This has been a trying week for me but I’m forging ahead with my studies at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. In this week’s module, I’ve thought a lot about the primary food of joy: the things that bring me joy, and how I can bring more joy into my life.
This level of introspection is challenging, but it’s really the key to understanding how to transform your life into one that attracts positivity, health, and happiness.
I was born in 1967, making me 50, and the same age as the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. With the celebration of its release, I’ve been listening to a lot of their later albums on my commute. There is nothing like music you love to transport you to a different time and place, recalling memories so vivid it’s like they just happened.
Growing up in the 70s, my mom stayed home with me and my brothers. She was such an amazing mother. She taught me how to read well before nursery school, and she started my love of music with piano lessons at the age of 4. Music was always part of my life with my mom, whether it was singing along to Sesame Street or to the music in the car on road trips. The other day, Yellow Submarine came on the radio (Siriux XM has a great Beatles Channel right now), and of course I am singing along in the car and it completely brought me back to a moment driving with my mom to Northampton, MA, the little arty college town where we would have girls’ day out when I was in high school. We sang in the car at the top of our lungs — the good old Buick Estate Wagon. Such a vivid memory, and a happy one.
I have some challenges ahead of me, but I’ve been trying to summon joy to my life where I can to help me process the shock of a cancer diagnosis. Music brings me joy, calms my overactive worrying tendencies, slows the heart rate, revisits happier times, and gives me strength. I feel less alone knowing I have these memories to power me through this, and my mother was one of the best role models in my life. Now SHE was brave. I will channel her influence in my own journey, and share my experience with my clients in the future.
I found this great quote: “Joy is a decision, a really brave one, about how you are going to respond to life.” (Wess Stafford) I will keep this in my heart in the weeks to come.
And meanwhile, back to The Beatles (Abbey Road, to be exact).