Each Breath is a New Beginning

I've had a difficult few days since the last time I posted. It has been a lot of ups and downs and they have been rather extreme.  I've had some great moments at rehearsal and with friends, some crazy parties, some fun movies, finally going to improv, but I've also found myself slipping back into my eating disorder mindset.  I think I need to go back to eating raw.  It is too easy for me to slip into old habits when I am stressed and if I don't have my health to support me in these next few weeks I'm not sure if I'm going to make it through.

I love my life. I have an amazing life, I just need to put myself first, physically, emotionally, spiritually and I need to listen to the advice I've been giving my friends. I'm not going to sell myself short. I'm going to cut myself a break (each breath IS a new beginning), I'm going to get my wings ready, I'm going to breathe, and live, and love.

I'm going to be love.

Namaste'

New Beginnings.

I haven't posted on here in forever. And I also haven't felt like myself in forever.

Night of Musical Theatre is going incredibly well. I couldn't ask for a more talented, passionate, hard-working, enthusiastic, beautiful group of people. Every single one of them bring something wonderful and unique to the show and I truly think it is going to be something special.

Now, with that being said, the rest of my life feels like it is falling apart. For the first time in my college career I just haven't been going to my classes. I am bored. None of them are challenging me and I feel like just curling up in a ball and crying most of the time. It is only rehearsal that seems to be saving me.

This ends today. I am going to psyc in a few short minutes to take an exam I know I am not thoroughly prepared for and that I've only been to one lecture for. This will be a good wake up call for me. I realize that I haven't felt like myself in a very long time and I'm ready to treat myself with respect.

I have been very down lately that I am not dating anyone, and haven't, in a very long time. However, how can I expect anyone else to love me if I don't love myself first. I am all I really have in the end. This body is the only one I get. This magnificent body that lets me see, breathe, eat, sleep, and most importantly, DANCE. I don't know what next year is going to bring, be it grad school or moving to Seattle or moving home or any of those marvelous prospects. All I know is that I want the next breath I take to be even better than the one before it. I want to measure my life in breaths, not in exams or diplomas or anything like that.

From now on I am going to take my life moment to moment, breath to breath, heart beat to heart beat. I will measure my life is kisses, hugs, laughter, and most of all, love. I will live by the motto: what would love do? I will BE love. I will live love. There is nothing more important than love. And, most importantly, I will learn to find love within myself. I don't need to go outside myself to be loved. I can love myself. In this moment. In all moments.

I will not judge others, and, I will not judge myself. I will forgive. And smile. And cry when I need to. And live the authentic life that I know is pulling me on. I will listen to the lyrics of the beautiful and brilliant song that I am singing in NOMT: I've got to know that I can be, astonishing. It comes from me. I am all I have.

Oddly enough this focus on myself (in a loving, caring, forgiving way) makes me feel less self centered than giving everything (all of my energy, strength and sanity) for others ever did. Only by taking care of ones self can one truly be able to take care of others.

This has all been a bit rambling. But, as I start this life cleanse, this new page that has been turned in this new book (or at least new chapter) I want a reminder of all the beautiful promises I have made to myself. I am going to be doing a sort of fast for the next week(s) or so and I am going to try and blog about the changes I feel within myself as I strive for self love and respect and practice giving, receiving and BEING love.

Namaste'

Day After Regrets

Yesterday was a lovely day. I went out to the lake with some of the PineCone crew and we had lunch at Jeff's parents' house. Gary Carter is Jeff Carter's dad, and he is a pretty famous artist. If you have seen any 'western' themed paintings of cowboys and chuck wagons and stuff such as that, chances are you have seen a Gary Carter painting. Though I've known the Carters most of my life I had never been out to their house. Gary's studio is amazing, and the whole house is beautiful.

The afternoon was quite lovely, however, I caved and ate all of the yummy, but nutritionally void, food they had around. I had some corn (which was good, and rather healthy) but I also had pasta salad, home made root beer and sampled a few kinds of dessert! I also ate some of Anne's chewy Sprees because she was eating them and they looked good. Well, I used way too much insulin, ended up with a stomach ache, and today I am hesitant to stray too far from the toilet. (I won't get more graphic than that, I promise).

This makes it even more clear that I can't eat crappy food anymore. Well, I can, but my body is going to rebel when I do. Over the past few years I have really learned what foods fuel my body. As David Kessler says in The End of Overeating (which I HIGHLY recommend to EVERYONE whether you have ever struggled with food or not), some foods satisfy us, but most foods that we encounter on a daily basis simply stimulate us. We live in a culture of instant gratification and constant stimulation. I learned this spring when I ate raw for 30 days how great I can feel physically, mentally and spiritually when I stay away from those stimulating foods.

I have all the tools. I have the knowledge, but sometimes they can be so hard to implement! I've found that even more than my eating disorder it is social pressure that makes it so difficult to stay on a healthful eating path. It is easier to have the junk food than explain why you aren't eating it. I feel self conscious enough explaining that I don't eat meat, never mind trying to explain that I don't eat cooked food.

But, in the spirit of this blog, I'm going to stop making excuses. Social pressures and my not wanting to feel uncomfortable are simply not reason enough to not eat the way that my body is telling me that I should! So, over the next couple weeks I'm going to implement as much raw food as I can into my diet and start phasing out the dairy and the eggs and the tofu, and most of all the sugar and the wheat and anything remotely refined.

As of September 1st I am going to go back to living a raw foods lifestyle. I may not be as strict as I was before, I may let myself have a drink from time to time, but try to keep it organic and without refined sugars. I may eat something that isn't raw every once in a while, but I'm going to stay above 90% raw and watch as radiant health and energy returns to me. Now, I just typed that previous sentence twice, because originally I typed: I am going to try to stay above 90% raw... Well, the days of trying to do anything are gone. Really, when you think about it, you simply cannot try to do anything. You either do it, or you don't. It is that simple.

So for the rest of the summer, I'll be like Nike, JUST DO IT! The applies to eating right, exercising (which I have, thankfully been doing very regularly lately), and getting the rest of my work finished for NOMT. The monologues will be written, the dances choreographed. Carpe Diem! I'll use every cheesy, overused cliche it takes, but I'm going to get there.

If anyone actually reads this, I hope you get to wherever you need to go for your health, happiness, and well being. Whether that means meditating, going to yoga, going for a walk, taking a day off, or starting something that you've been avoiding, make today the day that you decide to get there, or at least take the first step on the path. So, with that, another lovely cliche to end this post with, this one taken from the Tao te Ching:

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Out of Control

Some days are better than others. This is really important for me to remember. Particularly on days like today. Today has not been one of the better ones. I binged for the first time in a long while and I feel awful. I really don't even understand why. There wasn't even a particular trigger. Which just proves that the eating disorder mind set can spring up at any time. I think it was because I was feeling fat today. Isn't it odd that feeling fat can trigger me to eat more? You think it would be the other way around, but no, that isn't the way my brain works. I think I need to stop focusing on losing weight and start focusing on training. Eating things that make me feel good physically and exercising and stretching.

I keep worrying about NOMT this fall. I had all these goals to lose all this weight this summer so that I'd be thin for NOMT and I think that it is too soon after finishing treatment for me to be so focused on weight loss. So my goal for the rest of the summer is to focus on health. I want to be healthy and happy and I can do that at whatever weight I am at, including this one. When I put the focus outside myself it is so easy to be happy, so I am going to be self centered about my health, but try and let the rest of my focus be outside myself. And I'm going to cling to our wonderful blog A Daily Offering of Gratitude.

Namaste.

Feeling in Control

Tonight I had some chocolate, and I only had a little bit. It felt amazing! I am really starting to feel like I have my eating disorder under control and that is truly a freeing and incredible feeling. One of my amazing friends from NYU who I'm not really in touch with anymore writes a great blog and she posted today about doing a 30 day challenge in which she is giving up sugar. I've done this before and I feel like it might be a good idea for me to do again. Or at least to cut it down to one treat a week or something. I mean, it is summer, who needs sugar when there is all this amazing fruit everywhere?

I can't believe summer is going to be over so soon, but I feel like I've made so much progress with truly putting my eating disorder mindset behind me and focusing on the positive. I'm getting excited and a little apprehensive about starting my last year of undergrad! So much to do this year and SOO much travel, but I always love travelling. So here is to a great school year. Starting now, since I am getting my butt into gear working on NOMT this week!

Juice Feasting

I've been planning on starting a Juice Feast today for a week or so. I went to Bozeman and bought pounds and pounds of organic produce and greens, but I've been wondering if I should really start today. There seemed to be so many reasons not to. A trip to Virginia City tomorrow, wanting to eat certain foods "one last time," starting biking with my dad, the show and how many trip I'm going to have to make to the bathroom when drinking a gallon of juice a day...and many more.

However, this morning when I woke up I realized that all these "reasons" to not start today are simply excuses. So today I started my juice feast! I'm planning on feasting for at least 14 days, but who knows, maybe I will decide to go longer. Summer seems like such a good time to do a juice feast, thought it would be nice if the summer temperatures would return!

So here I go! Two weeks of self discovery and letting go of excuses. Two weeks of detoxing, clear skin, shiny hair, freedom from food, and time to let myself discover what I really want from life.

Namaste!

Letting go...

I have been inspired the last few days with how open my beautiful friend Sam has been about her struggles with anorexia. Though I have never struggled with this particular disease, I am very familiar with the eating disorder mindset, as I have personally struggled with more than one. It saddens me greatly that eating disorders are not only becoming more common, but are now the norm for young women. We, in the US, live in a very backwards society that prizes thinness above almost all else (for women anyway) and yet bombards us on every corner with fake, unhealthy food.

As a diabetic I have to be much more conscious of what I eat that the average person, however, this doesn't make eating well easy. On the contrary, as well as lacking insulin I recently found out that diabetes also causes you to stop producing the hormone that tells you when you are full. Not only is the feeling of 'being full' confused by my past history of binge eating, but my body also has trouble even registering the idea. I went through treatment for this particular eating disorder this year with a wonderful therapist and I feel like I am truly in recovery, ejecting the CD of the eating disorder mindset from the infinate CD player that is who I am. However, there are parts of treatment for eating disorders that I have come to see as a little misguided in the past months. One of these is the emphasis on the idea that this isn't your fault, that this is a disease, it is the anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, diabulimia, that has a hold on you. While I believe this is true to a point, I believe that these ideas can also be excuses.

I've realized over the past year that one of my biggest excuses is my weight. If a guy doesn't call me, it is because of my weight, if someone isn't nice to me they hate fat people, and most of all, if I didn't get cast in the role I wanted, I was too fat. I think this excuse is one of the biggest reasons I haven't ever lost the weight for good over the last few years. It is a nice, soft (if you'll excuse the pun) excuse to fall back on. 'Oh, it wasn't me, or my talent, it was because I was too fat." Well, I've realized that if I truly want to make theatre and dance my career I need to let go of this excuse. And the only way to truly let go of this excuse is to let go of this extra weight that I've been holding on to. I have so many excuses that have kept me from letting go of my number one excuse.

I know that I will be healthier, dance better, feel better when I let go of all this extra padding. It will mean that I will have to face the world, face rejection, without my number one excuse to fall back on, but what did I call this blog? My excuse free, inspired life! If I am really committed to living in the moment, and living without excuses, letting inspiration flow through me, I need to let go of the big one.

So, "Here I go, and there's no turning back! My great adventure has begun. I may be small, but I've got giant plans, to shine as brightly as the sun. I will blaze until I find my time and place. I will be fearless, surrendering modesty and grace. I will not disappear without a trace. I'll shout and start a riot, be anything but quiet...I'll be astonishing...at last." - Astonishing from Little Women the Musical (Look for me singing this wonderful song as my solo this fall!)

I'm jumping in with both feet. Anyone care to join me in letting go of your biggest excuse? I think it might just turn out to be the best thing we could ever do for ourselves.

Make plans, just don't fall in love with them.

Inspired by my beautiful friend Sam I am going to write a few "bucket lists" of my own. I don't find them morbid, or negative in any way. After all, all we are promised is this moment. It may seem silly to plan for the future with that outlook, but I think of it this way: Make plans, just don't fall in love with them. I heard Wayne Dyer speak those words a few years ago and I can't even describe how liberating they are. I am a list freak, anyone who knows me well knows how obsessed I am with lists and calendars. I write them in the back of all my notebooks, in the back of books, on my desk calendar, in my blackberry...etc. etc. My life is a series of lists, or seems so at times. I think I get this from my mother.

At first I thought that perhaps living in the moment and making so many plans might be mutually exclusive, but now I take the view described above. I make plans, but I don't fall in love with them. Plans change. I once heard Wayne Dyer explain it with this little story: He was talking to a friend of his who was a doctor and the man was expressing how truly unhappy he was in his career. Wayne asked the man, "Well, why are you a doctor?" And the man replied "Oh, I've always wanted to be a doctor." Wayne told him that he didn't sound like he wanted to be a doctor anymore and asked when he had decided to become a doctor. The man told him that he made the decision when he was 18 and then started down the path. Wayne proceeded to ask "Would you ask an 18 year old for career advice?" and the man replied, "Of course not!" to which Wayne answered, "then why trust the career advice you gave yourself when you were 18?"

I think this sums it up brilliantly. Plans change. Circumstances change. YOU change! And we have to allow for these changes. However, in the mean time, we can make plans, set goals, dream, reach for the stars, and be overjoyed when things go our way, and realize how great things can be when we allow plans to grow and change with us. So, in honor of this mindset I'm going to make a few plans. The first is a Seattle Bucket list.

Now, I only have one year left at PLU, and since I'm not applying to any grad schools in Washington I'm pretty sure I will be leaving the area when I graduate in the spring. Thus, there are a few things I want to do before I leave:

• Go to Experience Music Project.
• Take the Underground Tour of Seattle
• Eat at Cafe Flora
• Go back to Mt Rainier
• Go to a club in Seattle (and/or a gay bar/club)
• Go to Pike Place Market again.
• Go on an OR event
• Find a way to get out of one of my science requirements.

I'm sure the list will grown (and hopefully also shrink as I cross things off) as the year progresses.

Now, I also want to make an overall "Bucket List," so here goes!

• Get into an amazing MFA program for Theatre or Dance (or BOTH!)
• Get my PhD in Theatre
• Perform on Broadway
• Be in a movie
• Live in France
• Live in England
• Find a wonderful (possibly foreign) man who isn't in theatre, but appreciates it (vegetarian would be nice too)
• Choreograph something that truly moves people
• Cure myself of Diabetes
• Eat at Cafe Gratitude
• Live in Hawaii
• Stay in an Ashram in India
• Practice Yoga and Meditation Daily
• Have a dog
• Write my young adult fantasy series
• And many, many more marvelous things.

Hmmm....how shall I start working toward these today....

Being Grateful for the US of A

In the other blog I contribute to (Daily Offerings of Gratitude), which the beautiful Sam Tolbert so wonderfully started, I listed the USA as something I was grateful for. Now, I think this wouldn't be much of a stretch for most United States Citizens, particularly those of us born and raised in places as beautiful as Yellowstone. Of course we are grateful for our beautiful country and the freedoms that it allows us. However, lately I can't help feeling as if the United States is treating me as something of a second class citizen, me, and millions of other americans.

Now, it may seem odd for a white, middle to upper class, college educated woman to see herself as being discriminated against in any way, but I am also a type one diabetic. Now, any of you who know me know that I am unabashedly liberal. I'm all for the legalization of marijuana, strict gun control, and a woman's right to chose. But no political issue has hit me so hard in the last year as the "health care issue."

The fact that we even have a "health care issue" seems almost sad to me. I recently watched Michael Moore's documentary "Sicko." And while I don't usually love Michael Moore's way of going about things, this documentary hit home. It turns out in Canada, the UK, France and even CUBA people aren't punished for being ill, particularly for diseases they have no control over. I could go on and on about all the things this film brought to light, but really, everyone should just watch it. Suffice it to say that I have a strong urge to move to the UK or France.

For the past year as I've been struggling what to do with my "life" after I graduate college the main factor in what I do is whether or not I can afford insulin and all of the supplies that it takes to be a diabetic. The idea that other countries don't punish people because they were born with a disease that they must deal with on a minute to minute basis is so liberating. The idea of being able to chose my career based on what I want to do with my life and where my inspirations and passions lead me is the most freeing thing I can imagine.

However, I'm not going to just sit here and complain anymore! Excuses BEGONE! I know that if I follow my heart, and listen to my true self, the money for what I want and need to do will appear. Perhaps this will lead me to France or England, where it is every citizens' right to have health care, or perhaps this will lead me to some way to easily afford all of my supplies while remaining here in the states. Whatever way my path takes me I will be ready, willing and eager.

So, for now, I will be grateful for the USA. After all, why not be grateful to anything that has gotten you to where you are at this present, glorious moment? And no matter how many problems a nation may have, they seem to all be forgiven when you are standing in the majesty of its natural beauty, which is hard to avoid in beautiful Yellowstone.

Paradigm Shift

I recently went and saw Dr. Wayne Dyer in Seattle. This was the second time I'd seen him in person, though I've been reading or listening to his books for years. He is such an amazing presence. Though I haven't finished his most recent book: Excuses Begone! I am really drawn to the basic principle: everything in our lives that is holding us back from being our best selves, from doing the things we have always dreamed of, from living our true, inspired lives, all of these things are merely excuses! And if we let go of these excuses we can make a paradigm shift, and really live our lives free of excuses and full of inspiration.

I have decided I don't need a huge, life changing moment to make the life changing decision to lead an excuse free, inspired life! It can be difficult to let go of these excuses that you have held on to for a lifetime. Our society teaches us to hold onto these excuses with every fiber of our beings, but we can simply chose to let go of them.

I am ready to let go of my excuses, or at least start along that path. Why waste another minute of my life living with excuses? I am ready to live my excuse free, inspired life! And perhaps I'll actually stick with this blog to help myself remember how free I can be!