Food, Health, Kids, Keystones

It's Monday, the first two kids have made it safely back to Pittsburgh and we're in for another round of intense germ-fighting with the second two. Though it seems to be going better -- Jerilynn's cough, which apparently persisted all of last week without any relief, has almost disappeared after less than 24 hours with us. So I consider that a win. On the other hand, she managed to dump almost an entire water bottle full of water on herself and the bed in the middle of the night last night, put a pillow over the spill and then promptly forgot about it until after breakfast this morning. So all the sheets and the bed padding are back in the wash for the second time in as many days, and I'm hoping the soaked couch cushions won't be too much worse for wear if we can give them the day to dry out. But it means instead of spending the morning in bed resting, the kids are both out in the living room and I have no space on the desk to work, so I'm in our bedroom. With iced coffee. Trying to chill out a little bit.

It's weird how different the two pairs of kids are. Josh and Savanah are very clearly the loud, bossy ones, very intense, and you have to explain things to them two or three times (like about which shower door to use). They listen, they insist they understand, and then when they mess up they always have some weird justification for why they just weren't paying attention and they'll argue with you about it for very stupid reasons instead of just apologizing and trying to be more considerate in the future. (Even though I gave S her own dedicated trash can and tissue box, we're still finding random dirty tissues stuffed into couch cushions, though while Jeff was making the airport exchange yesterday I did a pretty thorough cleaning of every room in the house.) Jerilynn and Fiona, on the other hand, are pretty good at listening the first time, and Fiona especially is about ten times better at listening and thinking things through before doing something than her oldest sister is. But if they do make a mistake, they're much more likely to try to hide it and lie about it, hoping to just not get caught, instead of trying to justify or explain it away. If they do get caught, they just say sorry and try to downplay it and move on as quickly as possible (and all of this is more true of Jerilynn than Fiona). Totally makes sense, if they're dealing with other family members who are super bossy, tending towards melodrama and eager to argue every minor point until they're blue in the face. So on the one hand, J and F are the "easy ones," but on the other, you never know when you're going to discover some weird thing after the fact. Like when they arrived, several outfits in their bag were damp and moldy. No idea why or how it happened (J says the bag got wet during their layover in Chicago, but even if that were the case, that doesn't explain the mold). We were planning to wash everything anyway to try to degermify everything (which is how we discovered the mold to begin with), and it's easy to blame Emily for being an incredibly bad example of cleanliness and not bothering to do simple things like wash the kids laundry (apparently, each kid only has enough outfits to last a single week... and that's regardless of weather or season, which is kind of insane and makes us wonder where the hell Jeff's child support money is going if it's not to buy his kids some decent clothes). On the other hand, J did just demonstrate that she's prone to spilling things, hiding the fact and then forgetting about it. On the other other hand, Jeff and I are at least paying enough attention to realize this and then take the necessary steps to keep things clean, instead of leaving everything for our fucking legally blind housekeeper to take care of when she comes by once a week. At least J hasn't said anything about the gluten issue (I think the talk we had with her during solstice hit home), but she is still obsessing about her weight and talking about how she needs to eat less because she's too fat. Disturbingly, Josh said something similar last week about how he's too fat. I really, really hate the fact that these kids live in a house with people who are so immature and insecure that they have to project their own weight and health problems onto their children. Not to mention that most of what they eat is meat and butter based meals, so even though neither of them are actually overweight by any stretch of the imagination, it's probably true that they do need to eat more fruits and vegetables than they are probably getting at their mom's house. Did I mention that being a long-distance stepparent sucks?

Speaking of weight and health, though, Jeff said the other night that he's hit his lowest weight and fat percentage in something like two years, which is awesome. We've been doing lots of hiking and spending time outside on weekends (and also these two weeks in the afternoons with the kids), which I'm sure is helping, though biking to work also probably helps. I'm wondering if the cooking with Leah is also making a difference, since it's a chance for Jeff to experiment with food. I know that Jeff really loves thinking about and working with food, and sometimes I feel bad that cooking just doesn't interest me that much. It's not that I don't enjoy and appreciate (and understand the value of) good, healthy food and how that impacts my body and my physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual health. But I just don't spend much of my time thinking about cooking, it doesn't interest me that much. Cooking is like chemistry -- there are lots of really interesting ways to combine things, and some people love that experimentation and exploration. I'm a hunter-gatherer, not a cook. I like having simple foods I can eat right away whenever I'm hungry, especially fresh fruits and veggies, and I don't have the interest necessary to spend lots of time in preparation and experimentation. That's awesome if other people do, especially if they don't mind sharing the results. But left to my own devices, I pretty much always revert back to hunter-gatherer mode, not complex agricultural we-have-to-burn-this-with-fire-before-it's-edible mode.

I think this might also have parallels with health and exercise. Someone shared a link on Twitter to a blog post written by a fat-acceptance/fat-positive blogger, in which the blogger proudly (read: maybe a bit defensively) declares that she just isn't interested in being healthy, and that should be okay, who are we to judge her? Now, I can totally understand if what she means is that she isn't interested in the kind of compartmentalized, weekend-warrior exercise-routine madness that some people do. Personally, I've always rather liked trying out different exercise routines, and I've been my healthiest when I've done a combination of meditation and regular exercise like that... but just like cooking isn't for everybody, that approach to exercise isn't for everybody either. I do think it's probably a bad idea to conflate this with "being healthy," though, in the same way it's a mistake to think that because I don't care much about cooking that therefore I don't care about the quality of the food that I eat and how it affects my body. For some people, particular forms of exercise are like hobbies, that require all kinds of special equipment and training. But you can be perfectly healthy without doing that kind of thing, and plenty of people who are into that stuff aren't necessarily all that healthy. Same thing with food. You can really love food, but not necessarily eat shitty bad-for-you foods all the time. In fact (and this is one of those fat-shaming bingo phrases that people freak out about, but I'm going to say it anyway): the better food you eat, the more you actually enjoy it. So go nuts, eat lots of food. And be whatever shape and size you are. The point is that there are many, many ways to be healthy, and lots of them are easy and natural. We are biologically designed to be healthy, and living in the kind of civilization we do -- with sanitation and indoor plumbing and a wide variety of medical practices from herbal remedies to acupuncture to modern Western medicine -- most of us won't die of things that might have killed our ancestors. But saying you don't want to be healthy is like saying you don't like breathing. I just don't believe it. Everyone wants to be healthy and feel good, and to be physically capable of doing the things they enjoy doing without feeling sore, exhausted, breathless or queasy.

The problem isn't that we're being super-judgy by expecting people to want to be healthy... it's that a lot of our social structures and institutions undermine what should otherwise be a completely natural aspect of our lives. It'd be like if, in order to get fresh air and not die of lung cancer, you had to drive out to special "fresh air bubbles" in the countryside once a week where membership cost $100/month. Yeah, if that were the case, then people would be perfectly justified in saying they resent having to put even more of their time and money towards that and they're just "not that interested" in fresh air. Likewise, when most people have to earn a living sitting in a tiny, dimly lit cubicle staring at a computer screen and eating grease-drenched meals out of a food truck during a "working lunch break".... they might feel resentful at being expected to put even more time, energy and money towards good food and exercise, when those things should be naturally, easily and freely available to everyone. I mean, you're already putting so many hours into a shitty way of life just to get by, and then people expect you to give up your free leisure time to do something that's unnecessarily difficult instead of being able to use that time to do something you want to do? That totally sucks. But this is a social problem and requires a social solution. If, instead of demanding that healthy food and lifestyles be readily available to everyone and that obstacles to healthy living be reduced or removed, we throw up our hands and say we're just "not interested in being healthy," we're doing not only ourselves but everyone else a disservice, too. We're making it harder for everyone to be healthy, by not demanding that healthy living be a viable, natural way of life supported by social infrastructure.

Speaking of things that make health easy... I wish there was an easy way to make iced tea. Jeff and I have been drinking this iced coffee (instead of soda) which is super easy to make -- it's just an instant organic coffee mix, combined with a tiny bit of sugar, almond milk, some chocolate or other flavoring if desired, and then heated (but not boiling) water added to top it off. Shake until frothy for an iced latté drink. The result is a luke-warm mix that can be poured immediately over ice or stuck in the fridge, and you can make it in small enough batches that one jar will last one or two days, which is the perfect amount and a small enough container that it won't get shoved to the back of the fridge and forgotten about like all of our taller containers. Making iced tea is a pain in the ass. I haven't found a good way to make iced tea quickly in a way that doesn't involve not only steeping the tea, but then allowing the mixture to sit and cool for another hour or so before being able to put it in the fridge, let alone drink it. Leah mentioned finding a good iced tea recipe for us, but most of the ones I've seen online involve adding all sorts of extras like fruit juices and herbal blends to change the way they taste. Again, I feel like there's an assumption that my disinterest in cooking comes from not enjoying the taste of food, or because cooking is hard, rather than from the pretty straightforward fact that there are just things I want to be doing with my time other than elaborate prep that takes longer than the meal. I tend to drink tea plain whetever kind it is and I enjoy simple teas, anyway, so a complex iced tea recipe with all sorts of extras and lots of steps is probably just going to leave me even less motivated to make iced tea than before. Anyway, what I want is an easy to way to make "instant" iced tea that won't result in a jar that's too hot to pick up for an hour but that still allows the tea to steep relatively quickly. I think the best approach might be to brew a super-strong concentrate, and then add cool water to end up with the same kind of luke-warm mix as the iced coffee, that can be put over ice right away or stored in the fridge.

The fact that I've spent even this much time thinking about how to make iced tea, instead of writing about something else, is starting to discourage me. But I'm taking the morning to do some free-associative journaling, since I spent all of last week working on my next column for Aontacht.

Speaking of which! I've been expanding the outline for that column series, so now it's definitely going to be at least four parts, but possibly more. I've been thinking about ways to expand this series into an e-course that will last four to six weeks, with emails going out about twice weekly with short articles, follow-up resources and recommended exercises. From there, the entire thing can probably be expanded into a short ebook of 60 or so pages. I'm also trying to brainstorm something similar for SageWoman, so that each of my columns can be the building blocks for longer works that we can produce through FF&C as online long-distance learning courses and ebooks. Only doing one podcast episode each month will give us lots more time to develop these other aspects of FF&C, instead of always leaving them on the back-burner and spending all of our time on the podcast research and editing. I'm hoping that after we get some feedback about the correspondence e-course, I can develop an in-person workshop along similar lines, especially for people in the local area. It's one thing to talk in broad, abstract terms about the importance of grounding your spiritual practice in the local landscape. It's a totally different thing to actually teach people directly about the specifics of their own landscape. Since Aontacht has a wide readership in the U.S., Europe and Australia, it's pretty much impossible to get specific, though I do end up using a lot of examples from my own bioregion since that's what I'm most familiar with. But what I'd really love to do is actually work with people to transition from "this is why it's important to work with the local bioregion" to "this is how these big ideas translate into specific relationships and practices involving this bioregion." I can only really do that if I work in-person with people who live in this area. But starting with a basic structure for the workshop and/or multi-workshop training course by building up a long-distance e-course is a good place to start and makes the work much more manageable.

I do love working with people in-person, though. It was awesome going to the ponds twice last week with Savanah and Josh, not only because it gave us more time outside but because the critters we encountered were quite different on the different days. Including this beauty:


Who hung out only a dozen yards away for much of the time we were there. This brings me back, again, to why it's so important to show up and do the work, even while acknowledging just how big a role grace plays in how our spiritual encounters in the wild are going to be. I've been reading a lot about Taoist philosophy and, to a lesser extent, ritual (especially movement-meditations like QiGong and T'ai Chi) -- I'm very drawn to the simplicity of these types of approaches, and I feel like it would be very beneficial to inject some of this simplicity back into modern Paganism. I know lots of Pagans are drawn to the elaborate, arcane ritual work of ceremonial magic and reconstructionist traditions, and I do enjoy crafting rituals like that for some holidays. But for daily work, I think developing a strong foundation of simple practices that open us up to the presence of spirit(s) and grace is really important. I think that's why I've enjoyed working with and building on this idea of the "keystones" so much. The Keystones are so important to a landscape, and their presence can be seen everywhere if you know how to look for the signs, but actually encountering them directly is often a moment of grace, an encounter with mystery and surprise that you can't plan for, though you can definitely seek it out. This is why, as good as meditation and visualization is, I don't think it's sufficient for regular spiritual work. It's too easy for that kind of work to devolve into navel-gazing, and if you're going to be doing that kind of work with any intensity, you almost need some kind of teacher or mentor to hold you accountable and keep you grounded in the world beyond your own mind. If you don't have that kind of teacher or friend, you need to make yourself an apprentice to the world itself, and show up to the world around you as much as possible in order to be open to the presence and grace of the divine acting in the world. My best meditative practices have always been sitting quietly in a natural setting watching what's going on around me, rather than the times I sit inside in my own home, eyes closed, trying to "clear my mind" (or visualize some natural scene, for that matter, though both of those techniques can be good for getting to know your own mind). As usual, I think it comes down to balance, and knowing how to cultivate the kind of self-reflection that makes natural observation and movement-meditation the most effective and meaningful. When developing this e-course and ebook, I want to focus on finding a way to strike that balance with the lessons and exercises, so that regardless of the student's strengths or weaknesses, they will have some things that challenge and stretch them in one way or the other.

Jeff just stopped me to let me know that, astrologically, right now the moon is new (in fact, literally right now, as I'm typing this, it's both new and only about ten minutes away from being at its peak elevation for the day) -- so, this is a good time for intention setting. Tomorrow, something's going on with Ares (blanking on the details), which means that things are going to move pretty fast towards whatever intentions I'm setting today. So I think the rest of this week would be a good time to finish working on the outline for the remaining columns for Aontacht and maybe start brainstorming ways to expand that into an ecourse. I want to be able to launch the ecourse for FF&C Pro Members by Beltane, May 1, if not sooner. I'd also like to be a good way done with the book so that the final ecourse lesson can include an offer to purchase the book for people who want to continue working with the Keystones more in-depth.

But now, it's lunch time! Soup!

Post-Ritual Drag (And Moontide Blues)

It's becoming increasingly obvious to me that one area I need to focus on in my spiritual practice is working to regulate my energy. This is probably a combination of easing up on myself when I'm working too hard, and finding both mundane and magical ways of maintaining my energy levels through low periods.

And I do mean periods. I had been hoping to perform last night's protection ritual earlier in the week, riding the tide of the just-past-full moon, but I was slammed by my usual 2-to-3-day phase of intense pain and complete exhaustion that occurs every month. Every month. Recently, I had hoped perhaps I could somehow manage to avoid it. I've been eating better and exercising more routinely, and my energy levels have not just been higher, but downright awesome. Last month's moodtides laid me low, but it was in the wake of the custody hearing and a week with my parents, so I naturally attributed the energy lag to the stress, and within a day or two I was back on my feet. This month, I was disappointed and frustrated to find that all that awesome energy and vitality I'd been feeling for the last few weeks suddenly fled as quickly as usual, leaving me a sack of meat, fat and bones barely able to raise myself up in bed, let alone change out of pajamas and get my shit together.

For anyone (all two of you) reading this and wondering: it is extremely frustrating and embarrassing to have a regularly scheduled illness every month that slams you in the stomach like clockwork, especially when you're as intense and serious-minded as I am, and especially in a culture in which Successful, Serious People are supposed to be On the Ball all the time. Promises that birth control would help mitigate symptoms turned out to be empty promises, just compounding my usual fatigue and pain with morning sickness.

Yesterday, my energy was finally climbing back up to usual levels, and so Jeff and I dove into ritual. This morning, my energy was pretty good (I wrote that blog post, didn't I? yes I did, while walking on the treadmill).

Now, Jeff is on his way home, biking seven miles like a boss, and I feel like I can barely keep my eyes open. Physical sensations include: a headache that stretches across my temples, tension in my neck, eyes that feel tired and dry, muscles that feel flabby and somewhat tingly, feet that feel cold (my whole body generally feels cold), and an overall feeling of my old bag of flesh and bones being too heavy to shift around properly and hold steady. This is par for the course after a period, but it feels as though the effects were prolonged this month because of the energy work I did last night.

So..... items for the to-do list:
• Work on evening out my energy levels through the month so that, for the sake of slightly calmer highs, I don't find myself at such disruptively and frustratingly low lows.
• Work on post-ritual energy reboot to keep me grounded and healthy.

I really am not a witch. I really dislike being a female body sometimes, and my euphemistic moontides have been a bitch for most of my life. This is not oh-isn't-it-magical-and-special-to-be-a-woman time. Puberty was not a blessing. Menopause just might be. But let's take things one step at a time. I celebrate the sun. That's why I'm a Druid. But my fiery goddess has put me on hold for a little while and counseled me to get my act together and find a better balance, because otherwise she's fed up with me and my burn out.

So. Sorta-moon goddess, you're up. Let's do this thing. You aid women in labor, and this monthly round of gut-punching pain and bloodloss feels close enough to me. Let's say you and me work this out.

First things first:
• I'm going to make a list of activities that help me regenerate and re-energize, and see if I can get some healthy habits going. Same goes for foods.
• I'm going to make a list of activities and foods that deplete my energy and resources, and try to do better at avoiding them.
• I'm going to turn my morning meditations towards more deliberate energy work.
• I'm going to keep doing Tai Chi like a motherfucking KLINGON.
• I'm going to ask for help. Even if it kills me.

Saturn Return: Weekly Meditation

Saturn is a planet of limitations and boundaries, placed at the threshold between the inner planets that reflect the energies and influences of everyday reality and the outer planets that reflect the energies and influences of cosmic cycles and forces. Saturn is a planet of authority, the sphere that circumscribes our life and sometimes leave us feeling trapped or hedged in by our limitations - but it is also a planet that helps us discover and understand our limits and, in so doing, become our own truest authority, the author of our own lives.

In my natal chart, Saturn is in Libra, a sign of balance and relationship. When we try to go to extremes in one direction or another, we run up against the flaws and limitations of those extremes, sometimes finding ourselves even worse off than before. But in bringing extremes into balance and harmonious relationship with each other - even if they seem to be opposites - we can find a new resonance that opens us up to whole new possibilities. The lesson of Saturn is not transcendence, but integration, and this is what it is exalted in the sign of Libra, where integrity can take the form of balance and a "middle way" between extremes.

What extremes do I recognize in my life right now?

• Productivity and Passivity - In my career, I feel challenged to "accomplish" something and make something of myself, to do something extraordinary with my life that will change the world. Emphasizing productivity in this way, I often end up focusing on the negative - what's wrong with the world that needs changing, and everything I should be doing to "fix" things. (Or, simpler than that, just neat ideas that "someone ought to do" that I then feel like I should pursue just for the sake of it being done.) But this focus leaves me feeling overwhelmed and even helpless. I get tired out quickly just thinking about everything I want to do or think I should do (or even just wondering what I possibly might do), and so much of the time I swing back towards the opposite extreme of passivity, procrastination and lethargy. I waste time on frivolous things for entertainment and distraction. Because I imagine that any work great enough to change the world must be complicated and difficult, I avoid doing things that seem too simple or clear-cut. (It's difficult for me to even do this exercise, because part of me thinks that it's all very obvious and so must be a waste of time.) But again, avoiding simple tasks gives me an excuse to procrastinate on the bigger tasks, abstracting them into monumental deeds that I never feel up to tackling - and the result of inactivity and complete lack of productivity.
• Socializing and Isolation - In my personal life, I spend a huge amount of time alone, even more than when I was living by myself but still working a waitressing job four days a week. Most of the day I sit at home on the computer while Jeff works downstairs, and we only have a chance to socialize once a week (sometimes less). On the other hand, this alone time isn't the kind of solitude that really nourishes me - it only leaves me feeling isolated and constrained, cut off from everyone else. Sitting at home all day (in a house that never quite felt "homey"), I don't connect to the space in relationship; I also rarely go out on my own to go hillwalking or just walking the neighborhood like I used to. Because Jeff is in the house all day, I look to him for a sense of connection and company instead of trying to cultivate it for myself (but of course, he's working and so can't really provide it). I also turn to the online community to find connection - but again, this is a shallow and false kind of connection that focuses a lot on negativity (people complaining about everything that's wrong) when it's not overtly competitive (the popularity contest of the internet world). So even when I spend most of my time alone, I end up feeling worn out by the "noise" that prevents me from finding real solitude.
• Bingeing and Neglect - Another place where there's been a new "extreme" cropping up is in my relationship with food. I'm not sure exactly what the causes of this might be (other than stress and bad habits), but these days I feel like I'm often fighting off cravings for unhealthy/junk foods but rarely experiencing actual hunger for healthy foods around mealtimes. I'll sleep in too late and more often than not will skip breakfast completely; then later, crave sweets or fatty foods as snacks in between meals or afterwards for dessert. Eating too late (or for the sake of something to do or as a reward from stressful "productivity") means staying up rather later than is good and not feeling very hungry in the morning. And so the cycle begins again. One cause of this might be to self-medicate stress from the pressure I put on myself. Another might be my feeling of disconnection and isolation that leads to frustration, leaving me swinging between neglecting to eat altogether and then stuffing my face to get that calorie rush.

How can I transform these into relationships of balance, in which I recognize my limitations and work in harmony with them instead of fighting against them?

• Creativity and Receptivity - I wrote about this a little bit before: changing the way I think about my work by focusing on creativity rather than productivity. The cards I pulled tonight showed the Ten of Wands and the Eight of Wands. In one, the woman bends over, burdened with the huge weight of a full-grown tree that supports an entire village. In the other, a woman (perhaps the same woman) stands upright and eager on an outcropping of rock, blowing dandelion seeds away from her open palm to be caught in the wind. I think these cards illustrate an important difference between creativity and productivity. Creativity might be represented by the seeds - light as air and holding great potential within them, creativity lets those seeds loose to be carried by the currents of the wind and take root where they may. The person letting the seeds loose doesn't necessarily have any control over or responsibility for where those seeds finally land; she is involved in something much bigger than herself. The woman in the Ten of Wands is involved in something much bigger than herself, too, but in her case she's taken the world upon herself and has made herself essential to it, for better or worse. She has a lot of control, but that control has become a heavy burden for her - she's taken on too much, too concerned for the end product, the full grown tree, rather than the seeds. Moving to a healthier, more harmonious relationship in this case might mean I need to focus on creativity as a way of planting seeds (process, not product), while also being receptive to what the winds will bring and the relationship I have with a larger world that's beyond my control.
• Company and Solitude - I think it would be helpful to reframe this issue as one about company and solitude, rather than "socializing" and isolation. These are no longer mutually exclusive - in true solitude, I have the freedom and space I need to be my own true self and, in that way, connect to the world around me in all its being and particulars. In company, I carry that solitude with me so that I am not overwhelmed or swept up by other people's feelings or opinions, and connecting with society becomes less noisy and frustrating. Accomplishing this might not be easy, as a lot of it depends on bad habits. Maybe some ideas to help: When seeking solitude, I can ask myself if I have a sense of freedom and spaciousness, or if something is constraining me or my actions. I can challenge myself to do things that will nourish me or engage me physically or emotionally even if no one else is around (including Jeff). I can spend some time contemplating the kind of company I would like to keep if I could hang out with anyone in the world, and spend time imagining how I might seek out that company or be that kind of company for others. I can make more attempts to go out and meet other people (no excuses! stop saying, "well, but we have such busy schedules, and we're going to be moving soon anyway so what's the point?"!!). And I can definitely spend less time on "social networking" sites online (already doing this and it's already helping).
• Sacramental Eating and Fasting - This one I'm the least sure about, but I know that I really appreciated the insights in John's latest NUP piece on sacramental eating. One step I can take is to restore mealtimes to sacred rituals - in particular, breakfast (as a time to nourish myself and begin my day), and dinner. Trying to avoid being on the computer or watching television during mealtimes would be helpful. Paying better attention to what I'm eating and making sure there are healthy snacks in the house so that I'm not falling back on junk when I get mid-day cravings. Perhaps every once in a while, spending some time on a deliberate, mindful fast might also help restore my relationship with food. I think in general, I need to give up this notion that Jeff and I can share a diet plan - that kind of controlling attitude towards food sends me back into the cycle of "productivity" and passivity where trying to exercise control becomes too much of a burden and so I start to make excuses to slip up. Instead, treating mealtimes as special family rituals might go some ways in restoring balance without turning eating into one more project that I can potentially fail at. This is perhaps what the final card in my reading, the Ace of Cups, might indicate: going back to the very beginning, where nourishment and replenishment is a gift and a source of life and connection.

These are all my thoughts for now. Hopefully I can work on some of these during the week. Ideally, I'd like to be able to do a simple ritual to represent some of these intentions and help me integrate them into my life. The next full moon is on Thursday, November 10, so it would be nice to have a simple ritual to do by then - I can spend the next two weeks thinking a bit about what I'd like to do.