{Originally Published on Gourmet Chick}

The best excuse ever to eat eye popping amounts of pork is to gather together 18 of your closest friends and book a whole pig at St. John Restaurant in Farringdon in London, England. You really do need to book the pig in advance. A deposit of £320 at least a week before your meal is required to reserve the pig which we affectionately began to refer to as Percy. Yes, Percy would die for our eating pleasure however where else but St. John’s to best appreciate and pay tribute to the life of the pig. The head chef at St. John Restaurant, Fergus Henderson, is the champion of the concept of ‘nose to tail’ eating. We could be sure that every part of the pig would be appreciated in all it’s glory and used and consumed right down to the last trotter.

For the privilege of eating a whole pig our group is allocated the private room at the front of the restaurant. Just around the corner from the Smithfield meat markets, the austere white washed walls of the restaurant and the waiters clad in butchers aprons are a nod to the area’s continuing carnivorous traditions. The bone marrow served with parsley salad is St John’s signature dish so I have no intention of passing up an opportunity to sample the bone marrow despite the lashings of pork that was to follow.

{Originally published on Thursday Drive}

I was in the middle of nowhere, but I felt as though I had arrived at someplace important and pivotal. A place that should show on some map of my life with the words Go here.

Heavy and golden, the moonlight sank to earth on a parachute of stars and brought everything around me out of the shadows – the hulking shapes of mountains, open space, a black ribbon of road. Far away, the light of one house.

I stood in the middle of a road in northwestern Montana, shivering with the wind that ran through me like a hundred ghosts. I had stopped to get out, to look. No other car would pass by while I stood there. The night was big. The world was big. How many times had the wind that filled my lungs traveled along the curve of the earth? I breathed in, sure it told me secrets of what my life could be, how big it could be, now that it was all mine again.

Back home in Connecticut, my job waited for me and my husband did not. Our separation was new, no older than a month. With less fuss than it took to plan our wedding, we decided to break apart the marriage, each of us taking uneven halves of the whole, pieces that had never quite fit together and always left a space between two people who tried.

I settled into a new place and then took every vacation day and every bit of cash I could, and I drove – this time, from Connecticut to the western side of Montana, 5000 miles in 12 days. It was the middle of September – now, almost to the date. This time every year, I give myself over to nostalgia for that trip and for the person I was then. Brave. Unafraid to go as far as that, alone, to see something beautiful, to be changed.

And despite the disappointment of a marriage that ended, I still thought I could see ahead and predict the future, or shape it.

The joke was on me, of course. On her, on the person I was that night, eight months before I would learn that I was pregnant with my first child. Whatever I thought was brave or scary before hitched a ride to somewhere far away.

But she learned. You want scary? I told her. Having a baby is scary. Cobbling together a life with another person, with a new life between you, takes guts. Believing that it will all work out? Harder still.

{Originally Published on Mommy Melee}

It’s a little after 5:30 and the sun is starting to give everything a rusty, magic glow. Green is greener. Blue is bluer. And half of Riviera Middle School is in ruins.

I knew about it, of course—racing the sun to get the light, to document the destruction before I forget, before it’s gone gone gone. I have my camera in the passenger seat. I pull up against the fence, crack the windows for my sons in the backseat, and step out onto the pavement.

Monsters in the parking lot. Two giant diggers. (The dinosaurs are eating the school, my son whispers.) The sun glints just right, a little flare of personality. A wink. I shiver and start taking pictures.

Gum on the seat, then my jeans, a jacket tied around my waist. Crying on the phone, please come and let me go home, the girls are so mean. I write a report on dachshunds. A boy in gifted class writes a song about the way I pick my nose. I know I’m not the only one who thinks about last year’s rape incident every time I march up the dingy stairwells. I have a boyfriend for three days in the hall. A high school student volunteers with the after school chorus program. Why don’t blondes use vibrators, he asks me. Because they chip their teeth. I don’t get the joke.

{Originally published on John T. Unger Studio}

The best thing that ever happened to me was the night an angry, messed up cab driver pulled me into the back room of a 24 hour diner and held a huge handgun to my head for over ten minutes, all the while describing in intricately fetishistic detail exactly what would happen when he pulled the trigger.

Why? Because it changes you, staring down a nutjob holding a gun. After that, the small stuff just doesn’t get sweated. You either break, or break through to a mandatory satori of keeping things in proportion that most people never get to walk away from. It’s an ice calm I wouldn’t trade for anything.

The second best thing that ever happened to me was when the dot com crash of 2000 wiped out most of the design industry at the peak of my career as a freelance print designer. I went from turning away work every week to working exactly 7 days of the next year. I lost my girl. I lost my loft. I lost part of my thumb in an accident moving out of the loft. I pretty much lost it all.

Of course, the only reason I was working in offices was to fund the art career I wanted… materials, space, tools, etc. I worked eight hours in the office and ten in the studio, sleeping when I passed out involuntarily. I decided that if my industry had tanked, I was damned if I was gonna retrain to do something else I didn’t want to do. I chose to make the art be my sole means of support. I built some monumentally scaled commissions working out of borrowed shop space, with borrowed gear, sleeping on borrowed couches.

It worked. I’ve been making my living as an artist ever since, and these days I earn triple the income I ever did from the best corporate gigs.

The third best thing that ever happened was the day my studio building collapsed under a load of snow while I was standing on the roof shoveling. I rode that roof to the ground like a gut-shot rodeo pony. The building and some pricey tools were completely destroyed, but I was unharmed… until I spent the next three months (December, January and February) without heat, running water or a stove because the natural gas line into the house had been severed in the collapse. The gas company refused to fix the line until they could bury it in the spring. I lost a few brain cells, I’m sure, by running an unvented kerosene heater inside the house to stay alive.

{Originally published on Into the Rabbit Hole}

Tonight I put on my Express size 5/6 jeans again. I didn’t have to struggle, suck it in, or lay down to get them buttoned!

I never dreamed I would be able slide into these again. Since February, I’ve lost twenty pounds. That’s a lot, considering that I wasn’t fat to begin with. However, those twenty pounds were necessary, because now I definitely look better, feel healthier, and am more comfortable with my body.

Want to know my secret? Five simple words: “I love my beautiful body.”

Think about it! A person who loves their body will take care of it. If you were to body-sit for a loved one’s body, wouldn’t you do everything it needs, to make sure you return it happy and healthy? You’d feed it the most nutrient-rich, yummy food you could find, and you’d give it lots of exercise, and you’d never say things like, “You’re so fat,” or “God, if you could just lose fifteen pounds…” Hell no you wouldn’t say that!! If you were body-sitting, you would be kind and gentle, giving it everything it needed and telling it good things!

So, why is it that we don’t care for our bodies the way we know we need to?

I believe it’s has everything to do with how we think of our bodies. Instead of loving them, we put negative energy into our selves, wishing we could just lose (fill in the flaw)… or saying we’re not good enough until (fill in the ‘what am I lacking’)… Guess what! Thoughts like that affect our bodies.

You are what you think! And by changing the way I thought, I was able to bring forth to the outside of my body what it was that I thought from the inside of it. I wrote it in soap crayon on the tiles in my shower. I wrote it on my mirrors. Every time I turned the clasp on my necklace, I whispered, “I love my beautiful body.”

Eventually, I began to believe that. The power of your thoughts is everything. In order to break habitual thinking, or any habit for that matter, you must change that thought you express into something that is contradictory to what you have previously thought. For instance, when I quit smoking, I changed my self-perception into, “I am not a cigarette smoker.”

At first it was a struggle. “I love my beautiful body” conflicted with the original self image I had; it conflicted with the, I’m fats or I’m not pretty enoughs. That confliction is why I needed the reminders to change my thinking through out my day. I needed the necklace clasps and the soap crayons.

If you want to be beautiful from the outside, you must express beautiful things from the inside. Do not criticize your body; love it and care for it. Nurture it.

{Originally posted on Joy Unexpected}

I can’t sleep.

My friend’s baby died today.

Her baby died.

I had read that she has been taken to hospital by ambulance. I was worried, so this afternoon I sent her an email.

Just catching up on what’s going on with your baby girl. I’ve been so busy and wrapped up in my stupid little world.If you need ANYTHING, please don’t hesitate to call me. I’m only an hour-ish away.

Thinking of you all.

She wrote back and said she was worried. Maddie was breathing really hard and the doctors didn’t know why. She was scared, but glad she was being monitored so closely.

I remember feeling worried, but thinking they would figure out what was wrong and she would get better. She had to get better.

Then, tonight, I clicked over to her blog and read this.

My husband was sitting here on the couch with me when I read it. I threw my laptop down and just shouted “NO! NO!!”

I started to shake. I was in shock.

I then called a couple of friends who are also friends with Heather and we sobbed together in disbelieve.

It’s unreal. I still can’t believe it.

Every time I close my eyes to try to sleep, I think of Heather. I think of the last time I saw her– we were at the LA food bank, volunteering our time. She was so kind and wonderful to be around. Towards the end of the day, she got a phone call from her babysitter. Maddie had a fever. I saw the worry instantly sweep over her face. I told her it was okay if she needed to leave. I could just feel the love she had for her baby girl in that moment.

{Originally posted on Mommy Pie}

It’s 2 p.m., I’m sitting in a coffee shop surrounded by people. And the tears, they are streaming.

It’s funny, this community of ours. Call us Mommy Bloggers. Call us the Blogosphere. A powerful, and at times awe-inspiring collective voice. More often than not, a beautiful collective heart.

Our friendships forged over late night Tweets and Comments Sections, we find ourselves bonding with women we may never meet face-to-face. Yet, the invisible ties of the Internet that bind us are, inexplicably, many times, just as strong as the ties we feel with those we affectionately call our IRL (In Real Life) Friends.

Beginning today, I make no distinction between the two.

I’m no less happy for a Blog Friend when she lands a great job.

I’m no less sad when she loses it.

I don’t laugh less when she recounts her kid’s latest antics. (Or more times than not, her own.)

I don’t worry less about her during the tough times.

My heart doesn’t break less when she suffers staggering, unimaginable loss.

It’s 2 p.m., I’m sitting in a coffee shop surrounded by people. And the tears, they are streaming.

Originally Published on Dutch Blitz

I was a “big girl” growing up.

I was not comfortable in this body of mine. Yes, it was my body, but I felt as though it did not belong to me. I struggled with the fact that friends of mine could eat McDonald’s, and candy, and wear skinny acid-washed jeans. I would hang with them and curse my chubby thighs and flabby arms. I would shake my fist and silently scream, “It’s not FAIR!”

I resigned myself to the fact that I was destined to be BIG. My friends had flat stomachs and no inner thigh to speak of and it was so foreign to me. My thighs rubbed together as I walked and would get red from the friction.

There were a couple of stints where I got skinny. Because I did not eat. I remember when I was in grade eleven, I ran into an old friend from out of town. She praised me with those words I longed to hear. “You are so SKINNY!” And I told her (innocently) that I had not eaten in forty-eight hours.

That would be TWO DAYS.

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