I was invited to participate in a blogger’s blog hop.  What’s that?  Something like a cross between one of those tedious chain letters my mom taught me to refrain from and those painful rubbing-elbows party I always skip out on.  In this shindig, it looks like bloggers answer some questions about why they blog and then pass on the love to another blogger they like.

Jhanis at The Vanilla Housewife slapped me some affection.  Don’t you always wonder if you’d like certain bloggers if you really knew them?  I mean seriously, who actually puts their life on the internet for you to read?  Are they in fact who they say they are?  Well,  I worked with Jhanis just a bit during a Philippines relief drive after that horrible typhoon Haiyan hit her nation.  She’s real, and she’s got to be the most motivated, big-hearted, honest blogger out there and can make you laugh at life and yourself, nodding and saying “Yes!  Yes!” the whole time you read her posts!  Here’s Jhanis, The Vanilla Housewife:

Her invite to the chain-gang party came from here (4 Mothers 1 Blog):

Whose invite came from here (Defining Motherhood):

So now on to me, The Homeschooling Doctor, who is a happily converted medical doctor turned stay-at-home, homeschooling mom.  The days of rat-race are over, and I love it.

Why do I write what I do?

Well, as tempting as it is, I might come off kind of mean if I wrote about what other people do…so I write about what I do.  ( 🙂 )  I homeschool, raise three daughters, handle my husband, and I read fanatically (like a lizard in the spring who wonders where the sun has been all winter and can’t get the rays soaked in fast enough) about nutrition and natural health topics that pertain to me and my family.  Because they didn’t teach me any of this in medical school.  And people deserve to know it, even if they refuse to implement it!

With the sweat and blood of my own two hands, I slave in the kitchen for the health of my family.  I make potions and spells and (Some folks call those meals and recipes.) practice psychological manipulation to achieve ingestion of these healing tonics.  With my magical endeavors…

…I cured my husband’s severe gastroesophageal reflux disease.  Not Prilosec.  Not Pepcid.  Not avoidance of spicy foods.  Not abstinence from eating after 5 pm.  Me.
…I cured my daughter’s severe constipation and toilet screaming.  Not Miralax.  Not fiber.  Not increased water.  Me.
…I cured my dry eyes.  Not Restasis.  Not primrose oil.  Me.
…I greatly diminished another daughter’s year-round severe allergies.  Not Flonase.  Not Singulair.  Not Xyzal.  Not dust mite bed and pillow covers.  Me.
…I eliminated nearly 15 daily prescriptions from our household of five.  Fifteen.  All me.

(It wasn’t all me, by the way.  I know that.  But it was changing the way we ate, for sure.)

Nutritional rehabilitation changed my approach to food, life, and medicine forever, and that’s the core of my blogging intentions–it’s what I’m “supposed” to write about (envision Paul on the road to Damascus).  I’m a doctor at heart, and that means I care about people and their health, even if I stay home to take care of my nearest and dearest.  I see hundreds of people each week–at the grocery, at church, around town– hurting and not feeling good, and I now have confidence that nutritional intervention could change how they feel for the better.

How is my writing different from others in my genre?

1.  It allows readers to watch how a conventional medical doctor comes to terms with her incomplete view of health and nutrition as it pertains to herself and her family.  Her “aha” moments.  Her frustrations.  Her battles.

2.  You will never hear me say two things regarding nutrition:

• “Nutritional rehabilitation (change) is easy.”  It is not easy.  But we can do it.  As much as I love pizza and donuts, I do not intend to let them rob me of normal brain and body functions.
• “This is how you need to eat.”  There is no one true path to nutritional intervention, although there are commonalities among the successful paths.  Shun processed foods and stick to whole, unprocessed foods.  Look for food intolerances and nutritional deficiencies.

3.  I expect no gain from my blog.  None.

4.  I hope it allows professional women to know, if it is what they want, that staying home with the kids can be more challenging and rewarding than any career.  Hold your chin up.  Worth comes from inside not from external, workplace labels and accomplishments.

What am I working on/writing?

I have several topics lined up to write on, including iodine, vitamin K2, types of fats and fatty acids, how foods affect the brain, advantages and disadvantages some people find to low carbohydrate eating, placentophagy, hepatitis vaccines in newborns, and finishing the butyrate series.  Lots of recipes.  Finishing up our fourth grade homeschooling curriculum.  And on and on.  I just don’t have enough time to turn them out!

Most of my post ideas come from “battles” I am fighting (or have fought), information I am learning, realizations that struck me over the head, and tips from others.  If I have to Google something, that topic may eventually make it the “to post” list.  If I don’t understand something, and I get it sorted out, then I think that deserves a post.  It reminds me of the good ol’ days:   You’re sitting in chemistry or math class in high school.  You’re getting more confused by the minute as the teacher scratches away at the board.  You look furtively around.  Is anyone else confused?  Are you the only one?  You hate to ask a question that seems obvious to everybody else, yet, you’re just not getting this.  Does Jeff get it?  He’s the smart one.   How about Melissa and Laura?  They always know this stuff.  Ah, shoot.  Who cares?  You just don’t see how anyone could be getting this and you’re just going to have to deal with looking like the idiot.  So up shoots your hand and teaching pauses for your questions.  The teacher re-explains it.  You hear relieved sighs, groans of relief, and rapid scrawling from your classmates as everybody in the class suddenly “gets it.”  I hope my blog helps people “get it.”  That they’re not afraid to ask questions here.  (And that I’m not afraid to say, “I don’t know.”)

How does my writing process work?

It works best alone and uninterrupted.   And only from my laptop.  So it doesn’t work too well too often!  Every time I’m interrupted, for some reason it sets me way back to the beginning of my post.  I can’t just jump back in where I left off.  Each post type has a different approach and takes a different amount of time to write.  At any one time, I try to keep posts coming 2-3 times a week while still having time to read and work on the longer medical/nutritional/health posts:

• Recipes are easy posts except for the dreaded photo shoot and actual post layout.  Recipes actually kind of feel like cop-out posts.  On the other hand, it’s one thing to say “Cut out grains” and something else to actually eat that way most of the time, day in and day out.  So I think people really like ideas to see that eating without processed flours, sugars, and dairy really is possible.  I try to keep a couple in the draft bin.
• Homeschooling posts are fun to write up.  I just can’t even tell you how passionate I am about teaching my children and bringing them up to be independent, compassionate, and strong women with highly educated minds of their own.  Homeschooling posts aren’t too meddlesome to write except I tend to exaggerate some regarding my response to my kids’ behavior and I worry that somebody may misinterpret my humor!  My mom used to always say to me in front of other people when I got lippy, “Do you want me to backhand you?”  My mom never backhanded me ever–heck, she never even yelled at me.  I usually write these the week they’re posted.
• Nutritional cheerleading posts are some of my favorites.  I could write these three times a week, but I think that would get too redundant.  These are easy because as I write them, I’m also cheering and encouraging myself through nutritional intervention!  Usually I’m feeling inspirational when I write these, and they type out pretty quickly in a few hours.
• Medical/health/nutrition posts can take months to research and write.  I scour the internet when I am trying to determine what I think about a topic such as iodine, butyrate, or cooking with olive oil.  I like to see what even the most radical witch doctor says so I can try to piece it all together in my own mind without bias. I refuse to be locked into one camp’s thinking ever again.  These posts require extensive searching and reading of books, references, research articles and blogs–all while trying to not be on the computer all the time.  ((I see an exponential surge in my kids’ computer time as they see me on the computer.  Sure, I’m learning, but for all they know, they think I’m playing NickJr.com.  So I have to print off most of the scientific articles I am reading.)  After I start chasing my tail and hitting on the same articles and blogs twice or thrice, I know it’s time to start drafting a post and compiling the information in (hopefully) language every person can understand.  These posts are rewarding and I learn so much, but as they take so long, I like to fill in the gaps with all the other fun stuff in life, too.

Well, I guess that’s way too much to have said.

My love pat heads out to And Three to Go!  This family travels all over the world.  And eats all over the world, too.  Travel and eating.  Two of my favorite things.  They do it well–and with a toddler!  Aaaaaaaaaah!  An elbow-rubbing chain letter may or may not fit into their schedule…but travel and eat with them anyway!  If she takes the challenge, maybe we can learn how she manages to blog and travel at the same time.

Terri