I am a twenty-something year old woman living in an Atlanta, GA suburb with my husband. I have a particular interest nutrition, vegan and vegetarian lifestyles, animal rights, mindfulness meditation, yoga and other exercise, mental illness and religion and how they pertain to whole health.
WHAT AM I WRITING ABOUT?
Health: The condition of being sound in body, mind and spirit.
WHY AM I WRITING ABOUT IT?
I'm on a personal journey towards whole health and I am compelled to document my research and learning experience. Throughout my life I have had many health struggles.
In MIND, I suffer with anxiety/panic disorder. This mental illness is crippling. Although I treat my anxiety appropriately by being compliant with my prescribed medicines, I feel very strongly about the importance of mindfulness meditation, yoga, and nutrition for the treatment of this mental illness. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to stop ingesting synthetically produced chemicals to treat my condition and replace the treatment with natural remedies, but I seek to try. If nothing else, I hope to find a balance between modern medicine and holistic health.
In BODY, I struggle with my body image and self esteem. Emotional eating and generally poor nutrition habits have interfered with my whole health. I've been a vegetarian since January of 2013 and have been dealing with an iron deficiency (anemia) since that transition from being a meat eater. I also have Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). I want to explore all the best ways to battle these issues with intelligent eating and nutrition choices. I want to be more educated on how to treat my body with kindness and respect by feeding it the best fuel possible. As my husband and I prepare to conceive our first child I want to use nutrition to enhance my fertility that is hindered by my PCOS.
In BODY, I struggle with my body image and self esteem. Emotional eating and generally poor nutrition habits have interfered with my whole health. I've been a vegetarian since January of 2013 and have been dealing with an iron deficiency (anemia) since that transition from being a meat eater. I also have Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). I want to explore all the best ways to battle these issues with intelligent eating and nutrition choices. I want to be more educated on how to treat my body with kindness and respect by feeding it the best fuel possible. As my husband and I prepare to conceive our first child I want to use nutrition to enhance my fertility that is hindered by my PCOS.
SPIRITUAL health is something I find to be very important as well. I have not been religious all my life, but I am a Catholic convert since 2011. I experience a lot of centering and grounding through prayer. My growing faith has helped me become a kinder person who is more understanding and respectful of others. I feel like simple kindness - not only to other people, but to yourself, the earth and all living creatures - is one of the secrets to happiness. I firmly believe that faith can help shape your mental health. Whatever your faith is, I respect it, and I hope to learn about all religions as well as my own.
I want to be clear that this is a blog documentation of my journey and nothing more. I do not seek to educate. I seek to learn. I am a beginner.
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Beginners
By Thomas Merton,
(20th-century Christian poet, theologian, and monk)
In the spiritual life there are no
tricks and no short cuts…
One cannot begin to face the real
difficulties of the life of prayer and
meditation unless one is first
perfectly content to be a beginner
and really experience oneself as
one who knows little or nothing, and
has a desperate need to learn the
bare rudiments.
Those who think they “know” from
the beginning never, in fact, come
to know anything…
We do not want to be beginners.
But let us be convinced of the fact
that we will never be anything else
but beginners, all our life.
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