When I was nineteen and toured the US in a VW bus with my best friend, stopping at the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies for a month and a Rainbow Gathering for a weekend along the way, my father said more than once, the veins bulging from the side of his neck, “I don’t understand why kids your age have to ‘find’ themselves.”
It took me more than twenty years to finally understand why, myself. And thus starts the beginning of my latest project, a new book that chronicles how I overcame a gynecological disorder (called adenomyosis – related to endometriosis) in which I was told my only hope was a hysterectomy. A year after my diagnosis, I’d reversed the symptoms completely, avoiding the hysterectomy, and doing so only via natural means. One of the biggest hurdles I had to overcome to start my healing process was chronic stress, which I didn’t even think I had. Peeling back the layers of what may actually be at the root of my chronic stress took me on the clichéd (but real) journey of self-discovery, in which I found myself all over again (or maybe for the first time, fully). And guess who I also found at the root of that stress? The same person who didn’t want me to find myself.
Among the greatest things that I learned was that I was always destined to be a writer. I mean, I knew that, a long time ago, but over the course of a couple of decades while pursuing a career path that wasn’t meant for me, as well as the inception of motherhood, I had forgotten my fate, my destiny, my childhood dream. And you know what the Rolling Stones say in one of my all-time favorite songs:
“Lose your dreams and you will lose your mind.”
Well I am reclaiming my dreams in 1) the form of a creative non-fiction book — the kind of writing I’ve always dreamed of doing. A departure from my nutrition research and scientific writing, its a personal account of how I overcame the disease by facing my stressors head on, and some of the surprising discoveries I found out about myself and my past along the way; and 2) poetry. Today I submitted four poems to poetry magazines. I’ve been writing poetry since the 5th grade, but this was the first time I’d ever submitted anything. I am now almost 45. Its about time to believe in my ability to write and take the next step toward accomplishing my dreams!