Welcome
This is the kitchen where we talk about food, life, and recovery—a spiritual path to healing and peace.

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You are invited to keep coming back to A Cup of Kindness to share your experience, strength and hope; fears, doubts and insecurities; and to pick up information, inspiration … and have a little fun!

My story
In January 2007, at the age of 51, I joined a 12-step program and began my recovery from food addiction, losing 75 pounds in the process. Read more…

In January 2011, at the age of 55, I began my recovery from a multi-trauma accident, 36 fractures, damaged lungs, and post traumatic stress. Read more…

I am deeply grateful for all the kindnesses, large and small, offered to me in recovery. Here I am... alive… still making progress … still not perfect … finding a new way forward in a growing community of women and men who share a lot in common around food and life.

I hope you'll join me in this kitchen and let me know what's cooking with you.

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October 8, 2012

Save a life – take the next right step

 

 

Dear Friends,

Our 12-step program is one of action. This is a call to action. Please read the following and take the next step that’s right for you.

My dear friend Beth Corbin has two beautiful grown daughters, Dara and Shira. Shira has three amazing children who know she is the greatest mom in the whole wide world. She also has Hodgkin’s lymphoma and needs a bone marrow transplant so she can defeat blood cancer and see her kids grow up. But she doesn’t have a donor match, and without one she cannot receive the only treatment that will save her life.

Here’s a message from Beth:

“Kenny and I are asking you to help us help our daughter Shira realize a dream every parent has. The dream of watching your children grow up get married and have children of their own. Please go to the links below and watch each video. These video are extremely emotional and hard for us to watch, it is very raw and very real!”

There are many way you can help!

*IF YOU CAN’T ATTEND A DRIVE: register online for a kit at:
www.giftoflife.org/smilesforshira
www.dkmsamericas.org/news/smiles-shira

*DONATE: While there is no cost to get swabbed, there are costs associated with processing the tests and getting them into the registry. Consider making a monetary contribution to defray the costs of testing for others. Send donations to our nonprofit tax deductible organization (status pending) ; Smiles 4 Shira, LLC, 63 Riverside Avenue, Red Bank New Jersey 07701 or www.giftoflife.org/smilesforshira

*HOST or VOLUNTEER at a DRIVE: For a list of all current drives please visit http://www.facebook.com/#!/smiles4Shira and click on “Events”
Don’t see your community on the list of upcoming drives? Contact mailto:drives4shira@gmail.com.run to learn how to host a drive, or volunteer at a scheduled drive.

*SPREAD THE WORD!
Please forward this information to your community, friends, and family. Encourage everyone to put drive information on their list serves and social media pages. These simple acts could be all it takes to save a life.

Thank you, all.

Love & Light,

Valerie

 

Categories: 12-Steps, Love  |  3 Comments
October 6, 2012

What is it like… ?

 

File:Universum.jpg

 

Day 20 of Continuing Recovery

From “The Poetics of Coaching: Unveiling the Mystery of the Human as a Work of Art” – the workshop I took yesterday, by Sarita Chawla of New Ventures West…

What is it like to be the work of art that you are?

Love & Light,

Valerie

Image: Universum – C. Flammarion, Holzschnitt, Paris 1988, Kolorit : Heikenwaelder Hugo, Wien 1998

Categories: Inspiration  |  5 Comments
October 1, 2012

Healing is a verb

 

Day 15 of continuing recovery

I love this picture from Heather Lende’s blog. It’s her grandchild Caroline and young dog Pearl in Haines, Alaska. It gives me such a sense of peace. I feel the expansive gorgeousness of this place and the love among the people and animals I’ve gotten to know through Heather’s blog and books. I feel healing happening inside me as I ponder the picture.

 

 

C & O Canal

 

Yesterday Gregory, Miranda-the-Labradoodle and I took a walk along the C&O Canal. The leaves were falling. Miranda was running ahead. The sky darkened. Rain fell. The smell of the leaves, the earth, the rain, the cool air… I felt healing happening.

I’ve been wondering about Recovery as healing. What is healing?

I turned on the radio early yesterday morning to On Being and I heard immunologist Esther Sternberg say, “If illness and health are nouns, then healing is a verb… So healing, when I say it’s a verb, the body is constantly repairing itself. That’s what life is. You know, a rock just sits there and it eventually gets into sand or mud or something as the elements affect it. But a living being is constantly repairing itself against all of these different insults at a very, you know, molecular level, at a cellular level, at an emotional level… ”

This makes sense to me. As a friend reminded me this weekend, I have an addiction to flour, sugar and quantities that is continuous, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. It does not take a day off on weekends, holidays, vacation, or when my husband is out of town. It gets triggered by life, which keeps on happening.

In order to maintain health, by their nature, my systems are continually repairing — physically, emotionally and spiritually. According to Dr. Sternberg, I can boost my immune system and aid in the repairing by breathing deeply, meditating, getting enough sleep, swimming three times a week, walking 30 minutes a day,  cultivating social support and love… and finding places of peace.

Call it repairing, healing, or continual recovery, I find it in the 12 Steps and the tools of our program. Thank you, G-d.

Love & Light,

Valerie

Categories: 12-Steps, Food Addiction, Gratitude, Health, Meditation, Peace, Recovery  |  4 Comments
September 29, 2012

Day 13 of continuing recovery

grasshopper

 

The Summer Day
by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

“The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver, from The Truro Bear and Other Adventures: Poems and Essays. © Beacon Press, 2008.

Categories: Nature, Prayer  |  6 Comments
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