Susan's Story

Even if I never lose another pound, when I read Dr. Fuhrman’s books, listen to his lectures, cook the delicious recipes, I am filled with such profound joy. I know I will eat this way forever. Following a plant based diet has brought me home to myself and to a safe and joyful place in a friendly universe. If I were to send you a before and after picture of me in terms of my involvement with the Nutritarian diet, I’d have to send you pictures of my soul. While my outer body has not yet changed radically since I started eating this way, my inner spirit has gone from broken to healing. The brokenness started a long time ago.

My mother died of alcoholism in my freshmen year of high school. My mother’s death was followed by other deaths in high school and college. I kept pushing down these huge concrete slabs of grief until I was numb. Somehow, with the support of a counselor and others, I found the courage to stick with it, to keep breathing, to express all the feelings.

Eating a plant-based diet is part of my continuing healing from a separation with myself and what I call my divine. Now, it’s as if I can feel the very life force coursing through me and I am filled with this inner sense that all is well. I feel that I am participating in the cycle of life. Plants are growing, plants are feeding me, and plants offer themselves to me so that I too may grow.

I realize that there isn’t some mysterious lottery where some of us have good health and some of us bad. I feel in every cell of my body now that we are part of a life force that has given us everything we need: plants, legumes, nuts and seeds and fruits, there for us, just waiting to nurture us, just begging us to take in their nutrients.

Yes, all the spiritual reading and counseling has been important, but I’m not sure if people understand how eating naturally, getting away from all the processed food our society tries to sell us, along with all the other false, exterior, detrimental quick fixes, truly heals our broken spirits as well. I am eternally grateful.