I was raised vegetarian. I was a painfully picky eater all the way through high school. And I was unfamiliar with the basics of nutrition until I was nearly 30 years old.
As a teenager I struggled with some seriously disordered eating. Lots of deprivation, pretty terrible self-image. Emerging from that in my early twenties, building a tenuous new relationship with food, I still felt pretty lost about how to actually take care of myself.
Thankfully, my sister had cracked the picky eating shell open by moving to San Francisco after college, and inviting me to visit a few key times in my early twenties. She welcomed me with open arms and a pretty clear message that I was going to be trying new things, in the way of older sisters that left me little choice. Thank goodness.
There, I learned to enjoy a whole new world of flavors. If there’s any city in which to lose your identity as a freakishly picky eater, San Francisco is the one.
My relationship with food ~ and, ultimately, with the experience of nourishment ~ has transformed a great deal over the years.
Eventually learning about the basics of nutrition through the context of studying Anatomy & Physiology was a huge eye-opener for me. After all those years of being a vegetarian, I never really had a basic grasp on nutrition and I realized how profound an impact it has on our body systems, and even on our mental-emotional state. I was fascinated.
I studied many approaches to nutrition. And alongside these studies, I became a new mom and all my studies in the health and wellness field took on a very practical significance. With my training in natural healing and 2 decades of childcare under my belt, I operated as the de facto doctor of our family. My primary way of addressing this responsibility was obvious to me ~ I kept us healthy through food.
But, not being at my most mentally balanced or… rational… in those first few years of my son’s life, I often overwhelmed myself, applying undue pressure with the weight of this responsibility.
I blundered through the efforts to keep us all healthy through the “right” foods while verging on obsessing over it. No wait, I definitely obsessed.
And soon I fell into the old pattern of neglecting my own basic needs, even while caring so deeply for those around me. New motherhood was an easy avenue for this slippery slope. But of course, that didn’t serve me Or anyone around me in the slightest.
And as it turns out, fixating on “rules” happens to be one of the stages of nervous system collapse ~ good to know.
It also turns out that being preoccupied with good and bad, right and wrong (in terms of diet or just about anything else, really) creates an environment of stress in the body that has a very real impact on our immunity, our ability to heal, our cardiovascular health… and… wait for it… our ability to digest and make practical use of even the very best quality food. An obsessive, restrictive mindset leaves no room for a place of receptivity for nourishment itself.
So that was really not a good look for me. 
And I was a mess. My health was suffering. I found myself in the office of a host of practitioners. I can still remember the pangs that I felt when I shared, on the verge of tears ~ fearful that I’d lose it completely ~ that I really didn’t know how to take care of myself.
It wasn’t until I started being willing to shed some of my self-imposed limitations, to examine my internal blockages, to start questioning my own beliefs and actually letting go of ones that no longer served me, that I experienced any real relief from what was ailing me.
Probably the single most powerful tools for growth in this realm for me proved to be the regular practice of home cleanses. I did my first 2-day fast as soon as I stopped breast feeding. I slept most of the time. It was intense but incredible. I saw a significant improvement in some of my symptoms in the next few months. I started aiming to do a one day fast about once a month. It got easier. I started feeling more vibrant ~ more alive!
For someone with disordered eating in their past, a fast can be tricky. But in approaching this practice, even though I was still struggling with self-care, I was in a fundamentally different place than I had been in my late teens. This wasn’t about cutting myself off from nourishment, from feeling like I wasn’t ok as I was. I actually wanted to be taking better care of myself. And through cleansing, I was learning to take this into my own hands. The impulse was ultimately coming from a place of appreciating my potential to be a healthier version of myself.
In the old days of starving myself, eventually having to eat was basically a concession. Breaking a fast during a cleanse is like a revelation. It fosters an appreciation for our nourishment that goes straight to the heart of what it means to be aware and connected to the earth and its gifts. I often find that space is “the magic ingredient.” With space, we can process whatever has accumulated. Whatever life has put on our plate. 
During a cleanse, we invite space to clear away whatever is not serving us. We invite a greater sense of mindfulness with whatever we’re consuming. And we wake up our own inner knowing. Powerful stuff.
Our relationship with food mirrors our relationship with our bodies. And ultimately, this relationship reflects our connection to the earth itself. Over the years, I’ve come to see food in a completely different light, to recognize and heal the dysfunction in this relationship. The reward is growing more and more comfortable in my own body, and feeling more and more grounded, nurtured and actually a part of the earth.
At its essence, eating is an act of connecting with the earth, its abundance, the intelligence of its myriad living forms. All living things are in the business of transformation. Taking in, rearranging, releasing elements in a constant, intricate dance of interconnection.
In order to receive the gifts of this connection with the earth ~ the nourishment, the vital information, inherent in our food, ~ we have to be able to enter into a receptive state.
So often, we get stuck in a mode of giving but not knowing how to receive, or taking, but not being able to give. The ebb and the flow, the balance of give and take, reflected in every living thing, has much to teach us. And in these deceptively lessons, there is healing.
From Dr. Vasant Lad, the Ayurvedic Physician and teacher, I learned the perspective that all relationships are mirrors. In his poem, Reflections in a Mirror, from the book Strands of Eternity, he writes:
“Relationships are the school for self-inquiry/ into the nature of yourself.”
From this perspective, there is no end to what we can learn, see, and ultimately, become, through each of our unique relationships.
Looking at my relationship with nourishment as a mirror, I see the profound lessons that this journey has given me. About the resistance that I carried around ~ to being nourished, to being in a body even. To simply receiving support, on a fundamental level, for so many years. There were beliefs that needed to heal, to break apart. And there were gifts awaiting me on the other side of that process.
So through all this fumbling, I learned. I eased up. I found a balance.
Our need for nourishment, for a deep sense of support and connection from our environment, is real. And yet the experience of nourishment is not the same as fixating on nutritional data.
I embrace the gifts of nourishment and understand that at the core, it is actually an experience. It comes from so many more sources than what is on my plate. I make time and space to listen to, connect with and honor my needs for nourishment on all levels ~ which, it turns out, can’t happen when we’re too full all the time ~ of stimuli, of whatever we’re consuming habitually, of rights and wrongs, of everything we think we “know.” We have to be able to be empty in order to receive.
Perhaps the biggest shift of all, after all the ups and downs and finding and seeking was allowing my choices to come from a place of love, compassion and appreciation for myself.
It’s hard to express how profound this shift was, given my lifelong resistance to caring for myself in the most basic of ways. I have come to terms with the disconnect, the deprivation, the self-doubting mindset that had its grip on me for so much of my life. I have been willing to see the lessons contained in these struggles. And that is the shift that made space for everything else to fall in place.
It feels so… nourishing!... to let go of all the attachments to food that were coming from a place other than love and kindness and appreciation for my own evolving needs.
In that space I’ve left room for an integration ~ of all that I’ve studied about the body, about nutrition and about holistic health and well-being ~ and all that I’ve learned and instinctively come to understand from actively inhabiting and honoring this body. Of embodying my own wisdom.
Join me for the guided spring cleanse ~ March 28th through April 13th. Make some shifts in your relationship with nourishment and set the stage for feeling more vibrant, more clear and more nourished in the season ahead.
