Nourishment through Food–July Self-Care Retreat

I’m a feeder. I got the gene from both sides of the family, I think, and although not all of my relatives are feeder-dominant, those of us who are feeders are REALLY feeders. In other words, if I love you, like you, appreciate you, want to cheer you…chances are, I’ll try to feed you. Now, it may well be cherries or garden-fresh tomatoes or it may be chocolate, but food is my language. A friend reminded me that apparently in college I sent a card to a friend post-break up saying, ‘You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy cookies, so here’s the next best thing.’

Cooking, baking and feeding delights me (most of the time, of course…I love my days off, too). I love the challenge, I love the flavors, I love the smell, I love the uncertainty of trying something new and discovering my new favorite food…and yet, then there are all my food restrictions. And boy is that a balancing act. In the end, I’ve ended up discovering that I love to create different baked goods  (gluten-free, of course) for others and yet truly feel better when I am eating very simply myself. I get more excited about fresh peaches than I do about making myself a cake.  That’s especially the case during the summer.  Somehow hazelnut butter is more enticing than making myself hazelnut cookies.  Or chocolate hazelnut butter…mmm…And, of course, I got a kick out of Wendy sending me my Klout score, which says I’m “influential on cookies”.  I demand a recount!  I’d rather be influential on chocolate, not cookies!  So everyone now, tweet @cheryharrisrd and CHOCOLATE.

I had a lot of judgments about that for quite some time–that I should either be making more elaborate things for me, that I was somehow depriving myself or that I shouldn’t make foods that have  ingredients I can’t eat.  At the end of the day, plain is what my body most appreciates at this point in time. And, in some ways, gifting people with treats from my kitchen or garden is as exciting as eating them myself, just in a different way. I do enjoy the act and art of creation.  It would be like taking colors out of an artist’s box for no good reason.   In my mind, gluten is an exception–I won’t bake with it because it would pose too much of a risk to me, which is unacceptable.

Wendy is our host for Self-Care through food, and her post talks about the challenges of truly listening and honoring her body’s needs for real, simple, 100% gluten-free food.

This virtual self-care retreat is to inspire you all to make July a month of reflecting on self-care and the many ways to nourish ourselves.   We encourage everyone to participate in this event in a way that feels appropriate to them, whether through personal reflection, journal or other self-care.  If you would like to share your experience with self-care, we would love to include you in the experience, whether you join us for one week or every week.  You can write generally about self-care, or focus on one of the themes (movement, food, family/friends/pets, creativity and meditation and mindfulness), or write every week about each of the themes.  We ask that you link back to this post so that more people can learn about this retreat, and leave a comment for the weekly theme host, too!.  If you would like to be included in our  roundup, please email a link to your post, along with your name and blog name, to us at selfcareretreat at gmail dot com by July 30, 2011.  Feel free to use the badge in your posts.  Non-bloggers who would like to contribute,please email the full text to the same address and it will be included in the roundup.