“We’re struggling to recognize the power we already carry—and how we’re meant to use it.” This is the phrase that keeps coming back to me. One area of focus for me currently is my health. And it’s a place where many of us have fallen into feeling powerless and acting with little power - at the mercy of health professionals, food industry, insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies. It’s a cultural trend, especially in America, where we not only worry about our health ( spend huge amounts of money on and take massive quantities of supplements - according to the latest guru ) but we also acquiesce to ‘experts’ and fall into passive acceptance, motivated by fear, of our health problems as defined by othered whose best interests are sometimes not us-the patient. Talk about books we read - SO many books on healthy cooking, our broken agricultural system, supplementation, the best diet, best practice protocols for optimum breathing and sleeping and cold and hot therapy …. On and on ….. we are DESPERATE for health.
I’m pondering power in this realm and what it looks like to not just be angry and rail at a broken system, but ask myself what have I given up and what power could I find and use here ? I’m
Discovering that power IS like sunlight - gradually spreading its light into parts of myself and my world that I couldn’t see - I can take specific actions to exercise the power I am finding ( increase exercise, even LOVE movement and strength, eat differently and even think differently about the foods I buy or don’t buy or grow or don’t grow ….) and I can enjoy my growing sense of humbly learning about my submission to powerlessness and subsequent frustration ( anger ) at myself and others along my journey. The sunlight is spreading and I’m grateful that walking in the light means in part seeing more clearly.
Oh, Laura! How I have missed listening to you think - out loud in a lecture or seminar - and on paper in your writing - not to mention in person! I am so grateful that you are “thinking out loud” again!
“We’re struggling to recognize the power we already carry—and how we’re meant to use it.” This is the phrase that keeps coming back to me. One area of focus for me currently is my health. And it’s a place where many of us have fallen into feeling powerless and acting with little power - at the mercy of health professionals, food industry, insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies. It’s a cultural trend, especially in America, where we not only worry about our health ( spend huge amounts of money on and take massive quantities of supplements - according to the latest guru ) but we also acquiesce to ‘experts’ and fall into passive acceptance, motivated by fear, of our health problems as defined by othered whose best interests are sometimes not us-the patient. Talk about books we read - SO many books on healthy cooking, our broken agricultural system, supplementation, the best diet, best practice protocols for optimum breathing and sleeping and cold and hot therapy …. On and on ….. we are DESPERATE for health.
I’m pondering power in this realm and what it looks like to not just be angry and rail at a broken system, but ask myself what have I given up and what power could I find and use here ? I’m
Discovering that power IS like sunlight - gradually spreading its light into parts of myself and my world that I couldn’t see - I can take specific actions to exercise the power I am finding ( increase exercise, even LOVE movement and strength, eat differently and even think differently about the foods I buy or don’t buy or grow or don’t grow ….) and I can enjoy my growing sense of humbly learning about my submission to powerlessness and subsequent frustration ( anger ) at myself and others along my journey. The sunlight is spreading and I’m grateful that walking in the light means in part seeing more clearly.
Oh, Laura! How I have missed listening to you think - out loud in a lecture or seminar - and on paper in your writing - not to mention in person! I am so grateful that you are “thinking out loud” again!