I was a guest on the “Grieve with Ease” Podcast, with host Martika Whylly. She asked me, “what is your grief around Celiac Disease?” I told Martika, that this grief revolves around one’s loss of everyday foods. When you think about it, what is more universal in anyone’s daily life than food? Food is obviously for our sustenance and food for our sociability. Food is so ever-present and in a sense, its presence constantly surrounds us no matter where we go. To avoid its presence is literally impossible to do in our daily lives.
When we think of grief, we think of the awful loss of a loved one, the loss of a job, or home, but the loss of our everyday foods, is true, a great personal and social loss in one’s own life. The autoimmune disease, Celiac disease is the reason for one losing what formerly was their everyday foods. Any foods comprised of wheat, rye, barley, or oats, unless grown separate from these other grains when consumed by a person with this disease will literally ravage their physical body. Martika, also inquired about, “the effects of eating foods made from these grains?” For most people with this disease, there is a great amount of weight loss, major bloating with gastrointestinal issues, getting sick to your stomach after eating a meal, extreme exhaustion, bone pain and anemia are but a few of the numerous symptoms to this disease.
I wrote this book, not only to help those living with this disease, but as well for other family members, relatives, or friends who can’t seem to understand the importance of staying gluten-free for the rest of their lives. How can the grain of wheat, the staff of life, suddenly now be so dangerous to their family member or friend now? Yes, indeed, such an unbelievable concept to take in? Putting aside how downright foreign or strange that new reality is. There is the more sober reality of preventing your own death. For myself, I was within six months of dying. This Celiac diet, is giving you a second chance with your life. What will you do with your gift of life again?
Martika said,”beyond the physical side of this disease, what connection does it have to ones Spiritual worship?” I told Martika, that the grain of wheat which ravaged my physical body had followed me into my Church and was present now on the Altar Table in the Communion Host. For any Catholic who gets sick after receiving the newer low-gluten host, their own grief will revolve around their own personal loss of reception of Communion.
To learn more about this topic, be sure to opt-in for a chapter of the book, Journey of a Celiac’s Soul. Click the image to the right.
