“The lady with the hat stands out among the dozens of street vendors across from the old city’s north gate…For years, she’s been serving Khao Ka Moo, slowly stewed pork. She cooks it in a master sauce that probably goes back at least a generation.”
Anthony Bourdain
On my first trip to Chiang Mai, Thailand last year, I read quotes and food reviews by Anthony Bourdain. He talked about eating being a great act of trust. He took the new and unknown into his body and helped us see that everything was going to be okay. More than okay, in fact, delicious.
When you realize that 70% of your immune system is in your gut and this guy is going all in, trusting that he’ll come out better off in the end…well, to me — someone who’s overcome major gut-related health issues in my life — it’s a huge statement of courage. Last year, I took his invitation and like many things in life, found a new level of healing that had nothing to do with a health regimen and everything to do with enjoying the heck out of life.
Last night, we visited the Cowboy Hat Lady, the one Bourdain featured in his No Reservations Chiang Mai show. The slow cooked food was just as tender and delicious, even tinged with the loss of someone who gave me a new lens through which to see the world.
Something is changing. I think we can all feel it. Whatever it is, may we surrender with trust, knowing there’s a delicious outcome on the other side.
Personal Reflection
Eating is taking in gross matter and transforming it into energy. The question is…do you trust this process? Do you fear everything you put into your body? I feared everything as a reaction to having severe gut-related issues most of my life. Over time, I learned that I was looking at all energy this way — fearing every experience as possibly harmful to my health. Staring from fear instead of starting from trust or at least, curiosity.
As you think about your healing journey, it’s important to ask…do you trust how you process life? How you digest life and your food? How you experience and process energy? After all, digestion is something that should be happening healthfully without us even having to think about it. But in today’s world, with food manufacturers sneaking non-food items into the picture, we have been tricked in ways that shake us to our core. Because we were told or led to believe it should be safe.
Healing is about learning to trust again. And learning to navigate the a-holes and charlatans that we share spaces with. And how to remain balanced. How to stay in joy. How to see it all as an adventure, so we don’t get lost in the insanity of it all. Ultimately, it’s true, what all those gurus say. We have to start with love. Love is the greatest navigator and healer of all. Love is the hardest emotion to conjure when one has been betrayed, injured, diagnosed. And yet love is what it feels like to heal.
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