Here’s some clouds from Southern Utah. You’re welcome. That place is incredibly beautiful. I mean:
I joke with Joe that we should go live there and by “joke” I mean “semi-serious” and by “semi-serious” I mean how about in two years or so. Poor Joe. 
I think part of my joke-not-joking is that we had such an incredible time doing the retreat there a few weeks ago. The entire event was just amazing. I really felt so, oh, I don’t know the right words, it was so big what I felt. But some good words are Useful and On Task and Meaningful and Just Right. And when you feel all the parts of something come together that you’ve been planning and you see how so many people feel great about it and get what they need from it, well….it’s just kind of amazing. I added this picture of Joe because why not.
You’ll have to excuse this stream of consciousnesses and pick through for the good parts due to the fact that I’ve got uncharacteristic pressure and pain in my ear regions and it makes for less than sharp conversation at times.
In my quest for Health & Wellness I make course corrections and try on new things. These New Things might be drastic or small. The course corrections might be just a tad one way or the other or a major right turn. But through it all I seem to have one question in my heart and that is this: Am I where I’m supposed to be, doing what I’m supposed to be doing and with whom I’m supposed to be doing it with? (I’m ever so sorry I ended that with a preposition but it couldn’t be helped.)
One thing I feel I should be doing are the H&W Retreats and the whoms are my sister and our daughters. It’s beautiful when we’re all together and educating and helping people feel more and more well. It’s truly like magic and if I could do it every day the rest of my life I would.
In order to really be “in tune” to someone’s frequency and be in a place to help them the most, I don’t want to muck up my brain and body with chemicals because it can short-circuit our connection. To that end I’ve cut out alcohol and almost all caffeine. I’m down to one cup of decaf a day and I’ll tell you what, the nightly beers were much easier to give up than my morning coffee. I’m feeling a much larger reward than anything negative with this change, though, because I’m not experiencing my afternoon “dip” that I’ve had for so, so long and I’m sleeping better. So, there’s that.
Being more “in tune” means I can pick up on subtler messages that someone’s body/energy is giving off when we talk. There’s so much happening in between the lines and woven throughout the conversation happening with words. I consider it a privilege to be able to tune into those things and it makes it so much easier when I’m not riding a high from caffeine, when I’ve had a good night’s sleep and when I can fully feel my own stuff and not mistake it for someone else’s stuff.
The pressure in my ears has come along with a rash on my neck that is Candida trying to drive me crazy dying off. Because I’m no longer drinking sugar every night (beer and wine) and that was my last main source of sugar, my host body is no longer as conducive to Candida and the yeast is mad. Really, really mad. The rash is itchy and red and looks terrible but I just keep rubbing coconut oil on my feet and encouraging it to get out, get out and keep on going. I upped my water and increased support of my liver. I upped my supplements and fermented foods. I send loving thoughts to my ears and my neck for doing such a great job with this process and then I drink another glass of herbal tea because that’s what I’ve got right now and it’s not that bad.
I wasn’t expecting Candida to burst out of my neck or stack up in my ears and it’s a constant reminder these days to keep an eye on what I’m eating, keep the sugar-foods low, add in more green smoothies and other things Candida doesn’t like.
Here’s my basic Green Smoothie recipe. It makes one really large glass of smoothie plus just enough extra that you’re irritated and don’t know what to do with it so you just stick it in the fridge and forget about the 1″ of old green smoothie and then it goes bad so you dump it and do it all over again. Just kidding. I totally don’t do that. I ask Joe to drink it and sometimes he even does.
1 Kale leaf, stripped off rib
1/2 avocado
1/2 cup probiotic yogurt
1/4 cup coconut milk
2 TBL soaked or sprouted sunflower seeds
Handful of frozen blueberries
Half a frozen banana
2 tsp Spirulina
Enough filtered water to make the right consistency
The banana and blueberries contain all the sugar I can handle right now but if you need some more sweetener, go ahead and add a little raw honey, raw maple syrup or un-sulfered molasses. (There’s a recipe kind of like this in my book.) Sometimes I add sprouted lentils.
I don’t have a great ending for this post (EAR PRESSURE) but I’ll leave you with a thought I keep having. What if we were all doing exactly what we were supposed to be doing, where we were supposed to be doing it, and with the people we were supposed to be doing it with? And what if we did that all the time? I think it would be incredible.
One more of the clouds in Southern Utah because I can’t even.
I’ve had my fair share of grief over the years and when you have a real conversation with just about anyone, you realize they, too, have had theirs. We live on the surface so much of the time, nodding our heads hello and nice to see you, which is to be expected when we’re all surviving with our heads just above the surface. 
