One Year of Blogging!

This month marks a whole year of writing about my journey on web paper. I remember what made me want to blog: I could hardly find blogs of people who were having the same struggles I did, and I had an even harder time finding food and recipes that I could eat.

I was very thankful for the Whole Approach website, especially the forums. There I found people who were struggling to keep their sanity while all these strange things were happening while taking even stranger supplements to heal. I spent hours there while I poured over threads and tried recipes to help me actually keep from being so hungry! The recipes there were real lifesavers. I was so thankful to find them, but after a while, I wanted more. Some of the recipes were great for those of us that were on a candida diet, but weren’t so great for those that weren’t restricted by anything. The moms, dads, brothers, sisters, husbands, boyfriends, grandmas and friends who were willing to sample the dish once, weren’t interested in trying them again. A line would be drawn. On one side would be the special eater. On the other side were all those other people who could and would eat “normal” food.

I never liked that kind of dichotomy. I knew that sugar free, gluten free food could be delicious for anybody to eat, and I wanted to find out what it would take to make it so good that no one could tell the difference. I wanted to keep an account of the successes and failures, so the blog was put into existence. And I have loved ever minute of it.

There was only one problem.

Aside from my family, whose use to all of the food stages I ‘ve been through, and a few friends, I didn’t tell anybody what I was doing or even going through. This was quite an ordeal. I ate in private, because I didn’t want to have to answer five million questions about what I was eating. I just wanted to eat! I didn’t date either. I was worried that I would scare prospective mate away when I had to tell him that I can’t eat about 99% of all the foods that are in the restaurant, movie theater, theme park, or fast food joint that he wanted to take me to. And then I have to explain what exactly was keeping me from eating those things. Trying to explain what Candida Related Complex is is like trying to order a hamburger in French when you only know five words. I didn’t want to deal with that! So, I turned alot of guys away. For a whole year!

Little did I know that part of my healing would include learning to navigate the dating waters. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to live in a bubble all the time. It’s not healthy to close yourself off to the outside world. Deep down, I knew that my protective shell would have to be broken, but I wasn’t going to break it myself. Somebody else would have to do it.

Thank goodness the one that did was the right kind of shell breaker.
We’ve been friends for years, but after I moved back to the East Coast, we became much closer. Since he is a very attentive guy, he made notes about certain things, and asked the right question at the right time:

“What’s going on with your health?”

I think I spent about 45 mins explaining everything, from the beginning to where I am now. He just took it all in.

He was still there afterward.

He didn’t run away. He didn’t make some lame excuse about having to be somewhere and how late he would be if he didn’t leave, right now. He broke the shell. And I didn’t die!

And he’s still here! He has been the support that I wasn’t allowing in my life. It has absolutely made a difference in my progress, and sometimes I wonder why I was so scared to break out in the first place!

The world outside isn’t so bad after all, and I realized that I kept a shell around me on this blog too! For instance, until now, I’ve never really written much about my personal life, and I haven’t yet shown my face!

So this next year, I choose to be a little more personal. Food blogs are not about food all the time. They are about the people who write on them too!