If you happen to be around me and/or my home while I am in the garden, this is the “me” you are use to seeing.
There are two facets of my personality that seem to show up the most.. aside from my faith, they are the pillars of who I am . They have been the truest forms of me. They are of course the cowgirl and the “hippy dippy eco-gardener chick.” I know a lot of the conversations around Organic and shop local and bio-dynamic farming and permaculture. I “get” the importance of biomes in both the soil and the body. I can talk grass-fed and mono-cropping and…..
So, my love-hate relationship to food is one that has been a struggle. With all the benefits of a healthy diet, and the million and one ways one can chose to eat and lose weight – those two I can quote and compare and outline and give lengthy discussions about the pros and cons of each….
But, in truth there is also a down side to food – of course that is when it has become your drug of choice. And, like with any other addition, one can use and abuse for all the available reasons, you eat when you are happy and celebrating life, when you are sad and loathing life… when you are bored or on the run…..
For years I took classes on Holistic Nutrition and have read nearly every book on the topic. Met many of the movers and shakers in that world and yet….. and yet like many other addicts who have seen their passions go down the drain when bumped up against the very idea of having to give up their additions – I have literally looked success in the eyeballs and chose a different path so that I could hang with my addiction just a little bit longer. Even my convictions on farming, and harvesting practices taking a back seat to it.
It isn’t an unconscious thing – boy that I wish it were. Rather I am fully aware of the choices I have made. I see the complexity of the issue when I look into the eyes of those who ask a food question and hear my rather well read opinion on such matters, as well as when I look in the mirror – So it isn’t always an issue of “when we know better – we do better.” Sometimes when we know better.. we just know better.
There are a million reasons why one stays in any relationship even when they know it isn’t in their best interest to do so.. It fills a need – even if the “need” is an immediate fix to a not so easy to fix situation. I’m always a little amused at some people who see my struggle with weight and assume that it is as simple as what I do not yet know…. Then of course, for me there is sport in watching their reaction when I can blow them away with what I do know….. I have decided that as I work through my issues I just need a tee-shirt that simple states.. “Breaking Up Is hard To Do.”
A Cowgirl Called 