The start of my crunchy life

Okay blog world, I'm not exactly new to the concept of "crunchy". What I am new to, is the idea of a focused exploration and blog on the matter. So, where to begin?

First of all, perhaps you'd like to know a little bit more about me?

Well, I'm a 32 year old single mother of one twelve year old boy. I work from home as a nurse case manager and live in a fairly rural community. I consider myself to be...fairly..down to earth, realistic and holistic. I've learned a good bit in my years as an RN, about the body and it's ability to heal, but also about our health care system, our food system, our education systems and all their glitches and flaws. Yes. More flaws than good these days. I'll go into these more at a later date, in small doses. You may or may not find that I'm abundantly passionate about each topic and tend to be rambly as a result. I've been a nurse for 11 years now, most exclusively in the field of pediatrics and even more to the point...medically fragile pediatrics. That means I'm for the most part, not taking care of the healthy robust children of the world, but rather the extremely poorly represented section of our population, children with tracheotomies, feeding tubes, ventilators, extreme genetic diseases, brain damage, seizures, autism in every color of the rainbow, mental retardation of all levels. Children who are bed bound, wheelchair bound, twisted, contorted and..beautiful. All of them.

Also, I'll go ahead and put in on out there...I'm a "moderate to severe depressive", according to ICD-9 diagnostic codes. My charge says I'm a "Medicative resistant depressive" with "anxiety disorder". I take a daily anti-depressant, at a rather considerable dose. I keep anxiety medications handy, but thanks to  dietary changese and excercise I AM IMPROVING. Considerably. I'm also "morbidly obese", something I'm desperately seeking to correct. I have suffered in the past from severe adenomyosis, a condition of the uterine lining that caused me to undergo a hysterectomy at the age of 30. I have scoliosis which causes migraine type headaches and currently I'm in the process of being treated for a sleep disorder.

Why does this matter in my pursuit of holistic crunchiness? Because I've been privy to life at it's most base and fragile. To watching each drawing in of breath be a miracle and each body function a fight. I'm extremely aware of the power of air, water, mineral, element and spirit within a human body. I know first hand how devastating and powerful our life really is, how closely we truly interact with what goes into our bodies. I believe, perhaps arrogantly, that it gives me a certain amount of "authority" on the topic. And that's why you seek to read any blog, isn't it? To gain insight from experience and share in common explorations? Well, that and they're entertaining! :-)

That is a a small fragment of me, in a nutshell as it were. There's MUCH more of course and I'm sure I'll  divulge as time goes on and I put my self out there in this little space of the world. I hope you enjoy the trip! I have several posts ready to start, so this won't be the only one today, but I thought it should stand alone. An introduction!

Welcome to my world! Please leave comments. I do LOVE comments!

Jennifer