Crazy, lengthy entry!

I was playing around on the 

Internet, looking up different juice recipes for various ailments and came across this blog called My Crazy Sexy Life --(Founder Kris Carr is pictured) which is there on the right-hand corner of the screen as well.

I was wandering around when I noticed the slogan "Make Juice, Not War," and thought, oh, I like this place.  This is a good place to be.   So I joined.

Within hours I was receiving notes from people welcoming me to the community -- and I clicked on their blogs to check them out.   I spent hours and hours (not joking) reading up-to-date on this one woman's blog that touched me to the core.  Now, this happens frequently when I go off into the world of blogdom ... because I think if you keep a blog going you have the innate ability to write -- it is your preferred type of communication, and when someone writes from the heart, I think it opens up yours.

(This is kind of funny, I went to the blog to see if I could find the link to the blog of the person who stayed in bed for 100 days and became completely caught up in a conversation on the toxicity of tampons!)  Just thought you'd like to know that!  :)

100 Days In Bed Okay, there's the link to the blog I found so fascinating.   She doesn't think that she writes like Bridget Jones -- but she does.  She is self-deprecating, but very honest.  What she has going for her that Bridget does not is ... she is real.  And she is using her blog to jump-start her life back from the depths of her deep depression, which is why perhaps blogs are so interesting.  Because everyone has a reason.

Mine was to write -- to unleash the words that swirl around in my head all the time -- and it worked.  I am now constantly thinking about what to write about next, I am working on a new novel ... it's all good.  And one day I will even learn to organize my thoughts efficiently and write about things in order, as opposed to jumping all over the place.

NAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.  Then it wouldn't be me writing!  Did I tell you about the left-brain writing exercise?  I can't remember, but something about what I just said made my head ache -- the same part that ached after I wrote with my left hand.  It was torture.  Apparently now whenever I think of being inauthentic that part of my brain will ache.  Weird.

Now is about the time my sister tells me I sound manic!  But it's not that -- it's that I can't quite figure out what I am trying to say.

The Crazy Sexy Life blog is really an online community for people with cancer.  Or, as the founder Kris Carr calls it "canser" because she likes to make fun of it by not spelling it right.  I didn't realize this at first -- with a name like Crazy Sexy Life one doesn't think illness.  But this woman's approach to her disease is ... well I think it is the same approach I have.  And what resonates with me is that the reason I juice, etc. is because of the gallbladder ... disease ... that I had.  My first instinct wasn't to have surgery -- but to figure out the source of my problem and then do just about anything I could to reverse it.

The thing I learned was that some things are irreversible (like cancer) and you can't undo what has been done ... you have to figure out what to do from that point forward.  It took me four years to get there ... because I am stubborn.  And it is that stubbornness that left my body with no other choice than to try to kill me twice!   (Talk about ego!  Yikes!)  But unlike cancer, hearing you have gallstones is NO BIG DEAL and so you don't really go into survival mode until you get a biliary duct obstruction and turn yellow.  But somehow you lay on the couch and let that "pass," and then decide you are going to save your gallbladder come hell or high water and completely change the way you eat and then the damn thing has the nerve to shoot out another gallstone and create an obstruction near the pancrease causing pancreatitis which makes childbirth seem like a walk in the park.  (And I knew it was over because the "attack" wasn't caused by eating a plate of fried food and french fries.  It was caused by eating an avocado and some peanuts.  SUPER FOODS for crying out loud.)

I wonder if I use third person because I don't really want to believe I am that stupid?!! HAHA.

Okay ... tangent ... moving back to the Crazy Sexy Life blog, at first I thought maybe I didn't belong there.  You know, because I don't have cancer.  But these women are trying to make the point that they are MORE than that.  They aren't just cancer patients/victims ... but instead are real people who pay their bills and have children and lives and they plan to keep on living those lives.  And they get it.  Whatever brings you to your wake up call, to make you look at your life with a magnifying glass, whatever it is, once it happens, there is no going back.  

When I read a blog entry from a woman who has cancer who is now eating a raw diet about how tainted our food source is ... I thought YES!  She gets it!  SHE GETS IT!!!!!  And she didn't ask WHY ME about getting cancer, she looked back and realized she'd grown up in the smog of Los Angeles, she'd been breathing in toxins and chemicals her whole life ... and she is going to make damn sure her family doesn't repeat the same mistakes.

Which is why when I get down and frustrated because no matter how many times I explain to Peter why that juice is bad for you (high fructose corn syrup) or that even bread has high fructose corn syrup and you have to read EVERY label, or WHY it's NOT okay to let the kids buy junk food whenever they want it because it is junk.  Like I say, eat crap, treat your mother like crap.  Oh yeah, back to when I get down ... then something like Charlie coming home yesterday and saying he felt tired and out of sorts, and I asked him why he wouldn't let me pack him a lunch (I stopped because it was coming home full everyday) and that eating the crap at the school was causing him to feel bad.  (Please excuse these run-on sentences, there will be no grading for grammar today, I seem to have a lot to say and the need to end sentences is kind of pissing me off!)  So I made him a smoothie with fresh fruit and protein powder and flax seed oil and then followed that up with a wallop of protein in the form of a hard-boiled egg, and about half an hour later I asked him if he felt better, and he said YES.  And I asked him if I could make his lunches again, so he could feel GOOD all day long, and he agreed.

THAT is why you don't give up!  Because everything your child eats today will affect his health tomorrow, next week, ten years from now.  We have a pretty good foundation right now ... we live where fresh air is prevalent, no industrial toxins in the air, and lead a fairly active lifestyle.  

The key is not to get lazy.  And I did there for a bit.  I stopped juicing.  I was disgusted that no matter how hard I tried I couldn't save my gallbladder.  But that isn't the way to look at it.  That gallbladder probably taught me more lessons than any one thing ever has before!  I still have the gallstones here, on my desk.  And I look at them from time to time, and think ... something so small can wreak havoc on your body.  It's crazy.

But ultimately, it's a crazy, sexy, life and if you find joy everyday (and sometimes even go a little bonkers at the beauty of the color of food!) and get outside and get your body moving and breathing (and see what carrot juice does for your complexion!) then it can only be ... just that.

Cool.