Eating the Christmas Tree

Well, no....Nobody should eat their Christmas tree--unless it's one of those cute cookies or (please Santa) at least 60% dark chocolate!  My post today IS partly about eating lots of veggies and fruits every day.  Major disclaimer: I could lie and say I do that--eat lots of veggies and fruits daily--but I don't.  I'm an unreconstructed carnivore and lover of junk food, especially popcorn, which some say is one of the junkiest and, horror of horrors--microwaved baked potatoes! I also drink hot chocolate, tea, wine, gin, vodka, Irish whiskey, and Grand Marnier, though not all at same time--I do have my rules.

Be that as it may, one of the blogs I love is Robyn's Blog.  Robyn's Green Smoothie Girl website, of which her blog is only part, is another great resource. And these marvelous video clips arrived today in Robyn's free e-mail newsletter (available to those who visit her website and sign up). As I said, I am nowhere near as disciplined as Robyn, though I can be--in spurts.  But Robyn's talk about how her grandmother beat stage 3 cancer reminds me of my dear friend Mary.

[Note to friends, this is not "Mary from Iowa." This is "Mary from Indiana," whom I also met at Gallaudet when I worked there.]

Mary is deaf, a fluent communicator in both ASL and English, and one of the most talented painters--and now writers--I know. I met her first when I signed up for her class in oil painting, and now we ride bikes together when she has time in her busy life as a tutor and graduate student at the Big Famous Jesuit University here.  A number of years ago, Mary learned she had cancer, and without any health insurance (tutors at the Big Famous Deaf University here do not get benefits, despite the fact that many of the students who enroll there need help from the tutoring center to pass the requisite basic English class, produce written assignments, etc.), she started looking for other ways to heal herself that did not involve Western medicine and its surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and the whole expensive lot.

Always a serious, interested student of life, she started reading and talking with alternative healers here. She began her healing journey by changing her own diet.  Basically, she daily consumes plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables that she juices herself, eats gorgeously inventive salads with more of the same, and stays away from not only meat & dairy but also cooked foods, caffeine, and alcohol entirely.  And she is now free of cancer.

According to Robyn's interview (both parts here), Robyn's grandmother beat stage 3 cancer, too.  So here's a holiday present for my dear readers.  (If you know me well, you'll know I'm chuckling here.  If anyone dances on the razor's edge nutritionally, it's me.)  But, as my dear departed father-in-law, Murray, used to say, "If you done it, it ain't bragging"--a quote, btw, from Walt Whitman.
Robyn's grandma and my friend Mary from Indiana have done it, too--and it's up to Robyn and me to brag about them: 

Part 1: Food is Medicine


Part 2: Getting Started