For about a year I have eaten a diet that's approximately 50% raw. Basically, I eat uncooked meals until dinner when I have one cooked meal. For the past few weeks I have gradually incorporated more and more raw and living foods as I build up to February 1st. For 30 days I will eat nothing but raw and living foods. I will document the experience here, oh yes I will.
So far, I have noticed a lot of emotional shaking up of things. I have relived a lot of moments, most good but some bad. Travelling through time back to what I have always thought were simpler days -- The Nashville Years -- has been especially profound. I have reconnected finally with old classmates and neighborhood friends from the first twelve years of my life. A geyser of memories has erupted and flooded my thoughts the past few days. For example, I remember one neighbor who confided in me that her step-father was molesting her. Carrying that knowledge around, I was nauseous for days because I had promised I would not tell anyone. But I really needed to talk about it. Even now, writing this, I feel that awful twisting sensation in my stomach. That poor girl...eventually her mother left him and they moved away. I hope that she was able to get the support she needed to move on with her.
In that same family, the step-father abused the mother. She seemed to always have a black eye or a bandage on her hand. One time I was sitting on their front porch playing with girl mentioned above, when the door flung open and the mother stepped out, bleeding and screaming, with her screaming 2-year-old in her arms. The baby's head had a huge knot on it. Later I was told that the husband hit the wife as she was picking up the baby, and she fell forward bumping her head on the bed. Not sure if that's what really happened...anyway, the mother screamed for me to take the baby and run. I took both girls and ran down the street to a neighbor's playhouse. We hid in their for what seemed hours. I calmed them both down and distracted them by playing games. I was about 10 years old.
My heart is racing. There are so many distressing memories coming back to me, I wonder why I have always thought of that point in my life as "happy"? I guess for the most part it was, but these disturbing events were really too much for a little girl to observe.
Maybe as I travel along this authenticity path I'm seeing some things as they truly are, for the first time. Eating raw food has kept me from consoling myself with comfort foods that sort-of mask, or mediate the discomfort of reliving such moments. Whatever the emotion, I'm feeling it...raw.
Currently I'm eating a diet that's 75-80% raw. Upon rising, I sip a cup of coffee (not part of a raw diet, and one thing I will miss during the 30 day challenge!) Then I make a smoothie using fresh fruits and fresh-squeezed fruit juice, water and ice (no dairy.) Mid-morning I start on veggie juices. First, a blend of cucumber, carrot, apple and red bell pepper. Then another consisting of apple, carrot and ginger. Finally I finish off the juices around mid-afternoon with greens and an apple, or carrot, celery and apple. When Sage gets up from her nap we have nuts and seeds and dried fruit, usually. Dinner is our cooked meal (for now.) Tuna steaks with rice; chicken with pasta; turkey burgers with rice or chicken; black beans and rice with cheese; or pizza. I'll still make these meals for her during my 30-day-raw challenge.
I'm really looking forward to February. It's exciting to think about all the changes that may come from this kind of "detoxing"!
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