Category Archives: finding radiance

What is Finding Radiance?

The origin of the blog name!

I actually wrote my first blog post in 2005, can you believe that?  I had seen a couple blogs and thought they were neat – although they weren’t weight loss blogs, but more opinion blogs.  I decided to start my own and was trying to think of a name.

I was in weight loss phase at this time and part of what I was doing was really changing the way I ate.  I had read the book The Sugar Addict’s Recovery by Kathleen DesMaisons and it really changed how I looked at *what* I was eating.  Not just how much.

Anyway, she had 7 steps that you would follow to clean up your eating.  They were incremental changes that would lead to basically the removal of sugar from your life and the 7th step was called ‘finding radiance.’  What I so loved about this was that Kathleen said step 7 was not the end, but the beginning.  It was finding your own path.  She also calls it radiant recovery.  That little phrase finding radiance really spoke to me. I thought about what finding radiance meant to me:

  • Finding radiance is all about creating a life that fills you in your own way.
  • Finding radiance is appreciating joy in the smallest of things, like a blooming flower, a electric blanket, holding hands with my husband, or listening to the patter of raindrops.
  • Finding radiance is letting your inner strength and light shine out like a beacon.
  • Finding radiance is loving who you are and always speaking to yourself kindly.

This whole journey has not just been about getting to a goal weight.  I guess they all start that way, but something changed for me.  Maybe it was getting older, maybe it was just realizing that I don’t have to be perfect.  Radiance can outshine any imperfection there may be.

The action part of the word finding also means that it is a continuous process.  That means endless discoveries and paths to explore, even just simple ones!  It’s amazing how this blog has changed over the years and morphed into what it currently is.  Who knows what it will look like in a year! This blog is for sharing that journey and I hope that you all find your own radiance, whatever that may be!