Nothing in this world is new
How my Eastern Orthodox Easter Lent changed my brain chemistry forever & I want it to change yours too.
Hristos a Inviat! Cristos Anesti! He is Risen!
I hope you had a wonderful time this Easter & Holy Days.
Typically in Eastern Orthodox, we are supposed to do the Great Lent. Basically become vegan for 40 days. (this year our lent was 48 days). I have tried as a teen and young adult to this Great Lent, and my body would just react with flare ups, cold sores, headaches,… had a rough time. So I stopped and began to learn that Great Lent can also be a hobby you want to take up that bring you close to God or a habit you feel that is holding you against from growing with God.
This was my 1st year experiencing The Great Lent here. And it was great, grieving, sadness, confusion, glorious time I’ve experienced in any Great Lent up untill now.
I wanted to share with you here, as I’ve shared glimpse of it on Instagram, but I wanted to give the depthness because I truly am seeing how so many of us struggle but we struggle in silence of Christianity and the guilt of it all, the lent of Easter, Ester itself, and ultimately…growing closer to God.
^^Midnight mass on Good Friday
This year I gave up 3 things:
Using my phone Mon,Tues,Wed aka when I support my clients. Which was almost illogical at the time. My phone was how I’d voice memo my clients. My phone was how I would work while also “living my life”..or so I thought. Using my laptop FOR ALL things for work showed me how I don’t stick to my boundaries between work & family time. Between my workouts/movement times and work. I was multitasking everything while supporting my clients. And this entire time I had time blocks of working too and somehow I was working during that time, but id check my whatsapp or check my ig story views. Which was super hard to hold up that mirror and be like “Duh Geta, that’s why you feel exhausted…. you keep blaming it on the time difference and you have so much going on, but you’re filling in the absent time with noise”. I do have a lot going on: Nutrition Therapy school, family, planning our wedding, my career. But I didn’t fully let my brain and body just sit with the silence or the pause. This was how i started including pause times from one thing to another. Cook a meal, pause and just sit. Answered to 1 client, pause and breathe before going to the next client. Went for a walk, come home and just stretch without music or phone. We are afraid of the pause. We feel like the emptiness is…..empty. We don’t leave literal space & time to wrap our mind about what we actually did/say/think. Its why it becomes so difficult to make sense of our symptoms, of the food we put in our mouth, of how our thoughts become reality because we don’t even sit and THINK about what we just thought about. Nothing in this world is new. So why are we moving through this short, beautiful life without ever giving ourselves the space to actually notice it?
Giving up Pork meat. This once has been a battle ever since I did keto diet years ago. 1 Timothy 4:4-5 all food is great because it was my God. Coming back to living here in a village in Transylvania, Romania…. you have 1st look at how the pigs are kept here. It makes a difference if the pigs are roaming free outside. They can get in the Vit D that they are very good at absorbing and is a main reason why pork meat is ideal. But so many people here keep animals without the full benefit of keeping animals and giving them happy lives. This indirectly gave me clear conscious of how we want to raise animals when we have our own little homestead. The pigs here and most pork meat comes from pigs that are kept in a sunless metal barn and have barely any space to move. And I get it, truly, that we can continue saying this for all animals, and if i was like that , we wouldn’t eat anything ever again. As a Nutritionist who is food first, I am the 1st to say, you are right… we wouldn’t eat anything ever again. But the beauty of Gods food is we CAN CREATE our own reality. There are other options of cooking methods/buying meats/ etc. As my husband decided to do this one with me, we saw actually how profound people in Romania LOVE eating pork. We actually had to go a town over to find beef and turkey meats or else wed be eating just chicken for 48 days. After a few times doing this, we said lets go 3/4 on a cow. We knew someone here that had a few cows for “sale”. He’d take care of them, but we’d pay him for that + to give us 3/4 of the meat. Sometimes, we look at barriers and the heaviness that can come from them and dwell on them. I cannot say I feel any health benefits, but again its not about fixing anything. Sometimes its about taking the step that feels so big and to be nudged to buy a cow to start your homestead life. There will ALWAYS BE someone out there trying to get you to eliminate foods and meats and veggies. Do it with a strong heart posture and make sure your body & your mind is ready for that if you’re going to do it. But as a professional and a human living in this timeline, educate yourself on local farms. Educate yourself on cooking methods. Educate yourself on very primitive things. Not because you cannot do more or that you’re not smart enough to do “bigger” things, but because the primitive life is fading. We own a responsibility on this Earth. & its to not have lab grown meat, to create species based health, and strong environment for our animals. If we let this become normal by buying them & supporting them through our dollars and companies that they support, we let local farmers and animal species go extinct. So many people ask me “isn’t it hard to do your job if food and soil quality is poor?” No, because with knowledge and hope, there is always a solution… because nothing in this world is new. (not sponsored) Find your local farms and produce here today:
Being silent & meek in my personal life. For 48 days I talked only if i as talked to. With my in-laws, my husband, my kids. All other times, silent. If my child was in danger of hurting themselves then of course, id make sure they are safe. But that was it. It wasn’t perfect. I chatted with my husband, I chatted with my kids and then id realize i started the convo and I’d stop and pause. There’s the pause again.
Being silent shifted the dynamic in my marriage and in my kids ultimately… but it started with my in-laws. I will not go into detail, but there was evil. My husband did things he NEVER has done in his life. I saw it with my eyes how his personality left and was engulfed by evil. It was painful to say the least. Our daughter a few times would cry out of nowhere so hard that she almost threw up. When I say nowhere… like nothing happened & then this hysterical cry. I felt lost. dazed. Useless. After a few weeks, I let it out. I cried hard. It was a cry that couldn’t be done with one session. The one where you cry hard and there’s no more tears and the tears come hard and warm on your cold face and it was night after night, sometimes in the middle of the day. My face & eyes were puffy from all the crying. It was dark. & I cannot say that I went on with life, that was God. It was God that go me up and ready for when I talked to the kids at school about nutrition. It was God that lifted my head up and put my practitioner brain on to support clients. It was God that gave me 98/100 points on my 1st case study assessment in school. It was God that kept giving me good sleep. It was God that gave me the energy and strength to keep eating and not to shut down. It was God that told my good friends to call me at literal perfect moments to keep my morality up. Its crucial to have God, community, and a strong support system. Now more then ever, it is important to be good in your marriage but also have a strong group of woman or a loyal friend to help you see the whole picture. I do believe community is a part of the team that heals you. It can start or end with medical professionals such as myself, but THROUGHOUT it does include community, support group, and open communication.
Being raised Eastern Orthodox in America, we are taught that marriage is more of a business and that love passes. We were given the constant message of guilt and shame and that we aren’t enough, ever. That our value is in the way your husband looks or how big your house is or what car you drive or how your kids are in 73829473 sports. I knew my marriage was more than that, I’m so thankful for a husband who is my best friend and does hold up the mirror to himself when he’s not being at his best. I came here, in Romania, and Easter lent was all about what your heart posture is. No one persuaded you to lent. Even at church, our priest explained heart posture and how no matter the age, nothing is new and it will continue. No one boasted how they are fasting. Was lent in America that different because I was seeking Jesus hands, not his face? Was the way I looked at Easter… Materialistic without even wanting it to be materialistic?
Eastern Orthodox has Saints because we have what’s called Theosis and Ontogloy. These are 2 processes that have set me free from countless things of what I thought was “bad” in me and the continuous to be the preach we hear in Christianity to actually understanding that we are HUMAN and that God already put in calculation our overthinking, our illnesses, our “bad” parts of us.
In Theosis, the goal is not perfection of the body, but union with God through transformation of the whole person: body, mind, and spirit. Sounds similar doesn’t it? Chronic illness often strips away self-reliance and exposes our limits, which can become the very place where dependence on God deepens.. or weakens. Instead of seeing symptoms as failure, they can be reframed as invitations into humility, patience, and a slower, more surrendered way of living. In that sense, suffering is not glorified, but it is not wasted; it becomes part of the refining process where the person is shaped into greater communion with God. The body may struggle, but the soul is being drawn into something eternal.
Ontology is about what you are becoming, not just what you’re fixing. Your being, not just your symptoms. Chronic illness, then, isn’t only a physical disruption; it can be experienced as a disturbance in how the whole person, again, body, soul, and relationships, is participating in life. Instead of reducing healing to symptom removal, this lens asks: is the person moving toward wholeness, communion, and embodied life long peace? Suffering doesn’t define identity, but it can reveal where fragmentation exists and where restoration is needed. Healing becomes less about “fixing the body” and more about restoring the integrity of the person as a living, relational being.
These 2 process I learned during this lent because it didn’t make sense. Nothing of the pain that I was going through while living this timeline while also having really amazing things happen was CONFUSING. We have the power to pivot. Keep your eyes on God, and watch how He makes that path straight, even if you see it straight and fine and safe, keep praying and keep your heart posture strong.
You are enough, to renew to rebirth, as many times necessary to bring you to your purpose.
Following Jesus isn’t meant to be a holier than thou process & if you think it is, please unfollow me. It isn’t mean to suffer, if you think it is, please go to therapy. it isn’t meant to live in shame or guilt, if you think it is, leave the family and friends that support this. Its meant to keep you in your purpose. Ironically enough, most illnesses come from not living in purpose. So through all that, being a high stress can give you an autoimmune or chronic illness, but ultimately what are you going to do about it?
At some point, it stops being about what you’ve been through… and becomes about what you’re willing to walk out of.If you’re ready to stop circling the same patterns and actually rebuild your health, your rhythms, and your clarity…
that’s the work I do.
Rest, but don’t quit-Geta Barbu | Gut Health practitioner & Certified Nutritionist specializing in Chronic illness.
