The instant I read the words, I regretted picking up my BlackBerry that one last time before going to bed. A well-meaning relative of mine had read my recent post about my health and my leaky gut problem and told me: “This is not the time to volunteer for things.” She intended to point out that there would be plenty of time later in life for me to pursue my interests when I didn’t have as many health challenges to face and when I wasn’t in such a busy time of motherhood with a kindergartener and opinionated non-verbal toddler.

I get her point. Really, I do. The problem is that her note assumes that volunteering is something that detracts from my well-being. Sure, it might have seemed that way in the post she read. I’d rushed to finish it and get it up rather than wait until who knows when I’d get a free moment to sit down again. I did, I realize, sound a little overwhelmed. And yes, balance is something I’m working on.

But I don’t regret my choices, and I don’t want them restricted. That wouldn’t help. If I weren’t busy with something that felt meaningful, that contributed to my priorities, that gave me joy, or that fueled me with passion, I would be, simply put, depressed. Staying busy and engaged in something bigger than myself is a necessity for me to stay mentally healthy without medication.

And staying off medication is something I feel is a physical necessity as well; I simply don’t think my body can handle being on anti-depressants. They made an amazing difference for two years, and then again for a year while I sought treatment for hyperthyroidism (Graves’ Disease).

But they are drugs. Even if I weren’t a true believer in the healing power of nutrition and energy work, my system has shown me it simply cannot handle anything artificial. As much as SSRIs helped, I’m also pretty convinced that they contributed to the mess I’m in now — a much smaller role than 30 years of eating gluten, probably, but a role nonetheless.

No amount of saying no to volunteer work is going to undo all the damage that was caused by decades of eating food my body couldn’t handle, to say nothing of mild but young substance abuse. What will help me heal is continuing to eat real food, pursuing what makes me happy, and cultivating a mindfulness practice. It takes a lot more time and energy than popping a pill, but I really don’t see that I have a choice if I have my long-term health in mind.

Until I got this late-night email, I was, I admit, stewing a little about the lack of time to do everything I cared about. But rather than push me to step aside, as was its intention, the note inspired me to remember why I have chosen what I’ve chosen to do and to be grateful that I have the opportunity to do it.

The fundraiser I was working on was a great success, both in money raised and in positive momentum and a spirit of community, which was probably even more valuable to this project about which I care deeply. Even as I wished for more hours in the day to proofread the program and organize the volunteer schedule, I remembered that I proposed this event because I believe in the cause and that I offered to head it up because it’s something I knew I could do well. I knew it could be a great thing, and I wanted to create that.

So I carried that purpose with me into the event and sincerely enjoyed it. I lapped up the kudos with nary a self-critical remark or “if only we could have” lament. It was just good, plain and simple. We can debrief and learn from it, sure, but the thing I am most proud of is just enjoying it.

And then, when I came home after being gone at the school 11 a.m.-5 p.m. and launched right back into domestic goddess mode, I took on that role without resentment. Sure, there was a smidge of “really?” in my brain when my husband said he was super tired, but rather than go to a place of bitterness, I just chalked it up to a confirmation that the job I usually do of managing house and home is, indeed, a tiring one!

I wanted the laundry and dishes dealt with, so I did them.

I wanted celery and other veggies for the next day and to not cook that night or ask my tired husband to rally, so I went out to the grocery store after picking up take-out.

I wanted to do yoga before eating in peace and quiet, so I waited until after the family meal and bedtime to get on my mat and then eat my own safe food.

Somehow, that email sparked — or stoked — a fire. What started as angry turned cozy and glowing. The email inspired me, in part, to take the Mother’s Self-Renewal workshop to explore issues of balance and honoring our many selves. That first session then gave me the sense that I am both not alone in my dilemmas about time and also that my process is one to honor. It is part of my mothering to model not perfection but an embracing of personal growth and inquiry.

So thank you, dear relative, even if noting you wish you’d gotten advice from your elders still doesn’t convince me that you weren’t being more judgmental than supportive. Regardless of their intent, your words helped me see through the messiness of internal conflict and to look toward something varied and beautiful.

Baby girl has been a little under the weather, so we’ve been spending more time together — less babysitter, no outings. There were lots of things I intended to accomplish in the past two days, but many of them had to just go out the window. Or, rather, she sat on my desk in front of the window while I sorted files of papers in my overgrown office.

At 17 months, baby A is still not talking much, but she sure does have opinions. And she does nothing half-assed. Every act is intentional, whether it’s putting a random tea bag into a new box, taking my credit card out of my wallet and sliding it under her booster seat, or inspecting the tampons she finds in the non-baby-proofed bathroom cabinet. (When you have nothing toxic lying around, it’s easy to get complacent about latches. And then really easy to get embarrassed when little o.b.s from 1998 end up unwrapped in unexpected and cringingly public places).

This child has a lot more hair in the back than her brother did at this age. It’s coming in straighter but the same color (red!) and in the same location as her brother’s: party in the back. She doesn’t get dressed much in girly clothing, and I was just resigned to her having the same homely mullet her brother had until he was two and a half. It just occurred to me that I could consider actually doing something with that hair.

Even though I feel like I model busy more than bodhi, she actually came over to my yoga mat the other day intent on doing down-dogs with me. Looking at her increasingly long red locks, I said to myself, “You have a girl. A daughter.”

Someday she’s going to care how she looks, and she’s going to be embarrassed by my clothes, if she isn’t already. Her brother recently asked why I looked “fancy” when I put on jeans and a 10-year-old ribbed turtleneck that flared out at the bottom “like a ballet shirt,” he remarked. “I’m not fancy, honey, I’m just dressed.” My husband reminded me that he was the one to pick out that sweater back when it was in style, and from Bloomingdale’s no less.

Without my fashionisto boys, where would I be?

By the time the girl is in the mom-sucks years of middle school, I may have taken frumpy to a whole new level. Or maybe I’ll be in my midlife crisis-cum-renaissance, but I find that hard to believe.

At any rate, the cute barrettes my daughter’s brother insisted we buy her months before she was sporting anything like enough hair to stick them in, finally got a trial yesterday. Each attempt to put them in lasted almost long enough for my husband to take these photos.

I think pretty soon we’re going to have a Pippi Longstocking on our hands.

—

How did you handle hair differently with your daughters versus your sons? Or how did you manage not to?

Campbell Elementary School in south Arlington is hoping to remedy a swampy (and sometimes icy) problem in its playground and turn the area into a wetlands learning lab.

The school is a county-wide program that utilizes a hands-on curriculum called Expeditionary Learning. The wetlands learning lab will give students lots of opportunities to observe wildlife and ecosystems in action and to do various experiments. The new spot, which has been designed by EarlySpace landscape designer Nancy Striniste, will also be a place of beauty and an opportunity for students to have daily interaction with nature and outlets for unstructured play.

Learn more about the project at WetlandsLearningLab.com or on Facebook. In order to raise the necessary funds for construction to begin this winter, when construction costs are low, the school is holding a benefit concert on January 21 with music, activities and a silent auction.

Here are the details:

Wetlands Benefit Concert

Saturday, January 21, 1:00-4:00 p.m. (snow date January 28)

Tickets $10 per family (at the door)

Campbell Elementary School, 737 S. Carlin Springs Rd., Arlington, VA 22204

Entertainment and activities include children’s performer Groovy Nate, roots/bluegrass band Forty Miles Home, Bolivian dance performances, sing-along, family yoga, storytelling and a silent auction. Proceeds will help construct a Wetlands Learning Lab on school grounds.

For more information, visit WetlandsLearningLab.com, email CampbellWetlands (at) gmail (dot) com, or call 571-451-8273

Homebirth, school lunch, small farmers, Wise Traditions conference, Blogalicious, that bee sting I got the other day … there is so much to write about. But when you spend close to two hours trying to get a baby to nap for 30 minutes, well, it’s tough to get it all in.

My apologies for all the deadlines I have not met in the past few days (self-set, but still!) Maybe I just care about too many things. (The foot reminds me to care about it if I forget to take at least one dose of homeopathic Apis each day)

Here is some news to follow:

As I’ve written, the Wise Traditions 2011 conference was amazing. Until I have a solid chunk of time to clear my head to get more down in pixels, check out this great recap at Food Renegade.

A farmer in Maine is being sued for selling food without a license, even though his town ordinance allows him to: We Are All Farmer Brown on Facebook

In Congress wants to use spending bill to call pizza a vegetable

Congresswoman speaks on the House floor about the Home Birth Consensus Summit I wrote about recently at All Things Mothering

That panel I went to about balance at Blogalicious 2011 still hasn’t written itself into a recap piece. But here is a great one from Run Wifey Run

Oh, and my foot? I stepped on a bee. My son looked for all the appropriate remedies in our Wildcraft game and then wrote them all down. I mentioned this in a post about Green games at TheDCMoms, but it was so cute, I long to write up a heartwarming narrative of it or even an honest tale of how the closest I came to homeschooling on the day he stayed home from school (due to travel fatigue and fighting a cold) was tasking him with that activity while I gave his sister a bath. Cute and poignant or just the stuff of a mom looking to fill time, here is the result:

What else in the world of natural family living should I be paying attention to so I can then wish I had the time to write about it?

Being one of some 1500 traditional food enthusiasts here at the Weston A. Price Foundation Wise Traditions conference is humbling and exhilarating. So many people have regained health or healed their children through real food. The stories at the Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAPS diet) lecture alone were amazing. It’s easy in mainstream circles to feel like an outcast, a weirdo. When your diet is so restricted, you just smile and nod when others wink and nod about chocolate, or wine, or even about fruit or raw veggies, which I still can’t tolerate after nine months on the GAPS diet.

Real Food blogger panel at the Weston A. Price Foundation Wise Traditions conference

But here, as I listen to people who’ve put their whole family or hundreds of their patients on the GAPS diet and who, unlike me, actually render their own goose and duck fat, I feel like I’m getting off kind of easy, doing okay after nine months on the grain-free, starch-free, sugar-free diet.

And yet, listening to Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride talk about the physiology of damaged guts with damaged gut flora, I’m ever more determined to get well. As long as I continue to suffer from psoriasis, I will know that things are not okay in my body. Even if it goes away in a few months, as it did after my first child started sleeping (rather than nursing!) through the night at age two, I know I need to be very careful about what I eat. Forever. Not just in terms of no dairy or gluten but in terms of blood sugar fluctuations (which happen with a vengeance even just upon consuming fruit).

And the lifestyle component. Sigh. I need to give something up to simplify, but I just don’t know what that is. I need to make relaxation a priority or I won’t do it. I need to commit not to just taking care of pain and digestive distress but to the whole of my body. And not just to promoting and cooking real food and being an active volunteer in school and community but also to the whole of my home and family.

Tonight my husband spent almost two hours in the car – including a bathroom and sushi stop at  Kroger – to bring me my baby to nurse and my son to see after I’d been at the conference all day, some 15 miles away. In the grand scheme of things, this is not the end of the world. The kids were both fine and happy during dinner, but I’m sure it sucked to be stuck in Dallas traffic for so long. My husband was pretty blitzed.

Other dads attend this conference with the whole family. Still other dads might go to McDonald’s rather than care about where their food comes from, much less want to spend money to sit in a hotel all day to listen to people talk about food. Mine is somewhere in between – supportive and on board but not an advocate or anything close to a purist. I don’t get criticized, but I don’t much get thanked, either. And I definitely get the sense that I kind of make things hard. Maybe I do.

I believe that my children and my husband benefit from all I learn — and practice — about health and wellbeing. Sometimes that seems to get lost in my pursuit of something like a writing and editing career (and the hope of a future career). And lost in my desire to spread the word about all the things that have made such a difference for me. It’s not just enough to live it; my life and my telling about it have to be meaningful.

So it can feel like an indulgence to go to lengths to have great experiences like coming to this conference. But then I meet someone

Annette Fischer of Wilderness Family Naturals and daughter Logan sell oils, nuts and other snacks at the Weston A. Price Foundation Wise Traditions conference

like Annette Fischer, who founded Wilderness Family Naturals with her husband in 2000. They were living in the wilderness with no electricity and no water, with seven children who were born at home, and they wanted to share information about living naturally through herbs. So they put up information (most of which had to be taken down due to pressure from the FDA), and now they sell the highest quality products they can find. I’ve been a happy customer for years, since I first learned about WFN from an employee at MOMs Organic Market. Now that I’ve met the co-owner and her eldest daughter of nine, aged 10 to 24 (they now have another two children who they adopted from Haiti), I feel like my passion and my family should not be at odds.

And I’ve just now heard Kristen of FoodRenegade.com talk about earning more money than her husband through her blog, with the biggest source of income coming from her own products: e-books and e-courses. She quit doing copywriting work – which allowed her to stay home with her kids – when a conflict of interest surfaced with a client, and now, three years after she started blogging, is performing such a service and earning a living to boot. While homeschooling three kids under the age of seven!

I can’t not write. It’s just not an option. And I can’t watch important things happen and not have a say. I think of my children’s future health and freedom to eat real food, but I’d also like to earn some green to go toward that food we buy.

Time to sign-off before I get picked up to head back to my father-in-law’s where I expect to be coaxed away about every two hours by a baby who wants to nurse. Before I leave again in the morning to learn some more.

How do you balance passion, work, and non-work?

—

Check out this post on my Washington Times Communities column — a quickie first-day update from the conference.

One in a series of reports from the Weston A. Price Foundation’s 2011 Wise Traditions conference in Dallas. Busy Crunchy-Chewy mama is processing and writing as fast as she can! See the first day post and Washington Times Communities article.

Healthy notes from Day Two:

• I took a walk in the brisk morning on the golf course behind my father-in-law’s house. Fresh air after a day in a hotel is grand!

• The kids woke us up early enough that, after the walk, I still had time to make zucchini GAPS pancakes with the almond-pecan butter I bought last night from Wilderness Family Naturals.

• After feeling so overwhelmed and groggy, I took a short nap in the hotel room before LJ brought the kids. What a difference! And maybe taking a few drops of Camu Gold from Amazon Herbs that I got at the Take Back Your Health Conference helped, too.

Happy notes from Day Two:

All the Simply Being Well goodies at the Wise Traditions exhibit hall table. Notice the new book and the new baby food chart!

• Monica Corrado of SimplyBeingWell.com sold out of the book I edited and laid out for her! I’m so excited for her. She also ran an amazing meal program, getting the hotel on board to serve wonderful food prepared in the Nourishing Traditions way.

• It was a pleasure to talk to SP, a current student at the Integrative Institute for Nutrition, and a mom to a 4-year-old and 18-month-old. We have a lot of similar health issues, including adrenal fatigue and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. When I mentioned another friend had recommended I get tested for Lyme, and that, yes, I did have a bull’s eye in 2002 for which I took a round of regular antibiotics, she encouraged me to make testing a top priority. (Okay, maybe that’s not so happy, but it was a great conversation!)

• I was lucky enough to happen upon Jenny, author of the amazing Nourished Kitchen blog, as she and her husband were waiting out the dinner line, like me. Here was another kindred thyroid spirit: she had Graves’ Disease and fertility issues, too, and she also was able to avoid radioactive iodine probably due in part to going gluten-free.

• My husband and kids joined me in the exhibit hall. Although it’s been nice to attend sessions without splitting focus to feed or watch the baby (who is turning into a toddler in front of our eyes), she’s also fun to have around. And it was great to be all together as a family. It’s different for people to see you as a mom of two cute kids rather than just an attendee with a pink press pass on your name badge. My husband talked to the Norman LeMoine of Radiant Life about whole house water filters, taste the yummy olive oil from Chaffin Family Orchards, and watch Branch Basics Cleaner dissolve a red wine stain on a white napkin. It was nice to be a unit, even if I did have to ditch them to go into the fancy banquet alone. (I’m still not sure what they did for dinner…)

• Even though I had to come upstairs to nurse the baby to sleep (and my son was still awake at 8:15, which is like 9:15 at home), I still got back downstairs for much of Dr. Mercola’s talk. How fun to walk into the warm night air knowing I was probably safe to stay out for a good while longer. Even though I want to start going to bed earlier, it felt fun and fancy to be out where the people were in a major city’s downtown hotel. And the food was amazing! I especially enjoyed the Vital Choice smoked sablefish, and it’s such a treat to have fermented veggies served with dinner!  (Another healthy  note!)

More substantive reports from the conference to come!

Hop on over to TheDCMoms.com to see my Green post today on making thoughtful plans as you head into holiday hosting. Let’s see if I can take my own advice this time.

What a great turnout at yesterday’s rally to protest restrictions on the sale of raw milk. Here are some photos from the reporter mom perspective!

For full coverage, check out my article at The Washington Times Communities Family Today

Also visit Kimberly Hartke’s blog post about the rally.

Pasteurized milk is really a blip, historically speaking!

Know your farmer, know your cow!

Everyone enjoying the criminally transported goods!

Or check out all this great coverage!

Only 15 months old and she's already taking notes!

The Complete Patient

San Francisco Chronicle

TBD/News Channel 8

Christian Broadcasting Network

Delmarva Now

Gaithersburg Patch

Moms do not appreciate the government telling them how to feed their children and restricting their access to what they feel is a healthful food.

On November 1, 2011, mothers from around the country will protest outside the Food and Drug Administration building in Silver Spring, Maryland to protest the FDA’s restriction on the purchase of raw milk across state lines.

According to a press release from The Campaign for Real Milk, a project of the Weston A. Price Foundation, these moms want to:

“protest the FDA’s crackdown on raw milk production and distribution, arguing that the government campaign not only criminalizes raw milk, but criminalizes the American citizens who buy and consume it.

Prior to their peaceful demonstration, a caravan of mothers will cross state lines with raw milk and invite the FDA to witness what the agency wrongly considers to be a criminal act. Media are invited to ride along as embedded reporters to report on how the FDA responds to what it wrongly terms a violation of the law.”

If you agree that Americans should be able to control our own health choices, consider joining the demonstration at FDA Headquarters at 10903 New Hampshire Ave., Silver Spring, MD. The event is slated for 12 noon to 3 p.m. on Tuesday, November 1. More information on the event and the route the demonstrators will be taking is available at http://rawmilkfreedomriders.com/ ,at NaturalNews.com at the Farm Food Freedom Coalition and on Facebook.

The rally is hosting some big names in food freedom, including Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm, featured in the documentaries Food, Inc., Farmageddon, and Fresh; Mark McAfee of Organic Pastures dairy, the largest raw dairy company in the U.S.;  David Gumpert, journalist and author of Raw Milk Revolution; Max Kane, currently fighting the state of Wisconsin for right to private contracts; and Michael Schmidt, farmer currently staging a hunger strike in Canada regarding raw milk access.

Weston A. Price Foundation president and Nourishing Traditions author Sally Fallon Morell and WAPF publicist and HartkeIsOnline.com Real Food blogger Kimberly Hartke share resources on raw milk and traditional diets.

Although my head is reeling from attending two conferences this weekend and I’d like to just put my feet up at home for the next month, I’ve got this date on my calendar!

Even if I don’t personally tolerate any dairy very well, I certainly want my family and all other families to have access to this healthful living food humans drank for centuries until industrial farming created unhealthy conditions. Today’s small sustainable farms know what they are doing, and their customers reap the health benefits of raw milk obtained from happy grassfed cows.

And I see no reason why the federal government should waste its time and money on restricting consumers’ choices and bankrupting small family farms.

Isn’t this a free country? Aren’t there a lot of other needs for our tax dollars?

A tale of two conferences

I’ve had a split personality this weekend.

Much of my time has been spent at the wonderful blogging conference, Blogalicious. Since I first arrived at the conference Friday morning, I’ve met great people, caught up with friends, and learned a ton about social media and media resources in general. A favorite session so far was a panel on finding “balance” led by Jessica Smith and Jeannette Kaplun. I’ll do more of a recap later this week for TheDCMoms.com.

Most of the Blogalicious attendees are staying on site at National Harbor, but I still have a baby who nurses through the night, and I live only nine miles away. I also have an extremely restricted diet and feel a whole lot better if I cook my own food. So I’ve spent mornings and evenings here at home with my family.

Take Back Your Health Conference expo hall

But the split doesn’t stop there. This weekend is also the inaugural Take Back Your Health Conference right in my backyard in Arlington, Virginia. Organized by an amazing young woman who was so sick she had to leave college but then found healing through diet and lifestyle changes, the conference has a great line-up of giants in the field of holistic health. So I spent some of today there, too.

It’s been interesting to be at the blogging conference thinking about my priorities and passions and then to see so many people engaged in those passions at the health conference. And then to come home and live some of those passions — at least attachment parenting and healthful eating, anyway. A few other aspects of healthy living are taking a back seat with so much shuttling around.

Think I’ll go have a mindful moment with my partner now!

That is, if my daughter doesn’t wake up first.