It’s been way too long since we last caught up. I’ve just finished my first ever round of uni exams and have been spending every moment (apart from when I’m cooking, sleeping, running and working) studying because that’s what you have to do when you’ve got this much knowledge to consolidate (I’m stretching my arms out far and wide when I say ‘this much’) in this (I am now hovering my pointing finger a millimeter above my thumb) amount of time.

There have been so many things I’ve been wanting to write about for the past few months, but I couldn’t justify spending time on here connecting you with you gorgeous things when I didn’t know all of the enzymes involved in glycolysis off by heart or when I needed to memorize the diagrams of all the special senses.

Gluconeogenesis and the citric acid cycle aside (I’m still science lingo hungover), you might be wondering what on earth I am planning to write about with a title like ‘Not so stale about kale’. “But Rach you don’t even like Kale”, I hear you say “you told us so in this post“.

It turns out that I’d never eaten farm fresh kale and hadn’t given it a fair go (or maybe my tastebuds have changed). A few weeks ago I was at my friend Abbey’s house and she cooked the most amazing slow cooked roast with Himalayan salt and coconut oil, and one of the side dishes was steamed Kale. And oh, my, goodness, it was divine! I owe this humble plant an apology. I was too quick to judge him … her … him? Does Kale seem feminine or masculine to you? There’s a question you never thought you be asked).

And this time, you don’t have me to thank for the clever but oh so cheesy title – that was all Abbey’s doing.

Let’s use the above scenario – my new found appreciation for this tender leafy green – to fuel a new conversation. Admitting that we made a mistake and then being kind to ourselves and moving on.

This is hard. Especially when we’ve been definitive and forceful in our previous truth. When we’ve built up a story in our heads, only to wake up the next day and realize that perhaps we need to re-evaluate where we stand.

Not liking Kale for several years isn’t something I’m feeling guilty about or obsessively fixating on. In fact, I’m delighted that for the first few years of the kale craze I held back. It’s easy to force something upon yourself that you don’t like all in the name of bandwagon-hopping. There are more significant mistakes and misjudgments that I’ve made and I am still working hard to release.

I often look back at the person I was when I was 11,12,13 and 14 … and I cringe.

• I regret how nasty I was to myself (the negative self-talk).
• How harsh I was on myself (allowing my inner critic to rule the roost).
• How naive I was about nutrition (the scary and sad thing was I thought I was doing a reasonable job).
• How uninformed I was about chemicals in personal care products (I was easily exposing myself to 200+ chemicals a day just through personal care products alone).
• How I let other people’s comments and criticism get me down (it wasn’t worth it!).
• How I lied to myself and others rather than facing the truth (like not confiding in mum about how badly I was being bullied because I didn’t want to accept the reality of the situation).
• Letting the confident, happy, content person I was as a child, fade away and be replaced by a self-conscious, overly sensitive, people-pleasing adolescent.

You might read the above and think “honey, it sounds like you fell into the same trap that everyone else does at those ages. Forgive and forget. You are so young and have learned so much in a short space of time”.

I feel ridiculous for stressing about;

• the brand of cleanser I used in year 8
• that I didn’t go gluten free permanently until I was 17 – mostly due to criticism from my GP. “It’s all in your head, you’re paranoid, there’s nothing wrong with gluten unless you’re coeliac”.
• how self conscious I was as a 12 year old

I even try every day to rationalize and go “seriously Rach, how on earth were you supposed to know any better?”. The truth is I don’t know how I was supposed to know better. The problem is I have wish-therapy syndrome and I still wish that I had known better.

What is even harder than accepting your mistakes and moving on, is looking back and trying to remember how you were thinking and feeling when you made the choices that now; days, months, and years later, you regret.

We look back with educated, critical eyes. I look back at how I ate several years ago with disgust but at the time I was doing the best that I could (and was still trying to “fit in” with my junk-food-obsessed friends). I think about the chemicals that used to penetrate my skin’s protective barrier and I shudder. At the time I thought I was nurturing my body with a hydrating moisturizer. I reflect on the times I changed myself to please others or when I suppressed my happy spirit as a form of self-protection and am disappointed in myself. When at the time I just wanted to be ‘normal’ and ‘fit in’.

My message is to rationalize and be gentle with yourself – something I am still very much learning. If you had honestly known how to do something better you would have done it. If you’d had known the scary chain of events that would follow one simple mistake, you would have never made it. But you didn’t because you couldn’t. It was a lesson you had to learn.

• Would I be studying nutritional medicine if it weren’t for my health saga?
• Would I be so passionate about educating people on how to love themselves from the inside out, if I hadn’t lost my conviction and let bullies make me feel inferior? Maybe not.
• Would I be aware and educated about the chemicals in our skincare (and the rest of our world for that matter) if I hadn’t developed reactions to the nasty chemicals lurking in my every day products? Maybe not.

Life is full of lessons. Accept the paths you previously chose. Try feeling grateful for the lessons learned. Feeling inspired by your mistakes lessons, rather than deflated softens most blows.

Be kind to yourself. I’ll be working on it right alongside you.

Infinite x’s and o’s

Rachie