Granola Child

I've decided to start writing again. Really writing. Poetry, prose, songs. I bought a new book for Ghana. A nice green one full of empty pages. I will fill it with what I see, what I experience, what I feel. Not so different from all the other big books of empty pages lining my shelves, except that it is entirely different:
This one will belong to my world. This one I will share.

I'm going natural. Again, probably something that doesn't seem so strange or new, except that it really is very fresh inside me right now. I want to last. And I want to know that I'm taking care of this body as best I possibly can. I'm not going all freak-o "if it has an ingredient that starts with X in it I will not touch it", but over the last few years I've become increasingly more aware of what I'm putting in my body (or not putting in my body), how I'm treating my body, how I'm taking care of myself in general. Eating 6 apples a day doesn't make a girl healthy. It makes her sick. (warning: this may become a bit of an impassioned rant) It makes me sick to think of the number of times, number of days, weeks, months since I was in middle school that I've bought into the idea that abusing my body is going to somehow make me beautiful, desirable, better than I was before. If I skip a meal, drink a glass of milk and work out for an hour and a half I'll both feel AND look great! I've looked at too many women and wondered what it was like to have a body like THAT, skin like that, eyes like that. I've believed that if I weighed ten pounds less, wore a little more mascara, bought those new jeans I would feel so much better about myself.. or worse yet, that I would actually be better. College tested my love for myself, and to be honest, I'm not at all proud of what I discovered.
After coming to the end of myself time and again, I've finally begun to let go, and I'm done despising my own body, my own flaws and shortcomings and really, actually beautiful attributes that make me me. I mean that. Sitting here right now I can honestly say that I love my frizzy, unruly hair, my frustrating eyebrows, my puffy, sleepy eyes, my soft stomach, my wanna-be-runner legs, my size 10 feet. I love them I love them I love them! THIS IS ME!! And I want to be ME and be me healthy. I want my omega-3's, my fruits and vegetables, my protein (MY STEAKS!!), my oodles of oozing honey in my tea.
The world is beautiful. I've believed that for a long time now. Beauty is everywhere. But for some reason it's taken me a really long time to recognize that same beauty in myself. I'm not perfect, and I'm done wishing I was.
(weight: released)
So as for the natural thing
I just want to play in the dirt and find my potatoes there! I want to run through the woods and find my blackberries there! I want to float down the river and wash my hair with eco-friendly shampoo there! I want to lather on my sunscreen and let my freckles emerge under the unfathomably hot sun! I want to make my own hummus, make my own granola (it's baking right now) and sit under the stars sipping my handmade mug of green tea.. with oodles of honey =)

This summer has the potential to be far better than I first imagined.
The more I get to know Him the more freedom I find, the more "free-spirited" you call me, the more wild my heart grows, the more I long for sunshine and rivers and places with mossy hollows.
*The more I get to know You the more free I AM.
And the more I long for an even greater release of the fullness of that freedom*

oh, and another new development:
spending large sums of money makes me literally sick to my stomach.
I think I'm ready for Africa.