why i write about my health

 

 

When I first read the prompt for today, all sorts of happy thoughts raced through my head. I love to write. I love the topic of health. I love to cook great tasting healthy food. Blogging is a rather personal avenue. Why wouldn't I write about my health? And then the truth sort of hit me. I write about my health, mostly---so I won't cry about my health.

I am not in really bad health. That is not a perception I would ever want to leave. I take no medications. I can get up and go to work at a job I love every day. I can do my own shopping. I can do my own cooking. I can travel and entertain. I have a loving family, delightful friends, and an amazing little Frenchie, Coco. So very many people have far worse issues to deal with than I. My health issues are not the worst. They are, however, my issues, so they're the ones I deal with. And what I write about. 

Over the last few years, I have managed to identify one at a time many of the foods that have plagued me for years. I don't know when I started having problems with what seems to be 95% of the foods on the planet; it may have been in childhood. I didn't know what it was. I knew my stomach hurt. I thought I was whiny. I knew I had no energy. I thought I was lazy. I had no idea it could be the foods I was eating. And when I did make that connection, I tried all sorts of remedies, all in vain. I couldn't eat the foods I loved. I couldn't cook the foods I loved. And what the hell?! The pain never really went away. I kept trying and trying. Maybe I hadn't given it long enough. Maybe I made a mistake, missed an ingredient on a label. I tried so many different "cures" over the years, I probably couldn't remember them all, much less list them.

Now, even though I feel I have a little more of a healthy handle on the issues around my health, in the back of my mind I can always hear my own questioning voice wondering if this again will prove futile. Gee, I hope not. (That's my G-rated language for it.) I am still not pain free. I am, however, far, far healthier than I've been in years. And I get to cook real food. And write about it.