Health is Wealth! Gallbladder remedies and a healthy recipe for lunch

Hello darlings!

I haven't been feeling too hot lately and have been focusing on many (non-Internet related) life tasks, so I apologise for not blogging in weeks. I told you this blog wouldn't be entirely political and I meant it! So, today I am going to share with you one of my favourite healthy (and SUPER easy recipes) and a little about my health philosophy!

I was diagnosed with Crohns Disease at 17. so my entire adult life I have dabbled in healthy eating, massage, Ayurveda, reiki, natural supplements, herbs, and the list goes on and on! I have been vegetarian, vegan, pescatarian, raw, local, organic and all of these genres have morphed into my own life philosophy as I have gotten older. It is always improving, though. I have my weeks/months of eating poorly and temporarily being a destructive Pisces, but I always get back on the metaphorical healthy horse. My life has been moving back in that direction lately with a few very painful bouts of what I suspect is a spastic gallbladder. After having emergency surgery in 2009 to remove a necrotic part of my intestines, I REALLY really really don't want to go through surgery again. In today's world the solve-all is to just remove your gallbladder. Now, scientifically I understand we are constantly evolving creatures and I could survive without my gall bladder. I am not entirely in the healthy-hippie-woo-woo camp, science is my first and most important factor in all decisions. But, I would like to keep my gallbladder as long as possible since it does have beneficial properties..that's why its still in my body! So, I have been reading up about alternative remedies (and no, none of that crazy bullshit about using my own urine or putting vinegar in my socks to stop a fever..that stuff is just insanity) involving herbs and foods that will be beneficial to producing bile and a healthy liver/gallbladder/pancreas.

I am going to begin using the following:
-Milk Thistle- for your liver. I have used this in the past when I had mono
-Dandelion tincture-homemade by my step dad and taken in tea, a detox that also helps your liver and your gallbladder
-Apple Cider Vinegar- this is a BIG one and a very HARD one for me. I cant stand the smell of vinegar. I have horrific memories of dropping an entire bottle of this bastard juice on my floor and having the glass break and my poor little college apartment reeking of vinegar for months. However! This is so so helpful for acid reflux and a healthy acid level in your stomach. My ex boyfriend was a total convert when he came to me with terrible acid reflux and I pulled the tums away from him, poured a shot of apple cider vinegar (with honey and water to dilute it since I was a nice girlfriend) and told him to drink it in one sip. Yes, it burns..yes it tastes awful...but your body will thank you! Apple cider vinegar is really a super food in my opinion. The blogs I read said I should take this if gallbladder pain begins, but also take it daily to stay ahead of issues.
-Apple Juice- along with apple cider it is recommended to drink this daily.
-Exercise-Yes! Its a cure-all for so many ails. I have been walking 1.5-2.5 miles a day (with a day off here or there) for a few weeks now and hope to steadily increase that..however I have been very stagnant since I quit work and even if I only do 1 mile on  a specific day, It is 1 mile I didn't do before! Never forget that!
-PROPER SLEEP-a very difficult one for me..but I have stopped taking benadryl to sleep (I have always had issues sleeping and over the years used a variance of medications, but for the past few months I've been taking benadryl) and I'm slowly trying to fix my schedule with night time tea, a bedtime, waking up earlier than usual, exercise, and reading before bed instead of messing with electronics.
-Getting lots of sunlight-With summer coming and my working in the garden/taking walks, this is becoming a lot easier.
-Curcumin-I'm still researching this one as I have had allergic reactions to Turmeric in the past and I'm very cautious of going near this..but for some people this is a magical herb. I tried taking it in the past for arthritis pain, so if you have issues with that, try curcumin!!


Along with all of these things I am eating more organic vegetables,adding more hemp oil and hemp protein into my diet,  less soy, more tuna steak and shrimp (my body is SCREAMING for protein lately and I am still enough of a vegetarian that I will only eat fish) and SO MANY AVOCADOS! GIVE ME ALL THE AVOCADOS! Mm :)

Speaking of healthy food! Here is one of my favourite, most simple and super delicious sandwich (AND VEGAN!) recipes which I have held near and dear to my heart since college. I have never been a gourmet cook like my mother and grandmother, but I can make a damn good sandwich when I want to. (Yes, yes, insert your anti-feminist "make me a sandwich" joke here so you can get it out of your system.) The recipe is from one of the best cook-books called "The Vegan Stoner," right down my alley, right?! You can find the recipe online HERE

These are all the ingredients (not including salt) that I used.

-Garlic, Vegan Mayo, Bread, Cucumber, Tomato, Dill weed and salt. SIMPLE!

And the finished product! It literally only takes you as long as it takes to toast the bread :) Mix the garlic, mayo and dill together (there are measurements but I just put enough mayo to cover both slices of bread nicely and the garlic/dill to my tastes) spread them on toast, cut up a cucumber and tomato, salt them, FINISHED~

So, this has been my focus lately (healthy living and getting my life back on track) along with spending time with friends and family and building a more meaningful life for myself. I am over the moon about school and it occupies my thoughts every day. I absolutely can't wait to start back.

On the fox front, she has started sleeping with me ever since we moved into my new bedroom and that has been an amazing journey. To me, it is comparable to your child learning to walk or learning their first words. She had her 2nd birthday May 1st and has really grown in leaps and bounds lately. The only downside is shes a huge grumpy-puss when I roll over during the night and occasionally nips me, groans at me, or all out screams and attacks my feet thinking a monster snuck under the blankets.

We've had torrential rain the past few days which ended up being rather perfect since the garden went in the day before. I have: cucumbers, pumpkins, strawberries, watermelon, cabbage, poblano peppers, jalapeno peppers, and banana peppers, red bell peppers, 4 kinds of tomatoes (all heirloom), okra, yellow squash and zucchini squash! This will be the third year at this house I have had a garden and this year it is much more laid out. In the past it became a giant cluster-fuck mid-summer when everything had grown together along with weeds and bugs.

It doesn't look like much now, but just wait until everything begins taking off after this rain and warmth!

Last, but not least, I have been doing major spring cleaning in The Poet's House getting it ready for autumn when I settle in for my studies. I purchased this amazing Indian bronze metal lamp from World Market just before I quit and finally cleaned my dining room enough to have my step dad come put it up. I am super excited about having dinner parties in here now!

Anyway, I finished my delicious sandwich (this was supposed to only be a recipe entry but it became a WHOLE LOT MORE! That's life!) and its time to get back to cleaning the kitchen and dancing my ghetto butt off to Sublime radio on Pandora.

CiaoCiao!
-M

Feminism and Modern Love

I've been watching a handful of TED talks the past few days (You can find a group of them on Netflix under Sex Secrets and Love) and finding a lot of very poignant ideas coming up in these talks that have been nagging at me for quite some time.

This talk, in particular, really struck a cord with me on a couple different ideas. For one, this woman is an anthropologist, a field I am going into. But, she talks about a topic very near and dear to my heart: love. This is also a topic I have been very bitter about for almost a year now. I won't get into the level of (ABSOLUTEFUCKINGSHIT) that my last relationship was, I'm sure I will touch on it in the future. But, ever since we officially broke up in August of last year I have been on a very strange, painful journey back to some semblance of "normalcy." I haven't been in a relationship since and have felt the emotional scars to such a degree that I've found myself full of a fountain of rage, depression, and even a physical nausea at thinking of any memories from that time in my life. To put it plainly, I was head-over-heels, he can do no wrong, in love with someone who was narcissistic, a sociopath, and a secret heroin addict. Oodles of fun.

I've had long stretches since where I thought I was over him, doing fine, on the road to recovery and all of a sudden an overwhelming sense of rage would surface. At first, I didn't put the two together, but more recently I've been trying to understand why certain things just "set me off" and I see red. I'm a redhead, I've always had a temper. But, this kind of rage is often frightening because reeling yourself in is almost impossible. This is what bubbled up from the wound he created in me, though. It is different for everyone. I suspect rage became the forefront of my emotions because in my emotional make-up I feel anger at the idea of being powerless, being lied to, and not being in control of my own life. With a relationship like this, I was greeted with all of those things.

But, this blog isn't about him, not really. It's about genuine love, about romantic love. It's the most important driving force in my life and I often find myself aghast at how it fits into our society..or more importantly, how LITTLE it fits into our society. I have looked at history and the fact that love has always existed in the crevices of art, popping up in poetry or paintings, in books or in dance. But as far as the social norm? You married for financial reasons, for blood-line reasons, for power reasons. You didn't marry for love. I have looked at this and thought "Is the idea of a soul-mate a new idea? Is it the result of feminism and only really appeared in the past 100 or so years? Or, have we only been able to chase love in the past 100 years because of feminism. "

For awhile I settled on this idea..that romantic love is modern. Until I listened to this woman's talk and started to dig deeper. Romantic Love isn't modern(and by romantic love, I mean the novel idea of being IN love with the person you marry/live with/consider your mate), love has been around since the beginning of time. PATRIARCHY is modern, Patriarchy is confining, and Patriarchy has been allowed to run rampant for a few thousand years fueled by the religious engine of monotheism. Upright humans (Homo erectus) have been around for  200,000 or so years. We were largely hunter-gatherer and nomadic up until agriculture came along. Prior to agriculture, women and men were equal. Women gathered, Men hunted...everything was shared communally, and while life was a lot simpler there were lessons to be learned from our ancestors. There were agricultural societies that held matrilineal ideas, in example, the Minoans and Celts...even the Norse, a very "male centric" pantheon had women who fought alongside men. But, with the rise of monotheism, a rise of domination began. I am not saying that the monotheistic religions began in this thread, I havent researched that enough. I know that, just in example, the idea of Jesus in Christianity goes against this patriarchal confining trend. HOWEVER, Christianity PRIOR to Jesus was very Patriarchal and very very brutal and confining. That leads to the question if Jesus was truly even meant to be a part of the old world idea of christianity or if he actually was a brand new religion and sadly got clumped into an old, vengeful religion. BUT THAT IS FOR ANOTHER TIME TOO! I'm not here to debate the historical fact of fiction of Jesus, or if Jesus based christianity is the same as old-testament christianity (two very different ideas, if you ask me. ) and I really don't want to get into my very long, sordid past with monotheism or how I believe it is slavery. That is for another time. But, what I am trying to explain is that women haven't always been less than men..equality is part of humanity and it is slowly coming full circle once more. It's fascinating how humanity is re-learning these ideas and how we have new obstacles to overcome as we explore (or re-learn) what it means to be human. What it means to have a PARTNERSHIP, what it means to love without restraint, or even more..what it means to truly LOVE.

We often find a power imbalance going the OPPOSITE way now with women becoming exceptionally strong and men becoming weak. This entire idea is actually rather nerve-wracking but a bi-product of feminism taking root. It works for some people, so I am not judging what works for others and doesnt work for me. But, I have always seen human partnership/romantic love (and I apologise for using gender specific/ hetero terms because I do believe this extends into all relationships no matter what sort) as being a yin/yang balance. Whether man/man, female/female, or male and female..everything must balance out. My perfect balance, and a very healthy balance for the average person is a 50/50 share. You do not have power imbalance here, everything is shared, everything is equal. We are working towards that, but as I said..with the rise of these "New" ideas comes new obstacles.

But, what terrifies me the most is the fact that so many..so so so many people I cross paths with appear void of love. They have a very strong "lust" drive, or often times a very strong "Attachment" drive..but they are missing romantic love. So many dont even believe in it. So many settle with someone they can be friends with (attachment) and live their lives never understanding how important to their SOUL health romantic love is. I've bumped up against this time and time again in dating. In men who appear amazing, who I enjoy their company and vice-versa, but who have no interest in a relationship, in love, and in anything more than sex or a friend. It is startling because many of them are in their 30s..I can't fathom being in my 30s and uninterested in some kind of partnership with another human being..that is vital to humanity. It doesnt mean you have to want kids or to be married,but just the companionship. I mean, what are you waiting for?

This terrifying fact has been thrown into my life over and over and I havent been able to come up with an answer as to why so many people discard the idea of love for material possessions and security, or simply don't believe in it. UNTIL I listened to this TED talk and two different points I have been thinking about conjoined into one solid idea. What is that? I mentioned the first part, but the second part is how SSRI's (basically anxiety/depression medications) have become like candy to our culture. I know this is very controversial and I have many friends on them. I agree completely that if you are in such a bad place you feel you are going to kill yourself or someone else, you need to take them. BUT, counseling, learning coping methods, and changing your entire life on the mind/body/soul planes is crucial too! Living on SSRI's, growing up on them (like, in the case of my previously mentioned ex-boyfriend who was put on them at the age of 3!) and worst of all, going a decade or more during a crucial time in your development from adolescent to adult...this isnt healthy. It is changing the natural chemistry of the body and replacing something so fundamental as love with a flat-line. As this disseminates into our culture, the web of humanity begins to become toxic and cancerous...If you arent able to love, your compassion and ability to relate becomes non-existent. Without these, we become a society focused on money and material possessions and void of the most beautiful parts of humanity. I am not saying that my friends who take these meds are the aforementioned..but I'm saying that a culture as a whole that is raised from an early age on SSRI's is a broken culture...

But, doesnt that sound familiar? Look at what children are focused on in the recent generations: Kim Kardashion and her entire family that is only popular because they have money, Pop music full of fake bodies, fake music, and no talent, designer clothes and obesity while most of the world is full of people who own one pair of clothes and dont know where their next meal is coming from.

I could write an entire novel on this, but I know I'm already getting long-winded.

To put it simply, watch this Ted talk and just allow yourself to think for a moment about the repercussions of a society that is void of its ability to love...Or think about how love and feminism and equality are a web that spreads out over the vast history of humans on this earth..how it is integral to growth and a successful society. Just...think.

New Beginnings

I've started blogs many times over the years, but I always find myself losing interest or getting caught up in living and moving away from writing. I rather enjoy blogging, it's just that my life has this cyclical path of:
Beginning-HOW EXCITING!
Middle: Okay, I can do this a couple times a month
End: OH WOW! THIS (insert a new topic of interest) IS MORE EXCITING!

So I begin a blog with lots of gusto, post for a month or so, and disappear off the face of the earth. But, with turning 25 a lot of internal and external changes have been taking place in my life and I hope I can continue down that path and update this along the way.

I should add, I am absolutely, atrociously, and quite pathetically TERRIBLE with technology. I am not a big fan of it. I don't understand it, and I have put off making this blog solely because I hate trying to create an aesthetically pleasing space to write. I cannot write unless its aesthetically pleasing either...welcome to that Libra Moon that drives me completely bat-shit crazy on a regular basis. "OH EVERYTHING MUST BE BEAUTIFUL AND EXCITING!"

So, I have played around with this to the best of my ability (meaning no ability what-so-ever) but its in a vague purgatory state I am accepting of. That being said, if you (yes YOU, whomever you are) would like to fiddle with my page and make it pretty, please contact me!

On to more exciting topics, such as: Who am I?

I'm a 25 year old flower-child who has ambled through life loving and enjoying lots of things and testing many..many..many waters. I have finally settled on a career path (though I've also said that many times before, sorry mum!) and am attending University (AGAIN) this autumn for a BA in Forensic Anthropology. At this point I have 5 years of University in my path in fields like Interior Design, Photo-journalism, English, Creative Writing, Classics and so on. I also have a Massage Therapy license, an certifications in all sorts of massage modalities like Reiki, Hot Stones, Cupping, blahblahblah. I've lived in Siena, Italy and spent my 21st birthday in Athens. I love to travel, have attended somewhere in the area of 13 schools and moved a dozen times.

But that is a lot of resume bullshit. What I really love? What really makes my heart sing?
being barefoot, dancing naked under the moon, making lists, museums, corgi kisses first thing in the morning, fireflies, summer nights, iced tea, BBC, receiving mail, being in love, writing, mythology, archaeology, philosophy, books, and that awesome root-chakra...that feeling of primordial, primal, animalistic belonging. You know what I'm talking about! It happens when the bass is really good on a song and you just flow with it, or when you have a first kiss, or when you lay in the grass naked under the moon and stare into the universe laid out before you and just feel...alive.

But that is a lot about me and little about my tiny, fox friend who will be the other half of this blog. Her name is Poppy and she's a two year old Pembroke Welsh Corgi. She's basically my entire world, my best friend, and also the sole source of my daily rage. She's adorable, fiesty, and exactly like me. It's probably Karmic, and would be hilarious if it wasn't happening to ME.

So, What will this blog be about?

An amalgamation of healthy recipes, Bohemian gypsy wagon photos of my house as I continue remodeling it, my unparalleled (and rather constant) philosophies on everything from Socialism to Anarchism to Paganism to Feminism..a lot of isms, and of course an abundance of corgi pictures. 

Enjoy!

-M