Day 24

B blueberries, celery, orange, pear, ginger

L posted early...no lunch or dinner yet

D
S kombucha

I swear, sometimes I am like a dog with a bone. I picked up my people pleasing phone call that I blogged about yesterday and began gnawing on it again this morning. So here are some thoughts that I went through during my morning processing. It’s not so much that I want to please people, that’s nice, but it’s more about me being afraid to cause any strife which I would then have to deal with. It’s been kind of ‘peace at any cost’ for me for a long time. Now if I had told the truth when I spoke to this guy all this would have been over and I’d be out smelling the flowers. But I think I was afraid I would be forced to be rude, or abrupt, or hang up, so to avoid that discord, I promised something I wasn’t planning on delivering thinking that that was the easy way out. Ha! Witness my turmoil. I do this with Mr. Wonderful too...say yes to things I don’t want. He’s always talking me into bike things. I took this visualization this morning and ran with it and had to laugh because it wound up with me having a whole garage full of bikes and bike stuff! How easily I can let myself be manipulated. I think I’m afraid to get people angry with me because I have always taken that anger in instead of seeing it as something being expressed by someone who is trying to show me something. I let the anger in and the fear, not necessarily reality based, is that it will destroy me. I’m afraid of being eradicated! So ok, when I was little and learned this particular lesson, that was true. If I pi$$ed the big people off I might very well cease to exist, but now I think it’s time to put on the big girl panties and deal with this. So thank you to my spark friends who commented on people pleasing because it prompted me to take a closer look at it. And yes, I realize I’m people pleasing by doing that, but I’m also pleasing myself.

Let me tell you an aside here and then I’ll get on with the story. I was telling my family recently about how clueless I was when I was a new mother and one of the things that got me through the infancy and early childhood of, especially, my firstborn, was to think about my ancestors...you know, the ones who lived in caves. They had no clocks, books, bottles, etc. and had to rely on their own innate biological wisdom to survive and also to care for the new life. Still today, I go back to that in my head as a means of problem solving. Of course my grandkids picked that up and ran with it. They now ask me periodically, ‘what would Og do?’ Og is apparently some cave person known only to children. So that’s where I went this morning...to ask Og. Now Og is a realist. She would have had that phone solicitor for breakfast! But all I had to do was put myself in her shoes...ooops, no shoes...feet...for a minute and the dam broke and tears were streaming down my cheeks. The upshot is that whatever it was that happened...I think of it as releasing old emotional issues...cleared a wonderful space inside me where I can now create a new way of being. Do I understand what happened? No. But I don’t need to. It’s the experience that’s the key. Or to paraphrase the Sufi poet Rumi...reasoning is insanity.

I’m not saying that everyone who is dealing with people pleasing needs to go about finding themselves a cavewoman to chat with, but we do need to confront our issues head on and not eat over them. My way has to do with meditating and journaling. What’s your way?

On another, but related topic, my juicing has made astounding changes in my external world as well as the internal one. I am impressed with the synchronicity that my life has taken on. I seem to be surrounded by people who are interested in what I am doing and are encouraging me. A total stranger came up to me in the parking lot today and said, ‘are you eating raw?’ Of course I said ‘yes’ and then it dawned on me that she had seen my bumper sticker which says, ‘Love people, un-cook them tasty food.’ I had to add the UN to the word cook myself! Turns out that she has been eating raw for a couple of years. Many ‘coincidences’ like that are sprinkled throughout my days and I’m loving it.

Tonight I’m going to hear Dr. John Fielder speak. He runs a natural living farm in Australia, and a friend of mine has studied and apprenticed with him. I’ll report on that tomorrow.

Thank you so much for your support.

BTW Mr. Wonderful has now crossed the continental divide. All downhill to the Atlantic, right? Oooops, forgot about the Appalachians!