Mom Gossip: Deborah by Zoë

"In greatest times of flow, I feel God with me, teaching me to live in a state of love, gratitude, and awe."

Meditating at the museum

“My mom is my best role model for living life meaningfully and simultaneously never taking it too seriously. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she’s never left Southern California. (Her favorite song is California Dreamin’.) I’ve never seen her bored. She has an epic collection of gothic romance novels and once mailed a stack of nearly pornographic literature to my friend who, according to her, was in need. She’s always delighting, always grateful, always searching for God and meaning. She’s enlightened but would never say it, never loses a game of Scrabble or Monopoly (even if it means playing dirty), and never loses faith in the goodness of the world and humanity, even when it seems few and far between.”

— Zoë Madeleine Brown

Meditating to bless her glass of wine and crudité

Mom Gossip with Deborah
Cancer/Sagittarius/Leo
Los Angeles, CA

What are some of your earliest associations with and memories of health?

I think I was always trying to reconcile all the different people in my very close family trying to message to me on what health or wellness was. Underlying everything was a fear of staving off scary things like illness and death. My dad (a Holocaust survivor) would equate abundant food with survival and health. My mom (a chronic dieter) loved that I enjoyed eating vegetables and proteins but modeled some maladaptive behavior for me, like drinking too many diet drinks to stay full or going on extreme diets. My grandparents and my dad were immigrants meeting more basic needs for survival. My education beyond that level was all self-directed.

From an early age, I loved my nature walks (first with my mom in the neighborhood and later by myself). Wherever I lived in LA, I was always charting my walking course to get closer to nature. I also saw that I could shift my moods and get away from the stress of my parents’ divorce by either going on a walk or escaping into one of my happy romance books.

What do you do when you wake up in the morning?

I love to stretch in bed and feel all the delicious feelings of unfurling in the body. After I wake, ideally I get up early and go down to make my coffee and sit in the sun seat in the kitchen and enjoy that part of the morning.

What do you do before you go to sleep?

Recently I have started a practice of doing legs up the wall (for about 30 minutes or sometimes more) while reading my latest romance novel. Double happiness endorphins. I love this!!

Sometimes I listen to a yoga nidra meditation but right now the above is my routine.

What is the best part of your day?

I am in a really happy part of life now and try to love all parts of my day. I have practices throughout the day and at night that I think I use subconsciously to enhance my happiness. I try to gravitate toward positive activities and people and reflect back positive love when I feel stress or sadness from myself or others.

I look for sensory joys in whatever I am doing. When walking, looking for the crunchy leaves to step upon or the wild rosemary to pick a sprig of and smell; when taking my vitamins, the pleasure of drinking the accompanying warm concoction of that time of day; when exercising, trying to luxuriate in the joy of it. As a mom, I am of course happiest when my kids call or text me with their latest happiness.

My mom at her bachelorette party, age 30

Tell me about the law school stir-fry. (My mom has a legendary — to me — and oft-referred to “law school stir-fry,” which is exactly what it sounds like: a meal she would make herself almost always the night before a big exam during law school. It was her comfort food, brain food, and ritualistic good luck charm.)

The famous law school stir fry was about two pieces of chicken breast that I would stir fry and that I would add an entire bag of frozen veggies to (I would vary type). At the end I would add a sauce. I would sometimes use a different protein source but always a good amount of protein and lots of different vegetables. This would be my power meal for studying. When I worked as a beginning attorney, I would drag my best friend Sue to a stir fry place in Century City at least 3 times a week for a similar power meal. And even earlier in my working life, I would go to a food truck outside City Hall where I would get a big plate of salad, cooked vegetables, beans, and chicken and mix it all together. [Daughter note: this genre of warm & cold salad involving several disparate parts with little regard for presentation or flavor harmony is still my mother’s favorite type of very elevated cuisine. A small plate wine bar hates to see her coming, and vice versa.]

My dad used to worry a lot about bad luck/the evil eye. I believe I have moved away from that and of using food or other practices to ward away bad luck/attract good luck. But I do believe that lots of things I do every day positively charge my food, my drink, my thoughts and my vibrational energy. I try to always silently bless and give thanks for all the delicious things I am so fortunate to eat and drink.

What are your favorite wellness and happiness secrets post-menopause?

I’ve loved bio-identical hormone replacement (both the topical cream and progesterone pill). I wish I had gone on that right away, and that I had known even more to help my cycle last even longer. So much more knowledge is now accessible!

I love jumping on my rebounder to good music while doing self lymphatic massage and tai chi. You know I love jumbling all my wellness techniques together, like my big warm & cold salad bowls. Every exercise that I do in this part of life I practice doing from a place of love and indulgence (loving the feeling of a long-held stretch, a push-up, a lifting of weights). I am not making myself do anything; I love feeling what my body can do and I try to cultivate that positive self loop. I also want to report that happiness pre- and post-menopause should include abundant sex (either with a loved partner who you trust implicitly or yourself). This is a primal life force for me and I am still highly sexed (but very happily monogamous).

Her Malibu wedding

I realize things that used to bring me joy when I was younger (like shopping for clothes) are fun but not really that absorbing. Same for long beauty rituals or ordeals. I am more drawn, like I was when I was a young child, to the call of nature and the stories of love and spiritual quests.

Tell me about your relationship with God, astral traveling and meditation, and your pendulum.

Ah, now for the good stuff. I think I have astral traveled only once (in kindergarten during nap time when I did not want to nap, I ascended above the mats to look down on my class… a feat that I have yet to recreate). I love guided meditations of all sorts and am loving yoga nidra. I think the more I meditate, jump on the trampoline, put my feet up the wall, the more I put myself into the flow state of moving through and enjoying my life. In meditation, I have had glimpses of what I think existence becomes once your physical life ceases and I think it is beautiful and filled with light and powerful love energy. Your soul merges with this light and dwells with this greater soul and/or splits off again and experiences a different life. In greatest times of flow, I feel God with me, enjoying that I am enjoying all that he created and continues to create. And teaching me to live in a state of love, gratitude, and awe.

What would you tell yourself at my age?

You know I love talking to all my little Debbies (I take them sometimes on my walks through the nature park). An army of them, one for each year of my life to show them how amazing it is that I am now in this more tranquil area now, with unlimited nature and beauty and life would (and always has) sorted itself out.

I would tell my younger, 26-year-old self to nourish and nurture herself more (more walks, more quiet time, more love, more sex, more figuring out what makes me function my best and grounds me, more deliciousness on every level). And less worrying about comparing herself to others, about what may happen in the future, about pushing herself to accomplish or do things.

Deborah and Zoë

What would you like to see or create more of in the world?

I hope that the world will create more opportunities for health, education, and prosperity in every country (hopefully new technology will make that possible and will lessen conflict everywhere and bring a more golden age for humanity). Some mystics predicted that this would be the age that this would occur. My prayer is that this is true and that this life and all our lives are always rich with love, gratitude, awe, and beauty.

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