It’s tough to stay up-to-date with the research on food if you’re an OBGYN; after all, there’s so much other stuff to keep up with. That’s why so many doctors are still telling you to eat a low-fat, low-salt, high-carb diet. Arguably, it’s also one of the reasons we have such high rates of gestational diabetes and preeclampsia. But there’s an easy way to lower your chances of either…if you just keep it real. Lily Nichol’s book “Real Food for Pregnancy” is one in a series of excellent resources detailing how to eat during pregnancy for a healthy mumma and a heathy baby. And it’s not at all what you expected to hear…

As a good socialist it had never previously occurred to me that anything could be explained outside of an economic or political framework and so those feminist writings (and the psychology books that they led me to) were a revelation. Chain-smoking Marlborough Reds and pounding cappuccinos, I discovered that emotions and other things “inside” a person were a thing; a thing that you could study, a thing that you could use to explain other things, a thing that mattered. Sitting in a puddle of my own suffering, I felt a kind of relief; this was a type of knowledge that was more than “interesting”. This knowledge was relevant and applicable to my own life; it might actually help me.

With the growing multitude of self-help books, one could easily lose a lifetime in the reading of them. Sadly, a lot of this literature tends to use the following format:  I was broken but now I’m fixed; let me teach you how to become more like me. You don’t have to completely understand the problem with that statement to notice that it makes you feel icky. Icky and a little bit panicked. “Oh shit,” you think to yourself “I’d better buy that book!” It works even better if the person on the front cover has perfect hair and pearly white teeth.

“You mean I don’t even have to fix myself either?”

“No sweetheart,” legs purr back. “In fact, you don’t have to do ANYTHING. You are worthy even if all you do is sit there and pass gas.”

“Well sorry, but that’s just fucked up,” snaps back mind. “Only lazy people believe that. I think I’ll go and try to get some shit done.”

“Okay honey,” say legs, unperturbed by mind’s tone. “I love you.”

Mind doesn’t even stop to acknowledge the gesture.

To be clear: you are crazy and you’re not. Both are true. Even though we are awakening, you and I are not separate from this world that places inanimate objects over living, breathing beings. We remain to some extent, part of the madness, ducking in and out of sanity and insanity. One day we see clearly and the next we are blind. One minute we remember and the next we have forgotten all over again. One moment we feel ready to take on the great task ahead and the next we feel isolated and in despair. The great majority of us – enlightened masters aside – are in between times, in between stories and in between two worlds. All around us lies the destruction and devastation of the way we have been living but in our hearts, in our wombs and in our wildest dreams a new world is growing. As someone else once said, on a good day we can hear her breathing.

Two days ago I stepped through the magical gateway and found myself in between “reality” and a magical place where linear time and the so-called “laws of physics” don’t seem to apply. 🧝🏾‍♀️🧞‍♀️🧚🏽‍♀️ As with all modern superheroes, I spent the day switching back and forth; one moment a normal woman going about a normal life, the next ripping off her glasses and shirt to reveal the red and yellow S beneath.

Although your journey to your own gateway will be unique, today I’m letting you know that:

a) it exists and

b) if you step through it you will NEVER be the same again. You might wish - at moments - that you hadn’t taken the red pill but in the long run you won’t even be able to imagine going back.

This moment in history is like the moment of transition in birth because the fight for liberation has come so far - we’ve been through so many contractions - and yet it seems like we have endless hours of pushing to go before any kind of true wisdom - embodied wisdom - can be claimed.

I spent 23 years of my life in school but what did I learn? Not much. Actually, the last few years have been about trying to UNLEARN what my "education" taught me. Because the world we need to build is going to take an entirely new way of being that requires an entirely different way of knowing...

Nature therapy is increasingly promoting itself using scientifically driven data. So how did we reach the point where we need to be convinced that our natural world can benefit us? And can we ever embrace its true benefits if we cannot also embrace the real Mystery of it all?

Spiritual teachers come in all forms, but really, your only spiritual teacher is you. Or the Universe. Both actually, as those two are essentially the same thing...