Raising the White Flag

 

Sometimes I think that I should give up writing about food, health, and wellness.

With all of those voices out there, from magazines at the grocery checkout lines, to millions of bloggers crowding Pinterest and Instagram with delectable treats, “get thin fast!” promises, and gluten-free-dairy-free-fat-free-sugar-free-taste-free advice, I sometimes wonder,

Am I just another voice lost in a world full of people spouting opinions on food and health?

 

I don’t want to be that voice. If my voice ever takes on that tone–I will give it all up. I have better things to do than try to be the loudest blogger around the foodie table.

 

 

Sharing the One Thing Only I Can Offer

 

The last thing I want to do is confuse someone who is earnestly seeking out what is good for them. I do not want to offer advice and ideas born only of personal opinion. I want to give the hard evidence. I want to cook people tasty food that will communicate love. Care. Time.

And then, only if they are interested and want to know, to share with them why we choose to eat the way we do.

I do not want to compete. I won’t compete. There are too many writers with beautiful words, photographers with gorgeous photos, moms with more patience, and food enthusiasts with more time to cook.

Instead, I’ll offer my beliefs, based on sound knowledge and research, intertwined with something only I can offer:

My personal perspective and experience; my story.

 

Only I have traveled the path that has brought me from anorexia to a whole food enthusiast. And the adventures I write about, those are mine. And I share them in hopes of inspiring, educating, and enabling others to live this fuller life that we have embarked on.

 

The Words that Keep My Words Coming

 

Sometimes when the enormity of the blogosphere overwhelms me, or I read a book and think that I could never write that eloquently, or I am just simply discouraged by the noise in the food and nutrition world, I think about throwing in the towel. Baking a cake and calling it done.

But then someone tells me that they made my slow-cooked beef shank recipe last night for dinner, and loved it! Or that they read my post on eggs and made the switch to eating only free-range! Or my mom calls to tell me that she read my post on the benefits of bone broth, simmered up a pot, and she and my dad have been drinking a cup a night and saw noticeable improvement in their joints in just a few days! Or my brother-in-law competes in his first 5K race after reading my own journey into running.

Those are the things that keep me going. Those are the things that make it all worth my time.

Even more, sharing our story forces me to observe our story before I can write it. Even the simplest of errands or an afternoon hike become extraordinary because I am searching for the plot, the tension, the victory, the lessons to be learned. And then I capture them. Ponder them. Cherish them. Write about them. And then I get to watch as they inspire others. That keeps me going.

 

 

An Ongoing tale

 

And so I won’t be stopping. I can’t, I’m afraid, even if I wanted to. Because sometimes I close down the laptop only to have another idea pop into my mind and refuse to leave until I pound it out on the keyboard. I am afraid that if I stopped documenting the tales of my everyday, that I would stop seeing them.

The stories don’t stop. And I don’t want them to. For every person’s life is a novel made up of transformational chapters, which are composed of life-changing paragraphs, formed by sentences made of epiphanies, which are threaded together from carefully crafted words of beauty. And it would be a great shame to waste that potential.

 

Making Once Enough

 

I pray that as these stories and lessons unfold, and through the sharing of them, that they will offer some solitude, a place of rest from the chronic noise and chaos which is everyone telling us what we should eat and how we should live. It isn’t about that.

It’s about inspiring others to find what is best for them, and for their family.

To try, try again, fail, taste, learn, venture, discover, love. To live—fully and abundantly—and true to themselves, not trying to be the blogger on the screen or the author on the back cover. Just to live simply, faithfully, beautifully.

As one author once put it, “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”

 

Quote by author Mae West