Walk out that door

One of the most challenging things about motherhood for me is that there are no breaks. There’s no day off, there’s no vacation - in fact vacation can often feel like a more difficult version of daily life as schedules get disrupted, planning for our food can get tricky and everybody’s running low on sleep. No one gives mothers permission to take a break. There’s no national program where every mom gets three hours of free babysitting every week so she can get her hair cut or go to her OBGYN alone or take a damn nap. This basically exists in France and I wish I could unread Bringing up Bebe so I didn’t have to know that French mothers get to go shopping or go to the gym solo on the government’s dime.

I think that even if I had had run-of-the-mill children, I would have sucked pretty bad at taking breaks from motherhood. But I had Ellie and she’s been hard. I have felt for a very long time like I’m the only person in the world who can care for her. There have been many times when I’ve tried to relax and let go for a couple of hours, and her caregiver ends up feeding her the wrong foods and I return to a little girl with a tummy ache. It just didn’t feel worth it. So for a very long time, I didn’t take breaks.

Yummy nut balls

I know there are approximately 1,000,000 recipes for nut balls in the world, but I have been making them for years and made a version today that is the best I've ever had. I thought I'd write down the recipe so I don't forget what I did!

Ingredients:

1/3 cup brazil nuts
1/3 cup cashews
2/3 cup sunflower seed butter
1 cup pitted Medjool dates
1/2 cup shredded coconut
pinch Celtic sea salt

Put all ingredients into food processor and blend until it becomes a paste consistency and forms into a ball. You may need to scrape down the sides every once in a while.

Form into bite-sized balls and store in the fridge. Yum!

Where I like to hang out online

I haven't really figured out my relationship to this blog, even though I've been writing it for FIVE years now. I can't believe that can possibly be right. Some days I feel very share-y about our journey with food and allergies and health in general and other days I feel quite private about all of it. And sometimes those private days stretch into weeks and months.

I also think about privacy as Ellie gets older and I realize that this is her story as much as it is mine. I'm not sure how I'd feel if my parents had broadcasted my health history to the world during my childhood. Seems quite weird.

Focusing on the non-food aspects of health

This fall I participated in a program hosted by our family's nutritionist, Andrea, Nakayama, called the Girl's Guide to Hashimoto's. It was a tremendous experience for me and a healing experience for me to put my own health front and center for a while, and put Ellie's health on auto pilot (as much as I am capable of, anyway).

The program was a huge undertaking for me and I learned a TON. I learned a tremendous amount about my own phisiology, what Hashimoto's is, how my personal history and genetics got me here and how it expresses itself uniquely in me. The program had an active message board and I benefitted tremendously from the ongoing support from Andrea and her other nutritionists, along with the other participants in the program, who are walking this road alongside me. There is something very healing about realizing you're not the only one who experiences the symptoms you do ... that you're not alone.