While unpacking from a fresh move, I came across a stack of handwritten journals. Page after page of stories that covered almost every year of my life from age 10 onwards. Amongst a few cheerful stories, were dozens of painful ones waiting to be remembered and released from memory suppression jail. As I looked at my own handwriting, I could not have planned for what I uncovered about my own life. The unearthing of long forgotten memories provided a deeper understanding of my life long emotional states. If it weren’t for the bean protocol, I’m not sure how my body would have received this information about my past. 

I know that was probably not what you were expecting me to say. Why would eating beans all day long help with difficult information from my childhood? Because for the first time ever I stepped into my deeper, truer, healing process. Within the same week, I discovered those journals, and had a major blow out fight with my family where we didn’t speak to each other for 6 months after- the result of years of accumulated conflict came to a raging boil. Coincidence? At the time I thought it was. Now, not so much- the timing is too close. I did the BP an entire year after that interesting week and I now see how these circumstances presented themselves to me at a time when I could actually be supported in healing. The entire process thereafter was not just about the food. In fact, more than half of my phone calls with Unique were processing my emotional and mental states alongside my meals. I was learning from Unique that even if I followed the protocol perfectly, my body was still going to react to the stress of my current circumstances. I was doing most of the emotional, spiritual and mental work on my own time, so Unique helped adjust my protocol to support me through the tough season. The BP was the support my physical body needed as I did the deeper work of healing my heart and spirit. That is the magic of the BP. It's not a diet. I had to get myself out of the mindset that this was a diet, rather, this is the container my body can be held in right now as I do the deeper work of discovering myself. 

I first started the BP after years of failed attempts to improve candida overgrowth, leaky gut, chronic constipation, and horrific PMS and menstrual pains. During the protocol, I lost weight that I’d been trying to lose for years. Additionally, I lost muscle mass because I had to take a break from exercise so my nervous system and hormones could heal and take a break. I became smaller than I’ve ever been in my adult life. My reaction? I did not like what I saw in the mirror. I felt weak, frail, and ugly. Sounds weird from someone who for their entire twenties, worked their ass off in the gym and did whatever diet necessary to fit in a size 6 or less. 

When several months went by where I felt sick looking in the mirror and couldn’t recognize myself, I finally got quiet enough to receive a different message from my insecurity- “You never liked yourself”. BOOM. A truth bomb that, quite frankly, I did not want to hear let alone explode in my face. That was the truth I had to face: I never liked myself, so it did not matter how I changed to look, I was not going to like what I saw. I did not love myself. This realization was transformative in how I saw myself in my body and by extension, how I saw myself in the world. It made me confront being seen, and how the multitude of messaging I got for 30+ years told me it was unsafe. 

Without the constant repair and fight for equilibrium that was required from eating in my old ways, my body was allowed to focus on deeper healing. It was no longer distracted with good tastes and foods that irritated it. All I could focus on was what truly lived in my body. What emotions my body couldn’t metabolize. The foods I couldn’t digest was a road sign that pointed me to what I couldn’t digest in life. The foods I ate that caused a negative reaction, led me straight to other things in my life I still kept around that also caused a negative reaction, like people, environments, and thoughts. 

I don’t have a miraculous conclusion to this story or five easy steps to give you to make you succeed while on the BP. After over a year on the BP, I still find myself craving sugar, coffee, and eating out! With awareness, I now know these cravings to return to old tendencies are a reach for joy. Healing work isn’t always the most fun work and when I find myself tired on the journey, it’s natural to seek enjoyment. As I heal to uncover my true self, I sometimes don’t actually know what I enjoy. The only frame of reference my brain has for what brings me joy is from the past. So it's easy to reach back to things that used to bring me joy in order to fulfill that. But using old habits or once familiar techniques in a body or person that is not the same, is like taking a drug you’ve already built tolerance to, it doesn’t hit the same. It’s unsatisfactory. I’m here to continue unveiling myself, using the BP to empty out the old so the new ways I am to experience joy can have room to come right in and play.