Health

Happy Winter Solstice!

December 21, 2018 By Bean 2 Comments

Today is the first day of Winter in the U.S., and here in Colorado, on my parents’ farm, I just laid outside in the grass in a sleeveless shirt. As much as I long for a snow-induced hibernation, I revel in the sunshine and walk barefoot in the crunchy grass. Today, I begin my journey inward, seeking the medicine of Mother Earth to settle down for Winter, ground myself, hibernate and gather strength to spring into action in a few short months. As the days begin to grow longer once again, I have finally arrived to a space where I get to slow down and manifest the next step.

I am so grateful for beautiful sunny Fall days like this, which remind me that there is comfort and beauty even at the end of a Fall. Even when we face plant from life, or Crow pose, the beautiful earth is there to catch us, to hold us as we heal.

2018 has been a year of re-evaluating priorities, giving my Self credence, making space for and ever wrestling with my opinions and feelings, downsizing my possessions and dreaming of all of my many options ahead. Many unexpected turns, wonderful experiences, tough decisions, and turbulent moments arose as I negotiated my way back into the United States, back into friendships, back into family.

Coming back home stirred up many things which I thought were snug in my past, and the truth is, I had taken a lot of time off of my family for so much of my life, way before my move overseas. So while I was feeling so very good about ME after my two years in Brazil, it became obvious pretty quickly that some other people needed my attention.

Although I had “dealt with” many things from my childhood and early adulthood in therapy and yoga and self help workshops and readings, etc., I also maintained a safe distance from all the things during those times. Little did I know that I could not advance to the next level until I confronted all the things head on.

The voice called me home, and when I arrived and all the things were stirred, I wanted badly to revert to my old coping mechanism and flee–I even applied to jobs and started arranging a place to live in another city. But through serious self-reflection and questioning some may call prayer, and by talking about it in a couple of safe places, I came to the understanding and acceptance of sticking these challenges out.

One physical manifestation that I find fascinating, is that I carry my weight on my tippy toes, that I rarely fully plant my feet. Even as I typed that I brought my awareness to my feet, toes on the earth, but not my heels. I didn’t notice this about myself until I started the amazing yoga instructor training, Breathe for Change, but it is so telling of my attitude towards life: Always be ready to run. My flexibility in my feet and ankles has been compromised by my not planting my feet. My life has always been lived at such a fast pace. Even since returning home, I have spent at more 2 nights a week on the farm, living mostly out of my car and always on the go from town to town.

It is no wonder that the need to Ground myself has caught up with me, and thankfully not in the form of being bedridden, as happened to me once in Brazil, where I was ordered by the doctor to stay home from work and off my feet for two weeks while an injury to my Achilles tendon healed. Like a snow globe, I need to let a lot of things settle and integrate to find clarity and stability before I know in which direction I will next walk.

Some of you may be wondering about “The Mission,” the work to train Native women in self-defense; it is still in the works, simply slowed down. My exact role in it is no more clear than it was one year ago when I decided to help, but what is more clear is the need to be patient.

The good stuff is getting closer, and I have faith that by the time winter is over, that I will be fully back on my feet and ready for the next race, and I am also confident that when my next race begins, I will be stronger and more stable in body and mind, with the foundation and endurance to make it through the long haul, for now I know how important it is to slow down along the way and care for my Self when She needs it.

I invite you all to give your Self permission to do the same thing, to do some grounding work and nourish your inner goddess, whatever that looks like for you.

Growing Pains Ahead

August 18, 2018 By Bean 2 Comments

I didn’t know when I set off on this Tour of Hope, self-defense for Native women mission that it had to start with my-self. Here I am one month on the path, and facing some of the biggest challenges of my life. I’m here to tell you that changing your life can be done AND growing pains should be expected!

Despite the anticipated benefits to myself and Mother Earth, it is truly difficult to change so much so fast. Some people might not recommend doing all I have in just one month’s time, but I say, there is no time like the present! In my new routine, I have felt discomfort, doubt, pain and fear: fear of failure, fear of “more different than I’m ready for,” and fear of the judgment that can come from others.

Nevertheless, I am moving ahead with my personal transformation, and I invite you all to be a part of the conversation–just comment below with any tips, questions, or any dang thing that pops into your head! I’d love to talk to you!

In my last post I announced that I would only eat: local, organic, and unpackaged foods, with the exception of eating food that would otherwise go to waste. Well, the parents went on vacation and left a fridge full of leftovers, so I mostly lived on that for the week, and you all know my weakness for fine cuisine, so when I went out with friends one night I couldn’t help but order some tasty things (which didn’t strictly meet those 3 criterion, but they made me happy). I will continue to try my best, and I will certainly continue to make “mistakes.” The point is not to be perfect, just to be better.

Once it was time to restock, seeing that Z and I are both living on a tight budget, we checked out the local dumpster scene!

One morning, we gathered 17 pounds of free food: apples, melons, peppers, and organic whey protein (had “expired” a few days before–still totally fine to eat), about 20 individually packaged.

This all came from two dumpsters in the neighborhood (most dumpsters we met were locked.)

Z returned each morning for the rest of the week and found empty or locked dumpsters until yesterday, when she came home with probably 40 pounds of produce. Melons, bananas, summer squash, onions, broccoli, peaches, grapes, tomatoes (organic!), potatoes, lemons, mangos, pineapples…oh my gosh! It was a real cornucopia!

So that, along with a few local, organic and unpackaged pantry items, will feed us nicely this weekend and into the week. I made applesauce, we’ve had some fine salads, Lin made banana bread, and Z is making soup as I type! Amazing, right!?

I’m not saying everyone should go out and dig in the local dumpsters for free food, but….well, why not!? Ha!

Other than that, I have been doing a decent job of biking, though many of the free fitness classes we’re taking are too far away to bike to yet, so we’ve still been using the car. I have been to three boxing classes, my first Qigong class, and kickboxing and a mixed martial arts class will start on Tuesday. At the first of the month I completed my first 3-day fast, and I’ve been spending a lot of time outdoors, mediating, reading, walking, etc.

We rinse all produce in a baking soda bath and a vinegar bath and give them a good scrub.

These changes have made me super sensitive. I have had some strange physiological symptoms like cramps and headaches, and I am highly emotional right now. I am on a spiritual journey, for sure, and am so happy and grateful that I get to spend this time really taking care of myself right now, in order to be better prepared to take care of others when the time is right.

Giving up to carry on

August 7, 2018 By Bean Leave a Comment

Hello friends,

I just watched this cool video from a man I look up to a lot. He reminded me that I am currently living in the state which produces more food than any other state in the U.S!

This and some other things Rob Greenfield touches on in this episode have inspired me to change how I eat, and how I contribute to the system (#resist #maxandbellaaren’tyouproud? #what?thisisn’thowhastagswork?).

Starting now, I will only eat food that is local, organic, and unpackaged*, and food that would otherwise go to waste. (Did anyone else just get hungry?)

I know in my gut (no pun intended) that this is part of my journey: living in a way that respects my body and my planet. Therefore, I will carry on with my mission even more intentionally by giving up some seriously bad food habits along the way and maybe a few pounds?? Please!?? (Could anyone else eat potato chips and chocolate every day of their life? I don’t but…oh. my. gosh. I didn’t even think about chocolate when I made my promise….errrgh, is it too late to take it back??)

All rambling aside, did you know more than 30% of the food produced in the U.S. is thrown out?! And 20% of people in the U.S. face hunger. As Rob says, it looks like we don’t have a food problem in the U.S. but a distribution problem.

So, while I am here in beautiful San Diego, I am going to make the most of what is around me, and spend as little as possible while I do it!

I’d love to hear your thoughts below–what did you find interesting in the video? Do you already eat like this? If so, any tips? Do you think I’m going to succeed or fail miserably? If so, any tips? 🙂

*The meat from the cattle my father raises on his farm in Colorado is packaged in plastic wrap and butcher’s paper. It is the freshest and best quality beef one could find in this day and age in the U.S. Like hell will I skip out on eating that anytime I am back in Colorado.

Happy Taco Tuesday, everyone! I guess that’s going to be my first REAL test tomorrow!

~Bean

Life Lessons Learned from Living Abroad in Brazil

July 26, 2018 By Bean Leave a Comment

My wonderful friends in Brazil put a book together for me as a going away gift, and left a few pages blank with prompts on them. One of those pages inspired this post. Thank you, Maxine.

Here are my top 10 life lessons for living a happy life.

Take care of yourself. Self-love and self-care must come first.
In many ways I already knew this one, or else I wouldn’t have ever gone to Brazil, but I learned how to live it fully in these two years. Creating a healthy work/life balance was very important to me here, and I often spent time cooking, painting, walking, or watching my favorite shows after work instead of grading and planning (though there was still plenty of that!). Journaling and yoga were also big parts of my self-care. I encourage everything to find what works for them!
We need each other, our hive, our tribe.
Once I learned how to love myself, the friendships in my life blossomed. The respect I had for myself set the standard for what I expected of others. My time in Sao Paulo would certainly not be so memorable and cherished if it wasn’t for the amazing people I got to work with, travel with, party with, cook with, paint with, teach with etc. They built me up, and taught me just how wonderful it is to surround yourself with positive people. Also important: we don’t need EVERYONE and there are some people who we certainly don’t need in our life, but we need others, we need like-minded people in our circle and people who push us outside of our comfort zone.
Be open, and the world will be open to you. Be kind, and the world will be kind to you.
So many people in my life before I moved from the U.S. were full of warnings and advice, were full of fear for my move. Thank you all for caring, but in my experience, it is carrying fear which invites evil. Send out the energy you wish you receive, and it seems…you shall!
Look up.
What a beautiful and wonderful and amazing world we live in! Take it all in! People miss so much when we spend too much time on technology or in our own heads. Predators look for people who are distracted, so looking up and seeing who and what is around me makes me more safe. I didn’t stay out of harm’s way by retreating into my phone and remaining naively blissful; I was awake to the world around me, and looked at people and situations with a keen eye and was able to entirely AVOID harm by being mindful or my surroundings and being present in each moment.
Dreams don’t work unless you do.
Nothing is going to come to you for free. You have to set your intentions, let the universe know, and then work all the damn time to make those dreams come true. I am the happiest I have ever been in my life, and if that isn’t a dream come true, I don’t know what is!
Walk barefoot in the grass.
This one means so much more than this specific action. It means to take time for yourself to take in your surroundings and connect to this beautiful Earth. In Brazil, I would often take my shoes off and walk around the soccer field during my lunch break. It was so energizing. To touch nature, to place your feet in the sand, in a stream…there is something so grounding about bare feet in nature.
Stay present.
Mindfulness has been a years-long journey for me that has brought exponential joy into my life. From more fully enjoying the taste of my food, to engagingmore meaningfully with the person across the table from me, to listening to my body and my emotions more, bringing more attention and mindfulness to each moment has made everything better. And related to #4, it has also kept me safe. I have avoided several awkward, if not unsafe, situations by just paying more attention to the energy around me.
Always go on the adventure.
I’ve definitely embraced the “better an ‘oh well’ than a ‘what if?’” mindset, and have been rewarded for it greatly. Not only have I gotten to see incredible places, I have gotten to learn these life lessons authentically. Traveling also increases empathy, and who couldn’t use more of that?! I encourage everyone to go see the world, as far away from home as they are able to!

My top 10 places to visit in Brazil list is coming soon!
Stay positive.
This relates to so many, but it bears repeating. I used to have a very negative internal monologue. Becoming aware of that and taking systematic steps to change it, such as keeping a gratitude journal, have helped me be so much happier and so much less stressed and anxious. It’s also one of those pieces of advices that used to make me roll my eyes, but until you live it, you can never know how much it will change your life.
People are good.
Again, this one goes back to #3, but this was a resounding lesson from my two years abroad. Despite not even being able to speak portuguese well, I was immersed to so many heartwarming interactions. In the middle of the largest city in South America, in the middle of a torrential rain, in the middle of my walk home, I hopped on a city bus. A complete stranger reached out and handed me an empty shopping bag, noticing before I did that the one in which I was carrying extra items home from work had disintegrated in the rain and was barely holding said items in any longer. Countless times when I was traveling, people greeted me with warm smiles, tips about the best local bakery, I even shared a table at a busy restaurant with a family one night and had a wonderful time laughing and sharing food–we didn’t even speak the same language! In a world where we are so often flooded with bad news about terrible things happening (and don’t get me wrong, they are happening and it’s important to stay engaged and do everything we can to make this world a better place), it is VITAL to remember how many GOOD people there are. How GOOD people are. We have some screwed up systems, for sure, but individually, 99% of people are good. Don’t trust me? I suggest you get out of your house (without a cell phone) and go see for yourself!

Thanks for reading! More to come soon about my next journey, the Tour of Hope with LindseyLou!

About Harmony Way

April 25, 2018 By Bean 4 Comments

Growing up sometimes felt like hell. Ok, that’s a little extreme, but things were definitely not harmonious at my house most of the time. For starters, I have four brothers and sisters, and both of my parents worked full-time, my father running his own farm, which is more like an all-the-time job for ten months out of the year, and a part-time job for the other two months (much like the career I chose, teaching), which meant that mom and dad weren’t home a lot, and we five kids helped raise each other. With ten years between the five of us, and growing up in a small Catholic town, there was always something going on. From pee-wee basketball practice to family gatherings and birthdays (we had 16 cousins that lived in-state whom we were very close with), to mass, catechism, school plays, doctors appointments, emergency room visits, and trips to the grocery store, Mom or Dad were always on the road. (And did I mention that my family lived on a farm six to twenty miles away from the towns we traveled to for any of these activities?)

We spent a lot of time in our 1988, light blue Dodge minivan, driving up and down the curvy roads (curvy because, although we grew up on the plains of northeastern Colorado, it was near the South Platte river). Many parts of my childhood were idyllic in ways: We lived on a beautiful working-farm (where I can still remember watching my father and his friends, and then later helping, work cattle right across the street from our front-porch), our parents were very loving and involved in our lives and kept us very busy as kids, and we had a yard and fields to play in and even a creek just down the little dirt road behind our house. Yes, those things were all lovely, but the circumstances also left us kids unsupervised a lot. It’s true that many children were and still are safe in these circumstances, most of the time we were, also, but there was something about my childhood that tipped the scales from lovely, to at times completely frightening.

One of my brothers has bipolar disorder, and perhaps other medical disorders, that make him unpredictable and unstable, and at times downright dangerous. As we got older and were left at home more and more without adult supervision, even when parents were home but in another room or on another part of the property, crazy shit would happen. I began to fear and hate being home, despite all of the wonderful parts of it there. I’ve shared about my brother before and I’m sure I will again, but that’s not exactly what this story is about.

In the midst of all of the chaos of my upbringing, something happened that caused 5-year-old me some turmoil, yet turned into the biggest blessing of my life: Z, my best friend, moved away. Little did I know at the time, she would be my Harmony Way.

No, that’s not an expression. Z moved HOURS away from me, and she landed on a windy dirt road on the other side of the Great Divide, tucked into the foothills, on Harmony Way. 1501 Harmony Way, the home that was my refuge for one month out of every year. And it wasn’t just the escape that made this home so sweet, but that Lindsey’s family were the kindest people I had ever met, and still are the kindest people I know, to this day. If it wasn’t for their unconditional love and outpouring of support for me, I would not be the semi-balanced loving, open-minded person I am today. It was like all of the love and calm that these people generated, Z and her mom and dad, and passed to me in that one month together, somehow undid the damage that my brother’s terrifying outbursts and toxic insults and physical violence did to me in the other eleven months.

SONY DSC

Going from the middle child of five to “little” sister of one was like being an only child. I’m not just saying I was spoiled by them buying my favorite fruits and cereal and pot-pies for my visit, which I was, or that they spoiled me by making homemade tortillas and burritos every year upon my arrival, which they did, or that they treated me to camping trips where I didn’t have to fight over a fishing pole or be worried about my brother pushing me into a lake, but all of those things were definitely nice. I am saying that there, on my little slice of harmony, I truly felt listened to. I had a voice, and it didn’t have to shout over four others before it was heard. There, on Harmony Way, I my life was reshaped.

On Harmony Way, life was sweet. Z and I played outside with her ducks, chased lizards around rocks on the mountainside, and sipped sweet tea on the porch while we read books, uninterrupted, for hours in the sun. At night, we watched the stars from around the campfire. We talked about important things, we played games, we went for walks, and no one got upset and stormed off or started throwing rocks. We agreed on what TV shows to watch after dinner and no one so much as yelled. I didn’t have to think about the problems at home, and I got to explore my own interests and personality in a way I didn’t get to do at home. Being able to do that around extremely loving, kind, funny, thoughtful people was the most nourishing possible experience I might have never known I had needed if it hadn’t been handed to me.

People survive way worse conditions than those I grew up in. People find many ways to be balanced and healthy and happy despite toxic upbringings and unhealthy family members. People definitely find other ways, but there is no doubt in my mind that the path that lead me to where I am now began with Z on Harmony Way.

About Working Out

May 6, 2017 By Bean Leave a Comment

My best friend/soul sister has been telling me about this online workout for years. It is how she got into shape when preparing to join the Navy Seals, and it’s what she used again recently in preparing to become a self-defense coach.

I’m going to be totally honest: I have not taken working out seriously in a loooooong time. Ok, ever. Even in high school, while I loved playing volleyball and basketball, I hated the running and conditioning. Despite all the good stuff I hear about working out and how much I like looking at people who are in good shape and want to look like them…the most exercise I tend to do is dancing around my house when I’m cooking and cleaning, a few (short) walks a week, and the occasional yoga workout (I was doing much better when I first arrived in Sao Paulo, but work has gotten busier and I just haven’t made the time for it lately).

I have been so, so, so stressed out lately, and getting really bad migraines, so I’m finally ready to try exercise as a solution to all of this. I’ve always carried my family and friends’ stress on top of my own. I’m highly sensitive to the people around me, and love helping others, but sometimes to my own detriment. It’s something I’ve worked on in therapy and on my own for a few years now. It’s still not easy, but I’m hoping that by burning calories and releasing those good endorphins and dopamine that I’m going to find more balance and joy, and less stress in my life.

So, I just did the first workout on this page after a 10 minute cardio warmup of running in place and jumping jacks, and I was only able to do half of what she did–because I’m THAT out of shape! So I’m going to keep working on this first workout until I can do the whole thing at her pace, and I’m going to try to start jogging a couple days a week. I will keep you guys posted.

I would also love to hear what you do to workout, or if there’s a way we can support each other if you know it’s something you need to do for yourself also!

Peace and Love!

Da Bean

About Mental Illness and the Need to Break the Silence

May 1, 2017 By Bean Leave a Comment

Recently, the series Thirteen Reasons Why was released on Netflix. This is based on a book my students have been reading for years. The tough subject matter encourages them to talk about the very serious issue, and since its release, every teen I know has watched it and is talking about it. Some people believe that it’s not good for them to be talking about suicide. That it is too heavy of a subject for them to confront, but since it is the second leading cause of death for teens and young adults, I believe people should be talking about it more, adults should be talking about it with them, and talking about how we and they are going to change that statistic and improve mental health in general.

Talking about real life stuff is good. We need to talk about things: mental illness, gender, culture, suicide, the past, the future, sex, love, hate, abuse, poverty, racism, sexism. We need to talk about it all. Everything. Talking is how ideas are formed, how good ones are embraced, and bad ones are dismissed. Talking is for building trust and community. Talking is how we gain perspective and learn that not everyone feels the same way about all things, and that that’s ok.

Not talking about things is for cavemen and cavewomen. Not talking about things is what keeps things from moving forward, what keeps us in the dark. Not talking about things is why some people are still treated badly, why some people don’t get the help and support they need, why some people kill themselves over things that can be overcome. Not talking about things has innumerable negative consequences on our world and the people in it: It makes people unable to fully understand things, it sends the impression that they are wrong, and it puts people in danger.

Despite how uncomfortable this topic makes some people, I’m not being overly sensitive, hyperbolical or dramatic by saying ignorance (i.e. not knowing things as a result of not talking about/learning about things) is the root of all pain and suffering. Ignorance is like living in a dark room with only saltine crackers and water when just beyond the door there is an all-you-can-eat buffet with attractive servers walking around with trays of freshly-squeezed juice. Ok, let me give this some context:

Mental illness reared its ugly head in my life before I knew what it was. My parents’ level of ignorance to the mental illness which afflicted my brother caused it to be a bigger problem than, I believe, it might have been had their parents talked to them about the mental illness in their families. I understand that it’s scary, and that talking about it, putting words to it, meant admitting it was real, but that doesn’t make it wrong. Not dealing with it is wrong. Despite how it may sound, I don’t blame my parents for ignoring his behaviors or not getting him professional help many, many years ago. I blame society.

There is a long history in our world of mistreatment of those afflicted by mental illness, of professionals performing cruel experiments and socially accepted treatments on mentally ill people, of treating them like outcasts. I think that especially in small, rural, conservative communities people just don’t talk about mental illness. Just like Rachel Hollis says in her blog post from 2013, admitting there was something wrong with a family member was too sad and embarrassing. Instead of there being an outpouring of support and suggestions on what to do like there would have been for a child with a learning disability or a cough that wouldn’t go away, the reality of a mental disorder that caused enraged and violent outbursts wasn’t something people brought up at the reception hall over coffee and donuts. Depression, addiction, manic-depressive disorder, these were (are?) regarded as things to deal with on your own, in the silence of your prayers, or at least behind a partition. Talking to a therapist didn’t seem to be on anyone’s radar. Talking about it in general was too much of a taboo.

I, on the other hand, who felt the force of my brother’s fierce mental clamoring first hand, (when my parents were at work or when we were left alone in a backroom of Grandma and Grandpa’s house or anytime we were away from adults) I tried to talk about it all the time. While my brother is funny, intelligent, has a great energy to him that can cause others to share in his excitement about things, he also has an alarmingly violent vocabulary, a tendency to hurt living things, the strength of a bull, and an unpredictable nature to go from laughing with you to having his hands around your neck. For people who knew the funny charismatic side of him, believing the other side existed was difficult; it was far simpler to dismiss the sisters’ complaints or chalk it up to “boys will be boys.” Admitting that his impulse to kill frogs might mean he was mentally, chemically unbalanced wasn’t something my parents seemed able to do.

I get it now, that what was going on inside his brain was uncontrollable and caused him to do things a healthy person wouldn’t do. I got it the first time I heard the term “bipolar disorder” in my high school psychology elective. He wasn’t just super mean and violent and unpredictable, he was sick. Knowing this alone didn’t make the moments more tolerable or less painful, but the knowledge gave me perspective, and it allowed me to eventually forgive him for his actions.

Which leads me to this post: to encourage people to talk about, and talk to, the people in their lives who are suffering from things out of their control so we can prevent terrible things from happening to them and others and as a result of their mental illness. I was physically in danger more than a few times in my life because of my brother’s mental illness. His children have been in danger because he did not ever learn to manage his mental illness. Not talking about things, therefore remaining ignorant about things, puts people in danger. It’s time we stop that.

I always used to say, “he’s going to end up in jail or killed if he doesn’t change,” referring to his tourette’s syndrome-style outbursts of cruel and unusual insults and behaviors. The better of these two possibilities has happened, and I would do anything to prevent the latter, but I know that it isn’t in my power to do that. Since he is an adult now, he has to be the one to elect to get the help he requires to be able to save himself. I also know that I am not going to be someone to sit by silently and pray instead of taking action to change how people see and talk about mental illness. The first step to changing that, is simply by talking about it.

A couple of years ago he asked me to attend a group therapy session with him, as far as I know his only attempt at getting professional help. Supporting the person who abused me, physically and mentally (though I will tell you right now the mental abuse had a more enduring impact on my life) was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life, and one of the best. At this session, I heard my brother take responsibility for his actions, and while the lessons learned there did not seem to last long in his life, it taught me that there is hope, that he wants to be better, but that his mental illness is in the way. The doctor there called it a dis-ease. He described what was going on in his head, and others who also suffer from mental illness, as a disruption of ease. That what a typical person sees as easy is not easy to them. I’ve also seen this dis-ease in many of my adolescent students, in friends and colleagues, and in other members of my family. It needs to be ok to say, have you tried therapy? in the same conversation where we tell the person we are here for them. You wouldn’t tell someone with cancer to keep thinking positive thoughts and expect it to go away; we need to deal with depression and other more serious forms of mental illness the way we deal with any serious illness: by getting professional and medical help for it while showing them love and support.

This reality of dis-ease cannot be ignored. It needs to be talked about. We need to make it acceptable in society, on social media, in schools, at home, in church, to talk about that which afflicts one in five adults, (one in seventeen for more serious mental illnesses like my brother has). The topic is gaining more exposure, thanks to celebrities like Lady Gaga and Prince William’s Heads Together project ; Robin Williams’ suicide also kindled compassion and conversation about the topic; and amazing student organizations like Brighton, Colorado’s (Brighton Youth Commission) BYC’s annual SPEAK Week is building momentum in getting people to speak up about life’s challenges. But we still have more work to do.

Please leave a comment about your experiences with mental illness, what you did to get help or help others through it.

Update, 6 May: A family friend shared this link with me if you’d like to do some further reading: http://lineacinda.com/

About Cooking

July 31, 2016 By Bean 4 Comments

Cooking is an act of love. And being that I am all about loving myself these days, I cook for myself whenever I get the chance.

I have always enjoyed eating and come from a family who shaped that. While we sometimes sat down to bowls of cereal growing up–in a hectic rush to get five children to school–most of the time we sat down to bacon and eggs, or biscuits and gravy, or omelets, or pancakes, french toast, or crepes. Cinnamon rolls and dinner rolls. Roasts, casseroles, lasagna, steak and potatoes, hamburgers, tacos, stir-fries. These are just some of the main courses I grew up with. I consider myself fortunate to have a family that loves food. It has given me a strong foundation for what I now consider one of my favorite ways to spend time with myself. Cooking is my therapy.

I am extremely grateful that food is a major part of my background, and I can see now that my love for food blurred my senses when I met a guy in college who was going to culinary school. He was an amazing cook. He learned from the best, had a natural sense for combining ingredients, and put a lot of energy into his cooking. I mistook it all for love. I admired coming home to the smell of garlic and onions and I fancied the variety of meals this guy cooked for me over the years. I applauded his ability to adapt his cooking to my dietary needs when I went through a period of severe food-allergies. I doted over the good food so much that it kept me from being honest about the toxic relationship we were in. There were other factors at play, of course, but food was a big part of my blindness. In the end, I became a better cook and learned a lot of tricks in the kitchen from of him, but more importantly, I learned that when you eat food not made out of love, that it can poison you. So now, I cook for myself.

Loving myself has been a conscious goal of mine for the last year and a half. That may not seem like a lot of time, coming from a nearly-30-year-old, but deciding to love myself was a conscionable and life-changing moment in my life. To be happy was my New Year’s Resolution for 2015, and now my life-long goal. This resolution set into motion my leaving that toxic relationship. Once I was out on my own, with full control over my life again, (including a brief stint beach-bumming it in Hermosa Beach, San Diego, and the Dominican Republic for a summer, where I also enjoyed cooking for family and friends) I realized how therapeutic it was for me to come home after a long stressful day, or even a wonderfully relaxing day, and spend a couple of hours in the kitchen cooking something tasty, something that would soothe my hunger and my soul. Since I was cooking for one, I would make dishes that kept well as left-overs. I would cook two nights a week, at least, and I would enjoy those dishes for the entire week, alternating between meals, sometimes mixing it up with a quick salad, or put a twist on something by frying an egg to put on top: always the perfect way to make leftovers taste new again. I also love to take leftovers from restaurants and mix them with fresh ingredients to make them into something new and exciting.

Bean loves beans! I roasted onions, green beans, and baby eggplants with garlic, salt and pepper, and olive oil, and added them to some beans, rice, and pork from a restaurant meal from earlier in the week.

Cooking has helped me heal. It makes me feel powerful and relaxed at the same time (just like good sex). When I stand in the kitchen with my knife in hand and some cloves of garlic or green beans or potatoes on my cutting board, I know I’m doing something good for myself. I take my time to carefully prep all of the ingredients with the attention to detail and patience some women exercise to apply their makeup before a date. I love to put on music and dance around as I prepare my dish. I move to a rhythm in the kitchen that makes my heart feel whole and my mouth water in anticipation of the hearty meal. Finally, I sit down to enjoy my work, my art, my joy.

Cooking proves to me that every situation can be improved. That I can make the most out of what I have. That things change. That time heals. That patience goes a long way. That life is good.