realizing nothing’s wrong

I’m still working my way through the book Women Food and God, closing in on the end, and I’ve been hit with a couple things overall:

1. I’ve been living like a victim.
2. Nothing is actually wrong.

These two realizations tend to go hand in hand but I’m going to dwell more on the second.

Nothing is actually wrong. With me, that is.

Nothing is wrong with me.

I’ve been living in a head-space for so long – thinking of myself as flawed, broken, incomplete, a lesser person, lost – that I just accepted it as reality and never questioned the legitimacy of it.

Now, maybe to some degree, some of these things are true, specifically the flawed part (who on this earth isn’t flawed?), the incomplete part (who isn’t searching for something?), and the lost part (who hasn’t gotten off-track or turned around by life?). But to believe I’m really broken and a lesser person? Well, when I stop and really question this perspective that I’ve accepted as truth, I find it’s bullshit.

I am not broken or splintered. I may be maimed or injured but I am not damaged goods. Like so many things that break in life, it’s easy to consider them disposable and replaceable. But I am not replaceable and I have not reached a place yet where I am disposable – not until my last breath will I be disposable.

Injuries can be mended. My heartaches and wounds will mend themselves. I can heal, I can repair, I will survive, and eventually I reach a place where I once again thrive.

I am not irreparable. I am not doomed. I will thrive again.

The only way to heal is to accept and receive love and care; from others and from myself. No matter how maimed or injured I may be, I am still a whole person; a living, breathing, human being, and I will respond to love and care. I will respond to gentleness. I will respond to tenderness. Treating myself with contempt or disdain will not heal wounds.

There is nothing wrong with me. There is only something wrong with my view of myself.

That needs to change.

sausage and apple stuffing

Back in January a friend had me over and fixed Roast Duck with Sausage and Apple Stuffing from Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child. It was AMAZING!

It was the first time I recall ever eating duck and I’ll definitely be eating duck again. But the AMAZING part was the sausage and apple stuffing. YUM!

About a month ago I had a hankering for this stuffing and decided to try it out as a stand alone dish, especially since I’m not sure where I can get duck in my area in the middle of the summer without breaking a few laws.

The result was a succulant, AMAZING dish that I inhaled. So AMAZING!

Have I mentioned it’s AMAZING!?

I did tweak the dish to make it a little more primal friendly – at least balancing out the fruit and meat servings. Give it a whirl!

Ingredients

• 1 lb. ground pork sausage (regular flavoring, sage could also work), browned
• 2 medium apples (I like fuji), cored and chopped into appx 1 inch pieces
• 1/2 Tbsp honey
• 1/4 Tsp Cinnamon
• 1/4 Tsp Salt
• 1/4 Tsp Sage
• 2 Tbsp Cognac
• 1/4 C Port
• 1/4 C Beef Stock

Directions

1. Brown sausage and set aside in a bowl, reserving fat in the saute pan.
2. Add 1/2 tsp of honey to the reserved fat and heat.
3. Core and slice apples into 1-inch chunks and saute in the honey/fat mixture until lightly browned and almost tender.
4. Place the apples on a platter and sprinkle with cinnamon, salt, sage, and cognac.
5. Wipe out saute pan and add port and beef stock, boil rapidly until liquid has reduced to 2-3 Tbsp.
6. Pour wine reduction over the sausage.
7. Combine apple mixture and sausage mixture.
8. Eat!

The beauty of this dish is that it takes about 15 minutes to prepare, start to finish. It’s a great last minute go-to meal and is something that will be in my recipe box for decades to come. Perhaps the only downside is that it’s hard to stop eating it once you start. One of these days I’m going to try it with pheasant and see if they compliment each other. If I can refrain from eating too much of it before it makes it to the bird.

a turning point?

Months ago, before Oprah got a hold of it and gave it the Oprah bump, I picked up the book, Women Food and God. I was looking for a book to round out my order from Amazon (for the free shipping) and after reading the brief summary of the book, thought it might be worth reading at some point. I figured, “Eh, why not?”

It has been sitting on my bookshelf ever since.

I’ve been hearing all the hubub about the book the last few months and have been telling myself to read it. This week I started.

I’m through the first section of the book and I’m feeling so-so about it. There’s definitely good info in it and I find myself familiar with a lot of the warped perceptions and broken approaches to life the author writes about.

For instance, the focus and distraction that dieting becomes in your life. The project of fixing yourself. Focus on your flaws and inadequacies and fill your life with the fixing of these and suddenly, there’s no room for anything else. I’m there, doing that. It’s occurred to me on occasion that I AM doing that, but then I just make myself buckle down and focus harder on the fixing.

I don’t know what the approach to healing the rift between me and food and God involves yet, but the frequent references to giving up dieting is putting me on edge. I feel a touch panicked at the thought of not being a project. How do I function when not attempting to control everything that goes into my mouth or obsessing about exercise (though the latter isn’t that much of an issue)? I’m also wondering how I can still eat primal without it being obsessive. And more generally, how do I function when not trying to fix myself?

And then the thought occurs, do I really even need fixing? It almost feels like blasphemy to wonder such a thing. The knee-jerk reaction is to say “Of COURSE I need FIXING! I’m a MESS!”

But really, am I a mess?

This makes me think a little bit about being a victim and living in the head space of a victim. I wonder if maybe this approach to fixing myself is stemming from a sort of victim mentality. One I don’t necessarily deserve. Sure, there’s been a few hard things in my life, but compared to so many others, my hard things pale in comparison.

If anything, I’m more a victim of my own making.

I’ve perpetrated the greatest harm against myself with regular self-loathing and the Miss-Fix-It project status I’ve adopted. And it seems the more I try to play the fix-it game, the more fixing I need. So it would make sense to stop playing.

But then I find myself afraid. The threat of not playing makes me want to stop reading the book, maybe even chuck it across the room. And that’s exactly the reason I’m pressing on with it.

This is a revelation into how little care I actually give my body (even in the midst of the fixing).

And that needs to change.