That night when I got home, I sat down on the couch and just…felt what was flowing through me. But how can I put to words the medicine of my dance, the healing of my soul. The feeling of bliss when you finally let go of all inhibitions and dance to the beat of your own Soul. There are no words. A book, Earth Medicine, filled with Native American wisdom, “364 daily offerings organized according to the cycles of the moon”, sat on the coffee table. In the beginning, author Jamie Sams explains how to find today’s date using the moon calendar. He also offers the following suggestion:

“When you are feeling out of balance or overwhelmed, you may sit quietly and keep the book closed in your hands with the binding resting in your lap. Take a few deep breaths to relax your body and still your mind. Reverently ask for the teaching, story, or poem that will nurture you or bring peace to your situation. Take a moment and allow your fingers to feel for the right place among the pages, and then open the book to that page.”

With my eyes closed, I flip through the pages, back to cover, asking, “how do I continue to feel this love for myself?” I slow down and stop, eyes still closed, but it feels off. I start again, from back to front. I finally rest my hand upon a page. Once again, I ask before opening my eyes, “how do I continue to feel this love for myself?” I open my eyes to this poem, my answer to love:

Acceptance of the Whole Self (Third Moon 28)

The balance and acceptance
Of all parts of the whole,
Come when we can honor
The lessons in every role.
The shadow reflects the lessons
Of every denial we hold.
The mind can thwart or assist,
Choosing to encourage or scold.
The body reacts to all thoughts,
Whether they hinder or aid;
Freewill determines the outcome,
As we choose to love or degrade.
The spirit watches in silence,
Nurturing the Eternal Flame,
Counting the losses and victories,
Of the “Will Versus Shadow Game.”
The playing field of Mother Earth,
With the worlds of spirit unseen,
Affords a multitude of choices,
Lessons for every human being.
Wholeness to each is different,
Finding balance without denying,
That peace comes from acceptance,
From truth instead of lying.

Best,
Desirée

Have you ever asked these questions growing up? As a parent or an adult in touch with children, have these questions been ever presented to you? Many parents dread these sorts of questions. Common answers may include – “I cannot talk about it now,” “we’ll talk about it when you grow up,” “when we die God takes us to heaven,” etc. Some children will pretend to settle for these answers, but even if it seems they do, deep inside they know dissatisfaction. A veil remains shut because the parents may not be ready to face these questions themselves.

Looking in retrospective, when I wrote Daddy Fixes Everything, two events may have affected me more than anything else – the premature passing away of our much loved golden retriever, Zoe, as a result of an acute kidneys failure, and the premature passing away of my own dad when I was only fifteen. Like it or not, Death is always there, waiting. Be it a dog, a parent, or a friend. The dance of life goes on – we are born, we pass on, shreds of us remaining with whatever we did in this world, so we may be born again in other forms.

Daddy Fixes Everything is a picture-book intended for children and young adults, as well as for parents and other adults. It follows a family of four children and their parents as they cope with the death of their pet hamster. I chose to begin the story with a very light humoristic tone, introducing a father who is ever-busy fixing broken toys and household sundries while surrounded by his children’s commotion. All is well until one child (Danielle) discovers that the pet hamster is not moving. Figuring dad, who can fix just about anything, can fix the hamster as well, Danielle arranges a rescue operation, only to find out that resurrection is not included in the father’s repertoire of skills… The story then takes a different tone as the family, particularly the children, presented with the first-time experience of facing death and its emotional ramifications, must come to terms with the passing away of their pet.

Despite the challenging task of explaining death and departure in realistic terms, Daddy Fixes Everything attempts to provide children and their parents with tools to cope; so doing in language and register that are age-appropriate.

What makes Daddy Fixes Everything unique is the approach it takes to the topic at hand. While many children stories on similar topics sugarcoat them with promises of heaven, Daddy Fixes Everything introduces different beliefs and philosophies without being religious. It allows for different opinions about the great beyond. Furthermore, it does so while attempting to provide practical comfort through suggested use of sense-memory.

In addition to children, young adults and their parents, the book found an audience with therapists, educators and even veterinarians. Parents, educators and other professionals, with whom I consulted while working on the story, were enthusiastic about having such a book at their disposal and so far the responses I received from readers are wonderful and touching.

Daddy Fixes Everything is available at www.DaddyFixesEverything.com, Lulu.com, Amazon.com and selected stores and locations.

About Ronen Divon:
Ronen Divon resides at the lower Hudson Valley, New York, with his wife and four children: a set of triplets and singleton. Ronen brings into his work as a writer, a unique blend of mixed cultures and philosophies. A filmmaker by education (School of Visual Arts, NY,) with additional training in multiple arts, Ronen is also a yoga and tai chi instructor, a spiritualist and a business entrepreneur, with rich life experience, and keen, honest observations. Ronen is a member of the SCBWI (Society of Children Book Writers and Illustrators), who previously published children books abroad, as well as short fictional stories and a series of articles related to spirituality (available at the Monroe Yoga web site).

The Goddess of the Fall Season Salad

The fall season welcomes in the yin energy.  It is the time to go inside and examine, embrace color, and prepare for winter which is really a time to further the expansion of the yin energy and also to create some internal heat for the body.  Here is a recipe that will help every Goddess to embrace Herself.

Salad
handful of arugula
handful of pomegranate seeds
1/4 cup walnuts
2 mandarin oranges
1 apple (any seasonal kind)
1/2 cup butternut squash (cubed; optional)
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup cranberries

Dressing
2 tablespoons orange juice
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon of olive oil or walnut oil
1/2 teaspoon nutritional yeast
1/2 teaspoon herbamare or sea salt
pinch cayenne

If you are using the butternut squash toss it in olive oil or walnut oil and dehydrate overnight.  Toss arugula, raisins, cranberries, oranges, apples, walnuts, the butternut squash, and pomegranate seeds together in a salad bowl.  Whisk together your orange juice, lemon juice, nutritional yeast, and herbamare or sea salt in a bowl.  Pour over your arugula salad and add more herbamare or sea salt for flavor along with a little oil and a pinch of cayenne for internal heat.  Toss thouroughly and enjoy!

Nwenna Kai is an Urban Eco-Culinary Activist, and a Live Foods and Holistic Health Coach, Educator, Lecturer, Writer, Author, and Consultant.  Nwenna Kai is the author of The Goddess of Raw Foods available for purchase at www.amazon.com.  She is the previous owner of Taste of the Goddess Cafe, one of LA’s pioneering organic raw food cafes.  Her café has been featured in 944 Magazine, LA Magazine, The LA Wave, The Travel Channel, Your LA TV, KTLA morning news in Los Angeles, and E-Entertainment’s True Hollywood Stories about Diet Fads.  Celebrities such as Forest Whitaker, Andy Dick, Sanaa Lathan, Meshell N’degeocello, Stan Lathan, Orlando Jones, and Rev. Michael Beckwith, one of the Teacher’s of The Secret frequented the cafe often.

Nwenna Kai has been interviewed on numerous radio, TV, magazine, and blog interviews such as Raw Epicurean, The LA Examiner, Innerlightradio.com, Blog Talk Radio, Purely Delicious, Heart & Soul Magazine, KPFK 90.7 FM Radio in Los Angeles, Front Page with Dominique DiPrima, KYTN Gospel Radio 1460 AM in Los Angeles, Raw Mocha Angels, and VegCooking.com. She is a featured chef in The Ultimate Encyclopedia of the Raw Food Lifestyle DVD series.  For her work as an health and wellness entrepreneur, she was awarded the 2007 Elizabeth Dole Young Entrepreneurial Scholarship sponsored by Women Impacting Public Policy (WIPP).
Currently Nwenna Kai is diligently moving forward on her new book/documentary project, What’s Really Eating Us?  Black women and weight, an anthology of black women’s stories about weight.

Her spare time activities are belly dancing, yoga, hiking, morning walks, and learning about what she calls ‘Yoni” consciousness.

Nwenna Kai currently resides in Philadelphia and is up to creating an amazing life for herself where she can smoothly divide her time between two or three cities of her choice, do her life’s work of transforming people’s health and their lives, and maintain a happy and healthy family.

Her website is www.nwennakai.com.  You can contact Nwenna Kai at info@nwennakai.com.

Thankfully, our session was quite a breakthrough session.   For so long now I’ve been feeling like my fire has been dampened significantly.  In real life translation that meant hardly ever feeling that I was enough.  As a result I have been a perpetual student for some time now, attaining certificate after certificate in the field of health and wellness, not to mention all my grad school work in the field of business and finance.  Yet I never quite felt ready enough to put my extensive training into vocational practice.  Little by little I saw my peers move from study, into work, and rise up into success.  Where was I?  Still feeling like what I knew, what I had achieved just wasn’t enough.  It was sad really.  It seemed that this feeling of not being good enough pervaded practically everything I did, but especially hit me hard in the area of career and creativity.

There was a time when this wasn’t as pronounced and I was able to peak my head up above water enough for a few accomplishments under my belt, but more often then not, I held myself back when it came to stepping out into the world.  It was more than the fear of failure, it went deeper, it was that I was not worthy of success or of putting myself out there for paid work, or even putting my artwork out in the world as serious work.  In other words, I failed to take myself seriously enough to put my work out there as being any more valuable than just me dabbling.  At the same time, I knew my work was good quality work and I knew my commitment was solid and my heart and intentions were true and pure.

Soon enough, as we started this new session, it was clear that some work was required.  The work of making peace with whatever was holding me back so that I could rekindle my fire.  I was surprised just how far back it went and just how seemingly unrelated to real work my problem stemmed from.

In reality when I have put myself out there, despite my resistance and self-doubts, I’ve done just fine.  As an adult, I have emerged from being a painfully shy, quiet, introvert to a community builder, budding artist, and proficient and caring healing facilitator, with several accomplishments under my belt.  The catch was, it was never for any significant compensation, I could not allow myself to feel worthy enough of positioning myself as someone who’s work deserved compensation.  In this session, however, I was willing to at least get back to a place where I felt comfortable expressing my creativity without the fear of judgment from others and without harshly judging myself.  Vocation would come later, hopefully.

With Parashakti’s help, I was able to locate what seemed to be the root of the problem.  The genius was when she pointed out that the feeling just didn’t match the reality of the way my life had turned out, in spite of it all.   The truth was that not good enough was a deception.  It wasn’t true at all, despite my hanging onto it incessantly, and I had proven that with what I was able to accomplish, even in the throws of self-doubt.  I no longer wanted to live like that, constantly doubting.  The path I was on required that I let that go and I was determined to do so, but it had to be with self-honesty.  This was no intellectual exercise, this was a matter of being and knowing, not thinking.

With the work of the fire medicine that we nurtured together, I was able to overcome my self-doubts about my creativity, not intellectually, but rather in practice.  In other words, I wasn’t thinking, oh, hey, wow, I am creative, no.  I just started expressing my creativity in the playful, intuitive way that I once had before my doubts consumed me to such a degree, without thought, and instead with action.  Something had shifted, which was quite a blessing.

The result of this work has been so rewarding and so much fun.  Now, I have two really cute shirts that I have made, because I’ve always wanted to sew creatively but have never allowed myself to go in that direction before.   My medicine is Fire and my task now, as Parashakti has advised me, is to bond with this lost energy and see what unfolds.  She asked me how more I can nurture this bond between the fire and myself.  I vowed my commitment to this bond without imposing the requirement that I had to believe anything in particular.   The only requirement was to move into action, to play, to let the fire guide me and heal me and ignite my dreams through to fruition.

I know the next step is to begin to find a way to feel confident in my chosen vocation.   However, for now, just feeling the flames of my creativity getting stronger, no longer being blocked by self-doubts, the addiction to perfection has dissolved into the love of playfulness and the understanding that mastery comes with practice, and practice requires moving into action.

-Salma 12/7/10

This Recipe from Chef Melissa Mango is guaranteed to put some refreshing zing in your Spring

This hydrating and juicy sweet soup is best made in summer when all the ingredients are in season and at their best!  Most people think soups need to be warming, or even savory in taste. This soup can easily be a breakfast item or sipped throughout a warm day!  Enjoy

-          Chef Melissa

Fruit Loop Soop

Serves 6-8

8 med-lg carrots
7 large Fuji apples
7 med beets
6 c ripe peaches pitted and chopped
2 c ripe strawberries stems removed
5 kiwi peeled and quartered
3 ½ c ripe mango peeled and chopped
3 TB Agave, honey or a few drops of stevia (if fruit loop soup is too tart.)

Step 1

Juice the carrots, apples and beets. Place juice in bowl.
Step 2

In a food processor, gently pulse the peaches, strawberries, kiwi and mango.  Be careful not to over-process it into baby food.  Keep fruit slightly chunky.

Step 3

Combine juice and fruits. Serve in a nice bowl, goblet or wine glass!

Kitchen Tip: This recipe is perfect for summer picnics, days at the beach or anytime you want a nice light, mineral rich and energizing meal!

Recipe provided by Chefmelissamango@gmail.com

Melissa Mango’s paper-free recipe book is available now at www.MelissaMangosGreenCuisine.Blogspot.com

Also featuring Nut free and agave free meals.

Check out this video of Chef Melissa in action

Interview with Chef Melissa Mango

Chef Melissa Mango’s Bio

Meet the Chef

Melissa Mango has been on the Live Foods path since 2001, and has her own catering company and private chef service.  As her creative talents continued to blossom, Melissa paired up with friend, Chef Eric Rivkin, at Iowa Community College, and the ACF (American Culinary Federation) for professional demos. Melissa later taught the art of Live Cuisine at The Chef De Cuisine Idaho chapter.
Melissa was one of the chefs for six diabetics during the filming of RawFor30Days: Healing Diabetes Naturally, during which she was a guest Chef and a volunteer instructor at The Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center led by Dr. Gabriel Cousins.  Some of her earlier Southwestern recipes can be found in The Raw 50 by Carol Alt published in 2007.

Additionally, she was featured as a volunteer and Executive Chef at The Raw Spirit Fest 2006, 2007 and 2008.  Melissa has been a reappearing guest Chef on the super sleek G Living TV show that educates the planet on greener fashion, food, global topics and more. (http://www.gliving.tv).

Melissa opened California’s first South Bay Raw-Vegan, Eco-friendly cafe in the summer of 2006, Terra Bella Café.  Her café has been featured in Get Fresh Magazine.
Currently Melissa is a Chef for David Wolfe retreats world wide, Epic Eden Adventures in Arizona and serves quality Live Food to the city of Santa Cruz, CA.
She teaches monthly Fresh Start workshops at MINT in Scotts Valley.

You can reach Melissa for more details at ChefMelissaMango@gmail.com