THE OTHER DAY I ate a doughnut. It was my first doughnut in about 14 years—I’d been dreaming about them, and I thought it was finally time to try gluten in its highest glory: in the form of sugary fried dough. And let me tell you—it was good. It was so good that I laughed so hard I actually started to cry. You would be right to think this was a total overreaction to this most mundane manna from heaven, but that’s just because you don’t know what it means to me.
I started having gut problems when I was about 11. It was a season of funerals—three of my grandparents died within two years of each other, and my parents were suffering in their own cycles of grief. I was a preteen, facing the anxiety of puberty and graduating to new schools. At my maternal grandmother’s funeral, I got food poisoning and was keeled over a toilet for about two weeks afterwards. As an anxious young teen, I decided to try the age-old coping mechanism of refusing to eat. My body became sticklike, and I liked that. The closer I got to disappearing and the longer I went without food, the safer I felt in my own skin.
I eventually recovered from my eating disorder, but I dealt with pain and anxiety almost daily. I tried every diet I could find to feel better, and the only one that seemed to make any real difference was cutting out gluten. My symptoms were manageable but would flare from time to time, especially so after a traumatic sexual experience in my 20s. I spoke to several doctors, a dietician, and even a gastroenterologist, and all they would tell me was to eat more fiber. No one was taking me seriously. No one was helping me.
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Esta historia es de la edición Sep/Oct 2020 de Spirituality & Health.
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ONE WORD TO BEAT WINTER BLUES: BIOMIMICRY
CREATURELY REFLECTIONS
THINKING ABOUT RESTITUTION
THE HEART OF HAPPINESS
WAITING IN LINE
OUR WALK IN THE WORLD
ENTER THE SAUNA
Journalist Emily O’Kelly shares some uplifting research on the benefits of sweat bathing, a global healing practice not just limited to Northern climes.
the trail of ATONEMENT
One Ashkenazi Jewish family escaped pogroms in Russia and then flourished in South Dakota, but the “free land” of their new homestead had been unfairly taken from the Lakota by the United States. Generations later, a celebrated investigative journalist set out to tell the truth of the Lakota and her family, calculate The Cost of Free Land—and pay it back.
STALKING YOUR Mind
Stalking the Mind is part of an ancient Indigenous American Medicine Way to tame your guilt, fears, and shame. What we’re “stalking” are our thought patterns and beliefs that seem to create the opposite of happiness and wellbeing. It’s a powerful psychotherapeutic journey of healing without the diagnosis or labels.
LEAVING MESA VERDE
After 21 years of service at Mesa Verde National Park, RANGER DAVID FRANKS recently guided his last tour of the pueblos and cliff dwellings. He says he was fortunate to assist the archeologists with a variety of work and never lost his amazement with their ability to figure out how and when things happened. The question he still wrestles with is much deeper: Why they left?
BECOMING YOUR OWN LEAD RESEARCHER IN HEALTHCARE
PEGGY LA CERRA, PHD, downloaded a health app to aggregate her medical records and was stunned to see the phrase \"aortic atherosclerosis.\" What she did next is a helpful model for all of us.
ARCHETYPAL ASTROLOGY
\"Is astrology true?\" is the wrong question, writes RABBI RAMI SHAPIRO. He suggests that the truth is out there, but out there is really in here.
WELLNESS IN THE WILD
Spa aficionado MARY BEMIS takes the [cold] plunge at Mohonk Mountain House.