I think about food, a lot: what I’ll eat, when I’ll eat it, how I’ll cook it, where I’ll go to get it. It’s a conversation that is ever present and always available to light me up. I grew up in a family system that orbited around the three mealtimes of morning breakfast, 12 noon lunch and 4:30 pm supper (because my dad’s day shift ended at 4 and it took him 30 minutes to get home), and in an extended family where gatherings were focused around the potluck or barbecue. Food meant fun, celebration, comfort, always available and there when you wanted it.
As an awakening and wizening adult, I’m looking at my interaction with food very differently. The assumption of unlimited abundance and goodness is gone. Environmentally, we are losing ground literally and figuratively as farmland is plowed under for housing developments and remaining soils are leached of nutrients and natural controls for pollution and pests in favour of quick profits via mass production and non-native species. Economically, grocery corporations have never been richer while a growing number of two-salary families struggle to feed themselves. And personally, I have a growing awareness of how much I learned of nourishing myself in childhood was imparted to me for the benefit of others: scheduled meal times to support school and work structures, a diet rich in dairy and wheat and other highly politicized products that today have created a whole host of digestive issues, science that championed processed foods and supplements while dismissing traditional practices, and a one size fits all approach to diet, body type, and ‘healthy weight.’ Heaven forbid, some days I skip a meal because I’m – gasp – not hungry. Other days, I honour my inner hobbit and eat seven (meals, not hobbits) … you know, breakfast, second breakfast, elevensies, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner and supper. My body quite simply doesn’t function the same every day, or the same as yours. Same organs, yes, and maybe even same blood type … but the energy I carry, where I carry it, and how it is digested is unique to each of us.
That is a terrific awareness and a tremendous opportunity, it if wasn’t so damn terrifying. Because the greatest thing we have been fed, and that we have hungrily consumed generation after generation, is, quite frankly, the NEED to be fed, to be guided and instructed and handled by those who know better than us about how our miraculous and individualized bodies work.
Let’s be clear. We DO NOT NEED to be fed.
We NEED TO FEED OURSELVES.
Nourishment for a healthy life goes way beyond proteins and vitamins and dietary fibre. The food we choose to consume is part of nourishment that keeps our body healthy and we as divine godforce engaged with our human experience here on Earth. Our body also needs nourishment of other sources. We need information that challenges, invites, and creates opportunities for exploration and respectful discussion of who we are as individuals and communities, and who we are becoming. We need conversations and communities that support our exploration and our evolution, not for monetary or political gain but for literal reclamation of who we are and what we are capable of creating when not reproducing patterns and cycles for the benefit of others who would prefer us unchanged, unmoving, unquestioning. We need to reclaim our self-sufficiency and our resourcefulness to grow or find our own sustainable food sources, trustworthy information sources, healing powers, and nourishing communities.
We need to wake up, and I get it, looking around at the violence and natural disasters and shortages and expenses it’s akin to awaking into a nightmare whereas to stay in our own little bubbles, under our own early beliefs, we can pretend the problems are the responsibilities of others, that we have nothing to add or no way to help, that it’s better if we just keep keeping on and stay out of the way while others figure things out.
I’ve done that. There are areas in my life where I still do that, where it feels like I can’t fix the world so why try, that all is okay in my little cottage so isn’t that good enough? It is good enough, until the world continues to move on and my voice isn’t counted. Curling into a ball, closing your eyes and pretending to be asleep, gives an illusion of safety only until the earth disappears from in under you or you rise one morning with no food on your shelf and nowhere to buy any. Awakening meant taking ownership of my life, creating my life choice by choice, knowing clearly who I am and what I want, saying YES to those people and possibilities that speak to my higher evolution and a resounding NO to those using my fears, my doubts, my training and my history as launchpads for their marketing schemes and profit margins.
We were born with everything we needed internally to create a full and expansive life. Now more than ever, with the chaos outside us, a clear and grounded internal landscape provides the power of awareness, intuition, and change that one by one, community by community, will create lives abundant and sustainable.
How? Who knows? I’m still awakening to my own cues, my own inherent knowledge. That’s where it starts, each of us choosing to wake up and own all of who we are and what we create, not just the slivers that are socially acceptable or easy to offer up. Artists and social trailblazers have been engaging in this evolution for generations and it is no coincidence that ‘starving artist’ continues to be a reality for many. Today, it’s not only for those seeking to create a great painting or unforgettable song. It’s about each of us standing up and demanding to feed ourselves, owning everything in our awareness and our lives, blaming no one, choosing mindfully, creating always.
Feel impossible? Hopeless?
Breathe and bring your awareness inside you, to the base of your spine.|
It’s akin to putting your hands in cool, rich soil … so many possibilities, waiting for seeds. Intention to words, words to choice, choice to action.
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The unique and comprehensive WEL-Systems® body of knowledge offers a powerful new context for personal evolution and change, including articles and audio clips available free of charge to pique your curiosity and invite your exploration of self.
Decloaking and Living Authentically is a conversation that will take you into the much deeper dive of who you are, as the thinker behind it all.
Listen to a free sample here.
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Thanks for reading,
Jennifer
Jennifer Hatt is an author, communications consultant, publishing doula and CODE Model Coach™ .
ownyourstorynow.com
Conversations are like potato chips – you can’t have just one. Reclamation is in layers, evolution is ongoing. My conversation was like removing the topsoil from the minefield. We see the stories now. We can avoid them. We can take agonizing painstaking hours to diffuse them. Or we can simply choose in the moment to let go of the story and the mine disappears. Choice by choice. Conversation by conversation. Each authentic to self, creating something authentic and awesome when combined. That’s the life that creates, that we were born to lead. In my world, anyway.