Birth Control and Freedom
Patronized by figures like Sanger, the social movement toward contraception promised a certain freedom and human flourishing, but the Church anticipated otherwise and produced a different kind of patron saint.
Patronized by figures like Sanger, the social movement toward contraception promised a certain freedom and human flourishing, but the Church anticipated otherwise and produced a different kind of patron saint.
As I healed from my divorce, my Spiritual Director told me to see myself as a new butterfly, exiting my cocoon of suffering.
I know “fat” is a complicated, triggering word—it is for me, too. I chide myself when I say it in front of my children or in reference to the appearance of myself or others. But, that doesn’t stop the word from running through my head sometimes when I look at a mirror or see a picture of myself. It’s also a sticky kind of word.
Half way through my tenure as an officer, I failed a weigh in and was put on the weight management program- a program designed to hold military personnel accountable to fitness standards.
Nursing school was my first wake up call to understanding the function of food and movement and balance for a healthy metabolism. Science told me that I could not starve my body into submission forever and that the longterm effect would be ruining the memory of my metabolism and thus my ability to have a healthy body. It was over those years that I decided diets were not healthy for me.
You can actually live without the thing—anything—even a very good thing, for a good reason, for a period of time. In the midst of this current Covid-19 health crisis, our world is about to figure that out.
This book is not simply about fasting, but about eating and feasting.
Perhaps one of the saddest parts of diet culture’s influence on us, is the way in which it has appropriated and reduced the practice and power that fasting provides.
In 2011, our 13-month-old son had an anaphylactic reaction to milk. Further testing would determine that he was severely allergic to all nuts, dairy, and eggs. I recall walking out of the appointment overwhelmed and discouraged. Food, the means by which we provide physical sustenance for our bodies, just became one of the greatest dangers to my child’s life.