Everyone has a story and this is mine. You may be asking, "What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?" I was a middle class mom living in a suburb of Washington D.C. with my four intelligent, beautiful children and my husband of 32 years. I was an organizational tutor for many years who helped clients get through school and turn their lives around. I had never bucked the system before. I followed my doctors, teachers and parents advice to the letter. I was a " good" girl who crossed all my T's and dotted all my I's my entire life. I was a vegetarian who loved her pizza and ice cream. I thought I was healthy even though I was up to 175 pounds and aching all over.
It was in this mindset, in 2009, that I noticed an ad in Vegetarian Times promising a vegetarian cruise leaving from Florida, complete with interesting classes and exciting ports of call. Best of all, there was food I could eat! I begged everyone I knew to go with me. They all had a reason why they could not attend. I was terrified to go alone, but something inside of me told me this was an important crossroads in my life. With anxiety in my heart, I packed and got myself on a plane to the rest of my life. Standing in line, I exclaimed to the heavyset man in front of me, " This is so exciting. we are going on a health cruise!" He looked at me in shock. You see, he was on the other part of the cruise, where people could indulge in all the goodies a cruise offers. I thought the whole cruise was part of the program! Imagine my surprise, on the food line, the first lunch, when, expecting to see pizza and and other cheese laden savories, I spied seaweed, miso soup, and other strange oddities I had never before seen or heard of! I defiantly snuck up to the soft serve ice cream the first night. After all, no one was going to tell me what I could and could not eat!
By the third day, I was hooked on macrobiotics. Everything made crystal clear sense to me. It was like I had come home to a place I felt secure and my mind lit up like a light bulb as I heard the teachers describe yin and yang, order of the universe and chewing. I returned home and my family did not know what hit them! I cleared the cupboards, brought home strange ingredients they had never heard of and began cooking on Japanese burners, sometimes 6 hours a day.
Next I went to Asheville, North Carolina where a warm and knowledgable group of macrobiotic "oldies" welcomed me to Lino and Jane Stanchich's retreat in the mountains. I met people trying to recover from cancer and other ills there. One man was chewing each bite 400 times as he was quite ill. We did do in each morning and learned about poop from Lino. I never laughed so hard. The meals Jane prepared hooked me on macrobiotic cooking and I wanted to create them too. I left there with even more resolve to make this life work for me.
I enrolled in Denny Waxman's one year class in Philadelphia. While there I forged bonds with several students who were on the same journey as I was. I honed my cooking skills, even though I hated every minute of making pressed salad over and over again with Susan. Each month I couldn't wait to hear what we would learn next. The seeds of this blog were born there. In my excitement, I offered to create a newsletter for Denny complete with profiles of students, recipes, macro travel ideas, book and movie reviews. He was not interested, but after starting macro travel friends on facebook and this blog, I see that over one thousand other people are. Unfortunately other untenable experiences in that class ended with me resigning and feeling quite disappointed in macrobiotics. It felt like my balloon had burst. Thankfully, I met other teachers who encouraged me, like Warren and Verne and Melanie, and my unbridled enthusiasm for macrobiotics grew once again.
Through all these times I felt there was a sense of connection that was missing in the macrobiotic world. I attended Summer Conference my first year and realized, just as when I went on the cruise and they couldn't hook me up with other Marylanders to make my journey easier, there was no way to be connected to others in your home state. I put up bulletin boards listing every state with columns for name, address and contact info. By the second day, it filled up with eager newbies and seasoned macros wanting to form pot luck groups and meet others on their own macrobiotic paths. I was not allowed to post a board this year to the disappointment of attendees who approached me about it. The site Macro Travel Friends on Facebook now has over 800 friends who list travel info, places to stay, counsellor events and I have connected several healing chefs with cancer patients through this venue. Through my cooking business I hope to improve people's lives with good wholesome macrobiotic food.
My own potluck group has grown from three of us, in the beginning, to eighteen this past Saturday night. We each told about our macro journey this last pot luck. People were so encouraged by my story that I decided to share it here. That cruise was my life changing event. I ended up losing fifty five pounds, clearing my mind, improving my health, and meeting so many wonderful people around the world.
Macrobiotics shakes your life up. It makes you look at your life differently. It isn't always an easy journey, but one well worth it.
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear:
Though as for that the passing there,
Had worn them really about the same.
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
OH, I kept the first one for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
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