It's been a WHILE...

I thought I had lost this blog. I tried and tried and TRIED to log in to it and Blogger just kept pulling up a friend's blog and not mine. I was so sad about it. THEN...on a completely dumb luck moment when a Facebook memory brought up an old post I remembered that I had changed email addresses and was logging into the wrong account! I am so overjoyed to have regained access here and to be able to have a space to just come and talk. A WHOLE lot of life has happened since my last post here. A few highlights - I landed a dream job in Atlanta. We bought a house. Gamerboy graduated high school, moved out and is now a full-time social media editor. (I guess all those years of him hogging my laptop and internet were worth it after all.) My PC also scored a killah job in Atlanta. We went on my dream trip to Paris. We made it through a pandemic.... And now, my PC and I are empty nesters and I am back to focusing on getting to know myself better and giving energy to what SERVES me rather than what weighs me down. For most of my life I have been on some sort of diet. It started at 14 when I was told "you'd be really pretty if you lost 20lbs". Fast forward, I am 44 and still hear that sentence as clear as it was spoken 30 years ago...only now, it's my own internal voice speaking it to me on the daily. I poured 30 years into an endeavor I never mastered. I believe I spent all that time and energy on the yo-yo diets because deep down...and I mean DEEP down...I think I always knew I needed to find peace, put down the yo-yo and just walk off into the forest of life on an adventure where counting calories, points, or carbs did not exist. I needed to just BE me and let the beauty all around me inspire me to create a life that is true and beautiful for me. It's been ages since I ate gluten-free. I was diagnosed in 2010 with Celiac Disease, then in 2019 after eating gf for NINE years tested again, and was told I did not have it. I thought this was my free pass to eating gluten. Strange thing is that I actually felt better when I was gluten-free. Who knows? Perhaps it wasn't the gluten. Perhaps it IS the gluten? Perhaps its me making better decisions when I am gluten free like vegetable focused meals vs. bread focused. What I know for sure is this - I am done with dieting. I am done obsessing over how much I will feed my body. I deserve to eat just like every other person and whether or not I decide to be gluten-free or not does not determine my worth as a human being. What does make me feel like a better human being is not eating meat. So, I don't do that now. Gave it up June 10th of this year, and haven't regretted it for a moment. I feel more connected to nature and my spiritual path by not consuming Mother Nature's creatures. So, yeah...gimme the veggies yo'! So, cheers to just being me, Tabitha, a happily married redhead, Mom, friend, nature loving, magic seeking word nerd who is always doing the best I can. Happy Friday, The not-so gluten free Ginger