My first failure was my first success!

"We may not have control over how long we will live, but we do have control over how well we live" ~Nomi Shannon
Last night was a night of revelations and a night of falling off the wagon for me. Yes, I did it, I cheated, but I decided not to beat myself up about it and just continue with my raw food experiment unscathed.

On our way to the Halloween party that my daughter and I were invited to, I kept telling myself that I would not eat anything there unless it was raw. I committed myself to this. When we walked in, the first sight to be seen was an enormous Halloween decorated table covered from end to end in baked goods, snacks, and other things I shouldn't even be looking at. It was excruciating.

This was a party for my daughter's Brownie troop, which she just recently joined. I had only met about 2 or 3 of the other parents so far, and none of them were at the party. I am usually pretty quiet, so while I was trying to find my "in" to the conversations, my stupid f*%@ing eyeballs kept forcing themselves in the direction of the annoyingly delicious food on the table. I wanted to scream! Instead, I went outside, sat in the car and played with my cellphone. Eventually, once I was feeling more composed, I decided to chance another try at socializing. Well, as soon as I walked in the door and that junk food covered table was in front of me, staring me in the face, I broke down. My right arm involuntarily reached out for a plate, but my left arm pulled it back. The right arm forcefully twisted the left and shoved it quickly into my tight left pocket. The right arm, no longer under my control of course, picked up a plate and placed it in front of me. Then it continued by placing various foods on the plate, including but not limited to popcorn, pretzels, and chips.

In the middle of this dramatic struggle, one of the women I had befriended once before arrived at the party. We began talking and I mentioned that I felt so horrible about eating the foods on my plate, but that I just couldn't help myself. She said that if I was going to eat them, then I should enjoy them. She explained that by expressing negative feelings toward the food, it pretty much destines the food to go to all the wrong places on my body. At that point I decided that her words of wisdom were just that, very wise. My right hand gently let my now sweaty left hand out of my left pocket and we enjoyed the rest of the party.

Now, don't get me wrong, I won't be ending my raw food experiment here. I knew I was going to make at least one mistake in the beginning and I am actually happy that I did. Now that I know that I do not HAVE to eat a certain way, I am more likely to actually eat that way.

Later last night I watched Nomi Shannon on Rawkathon with my husband. Nomi helped me to clear the air of any more guilt residue that I had from the Halloween party. She stated, "It's only your food, it's not your religion...it's what you do most of the time that counts". So maybe I wasn't 100% raw yesterday, but that doesn't mean that I won't be today!


This is a picture of my daughter, Isabel, in her Halloween costume for her party.