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June 30, 2013.  Words.  A few words.  What is it about writing that holds hope for me that once I have put a collection of words together I will somehow feel better?  Which is to say that at the moment I don’t feel “better” at all!  Nope!  Life seems too complicated for me right now to give me any sense at all that everything is going to be the proverbial OK EVER let alone soon.

Did I bring “this” upon myself?  Yes, if I am accountable for being myself in the first place.  That I am in a state of unmet need and perplexity about possible options given my disabilities and very short financial resources deeply affects me – and what I can find to do about “this” seems so pitifully meager as to seem as NOTHING to me in these days.  These changing days.

I knew when I returned home from my Alaska-Seattle travels to see family at the beginning of this month that my needs are NOT being met here for meaningful relationships with people I love and who love me.  I have to leave here.  To go where?  When?  HOW can I move when I am living dollar to dollar with very few left at the end of each month?

I started dismantling my home anyway.  Growing stacks of boxes begin to surround my floorspace as I stack them along walls.  How can I know what I can keep if I know none of the above?  How can I find and keep a sense of magnanimous equilibrium in the midst of my growing sense of chaos?

I can handle chaos if it is constructive with a goal at the end of it, a goal in my mind.  Whatever goal I am working toward is nebulous.  I am scared.  I am sad. 

But I also know if all of my belongings have to end up in a storage locker then that’s what will have to happen because deep inside of myself I know I am not staying here.

I take baby steps each day the best that I can.  I am still involved in my cleanse as I have written about it recently although I took last Friday off to travel with friends the 90 miles to Tucson to visit a spiritual healer.  I am still stopped up from the antiD pills I had to take to get out my front door for the day.

Now THAT was a trip and a half!  All ended well post-driver getting lost and us ending up to our appointments late so that mine was cut short.  Which it didn’t have to be except that me being me gave the friend of my friend the first one knowing that I am too dang tough not to end up doing just fine if I (rather than her) was the one rushing pell-mell through such an important session.

Life being what life is with its twists and turns with surprises along the way, I made my right choice.  Courtesy and concern for others when I can show it helps me in deeper ways.  But the rushing through the information the healer, Christy, was sharing began the instant I walked into the room.  I knew it was not her descriptions of what needed to be healed for me that were of substance.  I needed and went there for the healing itself.

And the healing DID happen.  This woman has studied with traditional Native American healers for 30 years.  She is gifted in energy flows, in healing auras and chakras.  I have never given those much thought, and never have I studied them.  But I have known a number of women who, along with their friends, have gone through healing with this woman, Christy, and all have glowing reports. 

So I went with confidence. 

One important point Christy made clear to me is that healing itself as the body and soul respond takes time.  She did not use the analogy I recently used of “peaks and valleys.”  She referred to the image of a pendulum as she told me that in the days after this healing my inner pendulum of experience would swing first widely and then gradually settle down until the swings stop at center.  I am waiting for that day.  It is not here yet, and I suspect that much of what I feel today is part of the swinging effect.

I never realized that chakras can be damaged.  Well, evidently they can be, and certainly because I know of the severe trauma I have lived through it didn’t surprise me at all as Christy described to me what she “saw” and what she was going to heal.  I feel extremely fortunate to have found out about this woman and to have been taken by my very busy friend up to see her.  I am grateful for this healing.

Meanwhile I am living through the healing itself on so many levels that nothing about myself in my life feels “right” to me at this point in time.  Christy complimented me on how strong and healthy my “spirit chakra” is.  But living by faith and trust that there are higher powers that guide my life and make clear the way is not easy, either. 

I am doing more than transitioning.  I am transforming.  This is a difficult time for me.  I am not surprised.  I don’t LIKE this stage, but it is necessary.  I know that.  I am doing my part to make these levels of healing successful.  Along the way sometimes I simply MUST complain.  It is a part of my human process.

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Silly me.  Of course my healing journey must include peaks and valleys!  Healing is not something separate from life.  Life certainly has those peaks and those valleys.  What was I thinking?  I cannot separate out what I choose to accomplish toward my healing from my life itself!  “This, Linda, is a ONE THING!”

Night before last was an awful sleepless night – simply AWFUL!  Yesterday was no day to “write home about,” either!  Now, the day before yesterday was one of the best I have ever had.  It is so rare for me to FEEL GOOD for that many hours in a row!  And then the dark came – as it does – and BAM!!!!!!  There I was in an emotional crisis that lasted nearly 24 hours!

I did not understand – and still don’t – what triggered my crash.  I did NOTHING, thought NOTHING that I could track, and certainly did not ask to feel like absolute HELL.  And there I had been doing so WELL!

Dang!  Seemed pretty unfair to me!

I went hunting in every direction I could think of to find “what I had done wrong” that had created “what had gone wrong,” and I could find nothing.  My fall from my state of grace had simply taken me over without explanation!

The best I could come up with was that Shelley Redford Young and Robert O. Young who wrote the book that is my guide to healing, The pH Miracle: Balance Your Diet, Reclaim Your Health left out an important piece of information!  Leave it to me.  I found it.

These authors describe what they call a physical “healing crisis” that must nearly inevitably erupt for people so drastically changing their lifestyle, especially if they undertake the organic green vegetable juice (I strain mine) cleanse that I am in the middle of.  This is what they wrote:

WHAT TO WATCH OUT FOR

“During a cleanse, toxins are dumped from where they’ve been stored in the tissues into the blood so they can be eliminated.  This means that for a while your blood is actually dirtier than it started out.  You may feel worse before you feel better.  Different people experience varying degrees of unpleasantness, or none at all, during this “healing crisis,” which may include nausea, weakness, dizziness, headaches, light-headedness, rashes, bad breath, flu-like symptoms, and fatigue….

“A healing crisis is actually a good sign.  But it can be too intense, and therefore discouraging or even harmful.  So monitor your progress closely .  Some mild discomfort can be expected, but you should not experience undue discomfort.  A healing crisis should be short-lived.,,,”  (pages 176-177)

As I have mentioned in previous posts I seriously doubt these authors come from the malevolent world of severe early abuse and trauma, so it would be natural for them to “forget” to mention EMOTIONAL healing crisis that must, I believe now, be a natural part of this detoxifying process for we survivors.

I am grateful that last night I went to sleep instantly and slept just fine.  Today I am better than fine because I am so aware of how painful the hours of yesterday and the night before were! 

I am so determined to accomplish this life change that will enable my body to heal itself that no drift or crash into a healing crisis of emotional HELL is going to keep me from continuing to move forward.

Everyone I know in town today who saw me when I went in to run errands commented on the incredible transformational changes in me!  I have lost 20 pounds since the beginning of this month, have a buoyancy in my gait I haven’t felt for over a decade, my spirit shines with new intensity in my eyes, and hope and confidence inform my every spoken word.

What is this?  Could this be life?

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There are times in our healing when what we need is so important that we must find a way to translate what is nearly always written by non-severe early abuse and trauma survivors presumably for the SAME — into something we who ARE such survivors can understand and work with.

My guess is that as Shelley Redford Young and Robert O. Young wrote the words I am going to include in this post in their book, The pH Miracle: Balance Your Diet, Reclaim Your Health they had no thought for the kind of lives — usually greatly difficult and shortened lives — that infant and child abuse survivors endure.  Because I don’t see how I can continue to live much longer or with any quality of life in a body that has lost the ability to digest ANYTHING without a run immediately to the bathroom I am left without any choice but to try to find a way to help myself to heal.

There are wonderful ideas in the following passage and there is nothing actually preventing we survivors from apply this wisdom to our own situation.  I do feel it is important for me and other survivors to keep in mind NOTHING about our life is as it might seem to people who are completely uninformed about what early severe trauma can do to its victims.  Yes, STRESS is STRESS – and even though we have lived with great traumatic stress and its distress, the physiological impact on our body CAN be lessened.

Enough.  Here is a section from the chapter “Motivation — How to Get It, How to Keep It” from the book mentioned above that is the basis of my current cleansing, healing efforts.

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THOUGHTS AND EMOTIONS

“Those who wish to regain their health [note:  Severe early abuse and trauma in childhood greatly interferes with our ability to grow up entirely healthy in the first place.  This in NO way prevents us from healing to the best of our ability!] or prevent health challenges must be properly motivated to address the issue on all fronts, including eating, drinking and thinking.  This is not just a diet; the true pH miracle is a lifestyle.

“The eating and drinking part is actually sometimes the easiest.  The “thinking” part includes your thought processes, belief system, psychological health, emotional well-being, personal level of consciousness, and an entire host of attitudes, feelings, and behaviors.

Emotions can cause even more acid [not good, harms the body] than food and drink.  Powerful negative emotions come from all sorts of places and in all shapes and forms.  They can include thoughts, feelings, experiences, conscious and unconscious memories [I certainly include the vast amount of body-based trauma memories survivors of infant and child abuse trauma and neglect carry], and dreams.  Any of the many and various problems in living can cause emotional trauma.  They all come under the umbrella of “stress.”  And stress causes signficant amounts of acid to be dumped into your body.

“The great majority of people, even people in the most profound medical crisis, can return [note:  Don’t let this concept stop you!] to an excellent level of health if they conscientiously work to rebalance the body’s original alkaline design.  Conscientiously changing their eating, drinking, and lifestyle, and carefully following the pH Miracle program, they can and will be successful.  They can return to a level of health they have no experienced for many years, a level of health they never even quite imagined.

“But a small percentage of people fail to find full good health despite working hard to change their unhealthy eating and drinking habits.  They share one crucial trait in common:  They are challenged by psychological, emotional, behavioral, or spiritual problems that, perhaps, they do not fully address [note:  Well, we survivors have more of these and suffer from them more intensely than I believe these authors could ever “quite imagine.”  Improved health is STILL our birthright!], and in any case do not fully resolve.  [note:  Personally, being honest and completely realistic, given the extent of my infant-child abuse history I don’t believe it is humanly OR miraculously possible to “fully resolve” the extensive trauma-based troubles I AND my body face.  But I am giving this my ALL anyway!]  Where they fall down [note:  Grr!  Knocked down and nearly crushed to death during our most vulnerable stages of development is more like it!  I have to say, this kind of bias IRKS ME!  I’d like to see any non-survivor live through and live with the consequences we survivors do!  Anyway, continuing to focus on the positive, I continue.  We DO do some of what the authors describe and we can always make improvements.] is at the “thinking” part of the pH protocol.  Their patterns of thinking, ruminations, and emotions aren’t addressed in enough detail.  Unhealthy beliefs, attitudes, biases, value systems, or a diminished level of consciousness hold these people back.  They seem unable to bring an end to ongoing guilt [note:  I would certainly add shame.], grief, blaming, resentment, anger, self-pity, fear, anxiety, feuding, self-loathing mistrust, greed, false pride, spiritual confusion, and son on.  Perhaps they need professional guidance to deal with whichever of these issues dogs them, but do not seek it.  The stress of all this adds significantly to the acid in the body, and not even an alkaline diet can fully balance it out.  [note:  I would say the diet changes are a very good start!]

“When physical health challenges are accompanied by serious emotional and psychological problems [note:  I would say, very frequently so closely caused by these that we have huge difficulty disentangling the two.], you must somehow address them.  Despite what you may be thinking, it is not always a “shrink” that provides the answer.  There are many ways to relieve stress and begin to reduce this part of the acidic overload.  Of course it’s true a well-trained and experienced psychologist, psychotherapist, or psychiatric social worker can make a critical difference.  But so can a minister, priest, rabbi, or other spiritual adviser with years of experience and wisdom.  A good book can set you on the right path.  Reading the works of great thinkers in the realm of intellect and spirit is an excellent way to change your mind-set and quietly challenge the type of thinking that keeps your body mired in an acidic lockstep.  (Some of our favorite books are by David. R. Hawkins, MD, PhD, who writes about the body/sense/mind/intellect/spirit continuum so clearly that simply reading his work will immediately raise your level of consciousness.) You may want to study the stories of miracle workers, saints and mystics, religious martyrs, past-life experiences, near-death experiences, people who apparently died and came back to life, and the lives of Great Spiritual Souls such as Jesus, Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Mohammad, Joseph Smith, Brigham Young and Shirdi Sai Balba.  As you become more aware of how higher consciousness actually operates, it helps you leave behind some of those thoughts and behaviors that pull you down.  Higher consciousness equates to more peace and alkalinity for the body.  Lower consciousness equates to more turmoil and the creation of unwanted acid.

“To fully experience the pH Miracle for yourself, you must explore, pursue, investigate, read, inquire, and search for answers that set your mind at ease.  Why do bad things happen to good people?  What are we to learn from accidents, devastating illnesses, or setbacks in life?  How is it that some people seem to be able to forgive and forget or simply turn the other cheek?  How can you learn to do that?  What does it mean when people say, “Expect a miracle?”  What does it mean when people say, “There are no mistakes in life?”  These are questions that everyone must answer for themselves.  Look for ways to answer.  Develop understanding.

“To gain or regain your ultimate goals in health and wellness [note:  Well put.], your motivations must reach out far enough to encompass the broadest spectrum of the world around you.  You must strive to eat the foods that bring healthy physical and mental processes to your life, drink the fluids that help to cleanse and purify your body, create the thoughts in life that allow you to forgive yourself, cut others some clack, look only for the good in every situation, and bring peace and understanding to yourself and those around you.

“The value of change is the result.  In this case, the peace and harmony that can arise from embracing the change of this program as part of everyday life are yours for the asking.”  (pages 240-242)

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Late last night as I sat outside in a gentle breeze under a brilliant moon to the south (to become a full “super moon” of even greater beauty tonight) I looked toward the northwest where my neighbor’s huge pine grows.  The sky was dark indigo in that direction.  There I saw a very bright white light.  “Is that a planet,” I wondered.  “What could be that bright?”

It was not a planet.  It was moving, but moving to the southeast too quickly to be a satellite. 

It seemed about as high as the jet planes I occasionally see flying at night over the Mexican border line.  I wondered about passport and customs checks, about who was on this jet and about what their destination might be.  I waited for the sound of the jet engines.  Only silence.  There was no sound of motors.

I noticed the light grew larger and I wondered if a particular turn of the jet had caused it to catch a full reflection of the light of the glorious moon.  By then I was becoming extraordinarily intrigued in this object.  “Am I watching my first UFO?”

I had never seen a night-flying jet heading into Mexico whose flight path took it right over my house.  Just as I expected it to reach a point nearly right over my head the light blinked out as if it had never existed before.  Gone.  Vanished.  “What?”

I stood and walked around my yard to see if I could see where this object had gone on its pathway.  There was no sight of it – anywhere.  No trace.  Gone.

On this warm summer night I believe I finally DID get to see my first UFO.  I have spoken over the 14 years I have lived in this high desert on the Mexican line to several people who grew up here and remember seeing them – some of them rather closely – all of their lives since childhood.

Well, I believe I saw one and the experience has somehow gently, subtly changed me.  It makes me wonder what other people’s personal experience is when they see their first one.  Not overly wonder, but wonder just the same because I suspect such a reaction must tell a lot about a person’s beliefs about being alive and about their spirituality.

I also smile a bit at the lore in our family about my maternal grandmother having formed the first UFO abductee support groups in Los Angeles after she moved there with my mother in the 1940s.  True?  I doubt we will ever know what grandmother was up to, but the stories fit what I know of my grandmother.

Personally I have no fears that any UFO’s inhabitants have sinister intentions regarding humans.  I think they watch to see how we mature as a species.  I see no harm they could inflict upon us that could be greater than the harm we are already doing to ourselves, to one another and to this precious, glorious planet we have been gifted to reside upon.

Was that some craft built by our own species?  I certainly don’t know.  I do not believe that it was.

It doesn’t matter to me.  I matter to me and somehow I feel a little more special for having seen what I did last night.  I only sense beneficence from this experience, a warm sense of not feeling so alone here.  That comforts me as if I was briefly in the presence of benevolent angels that for a few moments I could actually see.

My take is that I feel safer, more protected, more connected in grander ways to life itself.  My response brings me an expansion of my soul and mind to include an increased felt sense of how intricate and HUGE the web of life really is that we are all a part of.

I feel gladdened and encouraged to continue my own healing journey because I believe every choice and action every person makes and takes influences the healing of all and an increase in goodness is shared by all life – near and far.

I contemplate that because there is only one God Who made everything everywhere, there is no stranger to us in existence.  I find myself thinking that it may well be that our species has been chosen and designated by God to be the mirrors of His spiritual light so that we will become the spiritual leaders of all of his creation.  All of it.  This would mean that ALL that exists on this side of the next non-physical world NEEDS us to grow up and do our job.

Maybe those who visit us in UFOs know this as fact.  They are then waiting for us to figure this out.  It may be that the sooner we grow as the blessed, great spiritual species of power for goodness that we are the better off all of life will be.

If this is true everything all of us do matters a great deal.  It is important.  Today I am even more inspired to do my part.  Back to my green organic vegetable juice cleanse I go!  Yet I will never be quite the same now that I both saw – and then did not see – that brilliant moving light as I was before.

I have a renewed sense of purpose and a new sense of hope.  Nothing about being in this life looks or seems the same to me as it did before last night.  I am glad.

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Our species has been given our detailed instructions that tell us how to create true and lasting peace and well-being among our species on earth.  What part will we choose to play in this grand unfolding?

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In today’s fast-paced world of junk food and junk news it’s a welcome moment when gentleness makes its appearance.  It’s in the world.  It’s in plants.  It’s in animals.  And it’s in many humans and many creeks and many breezes.

Do we bring out the gentleness in other people?  What brings out the gentleness in me?

I feel much better today and even did my 45 minute walk with no trouble today.  Gone is the scary ugly feeling of the previous two days when I could hardly lift one foot to place it in front of the other one.  It’s been 5 1/2 years since my last chemotherapy treatment for advanced aggressive breast cancer, but I know THAT feeling!  That is exactly what I felt like these past two days, like I had been given chemo.

If it takes a diet of strained fresh organic vegetable juice and a temporary life in my bathroom to clean up the toxic dump that the inside of my body has become then I am willing.  I can pray all I want to God for healing but I know faith is a partnership.  It is my time to do my part no matter how new and strange and uncomfortable this journey may be.

I am determined, and fighting my way through the effects of infant and childhood abusive severe trauma has taught me that my determination is my formidable friend.

I am drinking fresh juiced aloe right now.  As I strained it I realized I could put the little bit of fiber left over on the skin of my face.  Such small new learnings!  As I came back later to wash my face with tepid water I realized what a gentle plant aloe is, what a gentle action I was taking for myself in making space in my life to let it and all the other wonderful foods I am learning to consume (even if only in strained juice right now until my system has healed enough I can handle any fiber) to help my body to heal itself.

This is an extremely grueling routine.  I won’t say that it isn’t, but I am no stranger – no stranger at all – to grueling.  I can do grueling.  If I could not I would have long since been dead.

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I am finding that I am for the first time in my entire life bonding with my body and becoming consciously attached to this physical system that keeps my soul in this world.  Being born to a psychotic Borderline Personality Disorder mother (as I mentioned in my previous post) left me being hated and abused from birth through the next 18 years. 

I am not complaining.  That has never been my style.  But I was born a newborn.  I was born gentle.  I did not come from the devil at his bidding as his child with the desire to murder my mother as I was being born — as she so permanently believed (and “punished” me for).

To FEEL the truth of my innocent gentleness is coming through taking the best possible care of this body that I can.  This is serious cleansing and I need it to continue my life.  I kid you not, there is a plastic drop cloth pathway across my carpet – and you can figure what that means.

I am — we all are — always in the presence of angels.  As I go through this process I can nearly feel them touching what is becoming new skin, the new skin of Linda.  Our body uses every possible avenue it can to get rid of the toxins in our body — and certainly the horrible toxins created in our bodies given to many of us through early abusive trauma have residues inside of us that I believe can be released through a healing cleanse.

I am losing weight as the toxins stored in fat cells are released, giving the fat cells no reason to continue to function in my body.  I feel lighter.  The world is beginning to look brighter.  I have a long ways to go but for myself – I am heading down a gentle road of healing.

(More info on my cleansing is in previous posts.)

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I just had a realization that stuns me.  I didn’t plan WHAT I would experience as I drink nothing but strained green vegetable juice to alter my body pH to alkalyn so it can heal itself in areas that greatly trouble me.  (See recent posts.)  I live very near my bathroom, of course.  I am hungry all of the time.  But I am SO focused and SO determined to follow this through correctly.

This may take 7-21 days.  I don’t know how I will know I am done.  I am learning as I go to recognize what my body is telling me, especially about need for repeated daily doses of calcium, magnesium and potassium supplements.  But there is far more than just physical processes involved here, unless I include in “physical” the person that I am living in this body.

I have recognized how food is such a comforter to me.  I would reach out and consume all kinds of things if I could, and because I choose not to (can’t by the “rules” of this diet) I am left feeling exactly that hole inside of me that so desires to be comforted.  Food, of course, NEVER does that.  I don’t believe I am alone in my interactions with food that believes it can comfort me.

A few minutes ago I realized that in literal, physical ways I am remothering my infant, newborn self!!

Because my mother suffered a profound and permanent psychotic break during her labor with me that told her the devil had sent me to kill her (I was a breech birth), she hated me from BEFORE I was born for not being human, for belonging to the devil, for intending to murder my mother.  Nothing ever got any better.  (Mother suffered from Borderline Personality Disorder with psychosis.)

There are plenty of readers who come visit this blog whose mothers were profoundly abusive and NEVER gave for one INSTANT the kind of love, affection, care and comfort to them as infants.  This is infant abuse.

Every part of my life was contaminated with the toxins of trauma through Mother’s hatred of me.  Coming all the way down to my age now at 61, I realize that being limited to ONLY drinking strained green vegetable juice during this cleanse is like feeding infant me not milk, but the greenness of life itself.

I realized this as I prepared aloe juice for myself and set the timer for 15 minutes so I could go back for another 4 swallows.  I realized that from here on out I need to keep a detailed record of which vegetables are in the juice, when I consume the juice, how much I drink, how fast I drink it, and what happens to me afterwards (you know, the diaper part).  I need to maximize this whole process by gather information about myself in interaction with my pure “infant” diet.

I realized I am doing for myself in a very similar way exactly what I did for my 3 babies, what I would do for ANY baby!  And in this cleanse I trust absolutely that toxins of all kinds are being found and removed from the INSIDE of ME.  That’s what bodies are designed to do, and once the toxic waste dump that my body has become is all cleaned out, something new and wonderful is going to happen.  I know it.

A body that is clean and fed correctly is designed to heal itself.  I want to know what that feels like!  (Timer went off!  I will be back after my 4 swallows of fresh juiced aloe.)

I am confined to my home as much as I would be as a newborn.  I had to plan my entire morning’s intact of fluids and juice to make sure I could run to the post office in the afternoon to mail an important package without exploding before I returned.  I made it but barely.

What will I do with my time?  I have less energy, which is to be expected, although I still walk at least 45 minutes in the morning before my first juice.  I am learning to give myself permission to LAY BACK and to take it easy!  Not easy for me.  Not at all easy.

I sadly think of the children being born in our country who are (unless their mother polluted them while they were in her womb) perfectly pure at birth.  Then, a floodgate of polluted “food” is forced into their mouths!  This continues and continues until when we begin to choose our own food it is the COMFORT we are really after, the illusion of trust, feeling safe and loved.

I have posts on this blog – I don’t think I can find them now – where I wrote about the connection between community and food sharing.  We are a social species.  We are designed to be loved and to get along with one another.  When we are at war with our children, when we are at war with ourselves, there is no comfort in our eating!  When we choose horribly toxic food to consume, which is what 99.8% of the space in our grocery stores are full of, we are putting so much toxins into our acidified body that there is little hope we will reach our older age without suffering from some (surprise!) terrible illness.

Well, for now I will be my own GREEN BABY.  I am doing this cleanse because I realized for the first time in my life I can feel it inside myself that I WANT TO LIVE.  I CHOOSE LIFE!

I didn’t feel that at all 5 years ago through cancer treatments.  What I felt was that I didn’t want to die.  That is far from being the same thing as wanting to be here, to be alive, and to do so as healthily as I can manage.

I imagine there are schools of therapy that would “do” rebirthing processes with me.  Certainly my birthing was HORRIBLE!!  I don’t choose to go that way, it would not accomplish what needs to be done.  I need to take serious measures to bring my own body back to life — no matter how difficult this process may be.

After this is all done I know I will never be able to return to the foods I have eaten all of my life.  There is no magic.  I won’t get away with it any longer.  So be it.  I am ready.

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