The Quiet Gift

"Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other

is our attention [...]

a loving silence often has far more power

to heal and to connect

than most well-intentioned words."

 

            ~ Rachel Naomi Remen

 

 

Davina's Holiday Help

Hershey's chocolate kisses.  Creamy party dips.  Fried finger foods.

 

Temptation seems to be everywhere during the holidays, especially food that is unhealthy yet oh-so- delicious.  And precisely because it's the holidays, I always start out with good intentions but then end up giving myself permission to eat those sweet, creamy and fatty foods, don't you?

Basically, I need all the help I can get to keep my willpower strong while hanging out during the holidays.  Trust me when I tell you that I will find my way to bowl of nuts at any social gathering and eat all of the cashews!  It's true!  I need someone to tell me how to get back on track after sampling all those tasty foods that go right to my hips.  How else am I going to say "No!" to dessert buffets that are also calling out to me?

 

How indeed Davina?

 

Davina Sandground (www.nutritiongroove.com) is a health and nutrition counselor trained at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition where her teachers included Dr. Andrew Weil, Director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine; Dr. Deepak Chopra, leader in the field of mind-body medicine; Dr. David Katz, Director of Yale University’s Prevention Research Center; Dr. Walter Willett, Chair of Nutrition at Harvard University; and Geneen Roth, bestselling author and expert on emotional eating.

 

I just received Davina's December newsletter focusing on eating sensibly and staying healthy during this time of the year when the last thing on your mind may be eating well.  Nutrition may also be the last thing on your mind when you are trying to recover from a loss and experiencing great stress in your life.  But your body needs even more extra care during this time and eating healthy may help you manage your emotions better and feel more in control of this painful time.

No matter what your holiday plans, whether you are determined to burn the candle at both ends or just chilling at a friend's house watching movies, here are Davina's smart and easy tips for navigating the nutritional minefield of the next few weeks:

Davina Sandground

As we head into the holiday season, I wanted to share a few reminders with you about how to not over indulge and end up feeling bloated. ~ Davina Sandground

Tip #1 – PRE-PLANNING

Pre-planning means that you always eat before you go to a holiday party. Make sure you have a healthy snack before you head out to the party. An apple with some almonds or hummus with vegetables will both do the trick. If you know you cannot eat certain foods at this party, make sure you have a mini meal before attending. You may want to have a small salad with protein or even a small bowl of cooked vegetables with tahini drizzled on top to keep your blood sugar balanced. (I always eat a healthy snack before I go to a party so I’m not ravenous when I get there).

 

It is okay to make the choice to indulge once in a while, knowing the next day you may feel the after-effects but you need to know exactly how to get back on track.

So what to do the day after?

Tip #2: EAT SIMPLE AND EAT CLEAN.

Make sure that eating over the next few weeks is clean eating. Making it through the holidays is about moderation. If you have a lot of celebration dinners and office parties it’s OK to indulge a little but be sure to “get back on the clean eating train”  at the very next meal.

 

Come back to the basic principles of clean eating. Eat fresh vegetables with lean protein. Avoid processed foods and drink plenty of water. Start your day off with a high protein breakfast like a two egg vegetable omelet so that you begin the day with balanced blood sugar. This will make it less likely that you’ll crave sugar and simple carbs.

.

Tip #3 – FLUSH THE BLOAT AND ALKALIZE

UPON WAKING, DRINK LEMON WATER

Take 2 cups of room temperature water, and add the juice from 1⁄2 a lemon, a pinch of cayenne (optional), and 1 teaspoon of raw honey or a couple drops of stevia (use stevia if you are on a yeast cleansing diet).

MID-DAY, CRANBERRY DRINK

Add 2 tablespoons of cranberry concentrate (I like Knudsen’s brand) into 6 ounces of room temperature water or seltzer if desired.

BEFORE BED, DRINK A CHLOROPHYLL DRINK TO ALKALIZE

Add 1 tablespoon of chlorophyll to 12 ounces of water with the juice of one lemon.  Note: you can buy chlorophyll at any natural food store or Whole Foods or Amazon.

Tip #4 – MOVE YOUR BODY!

When you consume more sugar and alcohol than normal your immune system can become compromised, so it’s extremely important to give it a boost. When you get exercise your lymphatic system is stimulated (in effect, you are its pump). The more you move, the more effective the lymphatic system works in keeping you healthy and warding off infections. Plan your exercise. We’re all busy but make it a priority. You’ll always feel great afterwards!

IMPORTANT FACTS TO REMEMBER

95% of your serotonin (the happy hormone) is manufactured in your digestive system.

80% of your immune system is manufactured in your digestive system.

Focusing on your digestive system is the gateway to being healthy AND happy!

Try not to abuse your digestive system. Treat it with kindness and it will serve you well.

I hope these few tips inspire and help you over the coming weeks. Remember, life can get crazy so you have to take care of yourself or soon you’ll be running on empty. Don’t let that happen to you.

I wish you a joyful holiday, peaceful end of year and a healthy 2014!

Developing A Grief Pill

The pharmaceutical industry is researching the development an anti-depressant pill for people who are grieving.

Hmmmmm....

My gut feeling when I first read this story about the availability of a so-called grief pill in The Washington Post was that it seemed rather predatory of the pharmaceutical industry to be focusing its scientific expertise and vast financial resources on people when they are at the most vulnerable and sometimes lowest points in their lives.

I vividly remember the competing emotions I felt after my husband died.  Raw pain and numbness.  Exhaustion and adrenaline.  On top of all that, I was taking care of my young son, working a full-time job and all I wanted was someone to tell me was how long all of this was going to last. Unfortunately, no one could tell me  the length of time it would take for me to process my grief.  I now understand that figuring out how to live without a loved one is really and truly different for each person.

 

Yup, I enthusiastically support the marketplace being open to offering the largest array of medical options possible, including pills,  to alleviate the physical and mental pain of whatever disease or condition people are experiencing.

 

However, on the other hand, it is as though the pharmaceutical industry is saying that something is definitely wrong with you when you are grieving; that grief is similar to having high levels of cholesterol; that grief is a condition or a disease that needs to be treated with chemicals when that is usually not be the case at all.

 

Grief is a normal and natural reaction to the loss of someone you loved and cared about and unfortunately, it's extremely painful.  Pills are not the first solution that comes to mind because whenever you read or talk to a doctor about how bad you feel when you are grieving, they usually advise you to be very careful where drugs and alcohol are concerned because either substance by themselves or taken together can easily become part of an unhealthy coping system. 

When you take all of those factors into consideration, I have to conclude that the government's approval of industry efforts to research, manufacture and distribute such a grief pill is a difficult call. 

I did not take any pills while grieving for my husband but I honestly can say that I did think about how it would have been fantastic to be able to take a pill that would block all of the pain I was constantly feeling.  My desire was very strong to make the pain stop.  And the idea that there might be a pill that would take the edge off of my pain would have made life a helluv a lot easier to live.

But I also know that at that point in my life I could very easily have become dependent on any pill that would have made me feel so good.  Somewhere inside me I knew that the last thing that I needed was to be doped up when I had so much responsibility.  I never went to my doctor and asked for a pain or anxiety prescription because I knew that eventually I was going to have to feel the raw sadness of my loss and find a way to get on the other side of it.

There are cases when people do need medical help with their grieving process and I know that this needs to be taken into consideration but I think medicine already exists to take care of it.

 

How do you feel about this issue?

 

Make up your own mind by reading this link to The Washington Post story:

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/antidepressants-to-treat-grief-psychiatry-panelists-with-ties-to-drug-industry-say-yes/2012/12/26/ca09cde6-3d60-11e2-ae43-cf491b837f7b_story_3.html

Nelson Mandela

Rest In Peace Nelson Mandela

For you used your precious life and your healing nature to change the world

and make it a much better place for generations to come. 

Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world.

 

                            ~ Nelson Mandela

Oh Those Tacky Christmas Lights!

Christmas lights take me back to the innocence of my childhood, to a time when my parents would gather me and my five siblings and put us in the station wagon with winter coats over our pajamas and we would ride around the neighborhood and look at the Christmas lights displayed on other people's houses.

Did you do that too?


One of the houses on the Richmond Tacky Lights Christmas tour
Photo courtesy of Richmond.com

Those were the days when Christmas lights were larger than they are today -- no LEDs back then -- and they only came in blue, green, red, yellow and cream.  Pink and turquoise were nowhere to be found and I don't remember anyone ever having only white lights on their Christmas tree or on their house as is popular today.

 

It's a warm and cozy memory for me, made more dramatic because we would view the lights in the darkness of night and everything seemed magical from the safety of a car with your parents in the front seat.  Those were also the days when there were no seat belts so the babies would be lying in a carry-all and we would giggle and wiggle and slide around on the seats and press our faces to the cold glass of the car window and pick our favorite lights.

 

Today, my 23-year-old son absolutely adores Christmas lights!  There can never be enough Christmas lights for him and he especially loves a section of houses in Maryland that we pass on the way to his grandparents house where the neighbors are in competition with each other to see who can put up the most lights on the houses and in their yards.  I can't imagine what their electrical bill looks like.


Another house on the Richmond Tacky Lights Christmas tour
Photo Courtesy of Richmond.com

 

My son now lives in Richmond, VA and yesterday he tweeted about the Tacky Lights Christmas tour in Richmond, VA which of course is right up his alley.  I'm sure he will check out a few of the over-the-top displays which are part of a tradition started in Richmond in 1985 when local DJ Mad Dog Gottlieb booked a Winn bus and took a select group of Richmonders on a "tacky lights" tour of 10 to 12 houses.

Who knew that Richmond took such pride in its' creative abundance of Christmas lights?

Initially, houses needed a minimum of 10,000 lights.  Then it was decided that houses needed up to 20,000 and 30,000  Now, houses must have a minimum of 40,000 lights to be considered as part of the tour.  Can you imagine how long it takes for people to string this stuff up?

But what is tacky to one person is exciting and beautiful to another.

I can't help but think that there are lots of families out there this year creating their own memories by gathering their young children into their cars at night, riding around to ooh and ahh at the blinking, twinkling, multi-colored unbelievable houses full of Christmas Cheer!

Another house on the Richmond Tacky Lights Christmas tour
Photo Courtesy of Richmond.com

I'm In Today

A friend from a support group sent me a wonderful short poem (which I am sharing below) reminding me about the priority of today.

On one level, I suppose you could say it's about managing your time but on another level, I think it's about figuring out what's important to you and staying focused on the things you want to pursue or accomplish and the people in your life that you really want to hang out with.

That can be a tall order when you have lots of responsibilities from daily life vying for your attention but I find that most people will make, find or block out the time to do whatever it is that really fires them up even if they have to lose sleep to get it done.

 

The person who sent the below poem to me could not find the author and I couldn't either.  Whoever the author is they gave us the gift of a solid message calling into focus the beauty of being in the moment and letting everything extraneous fly away. 

Please check it out and see for yourself. . .

Be Spontaneous!

TODAY

There are two days in every week about which we should not worry, two days which should be kept from fear and apprehension.

One of these days is Yesterday with its mistakes and cares, its faults and blunders, its aches and pains.  Yesterday has passed forever beyond our control.

All the money in the world cannot bring back Yesterday.  We cannot undo a single act we performed; we cannot erase a single word we said.  Yesterday is gone.

The other day we should not worry about is Tomorrow with its possible adversities; its burdens, its large promise and poor performance.  Tomorrow is also beyond our immediate control.

Tomorrow's sun will rise, either in splendor or behind a mask of clouds, but it will rise.  Until it does, we have no stake in Tomorrow, for it is yet unborn.

This leaves only one day -- Today.  Anyone can fight the battles of  just one day.  It is only when you and I add the burdens of those awful eternities -- Yesterday and Tomorrow -- that we break down.

It is not the experience of Today that drives us mad -- it is remorse or bitterness for something which happened Yesterday and the dread of what will happen Tomorrow.

 

Let us therefore live but one day at a time.

Have Some Fun



Some people are hard wired to grab life for all its worth and wring everything out of it that is humanly possible.

At this time of year, I know how easy it is to feel frustrated.  Those dark thoughts start trying to find a place to live in your head and your heart but you have to find a way to kick them out because they will only drag you down. 

According to Dr. Rita Freedman, Ph.D., a former professor of psychology and author of "Overcoming Loss," efforts to heal your soul  won't work "if you keep on punishing yourself or the world for things that are beyond anyone's control.  Guilt is self-punishment; forgiveness is self-pardon." 

Instead, seek out the positive.  People such as Clark Lambros (please read the New York Times story below) and others like him inspire me as they go at life full force and develop their talents for the greater good, constantly looking for opportunities where they can improve the quality of life for themselves and others and, most of all, enjoy themselves and the people they love with their whole being.

 

They work hard and they play hard.

They live, live, live their precious lives to the max!

And so should we all with every chance that life presents to us!! 



Photo Courtesy of The New York Times

 

 

---

January 27, 2013

Living, and Dying, on His Own Terms

By MICHAEL WINERIP

Clark Lambros knew how to live, and he knew how to die.

      

To the end, he was in charge.

      

He never cared much about what others thought.

      

When he was 39, a divorced man, he met Michele Butler. She was a senior in high school at the time.

Looking back at it now, as a 58-year-old woman, she knows how unlikely it was that anything would come of it.

      

But life surprises, as does love, and the two ended up together for 40 years, settling in Marquette, a city of 21,000 by Lake Superior, on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

      

He owned Vango’s, a restaurant he named after his father, which still features pizza and food from his homeland of Greece. He also managed a golf course.

      

She started waitressing there while going to college, eventually earning a bachelor’s in education and a master’s in speech. In 1981, he asked if she wanted to become a partner in the restaurant, and for $40,000, she did. It was the first in a long series of joint business ventures that included a strip mall, a supper club, 10 rental houses, a 35,000-square-foot office building and 22 acres on Lake Superior.

 

Whatever Mr. Lambros took on, he wanted it to be the best. Vango’s was one of the last restaurants in town to have a Friday night fish fry and now it is the biggest fish fry in greater Marquette.

The couple never married — never had children together — and even Ms. Butler has difficulty explaining it, except to say, “We were more married in our hearts than most.”

      

On his deathbed, he would brag to the hospital chaplain that she was a workhorse, high praise from a successful businessman who did his own plumbing, electrical work and carpentry and who would fix a broken restaurant booth himself rather than pay someone to do it.

      

He led a building committee for the new Y.M.C.A. in town, donated money to reopen a popular ice cream stand in a local park and gave generously to Marquette’s little Greek Orthodox church. He also hosted spaghetti dinners to raise funds to help the high school’s sports teams and cheerleaders and to buy two new drug-sniffing dogs for the Police Department.

      

She was a Rotary Club board member and an ambassador for the Chamber of Commerce.

      

There was one dark spot in all this: the death of Mr. Lambros’s son from his marriage, Clark Jr., at age 24, in an automobile accident.

      

In 2003, when Mr. Lambros and Ms. Butler decided that they wanted a condo on Florida’s Gulf Coast, it took him six hours to buy one. He excelled in tennis, and in the last round of golf he ever played, a year ago, when he was 79, he shot a 78.

      

Last month he was supposed to have a hip replacement at the Mayo Clinic, but had two heart attacks there in two days.

      

The doctors put a tube down his throat to help him breathe, making it impossible for him to talk. So he wrote messages on a white board. At one point, seeing how glum Ms. Butler and other family members looked, he wrote, “Smile, don’t cry.”

      

Later on, he wrote, “Have some fun.”

      

At 1 that Thursday afternoon, he asked a doctor to pull out the tube so he could talk. That’s when he and Ms. Butler made final plans to donate their 22 acres on Lake Superior to the city.

      

In memory of Mr. Lambros and his son, they decided, it was to be called Clark Park.

      

At 8 that night, his doctors gave him sleeping pills and the four heart medications he was taking intravenously. Around midnight, during the second heart attack, paddles were needed to resuscitate him. By then, his kidneys were failing.

      

A priest arrived and they spoke together in Greek.

      

Several times through the day, he woke and asked, “Where is everyone?” For years he had been telling Ms. Butler that when he could not live a normal life anymore, he did not want to live.

About 5 p.m. he woke one last time. “He said, ‘I love you, I’m tired. It’s time to turn it off,’ ” recalled Ms. Butler.

      

He looked at her and winked.

      

Then the doctors turned off the oxygen and pulled out the intravenous tube.

      

On Friday, Dec. 14, at 5:05 p.m. Mr. Lambros died.

      

Even the nurses wept.

      

Booming: Living Through the Middle Ages offers news and commentary about baby boomers, anchored by Michael Winerip. You can connect with Michael Winerip on Facebook here. You can follow Booming via RSS here or visit nytimes.com/booming and reach us by e-mail at booming@nytimes.com.