdbrew.wordpress.com/2017/07/15/white-women-in-robes/

-Emily

TALKING ABOUT RACE- Honoring our Differences through Exposure and Education.

I’m sitting in a chemistry lab with 25 other students. I waver between compete fear upon the introduction of new information (nomenclature anyone??) and enraptured interest over the micro-infinity that makes me, me; carbon atoms that belonged to 20 other living organisms before they were ingested into my own existence.

It’s the little things that matter (chemistry joke). As cliche as that sounds, the hugeness of that phrase is not lost on me. I am, at the physical level, really little things. I am also an individual with unique desires, opinions and quirks, because of all the relatively small circumstances that accumulated to make up my history. I live in a great big world with huge ideas and problems and hopes, and all of that rests within a single pin-prick poked into the vast corners of space.

I travel an hour each Saturday morning to take advantage of my husband’s availability to stay home with the kids and slowly work towards attaining a bachelor's degree. My fellow students are mostly women. Many are tackling the requirements for the nursing program, others are working towards engineering. I am here on the presumption that I will someday be a chemistry teacher, but between you and me, I come here to figure out what the world is made of: that simple. Only my financial aid counselor doesn’t like that answer: so, chemistry teacher.

Upon arriving to class the first day, I notice immediately that I am in a multiracial setting. I am instantly excited. This shifts into me being mortified by my own excitement. I have to pause and search my heart. Why did race even make it on my radar? Do I have expectations that this experience will be different or special, and why? Don’t I believe that all people are the same? I I silently freak out for a minute and then find my breath. I am surely not the only one that could feel this way. Am I the only lame, white girl that feels this way?! My rural, “Hillbilly Elegy,” mountain-town foundations are shaken by the exposure to not “white” people? I get a flip-flop sensation in my stomach just acknowledging how this affects me. My tiny world is very incomplete. It’s uncomfortable to think about, and down right difficult to find a receiving ear to talk about it.

It would be easier to say, “Hm, I didn’t even notice how diverse my class was” because people are people and all that jazz- end of conversation. Now I don’t have to incorrectly assume that the articulate young woman with good posture sitting across from me is Asian, because she is actually Pacific Islander. And I don’t have to consider that the shy, soft spoken girl behind me looks Indian, even though she is Pakistani but that means little to me, because while trying not to think about race, I stopped giving two fucks about anything outside of the bubble that I live in, and I can’t point to Pakistan on a map, and why does it even matter since she is a second generation American and was born in California…? I am being facetious only to highlight that not knowing these things causes fear in general; it is a scary kind of vulnerability. I struggle with the humility of acknowledging that I know less than other’s about certain things. And race seems like a pretty important thing to know about, so yeah, I’m terrified of being the fool. But fuck it. Hiding behind the veil of color-blindness isn’t going to save me from this conversation.

I have inadequate exposure to people. I live in a white neighborhood, and share classes with predominantly white people in my little community college. I homeschool my kids with other families that are mostly white. I shop in a grocery store with familiar white faces at the checkout line. I can count on one hand where I might come across a different race in my daily existence, and that is a stretch. I know that this is an evil to the future of understanding my world. I read like a mo’fo, and although I can gain a perspective of what another ethnicity is like, I am struggling to stay afloat in a community that’s major tolerance is for ignorance. This town still proudly flies a rebel flag, and has three consecutive streets named Hang Tree, Black, and Spook. And that's just the outward bigotry. The quiet bigotry is what really frightens me.

I have an insecurity that I wear the ingrained racism of my backward-town like a patch on my sleeve. If I don't actively probe these feelings, there is a good chance that systematic racism will hide in the corners of my intellect. I want to be a part of a community that celebrates this woman sitting across from me. She just explained the naming of cations to two other students while I sat next to them quietly confused. She is black. How can I get a full view of this world that I am trying so hard to understand, if I don't see her?

I am down to take ownership of my cowardice and hold true to what I know; that if I want to figure out what the world is made of, I need to look into the eyes of other races. We are sharing more than carbon atoms, and I want to celebrate our similarities and differences.

I have made an effort not to shy away from matters of race over the last year. I wish I could say it is something I've always done, but I can only do better when I know better. Thank you Maya Angelou. I am by no means saving the world, but discussing issues that we have made such an effort to bury, can force our minds to grow, and eventually our hearts. Here are a couple of the ways I have strived to figure out what the world is made of, outside of my Chemistry class:

1. Go back in time. Teaching my children the history of immigration, indentured servitude, and slavery, has created an insatiable desire to know how our country was established. It's invaluable to go back this far before I am able to wrap my head around our current social dilemmas.

2. Read all the books! Or at least make an effort to read outside of your comfort zone. Here are some of the books I read this year: The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. There Are No Children Here by Alex Kotlowitz. The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas. A Young People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn.

3. Relearn Words. The Google definition of “white supremacy” falls short. If we are only looking for racism to display itself beneath a white hood, we are missing the social, political, historical and institutional poisons that currently plague our country. There is a difference between discrimination, prejudice and racism. Don't let the media give you their interpretation. Use your words.

4. Engage: I had to get real uncomfortable with my book club. I chose a book that some refused to read, and it got ugly, but it also got real. And I felt inspired by the women who responded with open hearts and shared their own personal insecurities about racism.

I am still on a journey to undo an ignorance that I grew up with. I am grateful to know enough now, to speak to my children and teach them to recognize racial intolerance when they see and hear it. I continue to hear the concern from people in my immediate bubble, that I shouldn’t shame my kids for being white. I hear the fear in that statement. Equipping them with the knowledge to discern when racism is happening is an empowering gift. How they use that gift will be up to them.

-Emily