Changing Seasons

This past summer, my garden was mostly flowers, as I only had about 5-6 vegetables remaining in my food repertoire. I still made room for those veggies in the raised bed; surrounding them with marigolds, poppies, and sweet peas. Then, promptly after sowing     the seeds, I had a flare that took most of those remaining vegetables off my list.

As I watched sprouts break through the soil a few weeks later, I resigned myself to the fact that it would all go to friends, or the office, or the food bank, come harvest time.

I started my DNRS brain retraining in mid-June; flowers were coming into full bloom, the lettuce was starting to look like lettuce, the parsley was just starting to get tall. During the summer, I did many of my 'rounds' (the set of retraining practices I do each day) in my back yard, often facing the garden; my bare feet in the cool grass, grounding me and connecting me to nature as I calmed my limbic system.

I was growing vegetables and neurons at the same time.

Iceberg lettuce was one of the vegetables I was still eating; I grew it for the first time this year, and I loved being able to grab leaves at will to add to my meals (also, non-mass-produced iceberg lettuce has so much more flavour!).

The Brussels sprouts never sprouted, so their leafy stalks got yanked.

The rutabaga found homes among my coworkers.

Rhubarb was shared with one friend.

Raspberries with another.

I found I loved having the energy to work the garden, even if I wasn't eating most of it. 

By late summer, the only vegetable remaining in the ground was the carrots. I just couldn't part with them. I pulled them on a warm afternoon in September, carefully scrubbing, slicing, blanching, bagging, and then tucking them into the freezer.

Since starting my DNRS program, I've actually nibbled on small, single bites of a few different foods here and there, though my limbic system was clear each time that it was still outside my training zone. I knew that many people in the program had been able to start reintroducing foods almost immediately, while many others didn't even start reintroductions until after the initial 6-month training period. I was starting to get the sense that my nervous system might be in the latter category.

Accepting this was almost as hard to digest as food.

But I still wanted to try.

A couple weeks ago, I pulled a slice of carrot from one of the bags in the freezer. Mixed it into my meal. And I don't know if it was the love and care that went into growing them, or the new neural pathways, or both, but my limbic system considered it from all angles, and said,

"Okay 🙂"

via GIPHY