Helping Effortlessly: A Book of Inspiration and Healing

Eat your vegetables!

We hear this message a lot, and we don’t doubt its truth. But let’s be honest, most of us need a reminder because we probably don’t eat enough veggies. We read diet books already knowing that avoiding sugar and eating more vegetables is a good place to start.

That is what I plan to do in this book – not teach you anything, but remind you of truths you probably already know. I’ll ask questions because no transformation can truly happen without them.

Let’s start with asking yourself this question:

Do I want peace on earth?

I am asking this question because, to truly contribute to peace, we have to want it. Ask this, then answer it with absolute vigour. There was a time in my life when I would have resisted answering this question because, with a heavy heart, I felt like it wasn’t even possible. I am hopeful that you will keep trying to answer this question with love and truth. If you don’t believe peace is possible, challenge yourself to keep asking this until, to your delight, you begin to believe it is possible.

Peace begins with me (and you).

The helper

Help (verb): Make it easier or possible for (someone) to do something by offering them one’s services or resources.

We can’t help everyone, but everyone can help someone. – former U.S. president Ronald Reagan

Being a helper can be unforgiving and a brutal undertaking.

What does it mean to help?

In the context of this book I often refer to a helper in the professional sense: the people who spend their lives helping in various settings in the hopes of making the world a better place, people who see a need and feel they can contribute in some way. Those who are not helpers by profession still offer help; in fact, most people are helpers in some way or another.

While I often refer to frontline workers or people in social services who were involved in my experiences, I hope my story of healing and transformation will inspire all helpers. I want to take a moment to acknowledge the powerful and supportive people who help communities in so many ways and give selflessly of themselves. They are: the frontline worker who knows homeless people by name and ensures they have beds and blankets; the foster parent who takes in a child who has suffered unthinkable abuse; the social services worker who checks that the man down the street has taken his medication; the developmental service worker who helps the student in a wheelchair use the washroom; the concerned volunteer Big Brother to a boy who suffers from isolation; the child-and-youth worker who attends to the violent students in our schools; the frontline nurses, paramedics, police, teachers and many more important "helpers" who make our society run.

I have witnessed so many incredible, wonderful helpers slowly become broken by their job, their calling, their life’s work.

This book is about how to be a better helper, how to inspire, uplift and effect positive change in others by first helping yourself. To be a better parent, a better social worker, foster parent, youth counsellor or better anything, you must first focus on YOU.

What does it mean to be a helper?

I contemplated what has helped me, and many of the greatest moments of inspiration have been in the moment I stood before a tree.

A tree helps me.

A tree makes me feel deeply grounded.

A tree transforms me; it reminds me of who I am.

A tree aligns me.

A well-choreographed dance

This book is divided into 3 sections because that is how my journey progressed.

Body

Mind

Spirit

Section 1: Body

Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live. – Entrepreneur and motivational speaker Jim Rohn

Epigenetics

Epigenetics (noun): Biology, the study of changes in organisms caused by modification of gene expression rather than alteration of the genetic code itself.

The body is wise, like a diary keeping details of our experiences. Stress can become trapped in our body, with signs reflected in every tiny cell that makes up the whole.

In an article entitled Epigenetics: How to Alter Your Genes in the U.K.’s The Telegraph, Chris Bell explains that epigenetics is a relatively new branch of genetics that has been declared the most important biological discovery since DNA. Until recently, it was believed you were stuck with the genes you were born with but now, thanks to epigenetics, it’s known that your genes get turned on and off and are expressed to greater or lesser degrees depending on lifestyle factors.

And the book entitled Super Genes by Deepak Chopra and Rudolph Tanzi explains that only 5% of disease-related gene mutations are fully deterministic while 95% can be influenced by diet, behaviour and other environmental conditions.

Let that sink in: the influences of our lifestyle have control over our gene expression.

Gone are the days when we could blame it all on our genes. This is the reason to take heed and start making changes in body, mind and spirit. In the following chapters, I’ll describe how I took back control over my body with the hopes of eventually controlling its biological expression.

Food heals

The word is out on the street that diet really does matter. – Clinical professor of medicine Dr. Terry Wahls

Ask yourself these questions:

Am I afraid of changing my diet?

Is changing my diet a good idea?

Before I discuss diet, here are a few words of tough love and two tiny rants… please humour me!

Rant #1 – the art of confusion

People all around are using confusion as an excuse to continue eating the way they do. The fact is sugar and processed foods are addictive, and some people find facing this addiction so hard that they make excuses like I don’t where to begin, or I didn’t know that was a carbohydrate.

Letting confusion get in the way of changing your diet and lifestyle will deter you from facing the reality of how hard it is to give up sugar. If you’ll forgive the expression, I am not going to sugar-coat it: sugary drinks, donuts, cake, cookies and candy are out. And there’s no okay in moderation.

What does that mean: once a week, once on the weekend, only on holidays? It probably doesn’t mean Friday after work until Monday morning!

Rant # 2 – food fight

We seem to be looking for any excuse to fight. We have become so anchored to our ego that we use food and diet to engage in the stupidest food fight ever: the vegans/vegetarians versus the meat eaters.

Each of us wants to fuel our bodies and walk the earth with health and energy, to honour the vessel that takes us through life. We have allowed food, of all things, to divide us. Food is meant to bring us together. Food is celebratory, nourishing. Our world needs less conflict and more live and let live.

Some of my dearest friends are vegetarian and I am a meat eater. While we have differing opinions and perspectives, we can still agree to disagree and love one another despite our differences. What is right for one may not be right for another and that is okay. We can be advocates for what we believe in with love and not anger.

This reminds me of a wonderful warrior who illustrates how to fight with love. Several years ago, a 19-year-old University of Iowa engineering student, Zach Wahls, stood up in the Iowa House of Representatives to deliver a speech about his life and experience growing up with two moms. His speech, available on YouTube, was a response to proposed legislative efforts to end civil unions in his state. In his advocacy address, Zach resonates love, not anger.

I must admit, I used to have the fantasy of being vegan. I felt like it would somehow make me cool, or as cool as you can be with developing crow’s feet, stretch marks and a 14-yr-old son who, after hearing me sing in the car, says things like, Oh my gawd, I think Mom just killed cool!

But I digress … I somehow felt veganism would make me super-skinny and that I could have a really awesome (read young and pretty) Instagram account where I would be wearing my Lululemon yoga pants and perfecting a downward dog while holding my Starbucks tall, bag-in green tea for my (thousands of) followers. I would be demonstrating the fun and glamour of meat avoidance because somehow, I would be ethically superior in all my glorious economic white privilege.

What’s funny about that fantasy is it wasn’t even mine. These imagery associations were unconsciously embedded in my brain, as ridiculous as I knew they were.

If you have found a diet that works, I am happy for you. As you move through this world advocating for what you believe in, do it with love and an open heart, not with anger and a closed heart.

End rants.

When I first started changing my diet, I gave up Diet Coke, which was a huge addiction for me. At first, I only had it when I went out for dinner, no more than once a month.

I can recall the last Diet Coke I had, believing aspartame to be a neurotoxin but knowing I was no longer addicted. I was proud of myself for practicing moderation yet felt an overwhelming conflict. It dawned on me how silly it was to be practicing moderation with a neurotoxin. It was like saying, yeah, I used to snort cocaine every day but now I just do it when I go out for dinner. I am so healthy, I practice moderation and it is an incredible improvement.

I was no longer kidding myself.

Now I drink organic ginger kombucha and I have experienced firsthand that changes to food and diet can be a powerful tool towards healing the body. If you are living in a state of constant pain, you can change your diet and although it might not cure what ails you, it can help.

Many people feel angry by the idea of giving up sugar. If you are one of them, ask yourself this question:

What am I afraid of?

If you are afraid of putting in the work, I get that. You must get to a place where you think you are worth that amount of energy. Make yourself a priority.

Shortly after the realization that I had become a cliché case of burnout in 2011, I changed my diet to a Paleo diet, which dramatically altered my life; a fog that had plagued me for years was lifted.

That year I went from a size 20 to a size 10, but it wasn’t just the weight that disappeared. I noticed lifelong phobias vanish, mild depression lift, mood swings become a thing of the past, cystic acne ... check! My morning stiffness was gone, and I felt emotionally and physically stronger in ways I never knew was possible.

Let me walk you through the Paleo diet, in simple and brief terms. If you want more information, a list of resources at the end of the book will point you in the right direction.

In layman’s terms, Paleo means to eat like a caveman once did. It’s only in the past 10,000 years that farming and agriculture was even a thing. According to the theory of Paleo, we were not designed to eat grains, beans and legumes, especially in large quantities, if even at all, because in the natural caveman world, those foods would have been too labour-intensive and required too much processing to even be considered food.

If you really think about it, wheat requires a lot of processing to become digestible and yet we sometimes don’t think of wheat foods as being highly processed. There is more to it than this, like the fact that some people believe that wheat causes systemic inflammation and other biological issues leading to the development of disease. Dr. William Davis, author of Wheat Belly, explains: Grains also contain wheat germ agglutinin (WGA), a lectin protein in wheat. The lectin proteins of grains are, by design, nature’s form of bodyguards. These toxins discourage molds, fungi, and insects from eating seeds of plants … I call wheat and its closely related grains not just perfect chronic poisons, but also perfect obesogens: foods that are perfectly crafted to make you fat, especially in the abdomen, what I call a wheat belly.

Since my eyes were opened to the Paleo diet, it has evolved to more of a science-based perspective with a following of highly respected, warrior-like people.

Here is the basic four-point plan that I began to follow in 2011:

DO EAT anything that could be hunted or gathered as we did in the caveman years: things like meats, fish, nuts, leafy greens, fruits, veggies, tubers and seeds.

DO EAT fermented foods such as kombucha, sauerkraut, kimchi, pickles and so on to restore and maintain healthy bacteria in the gut.

DON’T EAT pasta, cereal, sugar, beans, legumes, dairy and candy.

DON’T EAT anything that didn’t exist in caveman times.

While most people don’t follow Paleo religiously, the idea is to eat and drink what will help us be better, healthier versions of ourselves.

I have struggled with