hello
i'm writing this friday lunchtime, so far today i've had the juice of 20 oranges :-)
yesterday was a continuation of what has been going on, but it felt more like i've turned a corner. i still feel vulnerable and not particularly balanced, but i'm starting to get back on track with my emotions and my eating.
yesterday i ended up bingeing on a jar of mixed seed butter (supposedly raw). my emotions were still really overwhelming, and now i have tasted cooked/fatty food, i need to go through those three days or so that it takes to really get it out of my system, and so that the cravings can reduce to manageable levels. today should be the first day of that.
i rigged up my makeshift sauna (the heating in my room is a wood burning stove, so i make a sorta tent around it, and then sweat!), in the afternoon, and spent several hours in there, writing and thinking, and nursing my poor swollen fat filled belly. why do i always forget how much this hurts!!! i wrote soooo much. i don't want to fill this blog with what i wrote, heck, its enough to start off a small book (no doubt someone has already written it). so i'll just try and abbreviate.
i first realised that i have issues with anger when i was in my early 20s. i was attending an assertiveness class, and we had to roleplay anger. i literally couldn't do it. had no connection with anger at all... actually i seemed to have little connection with any emotion! the course leader was really helpful, and encouraged me, and then i found it. oh boy did i find it! literally completely swamped, lost the plot, it just burst out of me. scary. but it was there. and i had some awareness now that at some point in my childhood i had pretty much suppressed all anger feelings.
this is not rocket science.
i have had anger issues since i was a little kid. its a no brainer, my dad was a violent alcoholic schizophrenic who beat my mum and brother and for some reason didn't include me. also took very little notice of me (very sexist too). so i grew up feeling like love was about being angry towards someone. i wanted him to hit me!
i tried so hard to be good, and never got his attention. i only got it when i rejected him at 15 and never wanted to see him again. then he was interested. as a kid, i totally suppressed my anger. as a late teen early 20s i had almost no feelings at all. i have not yet resolved my relationship with anger. it usually comes out of the blue and completely inappropriately. i really want to heal this part of me, i want to get back to that little child who should have expressed anger and been heard that she was having to put up with a fucked up situation. i want to love that little girl, and allow her to reconnect with her power and release it.
phew. this is such a deep issue, and the time has come. raw food has released enough in me and i know it is time now.
so... i am aware of a large reservoir of anger that i carry permanently. this is from all the anger that i have not managed to express in my life. and it grows as more situations arise which i don't deal with. it takes energy to keep a lid on. when i don't deal with anger in a helpful way, and suppress it instead, this anger is amplified, festers, and will eventually take more energy to deal with. the volcano often erupts, mostly inappropriately. sometimes i turn it in on myself (self harm, depression). sometimes i turn it on my loved ones (bf, kids), and sometimes onto situations which deserve a justified anger response, but of course with the weight of this reservoir behind it, i way overreact. all of this takes ALOT of energy.
i want to
1. release this reservoir of anger in the most appropriate and least harmful way possible and
2. i want to learn how to deal with new situations in appropriate ways so that i do not add more to the reservoir.
i have a practical plan :-))
1. dealing with the reservoir
involves dealing with one anger at a time. starting with easy ones, and moving on as they feel right. i want to write/express my feelings about a past hurt/situation. i want to decide if i want to contact the person/organisation directly. if yes, then i contact them, expressing my feelings, in the most appropriate way, being clear, conscious and effective, and not harmful. i need to be prepared for consequences, and to proceed from a place of LOVE. if i don't want direct contact, then i will write/express my feelings in another way, and release these, e.g. through a simple ritual, or other way that makes sense. if i need to do more work on these then i will.
2. for new situations
i will be aware in the moment, to catch feelings of anger before they grow. i will articulate these, and ask for help, also i will ask for help from my loved ones, to learn to recognise these signs. if the feelings are appropriate, i will express them clearly, stay conscious, not shut down, and take appropriate action. if the feelings are inappropriate, i will seek to put myself in a safe space as soon as possible, express immediately what is coming up with me, preferably physically as well as writing (e.g. shouting, crying, hitting a pillow), i will try and connect with what feelings came up and why, and devise a plan to release those. if i have caused any hurt i will apologise and make amends. and i will always try to proceed from a place of LOVE.
3. for my energy
i need to keep increasing my energy levels and letting energy flow through me rather than it being blocked. i put alot of energy into keeping my anger blocked, to stop leakage and inappropriate action. activities that i know will increase my energy are
a. raw food (LFRV - low fat raw vegan)
b. meditation
c. exercise
d. sun
e. creative expression
f. heat/saunas
g. massage
h. healing
i. connection with earth/nature
but... i also know that many of these also cause me to be more in touch with my feelings, and anger, and sometimes to bring stuff up that i'm not ready to deal with. cooked food for example, is an easy way to 'stuff' my feelings back down. so this healing process needs to be in tandem with releasing from the anger reservoir.
4. for anger turned inwards onto myself
this is about recognising that my self harm activities (food bingeing, hurting myself physically, depression, low self esteem) are a coping mechanism to sort of deal with this well of anger (not very effective ones!). so the first step to reduce this is to work on reducing the reservoir, and not filling it with new stuff. always be conscious, and ask myself why i am doing what i am doing. to allow love for myself and for others to flow and not be blocked, and to help others so that i am not self obsessed. when i feel low and in danger of self harming activities, to connect with what anger i'm feeling, and to find a way of expressing that. to be gentle with myself and not judgemental when i mess up, to make amends by loving myself (see increasing energy for ideas), and to move on. to really avoid getting stuck, and to keep reaching out to myself and others. writing is very important!
5. for loved ones
to keep the love flowing, and not blocked. to keep reaching out to my loved ones, even when i don't feel able to do so. for hurt that is already there, to write and communicate and find ways to share with them the path that i'm on, and to make amends. to ask for their love and support. to have conscious conversations, and silly times too. to ask them to feedback to me in the moment if they think i am being angry or inappropriate, and if necessary to help me to a safe space so i can express. to share about healing past angers. to express deep and lasting love and show this daily. to help them connect with and understand their own angers.
6. other stuff
to try and model people who express anger in appropriate and effective ways. to do more research on this issue.
phew. well not much about food and ALOT about emotions but that's where i'm at so there!
so next little baby steps for me:
1. identify safe space and let people know (my room, punchbag/pillow).
2. identify first anger out of the reservoir that i want to tackle
3. talk with bf and kids about this plan and see what they think.
4. express my deep love to my loved ones :-))
5. do more research on what is appropriate expression of anger. use in the next situation that arises.
6. carry on with healthful energy increasing activities.
7. be gentle with and love myself :-))
thats all for now folks
cat xxx
Friday 19 June 2009
Wednesday 17 June 2009
days 24/25 - unravelling...
day 24
hello
today i ate: 2 mangoes, 2 smoothies, each of 5 apples, 2 nanas, and a handful of greens. 1400 cals
today started well. energy not too bad, managed to bounce on the trampoline and did a bit of club swinging (sorta juggling). pottered for a bit, then around lunchtime some of us living here had a chat about something we're planning. i thought it was about just that specific thing, which went ok, but then we moved on to another more thorny issue. i wasn't prepared for this. one person wouldn't let the issue drop, even when i begged him to, and said that this was really bad for my energy. so i ended up having to walk out of the conversation. i find this sort of situation very hard to handle at the best of times, but i was really trying to be conscious and say where my energy was at and what i could handle, and he was just ignoring it. so... after walking out, i went and sat and read in the sun in a quiet place for a few hours to try and calm down, and regroup my energy. for some reason this situation has really made me angry and brought alot of my anger to the surface (i know that i have deep anger issues, that i am slowly dealing with). i didn't want to be with people because my anger might bubble over and i didn't want to lash out at anyone for no reason, so isolating myself to calm down seemed to be the way.
my lovely was having a difficult day for his own reasons, and came and found me, wondering why i hadn't been around being supportive for him as i usually am. i told him what had happened. but this led to a rush of uncontrollable anger which just burst out of me. i wasn't hurtful to him, but just shouted and screamed and basically lost the plot for 10 mins or so. he has seen me like this before, something similar happened when i went raw last summer. i couldn't believe how angry i felt inside. i felt like i wanted to kill the other person, wanted to hurt myself, wanted to hit out and hurt anyone around me, wanted to stuff my face with crap food, like i didn't care about anyone i love. my lovely managed to get me into a safe space lying down, and as my feelings and crying subsided somewhat, he just held me and then gave me a massage.
then basically i fell asleep (about 8ish).
needless to say, food got a bit forgotten in the drama
continued tomorrow...
day 25
hello again
its only 2pm, and i'll do an update later today, but i think it would really help me to write, so i'm going to :-)
after falling asleep last night, at some point my lovely came to bed, and woke me up (didn't mean to). i couldn't get back to sleep, and lay there for hours, with all the events of yesterday going round my head. and, surprise surprise, the overwhelming urge to stuff my face with food (to suppress all these really big scary emotions). this is a very common pattern for me, and one i'm really aware of... but when i'm in the moment suffering, well it is just overwhelming.
dawn happened, the birds started singing, and i couldn't cope any longer so i went to the kitchen and ate some home made humus, salad, oatcakes, and lentil bake. surprisingly, i couldn't finish the plate. it just didn't taste good, i was forcing it down. but yes, it did calm me somewhat. then i decided to go for a walk. it was about 5.30 am. i walked into the village, feeling pretty shitty and cross with myself and all the bubbling anger from yesterday. amazingly the local shop was open, and i bought 2 sandwiches (one cheese, one egg), and a bottle of apple juice. i managed to eat the cheese one, but one bite of the egg one was enough, nearly made me vomit, so i threw that one away and tried to wash the taste away with the apple juice. so even cooked food wasn't helping, just tasted like ash.
i walked back home the long way, and sat on a hill for a while just being with the dawn. my gut was starting to hurt with the food. and i could feel saliva and mucus. i walked back home and came to bed and slept.
now i've woken up again (2pm ish). my lovely has tried to be with me, and so has my eldest daughter, but i really can't do people at all. i haven't eaten anything since early this morning, just drinking water and feeling shitty from the cooked food. i'm still angry. i don't want to leave my room because i don't want to see this person who started it all off yesterday. i don't want to talk about anything! i think its positive that i'm writing this, as at least i've got some outlet. i'm hoping i'll go back to sleep soon.
i get my delivery of fruit this evening, and i ordered 3 days worth of oranges for monoing with, so i'm thinking of just staying on water til tomorrow morning, then monoing oranges. i don't know how to get back to talking and being with people. i don't know what to do with my levels of anger. expressing anger is really really scary. i could do myself or someone else a real injury. and from past experience, this type of episode feels like i'm burning pathways in my brain, doesn't feel healthy at all.
so... that's where i'm at. hopefully i'll update later
catx
UPDATE... 10pm
well i slept til after lunch time, and stayed on water til the evening when i felt some hunger and the beginnings of cooked cravings, so i ate 2 small melons, which tasted yummy. i'm hoping there's enough time between them and the cooked food at 5am so that my digestion is ok. not too much pain so far.
sleeping and water and resting were definitely the right things to do. this evening me and my lovely reconnected, he'd had a difficult day falling out with the same person as me yesterday, trying to talk things through and getting nowhere. he's pretty low and vulnerable because of another personal ongoing issue, so we are both in need of some healing and love and a quiet gentle space! just hoping that here can be that, otherwise we'll have to go away for a bit.
re my anger and cooked cravings, they both seem to have subsided somewhat, i want to do some deep work on my anger, writing down who i'm angry with and why, how the anger feels inside of me (like a dragon bursting out! or a volcano... pretty uncontrollable). where i think the roots of it lie. and ways of expressing it so that i don't get swamped like yesterday. ideally that's what i'll do tomorrow...
i also want to write to this person while thoughts are fresh in my head, of ways forward, and how i'm feeling, so that there's some communication.
so i'm feeling a little more positive, though still not left my room! and hoping that this cooked blip is just that. a blip.
hugs
cat xxx
hello
today i ate: 2 mangoes, 2 smoothies, each of 5 apples, 2 nanas, and a handful of greens. 1400 cals
today started well. energy not too bad, managed to bounce on the trampoline and did a bit of club swinging (sorta juggling). pottered for a bit, then around lunchtime some of us living here had a chat about something we're planning. i thought it was about just that specific thing, which went ok, but then we moved on to another more thorny issue. i wasn't prepared for this. one person wouldn't let the issue drop, even when i begged him to, and said that this was really bad for my energy. so i ended up having to walk out of the conversation. i find this sort of situation very hard to handle at the best of times, but i was really trying to be conscious and say where my energy was at and what i could handle, and he was just ignoring it. so... after walking out, i went and sat and read in the sun in a quiet place for a few hours to try and calm down, and regroup my energy. for some reason this situation has really made me angry and brought alot of my anger to the surface (i know that i have deep anger issues, that i am slowly dealing with). i didn't want to be with people because my anger might bubble over and i didn't want to lash out at anyone for no reason, so isolating myself to calm down seemed to be the way.
my lovely was having a difficult day for his own reasons, and came and found me, wondering why i hadn't been around being supportive for him as i usually am. i told him what had happened. but this led to a rush of uncontrollable anger which just burst out of me. i wasn't hurtful to him, but just shouted and screamed and basically lost the plot for 10 mins or so. he has seen me like this before, something similar happened when i went raw last summer. i couldn't believe how angry i felt inside. i felt like i wanted to kill the other person, wanted to hurt myself, wanted to hit out and hurt anyone around me, wanted to stuff my face with crap food, like i didn't care about anyone i love. my lovely managed to get me into a safe space lying down, and as my feelings and crying subsided somewhat, he just held me and then gave me a massage.
then basically i fell asleep (about 8ish).
needless to say, food got a bit forgotten in the drama
continued tomorrow...
day 25
hello again
its only 2pm, and i'll do an update later today, but i think it would really help me to write, so i'm going to :-)
after falling asleep last night, at some point my lovely came to bed, and woke me up (didn't mean to). i couldn't get back to sleep, and lay there for hours, with all the events of yesterday going round my head. and, surprise surprise, the overwhelming urge to stuff my face with food (to suppress all these really big scary emotions). this is a very common pattern for me, and one i'm really aware of... but when i'm in the moment suffering, well it is just overwhelming.
dawn happened, the birds started singing, and i couldn't cope any longer so i went to the kitchen and ate some home made humus, salad, oatcakes, and lentil bake. surprisingly, i couldn't finish the plate. it just didn't taste good, i was forcing it down. but yes, it did calm me somewhat. then i decided to go for a walk. it was about 5.30 am. i walked into the village, feeling pretty shitty and cross with myself and all the bubbling anger from yesterday. amazingly the local shop was open, and i bought 2 sandwiches (one cheese, one egg), and a bottle of apple juice. i managed to eat the cheese one, but one bite of the egg one was enough, nearly made me vomit, so i threw that one away and tried to wash the taste away with the apple juice. so even cooked food wasn't helping, just tasted like ash.
i walked back home the long way, and sat on a hill for a while just being with the dawn. my gut was starting to hurt with the food. and i could feel saliva and mucus. i walked back home and came to bed and slept.
now i've woken up again (2pm ish). my lovely has tried to be with me, and so has my eldest daughter, but i really can't do people at all. i haven't eaten anything since early this morning, just drinking water and feeling shitty from the cooked food. i'm still angry. i don't want to leave my room because i don't want to see this person who started it all off yesterday. i don't want to talk about anything! i think its positive that i'm writing this, as at least i've got some outlet. i'm hoping i'll go back to sleep soon.
i get my delivery of fruit this evening, and i ordered 3 days worth of oranges for monoing with, so i'm thinking of just staying on water til tomorrow morning, then monoing oranges. i don't know how to get back to talking and being with people. i don't know what to do with my levels of anger. expressing anger is really really scary. i could do myself or someone else a real injury. and from past experience, this type of episode feels like i'm burning pathways in my brain, doesn't feel healthy at all.
so... that's where i'm at. hopefully i'll update later
catx
UPDATE... 10pm
well i slept til after lunch time, and stayed on water til the evening when i felt some hunger and the beginnings of cooked cravings, so i ate 2 small melons, which tasted yummy. i'm hoping there's enough time between them and the cooked food at 5am so that my digestion is ok. not too much pain so far.
sleeping and water and resting were definitely the right things to do. this evening me and my lovely reconnected, he'd had a difficult day falling out with the same person as me yesterday, trying to talk things through and getting nowhere. he's pretty low and vulnerable because of another personal ongoing issue, so we are both in need of some healing and love and a quiet gentle space! just hoping that here can be that, otherwise we'll have to go away for a bit.
re my anger and cooked cravings, they both seem to have subsided somewhat, i want to do some deep work on my anger, writing down who i'm angry with and why, how the anger feels inside of me (like a dragon bursting out! or a volcano... pretty uncontrollable). where i think the roots of it lie. and ways of expressing it so that i don't get swamped like yesterday. ideally that's what i'll do tomorrow...
i also want to write to this person while thoughts are fresh in my head, of ways forward, and how i'm feeling, so that there's some communication.
so i'm feeling a little more positive, though still not left my room! and hoping that this cooked blip is just that. a blip.
hugs
cat xxx
background
hello
a little bit of background first :-)
so... i thought i'd kick off by sharing my CFS story (and no doubt other bits of myself)
its hard to know where to begin really...
I'm 40, the mother of 3 girls who are 20, 16, and 12. I was born in and live in the UK. I first became ill on Jan 1st 2000 (I always joke that I got the Millenium Bug!). I got flu, really badly. I was delirious, couldn't walk, bad chest infections. I felt horrendous. My youngest was 3, and still breastfeeding, needless to say, she had to be weaned. At the time I was studying as a herbalist, and I was trying to treat myself herbally, with no effect. I was getting weaker and weaker. So after 2 weeks I ended up going to the Doctors, and was prescribed antibiotics for the chest infections (pneumonia). I had never taken antibiotics in my adult life. But... I felt like I was dying. So I took them. And yes, there was some improvement. But...
My recovery was very slow. And I seemed to have picked up all sorts of symptoms that I hadn't had before. These included:
Tiredness
Rhinitis (inflamed runny nose and lung inflammation)
Overproduction of saliva (a fun one this... imagine how antisocial having to spit into a cup all day is!)
Worsening of my IBS symptoms til sometimes I was doubled up with pain
Sudden increase in allergies, especially food intolerances, pollen, etc
Mental trauma which hadn't been present before.
Sleep disturbance
Intolerance to anything electrical (I had to sleep outside for a year)
Worsening of migraine symptoms
Total intolerance to alcohol
I spent 6 months in a daze, trying to live with the above, no idea what had happened, no diagnosis or anything sensible from the doctors (clear blood tests etc). Being a single parent was very hard, and I really struggled. I had to give up my course as I just couldn't carry on. In any case, my belief in herbal medicine had been firmly shattered. I was trying to take tinctures (which had alcohol in!), and realised they were making me worse!
That summer, I was desperate. I was looking up anything I could about healing, then I met someone randomly, who was into raw food. Wow! He was superfit, and hard to talk with, but I got the idea that going raw could help me. So I started researching, and came across the Hippocrates Institute, Ann Wigmore, and here in the UK, Elaine Bruce, who runs living food courses based on Ann Wigmore's stuff. I also got allergy/food intolerance tested. I pretty much reacted to everything except 3 fruits. My first experiement was three weeks raw, when i really didn't know much at all. BUT!!! these three weeks had an amazing effect on my symptoms. I also lost a stone in weight, my mental/brainfog/eye disturbance and general feeling really unwell subsided... and my energy was higher. I was converted.
BUT!!!! I just found it sooooooo hard!!!! Despite such a change in my symptoms, I just couldn't maintain 100%, which is what only really brought such a change. Or not for more than a few weeks anyway. and that was when i realised that i had had food issues all my life. I also spent a week at Elaine Bruce's retreat centre on living foods and learning about sprouts, recipes, etc. My intro into the raw food world was definitely a gourmet high fat one. Which I didn't really understand then. Elaine emphasised that too much fruit was a bad thing.
It took me a year before I could maintain 100% for more than 6 weeks. During that time, I moved out of the community (a rural farm) that I was living, as it was too physical for my new self, and also too stressful, and I needed peace and quiet. I struggled with several of my ongoing food issues, sometimes using fasting. I slowly dropped weight from 11 to 9 stone. Wheat was a big issue and very hard to give up. I went vegetarian at 16, vegan at 19 and then at 23, and had been vegan for 8 years when I got ill. So meat, dairy weren't issues. But I was cooking for my children, which meant all sorts of tempting baddies around. Managing to cook while not tasting was nigh on impossible. But my health slowly improved, I could work again, I could exercise, and things were looking up. I managed to maintain 100% for two years, from mid 2001 to mid 2003. This was a good time :-).
I was working, busy, kids growing, I bought a house, and had a garden:-), and had a boyfriend who was sympathetic to me being raw. But in hindsight there were still issues. I had managed to heal most of my gut symptoms, brain fog, and fatigue, I was running and had lots of energy. But I was on a gourmet high fat, lots of dried fruit, bad combos, diet that was as much linked into my poor eating habits as when I was eating cooked. When I craved sweets I ate dates, and soooo many! I ate lots of nuts and made lots of gourmet dishes with all sorts of bad combos. and I'm sure I overate to stuff myself... overeating and not being able to stop is a definite pattern. And my relationship with food is closely intertwined with emotions. Too closely. Its like giving up cigarettes... any form of stress and I crave baddies.
So... what happened? My goal of health had been achieved (apparently). And I think this is where things unravelled a bit. The overwhelming reason for being raw, for maintaining that state in the face of unresolved emotional issues, i.e. my debilitating symptoms, were gone. And so was my reason for maintaining 100%. And there were other forces. I was beginning to explore the more simple side of raw food, higher fruit. I read and heard some of Doug Graham and Rozalind Gruben.
The logic (to my scientific mind) was indisputable. We are designed for a diet of fruit and leaves. But here in the UK, there was an alternative growing among my politically active and vegan friends. Local food, organic, home grown where possible. All great, until I realised that I am in the wrong country for my digestive system. I had a big ethical dilemma... high fruit and imported exotic fruit, and no food security, cooked vegan local food (which I knew didn't work for me, so also poor health), or move! I was also questioning my lifestyle, the job, car, school, consumerism, etc. So my cravings coupled with a political urge to eat local and a practical necessity for eating with my fellow activists meant in the summer of 2003 I slipped off the 100%. It took a year before I felt the health effects.
I put on a little bit of weight, but only gradually. And at some point, which I now find hard to pinpoint, the CFS/ME symptoms started to return. But differently this time. I had low B12. My energy was less and my brain gradually got fuzzier. I got a stomach bug called Helicobacter, which really knocked me for 6, and for which I took a course of three different heavy duty antibiotics. Why!!! I moved, had to stop working, and then after a particularly active summer, had a major crash. I couldn't walk. My children had to be cared for by others. I spent the best part of a winter like that. In bed, major symptoms. Though I knew about raw food, of course, I had no energy to help me implement it... no brain power, no support. It was a bad time.
I managed to get back on my feet a little and decided to move to a city, so that my kids could self care more effectively, and to where I had lots of friends who were up for being supportive. Which is what happened. I love the countryside, and living in it... but when you can't walk, or afford a car, it gets pretty isolating, and hard for children to help at all.
In the city, I slowly improved things. But it was very slowly. I even went back to some vegetarian eating. After raw, veggie and vegan looked pretty similar. I was in the pattern that alot of long term CFSers are in... a cycle of months where some are a bit better, some are worse, its hard to pinpoint exactly why... and anyway your brain just doesn't work well enough to really question. I don't think I was a very good mum, and my eldest two voted with their feet at 16 and 14. I watched alot of TV.
I knew how I wanted to live life, my politics, etc, but my actual life was very far from that. I was only the CFS downward spiral. I may still be there... slothfully drifting from bed to settee to local cornershop on a good day, back to bed... but
I met my gorgeous lovely lover partner best friend :-))))))
now I know that we should be our own salvation, and shouldn't look for it in others.... but he really was the turning point in my life.
we'd known each other vaguely for a couple of years. we used to meet on the street, he'd ask how i was and i'd say something like 'f**king tired, of course!'. Which I was. But... unlike alot of people when confronted with a depressed CFS person just run a mile in the opposite direction, he started saying... 'apart from f**king tired!!!'
wow. someone who sees past the illness and depression and wants to know me. that hadn't happened in a long while. i wasn't exactly miss world, had put all the weight back on again, but he wanted to get to know the me that i'd almost given up on. wow.
so... after a whirlwind romance (about a day lol), he moved in with me... and set about encouraging all that latent stuff inside me... despite the CFS. and i think with his help and support, i've been able to find my path back to raw food, and back to the countryside. knowing that he's there to support me means that i can relax, and have a bad day, without worrying about my youngest. and while having a relationship and CFS is very challenging (maybe more on this eh!), it has given me the space to rediscover and listen to my body.
So... long story here!
last year 2008, I got a tummy bug from someone's son who had some back from India. A week solid of diarrhoea, vomiting (fluorescent green bile, yum), hallucination, bleeding from my bowel... incontinence, bed ridden. wow. but. i made a decision to fast until the bleeding from my anus stopped. this took eight days, but was definitely the best thing to do. I then went onto a very light diet, all raw. for 2 weeks. At that point... I knew I was back on the raw path.
Since then, I have had periods of not being raw, but when I have, it is definitely working. However I had a bad winter, wheelchair bound, little energy for anything, especially raw. Lots of emotional stress. And cold!!!! come february time I was hospitalised with overwhelming suicidal feelings. When I came out, I knew enough was enough. I started ordering fruit and veg from my local organic box scheme (I live in a small village, so no access to shops). I was sick of my wheelchair. So since 23 feb I have been very high raw. I have done lots of reading, and I came across 811. The penny dropped.
So in the last couple of months, the sun has come out here, and I am trying to lie in it when I can, natural hygeine style. I'm out of my wheelchair. My energy is better, though a long way to go. I'm learning to eat enough fruit. I'm still struggling with emotional eating, and that's my downfall. I'm experimenting with a manual juicer and eating LOTS of home grown greens. I still have the ethical dilemmas of imported fruit. But I want to be well. And I want more than that. I want my life to be amazing! I want to be the mum that my 12 year old has never experienced! I'm just 40, I want the next 40 years to be an expression of the real me inside, not some cooked, emotional deranged, constipated, junk food, processed shadow. I want so much more than just my health. And that is why I am going to succeed on 811. I know the issues, i've done the reading, i've lived alot of the raw food mistakes. And now i'm going to be me!
thanks for reading
emma xxx
ps: i wrote this on may 26th 2009, since then i've been blogging on the website www.30bananasaday.com, which has inspired me to set up this blog. i'm on day 25 of this particular journey. all raw apart from day 4 (little slip of emotional eating with some oatcakes/soya cheese), and today of course :-((, and low fat since day 6. the benefits have been:
amazing skin, so soft
improved energy (though i did have an ME/CFS crash, that took a week to recover from, pretty good going for me, that recovery time).
improved digestion
flatter tummy
some weight loss
mostly controllable cooked cravings (i have a real problem with emotional eating, so this is a biggie!)
my detox has not been too bad, mostly just a bit of a runny nose, some spots (funny on my otherwise beautiful skin!), but yesterday and today (see next post), well i think the emotional detox has kicked in. i've experienced this in the past and its really not pretty. i know i have alot of unreleased emotion from my childhood, and being raw just brings that out. its working out how to let it out with the least damage to myself and those around me that is my challenge :-)
so that's pretty much up to the present.
feel free to ask questions, i'm new to this blog thing, and am quite excited by it.
hugs
cat xxx
a little bit of background first :-)
so... i thought i'd kick off by sharing my CFS story (and no doubt other bits of myself)
its hard to know where to begin really...
I'm 40, the mother of 3 girls who are 20, 16, and 12. I was born in and live in the UK. I first became ill on Jan 1st 2000 (I always joke that I got the Millenium Bug!). I got flu, really badly. I was delirious, couldn't walk, bad chest infections. I felt horrendous. My youngest was 3, and still breastfeeding, needless to say, she had to be weaned. At the time I was studying as a herbalist, and I was trying to treat myself herbally, with no effect. I was getting weaker and weaker. So after 2 weeks I ended up going to the Doctors, and was prescribed antibiotics for the chest infections (pneumonia). I had never taken antibiotics in my adult life. But... I felt like I was dying. So I took them. And yes, there was some improvement. But...
My recovery was very slow. And I seemed to have picked up all sorts of symptoms that I hadn't had before. These included:
Tiredness
Rhinitis (inflamed runny nose and lung inflammation)
Overproduction of saliva (a fun one this... imagine how antisocial having to spit into a cup all day is!)
Worsening of my IBS symptoms til sometimes I was doubled up with pain
Sudden increase in allergies, especially food intolerances, pollen, etc
Mental trauma which hadn't been present before.
Sleep disturbance
Intolerance to anything electrical (I had to sleep outside for a year)
Worsening of migraine symptoms
Total intolerance to alcohol
I spent 6 months in a daze, trying to live with the above, no idea what had happened, no diagnosis or anything sensible from the doctors (clear blood tests etc). Being a single parent was very hard, and I really struggled. I had to give up my course as I just couldn't carry on. In any case, my belief in herbal medicine had been firmly shattered. I was trying to take tinctures (which had alcohol in!), and realised they were making me worse!
That summer, I was desperate. I was looking up anything I could about healing, then I met someone randomly, who was into raw food. Wow! He was superfit, and hard to talk with, but I got the idea that going raw could help me. So I started researching, and came across the Hippocrates Institute, Ann Wigmore, and here in the UK, Elaine Bruce, who runs living food courses based on Ann Wigmore's stuff. I also got allergy/food intolerance tested. I pretty much reacted to everything except 3 fruits. My first experiement was three weeks raw, when i really didn't know much at all. BUT!!! these three weeks had an amazing effect on my symptoms. I also lost a stone in weight, my mental/brainfog/eye disturbance and general feeling really unwell subsided... and my energy was higher. I was converted.
BUT!!!! I just found it sooooooo hard!!!! Despite such a change in my symptoms, I just couldn't maintain 100%, which is what only really brought such a change. Or not for more than a few weeks anyway. and that was when i realised that i had had food issues all my life. I also spent a week at Elaine Bruce's retreat centre on living foods and learning about sprouts, recipes, etc. My intro into the raw food world was definitely a gourmet high fat one. Which I didn't really understand then. Elaine emphasised that too much fruit was a bad thing.
It took me a year before I could maintain 100% for more than 6 weeks. During that time, I moved out of the community (a rural farm) that I was living, as it was too physical for my new self, and also too stressful, and I needed peace and quiet. I struggled with several of my ongoing food issues, sometimes using fasting. I slowly dropped weight from 11 to 9 stone. Wheat was a big issue and very hard to give up. I went vegetarian at 16, vegan at 19 and then at 23, and had been vegan for 8 years when I got ill. So meat, dairy weren't issues. But I was cooking for my children, which meant all sorts of tempting baddies around. Managing to cook while not tasting was nigh on impossible. But my health slowly improved, I could work again, I could exercise, and things were looking up. I managed to maintain 100% for two years, from mid 2001 to mid 2003. This was a good time :-).
I was working, busy, kids growing, I bought a house, and had a garden:-), and had a boyfriend who was sympathetic to me being raw. But in hindsight there were still issues. I had managed to heal most of my gut symptoms, brain fog, and fatigue, I was running and had lots of energy. But I was on a gourmet high fat, lots of dried fruit, bad combos, diet that was as much linked into my poor eating habits as when I was eating cooked. When I craved sweets I ate dates, and soooo many! I ate lots of nuts and made lots of gourmet dishes with all sorts of bad combos. and I'm sure I overate to stuff myself... overeating and not being able to stop is a definite pattern. And my relationship with food is closely intertwined with emotions. Too closely. Its like giving up cigarettes... any form of stress and I crave baddies.
So... what happened? My goal of health had been achieved (apparently). And I think this is where things unravelled a bit. The overwhelming reason for being raw, for maintaining that state in the face of unresolved emotional issues, i.e. my debilitating symptoms, were gone. And so was my reason for maintaining 100%. And there were other forces. I was beginning to explore the more simple side of raw food, higher fruit. I read and heard some of Doug Graham and Rozalind Gruben.
The logic (to my scientific mind) was indisputable. We are designed for a diet of fruit and leaves. But here in the UK, there was an alternative growing among my politically active and vegan friends. Local food, organic, home grown where possible. All great, until I realised that I am in the wrong country for my digestive system. I had a big ethical dilemma... high fruit and imported exotic fruit, and no food security, cooked vegan local food (which I knew didn't work for me, so also poor health), or move! I was also questioning my lifestyle, the job, car, school, consumerism, etc. So my cravings coupled with a political urge to eat local and a practical necessity for eating with my fellow activists meant in the summer of 2003 I slipped off the 100%. It took a year before I felt the health effects.
I put on a little bit of weight, but only gradually. And at some point, which I now find hard to pinpoint, the CFS/ME symptoms started to return. But differently this time. I had low B12. My energy was less and my brain gradually got fuzzier. I got a stomach bug called Helicobacter, which really knocked me for 6, and for which I took a course of three different heavy duty antibiotics. Why!!! I moved, had to stop working, and then after a particularly active summer, had a major crash. I couldn't walk. My children had to be cared for by others. I spent the best part of a winter like that. In bed, major symptoms. Though I knew about raw food, of course, I had no energy to help me implement it... no brain power, no support. It was a bad time.
I managed to get back on my feet a little and decided to move to a city, so that my kids could self care more effectively, and to where I had lots of friends who were up for being supportive. Which is what happened. I love the countryside, and living in it... but when you can't walk, or afford a car, it gets pretty isolating, and hard for children to help at all.
In the city, I slowly improved things. But it was very slowly. I even went back to some vegetarian eating. After raw, veggie and vegan looked pretty similar. I was in the pattern that alot of long term CFSers are in... a cycle of months where some are a bit better, some are worse, its hard to pinpoint exactly why... and anyway your brain just doesn't work well enough to really question. I don't think I was a very good mum, and my eldest two voted with their feet at 16 and 14. I watched alot of TV.
I knew how I wanted to live life, my politics, etc, but my actual life was very far from that. I was only the CFS downward spiral. I may still be there... slothfully drifting from bed to settee to local cornershop on a good day, back to bed... but
I met my gorgeous lovely lover partner best friend :-))))))
now I know that we should be our own salvation, and shouldn't look for it in others.... but he really was the turning point in my life.
we'd known each other vaguely for a couple of years. we used to meet on the street, he'd ask how i was and i'd say something like 'f**king tired, of course!'. Which I was. But... unlike alot of people when confronted with a depressed CFS person just run a mile in the opposite direction, he started saying... 'apart from f**king tired!!!'
wow. someone who sees past the illness and depression and wants to know me. that hadn't happened in a long while. i wasn't exactly miss world, had put all the weight back on again, but he wanted to get to know the me that i'd almost given up on. wow.
so... after a whirlwind romance (about a day lol), he moved in with me... and set about encouraging all that latent stuff inside me... despite the CFS. and i think with his help and support, i've been able to find my path back to raw food, and back to the countryside. knowing that he's there to support me means that i can relax, and have a bad day, without worrying about my youngest. and while having a relationship and CFS is very challenging (maybe more on this eh!), it has given me the space to rediscover and listen to my body.
So... long story here!
last year 2008, I got a tummy bug from someone's son who had some back from India. A week solid of diarrhoea, vomiting (fluorescent green bile, yum), hallucination, bleeding from my bowel... incontinence, bed ridden. wow. but. i made a decision to fast until the bleeding from my anus stopped. this took eight days, but was definitely the best thing to do. I then went onto a very light diet, all raw. for 2 weeks. At that point... I knew I was back on the raw path.
Since then, I have had periods of not being raw, but when I have, it is definitely working. However I had a bad winter, wheelchair bound, little energy for anything, especially raw. Lots of emotional stress. And cold!!!! come february time I was hospitalised with overwhelming suicidal feelings. When I came out, I knew enough was enough. I started ordering fruit and veg from my local organic box scheme (I live in a small village, so no access to shops). I was sick of my wheelchair. So since 23 feb I have been very high raw. I have done lots of reading, and I came across 811. The penny dropped.
So in the last couple of months, the sun has come out here, and I am trying to lie in it when I can, natural hygeine style. I'm out of my wheelchair. My energy is better, though a long way to go. I'm learning to eat enough fruit. I'm still struggling with emotional eating, and that's my downfall. I'm experimenting with a manual juicer and eating LOTS of home grown greens. I still have the ethical dilemmas of imported fruit. But I want to be well. And I want more than that. I want my life to be amazing! I want to be the mum that my 12 year old has never experienced! I'm just 40, I want the next 40 years to be an expression of the real me inside, not some cooked, emotional deranged, constipated, junk food, processed shadow. I want so much more than just my health. And that is why I am going to succeed on 811. I know the issues, i've done the reading, i've lived alot of the raw food mistakes. And now i'm going to be me!
thanks for reading
emma xxx
ps: i wrote this on may 26th 2009, since then i've been blogging on the website www.30bananasaday.com, which has inspired me to set up this blog. i'm on day 25 of this particular journey. all raw apart from day 4 (little slip of emotional eating with some oatcakes/soya cheese), and today of course :-((, and low fat since day 6. the benefits have been:
amazing skin, so soft
improved energy (though i did have an ME/CFS crash, that took a week to recover from, pretty good going for me, that recovery time).
improved digestion
flatter tummy
some weight loss
mostly controllable cooked cravings (i have a real problem with emotional eating, so this is a biggie!)
my detox has not been too bad, mostly just a bit of a runny nose, some spots (funny on my otherwise beautiful skin!), but yesterday and today (see next post), well i think the emotional detox has kicked in. i've experienced this in the past and its really not pretty. i know i have alot of unreleased emotion from my childhood, and being raw just brings that out. its working out how to let it out with the least damage to myself and those around me that is my challenge :-)
so that's pretty much up to the present.
feel free to ask questions, i'm new to this blog thing, and am quite excited by it.
hugs
cat xxx
first post on my new blog
hello
well as i've been blogging for a while on www.30bananasaday.com, i decided that i'd branch out into my own blog site, so here it is!
i've been really inspired on my raw journey by reading other peoples blogs, and so am hoping to add my journey, warts and all to the melting pot.
my journey so far as documented can be found at
http://arawconnection.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?user=gj60zeqmr8h4
if you read the last few posts, you can see that i'm at a bit of a watershed re my health, mental health, raw journey, and emotional journey. i'm going to post in a bit about where things are about this, just wanted to start this blog off really, and not on a big downer!!!
so, looking forward to sharing and learning with other people
love and strawberries
catalyst xxx
well as i've been blogging for a while on www.30bananasaday.com, i decided that i'd branch out into my own blog site, so here it is!
i've been really inspired on my raw journey by reading other peoples blogs, and so am hoping to add my journey, warts and all to the melting pot.
my journey so far as documented can be found at
http://arawconnection.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?user=gj60zeqmr8h4
if you read the last few posts, you can see that i'm at a bit of a watershed re my health, mental health, raw journey, and emotional journey. i'm going to post in a bit about where things are about this, just wanted to start this blog off really, and not on a big downer!!!
so, looking forward to sharing and learning with other people
love and strawberries
catalyst xxx
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