clean floors, dirty paws

Okay, here it is, the last and final resting place of my health journey.  It took all of that messy climbing and falling and climbing up again to get to this place of a completely plant-based diet living in alignment with my core values and lots of self love and compassion.  But before we go on I feel like I should preface this with what is swirling around in my own head and perhaps yours. I feel like a hypocrite!  How can I sit here and shout from the rooftops that a plant-based diet is the best diet for your body, the planet, all other humans and animals when I was eating meat just about 18 months ago?  That feeling of hyprocracy wants to hold me back.  It tells me to stay small and quiet and just go about my own business.  But I wont' listen to that voice anymore.  I made a mistake but that doesn't mean I can't change and it doesn't mean you can't either.  So many of us stay in the same old routines day after day and even worse, we expect different results from

Now it is about 18 months ago and I am feeling very disconnected form my body.  My body feels weak and frail, sick.  I can't do a lot of things with my hands.  I spill things and need to take breaks when cooking dinner or shampooing my hair.  I can't really hold a hair dryer for long or stir when I cook.  Holding my kids is really difficult and walking the dogs seems daunting.  I am also packing up an entire house to move in with my mother for 7 months and then move 2.5 hours away from everyone I know and love. But I'm digging.  I won't give up.  Something isn't right Then one day while packing up food items and cleaning out the fridge I pick up a block of frozen beef and for some reason it looked different.  It actually looked  dead.  And there I sat with my laundry list of symptoms, my borderline fatty liver, my insulin resistance, my higher than ever cholesterol, my higher than ever weight, my high inflammation markers, my arthritis and my carpal tunnel holdi

And so I made bone broth and bone marrow.  I added pastured meats to my recipes.  I poured collagen into my coffee and pretty much forced my toddler to take fermented cod liver oil.  I made gummies out of beef gelatin and cut way back on our grains and fruit.  I added grass fed butter and egg yolks to everything.  And somehow through all of this I was able to disassociate enough to see meat as food for the first time in 18 years.  Somehow I was able to block out everything I knew to be true and right for myself.  Somehow...and that somehow was fear.  Fear is SO powerful!  I thought this was for the health of me and my family. Okay, so now Arlowe is born and I am overwhelmed with a toddler and an infant.  I am not sleeping well or eating well or taking care of my body in any loving way.  Again due to some gastro issues with Arlowe I gave up all gluten, dairy, eggs, soy, corn and nuts but I continued to eat meat.  Arlowe's first food was egg yolk mixed with liver in contrast to Cac

Okay, I have a lot to say today and I'm not really sure how to organize it all into one blog post so I will probably summarize and then go back and elaborate on specifics, particularly if anyone has specific questions. Today I want to talk about health, specifically my own healthy journey and where I am currently on my path to whole body wellness.  I want to share a lot but I don't want it to be confusing so maybe I will make this a two part post or maybe I'll just start writing and see what happens.  Lets do that... I am going to take you way back, like 20+years ago when I first became a vegetarian.  I honestly don't remember the exact  year but I think I was about 13.  Growing up we didn't eat much meat but I do remember thinking that it was normal, everybody does it.  I remember hearing in school that it was an essential part of a healthy diet and provided protein etc.  Then one day, this is a vague memory so bare with me, I recall looking at my horse and thi

Recently I've felt a deep yearning to be more authentic.  To live my life in a way that lines up with my core values and moral compass.  To be unapologetically ME!  Is unapologetically even a word? The real me doesn't care so I'm not even going to look it up, HA! Anyway, I have been reflecting on my life the past few years, like A LOT!  Thinking about the person I am verses the person I put out into the world verses the person I want to be.  For me this has always been three different people!  This is not okay! I mean we all learn to adjust to our environment and sometimes being who we are will get us punched so we tone it down.  This is natural and a good thing.  What I am referring to though is different because it is based on fear.  Fear that I wouldn't be accepted.  Fear that I wasn't good enough or smart enough. Fear of confrontation.  Fear of crying in front of someone or you know shitting my pants because of anxiety.  Hey, this is the real me! I am only n