GRATEFUL AS CAN BE

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day.

I am grateful that I'm going to my friend Melanie's house!

She is a wonderful cook, has a beautiful home, is the matriarch of a lovely family...sons, daughters-in-law, grandkids, and friends galore. I feel lucky to be invited even though we are eating in her garage! Actually, Melanie has a garage floor clean enough to eat off of, holiday or not. I don't have to cook: just show up with some gluten-free corn bread stuffing.

I am grateful for Chef Susan, who made the gluten-free stuffing!

Susan is so gifted...as a chef and as a writer, intelligent with a sense of humor that can keep me laughing until the tears roll down my cheeks! She is the mother of wonderful twin girls, also

intelligent, with a sense of humor, and talented who just happen to be on the spectrum for Autism. Listening to Susan talk about this journey she and her husband and daughters are on has been extremely humbling. Some things are achingly funny. Some things just make me ache. I admire her patience and dedication to giving these girls the very best care and education, even if the stress often wrecks havoc on her physical and emotional body.

I am grateful my daughter is healthy.

Kelsey will be 40 years old on November 28th. I cannot say my mothering skills were finely honed. Many times, I can say I have felt like a failure as a mom. But being a mother has been an opportunity to know a love like no other. Though I am not sure that I would actually throw myself in front of a bus to save her, she is the only person on earth for whom I would even think about doing such a thing! Motherhood made me a less selfish person than I would have been otherwise. There is not much I ask of the Universe: keep my child healthy and safe from harm. Thank you.

I am also grateful that our mother-daughter relationship has flourished in the past four years, that we are growing into an unconditional love for each other, that we do not need to place demands on each other because we are secure in the love we share.

Would that every parent-child relationship could be so. It is so freeing for both parent and child. The letting-go on the part of the parent does not create distance. It actually draws the child closer. You want to be together. You don't get together because you feel you have to. I have my kid to thank for this...she set the standard to create boundaries in our relationship which led to this freedom and acceptance.

I am grateful for my independence, that I am finally growing up!

Trust me, I have fought it tooth and nail. I have been a loner who needed to not be alone! Now that I have chosen to be alone, there is such a sense of peace in my life. It has also given me the opportunity to learn to take care of myself, make reasoned, thoughtful decisions. I have taken responsibility for myself. I'm not perfect at it, but I am grabbing the bull by the horns. Sometimes, the bull wins, but I'm fighting the good fight and I do like a tight fitting pant!

I am grateful to my former husband for creating a secure life for our family when I so needed someone to take care of me.

I am also grateful for the manner in which he allowed me to leave our marriage.

I am grateful for my sense of humor! Period.

I am grateful that I still recognize I have work to do on myself and have the energy and spirit to do it.

My path to health and self-acceptance has not been a straight one. It has taken twists and turns, many times screeching to a dead halt. However, I have never given up on myself nor the hope that I could find the key to unlock a door of my own making. The human spirit is a remarkable thing. I have often likened it to an intricately woven spider's web...able to withstand buffeting winds yet fragile enough to be destroyed by the flick of a wrist. I don't know why some spirits can be dashed and extinguished, but I am ever so thankful that I can persevere.

I am grateful that I have work to do - grace through purpose. My business partner is dedicated, talented, a skilled coach and trainer.

Thank you, Scott.

I am grateful for the beauty I see in the lives around me!

Lauren and Roland in a new house, with a new baby...Emma taking course work which will allow her to fulfill her dream...Suzanne and Scott beginning their life together after so many years together...Dan being healed enough to find the perfect new dog...Legacy clients reclaiming their health so that they can imagine life uncompromised by pain and injury.

Hope abounds. People persevere. Life is good.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

FAKE OR THE REAL THING?

No, I not talking about boobs although, in Dallas, to not have breast implants takes a lot of courage!

I'm talking about food.

Every time we grocery shop and put a product in our shopping cart, we are sending a message to ourselves and to others: this is who I am...this is what I am made of...this is a core value.

If I choose margarine instead of organic butter or Ghee, it's like I am wearing a gaudy, bawdy T-shirt that says "I don't give a %@*^ about what goes in my body and I'm proud of it". Essentially, if I buy a food product that is actually something that was created in a laboratory instead of by nature, I am saying that I am fine with ingesting petrol-chemical products that have no food value and may be seriously toxic to my system. I am also saying that I am okay with these poisons being on the market so that others can feed them to their families.

But I'm not okay with it. When it comes to the state of child health in America, I am really not okay with it.

The Dallas Morning News ran an article last week that stated it is now a recommendation that children be tested for high cholesterol. This is insanity, folks.

What I really don't understand is how intelligent people with the wealth of information on hand about food, chemicals in the food, in the soil, nutritional needs, and the statistics on childhood diabetes (now this cholesterol thing) can continue to buy into the American C.R.A.P. Diet - Conventional...Refined...Additives...Preservatives.

The only reason I can come up with that explains this behavior is that their minds have been impaired because they have been eating fake their entire lives. I may sound like a broken record but "Eat cleanly. Think clearly. Live fully!"

We need real food in order to run our hormonal, digestive, cleansing, and neurological pathways. Garbage in, garbage out. Do you want your blood cells, the millions created every day, to be the stuff of iced tea sweetened with the chemical called aspartame, or pure, un-chlorinated water? Do you want your sex hormones to be made from something that came out of a petri dish or something that has the natural building blocks our body needs?

http://www.westonaprice.org/know-your-fats/questions-and-misconceptions-on-fats-and-oils

Most people wouldn't talk up the bogus art piece they purchased or that the five-carat diamond they are wearing is a fake. Many women who do choose to have plastic surgery deny it. People don't want to advertise that what they have or do isn't real. But when you run a boxed or canned food through the check out line at the supermarket, your T-shirt says "Fake as a fake can be."

Eat better. Feel better. Look better. Teach your children the difference by supporting their chance to thrive in an increasingly toxic world. Live more authentically because you are eating that way.

You are what eat. Eat real food.

And, by the way, my boobs are real...just saying, though that's not saying much!