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Your Power, Holidays and Choices
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- Category: Holidays and Special Occasions
You may notice and wonder why I include sustainability issues in my writing when my work is dedicated to eating disorder recovery and women's fulfillment in life, living free, respected, healthy and educated. pix*
Sustainability - the real sustainability that supports health and well being of all while respecting and honoring living active systems and relationships among and between everything - is vital for our personal lives. It expands out to include everyone, everything and, indeed, the globe.
Understand and take care of your mind, spirit and body well with an appreciation of how you are connected with everyone and everything is all the equipment you need to create a good healthy life and a sustainable world. That includes eating disorder recovery. Here's how.
The powerful and influential positive actions you take that honor and support sustainability are based on your choices.
If you choose to recover from an eating disorder your save your life and give yourself a good life now with a future of wonderful possibilities. But you have to inform yourself, do research, find your recovery path and work it with dedication and courage. Your recovery is not only your own. As you recover you become a more positive influence around you and affect the lives of countless people.
If you choose to buy items that are not made by slaves you promote well being and could change entire slave based economies. But you have to learn what products are made by slaves.
If you choose to buy fish that are not caught through the use of gill nets you promote, protect and preserve the lives of our great sea creatures like whales, dolphins and sea turtles. You may stop the practice of using gill nets world wide. But you have to learn who is using gill nets and what products in your kitchen and on the restaurant menus are brought to you through gill nets.
If you choose to eat foods that support your health without harming your body you need to know what plants and animals are grown and processed with toxins so you can avoid them. You then care for yourself and your loved ones plus influence major changes in toxic farming practices.
Personally I believe that emotions are forms of energy that move through the world like air currents and tides. They are around us and have great effect on us whether we are aware of them or not.
Therefore, I believe that joy spreads through the world and affects us in positive ways. However, anguish and cries of pain and despair also affect us. So people and animals that are subject to horrors must be taken out of the realm of "unspeakable horror" so we can address the causes of that anguish and reduce the suffering in the world. That includes the suffering of animals, plants and the earth itself as well as human beings.
Personally I can't bring myself to eat the meat of an animal that died in terror and anguish.
And it's not necessary. We can inform ourselves and make wise choices.
Terror and anguish change the chemistry of the body. That influences the effect eating that meat will have on your body. You can make choices based on compassion. You can make choices based on your own well being and decide not to eat the chemicals that flood a body in fear and pain. You can make choices based on both.
But you can't make informed choices unless you are informed. And the information you need is not readily available. You have to plough through advertisements and cultural mind shaping to get past diets, food glamour, fashion fads, instant gratification promises and especially good deals on cheap merchandise.
Follow that cheap merchandise back to its source. If it's a quickly used, broken and tossed away item see if the source is a slave factory in a third world country where men, women and children and working killing hours at starvation wages with no way out. If the item is cheap and easily thrown away, it's possible that the people making it are also treated as cheap throw away items.
It's holiday time. It's a time to think about being generous and giving to the people you love. You can give to everyone you love and the world itself by learning how to inform yourself and make choices that benefit everyone. Your little day to day choices can make a better world.
You are a force on this planet. Never forget that. If you weren't advertisers, media moguls and governments wouldn't spend so much time and money trying to influence your decisions.
You can spend your own time and energy learning what you want to know to influence your own decisions so you act according to your values and what is best for you and the people you love.
In the long run what is best for one spreads to all. We all need a clean and healthy planet that is sustainable in order to live good lives. Together with our many personal day to day decisions and actions, we can make it happen.
- What do you use or buy or eat that you can explore to find out its source?
- What personal criteria might you examine to enrich your decision making?
- What external influences govern your choices against your better judgment?
- How can you inform and strengthen yourself to move beyond external controls and choose for yourself?
- Who do you love and what kind of world do you want for them?
- What actions can you take to help that world exist?
- How do these issues and actions support your eating disorder recovery?
*pix This is a "green man" plaque that hangs in my kitchen, smiling and overseeing me and my guests as we do the myriad of tasks that happen in any kitchen. I hope his warmth, health and vitality of nature comes through. I found him in a Thrift Shop with no identifying mark. Nor could I find him on an image Google search. If someone does recognize him through this site, please let me know. I'd like to give credit to the maker. JP
This article was inspired by Chef Seamus Mullen's article in the New York Times, "A Chef Predicts the Future of Food." Thank you, Seamus!
Positive farming: good you them, good for us. Take a look.
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Hardship on Mexico's farms, a bounty for U.S. tables
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Comments
I like this article JP...when I feel like I'm doing my best to buy products and consume foods whose source I am happy/comfortable with, it helps me to feel more congruent, like the person I believe I am and my core values are reflected in the way I am behaving and the choices I'm making outwardly, that affect others and affect the planet as well as affecting me inwardly in helping me to feel at peace, connected and whole.
Interestingly, my eldest daughter announced about a month ago that she had decided to become vegetarian - as a mother, my words to her were that as long as she was aware that being veggie didn't mean she could have cheese for every meal and that she'd need to be upping her intake of beans, pulses, nuts and seeds, then I would do my best to support her. She has really surpassed my expectations and has taken to it so well, that it's made me reduce my meat intake too, although I never seem to function well without some element of animal protein, so I think there will always be some meat in my diet, it has become a time to look more closely at what we eat and where it comes from, and pay more attention to trying to shop organic again (something that seems to come in waves here - it is what I believe is right, but the cost and availability doesn't always make it practical)
P.S. Every time I look at your Green Man, he reminds me of Barry Manilow
seems like you are hanging in there!! You are such a good mom to your girls. I thought about you when I was looking at my little one this morning. I am struggling pretty hard right now but won't go into details as they could be triggering for others.
But as I was looking at her- asleep, sucking her thumb and even smiling at times- I was sobered by how important it is for us moms to take care of ourselves so we can be around for our kids. Sometimes thats all the reason we have as mothers with ED, but it's a very important reason and good enough for now.
I am looking into the possibility of treatment..again. I feel like a failure.
I come here to find positive and reinforcing posts and you consistently find something positive to say. Not that you don't struggle- but I'm so impressed by how far you have come. Some days you are my hero. Really. I know the struggles of being a single mom with an ED.
After I watched my baby this morning and as I took in the reality of my physical state right now, I was able to make a positive decision for myself. Something I was able to do at that moment to help myself. I keep my HHH book close by at all times. I'm hard headed. Im sick. I recognize this is beyond my ability to fix alone. I hope to be in treatment by next week but I think my insurance company is going to give me a hassle. I may have to do a day program instead.
I realize that one thing I am struggling with is that my therapist is retiring in one year. Shh I believe you had this same struggle a couple of years ago. It's a year away but I already feel abandoned and helpless. I have been talking about this in therapy which takes a ton of bravery. I give myself props for this
I think its part of why my ED stuff is worse right now. Acting out is so mature, right? :/
I'm lucky to have my therapist. She's been amazing. She probably shouldn't have, but she did disclose some personal issues with past sexual abuse. We've been together 20 years and I think she was just sensing my desperation at the moment. It meant a lot that she shared that with me. I felt less alone.
I had a recent episode with a male co-worker where some very inappropriate comments were made. Guys don't realize how things can be triggering for women.
Anyway, just say a prayer for me guys. Please. I want to get better.
I want to live, despite how it looks sometimes. I know you all get it. That's why I'm grateful for JP and all of my friends here.
I will keep you all updated on what happens with treatment. If you've ever been you know they limit your phone and computer time. I am praying that God will guide the process and that whatever happens and wherever I end up, will be what is meant for me and I will make the most of it.
Thanks friends!
tracy
Hi Tracy
Thank you so much for the kind things you wrote about me. I'm shocked and touched that anyone would look up to me as I am just has human, vulnerable and have frequent struggles just as anyone else does, but I'm flattered that you feel that.
When I see your more recent posts, it really stands out to me how far you've come and how much you've changed, even though you might not be able to see it yourself - you seem so much more self-aware, and so strong and brave, and I find that a real joy to see, even though you're having a tough time at the moment. You don't know how proud I am of you for being able to say "it's time I got some help" and follow through on that to start asking for and arranging the help you need.
It must be really hard and scary leaving your therapist after 20 years, I'd only been with mine for 2.5 years and it was a different scenario, albeit with the same outcome, of knowing you have to get your head around never seeing that person again. It's just over 2 years since I parted with mine and yeah I miss her sometimes, especially when the going's tough, but she still lives on inside me, as an internal guiding voice, and I am still growing and changing as a result of my time with her and the things she showed me. I can honestly say that I'm more congruent now than I've ever been, and that since I finished therapy with her my levels of self-belief have continued to increase, and I experience less feelings of guilt and shame than I've ever done. Your therapist has helped to plant seeds in your mind that will continue to grow long after you stop seeing her.
I really hope you get your treatment sorted out this week without too much hassle with your insurance company. I know you'll have limited contact, but please keep us posted as much as you can on your progress.
I'll be thinking of you and mentally spurring you on!
S xx