What is Your Voice Saying

What is Your Voice Saying

What does your voice sound like?  Is it calm and inviting like Pavarotti the opera singer? Does it engage people?  Does it work in your favor by having a positive energy force?   Do you bring this positive nature forward to carry out the work you wish to do?  Do you work well with others?  Are you a team leader, have innovative ideas and do well under pressure? Is your attitude uplifting, cooperative, and willing to compromise?

Or does it irritate, offend, and insult like a hawk and its warlike aggressive behavior? Would you say you come across whining, blaming others, and always having to be right?  Additionally, do you come across in a doom or gloomful kind of manner?  Can you handle corrective citizen by just listening- Can you take what others have to say?  Are you willing to take the necessary steps and action to grow from your lessons just learnt?  What is your energy level like? Are you tired before you even get started in the morning?  Did you stay up all night listening to your voice in your head?  Did it keep going on and on complaining about what this person said and didn’t say?

Does your voice work for you?  Is it a useful tool to help you get ahead? Or, does it extinguish your light and what you stand for?  Do you fight to forge forward in your life’s’ endeavors?  Or are you wasting your precious time and others’?  Does it affect your productivity and the way you move forward in the universe? Is it an effective tool or one that hinders? Better yet, does it drain peoples’ energy?

If your voice does any of the above, you are not alone.  You have a chance every day to work on yourself to become a better person. To gain the qualities you truly posses-

No one said it was going to be easy.  But if you work on it a day at a time, and take the necessary steps one must to change, you will be so happy.  You will feel so content within.  You will have mastered the yin and yang of  your true self.

How Do I Navigate My Life

How Do I Navigate My Life

In your life, do you sit passively on the sidelines?  Do you sit back and watch the world go by?  Do you often look out into the oceans water wondering how you are going to master the obstacles in your life?  Do you ask yourself how you are going to make your life happen?   And when!  Do you reach out to others in the things you are interested in so that you can move forward?

Do you see people taking on jobs or positions you wished you could have, or are capable of handling?

What’s holding you back?  What can you do to change your circumstances?  How can you rise above?

Are the people around you telling you that you cannot succeed?  What happens inside your being?  Do you fight and stand up for your rights, or do you plop down onto the couch and wither away in sadness and depression? Do you let those thoughts win?

It’s worth believing in you.  For one, you build your own self-confidence and self-esteem.  You take on new ideas, inviting challenges, and by engaging yourself with new people and activity you hear your own voice. You start to like what you see.  You have experienced something new.  You are making choices on your own.  You are not frittering your life away. And, you are not listening to those who once told you, you couldn’t.

Is it worth stepping outside the box?  Is it worth trying?  Is it worth feeling good about youself?

Blueberry Bread

Blueberry Bread

This gluten free bread is VERY yummy in the tummy.  I took a muffin recipe and developed a master piece.

2 cups gluten free buckwheat flour and an (extra 1/4 cup for the blueberries )

1 cup frozen blueberries rinsed and drained

¼ cup canola oil

¼ cup honey

1 egg = 1 tablespoon flax seed and ¼ cup water with a smidgen more

½ teaspoon salt

4 teaspoons baking powder

1 cup unsweetened coconut milk

1/3 cup arrow root

1.   Mix ¼ extra cup of buckwheat flour with the blueberries and let stand for 1 hour.

2.  Preheat oven to 425 F.  Cream the oil and honey together.  Beat until light and fluffy.

3.   Cook the flax seed with water till it has the consistency of eggs.  About 5 minutes on a low to medium flame stirring constantly not to burn.  Add the flax mixture to the oil and honey. Then sift together the remaining flour, arrow root, salt, baking powder, as you add it to the oil and flaxseed mixture alternately with the milk, starting and finishing with the flour.  Fold in the floured berries last.

4.  Pour into a greased loaf pan of Canola Non-stick spray oil and sprinkled buckwheat flour.

5.  Bake about 60 minutes

Apricot Nut Bread

Apricot Nut Bread

Here is another delicious recipe for you

½ cup dried apricots

2 cups gluten free flour (buckwheat, oat, brown rice)

2 tablespoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 egg= 1 tablespoon flaxseed and ¼ c water plus a smidgen over, lightly beaten

½ honey

2 tablespoons canola oil

¾ teaspoon salt

3/4 cup orange juice

1 cup Brazil nuts (chopped)

½ tablespoon Cinnamon or (to taste)

½ tablespoon Coriander or (to taste)

½ teaspoon Orange flavoring

2 teaspoons Orange Peel

1. Preheat oven to 350F.  Soak apricots for ½ hour, and then chop.  Beat eggs or stir in flax mixture with the honey and oil.  Stir well. Next,
2. Sift flower with dry ingredients.  Baking powder, soda, and salt.  Add Brazil nuts and apricots.  Then, mix well
3. Pour into a loaf pan that has been sprayed with a non stick cooking oil spray and a TBS of your gluten flour.  Bake until toothpick comes clean when  pierced in the center, about 1 hour.

1.            A.  Remember honey can be substituted for all natural 100% fruit jams.

B.  And, a pure unsweetened applesauce or apple butter can be use to moisten the consistency even more.  Add to taste.  Its optional.

Home Made Prune, Raisin Bread

Home Made Prune, Raisin Bread

Now that I have explained the basics in my other two posts, let’s get started! Remember this is for you- so, to life!

1 cup whole prunes and 1 cup raisins                ½ cup honey

1 cup gluten free buckwheat flour                   1 teaspoon salt

1 cup gluten free oat flour                              4 teaspoons Hains gluten free baking powder

½ cup gluten free brown rice flour                  1 cup almond milk, or, unsweetened hemp-

Add some gluten free oat flakes                          milk or unsweetened coconut milk

1/3 cup arrowroot                                           1 tablespoon lemon juice

2 tablespoons gur gur                                      1 tablespoon canola oil

3 eggs = 9 tablespoons water and 3 tablespoons flaxseeds

1. Soak prunes and raisins in cold water for about a half hour to an hour. Drain and remove prune pits, and chop.
2. Mix all dry ingredients together and wet with wet. Then blend together and mix well.
3. Add the prunes and raisins to the melted canola oil and honey.
4. Bring Mix water and flax seed in sauce pan to boil.  About 3 to 5 minutes omit if using real eggs.
5. Put in greased loaf pan, let stand 25 minutes in warm place.
6. Preheat over 350 F. and bake about one hour
7. If you want a bigger loaf double recipe

Preparing the Dough

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Allergy Awareness

Allergy Awareness

For years, every time I ate something with wheat, dairy, eggs, yeast, or gluten, my body would violently react.  I would get black eyes, my stomach would blow up, and my nose would get terribly stuffy!  I would feel miserable after suffering the severe consequence of a compromised immune system for decades.

Somehow I knew instinctively that I was different and something was terribly wrong.  The human body was made to enjoy foods- not battle them-

But no one would believe me.  Family members thought I was crazy!  I even went to a young doctor in his thirties, who told me my body was suppose to blow up-  That made absolutely no sense to me.  I knew that, that was wrong advice- perhaps my Cerebral Palsy could be part of the cause. Perhaps it had something to do with the DPT shot given me at infantcy.  I did not know for sure- or to what extent.  But I was not going to give up!  I kept searching for answers.

Through reading, I saw in black and white where it stated that sometimes the digestive system and swallowing could be affected in people with C.P. (Cerebral Palsy.)  What about those who did not have Cerebral Palsy and those who have Celiac Disease?

Well, for the last 2 years, I have been on the road to recovery.  I have eliminated all the foods I am allergic to, go for acupuncture, and, I  work one-on-one with a naturopathic doctor that truly understands and cares-   I have been searching out, baking, and trying new recipes.

Because I was asked to write a blog for all of you, I have agreed.  Know that you are not alone anymore!  You are in good company and there is someone else out there that truly understands what you are going through.

Stay tune.  There’s more to come…

Tis the Season

Tis the Season

When I think of Christmas and Hanukah, I think of giving.  I think of joyful memories, and I think of good times spent with the people I care for and about.  I think about looking outward.  I think about making other peoples face light up.

What do you do?  What are your thoughts?  Do you think of store bought gifts, or gifts of the heart?  Do you give because someone has touched you?  Or, do you give to see how many presents you can stack up and get?

Year after year, generation after generation the season has changed. We see people giving to get.

How do you give?

How have you brought joy to a person heart this season?

How have you made a difference?

And, how did you pass it forward so that person will never forget your kindness, that day, or what you did for them?

It Never Stops

In all the 60 years I have been alive, we still do not know how to treat the disabled or challenged person with dignity and respect.  I just had a birthday seven days ago, and it has really gotten my wheels spinning.  In all these years, with all the advances in technology, human attitudes have not advances.  We remain aloof, callous, cold, and even more judgmental of each other than ever before.   Every other grouping of disabilities is far better understood than people with Cerebral Palsy.

We are trapped in a world of worthless, valueless, and second-rated ideas.   You would think by now, with all the human Civil Rights cases and laws on the books, things would be different. But they are not-  People in charge smile and use all the right words, in all the right company, although, for many, they retain dangerous ideas and concepts about what must be done to “help” us .  This idea that “we should” want meaningful employment, a person we could call our soul mate, a place that we could call our home, and the opportunity to recreate is for many of them terrifying.

To be amongst people, working, playing and living healthy, happy, meaningful lives does not exist!  People are down right threaten of those like myself who are self-directed.  They can’t stand me because I threaten their world and their ability to perform and exercise power in any way, shape or form.   They are taken-a-back by my determination.   So they begin to resent, bully, judge, and retaliate against us.  Why, tell me why does this have to be?  We are not doing or bringing harm to other people-  All we want to do is live our lives joyously and peacefully in the way we choose.

Their is absolutely no reason at all on earth, to take matters into ones hand to ruin our lives. What reason do people have to stifle our needs, our wants, our desires, and our aspirations’.  The only reason I can come up with after a life time of this kind of bullying and trauma is to uphold the image of our community as cute and helpless.  They can’t stand us having our own power.  They can’t stand seeing us succeed and be successful. And, they can’t stand that we are accomplishing and trying to accomplish anything without their help and guidance.

Just like all of you, I intend to continue to not only accomplish the accomplishable, but I intend to continue to make this a kinder and gentle world by bringing this to the forefront.

The Distinguished Panel

On Monday, November 22nd, I was invited to be part of a respected body of people who talked For/With/ And About disabilities.  It was a well received event. Hosted by the IWOSC.org( Independent Writers Of Southern California.)   Where one of the first questions asked, of us was…  what made you decide to become a writers?  And when did you know?  Each of the four individuals in order asked, answered, including myself.   Each person responded.  And each, because their disability was/is  different, or, was writing about a disability or personal family member having one, each answered in accord.

Personally, to be ask to be on a panel such as this; so quickly, was quiet exciting-  it was quiet stimulating, and quiet awe inspiring!  The topic, shushed the audience in amazement.  As “we”  the panel, were not able to talk about why we inspire others.

I believe and accept that the inspiration is in the act of doing, conquering, and  achieving.  It is in the believing in oneself when others don’t!  But most important, it is in the use of the written word.  It is in the how we express ourselves, our visions,  our dreams , and, our insights as writers.

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