Friends, Food and Fibromyagia. Cancer and Community.

I attended a memorial service and after party/gathering in a rural western Colorado 'fellowship hall' for the husband of a friend of mine who has just been very special since the day we sat next to each other at a progressive health-type seminar three years ago this month.  My day's variables had been more time-extensive than I'd planned and MapQuest misdirected me to miles from where the service was AND the one paper notice that I had with me was incomplete and gave the time and place of the after party as the time and place of the memorial.  But I got there for the important part, which was the food! I saw the guys who are The Cooks of the lamb at their fundraising functions I've attended in years past.  But really people come together at these times for the sense of 'community', and this was a varied group, from the ranchers who were outside cooking meat in their big cooker to a guy who remarked about how much he likes to do yoga on PBS in the mornings!  Now THAT wasn't what I expected, and it came up because I ran late from Pablo Blanco's house and so went in my yoga pants, which I wore for all the floor cleaning that goes on after cooking a new recipe.  It was a BIG day for a BIG man! 

A sheep rancher and native to this area, Loren was one of those 'one in a million' that has the same quality of 'larger than life' like John Wayne or someone.  I'd gotten to know their older son recently, who is a remarkably talented young businessman, likely from being raised 'on' a business/ranch with really uniquely talented parents, so it was equally great to get to know the youngest, who is 'coming home to take care of the family'.  It was nice to have a good philosophical conversation with someone so young .... he was naming areas of concern for the things going awry with the county and world right now and it was good to see both young men with such diverse interests but common enthusiasm for being part of solutions and life right now. 

While at the community center, I spoke initially with a woman who had taken a very proactive nutritional approach to middle age and aging and who had some real opinions about how allopathic medicine has a tendency locally to treat cancer.  Her daughter lives here and has fibromyalgia and so was thrilled to find out about Lumigrate.  She had to get back to her business and so I moved to another table and talked with a woman who had a keen interest about Lumigrate as well, and she also had done Internet research to find resources about cancer.  Loren had died from cancer and I know Carolyn was very 'up' on taking a progressive, nutritional approach in the past with good results.  Also in attendance later was a young woman whose family bought the local natural meats market and who have the largest liquor store in town, who I've been talking with recently about how difficult it was for them to get educated about how to select wines to meet the growing consumer demand and their business' development plan for more organic and natural.  That conversation actually came up when I had noticed a lot of artificial colorings in products on the shelf and pointed out that I'd hallucinated once about 2 years ago and asked Dr. Lepisto what that could be from and he said it can be from artificial colorings and sweeteners. 

Everyone was so upbeat when they arrived from the memorial, talking about how wonderful it had been, as we all pitched in to set up tables and chairs, food and drinks and then stand or sit and 'commune' in the community / fellowship hall out in the high desert of western Colorado on a beautiful spring day with an almost full moon to arrive later in the night.  It was clear this was a very special community, who deeply miss their 'grand pooh bah of 'baaaa' (sheep)' but who also appreciate how they all will be okay because they had each other BECAUSE of this man's unique gift for bringing people together.   

One of Loren's friends grew up ten miles ten years behind me in the mountains east of here about 4 hours' drive, and I particularly enjoyed talking with him and his wife, who is a medical sales representative.  (And the company has medical education resources!).  He asked me how long I've lived here, which is six years.  This can seem a very backwards community to bigger city people, and he had also lived in the Front Range cities I had, saying his wife cried when she moved here.  As did I on many occasions because I'm so far from my family, which includes a big circle of close friends I rarely see anymore.  He replied "After that amount of time you start being like people here, I've found".  Just then his wife returned to the table talking about the vehicle Loren had given his friend the day his son was born ... a VERY old and classic truck which they had driven to honor him that day -- joking that since it doesn't have seat belts you have to wear bicycle helmets.  I joked and said to the wife of the couple with the truck 'your hair looks really good for having had a bicycle helmet on!' and then referred to my coming in yoga pants and snow boots.  And the guy sitting on my left who grew up where I did looked at me and smiled and said 'see, like I told you -- eventually you get to fitting in here.'

I felt that as I gave business cards to the people who were wanting to write down the name of my website, Lumigrate is something that does for people like the Enterprise Community Center -- bringing good people together with common interests.  When a woman was telling me about what product for detoxification while cleansing she likes best at Vitamin Cottage, not knowing there is a link from Lumigrate to Vitamin Cottage even, and even using the term 'healing crisis' when I told her about my first experience with cleansing a few years ago, I really hoped she would accept my invitation to register and 'use' Lumigrate.com's Forum areas and write, as it just is really interesting to me these women from rural western Colorado who were saying how much they had learned when seeking out information from their computers. 

My theory has long been that these are people who make their living closer to the Earth and therefore they intuitively have been seeking out health solutions that fit more with their foundational principles.  "Integrative medicine' is mind, body, spirit.  All of which were with us yesterday there AND at Lumigrate I hope, with the Grate Group that writes in the Forum area.  We're at 273 registered users now.  And yesterday I saw half that many people in three dimensions and it's quite a formidable energy that can happen.  Which will only grow and deepen with time. 

Thanks for the memories, Loren!  Thanks for the daily moments, Grate Group!  And to his amazing sons -- glad you're here now and I look forward to seeing you on facebook from Hollywood or New York City someday when that is where you will be.  For those of us here, it just makes it more special here.  (Kudos to Billy on the video of his Dad's life. What a lovely gift to us all!)