Cats, birds, and nature don’t always – or maybe ever – mix. We get busy and distracted in our important lives – starting a new practice, entertaining and improving my level of fitness and oops. Right now I’m grateful to a tiny baby bird, who reminded me about the courage to begin again and again, to make space for practice.
Here’s what happened
Two days ago, a baby bird came into our lives and reminded us about moral clarity. I was pulling weeds in my garden, stood and came around the corner of the house and there it was – a naked egg-shaped baby bird between the paws of my two-year-old cat Bandit. Clearly alive. Clearly struggling.
My beloved and I live atop a hill overlooking an undisturbed field (no spring cut). There are too few uncut fields anywhere these days. A type of bird in New England nests in fields – I don’t know its name but I can show you two of them right now, perched in the tall grass courageously watching their nest and babies – I believe they are endangered.
I scooped up the hatchling so it would not be eaten alive, showed Craig, brought it inside, and made a little nest out of cotton and leaves in a flower pot. I thought I would just make it comfortable as it died and I tried to forgive myself for said death. I googled, made calls and started to find my way to people who could help with information or maybe even save this little one. That might take me off the hook for this possibly endangered bird that my cats have been feasting on while making me feel as though I was doing my part – check!
Fearless fighting Freddie lives
I found out that you can feed them softened cat food. It was clear this little one was not going to die immediately, his neck strained and little beak opened wide for the dropper. He grabbed that dropper and sucked with force. Wow. Impressive.
Through that first night, with (fearless fighting) Freddie cheep-cheeping every 45 minutes, and me rolling over to feed it, it was clear that 1. he might actually live and, and 2. we needed to – as every bird-oriented wildlife person will tell you – keep the cats in to give the other babies a fighting chance. Maybe weeks. Or forever.
Freddie dies but lives on
Freddie died the next day after a valiant effort – he spent much of a day and a half in that upstretched open-mouthed position that is so cute. He/she died for a hundred possible reasons including that he was too warm/cold/over-hydrated/underhydrated/had internal injuries/the wrong food/or handled too much. I loved that little bird. I could recognize his/her voice cheep-peeping every 45 minutes. Craig loved him too – we decided, after he made it through the night, that we would roll him into the family – do what we had to to take care of the little fellow. This in spite of the mess and stink and the fact that I really do not like bird-pets. We also have 3 cats.
Through the experience, we were reminded that once in a while doing the right thing comes and smacks you in the face. We have to keep the cats in, regardless of how cute they are as they scamper to the door when we make the slightest move in that direction. Maybe for weeks. At least until those two parents are no longer guarding their nest. Maybe indefinitely.
It reminded us, too, that as conscious beings we have to practice – we can’t just wander on and let nature and life take its course. We had a lot of house guests around the time Freddie came into our lives and had stopped practicing. We were less connected to nature than usual. Tending the land comes with responsibility – now that we know those birds are there, we can’t let the cats out. If a little Freddie shows up because we didn’t know or weren’t paying attention, we try to rise to the occasion. Peep peep!
Now what? The answer is always practice
Freddie is now resting-in-peace near his nest. I am grateful to that little fellow and to the practice of mindfulness that allows me to slow down enough to learn from all the crazy things that are unfolding around me.
A good reason to think about joining our online group – to begin (or begin again) to practice mindful living.
I finally got a glass pitcher with a cylinder in the top so that I can easily make herbal waters – cold water sun infusions. These are really the perfect alternative to soda or even to sparkling water in plastic containers.
Why Drink Herbal Water?
With herbal waters, you take a pass on the sugar and whatever else is in packaged drinks you purchase. But you also get a smidgen of phytonutrient and bioenergetic support (that certain je ne sais quoi – a delight of unknown origin) from herbs and other botanicals. Herbs do contain some of the most potent of nature’s medicines, and the flavors and fragrances you experience are those potent antioxidants that provide health-enhancing benefits like calming inflammation and helping to make your internal environment resilient.
How to Make Herbal Water
The recipe is so straightforward – it’s really more of a reminder.
Herbal water passes on the sugar and expense of soda and soothes your senses with some of the most potent of nature's medicines - phytonutrients.
Course Drinks
Cuisine Plant Medicine
Keyword Herbal Water, Recipes, Plant Medicine
Prep Time 15 minutesminutes
Steeping time 6 hourshours
Servings 4
Author Annie
Cost $2.00
Equipment
Pitcher
Ingredients
1 quartwaterclean, filtered
1 /2cupherbs & flavorings any edible fresh herb, root, flower or spice
Instructions
Fill a one-quart glass pitcher with water.
Place herbs and flavorings in something that will allow their suspension in the water - a clean small cloth bag, for example - I have a pitcher made just for sun-tea, with a plastic cylinder attached to the lid. A tea-ball would do the trick. There are an array of options available commercially.
Place pitcher containing herbs on a sunny windowsill or a sunny spot free from critters.
Leave for at least an hour, preferably several hours.
Remove herbs/flavorers, and enjoy as is or over ice. Keeps refrigerated for about a week.
Notes
This is one of those non-recipe recipes - perhaps it's more a technique. But, having a quart of herbal water around is a wonderful direct and simple way to connect with what is blooming or at it's peak in my yard. Simple refreshing plant medicine.
Here are a few of my favorite herbal water combos I’ve tried over several summers:
Fresh ginger and English mint – refreshing and delicious
Lavender and blueberries – sweet and soothing
Cilantro – like a light green drink – tastes cleansing
Watermelon and lime – sweet and tangy and what is it about watermelon that just makes me happy?
What’s Your Favorite Herbal Water Combo?
If the idea of botanical cooking appeals, check out Kami McBride’s book, Herbal Kitchen. It’s an inspiration, a classic and uses botanicals in a variety of creative ways, from herbal waters to soups to cordials and even bathing and beauty non-products. Check her out!
The last couple years have been tough. Through my challenging time, I had a personal experience of how prediabetes symptoms feel – I don’t recommend it. For me, it was the wake-up call I needed to refocus on lifestyle.
One indicator of how life is going generally is my eating – for years I had it together, surfing life’s ups and downs while my relationship with food was stable and happy. It helped that I work at a yoga center famous for its healthful food, and that I’ve studied nutrition for almost 30 years (still fascinated!). Being an “expert” actually heightens the misery – I’m sure many of you know of what I speak.
Over the past two years, when I realized several of those big life fears (I watched the love of my life die, quick and gruesome…then…he came back to life! wait, wha?), the place that slipped was eating (of course!). In my despair, movement-related self-care was also just too hard to keep up. I moved a little but not enough – and I just could not find the joy I always felt with dance, movement and fitness.
Through this time, my A1c crept up. While I know in great detail how to address it (hello, moderating carbohydrates and moving more) it hasn’t been easy. My progress until now has been rather slow. One thing that I’ve experienced (I think) is how someone feels when their blood sugar is on what I call the blood sugar roller-coaster, giving you prediabetes symptoms. It is a profound feeling and impacted nearly every moment of my day, and has a set of unhelpful thoughts attached.
Prediabetes Symptoms
While many people with prediabetes do not have symptoms, here are a few that can happen.
Fatigue. First, you’re tired. Really tired and unmotivated. It’s hard to comprehend a reason to get up and out of bed, and why-botherism is right there, pretty much all the time. There are moments of light, but mostly grey. Tired and unmotivated.
Unwellness. Then, you feel sort of crummy. Most of the time. Low energy and achy deep inside for no real reason.
Increase Thirst & Urination. I’ve always been a water drinker and didn’t notice this one, but some folks do.
Weird things begin to happen physically – blurred vision, skin things, digestive things, that have never happened before and don’t help with moving forward.
Cravings. For me, eating my favorite comfort/trigger foods (starch for me – mashed potatoes) became a heightened experience. I got trapped in a familiar cycle of emotional eating – stress, think of mash potatoes – eat mashed potatoes, overeat mashed potatoes – wish I hadn’t eaten mashed potatoes as I feel over-full.
Gather helpers. My counselor/therapist – weekly through the worst of it, gave me someone to get into the muck with – to go deep deep into my fears and feel them, honor them. I could never have moved on or begun to release my fears around losing my dude without her.
Find yourself a good dietitian. Every town has at least one excellent dietitian – that’s is the right fit for your personality and pocketbook. More dietitians take health insurance, and more dietitians also offer premium services like custom fitness routines, custom meal plans, and seriously regular meetings.
What is Prediabetes Anyway?
Prediabetes is when you begin to have problems with your blood sugar but you are not quite to the place of having a diagnosis of diabetes. It is action time, my friend.
Specifically, by the numbers, prediabetes is when:
A1c (a measure of blood sugar over several months) between 5.7 -6.4%
A fasting blood glucose of between 100-124 mg/dL
There are other indicators, like an oral glucose tolerance test, blood lipid levels that can also point to your risk of having prediabetes.
Why do I say it is action time? Because you can change it.
Update – My Story
At times, progress seemed a game of inches – sort of exasperating. It does, as you might imagine, heighten the excitement to also be an expert in the field. That’s where self-compassion comes in. Then, as I tried to show up for my own life, and my family’s life, over and over day after day, it began to slowly shift. I had a great leap forward – normal labs! Now, I’m feeling better, eating better. My mindset is better and I’m heading in the right direction. I just show up, over and over, and participate in my own life (I wasn’t for a while). Recovery is one step forward, one step back. Sometimes it’s two steps forward, one step back and I do my best to notice and celebrate that.
Everyone, when it comes to health and well-being, has both unique challenges and resources. I am not recovering without support and friends. I have support from the medical community – I live in the great state of MA – a place that attempts to provide care for all – and that care for me (and my husband) has been nothing less than life-saving. I have access to mental health and physical health care.
Take Your Next Step
As part of my healing and hopefully helping, I am now in private practice – both telehealth and face-to-face in Great Barrington, MA. Find out more about my personal lifestyle coaching.
Tell Me
What’s your story? What are the challenges and resources you have to heal your life? I want to know!
If you live in New England, this has been a chilly – OK freezing – spring. Our minds are thinking of fresh herbs and lightening up, but our palates crave warmth. It’s an excellent time for a fresh curry. Here’s a favorite: Pork Tenderloin Cauliflower Curry. You have here a one skillet meal, my friends, that takes about twenty minutes.
My beloved husband has, over the past year or so, become quite a connoisseur of quality food for less $. Do you know how sexy that is for a dietitian? Quite. I have become a student of his method of finding excellent quality food deals locally. It involves knowing when the local shopper’s guide comes out and knowing what’s on special. In last week’s supermarket circular, there was a two-for-one offer of pork tenderloins (and organic chicken breasts, by the way). Who knew?
Pork tenderloin is a lean and healthful meat, particularly when raised as nature intended – on a small farm with love and a varied diet. Here’s what I did with half of a pork tenderloin. This Pork Tenderloin Cauliflower Curry recipe is easy to modify. You may of course eliminate the pork and sub tofu or beans for a vegan curry. Chicken and shrimp are also easy substitutes.
Pork tenderloin is a lean and healthful meat, particularly when raised as nature intended – on a small farm with love and a varied diet
Course Dinner, Lunch, Main Course
Keyword cauliflower, Curry, Pork Tenderloin
Equipment
Large Skillet
Ingredients
1/2lbPork Tenderloinsliced into bite-sized pieces
2TbspSesame oil
1small head cauliflowercut into bite-sized florets
1cupasparagussnapped into bite-sized pieces
12ozcan coconut milk
2Tbspred curry paste
2Tbspchopped Thai or regular basil
Instructions
Coat the bottom of a large skillet over medium-high heat with sesame oil, add pork pieces and sear, turning, for about 4 minutes.
Turn head down to medium. Add cauliflower and saute for 4 minutes.
Add asparagus, coconut milk (give the can a good shake before you open it)
Stir in curry paste and simmer over medium heat for 5 minutes.
Slice into one of the pork pieces to make sure it is cooked through – no pink on the inside. When pork is cooked through, the cauliflower is soft, and asparagus is bright and al-dente (still has some firmness), top with basil and serve as is or over brown rice or another grain.
I’ve been a clinical nutritional biochemist for over 20 years, a yoga teacher and therapist for 15, and a student of the psychology of how people change and of consciousness for all my career.
Through my years of helping groups and individuals improve their health through lifestyle, I have seen hundreds (maybe thousands) of people who want to eat a healthful diet that supports who they are, but don’t.
It’s Tough to be Healthy
They can’t get started, can’t sustain it or get sidetracked by things that don’t work. It can be nearly impossible to eat well in our current (nutritionists call it toxic) nutrition environment.
Our modern culture is filled with mixed messages about food, weight, and how we should look and feel. The same is true for other aspects of healthful lifestyle – we want to be physically active yet our worlds are set up to be sedentary. We want to practice mindful resilience and stress-management yet we don’t have time because of the 24/7 culture of work, family, life.
Where I Fit In
I am an unapologetic proponent of spirituality as essential to health. Mind body and spirit have been fractured in our modern culture, and re-uniting and fully occupying our multidimensional selves in balance with the earth is the path forward that resonates for me.
One of the gifts of living right here and now is that we have the potential to be the re-integrators. We have at our fingertips the modern health sciences, and we also have new and accessible interpretations of ancient wisdom-sciences such as shamanic plant work, Ayurveda and tantra. Many practices from these wisdom traditions are proving to be effective modalities for addressing the mind-body-spirit split and toxicity of modern life.
Here’s How I see Health
Practicing an integrated life (imperfectly but regularly) maintains wellness and supports dynamic well-being. For a variety of reasons, most people don’t or are not able to sustain regular practice. Enjoying a plant-based diet, moving, taking time for rest and contemplation, and connecting with family like-minded people are components of a life that keep things in dynamic balance. Your unique variation on that lifestyle fuels your life force – healing is a feeling. But life, for nearly everyone, inevitably becomes imbalanced. It is our nature and indeed the nature of life here on earth to become imbalanced.
I also think that feeling bad about ourselves is overall the largest chronic health problem. Please please don’t feel bad about the choices you make. It’s the critical first step to change.
And Healing
The opportunity of imbalance is to learn more about who you are and why you are here.
You can become a discerner of the array of therapeutic options from evidence-based and wisdom realms, or find others you trust to help you sort it out. You can become a students of who you are – each of us are unique, and what works for someone else will not necessarily work for you. Then you can become a thoughtful experimenter of what works.
With time, life comes into a (often new) balance. Dynamic, changing balance that requires ongoing tending and practice.
It’s a long-term project and a lifelong dance. The alternative, for many, is to get sick before your time. You can do this. I’m honored to share what I know to show you how.
What’s your health philosophy? What’s most important for your health and well-being? I want to know!
