Healing : : How This all started

I have been thinking about how I started this journey toward healing myself.  About how people may not really know what brought me to this point.  I was trying to put a finger on the moment when I made the choice to do something about my circumstances rather than count on Doctors, medications and good old luck to provide me with the quality of life I hoped I would have for years to come.

I guess the seed was planted way back when I was first married to Chris, around 23 years old (11.5 magical years ago!), and we went to see a Rheumatologist together so Chris could get a better idea of what he had just signed up for.  Among many other completely cold and detached things the Doc told me that day he said, "you know, your life expectancy is about 10 years less than for the average healthy person and you should expect to be in a wheelchair at some point possibly in your 30's. But right now there isn't much I can do for you...just keep taking your meds."  Just like that he put limits on me...dropped them in my lap like a cold bologna sandwich.  Bam.

I am pretty sure I cried before we got to the parking lot...

I knew then that if I was going to be one of the people who had a better than "average" life with RA it would be because of something I did...otherwise I was on the average path to average-ville and those were the type of results I would get.   Or worse.

I didn't know anything at the time about diet affecting disease...other than the obvious diabetes, and maybe heart disease.  So I think all that happened that day was that my mind opened up to the idea of responsibility.  My responsibility in the course of my life.

I have, since that day, tried to eat a pretty healthy diet.  Mostly organic, lowish fat, not much sugar, whole grains.  But still I ate meat, LOVED cheese, drank milk and didn't think much about it.

Then about a year ago Chris and I watched a documentary called 'FOOD MATTERS' and it completely changed how I saw health and disease.  It opened my eyes to the idea that I was much more responsible for how I felt than I was aware of.  The way I viewed food completely shifted.  I now saw eating as nothing more that what it is...fuel.  If I put better fuel in this amazing body machine I will get better results.  It's that simple.

But what was the right fuel?!  Heck if I knew!

Here's where I enrolled myself in the 'Amanda's School of Healing with Food'.

I then watched a whole string of documentaries and read quite a few books, along with seeing a Naturopath and consulting my good old intuition.

Here's what I watched:
(by the way these are all available to stream or by mail on Netflix)

Food Matters

Forks over Knives

Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead

Crazy, Sexy, Cancer

Fed Up

Supersize Me

Food Inc.

Ingredients


Here's what I read (or Chris read and told me all about):

Crazy Sexy Diet

The China Study

Thrive

Animal, Vegetable Miracle

The Omnivore's Dilemma

In Defense of Food


I threw in some meditation and a therapist too...to heal this mind and soul.  Since it's all connected, right?


And slowly I learned what it was that my body needed.  The common theme in many of these films and books is not that these people all have the same illness as me, or ate the same types of food, or even have an illness...It's that they were struggling with the ideas of what is health, what is food, and wanting to know how to care for these bodies. And rather than just saying "Oh well, this is just life.  My body is sick now and that is just the way it will be"  or "Oh well, there are pesticides in my food. Guess that's the way food is now.  It'll probably be OK" they said, "Hey, Wait! I am not going to just accept this, I am going to DO something"

Well, I decided the same thing.  I am not going to just chug along in the Western Med Model of treating symptoms. I'm not just going to eat this Standard American Diet (S.A.D.)  I am going to treat my whole body with Love and Nutrition and heal my Whole Self.  Not just treat Symptoms, but Treat ME...all of me.

And..here I am Today.  Still definitely on this journey of healing and learning.