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Heather Diamond, M.Ed & Certified Integrative Health Coach, has 22 years of experience leading effective change in small and large educational systems, in her own life of continuous improvement opportunities, and as a graduate from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, NYC. The purpose of Heather's work, Heather Diamond Health (HDH), is to help identify and make changes you desire across the five interrelated domains of healthy living: physical, mental, social, emotional and spiritual. The ultimate vision is that ALL people are empowered to make changes for a healthier, happier life.

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Chapter One; Part Three: Then to Now...Getting Good

Chapter One
Part Three


Perfection, right? No. It’s just the illusion of perfection. All of these facts are true, but there’s more. Over the years, I’ve developed significant allergic rejections of a dozen common foods. I’ve developed obsessions that last for several weeks or months only to be dropped and replaced (minimalism, naturalism, vegetarianism, entrepreneurship, non-consumerism, women’s rights, urban planning, running, etc.). I have come to require an almost sterile environment that must be clean with everything in its designated place at all times. I completely change the arrangements of my furniture so often that my family can’t figure out where to sit. I have to go to elaborate meditative and yogic lengths to get out of my constant mental chatter for a moment of peace from my overactive mind. I journal like a beastly Hemingway. I have not been well, but I sure have looked well.  For all observable purposes, I’m doing a great job with this life. The illusion of a perfect life.

The allergic reactions to foods got the best of me last year. I was experiencing rashes, panic/anxiety attacks, severe digestive issues, and a seemingly absurd desire to run screaming from my perfect job. During one of our daily coffee talk couch times before getting kids up and ready for the day, Stephen and I decided to budget for an alternative doctor that a friend of ours had recommended. Her approach was reportedly holistic and largely homeopathic, though she had impressive credentials in western and eastern medicine. My subsequent work with her resulted in a monumental fortifying of the digestive track and various organs and most significantly a clearing of the energetic and spiritual conflicts in several of my chakras. With transformation came a bit of calm and an absence of anxiety, tension, nervousness, and compulsivity that I had not even realized had been with me daily since at least adolescence. Well, it’s no damn wonder!


And with this transformation came more presence and less urgency. Not perfect, just more. Everything became less perfect, more real, and more relaxed. As I became less perfect to myself, I began to experience more actual joy and pleasure rather than the illusion of such perfect things. And then, when I was least expecting such a fine announcement, my husband who is of great heart and total sexiness tells me over coffee that he’d quite like to have a baby with me. YES, screams my enthusiastic but relatively aging ovaries! YES, screams my heart to the absolute love of my life as we rub each others’ feet, talking eye-to-eye on our sunroom couch. YES, screams my restless mind always stretching toward the next new challenging change in life and identity. YIKES, screams the almost-menopausal goddess who had been most recently getting very excited about the freedom of a well-earned cronehood. So I said yes. Why not have another new beginning in the most primal way there is such a thing? And why not do it like an almost crone would do it? With total abandon of following society’s expectations and illusions. With a total openness to the natural unfolding of life with all its blunders and without all its judgements. I’ll take this adventure without contrived constrictions. So what is that going to look like? I HAVE NO IDEA! Well, that’s never really true is it? I do have some ideas that I’ve been savoring.

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