A Return to Joy

Wow, it's sure been a long time since I was last here, almost a year. I have missed it terribly, but knew that I needed to take a break and figure out what it was that I really wanted to share. I also needed to tackle my health issues in a new way, which took up a lot of my time. I was diagnosed with severe heart failure at the beginning of 2012, which rocked me and my family to the core, but I was not ready to check out just yet and as I lay in my bed for weeks on end, heavily drugged with medication from the hospital, the one thought that my addled mind kept circling back to was: I have work to do.

The past three years have been what I thought were the beginnings of that work, but now, with hindsight, I realize that that work actually began many years ago when I first started training to practice energy medicine. It was my first foray as an adult back into a space of authenticity. When we are children we know instinctively who we are and what matters, but as we grow up and become conditioned by the world we live in, we forget so much of that. Clearly, some part of me had realized that it was important to get back to that space, but my internal conflict about who I was "supposed to be" as a wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, etc was so fierce that I didn't make it. I believe my heart failure was the result.

When we are not our authentic selves we lose our joyfulness. At the beginning of 2015, I chose the word JOY as my theme word for this year. I love theme words, as opposed to resolutions, because they have the ability to continually bring us back into the space we need to be in. Last year my word was CREATE and, unwittingly, I created much more than I had planned to! I worked fiendishly hard to keep my mind in check and not let it run off in unhelpful directions, I learned how to throw pots on a wheel (a lifelong ambition!), I learned how to cook and eat an Autoimmune Paleo diet to reduce inflammation and "clean up" my body from the inside out and, mostly, I learned that when I honour my own needs, life flows much more smoothly for me and everyone around me.

I decided the best way to honour those lessons is by being my genuine self. So bear with me while I find my voice again and I will share what I have learned, what is important to me, what's worked and what hasn't, including recipes to inspire you to use delicious food as medicine and plenty of book reviews because, well, books are my one weakness! So, I hope that you will join me and along the way pick up some things that will inspire you, lift your spirits and help you move into your own authentically joyous space.