Identity

At the end of May, I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease. 'Celiac' isn't just the name of a disease, it also a noun ... as in, 'I am a celiac.'

I'm in my second year teaching on the tenure-track at a small liberal arts college in a small city. So, I'm a professor too.

I'm new to both these things--celiac and being a professor--and both seem so much about my identity. I can't just do my job, I have to 'be' a prof and, certainly, I can't just eat anymore. Food has turned out to be the center of my health, and, at least for this summer, the center of my world. Celiac Disease has a steep learning curve and you have to do the work for yourself.

You know the saying 'you are what you eat'? I'm working on thinking about celiac as a wonderful opportunity for that to be a positive and affirming statement. One danger I can see in CD is that it can lead to you becoming what you don't eat - defining yourself by the absences in your life, all of the multitudes of I can't ... I want to try to reconnect with food.

Last year, it was fuel (bad fuel, apparently! Maybe leaded in an unleaded system? Can you tell I don't teach internal combustion?!). I ate out a lot and many, many Amy's frozen dinners. It was still a healthier year than I've ever had in terms of eating because I got rid of caffeine, soda, fast food, and most heavily processed chemical foods. But I didn't cook, working fourteen or sixteen hours and trying to teach, research, write, publish, and, well, the multitude of madly important tasks that suck up time.

In the past month, I've cooked more meals than in whole past academic year. They've been pretty simple, as I'm still healing, and dealing with nasty amounts of fatigue. I also have a broken oven (although it's amazing what a toaster oven can do!) which I hope will be fixed tomorrow.

So, I'm going to try blogging as I discover celiac & academia and figure out how my life is going to work.