You may notice and wonder why I include sustainability issues in my writing when my work is dedicated to eating disorder recovery and women's fulfillment in life, living free, respected, healthy and educated.
Sustainability - the real sustainability that supports the health and well-being of all while respecting and honoring living active systems and relationships among and between everything - is vital for our personal lives. It expands out to include everyone, everything and, indeed, the globe.
Understanding and taking care of your mind, spirit, and body well, with an appreciation of how you are connected with everyone and everything, is all the equipment you need to create a good, healthy life and a sustainable world. That includes eating disorder recovery. Here's how.
The powerful and influential positive actions you take that honor and support sustainability are based on your choices.
If you choose to recover from an eating disorder, you save your life and give yourself a good life now with a future of wonderful possibilities. But you have to inform yourself, do research, find your recovery path and work it with dedication and courage. Your recovery is not only your own. As you recover you become a more positive influence around you and affect the lives of countless people.
If you choose to buy items that are not made by slaves, you promote well-being and could change entire slave-based economies. But you have to learn what products are made by slaves.
If you choose to buy fish that are not caught through the use of gill nets, you promote, protect and preserve the lives of our great sea creatures like whales, dolphins and sea turtles. You may stop the practice of using gill nets world wide. But you have to learn who is using gill nets and what products in your kitchen and on the restaurant menus are brought to you through gill nets.
If you choose to eat foods that support your health without harming your body, you need to know what plants and animals are grown and processed with toxins so you can avoid them. You can then care for yourself and your loved ones and influence major changes in toxic farming practices.
Personally, I believe that emotions are forms of energy that move through the world like air currents and tides. They are around us and have a great effect on us, whether we are aware of them or not.
Therefore, I believe that joy spreads through the world and affects us in positive ways. However, anguish and cries of pain and despair also affect us. So people and animals that are subject to horrors must be taken out of the realm of "unspeakable horror" so we can address the causes of anguish and reduce the suffering in the world. That includes the suffering of animals, plants, and the earth itself as well as human beings.
Personally, I can't bring myself to eat the meat of an animal that died in terror and anguish.
And it's not necessary. We can inform ourselves and make wise choices.
Terror and anguish change the chemistry of the body. That influences the effect eating that meat will have on your body. You can make choices based on compassion.
You can make choices based on your own well-being and decide not to eat the chemicals that flood a body with fear and pain. You can make choices based on both.
But you can't make informed choices unless you are informed, and the information you need is not readily available. You have to plough through advertisements and cultural mind-shaping to get past diets, food glamour, fashion fads, instant gratification promises, and especially good deals on cheap merchandise.
Follow that cheap merchandise back to its source. If it's a quickly used, broken and tossed-away item, see if the source is a slave factory in a third-world country where men, women and children are working killing hours at starvation wages with no way out. If the item is cheap and easily thrown away, it's possible that the people making it are also treated as cheap throw-away items.
It's holiday time. It's a time to think about being generous and giving to the people you love. You can give to everyone you love and the world itself by learning how to inform yourself and make choices that benefit everyone. Your little day-to-day choices can make a better world.
You are a force on this planet. Never forget that. If you weren't advertisers, media moguls and governments wouldn't spend so much time and money trying to influence your decisions.
You can spend your own time and energy learning what you want to know to influence your own decisions so you act according to your values and what is best for you and the people you love.
In the long run what is best for one spreads to all. We all need a clean and healthy planet that is sustainable in order to live good lives. Together with our many personal day to day decisions and actions, we can make it happen.
- What do you use, buy, or eat that you can explore to find out its source?
- What personal criteria might you examine to enrich your decision-making?
- What external influences govern your choices against your better judgment?
- How can you inform and strengthen yourself to move beyond external controls and choose for yourself?
- Who do you love, and what kind of world do you want for them?
- What actions can you take to help that world exist?
- How do these issues and actions support your eating disorder recovery?
This article was inspired by Chef Seamus Mullen's article in the New York Times, "A Chef Predicts the Future of Food." Thank you, Seamus!
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Written by Joanna Poppink, MFT. Joanna is a psychotherapist in private practice specializing in eating disorder recovery, stress, PTSD, and adult development.
She is licensed in CA, AZ, OR and FL. Author of the Book: Healing Your Hungry Heart: Recovering from Your Eating Disorder
Appointments are virtual.
For a free telephone consultation, e-mail her at
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