Eating For Trauma
How Food Might Play a Role in the Mind-Body Connection
1. Christmas Eve, 2019, Austin, Texas. Imagine: a cold-for-central-Texas night (we wore sweatshirts to bed). We were at our campsite, in a state park called Mckinney Falls, which is within the city limits; close enough that we could dip into Austin using a looping freeway, but far enough that we could see a few pinpoint stars between the clusters of prickly tree branches. We had arrived merely days ago, fresh from losing our farm on our rental property. We had driven our new home—an older Airstream Legacy bus—down our winding driveway. My eyes were blurry with tears as we drove down our busy street one last time. We made it to Texas in two days.
At our new campsite, I was reading my favorite picture book version of “Twas the night before Christmas” (by Tomie DePoala) to our two boys, like I did every year. Our nine-year-old and seven-year-old sons, full of s’mores and giddy at the prospect of reindeer hooves plodding on top of our airstream bus’s roof—were we sure Santa would find us here, at a campground, so far from home?—were oblivious to what was happening at the front of our camper.
Our bed was in the back while a couch that turned into a bed was in the front. My husband was on this couch, sitting up, trying hard to breathe while in immense pain. Trying to feign Christmas cheeriness for our boys, I would quietly rush up to the front every few minutes. “I’m fine,” he would whisper to me, hand on his chest.
“How are you going to sleep if you can’t even lie down?” I whispered back. We couldn’t tell what was wrong—was it an asthma attack? He had done his inhaler but it hadn’t done anything, and he was on the maximum dose for Ibprophen. We thought he might have pulled something in the beginning, but his pain had gotten worse.
I put on a playlist of Christmas carols for the boys to fall asleep to as I hurriedly googled “chest pain”, “asthma chest pain”, and even “heart attack”.
“Just go in the back room with them and go to sleep. Let’s wake up in a few hours to put out the presents-- I’ll be fine,” Alex winced. I abided, and crawled into bed between our bundled up boys, falling asleep to Nat King Cole’s “God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman.”
I woke up at midnight. We set out the brightly colored packages we had stashed under the seats, but something was very wrong: Alex was worse. “I can’t breathe very well and I can barely move,” he gasped, trying to sit. I knew he was worried. “Let’s go a hospital,” I said. His eyes were watery as he finally relented.
This meant waking up two groggy, exhausted children on Christmas eve. As they groaned and sobbed, I bundled them up in raincoats while sweeping them out of bed. I tried to sound upbeat (“We just need the doctor to check Daddy real fast!”), but it was a miserable, panic-filled situation. On the way out, amidst tears, River saw the presents under the tiny white pine tree, one we had bought and chopped down ourselves at a Christmas tree farm back in Illinois, decorated with several felt ornaments. He fell silent, then whispered: “Santa was here.”.
We saw almost no cars on the way to the hospital, watching pumpkin-colored streetlights reflecting in black streets as drizzling rain whirled by. I drove calmly but stayed laser-focused, my body tight with tension. I had unfortunately grown accustomed to ER visits; our oldest son was born as a 26 week preemie, and he had been diagnosed with chronic lung disease at birth. At nine years old, he seemed to be mostly growing out of it, but as doctors had told me, his lungs would never be “completely normal”, so it still kept me on my toes and sent me into a tizzy whenever he got a cold or a cough.
I drove up to the ER automatic doors and parked as close as I could. We shuffled out, me helping out the two sleepy boys and trying to steer my hobbling husband. We got checked in soon enough into a startlingly white room, complete with the familiar sounds of beeping monitors and crinkling paper from a hospital bed that I helped Alex onto. The standard ER things ensued: nurses came, the doctor came, EKG patches were placed on his bare chest, things were strapped on and measured and information was taken, things were scribbled down, typed in, added up. Our sons were worried, fearful, and exhausted; they slumped together in a single chair.
The nurse told me he would be there overnight, and that we should go back home. I felt terrible leaving him, but I knew the boys needed sleep. I told Alex to text me or call me. The nurse took my number too while I asked her what she saw on the EKG.
“Well,” she sighed, “I didn’t like what I saw, but I’m going to let the doctor look at it.”
The familiar pain, the deep twisting worry, seized my stomach, as if my insides were made up of curled rope. “Ok,” I croaked, the tears starting to silently drip.
Driving back, I prayed that good things--sugar plums instead of hospital lights-- danced in our sons’ dreamy heads, and that Christmas wasn’t ruined, and that Alex would come home soon and safely and that something wasn’t horribly wrong.
The boys fell asleep at the touch of their pillows to their heads back at our campsite, but I laid awake, texting with Alex:
“They want to do a test for a blood clot. Is that ok?” He said.
“Yes!” I furiously texted back. “Let them do whatever they need to do!”
Later, as I stared at our bus’s celing in our cramped bed, I texted: “Just so you know, registration is going to come in your room. They are going to ask you questions. I’m not sure what to say about our address when they ask that—maybe let them know we live at campsites or other farms we work at.”
Looking at all these texts, I felt crazed; reading over my words over, our life sounded so absurd. Last Christmas, we had had a home, we had a woodstove we were drinking hot cocoa by, a bigger Christmas tree dotted with bright lights, a snow-covered farm. This Christmas was our new reality, and I wasn’t sure when and how it would change. How did we get here? How was this suddenly our life? It felt so bewildering, so crazy, like we had entered the alternate reality, the mirror-image of our lives, the looking glass version where everything had been flipped upside down. Feeling delirious, I finally drifted off to sleep, holding my phone and waiting for Alex to call.
2. Broken Heart Syndrome was first described in 1990 in Japan. Also known as Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, Broken Heart Syndrome is a weakening of the left ventricle, the heart's main pumping chamber, usually as the result of severe emotional or physical stress, such as the loss of a loved one, a car crash, or a strong earthquake. It is also called stress-induced cardiomyopathy. The name “Takotsubo” is the word for a Japanese octopus trap, which the shape of the left ventricle resembles when it balloons; it takes this shape during the syndrome’s flare-up. The main symptoms are chest pain and shortness of breath. The exact cause of Broken Heart Syndrome isn't known, but experts think that surging stress hormones (adrenaline or cortisol) essentially "stun" the heart, triggering changes in heart muscle cells or coronary blood vessels that prevent the left ventricle from contracting properly.
3. Doctors ran tests at the hospital. Tests after tests were done, until Alex was released that morning. He took an uber back to the campsite, where I had made the most healing thing I could think of for breakfast: a spicy, Southeast Asian-style soup, with chicken bone broth, lime juice, garlic, onions, chilis, and green herbs.
Doctors had found nothing; they said it was probably just “stress” that had caused the pain, and sent him home with codeine to numb his chest.
4. Unprocessed trauma can dig into the body. It can disrupt the microbiome, causing gastrointestinal problems, damaging the villi, which are the nutrient absorbers in the small intestines. Trauma can foment health challenges, unless it is properly dealt with. Ways to release trauma: crying, wailing, punching a pillow. It is important to talk to people, maybe see a therapist, to not isolate yourself, to let words and sounds release those built-up feelings. Some books recommend writing, journaling, and reading (fiction, preferably, or at least something uplifting). “Walking” is one of the most recommended remedies. Remember to breathe: take two minutes out of your day to do deep breathing, lengthening both inhales and exhales each time. Eat well, eliminating refined sugar, and take a break from gluten. Eat more fruits and vegetables. Make sure to get Omega-3s, which are anti-inflammatory, from things like flax oil or good quality fish oils. Prepare or eat food with intention; the mind-body connection is strong, and if you have the intention that your food is able to heal you, then maybe it can.
3. June, 2006. I worked at a macrobiotic restaurant when we first moved to Austin. It was my first real introduction to cooking. Having just moved into our co-op apartment, I had looked up all the vegan and vegetarian restaurants nearby. I read about one in particular, called Casa De Luz, and rode my bike over. Casa De Luz is a beautiful space surrounded by green plants and trees and twinkling lights, with outdoor seating underneath tree canopies or wooden structures. It felt so relaxing to just be around all of that foliage, all of those breathing leaves. I walked in and practically begged for a job. I really knew nothing about cooking back then, as I have previously talked about. The woman I talked to said they didn’t really hire people—the food was mainly cooked by volunteers, in exchange for meals. I started that week, volunteering for food (seems to be a theme in my life). Right away, I was trained by one of the main cooks there, a man named Oscar. The training was a fascinating crash-course in vegan cooking: black, adzuki and kidney beans (where I first learned the importance of soaking legumes and grains), miso, tempeh, kale, salad mix, brown rice, sweet potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower and beets. The kitchen we worked in was warm-feeling with orange tiles and natural light from the strong Texas sun. (Much later, I would paint kitchen cabinets orange in the house we rented, an ode to Casa De Luz’s kitchen.) Every shift I had, I would tie on a brown apron, and tie my hair back in a scarf they would provide. Farms would deliver heaps of kale and collards which I would wash and chop and put into huge pots, ready to steam. I would make the sauces for the greens, mixtures of soaked cashew creams, tahini, tamari, apple cider vinegar, miso and walnut or sesame seed oil. We cooked brown rice, along with sweet potatoes and beets, mostly by steaming. I learned about fermenting foods there, and how to make sauerkraut and lacto-fermented turnips. The food was medicinal with the ingredients it used, but it was also intentional. Oscar taught me, along with another volunteer that trained me, that it was very important to be intentional when we cooked food; when stirring a pot of soup, for instance, it was important to put a good, healing energy into every stir. I watched one of the other volunteers, who had chopped parsley to put into a pot of rice, mix it in with a big wooden spoon, while closing her eyes and humming. I imagined that pot of fluffy jasmine rice to be able to soothe and melt away any stress from its eater. It was a nice idea, even though I wasn’t sure I truly believed it then. But I realized that perhaps believing was the most, and maybe the only, important part.
4. August, 2012. Our oldest son, Huck, had been born a month ago as a micropreemie: a baby that is born under two pounds, and about three months early. Doctors gave us fifty percent hope: fifty percent mortality rate, fifty percent chance of blindness, fifty percent chance of brain damage. Likely will have lung issues. Memories of this time are tucked in the crevices of my mind, stuffed in small bottles, gathering dust in the cupboard; even now it is hard to look at them. Huck was born July, mid-season (it took me so long to forgive and not blame myself: was I working too hard? Did I carry a crate of onions that was too heavy?) and stayed in the NICU until October. Two other traumatic things happened during this time: Alex and I had a car accident on our way back from a farmer’s market, where we lost our trailer but we ourselves were uninjured, and my breast milk dried up. I didn’t pump enough, but the lactation consultant blamed stress, and said it just “happens” to some women. I decided to do my own research and, with the help of an antacid I had to order that was not approved in the US for lactation but was approved in Canada, pumped every 15 minutes for two months (including waking up in the night every 15 minutes, occasionally allowing myself to sleep for 30 or 45). I ate as best I could during this time—Alex had to run the farm almost by himself, while I made pumping breastmilk my full-time job—but my eating had taken a downward turn. For the first time, I just didn’t care about food. I knew I should have—I was trying to restart my breastmilk, after all--but I couldn’t. I was just a body barely functioning, a miserable shell of a woman, inside me a dark sky with no stars. Every night, after Alex would get home to our apartment from the land we were renting, I would get into the car and go to the hospital to sit with Huck. On the way, I would get my guilty pleasure, my one thing I looked forward to: a Dunkin Donuts iced coffee, large, with cream and sugar. It kept me awake for the drive to the hospital, which was a forty-five minute commute that I started at 9 pm. The drive-thru workers knew me, expected me. It was a real departure from my usual, fair-trade, shade-grown, rainforest alliance-certified cup of coffee I normally made in the French press every morning; I had stopped making coffee in the morning anyway, since every hour blended together and I was barely going into the field anymore. It was just this hour, at 9 at night, that anchored me, grounded me, where I couldn’t wait to taste that iced sugary liquid, to have it fuel those miles to the hospital, where I would soon be overstimulated with overhead white lights and beeping and wires and consoling nurses. This DD iced coffee addiction made me feel, at times, like the worst environmentalist in the world (I never even brought my own stainless steel coffee cup-- I just let them give me the plastic, with a STRAW for God’s sake!), but it also was the one thing that made my mind at ease. It gave me my one joy to look forward to, and looking back on it, the mental state it provided helped me as much as any superfood. I got through that time, but that iced coffee remains a permanent part of those memories, in front of those dusty bottles, stuffed inside a mason jar.
5. What do we need to process trauma? It is helpful to eat good food, of course, but remembering that no matter how well one eats, the trauma has to exit the body somehow. Sometimes food, even good food, will not help a stressful situation if nothing else is done. Sometimes intention, or food is that is eaten that provides joy, is just as important as nutrition in one’s life. Right now, our society is not one that is especially interested in nourishing mental health or intentional eating. Right now, our society is one where a broken heart is an actual medical diagnosis. But we can do things to alleviate pain and stress and trauma. Our thoughts are important. Taking time to figure out how to release trauma and ease stress is crucial. Awareness is just step one.
On the Road:
We are having major engine issues (or coolant problems? I have no idea, but Alex should be an RV mechanic after all this), so we are stuck in Utah, which….wasn’t really the plan, actually. In fact, we meant to merely pass through Utah on our way to Colorado, which I was in the process of securing a two-week job in. But a monkey wrench has gotten thrown into our plans (bum-dum CHING! Some mechanic humor for you). So we are currently in southern Utah, since this is the only place we could find a diesel shop that would see us. Though it is beautiful here, there is a real lack of good grocery stores. In fact—in most of these small Utah towns, the grocery store situation is really bad, with such little produce that I am actually afraid for this sand-colored state. I hope most of these people have gardens! After doing some digging, though, I happened to find a small farm, one that I had to text to come meet me outside and buy from their kitchen. A homesteading older couple, I bought some jars of raw milk, some rabbit meat that they just processed in their house, some just-baked cookies (boys made me), and some duck eggs. They asked if they could give us a tour of their farm, and I right away asked if we could volunteer. More on Utah and this farm next week!
Aside from that, Utah is not a bad place to be, and, I must say, gorgeous; almost everywhere we drive looks like a national park. (Also, there are some really good national parks here.)
From the Tiny Kitchen:
Because of the lack of a good grocery store and being in a tiny town in Utah, food has been a challenge, but one I have taken on. I still, luckily, have some frozen vegetables stashed away in our freezer. I also have several mason jars of dried beans, and some key ingredients on hand that I can make quick, delicious sauces from. I am developing recipes based on not having much in your kitchen!
Speaking of recipes, I am opening up paid subscriptions this week! Monday newsletters will remain free for all; become a paid subscriber to start getting recipes, culinary herbalism healing advice, and some more content every Thursday!