#because this is where i first learned about what chronic pain really is. and thay othed peopls hurt like me too

[kiwibirb1]

I never really got sick as a child, or at least never really missed school because I was sick. I would roll my eyes whenever my sister stayed home for what felt like the littlest things to me. Like you have a headache and it hurts a lot? Wow, we all do, get over it. But I'm realizing now that I did get sick. Not a lot, but the normal amount y'know? But I thought that it wasn't that bad, so I didn't tell anyone, and just continued on. If no one else noticed how much pain I was in, then I must not really be in that much pain. And this has kind of stuck with me throughout life? Like take the incident that happened a little over a month ago now. Looking back, I'm pretty sure I was sick to some extent for nearly a continous month, which explains why I had no energy at all during that time. I simply brushed it off as not enough sleep, despite my habits having not changed in months and it only just now affecting me. It all came to an head during this two week stretch. I would be out sick one day, and immediately force myself back the next, despite not actually being better. This continued for a while, until I actually fainted for a second and was forced to take the rest of the week off. I was most definitely sick than, and likely had been for a while, but I just didn't notice and didn't tell anyone because I thought that was normal. To always be in pain. I'm sure having chronic pain hasn't helped with this at all, but I'm also always sore when I shouldn't be. Everything hurts and it's just so fucking hard and I can't bring myself to tell anyone because little baby me ingrained it in myself that it really isn't that bad if no one else mentions it, so it all must be in your head. It hurts so fucking much.

#vent post #sorry. im... im noy doing great right now. this post kind of spiraled as well. #i hate that my body is like this. that i have to be in so much pain all the time. that no one believes im in so much pain. #because i dont act like im in pain. at all. ever #because im used to it. this has been my entire life but its gotten so much worse lately and i keep getting fucking more emotionally mature #and realizing “ph hey thag isnt normal” and it suck so much. its just to much sometimes. #sorry i just #its easier to talk about it here #because this is where i first learned about what chronic pain really is. and thay othed peopls hurt like me too #and... the whole hiding behind a screen thing. #its a lot easier to dissappear online than it is to in real life. #sorry.

[criticalbread]

a confused witchy blog post of happenstances

Ever since we’ve moved up here to Oregon, I’ve been finding all kinds of magnificent feathers on my walks. Since the first one, my instant feeling has been, “This is a gift (from the universe/area/Something).” When I walk, only some feathers give me this instantaneous and grateful feeling. Others are just feathers on the ground and I pass them by. I’ve been gifted crow feathers, blue jay feathers, feathers from robins and others I can’t identify. I even found one that I immediately felt wasn’t for me, but for Eagan. Mostly, it’s been crow and little spotted pale brown and beige feathers. The only other time I’ve experienced this is before I left Florida. I was sad to leave the little hawk that lived in our neighborhood and would cry all around our house, land on nearby fences, and occasionally land on our fence (sometimes while I was lucky enough to be in the garden!) Right before I left, I found a perfect feather from my friend right outside the house and felt immediately like it was a goodbye gift. It came with me from Florida, and now it’s been joined by almost two dozen others on my little altar.

Having lived most of my life in Florida with our daily summer thunder storms, I’ve spent the last ten years very aware that there’s something special about the wind at the head of a storm front when it comes galloping up. It’s the most alive I’ve ever felt and ever feel. I honestly think that moments like that might be some of my first spiritual experiences, right up there with being out in the trees and boulders and river at the Chimneys when I was a kid. It doesn’t storm so much up here in Oregon; it just drizzles or pours down dispassionately. I had almost forgotten about my connection to those windy pre-storm moments until it started kicking up on my walk today. Turns out, I’m just as connected to wind in the pines as wind in the oaks. Feels like rediscovering a forgotten sense.

Crows. Crows everywhere. Crows every time I have a revelation or feel a connection to some bigger Presence. I can’t tell if I connect to crows because they represent me or because they represent Something Else. Witchy insight is hard when you’ve forgotten how it works.

Eagan bought me my first tarot deck as a gift last year and every single reading I’ve done-- done rarely, only when a powerful mood strikes-- has been so shockingly on point. After the first one, I said somewhat disbelieving, “It’s just because you see relevance in the cards when you expect to see it.” But then the next, and next, and next, and next... I’m sweatin. I’ve had an intense lesson just recently come from the cards. How far does coincidence stretch? Or seeing what you expect to see? It doesn’t feel casual. It feels very... big.

I just want to get involved with every craft and home project I can. Basket weaving, knitting, woodworking, embroidery, throwing clay, fermenting, sewing clothing, preserving and canning, beekeeping, gardening, composting, more more more. I went from like a solid 15mph with three or four interests to like 100mph need to do it all in just the past couple weeks. I’m itching to be done with this job, move on, to be doing the things that actually mean something to me.

I have been planning for years to get back into Muay Thai because it’s fun and fulfilling to learn to do things with my body. (Also, who doesn’t enjoy throwing a good solid elbow?) I keep falling away from doing it, though, because of money and being afraid my tired, chronically painful body won’t agree. Now, though, I feel that same desire for fun and fulfillment, but also something more, like a calling. This was sticks out to me as odd because this isn’t the same vein as I’ve felt before-- this isn’t feathers and warmth and gentleness and growing things and singing in the kitchen. 

It’s not just crows that I keep thinking about and feeling about and all that. Snakes and cows. I can understand the connection; snakes to the ground and growing things, cows to land and abundance and the warmth of home. They’re such beautiful, sensitive animals. I can talk about their importance to recent human evolution and food culture for hours. Still. Anyone know of a crow-snake-cow deity?

Had a profound moment out on a walk the other day, thinking on what I’ve been reading about healing from emotional neglect as a kid. Thinking about moms and what I missed out on and the deficits in self love it’s left behind. And as I was thinking, “I can’t do the exercise that writer mentioned where you affirm to yourself all the things you were supposed to be taught by a parent, about how you are enough and deserve support and all that. I don’t feel it and I can’t do it,” I felt suddenly like this warm, kind presence was walking with me, surrounding me with love and acceptance, almost replacing the missing mother voice in my head and telling me all those things, “You’re enough, you deserve to be loved by dint of existing, I love you just for being, I want to hear what you have the say and think, I love that you are so passionate, I love that you are so interested and enthusiastic and curious and silly and naive and sensitive. You’re safe with me; I won’t let the world be too much for you. I’ll help you. You can ask me anything. I’m here.” On and one. It was such a startling experience and moving, emotional, Big experience and it lasted nearly thirty minutes as I was just wandering, not even listening to music. It felt like being bigger and smaller than my own skin. Looking back, I get so filled with doubt, thinking it was just wishful thinking, wondering if I really experienced it. But there it is. I feel embarrassed just talking about it because I feel like, well... see the next bullet point.

I have trouble accepting any of these things, to be honest. I used to be so much more open to spiritual things and witchy things. I believed so much more in my own power and abilities, my uncanny insight, foresight, my experiences living in a haunted house for 10+ years. But I didn’t have anyone to connect to who felt similarly, and there were so many messages around me conveying how ‘cringey’ and ‘woohoo’ this kind of stuff was. And then there was being scared as a kid and teen in a haunted house where I was often alone and freaked out by my experiences so once I left I just wanted to turn off and ignore anything like that again (to the point where my reaction to any creepy feelings or paranormal possibilities is to go “nope, not looking lalala i refuse”). I feel like I just shut down my ability to feel and believe in spirituality and spiritual things. So now I’m having all these experiences, not knowing what to think, if it’s real or my imagination, and if it is real how to connect again to what used to come so easily.

can’t think of any other relevant musings. anywho i feel called back to witchcraft and spiritual exploration and think I’m being invited in by Someone but dunno who or how to go about finding out or opening myself up again or anything at all and I’m just very confused and lost. started following a few witchy folks recently, guess that will need to be enough for now. Just need to survive the American dystopia, get financial stable, and hopefully be less stressed and more able to do literally anything.

#personal #witchcraft

[getwellgotell]

Why It’s Surprisingly Easy to Eat Vegan

//You need only look for tried and true plant-based recipes, leaving the expectations behind, rather than trying to veganize everything//

I once entered my hometown library with a particular book in mind. I was disappointed when they didn’t have that book, but that same day I left with five or six great books that I enjoyed immensely. My expectations in such instances were often thwarted, and being the self-aware dude I am, I learned to discard expectations and in that way I’d be much more likely to enjoy and appreciate the library by showing up without a book in mind, i.e. without the expectation, hoping to find a particular book, and instead to go and see what is there.

This lesson applies to vegan food and is demonstrative in both how and why it is easy to get discouraged at the beginning, as well as how to avoid the mental pitfall of expectations. If you apply that same lesson, however, you have a powerful tool with which to make the transition far more easily and painlessly.

Here’s what I mean, in case you’re not tracking: if you’re spending the whole day craving a certain food from Before, vegan cuisine might disappoint you. Sure, you might be able to find the Gardein or the Boca substitutes, but there might be one sour note in the experience. It might be tasty and SO REAL, but expensive. Or it might be cheap but not tasty, or else cheap and tasty but still kinda terrible for your body (fake cream cheese! or the lovely and greasy soyrizo). People who are primarily vegan for ethical reasons might not be too concerned that they aren’t losing weight, but others might wonder why they switched if their waist line remains the same.  But again, it’s like you’re at the library and you’re trying to find that one book that you’re really hoping to read--images of chili nacho hot dogs come to mind, but vegan...?--and yeah you’re walking through the aisles and it’s not there or it’s not totally acceptable for either money/health/taste reasons. BUT FRET NOT ANY LONGER.

Because from now on, you’re not going to show up at the library with those expectations. Instead, you’ll tap into civilization’s thousand-year old vegan library to see what exemplary dishes it has there, things to eat that are not trying to recreate or provide substitutes for this or that meat dish. No! Instead you’re going to walk down the aisles of the library and pick from its offerings, whether that be Indian, Thai or Ethiopian, or some delicious concoction from Moosewood or any other vegan culinary wizard and so avoid the disappointment or difficulty of trying to make the vegan poached eggz at home that will really set off your vegan BLT¹.

I was committed vegan right away, and didn’t waver or ever feel disappointed, but I’m telling you this to help. If phase one was eating fake meat everything, things changed and my body began to respond its best when I had ten different vegan cookbooks and four vegan phone apps. At that moment I became much more enthusiastic. For a change, I was not trying to veganize everything but instead was meeting the cuisine on its own terms. This enthusiasm was contagious: reading ahead in my cookbooks and having two dozen recipes earmarked to try and which I was enthusiastically preparing to cook; discovering a treasure trove of Indian, Ethiopian and other world cuisines that need nothing drastic done to be vegan; subscribing to youtubers Vegan Richa (Indian), Viet Vegan, the Kale Sandwich and Veganlovlie (Mauritanian).  I was leaving the ‘library’ with a big stack to take home and avoiding any disappointment because there’s SO MUCH GREAT STUFF OUT THERE. 

Not only that--and yes, it is a wonderfully rich and awesome library to browse--but the stuff is magical. Eating this way does seemingly magical things to your body and the planet, from reversing killer chronic diseases, cutting down on debilitating chronic pain and inflammation, autoimmune disorders--cancerdiabetesalzheimersandheartdisease!--to reducing land degradation and forest destruction, as well as enabling you to more fully attune and synchronize your ethical choices to the image you used to have of yourself as an ethical person. In all likelihood, the food will be some of the best that you’ve ever had, your taste palette will change, maybe even refine, and your microbiome in your gut will soon be so much happier and more hospitable to good bacteria that you’ll actually start craving those foods instead³!

It’s a magical library§, and you need only browse for a bit until a recipe captures your eye and then chances are you’ll have a happy dinner! Then, using plant based whole foods you’ll start to see that magic begin its course on your body, your mind, your soul and you’ll start to realize--maybe for the first time--how there are thousands of great foods, spices and combinations all possible from just plants! Satisfying meals low on the So much more than you ever might have believed!

¹I say leave that type of stuff to the professionals! Go out to a restaurant and you’ll find someone has found a way to recreate literally every dish under the sun. Like this meal that YouTube user Planty Life had at the restaurant Matcha in Australia: 

² I had a talk with Instagram user @miny_moe_ about this. 

“I thought of myself as a good person but when I switched I felt like my thoughts and actions were finally in agreement. // I considered myself an animal lover in my whole life then I realized I wasn’t.”   

Follow her, she’s *great*.

³ True story, the microbiome in your belly is what controls your cravings, as much or more than your brain, and it responds well to greens--after all, that’s what the bacteria comprising your microbiome loves to eat the most! You might not be a salad person now, but I’d say within a week of regular consumpion you’ll be craving even more of them.

§The library I chose for the picture is the most magical library of all, the Livraria Lello in Portugal which is where JK Rowling had the epiphany of a story about a wizard named Harry.

#vegan #epiphany #harry potter #books and libraries