Once upon a scrambled egg breakfast, there lived a young girl.

Her name was Jezebel.

Jezebel lived in a quiet eastern suburb of Melbourne with her family. Jezebel looovvveeddd to eat, so she befriended all the foods in her fridge and pantry and played with them day and night.

There were soooo many awesome food friends to paly with including:

Charlie Chicken Drumstick who played the oboe;

Tommy the Tomato, a hopscotch Olympic champion;

Pete the Pumpkin who loved to wrestle stray guinea pigs;

Wazza the Watermelon who liked to read Dr Seuss books:

And then there was Jezebel’s favourite friend of all…

Astro the Avocado, who Jezebel would play lego with for hours on end.

A picnic basket full of wholesome and delicious culinary morsels was Jezebel’s friendly little crew.

The years passed by faster than a galah in a red corvette, and Jezebel was all of a sudden a young lady. Jezebel had distanced herself from her food friends over the years. Models in magazines, actresses on the TV and a barrage of stylised advertisements from all media forms had lead her to believe that super skinny was the only way to be. And in order to be super skinny, Jezebel turned her back on her culinary “besties”.

For over 15 years, Jezebel battled with an uncertainty on how to be enough: pretty enough, skinny enough, smart enough, friendly enough, kind enough…how to just be enough of enough?! And because she didn’t know how to be enough, Jezebel put her whole sense of self into what she weighed. If the number on her bathroom scales was below a certain figure, than in her mind, she was enough.

Ironic thing is, this number on the scale never made her happy, no matter how high or low it went. Jezebel was ill and unhealthy. But worst of all, there was an infinite sadness that tugged at her spirit with more ferocity than a twelve-legged sea monster at the end of a fisherman’s line. She missed her friends of her childhood past; they had nourished her body and made her heart dance a delicious conga-line of love and laughter.

Over the years, some questions begun to creep into Jezebel’s thoughts. Who was she trying to be “enough” for? And what did enough actually mean? When was enough, enough?! These questions poked their heads up amongst her dominating thoughts of lack, sadness and pain that kept her in the dark. They twinkled in her jet-black sky with an alluring glow of promise.

The stars warmed Jezebel’s soul. Their rays spoke of the true love, joy and peace of which, deep down she knew, her soul was made.

So Jezebel gradually started to focus her attention on the stars with more frequency. And like magic, the stars moved closer. As they drew closer, their light grew increasingly brighter. Until one day, the stars were so close that they completely dissolved the darkness of Jezebel’s worries and her life transformed into the brightness of a star too.

And in her newfound costume of light, Jezebel realised that there was only one thing she didn’t have enough of in her life…and that was her old picnic basket of childhood friends. So she invited them back into her life, one by one…

First she listened to Wazza Watermelon read his favourite Dr Seuss book, “Hooper Humperdink…? Not Him.”

Then she got out her harmonica out and had a jam session with Charlie Chicken Drumstick and his oboe.

She played 18 games of hopscotch with Tommy Tomato and lost every time (she should have known it was impossible to combat this four time Olympic Hopscotch gold medalist)

She gathered up some stray guinea pigs for Pete the Pumpkin to pile-drive in his next wrestling match. And lastly:

She found her best mate, Astro Avodcado, and played Lego with him for 234 hours straight (this is actually a lie, no one can play Lego for that long, everybody knows that, but they did play for a long time).

So what’s the moral of the story?

Food is your friend, especially wholesome, natural real food. Eat it, play with it, be best buddies with it.

You are always enough! There is a fertile plain of super awesome inside each and every one of us! This super awesome has nothing to do with what you weigh, what you look like or how you compare to others (especially those others who have been digitally enhanced in advertisements and magazines). This super awesome is the light of your soul and its petrol tank is always full of love, amazingness and spectacularity.

You are enough! You always have been, and you always will be.

You are spectacular…TURE!

xoxoxo

Story written by Jen Richards