I try not to use exotic ingredients that are difficult to source but I couldn’t resist posting a recipe using black sapote which I picked up on a recent road trip through Carnarvon. The flesh is rich and tastes a little like earthy chocolate mousse. It must be used ripe for this recipe. The green skin will go a deep dark colour when ready to eat and be soft to touch.

If you can’t get black sapote, ripe paw paw would be a good substitute for this recipe.

Black Sapote and Coconut Puddings

Serves 2

=R1=

Enjoy x

 “When you quit drinking you stop waiting.” 
Caroline Knapp, Drinking: A Love Story

What does wellness mean? For a long time I thought wellness meant the absence of illness. Now I know. Wellness is so much more, so very much more than the absence of illness.

Wellness is different for everybody but I believe that at the very heart of being well is a sense of being connected: connection to family and community but, more importantly, connection to self.

I stopped drinking without AA but I did immerse myself in addiction literature and like an eclectic bower bird I picked up twigs of collective wisdom and built myself a dazzling nest of sobriety.

Next week I will celebrate my first soberversary. One year sober. One year of radiating wellness. Anyone journeying from addiction or dependency undertakes a very personal and spiritual journey. They must undergo what AA refers to in one of their steps as a fearless moral inventory. I stopped drinking without AA but I did immerse myself in addiction literature and like an eclectic bower bird I picked up twigs of collective wisdom and built myself a dazzling nest of sobriety.

What I learnt in my own journey is that I was deeply disconnected from the center of myself. I was orbiting around my own psyche like star ship enterprise. Never finding the Beauty of fittingness. Drugs and alcohol offer an illusion of fittingness. Carl Jung recognized this, describing alcoholism as a spiritual thirst for a sense of wholeness. My ragged thirst was, all along, profoundly spiritual.

Wellness is different for everybody but I believe that at the very heart of being well is a sense of being connected.

Several years ago, the rapper Eminem described his recovery process in an article in Rolling Stone. His sponsor Elton John was “hipping” him to see “nature that you never noticed before”; Eminem goes on to describe his love of leaves “the color of leaves. I fucking love leaves now, man. I feel like I’ve been neglecting leaves for a long time.”

I love this. This is what wellness sounds like, particularly wellness in recovery. It is an astounding wonder at the natural order of things and the relief and joy of fittingness. I have spent one year journeying in and then once in marveling out. I cannot describe this any better than Eminem: “I fucking love leaves.”

One year ago, I gave myself the gift of sobriety. It is a gift that keeps giving. Through sobriety and clean eating I have forged a deep connection to my life, my partner and my joy. It would be totally disingenuous to say that I was not happy before; I was, but there was no sense of wonder, no marvelling of leaves, no quiet joy at the fittingness of things.

One year of wellness down the track, I think of wellness as balance, love, connectivity, wholeness, awareness and fulfillment. It is in my physical body from the tips of my ears to my toes. It is in my spirit and my soul. It is a contemplative wow at the sky and the land and a deep profound thank you to the mountains and the leaves.

Thank you for sharing the journey with me. It is so very beautiful to be here.