March 16, 2021

Perhaps because of my stripped-down, COVID-altered world, I’ve never paid such mindful attention to that craving for light as I did this winter. My body was truly asking for outdoor time and the sun above me. Finding time to go for a walk on a bright day made a huge difference in my happiness level, no matter how cold it was, and it felt just as important as eating right and getting enough exercise.

One of my favorite sayings I’ve kept with me from a Nordic book about hygge is “There’s no bad weather, only bad clothing.” I love this saying. I try to actualize it within my own life. Inherent in Norwegian culture is not only the value of cozying up inside but of loving the outdoors and taking advantage of all weathers. I recently read about how those who see winter as a time of abundance experience “more positive emotions, greater life satisfaction, and greater personal growth.”

Loving the romanticism of the holidays really got me through December. And appreciating the only time of the year winter graces us has helped me get through January and Feb.

There’s something about walking on a chilly day that I like. I like bundling up in my thermal wear and bulky winter coat and cute hat so I can be outside for a while. I like trying to notice what trees and plants in my neighborhood are still green. And I love those days when the sky is super blue and clear but it’s still frigid out.

Being outside in the sun activates something deep within us and makes us happy.

Some tips for letting light into your life:

— If you are at all familiar with the basic facts of REM cycles, light is extremely important in the morning to signal to your body that it’s time to wake up (just as, in the evening time, low lighting signals that it’s time to go to sleep). The most crucial time for light exposure is within the first half-hour of your day. If you can’t reliably access natural light in the mornings but want the energy and good mood it brings, I’ve had this sun lamp for over a month now and love it.

— The ideal way for sunlight to hit your eyes is from above and at an angle. I purposely bought a sun lamp tall enough to do this, and I keep it at a slight angle down. When I’m out on a walk, I let the sun get a little bit in my eyes — not staring directly at it, but making sure once in a while it hits the corner of my retinas.

- One of the most important things you get from the sun is Vitamin D. I really like taking this liquid Vitamin D supplement from Thorne in the wintertime. Many people are Vitamin D deficient because of changing seasons and lifestyle. It plays a big role in mood, energy, and immune function.

- If you’re on a walk and it’s warm enough, pushing up your sleeves so that the sun can hit your skin is huge in terms of Vitamin D exposure. Even ten minutes minimum helps you get more Vitamin D.

Light II: Leaving Room in Your Heart for Hope and Faith

You’re allowed to have faith in life.

You’re allowed a space for love, and for the belief that everything’s going to work out, and that life is ultimately good.

I recently remembered this again and so I wanted to write about it.

“The antidote to fear is hope and faith.” I heard that while listening to a podcast, serendipitously timed with my own realization that I had let go of that small light of hope and trust within me. It’s a light that can seem so tiny in our hearts but radiates far beyond us into our outer lives.

The thing about the light in our hearts is that it needs to be cultivated.

Sometimes I assume that I am by default projecting happiness and goodness into my life (because who wouldn’t want a happy and good life?), but if I am not keeping a bubble of hope and faith afloat in my chest, then I am not.

For me, what ‘hope and faith’ means is a remembrance that I definitely wasn’t put here to be tortured and miserable. Maybe someone is rooting for me. Maybe someone infinitely more compassionate and intelligent than I am is nudging me along. Maybe all of those worries I convince myself are real are actually just garbage, and maybe someone out there is prepared to give me more happiness and goodness than I can even conceive of for myself.

If you can trust in nothing else, trust that you’re not actually as smart as you think you are. Sometimes what I have faith in are my own limitations. We probably own just a small fracture of the infinite wisdom out there. We might be walking around totally unconnected to the wellspring of love and light that has held us all along.

I’ve been choosing to dive headfirst into believing in this and letting the hope and faith in my heart grow and grow. And what tends to follow hope and faith is a sort of delight in experiencing the unique personality of the universe, a joy in all that is living and sprung from love, yourself included.

And, just in case anyone needs to hear it, believing that life is ultimately good does not mean that you therefore believe that what mankind is doing in this particular moment in civilization is good. One is much bigger than the other.

I like letting all those good feelings bubble up in my chest and leaning into a little hope, happiness and love.

We Love This Miso Dressing

My latest fave new salad is this kale salad with roasted delicata squash and miso dressing from The Defined Dish!

This salad has the miso dressing of my dreams, which it's taken me until now to learn how to make for myself instead of just getting excited when I can order one at restaurants. The reason it’s so good is because it does what I need any kale dressing to do, makes me want to eat a lot of kale.

Jake and I both instantly knew we’d found a winner the first time I made it and I’ve made it several times since.

I’m including just the dressing recipe below, but I would recommend the entire salad. I heard about a vegetable-color cheat code that’s stayed in my mind, and greens = good for your liver and low-GI, yellows = good for your stomach. I like eating the green kale and the yellow delicata squash and knowing I’m supporting different parts of my system at once. Never forget that food is medicine!

When I make this, I actually blanch my kale before eating it since I’ve been having a hard time with raw foods. I put my kale leaves in boiling water for just a minute and a half, drain and rinse with plenty of cold water, and squeeze excess water out with a dishtowel. This may not be for everyone since it’s not really what we’re used to in salads, and it does reduce the volume of your kale significantly.

Perfect Kale Miso Dressing from The Defined Dish:

¼ cup avocado oil

2 cloves of garlic

1 tsp white miso paste (I use 2 tsp)

2 tbsp coconut aminos

2 tbsp rice vinegar

1 tbsp of honey

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon pepper

Blend all ingredients to make dressing. Enjoy!

A Simple Trader Joe's Whole30 Meal

Confession, this meal has ground beef in it, which I never used to eat but now I kind of love.

In true Whole30 magic, this meat + veg meal feeds my body well and sets me up for the rest of the day. It’s replaced my lunch salads while still helping me get in my daily cups of cruciferous veg and leafy greens. All the better that they’re heated and easier to digest.

What I love about this recipe is how easy it is to make. I literally just throw stuff in a pan. If I’m super lazy I’ll even skip the onions and garlic, and I still like it just as much.

It was adapted from this beef + zoodles recipe from Clean Foodie Cravings, which I made and loved on my most recent Whole30.

Ingredients:

1 small onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, sliced

1 lb. grass-fed organic ground beef

1 bag Trader Joe’s Cruciferous Crunch Collection

Sauce:

4 tbsp coconut aminos

2 tbsp unsweetened applesauce

1 tsp unsweetened BBQ sauce (I use this guy)

1 tsp Korean pepper flakes (I usually use just under a tsp)

Heat cooking oil of your choice in a saute pan (choose a pan large enough to handle your bag of veg later). Add onion and garlic and cook until softened, about 5 minutes.
Add ground beef to skillet, breaking it up as it cooks.
While beef is cooking, mix all sauce ingredients together.
Once there is almost no pink left in beef, add bag of cruciferous vegetables. Let wilt and gently cook as you mix it in with the meat, about 3 minutes.
Add sauce to pan, stir to distribute evenly, and remove from heat.

Human Superpowers

I think humans really do have superpowers. I have discovered them within myself accidentally, namely: through knitting and crossword puzzles.

Even just a year ago I was far, far worse at doing The New York Times crossword puzzles. Two years ago, barely able to get half. But keeping on doing crosswords fairly consistently over the years has made me, not a whiz, but a much better crossword solver.

The same goes for knitting. Last year it took me several months to knit the back of a sweater. I recently finished the front, a swatch the exact same size, in less than a week, which flabbergasted me.

This is why I suspect I may one day be a fabulous meditator.

Because I have accidentally proven to myself that I can (knock on wood) do anything I set my mind to.

At the moment I would consider myself an untalented meditator. But I also think I’m a realistic meditator. Maybe I once expected to feel impressive results after only a few meditations, similarly to how I could once convince myself that I would get the body of my dreams in the two weeks before summer vacation. But now I expect to be in it for the long haul.

I could meditate for a year and still just feel like a silly duck sitting there getting triggered by my own thoughts, and I am cool with that.

Because I believe that if I apply the human superpower of short doses of effort over a protracted period of time, I will astonish myself at my own capacity for growth.

Short doses of effort over a protracted period of time: the real human superpower.

My hobbies of knitting and crossword puzzling have, in a very in-my-bones way, proven to myself my growth mindset (the belief that talents and abilities have limitless potential, rather than being fixed).

If I am already improved at these things after a couple of years, what could I be doing in ten years, or twenty? Creating my own knitting patterns from scratch, solving the Sundays before my husband has even made me my eggs?

Maybe I’ll have moved on to other hobbies in the future, which is fine too. Who’s to say. But I am happy to have discovered this mindset before embarking on an attempt to develop a meditation practice.

I have heard many different people from many different places laud the benefits of meditation (and I’m sure you have, too), but having never experienced them myself, I am going into this with a large sense of curiosity. Which is mostly to say, if you are skeptical of meditation and find it annoying/frustrating/confusing, you are not alone.

My friend Diane recommended this meditation course to me. It starts you out pretty bare-bones, just sitting following your breath, but every week you get a new email with additional techniques and answers to problems that may come up. So far I have done week one, and I have the week two email sitting in my inbox which I am oddly excited to read.

The course had me write down my intentions for meditating before beginning, with an explanation of how these may change over time as different benefits unfold. My intentions were:

To clear out mental junk, or rather to be able to see it for what it is
To feel more confident
To feel more grounded
For increased happiness

If anyone else is curious about starting meditation and wants to do the Aro course, join me! I would love to have someone to bounce different thoughts and experiences off of.

It might feel like nothing’s happening at first, but if countless others can get so much out of meditation, then with our human superpowers it’s possible for us all.

Volume 1, Issue 9

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Volume 1, Issue 9

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Volume 1, Issue 10

Volume 1, Issue 8