#FoodForThought: This weekend is gonna be a tough one for me. Sunday is my late mother’s birthday. She would have been 61 years old. It’s only been two years since her death so I expect there’ll be a flurry of emotions going on. But as I think about the last few years of her life I honestly can say that something changed in my mother. While we won’t ever know for sure what took her, her death was deemed “complications from diabetes.” If you’ve read the blog a while I incorporate my mom’s dishes, quips and sage advice throughout and so you can tell that she was a firecracker back in the day. But when she found out she was a diabetic, those same sparks that ignited excitement around her redirected. They fueled rebellion. It started as her “taking a day off of diabetes” and eating whatever she wanted to. Those days became successive until there were more days off of diabetes than on. She got sicker and sicker until eventually she developed neuropathy in both her legs. Had she not passed away her doctor was fairly certain she was facing at least a single amputation, if not double. I share this with you because sometimes we focus a lot on numbers and size in our community. But think about this: you are HERE. And the things that you are doing for yourself – regardless of whether they result in weight loss or not – are keeping you HERE. Celebrate that. Don’t get me wrong. I wish for each and every one of you to get to your goal weights. But more than that my wish for you is that you get into a routine, a pattern, an INSISTENCE of your own well-being. My wish for you is that the surgery ignites a spark in you that makes you FIGHT for yourselves. Because there will be challenges. For some of you there will regain. For others life will get the upper hand sometimes. The fight is what will pick you back up from those situations and set you back on your path. You are here, Foodies. And you deserve to BE here. You deserve to continue to be here. So celebrate that while you work toward your goals. Embrace how alive and able and capable you are. Embrace how much more active you are capable of being in the lives of those you love. Embrace the memories you are making. Embrace the extra time you are working on providing for yourself here on this earth. I won’t lie: I miss my mama something awful! But I know she lives through me, in the words and recipes and advice I share with you. It is her spirit that runs through my blood that makes me crave interaction with you all. It is because I am her daughter that I don’t have the ability to not answer an email when someone sends it or a message. Because she loved community, she taught me to love community. And in that way her spirit lives on. So I’m going to work on celebrating instead of mourning, while I empower you to work on embracing ALL the great things about this process that have nothing to do with a number. #FoodForThought
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 01:00:00 +0000
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