Why This Blog?

Why am I blogging about food?  That's a great question.  This blog has 0 - yes zero followers.  I do get some occasional readers and I think I've had 4 comments.  A little pathetic, I know.  Mostly this blog is for me.  I can  write my successes and failures with food, put recipes that I'm trying all in one place, etc.  My secret hope is that maybe others or even one other person will find something helpful and hopeful in what I write here.  Today I want to tell you part of my story.  This story is the reason I feel passionate about nourishing foods.  Not just eating but looking at food as if every bite counted toward health.  The fact is, each bite does count - good or bad.

Why, as mothers (and father too), do we neglect our own health but when needed, we will move heaven and earth to help our children or spouse.  When you think about it, what wouldn't we do for our children?  My story doesn't start with my children and I'm nowhere near the end.  This story won't be for everyone to read.  It gets kind of personal at times and maybe a little TMI but it is what it is.

I had warning signs of health issues very early in my life.  My skin was covered in excema.  If someone with impetigo breathed on me I would break out with it.  I remember a family reunion where I was covered in bandages because impetigo was all over my body.  It just occurred to me that kids must have thought I was a freak growing up!  In the eighth grade I started my journey into womanhood and boy was it rocky.  I had anxiety so bad that it was interfering with my life.  I have always been really active.  Hiking, biking, running, water and snow skiing, soccer, etc. and always slender.  So why was I having such trouble?  I married my awesome hubby pretty young, 18.  I remember telling him that we better not wait to try having kids because I was pretty sure that I had endometriosis.  E ran in both sides of my family and my mom had a really bad experience with it.  Sure enough, we had trouble getting pregnant.  As a matter of fact, we chose adoption over infertility treatments to have our first four beautiful children.  The endometriosis was getting so bad that I was having 1-2 good weeks out of every month.  I predicted that I would have a hysterectomy around age 30.  My anxiety was getting so bad that I started having compulsive thoughts and actions.  I didn't want to live like this but I was only trying hit or miss things to make things better.

I came to a point where I decided to have the hysterectomy.  Nothing worked out for that to happen and I ended up changing my mind.  Thank heavens for that!  My mom started on a new "diet" that eliminated the "whites."  I thought, why not try it.  I thought we were already eating a fairly healthy diet but it wasn't nearly as good as I thought.  I made a really tasty french bread and pizza.  We had the typical mac n cheese, store bought wheat bread, and all the other processed goodies that make up the typical American diet.  Stepping back a bit, I have a son that was having numerous behavioral problems.  He would scream for an hour or more at a time plus a multitude of other things.  We tried a variety of things and then took him to a former nurse who now practiced natural medicine.  She told us he was pre-diabetic and gave us some stuff to take to help with his obvious sugar cravings.  We eliminated sugar from our diets.  So now we had eliminated white flour and sugar plus we added in all types of grains, wheat, spelt, kamut, millet, quinoa, buckwheat, etc.  I was feeling great!  Best I had felt in a long, long, time.

Out of the blue, 17 years into our marriage, I was pregnant.  It was quite a shock.  There could be many explanations to why it happened.  Maybe it was Heavenly Father's timing.  I think it had a lot to do with how good I felt, my endometriosis symptoms fading away, and eating nourishing foods...  To be continued.