november 21: addendum

i want to thank the well-meaning commenters who keep admonishing me to "take it easy" and "not be so hard on myself" and all that. i really appreciate the sentiment, and i also want to reassure you. i've been on this raw food path for almost 6 years. i've been up and down, on and off, and i've tried and struggled with just about every variation on a raw food diet there is. i was a cousens/wolfe disciple. when i discovered 811, i knew to my bones that this was the path for me, forever! and i still know that. falling off the 811 wagon is NOT my first fall off, but it was the most calculated, and by far the most regretted. there is a big difference, to me, between being "hard on myself," which involves a great deal of self-punishment and unrealistic expectation of fixing things right away, and being fully awake and aware and clear on just how painful the fall off the wagon IS. this sucks. it really does. it's painful. and it was hubris that made me think that even though every time i'd tried cooked food in my raw food lifestyle over the past 6 years, it has always led to misery and regret, i thought this time i could handle it. the blindness of sobriety. and the insanity of expecting different results from identical actions. the truth is that cooked food is poison, and eating it puts me in a position of needing to recover from food poisoning. and i'm going to have some more of that poison in a few days, at thanksgiving, and have to recover again.

when the drinker quits drinking, they wake up to their hangover and swear that they are never going to do that again. well, i'm a raw foodist with a cooked food hangover. i know, for a fact, that i will have this hangover again in my lifetime. i'm not going to blind myself. but it's also so important to remember and work from this place - i'm not in denial, i'm not in punishment, i'm in deep, tough, hard-core self-love. somehow, i have to learn. so i am learning now. that's what this is about. and that's what the blog is about. it's not so much about "inspiring" people, although i hope to do so again sometime. it's about getting honest, getting real, and getting sober. and you can't take that too easy.