health and biscuits

For years and years I struggled
just to love my life. And then

the butterfly
rose, weightless, in the wind.
"Don't love your life
too much," it said,

and vanished
into the world.

Verse 7, One or Two Things, Dream Work, 1986, Mary Oliver


I made some yummy gluten free biscuits. Again. I was supposed to be doing this paleo type thing where I skip most to all carbs. But honestly this urge comes over me of late and it makes me very happy to eat a biscuit.

When I was first diagnosed with an auto immune condition I came home and googled it. The first link I clicked on very negligently (and wrongly) claimed that not many people live 6 months past diagnosis. I was out of my mind with shock. The man and I were blank with despair and there was not a thing I wouldn't do to stay alive. (Um, except take the chemo drugs they offered me, to those I said no). I instead radically changed my diet. Cold turkey I went from a regular diet to totally sugar, dairy and grain free. I was so paranoid I wouldn't even eat sweet potato so worried was I about blood sugar levels rising from the carby vegetables.... I was on steroids for a week and told myself the hunger was false and caused by the drugs so I drastically cut back on my intake of foods. In fact I found it so hard in those first few weeks to find actual foods to eat I doubt I ate much at all. This radical detox combined with weight loss (toxins are generally store in fat so when you loose fat quick you can often feel very ill due to the extra circulating in your blood). I did. I felt very ill for months. Although I wouldn't really admit it to anyone other than The Man. He knew. His opinion was that anything I wanted to try or do was good with him. He supported me 100% with anything I wanted to do to get and stay well (which included trips to quack Harley Street practitioners, to multi hundred pound supplement regimes). We both felt pretty desperate. Then. The uber anxiety I felt, the super sensitivity to every little thing I felt in my body and the anxiety it provoked began to wane because..... I had started to meditate. The books I read around that time and the guided meditations I listened to allowed me to 'let go' of my fears for the future, reminding me that the only time any of us ever ever get to live is right now. This very moment. Our lives are made up of moments. When do you ever live in any other time than right now? You don't. And the best thing is: you can *always* handle the right now. Always. And it always passes. And with this knowledge came relief and a relaxing. And I started to feel better. I literally felt myself breathe out. I started seeing the little things that make up life and notice that I wasn't thinking so much, living so much in that huge anxiety gap/chasm created by my mind in which I was perpetually terrified about the distant future, the now and then and the big black space it in between. The nothingness and terror. I began having acupuncture too around this time and still continued with the diet. Still am. Here I am 2.5 years after diagnosis and I really do feel in better health than I have most of my adult life. I don't read the articles and medical journals I once vigorously trawled, day after day. I unjoined the support groups because they were just filled with desperate people trying the whole concoction of Pharmacy drugs and since I wasn't what could I say? I still take an interest in an anti inflammatory way of living, but the more I feel better, and the longer time that passes in which I feel better the more relaxed I feel I am getting with my diet. Maybe this also is OK. I am not sure. The total fat I once lost from my body (I swear I had a flat stomach for the first time in my entire life :) ) has crept up a bit. I went down to 8 and a half stone and now reckon I am more about 9-ish. It feels reasonable and I am trying not to be anxious about weight and body shape as well as health. Because eating and living has for so long now been about health that when I see fat on my body again I start to get those teenage-body-image-paranoia thoughts, the ones that I had thought long gone, the ones that occupy far too much head space and take you away from the real stuff.

So I make biscuits. And I damn well eat them too. Because in this moment I am fine, and the odd biscuit is pretty much OK too. And if it becomes not so I know I have the willpower and dedication to stop eating them. I did one, and can again. So roll out the cookies :)

Chocolate Crumble Cookies

ghee or virgin coconut oil - melted 1/2 cup
maple syrup - 3 glugs
coconut sugar - 1/4 cup

Mix well

Add a combined cup full of rice flour and ground almonds
Add cocoa - 3 tbsp ish

It should be a stiff dough type of mixture, if it's not add more flour/almonds until it is.

Flatten by the spoonful onto a paper lined tray and cook for ten-fifteen minutes in a medium hot oven. The ground almonds can be subbed with arrowroot flour/powder for a less firm biscuit. Or you can get rid of the cocoa and add lemon zest and use all arrowroot instead of the almonds for lemon cookies. They are all pretty yum.

When you can find beauty in a biscuit you know you have entered the realm of impermanence. There in nothing permanent about a biscuit. Not in this house. The ultimate reflection of life.