Right, so the truth is, for about a year now, I've been feeling kind of lost.
Blah blah blah...if you don't feel like reading this whole longwinded post, you can skip to the end where the punchline is.
Hurricane Katrina - So a few years back there was Hurricane Katrina. I try not to talk about it too much because, well, because its in the past and life moves on and for most people its pretty stale old news. But, for me, it was a catalyst or harbinger or some major changes and shifts that occured / are occuring in my life. The Saturday before HK, I was 23 years old working as an actuarial assistant in a 3 person consulting firm. I had a penthouse office of my own in downtown New Orleans complete with two executive-style dark wood desks, a fancy round sitting table and chairs and a beautiful view. I had a start-up salary of 40K with plenty of generous fringe benefits to boot. I had begun dating a handsome, successful, vivacious gentleman and I was exploring raw foods more than ever, maintaining a pretty hardcore high raw diet with occasional massive chocolate binges. Anyway, not to get too wrapped up in details, after Hurricane K, I lost this job (to my surprising relief), the guy I was dating dumped me 6 weeks later, my 3 closest friends had to relocate and move away, my father and brother whom I was sharing a house with both moved out and my Dad went to California for work and is still living there now. And he took the dogs. No, our house didn't flood like many other people's did and we were very lucky for that. But SO MUCH changed. Entire neighborhoods of the New Orleans metro area were and are still wiped out. Destroyed, uninhabited, like modern day ghost towns. I took all these changes as good fortune and struck out on my own to start up my dream raw food business at the farmers market. Feeling purpose to my life for the first time ever and ready to help nourish people with truly good food in an area where food was sometimes scarce (many grocery stores and food establishments were closed for months or more due to damage, lack of electricity, lack of employees and so forth) , I began to experience things more wonderful than I had ever imagined. I felt full of love and grace and abundance and this poured into everything I was doing. After a year and half or so of working at the farmers market, things were different. My situation felt different and I couldn't understand why I wasn't feeling the way I had when I started. So just as my market sales were doing better than ever, I decided to leave the market. I knew I wanted to try and grow my own food and this desire was becoming overwhelming. So from scratch and with very little experience, I turned my dad's backyard (a little bit to his chagrin) into a kitchen garden. For almost a year, I putzed around living off of savings and doing odd things here and there. I knew I wanted to grow food on a larger scale. I went to the SSAWG (Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group) conference in January - that was awesome. In Feb/March, I spent a lot of time at Tommie's house learning about growing sprouts, shoots and wheatgrass. An informal apprenticeship of sorts. I started searching for farming internship opportunities and thats how I landed up where I am now (see last post). However, now that I have been here for a couple of months and I am feeling more at home, I've been getting online a lot again, searching searching searching...
And then it hit me. I saw Philip's 100 day prune eating video. BOOM. Bingo. Something moved me deep inside. Then I saw some picture of Suki and she was super
tiny. Ding dong. She was in on it, too. I began reading and found David and Katrina Rainoshek's juicefeasting blog on day 8o-something and I saw the video with her and her mom where they went hiking in the Grand Canyon and I was like...holy hens, this is it. I want to do this. So after being way out of the internet loop, I've just come back to find all these people (jawdroppingly radiant, might I add) finishing up extended juice feasts and I haven't felt this excited or driven to do something in a while. Because even though I am doing what exactly what I know I want to do - working at an organic farm - there is more. I think I want to juice feast. I had heard a while back about March 1st being the beginning of a Global Juice Feast, but I had no idea how much all the juice feasters were going to
ignite me. When Angela did hers over a year ago, I thought it was pretty far out and for about 6 seconds I considered doing it myself and then I thought, nahhh. I will get too skinny. Then Courtney moved the world with her feast and I thought about it again. She was super helpful and encouraging when I asked her some questions about it and she made the point to me that I could always feast for 30 ro 60 days instead of 92. Yeah, I suppose. And then I forgot about it again. But when I saw Philip and he was talking about putting an end to the mediocrity in our lives and he had this indescribable angelic inner glow to him, I was like YESSSSSSSSSSS! Amen and Hallelujah. I've got to do it. I couldn't get to bed that night. I kept thinking about juice feasting and wondering if I should do it. I knew I wanted to, though. So Penni, Bronwyn, Ayrie, Constanze, Terilynn, Chaya, Ben, Katrina, Philip, Suki, and all juicefeasters, thank you thank you thank you for setting really amazing examples and for paving the way. I have spoken with Simon about it at length and he is going to support my decision to do this while I am working and living here at Noah Valley Farm.
I made an attempt to begin on June 1st. By the 9th day I was having a really really hard time. I was feeling miserable from low energy and doing lots of physical work. So I have eaten food for the last three days, but even as I was eating that bite of food on day 9 I knew that this was just the beginning and that I was going to try again with even more resolve. So, I've decided to try and get a few supplements in addition to drinking juice since I will be needing some energy to complete small daily tasks around here such as carrying hoses around and keeping things watered. I am going to try and figure out what supplements are the most vital and take it from there. I feel very ready for this. I wasn't sure at first if I wanted to try and blog about it, but I figure if all the other juicefeasting blogs out there are proving to be such an amazing resource for me, then I can put my reservations aside in the hopes that perhaps my being open about this experience will possibly be resourceful to someone else.
Punchline: I want in on the Global Juice Feast.
Thank you, juice feasters.
me and my buddy
