[Stylist] my first submission

Tue Feb 9 22:25:11 UTC 2021

Ok here it goes, you guys are the first!

My outline so far maps 30 stories/chapters. Each chapter will be accompanied
with a relatable recipe. Food is my passion, my medicin, my art form, and
last year I graduated from Culinary school at the age of 52.

this is one story somewhere in the middle, it's the adrenolyn story:

Adrenaline fills my body with little bubbles of energetic high. I'm alive. I
know I'm alive, because I can feel the buzzing.

Not like the buzzing of restlessness that feels like battery acid in my
muscles when I'm trying to feel satisfied or comfortable sitting and reading
a book on the sofa. That would be a beautiful thing to be able to do, but in
my universe the satisfaction of living can't ignite unless I'm out there in
the world, active, seeking only activities that lead to accomplishments that
make me feel more normal, more accepted. If I win, people won't see me as
weak or disabled, which is the bare minimum anyone needs for belonging. In
other words, the very foundation of fulfillment is the thrill of the win. I
need to jump out of my skin with excitement to have the self-confidence to
stop  putting myself down. 

Winning proves that I am ok, that I am normal. Seeking the same acceptance
as everyone else, I made winning or performing the channel for being
recognized by people. My life became a game of gathering attention. 

I had noble intentions too, of course. I also wanted others to see that
their stereotypical perceptions of disability are wrong, that there are no
real barriers between anyone and a fulfilling life. Adrenaline bubbles gave
me the tangible, physical feeling of fulfillment, and there were always
methods within my ability to bring it to me. Scuba diving, down hill skiing,
parasailing, zip lining, even gymnastics. 

To do a backflip on a thin beam when you can't see where it is, you need to
move by knowing.  You start by feeling the position of your body in space
and knowing the contours of your physicality. You feel the beam under your
feet, and align yourself physically and mentally with the laws of the beam.
You know it's width, it's length and it's rigidity. You intend. And then you
move through the multidimensional vision of you mind, by feeling it. The
brain knows the precision required, and I don't interfere with the
mathematics. 

We could all be sitting on the same sofa having the same conversation,
experiencing completely different realities. Nobody sees the way another
sees. There is no true vision other than the Light. 

"Wow, you can do it!" they'd cry.

"Orly, you're incredible! What an inspiration!" 

It's definitely a buzz when that praise turns into adrenaline then to
acceptance then to love, but somehow it doesn't last long. 

Maybe, not being able to see what's ahead of me visually has made me more
prepared. If someone through the years prescribed a limit on what I could
do, I made a point of going out and proving them wrong. Showing off my
disability was the opposite of retreating, it was a demonstration.

Of course, everyone has their disability. Everyone has a challenge or
affliction. But when you are blind, you are very visibly blind. You can't
hide your blindness in the dark, what an ironic joke that is. There are
entire cultures who hide their disabled people at home, hidden behind closed
doors to prevent the mark on the family from being revealed to the judges
who would reject and cast out. 

I wasn't designed like that though, it wasn't in me to hide. I became the
other extreme, to try to overachieve with everything I did, to be as visible
as possible. Heaping the pressure on myself, I stretched expectations and my
own thought processes to bring the harsh light of overcompensation to prove
to myself I was not being untrue. 

Life is to be out there, doing things, engaging with the movement of the
world. To be frightened, and to win.

When you're blind and you commit to extreme sports, you can't just change
your mind. On the edge of the plane when you're about to jump out, right at
the point of pivot just nanoseconds before the launch into total loss of
control, you can't change your mind because you've relied on so many people
to even get so far. You'd look like an idiot. So you just have to go for it.

After a Tony Robbins conference a few years ago I was waiting in the line up
ready to walk across hot coals. (Hot coals available? That'll definitely do
the trick!) Nervous energy was whizzing from my solar plexus to my skin, my
words moving quickly in my head "Oh my god oh my god". From ahead of me came
the sensual clues of the awesome horror that was waiting for me. Screams of
pain and elation, urgent cheers, panting and gasping. Smells of burning
coal, the ashen smell of smoke that is both primally terrifying and deeply
comforting, and perhaps even undertone smells of singeing flesh. Waves of
heat, whirling seductively and threateningly in the air from in front of me,
licking my face like a passionate lover. The line moves. We shuffle up. The
heat intensifies, the sounds become more intense, the energy is thickening
in tension. I heard people giving up and turning away, they couldn't follow
through, it was too hard for them to imagine enduring the process of
accomplishment. They didn't have enough to prove. The lump in my throat
grew. The people in line around me had all kinds of disabilities, challenges
from intellectual to mobility, each with their own handicap. They let the
disabled people go first, you see. So there we were, a crowd of disabled
people lined up to walk across hot coals so we could feel the visceral
sensation of being perfectly alive. 

INSERT: Walking across the coals, and getting to the other side. 

When I see, I have so much more input than most sighted people because all
my senses are engaged, I get input and signals and messages from so many
coordinates that it's hard to ignore the information. I wish I could just
close my eyes and make it all go away, but unfortunately my vision is as
clear with my eyes closed as when they are wide open. Even so, I can't see
what I'm in for. 

Standing top of a cliff with the buzzing vibration of a zipline near me,
other people could see people whizzing through the air, but I can only
imagine it. They try to describe it to me from their perception, but all I
get is a limited view of someone else's universe. 

If I was completely autonomous I could change my mind more easily. I'd just
say, "nope, this isn't for me," and turn around. You're way more committed
when your loyal guides have helped you get that far, because you don't want
them to think you're a failure or weak. No way I'm looking like an idiot. It
gives me the motivation to follow through. 

And then there's the feeling of getting to the other side. It's like you're
alive. Your body is tingling, your mind is liberated from the planet, in
space, like you're walking on air. Touching down after a skydive or a
zipline, stepping out on the other side of a burning coal bed, gasping for
air after being submerged at the bottom of a rushing river, I felt my body
soften, less rigid, like a release of intense physical and mental pressure.
Born again. The sensation of love and acceptance, a moment of clarity and
truth, a sparkling light brighter than the sun. 

Is this what performers, actors, singers and bands do when they get the
audience cheering and clapping, that beautiful feeling of high? They bring
the group collectively to a state of united belonging. Aligning vision. All
these chemicals and hormones flowing through all the different body systems,
healing medicine. That's why people get addicted to the surge. 

Addiction is harmful. Believing I need hot coals to feel alive is harmful to
my soul who wants to live no matter whether there are dangerous pursuits to
accomplish or not. To be OK just sitting here on this sofa, being just as as
calm, relevant and belonging. Just breathing, feeling the sofa under my
body, my feet on this floor, just being OK in this moment. In my striving to
be OK no matter no what I'm faced with, I forgot to be able to feel that
inner peace without the restlessness even when I'm faced with nothing. I am
enough right here.  

The weekend I met Ben, my first late husband, I was on a camping trip with a
group of people I met while downhill skiing in Toronto. There was rush of
wild river rapids in the area and the thrill of rafting out of control was
like a shot of heroin that I couldn't resist. I wasn't the only one, a host
of voices scattered along on the shoreline, along with sounds of rafts and
tubes and the hustle of movement between humans and their surroundings. I
could hear the rushing sound of the gorge to my left as I was approaching
the river. The stones under foot were cold and sharp, sending electric
signals up through the reflex points in my feet. Alive ning had begun.

Perhaps if I could see I would change my mind. That is one of the benefits
of being blind I suppose, I can commit myself to Life without knowing what
I'm in for. But as I approach what's coming up, like the river, my senses
start painting a picture and my imagination fills in the blanks. "Oh shit.
Oh, can't turn back! Orly, are you crazy? Yes I am! Here we go!"

I approached the shore of the flowing river. Hundreds of people in a
cacophonic mass of voices around me, screaming, laughing, shouting meaning
at each other over the roar of the water. "I am here, moving boldly toward
the danger." 

"Come, let me help you!" a voice startles me on my left and shakes me out of
my confidence and into uncertainty. Who are they speaking to? Why is their
voice implying that there is a weak, frail, incapable woman here who needs
help? Why are they holding my elbow?  

To my right I heard other people and the flow of rushing water, but the
rushing water on the right of me more intensely than on the other side.
Loud. The volume of the day was loud and intense, booming frequencies of
wild excitement. There was fear in the texture too, the delicious anxious
unknowing that comes with danger. 

"No, I can do it," I said, gruffly. "I don't need help. I can do anything
sighted people can." 

The inner tube was huge, you have to carry it in both arms and then you
place it in the water and jump on. I needed to move quickly before someone
else would come and think I needed help. Their need to help me chipped away
at my feeling of self-love and acceptance, kept reminding me that I'm not
good enough. Charge forward and quickly prove them wrong. Neglect to take my
time to feel the water and know which way it's actually going. A sighted
person would not even think to stop to gather that information. A blind
person (a wise one at least) needs to use the sense of touch to know the way
a river flows, especially when the sound is so deafening. But I was too busy
to immerse my sensual knowing into what I was doing. 

There are handles on either side of the fat rubber ring and your butt sinks
into this donut hole. I jumped on and started spinning, immediately losing
my sense of direction whizzing inside a tornado of movement on a turbulent
surface of water. I started paddling with my hands the wrong way up the
rapids, wobbling and spinning and trying vainly to win over the force of the
river. The deafening booming volume of the air was like a blanket around my
perception, I couldn't hear if anyone was shouting directions. The water got
faster and wilder, I crashed into a rock, fighting with it for survival. 

"Hmmmm, maybe I'm going the wrong way." 

"I'm not going the wrong way, the river is going the wrong way." 

I proudly placed my inner tube in the water thinking the current was going
the opposite way. I held on for dear life, crashing, bumping into rocks,
falling in but getting up, falling in, getting up, all wet and stubborn!
Friends rushed to my side, worried I had lost my mind. Covered in bumps and
bruises, inflicted by my blind pride as I kept refusing the support I needed
and deserved, stubbornly trying to force my inner tube to go against the
current! The thing I was avoiding was hitting me right back in the face. I
just kept thinking what a blind thing to do!! Or perhaps, what a human thing
to do. If I just reached out and said, yes I need help and support to
position my inner tube for a successful fall down the river rapids, I would
have been safe, flowing with ease, have more fun, less tension and pressure.
So simple right?

But the stubborn water refused to change direction and the strength of the
flow spun me under the surface where I took a few deep gulps of river and
hit my knee against a rock, gashing the skin. 

A friend waded out to help me, "Come up, hold on to my hand! You are
injured." 

My knee was throbbing, my head was bumped, but when I came up to the surface
to the cries of good-hearted do-gooders all crowded round to save me, I was
already seduced by the adrenaline. As soon as a friend had straightened out
my inner tube and aligned me with the direction of the river, I jumped in
and zoomed down. 

Light, free, zooming speed, the flow of the air, sailing on the current of
the wind, sprinkled by living water, splashes of life on my face and my
body, fresh and cold, awake and alive, love. Inner love. I loved and
accepted myself. 

I did it again and again that day. 

I was sore and bruised that evening, my knee hurt, and I definitely had a
little bump on my head. But I didn't show people around me that it hurt.
Going down the rapids, is like walking out the front door. We are
immediately in the flow of life, and have our disabilities and well-meaning
do-gooders to contend with. And when we prove the do-gooders wrong, we have
the adoration of the idolizers to feed us with enough buzz until the next
thrill.

"Oh my goodness Orly, you're so amazing, inspiring, breaking down barriers,
a mover and a shaker, a trailblazer, all that stuff!" 

The truth is the only thing that mattered was that adrenaline made me
believe in myself. The adoration of others was a reminder, but it didn't
last long. I kept losing that feeling. I wanted to get it back. 

Orly Shamir (My Light)

Integrity Based Human Influencer / Chef

Website:  <https://nourishedbylight.com/> https://nourishedbylight.com

Email:  <mailto:orlymylight at gmail.com> orlymylight at gmail.com

Phone: (954) 559-4105

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/stylist_nfbnet.org/attachments/20210209/cec42053/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 23410 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/stylist_nfbnet.org/attachments/20210209/cec42053/attachment.jpg>