Jennifer's Cellular Regeneration Log

[Vileplume]

Update:

It officially makes a year that I’ve been consuming a dairy-based diet so after a decade of severe rashes, constipation, depression, brain fog, anaphylaxis and a few false starts, I think it’s safe to say that I’m finally tolerating dairy again. I’m really glad I didn’t give up on it. There are so many reason why I love it, but the main one is what it does for my bones. My bone density is improving so there’s a real possibility I may actually achieve my goal of getting this little lemon of mine up a mountain. ??

My health overall is excellent now. I contribute it not only to diet but the release work I’ve done, some major self-love and acceptance, and tapping into my intuition and playful side more and my mind and “adulting” side less. I realized that life doesn’t just happen to me, I happen to life and so I decided that I wasn’t going to wait until life was no longer difficult to be happy and have made it a priority to do what brings me joy. Suffice it to say that I feel pretty incredible and so at peace, most days now.

With that said, one of the loves of my life passed away last week and even though I’m happy she’s free, I don’t know this world without my grandmother physically in it so it’s going to take time adjusting to that and having her with me in spirit now. She saw and got me in a way few people have and I will forever be grateful for having the opportunity to love, and be loved by, that beautiful, accepting, unconditionally loving and wonderfully stubborn, little French woman. I wouldn’t be the same without her.

It’s times like this where I’m learning to embrace and honor the fact that I’m human. In a world that seems to reject our humanness for a perpetually numbed, photoshopped, filtered, surgically enhanced, living the perfect destination, Instagram life, I’m learning that it’s okay to not always be okay. It’s okay to be sad, lonely, insecure, anxious, frustrated, and God forbid even helpless, at times. It doesn’t mean anything is wrong with me or that I shouldn’t feel the way I feel just because it’s uncomfortable.

I’ve also been learning to trust my inner knowing that I don’t have to struggle or settle to have health, that it can come naturally and in a way that brings me joy and is, in fact, a byproduct of living my joy. I don’t have to chase it or resign myself to a life of raw meat, kale smoothies, meditating on a pillow for hours a day or living as a fruitarian recluse in some jungle, forced to forgo personal hygiene and cr*p in a dirt hole just so I can have access to good fruit. I can actually have health and indoor plumbing.

Speaking of fruitarians, I no longer worship the sun. Thankfully, I only require a minimal amount of it now, since I don’t care for it or heat nearly as much as I used to. I think in the past, because I was so tiny, cold and unable to keep my vitamin D level up, I was desperate for the sun and too much of a purist to just supplement. As a child, I was drawn to the shade and now that my temps are stable (average 99°), I find myself drawn to it again, and my fair skin is happier for it. My grandmother was right!

As for my diet, I no longer need as many carbs to prevent hypoglycemia. The majority of my calories come from animal proteins now and the rest from mostly raw honey and to a lesser extent fruit. Goat’s milk was a real game changer for me and I was happy to learn that the farm I used to get my raw cow’s milk from during my WAPF days, started raising goats and selling goat’s milk, too. They practice calf at foot, something that’s important to me. I go into more detail on the practice here if anyone is interested:

Impossible Milk Is Incoming

Sadly, with all the science and health advice I’ve accumulated over the years, I got so used to selecting foods based on what the “experts” deem healthy that it took trialing a wide variety for me to remember which foods I actually enjoy and not too surprising, they’re the same foods I enjoyed as a child when my mind was free of dietary dogma. What was surprising was discovering that I don’t actually care for most tropical fruit. The following is a list of my current diet and supplements:

PROTEINS (30%)

• Local pastured raw skimmed goat's milk
• Local pastured soy-free eggs (scrambled, omelette, quiche, custard, egg drop soup)
• Goat’s milk gouda—made with rennet (Whole Foods [Spring Koe] and Trader Joe’s)
• Homemade fresh curds
• Local wild sea scallops (downeastdayboat.com and www.vitalchoice.com)

CARBOHYDRATES (60%)

• Pastured goat’s milk
• Cherries
• North American pawpaw
• Figs—black, brown and green
• Peaches—white fleshed Saturn
• Melon—honeydew, canary and watermelon
• Grapes—black, cotton candy, jam and pink muscat
• Berries—black mulberries, black raspberries, boysenberries, goldenberries, golden raspberries, heirloom raspberries, heirloom strawberries, honeyberries, Idaho huckleberries, marionberries, saskatoon berries, wild bilberries, wild blue huckleberries, wild mountain blackberries, wild strawberries (home grown and nwwildfoods.com)
• Sweet corn—white sugar variety (grilled on the cob and in clambakes)
• Onions—Vidalias (for French onion soup)
• Dates—Sukkari (soaked in milk overnight then strained to remove fiber)
• Raw honey—(Altay Meadows’ acacia—amishhoney.com, Wendell Estate—wendellestate.ca, Eisele’s—eiseleshoney.com)
• Maple syrup (from my uncle’s trees)

FATS (10%)

• Goat’s milk gouda
• Local pastured eggs
• Avocados (occasionally)

SEASONINGS

• Culinary herbs and spices—cinnamon, vanilla beans, orange peal, chives, dill, parsley, rainbow peppercorns, tarragon
• Refined additive-free kosher salt (Diamond Crystal)

MISCELLANEOUS

• Mushroom broth—a mix of varieties (used as a beef stock replacement for my French onion soup)
• Cacao nibs for brewed iced cocoa—mycotoxin-free (www.addictivewellness.com and supervitalfoods.com)

SUPPLEMENTS (daily)

• NDT 2 grains (TyroMax)
• Vitamin D3 2000 IU (bio-alternatives.net)

I still seems surreal that I’ve made it this far. To no longer be fighting to stand on my own, to walk, bathe, feed myself, counting down the hours until bedtime because in my dreams, I could run, I wasn’t broken. To no longer feel like a bystander in my own life, having mentally detached myself from my body because it was too painful to be in it, both physically from the injury and emotionally from the abuse. I finally feel in my body and it feels so light, like the weight of the world has been lifted off of it.

This might sound crazy, but I’m so grateful I had the chance to fight for myself. Having kept silent every time I was abused and finally release the guilt and shame I felt, to no longer feel anything but compassion for all those involved, and make peace with it being a part of my story, is so freeing and healing. I now understand the damage caused by holding on to that kind of energy, and how the burden of someone else’s guilt, shame and lack of love was never mine to bear yet I bore it for years.

As a little girl growing up Catholic, I feared that I wouldn’t be accepted into heaven for having kept silent while being molested, and didn’t have the courage to tell my family. Had I not suffered the injury and broken my filter, I might not have found the courage to speak up and instead, taken that secret with me to the grave, likely an early grave. Breaking my back was one of the best things that ever happened for me. I found my voice. I hope I’ve made you proud, Mem.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcOkmShJG9Q

This was a beautiful post. Thanks for sharing your journey Jennifer, and way to go with having taken these steps forward.

 

[Sefton10]

Update:

It officially makes a year that I’ve been consuming a dairy-based diet so after a decade of severe rashes, constipation, depression, brain fog, anaphylaxis and a few false starts, I think it’s safe to say that I’m finally tolerating dairy again. I’m really glad I didn’t give up on it. There are so many reason why I love it, but the main one is what it does for my bones. My bone density is improving so there’s a real possibility I may actually achieve my goal of getting this little lemon of mine up a mountain. ??

My health overall is excellent now. I contribute it not only to diet but the release work I’ve done, some major self-love and acceptance, and tapping into my intuition and playful side more and my mind and “adulting” side less. I realized that life doesn’t just happen to me, I happen to life and so I decided that I wasn’t going to wait until life was no longer difficult to be happy and have made it a priority to do what brings me joy. Suffice it to say that I feel pretty incredible and so at peace, most days now.

With that said, one of the loves of my life passed away last week and even though I’m happy she’s free, I don’t know this world without my grandmother physically in it so it’s going to take time adjusting to that and having her with me in spirit now. She saw and got me in a way few people have and I will forever be grateful for having the opportunity to love, and be loved by, that beautiful, accepting, unconditionally loving and wonderfully stubborn, little French woman. I wouldn’t be the same without her.

It’s times like this where I’m learning to embrace and honor the fact that I’m human. In a world that seems to reject our humanness for a perpetually numbed, photoshopped, filtered, surgically enhanced, living the perfect destination, Instagram life, I’m learning that it’s okay to not always be okay. It’s okay to be sad, lonely, insecure, anxious, frustrated, and God forbid even helpless, at times. It doesn’t mean anything is wrong with me or that I shouldn’t feel the way I feel just because it’s uncomfortable.

I’ve also been learning to trust my inner knowing that I don’t have to struggle or settle to have health, that it can come naturally and in a way that brings me joy and is, in fact, a byproduct of living my joy. I don’t have to chase it or resign myself to a life of raw meat, kale smoothies, meditating on a pillow for hours a day or living as a fruitarian recluse in some jungle, forced to forgo personal hygiene and cr*p in a dirt hole just so I can have access to good fruit. I can actually have health and indoor plumbing.

Speaking of fruitarians, I no longer worship the sun. Thankfully, I only require a minimal amount of it now, since I don’t care for it or heat nearly as much as I used to. I think in the past, because I was so tiny, cold and unable to keep my vitamin D level up, I was desperate for the sun and too much of a purist to just supplement. As a child, I was drawn to the shade and now that my temps are stable (average 99°), I find myself drawn to it again, and my fair skin is happier for it. My grandmother was right!

As for my diet, I no longer need as many carbs to prevent hypoglycemia. The majority of my calories come from animal proteins now and the rest from mostly raw honey and to a lesser extent fruit. Goat’s milk was a real game changer for me and I was happy to learn that the farm I used to get my raw cow’s milk from during my WAPF days, started raising goats and selling goat’s milk, too. They practice calf at foot, something that’s important to me. I go into more detail on the practice here if anyone is interested:

Impossible Milk Is Incoming

Sadly, with all the science and health advice I’ve accumulated over the years, I got so used to selecting foods based on what the “experts” deem healthy that it took trialing a wide variety for me to remember which foods I actually enjoy and not too surprising, they’re the same foods I enjoyed as a child when my mind was free of dietary dogma. What was surprising was discovering that I don’t actually care for most tropical fruit. The following is a list of my current diet and supplements:

PROTEINS (30%)

• Local pastured raw skimmed goat's milk
• Local pastured soy-free eggs (scrambled, omelette, quiche, custard, egg drop soup)
• Goat’s milk gouda—made with rennet (Whole Foods [Spring Koe] and Trader Joe’s)
• Homemade fresh curds
• Local wild sea scallops (downeastdayboat.com and www.vitalchoice.com)

CARBOHYDRATES (60%)

• Pastured goat’s milk
• Cherries
• North American pawpaw
• Figs—black, brown and green
• Peaches—white fleshed Saturn
• Melon—honeydew, canary and watermelon
• Grapes—black, cotton candy, jam and pink muscat
• Berries—black mulberries, black raspberries, boysenberries, goldenberries, golden raspberries, heirloom raspberries, heirloom strawberries, honeyberries, Idaho huckleberries, marionberries, saskatoon berries, wild bilberries, wild blue huckleberries, wild mountain blackberries, wild strawberries (home grown and nwwildfoods.com)
• Sweet corn—white sugar variety (grilled on the cob and in clambakes)
• Onions—Vidalias (for French onion soup)
• Dates—Sukkari (soaked in milk overnight then strained to remove fiber)
• Raw honey—(Altay Meadows’ acacia—amishhoney.com, Wendell Estate—wendellestate.ca, Eisele’s—eiseleshoney.com)
• Maple syrup (from my uncle’s trees)

FATS (10%)

• Goat’s milk gouda
• Local pastured eggs
• Avocados (occasionally)

SEASONINGS

• Culinary herbs and spices—cinnamon, vanilla beans, orange peal, chives, dill, parsley, rainbow peppercorns, tarragon
• Refined additive-free kosher salt (Diamond Crystal)

MISCELLANEOUS

• Mushroom broth—a mix of varieties (used as a beef stock replacement for my French onion soup)
• Cacao nibs for brewed iced cocoa—mycotoxin-free (www.addictivewellness.com and supervitalfoods.com)

SUPPLEMENTS (daily)

• NDT 2 grains (TyroMax)
• Vitamin D3 2000 IU (bio-alternatives.net)

I still seems surreal that I’ve made it this far. To no longer be fighting to stand on my own, to walk, bathe, feed myself, counting down the hours until bedtime because in my dreams, I could run, I wasn’t broken. To no longer feel like a bystander in my own life, having mentally detached myself from my body because it was too painful to be in it, both physically from the injury and emotionally from the abuse. I finally feel in my body and it feels so light, like the weight of the world has been lifted off of it.

This might sound crazy, but I’m so grateful I had the chance to fight for myself. Having kept silent every time I was abused and finally release the guilt and shame I felt, to no longer feel anything but compassion for all those involved, and make peace with it being a part of my story, is so freeing and healing. I now understand the damage caused by holding on to that kind of energy, and how the burden of someone else’s guilt, shame and lack of love was never mine to bear yet I bore it for years.

As a little girl growing up Catholic, I feared that I wouldn’t be accepted into heaven for having kept silent while being molested, and didn’t have the courage to tell my family. Had I not suffered the injury and broken my filter, I might not have found the courage to speak up and instead, taken that secret with me to the grave, likely an early grave. Breaking my back was one of the best things that ever happened for me. I found my voice. I hope I’ve made you proud, Mem.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcOkmShJG9Q

Lovely and inspiring post. I think if anything this is the true Ray Peat diet, not because of what it contains but because of the process of work and experimentation to get to what works best for YOU.

 

[Jennifer]

Thank you, @Vileplume and @Sefton10. :)

Sefton10, your comment made me think of Ray’s perceive, think, act quote where he says part of the therapy of working with a psychologist is the effort itself and the opportunity to practice being human. I guess we could say I’ve been practicing being human. Haha!

 

[gaze]

no lie, the goats milk gouda from trader joe's might be the best tasting cheese i've ever had. extremely addicting

 

[Jennifer]

It really is, @gaze! Sometimes, I eat a whole wedge (close to a lb) of it. lol I try not to do that too often, though, because it makes me so hot. The last time I had that much, my temp hit 99.5°. I was sweating just sitting around in an air conditioned house. lol

 

[Jennifer]

Hi @Blossom! May I ask, is there a way for me to remove some personal photos from this log and my old one?

 

[Blossom]

Hi @Blossom! May I ask, is there a way for me to remove some personal photos from this log and my old one?

Yes, just message me the details.

 

[Amazoniac]

Hi @Blossom! May I ask, is there a way for me to remove some personal photos from this log and my old one?

I'm going to save them for black marketing. Will be overpricing the ones that show more skin. We can negotiate your privacy as well.

 

[Jennifer]

I'm going to save them for black marketing. Will be overpricing the ones that show more skin. We can negotiate your privacy as well.

Hehe! I don’t think you’ll get much for them, but I wish you luck! If I would have known you’d be selling them on the black market, I would have posted the French maid pics instead. You might have made a nickel on those.

 

[Jennifer]

Update:

I’ve had this written up since last week but struggled to post it. On January 15th, the main woman in my life and one of my greatest loves, my mum, passed away unexpectedly. I don’t know if it’s normal when a parent dies to find ourselves emotionally as children again, but I feel homesick for my momma. I don’t really know what to say other than grieving has been an emotional rollercoaster ride from h*ll, but at least I can feel so I know I’m still alive, an ability I feared I had lost for good. Within minutes of her passing, my brother and extended family were gathering to mourn with my dad and I at our home, but I was numb. Someone would hug me and I couldn’t feel anything. I sobbed but felt nothing. I was afraid I’d never feel again, that this was the final tragedy to wall up my heart for good. Everyone said I was in shock, that it was totally normal given what my dad and I had just experienced—my mum died in my arms while my dad was waiting outside our home for the medics to arrive, and we watched (and prayed) as they tried to revive her. I hoped they were right. Thankfully, they were. At her funeral on Friday, I felt every condolence hug given.

My extended family has truly been amazing. I’m so blessed to have them in my life, to have their love and support, and yet I feel horrible because all I want is my mum, and my dad to have his sweetheart back. I wanted to run to my best friend when my mum died, and run to mum when my best friend died, but she played both roles. I know she’s with me, but I miss her physical presence. I miss our spur of the moment road trips, how impatient she’d get when having to sit at red lights and our deep conversations. I miss her open and artistic mind, her sensitive nature, how it felt to be hugged by her and how she referred to me as “Beautiful” and “Baby Girl.” I miss her trying to convince me that not all Hallmark movies are the same five storylines of cheesiness. I miss worrying about her and nagging her to put herself first for once without guilt. I miss how we knew what each other was thinking with just a look, how we finished each other’s sentences and got each other like no other person has ever before, and the list grows.

My mum often said that I saved her, well, she saved me back. She was one of my main reasons for living when I wasn’t yet reason enough, and I know she’s still saving me, that I’m feeling her love so strongly because I wouldn’t still be here otherwise. She knows I go where she goes, that I’d follow her anywhere, but can’t follow this time, not yet anyway. I know she won’t let that happen. My dad, brother and I need each other and I need to get her (in spirit) and I up a mountain so we can feel what it feels like to accomplish the impossible because we lived and fought through my hell and her own together. We need to follow through with what we set out to do and know that getting up every time we were knocked down by a system that routinely failed us meant something, and that one by one, we transformed life’s devastations into the slow burning flame that acted as our spark of motivation for growing more alive each day. I will not let her suffering, and all the effort she put forth to overcome it, be in vain.

For the past two weeks since my mum’s death, I’ve been trying my best to think in terms of days and not a lifetime. If I take it one day at a time, I’m not consumed by the overwhelming and unbearable thought of living the rest of my life without her in the physical, though, the hollowness is real and my broken heart’s echo deafening, at times. It has also helped me get through the emotionally draining process that is funeral arrangements and picking out burial plots, something I never thought I’d be doing at my age. My dad and I bought space for all of us—my brother, an atheist, doesn’t realize I’m dead serious when I say he’s coming with us. My mum used to tell us to just kick her sorry *ss off a cliff when she passed because she didn’t want to take up any more space on this planet, but she deserves to take up space just as much as everyone else so we made an executive decision. My dad and I plan on setting up lawn chairs and barbecuing on our newly purchased real estate. I suggested we get a neon sign for our headstone. She never should have left such important decisions in our hands. Emotionally fragile and a twisted sense of humor is a dangerous combination.

Other than being here for my dad and brother, I’m struggling to see the point in anything right now, but I’ve worked really hard at practicing self-love and made a promise to myself to always have my back even if the whole world is against me, and I have to take care of my mum’s sweetheart and babies so I’ve continued to do so. I continue to get up and show up. I’ve been cleaning non-stop, my go-to coping mechanism, and I hear my mum in my head telling me to eat so I eat. I ate her food so it wouldn’t go bad and inadvertently adopted a new staple—apple, pear and peach sauce warmed with different varieties of raisins, dried bing cherries, cinnamon and a pat of butter. I also finished up some iced tea she bought for guests at the holidays and have since gotten back into the habit of having sweet black tea daily. I ordered some grown in Hawaii and Michigan, thinking that fluoride and other contaminates would be less of an issue but at this point, the way I see it, having some fluoridated tea won’t kill me like not living will.

It’s hard for me to sum up in a log post what my mum, a woman who I’m better for having loved and been loved by, has meant to me so I hope this does her justice. My mum, an artist, and my dad, a musician, were high school sweethearts, married at 18 and for 47 years total, didn’t have much financially but worked insanely hard to provide for my brother and I. When I was around 2 years old, my mum worked the night shift so in the morning when she got home and my dad went to work, she slept. She taught me how to work the VCR and I’d sit quietly next to her and watch the Wizard of Oz on repeat while she slept on the couch. To this day, that movie remains my all-time favorite for many reasons but the main ones being for their connection to my mum. Somewhere Over the Rainbow was the song my mum sang to me when I was a baby, the first music I ever owned was a recording of the same song sung by Judy Garland that my mum made for me, and one of its most memorable scenes is what I think of when I think of my mum. When Dorothy, in her sepia-toned world, lands abruptly after a turbulent ride in the twister, opens the front door to the family’s farmhouse and is greeted by the land of Oz, that’s my mum. My mum is like opening the door to Oz. She brought, and I know will continue to bring, the color to my world—the technicolor. My dad has brought the music and together they’ve made my world magical. I may be a bit unsure about life right now, but what I do know for certain is heaven just got a lot more colorful.

Mumbum, I love you always and forever, to the moon and back. Until I see you again somewhere over the rainbow…


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSZxmZmBfnU

 

[sweetpeat]

Oh Jennifer, my heart is sad for you. I can tell you and your mom were close. You wrote a lovely tribute to her. It's very hard to lose someone like that. Someone with so much shared history, who knew you when you were small and watched you grow up, who loved you unconditionally. It's irreplaceable.
I lost my dad 3 years ago. I still feel his absence.
You are in my thoughts and prayers.

 

[Dutchie]

Very beautiful spoken.
It's not easy putting down in words and sharing what someone ,so important in your life, means to you.
Your mom can be proud of this tribute you've written for her.

I wish and hope for you all to find strength and comfort to carry on your lives, finding your ways in this new dynamic.

 

[bogbody]

I’m so sorry for your loss. I lost my mom 2 years ago and there really is nothing like it. Sending you love.

 

[jet9]

Stay strong! And stay positive, find things to be thankful for and smile at, your mom wouldn't like it if she would see you upset / negative.
Your are amazing! Your log / story helped so many people here, many of us come / re-reread / and you even don't know about it :)
One day you will see mom over the rainbow, but not now, lots of things for you to do - for you it's only the beginning!

 

[InChristAlone]

I had a feeling there was a death but I was afraid to ask. I'm so sorry for your loss :'( .
I am terrible with words surrounding grief, but all I know is that it's okay to cry, cry as much as you need to. We are all here if you need us.

 

[Blossom]

I don’t have adequate words but I’m sending heartfelt condolences for you and your family.

 

[Jennifer]

@sweetpeat, thank you for your thoughts and prayers. They're greatly appreciated. You're so right, it really is irreplaceable. It's so emotionally confusing to me to feel this sad yet at the same time so blessed to have had that kind of love in my life. I'm so sorry for your loss.

@Dutchie, thank you. That means a lot to me. And thank you for being there for me through all of this. Your friendship has meant the world to me. Love you, girl!

@bogbody, thank you. It's so true—there really is nothing like it. I'm so sorry for your loss, as well. Sending much love right back to you.

@jet9, thank you for your kind and encouraging words. I really needed that. My mum encouraged me to share my story thinking it might help others so what you said is extra special to me.

@sugarbabe, thank you. What you said was perfect. I really appreciate the support.

@Blossom, thank you for that.

 

[Vileplume]

Jennifer, that was the most beautiful and moving piece of writing I've read in a long time. Thank you for sharing yourself so openly with us here at the forum--we're blessed to have you as part of this community.

 

[Jennifer]

Jennifer, that was the most beautiful and moving piece of writing I've read in a long time. Thank you for sharing yourself so openly with us here at the forum--we're blessed to have you as part of this community.

Thank you for that, Tyler. It means a lot to me. This community has been like my virtual family in health and I feel blessed to have been a part of it. I love you guys!

 

[Richiebogie]

Hi @Jennifer, I haven’t visited your blog in a while. Good to hear that the goat milk and goat cheese are working well for you!

Sorry to read about your grandmother’s death and your mother’s recent death as well. It must be hard for you as you were very close to both of them.

I am sure that their memory will be a source of strength for you. I hope you and your father and brother are managing ok at this time! Hugs to you!!