Loneliness and moving on (again)

Sun rising on a new day... Mission Beach, Australia. Copyright (c) 2008 Wendee Holtcamp

I don't want to dissect everything today
I don't mean to pick you apart you see
But I can't help it
There I go jumping before the gunshot has gone off
Slap me with a splintered ruler
And it would knock me to the floor if I wasn't there already
- Alanis Morissette, All I Really Want

I heard this Alanis song on my ipod shuffle the other day while running and it was like a scene out of my life! I won't get into details, and they're actually two unrelated situations but it was like whammo! Love Alanis - she is like my soul sister.

It has been a doozie of a week. After coming back from trip after trip (Costa Rica, Miami) I experienced some post-bohemian-travel-adventure blues that hit me like a sledge-hammer. Oh, it was a combination of factors, I'm sure, but probably mostly the loneliness from the lack of constant companionship and friendship from my on-off relationship of nearly three years and the realization that is truly is indeed, over. The loss of that companionship, combined with the death of the dream (and oh do I dream of love and closeness with someone... probably far too idealistically), and then throw in a little bit of parenting-a-teenager-stress plus a healthy dash of PMS and you have the makings of a week from hell. But hell is the broth from which progress is made.

I am taking part in a 9-month-long "step study" in Celebrate Recovery, a Christian 12-step program that is for people dealing with all sorts of issues and of course things come up during this process. You get stirred up emotionally and spiritually, and this isn't a bad thing. I know that things will happen and it's good because then you can deal with them and with people who are safe and won't judge (because we are all in there for our own "junk" and believe me, these people are real because you gotta be if you're going to do recovery right!)

So what else? I have a short Science Selection piece in Environmental Health Perspectives Nov 2011 issue, "Poultry Relief? Organic Farming May Reduce Drug Resistance" - this is just a basic summary of a peer-reviewed science article that is in the EHP issue that month. But it's quite an interesting study and a topic I'm increasingly intrigued by - that is, food and health issues. I don't have any travel coming up that I know of yet - trying to stay close to home for a bit. I will probably be pretty darn busy in the next several weeks with some articles I'm working on. Hopefully I will have some time to write up some great recipes I've made in the next few weeks!