This horse is named Myst.

Grabbing a quick snack before the ride.

Show your shoes!

Weeks 1-7 have been easy-peasy, fun, energizing, and delicious.  This week, not so much.

It started with a  really hectic work week, and then real tiredness on Saturday.  That tiredness translated into two things:  I didn’t want to go to the farmers market or grocery store, and I didn’t feel like cooking.

I made hummus for lunch, without our usual spicy serranos or jalapeños to add to the mix.  Also the cilantro has bolted so what leaves I could harvest were muted in flavor.  Lunch was healthful, but also kind of sucked.   Saturday night I was content to have veggies and a salad but we opted for caprese salad – except we bought the wrong bread and I can’t eat mozzarella.

Sunday brought an unexpected trip to a local “famous hamburger” joint.  I got a portabella sandwich that was perfectly fine, but the fat in the onion rings made my belly hurt.  And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t eyeing the delicious looking cheeseburger that sat perilously close to me.

Not my burger

In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a bit whiney.

Today I’m doing my taxes, which would take away anyone’s appetite.  I made some spicy black-eyed peas (a recipe I love btw), but I’m conscious of the bacon that is not in the pot.  Maybe I’m focusing on what I don’t have rather than what I do have…

Everyone has meals that are “less than stellar.”  I’m blessed to have the time and interest to focus on  eating more healthfully, and creating interesting meals.  It’s not always going to be “tofu and roses.”  Some days I’m going to struggle.

I remember when I started running, my 8 mile run was so daunting.  I couldn’t sleep the week before the scheduled run.  I kept thinking, “There’s no way I can run 8 miles, it’s too far.”  As the weekend run approached, I realized I’d hit a wall, and that I’d constructed that wall with my own limiting beliefs.  And if I made that wall, I could tear it down.

I ran that 8 miles and many more after that.  I’ll get back onto the, “Man this food is fantastic” road tomorrow.  For tonight, I’m going to make good choices so I am nourished, and try to finish my taxes.

Things will look better in the morning.  I’ve learned that I need to plan ahead to have good foods ready to eat for days and nights when I’m less than motivated.  I also need to plan for busy work weeks.

Here’s the terrific Spicy Black-Eyed Pea recipe that is both quick and delicious.

Really, I’m a shocked as you are. I have, off and on my entire adult life, flirted with vegetarianism. I have vegetarian cookbooks, have “gone vegetarian” once a decade or so, and honestly love my vegetables.

But I also love meat, especially lamb. In fact, when I was a member of Leadership Boerne, I was given an award for being the only “lamb-eating-vegetarian” the group had ever met.

I’ve wrestled for years with how animals are treated in feedlots and after reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I can say with very few exceptions, I know the meat I have purchased has come from humanely treated animals. I’ve wrestled with the ethic of “dominion over all the earth” meaning that the earth and it’s creatures might not be here for us to consume and exploit. And yet, I’ve never been able to become vegetarian – for whatever reason, it hasn’t stuck with me.

Now, if you’re still reading, I haven’t gone all PETA – really, I was admiring some pretty leather handbags just this morning.

However, I have been reading about exercise nutrition for months. In order to get enough calories and the right kind of calories for my long runs, I started investigating protein and carbohydrate recommendations for distance runners. I learned a lot about nutrition and I knew some professional athletes are vegetarian or vegan, I wasn’t quite sure how that worked. What did they eat? How did they fuel their bodies?

And then there’s Lance.

I’ve had a long-standing admiration (some would say crush) for Lance Armstrong. I’ve spent many early mornings glued to the neighbors TV (because I didn’t get Versus) to watch him race and win the Tour de France. I have a Livestrong bracelet somewhere, and I subscribe to the Livestrong health newsletters.

And I follow Lance on twitter.

So in January or February, Lance tweeted about enjoying his Engine 2 breakfast and I thought, “What’s an Engine 2 breakfast?” So I googled Engine 2 because I care about Lance and had no idea what an Engine 2 breakfast might be.

Google came up with The Engine 2 Diet.

I learned that this handsome fellow, Rip Esselstyn, is a former professional triathlete, former All-American swimmer, an Austin Fireman, and a vegan. That was interesting on its own, but then I learned that in an effort to help a fellow firefighter, whose cholesterol was sky-high, Rip got his fire house to eat “plant strong.” They went vegan baby!

The firemen lost weight and their cholesterol numbers improved dramatically. The firehouse gained local and then national attention for eating differently, and the Engine 2 Diet was born. It’s based on good science, with good research to back it up.

Curious, I bought the Engine 2 Diet book, and read the stories, and made the choice to see what would happen if I stopped eating animal products, chose very low-fat foods, and learned to get my nutrition from vegetables.

The results have been amazing. The biggest change is that I feel energized. I’m not so sleepy in the afternoon, I wake up feeling ready to go. I’ve lost some weight, not the big 30+ pound weight loss you read about in the book but I don’t have 30 pounds to lose, and I already ate a fairly healthful diet before I switched. So the diet wasn’t a total shock to my system. But it was a pretty big change in my dinner plans.

President Clinton is Plant Strong:

I think President Clinton read The China Study, but I haven’t read it yet.

I didn’t go on the 28-day diet, I took on the dietary guidelines. t can’t say that I’m a “strict vegan” I have had a little bit of meat or fish here and there since I switched. I’ve got a freezer full of free-range organic lamb, and I’m going to help consume that delicious lamb. I still drink 1/2 & 1/2 in my coffee, but I mostly eat low-fat, delicious, plant-strong foods.

It’s funny, I’ve felt a little self-conscious about it all. I haven’t wanted to tell people that I’m eating plant-strong, or (gasp) vegan. Perhaps they’ll think I’ve gone off the deep end, or that I’m now really difficult to feed, or suddenly no fun to out to eat with, or somehow super fussy. Really, I just want to eat my veggies and be healthier. I didn’t take before and after cholesterol numbers, but I’m interested in getting my routine blood work next month, because I know my fat intake has shifted dramatically, and while my cholesterol was good before, maybe now it’s really good.

It’s also interesting to me that I’m a vegan because of the health benefits of a plant-based diet, and not because of an ethical disagreement with eating animals. I think I’ve come a long way.

Here’s a link to the Engine 2 Mighty Muffins. I’ve made these twice and the second time I doubled the walnuts and craisins (I haven’t tried using raisins). The muffins are filling and healthful and I think they are delicious with a cup of coffee before I start my day or head to the gym.

I couldn’t sleep well because joints and muscles were complaining at night.  I felt pretty good during the day but when my body and mind had time to rest, the complaints came loud and clear.  Additionally, my run times were getting significantly worse.  I’ve never worried about being a slow runner, or even a slow walk/runner, but I was losing time in a big way.  On my 18 mile run, some of my miles were a full 5 minutes slower than regular miles.  It was grim.

My instincts told me I needed to stop trying to get to the marathon and listen to my body.  I checked with a friend who coaches college runners, and he agreed.  He told me that my base mileage wasn’t sufficient to support the marathon training.

Here’s what that means:

• I was running 3 mid-week runs averaging about 10 miles total
• I need to be running 3 mid-week runs that average around 20 miles total before I add on the marathon long runs.

I was under-prepared and my body knew it.

It was a sad, rainy Sunday afternoon when I sat down at my computer and cancelled my registration for the New Orleans Marathon.

I cried a lot.

But I also had the sense that I’d done the right thing, and that by listening to my body, I had avoided real injury.

Sometimes, it’s really difficult to do the right thing.  I had to put aside what I wanted to be true and just look at what was really true.  I had good feedback from my body.  It took weeks for all the aches to stop, but I am now pain-free.

My new challenge is now to start running again.  That seems ironic to me.  I struggled to let myself not run 22 miles, now I’m struggling to get out the door to do 2 easy miles.  Maybe I’m afraid they won’t be “easy” or perhaps I’m afraid I can’t really run 2 miles.  I don’t fully understand it.

Let's go!

But sometime this weekend, I’m going to lace up my shoes, turn up the volume on my iPod and get a road-level view of the wildflowers.  Since my mileage goal is low – 2 miles with a rest break in between mile 1 & 2, it’s not going to take me long to do the run.  In fact, I’m certain that writing and publishing this post will take longer than that run.  But it’ll be a big run in terms of conquering fear, and I’m looking forward to a new beginning.

For a zillion good reasons, the annual card sending did not happen.  We typically take a goofy family photo that includes  the four pretty-good Labrador Retrievers.  It’s an event just getting the dogs all sitting, all facing the photographer, and then we cross our fingers and toes in the hopes that at least one photo will have all eyes open and happy smiles on our faces and muzzles.

By Thanksgiving, I knew the annual photo wasn’t going to happen.  But I had hopes that I’d send Christmas cards to friends just to say, “Hi,” and to let friends and family them know we are thinking of them.

That didn’t happen either.

We received fewer cards this year, probably because we didn’t send any.  I have been wondering if the annual sending the Christmas card has given way to the e-card.  Or perhaps the well-intentioned “Merry Christmas” Facebook status update is what people “do” now.

I love getting Christmas cards, New Year’s cards, Happy Holiday cards, Solstice cards, Epiphany cards – you name it- I love them all.  I don’t want to lose touch with friends, and I’m promising myself that I will send cards this year.

Today is January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany and the end of Christmas season in the church calendar.  Whatever your faith, I wish you blessings of joy, peace, and love for this new year.

Cynthia

“There’s no way I can run a marathon.”

“I can do it, I can run a marathon.”

“26.2 miles – you have to be joking.”

“I think I can do it.”

“It’s going to be hard and maybe scary.”

“I can do it.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Just a little further every run and I’ll have it.”

“No way.”

“Way.”

Some days it ends with “No way,” others, “Way.”  

Argh.

This is Pippin, relaxing in my office.

He is confident, playful, and open to the joys that the world has to offer

I want to cultivate more of that open heart and open hand – or open paws – engagement with life.

May you rest in peace.

A few years ago, I started giving myself a Reading Week – oh sometimes it’s a Reading Weekend, and sometimes it’s a set number of mornings with nothing on my to-do list but “read.”  This year, I have given myself 7 days.  I cancelled client sessions and made arrangements to get away and read.  My master plan includes early morning runs too but so far, those haven’t materialized.  Maybe tomorrow.

I have been reading a lot of novels recently, so I devoted this week to reading works on shame and sexual shame.  Shame is a normal part of being human but sometimes shame overcomes a person and sets in motion a wide variety of very damaging defense mechanism.  One author calls in “soul murder” – the self is so shamed, it gets so small that it seems to cease to be.  The shamed self is replaced with a mask, or false self and mask is all that the world sees.  Or rather, that hask is all the shamed person hopes the world will see.  It’s such a  powerful subject…

Here’s my reading list for this week, in case you’re interested:

• Healing the Shame that Binds You by John Bradshaw
• Letting Go of Shame:  Understanding How Shame Affects Your Life by Ronald Potter-Efron
• An American Childhood by Annie Dillard
• Telling Secrets by Frederick Buechner
• The Wounded Heart:  Hope for Adult Victims of Childhood Sexual Abuse by Dan Alender
• The Fall of the House of Zeus:  The Rise and Ruin of America’s most Powerful Trial Lawyer by Curtis Wilke
• The Intimacy Factor:  The Ground Rules for Overcoming the Obstacles to Truth, Respect, and Lasting Love by Pia Melody

Purple bean blossoms, but no beans

Last summer, my tomato plants produced about 100 lbs of tomatoes each week.  That’s a lot of tomatoes and I’d hoped to sell some of my produce this summer.  Tomato pollen dies at about 96 degrees, we’ve been over 100 for weeks and weeks.  This summer I gather a small handful of tomatoes weekly; weakly.  It’s been such a hard year to garden.

As I walk around the property, I mostly walk on dead grasses and powdery dirt.  It looks like a winter landscape, except it’s August.  I find I am wishing for winter.

There are times in life when things get difficult and we are called to put every ounce of energy we have into making things better.  If this were one of those times, I’d be pouring compost on the plants and watering several times a day.  If this were an important relationship that was struggling, I’d be focusing my efforts on communicating, and getting therapy, and spending time reflecting on what I could improve.

There are also times in life when what is healthy is to say, “Enough.”  That could be, “I’ve done enough,” or, “I’ve had enough,” or, “Enough already!”  With the drought, I’m now concentrating my watering efforts on keeping the foundation of the house watered, and probably not doing that enough.  I catch myself thinking, as I water the struggling tomato plants, “What if it doesn’t rain?  I’m going to wish I had this water to drink instead of having spent it on struggling tomato plants.”   Sometimes relationships chip away at the soul, making us less of ourselves rather than nudging us to be more fully ourselves.

Sometimes, you’ve given all you have to give and it is time to stop.

It’s hard to let go of the garden.  I started most of these plants from seeds in January.  I watered them by hand, and carried the flats of seedlings out into the springtime sunlight and tucked them back in their warm storeroom every night.  It’s challenging to let go of things that hold a lot of emotional energy for us whether it’s a tomato plant, an argument with a spouse, a failure at work.  It can be really tough to stop trying to make something happen, or to let go of our fantasy of how things should be, or could be if only they’d change.

Here’s a little wisdom from the Buddhist tradition:

Two Buddhist monks were walking along a path when they came to a shallow, muddy river. A woman in a beautiful dress waited there, not wishing to cross for fear of ruining her beautiful dress. One of the monks lifted her onto his shoulders – something that he was absolutely not supposed to do – and carried her to the other side, where he set her down (dress intact) and proceeded along the path with his fellow monk. After a few hours, the second monk, unable to continue keeping quiet about what he understood as a violation of the code by which they lived, asked his companion, “Why did you pick that woman up and carry her across the river?” The first monk replied, “Are you still carrying her? I put her down hours ago.”

What are you holding onto?  What things are you trying to change or control?  Is it time to let go?

Dead strawberry patch with dead and dying tomatoes in the background

You know, you still love them because they are part of your family, or a close friend.  However,  in the quiet places of your mind, you think, “You have become such an old codger!”

So my question is this; how do we avoid becoming so rigid?  How do we maintain our core values and continue to interact with the world around us in a way that is active and creative?  Is it even possible?

Is “old fartishness” inevitable?

The problem is that some people  trade on pleasing and agreeable.  Somewhere along the path, they have decided that “nice” is the way to get through this world.  It’s almost  as if the broad range of human emotion and human interaction is reduced to “nice and agreeable.”   When presented with a challenging situation or difficult person, nice is the only resources they have on hand.

When the difficult or challenging event occurs, most humans feel many emotions and may react in different ways.  Anger, frustration, sadness, fear, etc., are normal responses, and each might be appropriate and healthy for in our imaginary difficult situation.  The person who only deals in niceties may feel all these feelings too.  But the feelings  are often perceived as “bad” or “wrong” or “uncontrollable” so they are pushed down deep inside and what is given to the world is “nice”.

This pushing down of real feelings and responses is often learned in early childhood.  In an effort to get children to conform to some imaginary set of social rules, we tell them to be “nice.”  Imagine two chidden fighting over a toy, the adult tells them, “Be nice,” which really means, “Stop asking for what you want and be quiet or else you’re gonna get it.”

Sometimes the mandate to be nice is overt and more often the message is sent in a thousand subtle but unmistakable ways.  Whatever the method, the child learns the lesson well.

Emotions help us understand ourselves and the world around us.  Our emotional, feeling self akin to one of those indoor-outdoor thermometers.  Emotions give us the temperature inside ourselves, and how that temperature relates to the outside world at that moment.

Pushing down our emotions doesn’t make them go away, but we can bury them so deeply that they become more difficult to identify and use in daily living.  It’s almost crippling to react to this complex world of people and events with “nice” as your only acceptable response.

There is hope.  Most people can reconnect to the world of their emotions and develop understanding, flexibility, and confidence  using the emotional gauges we’re born with.  It takes effort, and it’s often frightening to consider letting those feelings out, and dealing with the consequences.  The reward comes from greater self-knowledge, increased understanding, and more fulfilling relationships with others.

A lot of things aren’t going “right” right now.  It feels like I’m pushing against a brick wall.  Nothing serious, just a series of tasks which ought to be simple, for various reasons, are anything but simple.

I’m frustrated.

This isn’t an “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” kind of day.  It’s just one of “those” days.

How do you get through days like this?  We all have them.  I’m open to suggestions and I’ll report back later on how the day finally turned out.

A friend’s 31-year-old husband was killed in a car accident – hit by a driver going the wrong way on the highway.

A former student got a respiratory infection and died shortly after –   She was 25.

Another friend went in for a routine surgical procedure.  The surgeon discovered she had cancer, and it had metastasized.

We wake up in the morning, and assume that the day is going to go on as expected.  We’ll do our various chores, go to work, see the people we love, tend to details – a day in the life.  But things can change in the blink of an eye.  We don’t always have forewarning, we don’t really know what will happen next.

We live “as if,” as if our lives will continue to go on as expected.  I suspect we’d never get out of bed if we spent all our time thinking about what might  happen or things that could go wrong.

But that comforting thought of “everything is fine, and  therefore, everything will stay fine” can lull us into complacency.   We take things for granted.  We let the busy-ness of our lives overshadow the love that binds us to each other.  We feel love and compassion, but we decide to tend to that later – first the laundry, and errands, and…

We’ve all heard stories of people, on their death beds,  resolving long-standing grievances.  That’s an awesome healing moment.  But the thing is, we don’t always get to say goodbye.  We don’t get that “perfect time” to apologize, or make amends or express our love and affection.

Life happens and so does death.  Just as we should all tend to our “end things” like having a will, doing advance medical directives and durable power of attorney, shouldn’t we also tend to the emotional health and well-being of the people we care about?  We don’t have to have “loose ends.”   We can build our connections and tend to the business of loving one another today.

Take the time to look in the eyes of the ones you love.  Say, “I love you.”  Say, “I love you,” even when you are mad at each other.  It really does matter.

Stop multi-tasking and listen to your spouse, to your children, your friends.   It’s the connections in life that bring us the greatest joys.

Don’t miss them.

I used to teach with Jennifer’s husband Kurt, and Jennifer and I have struck up a friendship on Facebook and DailyMile.  Jennifer is bright, witty, and a good person.  She is also a writer with a new book coming out this fall.   I can’t wait to read her book, and in the meantime, I hope you’ll check out her blog and of course, read my piece:   Why I Run.

I haven’t blogged much since I started preparing for the race, due in part to the time it took to get ready.  I’m always a little hesitant to use the word “race” because I’m a slow runner.  So the mornings when I would normally blog or tweet, I was outside somewhere, running and walking and generally enjoying myself.  I remember Roger Soler telling me that he doesn’t run marathons any more because of the time it takes to train.  I understand what that means now.  If you go out and run 8 miles, it takes the time to do the run, and then the rest of the day to lay around and be exhausted.  Okay, probably not for Roger Soler, but that’s my general training plan.

This is me just before I ran 8 miles, with a little help from Kendall Jackson

I was afraid that this blog would turn into a blog about running and I didn’t really want that to be the focus.  Now it’s June and I think skipping the “blogging about running” was a mistake.  I learned so much from the training and running, lessons that can be applied to other aspects of life.  I missed out by not sharing them.  So here’s the plan:  I’m going to blog about running, and hope you’ll come along for the ride.  There will be regular “Garden Gate” type posts too,  but writing about running will free up some of my brain space and besides, I think it’ll be fun.

The single biggest lesson I’ve learned (so far) is that I’m strong.  I mean that in a physical sense.  I can run 14 miles and not die.  I can run when the weather is cold or hot or really windy – it might not be pleasant, but I’m strong enough to push through it and “get ‘er done.”

I’m also strong emotionally.  I had knowledge of my emotional strength before taking on the 1/2 marathon, but I have a “don’t give up” spirit that I haven’t been tapping into enough.  My training for the 1/2 marathon generally meant that I’d get dropped off miles from my house, and I’d have to get home.  I could run, I could walk, I could crawl if necessary, but the only way home was “through.”  I had to run through my fear of failure, through my aches (and internal whines about being much too old for this sort of thing), through legs feeling like lead, through disappointment that I wasn’t running an 8 minute mile (man I’d love to do that.)

Katy Perry’s Firework is on my running playlist and includes this lyric:

“It’s always been inside of you, now it’s time to let it through.”

That sums it up for me.  We have inner strength that we don’t necessarily use and it’s time to let it out.

You gotta ignite the light and let it shine!

Baby,  You’re a Firework!

The sisters were articulate and handled the questioning with a tremendous amount of grace.  They were clear about the depth of pain and damage they’d endured.  They were genuine, they are survivors.  I’ve worked with hundreds of men and women who have survived rape and incest, and I admire their willingness to be so vulnerable.  I admire their inner strength, it takes a mountain of courage to tell the truth about being abused.

But telling their compelling and heartbreaking story wasn’t enough for the Oprah show.  We, and the young women, had to  hear disturbing details about what their perpetrators said during the investigation – and immediately, the camera cuts to the young women crying.  I’m starting to get angry, and hoping this will be redeemed before the show ends.   Next, their mother makes a statement; not taking blame, not really apologizing and the young women don’t seem surprised.  They already knew their mother betrayed them by not protecting them.

I guess I should have seen it coming.  The perpetrators get to talk.  They talk by phone, from prison, about how sorry they are – or aren’t.  Why do rapists get time on national television?  Is it because it’s “Season 25″ for Oprah, and if you’ve been watching that show, you know “over the top” is the name of the game.

I’m angry that Oprah gave them airtime.  I didn’t want to hear what the abusers had to say.  Moreover, the sisters didn’t want to hear what they had to say.  It’s one of those moments, when powerful television, trades in its power for exploitation.  But wait, there’s more.

Oprah asked,  ”How does it feel to hear (her abuser) say he’s sorry and wants your forgiveness, you feel what?”

The young woman replies, “Confused.”

So Oprah gives her “favorite”  definition of forgiveness,

“‘Forgiveness’ is giving up the hope that the past could’ve been any different.”  Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could’ve been any different.  So you don’t hold on to wishing that you’d had a different kind of brother, a different kind of mother, a different kind of family.  You let that go and you move forward with the grace that God has given you.  From this day on, forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could’ve been any different.” ~ Oprah Winfrey

I think I understand what Oprah was trying to do.  I think she was trying to help them move forward.  The thing is, forgiveness means so many things, and these young women don’t need Oprah to tell them to move forward, or what to believe or how to feel.   Isn’t Oprah always talking about finding and speaking “your own truth.”   If they choose to forgive, they’ll do it in their own time and in their own way.  They might not want to forgive at all – it’s really their journey.

If Oprah had wanted to help them “move forward” then she and her staff could have spared them from seeing their perpetrators photos, or hearing their voices.  Oprah could have asked how a person puts their life back together after so much abuse and pain.  What happens when you tell the truth and lose your family?  What challenges them now, day-to-day?  What gives them hope, if anything?

You let us down Oprah.  You said that you’ve done dozens of shows on rape and incest over the years.  How then, did you miss the concept that every survivor has a right to feel whatever he or she feels.  Telling these brave women to “move forward” doesn’t really help and doesn’t really move them forward.  It’s akin to telling them to “get over it.”  These courageous women will move on in their own way and in their own time.

The Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network http://www.rainn.org is the nations largest anti-sexual violence organization. RAINN offers information and help  24/7 for those who are victims of sexual assault or incest.  You can call 1-800-656-4673.  Your call is confidential.  You can get help today.