welcome to my blog

Welcome to my blog. My name is Beth, and I created this blog to document and share our lives as we endeavor to create as healthy and balanced lives as we possible can.

I am a wife, mother, artist, business owner, and student. I live with my family in the Southern United States. The household consists of me, my husband, Greg, and my two teenagers, a daughter 16, and a son, 14. My oldest son, 23, is away at college, studying to become an attorney. I run a home-based business and about to enter my junior year as an Art History major with a minor in French. My husband is a coach, trainer, and fitness professional. We are both self employed, and enjoy that freedom immensely. Having experienced the "Rat Race" we quickly recognized that it wasn't for us, and no salary or position could put a price tag on our happiness and freedom. It took some doing, but we are both now free. In the past, I have been a professional artist, a hairdresser, and worked in corporate America as an account manager, marketing director, and in sales.

In 1992, when I was 23, I decided to go back to vegetarianism (I had been raised as a vegetarian)after my young son and I became violently ill from eating a McDonald's hamburger out of a Happy Meal. That was a huge turning point for me, and began a lifetime of healthy eating, as well as putting me and my family on a path of health, nutrition, and well being. Over the next 15 years, I raised my children as vegetarians (until they were old enough to decide for themselves), spent the extra money for organic (even before ANYONE knew what that meant), grew my own food, did my own cooking, and continued to seek out knowledge and grow. Unfortunately, that growth did not include my at-the-time husband, and we divorced in 2003.

Another turning point on the road to a healthier lifestyle happened in 2005, when in October of that year my husband, my ex-husband, and my father were all diagnosed with some form of cancer. My husband's was the most serious (and rare), my father's was the second, and my ex-husband's was merely dysplasia, and therefore, he had the best prognosis. It rocked us to our cores when the dysplasia didn't go away, and instead of getting better, my ex only got worse. Two years later, and after a very rapid decline, my children's father lost his battle with this dreaded disease and passed away. Both my father and my husband have remained symptom free, thank God. This experience only furthered our quest for knowledge about all things pertaining to health and wellness.

Currently, my daughter and I are total vegetarians, and my son and my husband adhere to what is now called the Mediterranean Diet. This diet, so named for the region around the Mediterranean where the population eats a diet which mainly consists of grains, fresh fruits and veggies, and limited amounts of fresh seafood and poultry. All animal products that enter our home are organic, hormone and antibiotic free, grass fed, mercury free if fish, and locally raised if possible. We garden extensively, including two plots at a local community garden. We make our own breads, pastas, sauces, pestos, hummus, teas...well, you get the picture. The best thing is, though, that we feel great, rarely get sick, don't have weight problems, and eat amazing food! Other things we do (besides eat) are cook, see movies, sew, paint and draw, study, read, study herbalism, bike, practice yoga, travel, and now blog:) We tend towards alternative medicine, never use antibiotics, and listen to our bodies. We don't buy things unless we can't reuse, recycle, borrow, or re purpose, and, other than our two homes, we live completely debt free.

As different and "un American" as all this might sound, it makes perfect sense, at least to us.