Today, I'm honored to be sharing the following guest post from Sera Bonds, a representative of COHI, Circle of Health International, an Austin-based non profit that provides women's health services in war and disaster settings. COHI has served over 3 million women and is currently active in Afghanistan, Jordan, the West Bank, and Israel. Find out more at their website, www.cohintl.org
Circle of Health International is currently raising funds to help support their ongoing projects. Click here to make a donation to their cause, and check out their Facebook page to find upcoming fund raising events going on in Austin, New York, and San Fransisco.
Empowering women is a cause that I'm proud to support. Later this month I'll be doing a cooking class in Austin with the proceeds going directly to COHI. Stay tuned for more details on the event.
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A Specia Kind of Love
by Sera Bonds, Circle of Health International
Women and chocolate, how we love each other. The love is deep, real, and symbiotic. There is a high that happens when we come together, not all that different from when we breast feed our babies or when we find ourselves in a circle surrounded by those we love, laughing. Oxytocin, the love hormone, we call it in midwife speak. That is the happy hormone, and the way we feel when we eat chocolate, well, it feels like an oxytocin high. It’s good, really good.
Women, we hold our chocolate close, and we are devoted to it. The chemical reactions it ignites in our blood and brains make us feel good, and we crave the feelings it inspires in us. We are so blessed, we women who love chocolate, to live in the era of boutique chocolate because it is just that much better. Our mothers had Nestlé and Godiva–they’re good and will get the job done, certainly. We are so blessed to live in the era out boutique chocolate and my fave remains TCHO out of the Bay Area in CA. Whatever your preference of brand, chocolate transports us, it realigns us, and it satisfies us.
Chocolate has traveled with me, been my companion, in some of the world's hardest places. I work with women in war and disaster settings. There are a few items I never head into the field without, and chocolate is one of them. It nurtures me after a day where my primary activities are to bear witness to the suffering of women, and to offer a compassionate, competent, and committed response. Our field teams will be sitting with refugee women in Jordan and Haiti in the coming weeks, and at the end of the day we will drink tea and eat chocolate. It is how we take care of ourselves, and how we take care of each other.
Thanks, chocolate, for the nuggets of peace you've brought me in times of darkness. I am so grateful for our special love.
Images courtesy of Circle of Health International