About me and how I got here

Posted on by Cecilia Holm

I am currently sitting in a living room in LA, trying to figure this blog thing out as I’m having a beer. I am 1 day away from celebrating 5 weeks as a vegan and my legs are sore from my run and work out today. And do you know what? I feel great. I feel accomplished. I’ve wanted to be here and feel this way for many years. 

I started out in a small town in Sweden. We ate a lot of veggies, fish and food cooked from scratch so I grew up kinda already aware of healthy eating and how to feed yourself on a budget, since everything was cooked from scratch. I even helped my mom grow potatoes when I was growing up so my interest in planting food started early. My mom and I tried going vegetarian when I ask about 14 but it only lasted about 2 months before we kinda lost motivation and gave in. We didn’t do our research or learned how to cook vegetarian meals, we just kinda ate whatever didn’t have meat at the dinner table(veggies, rice and pasta pretty much) which is an awful way to do it. I have always loved animals, and I grew up with many pets, so why reason to become vegetarian was for the animals. This was way before I knew there was another reason to do it.

I’ve always had bad anxiety. Ive had it as long as I remember . Growing up I didn’t know what it was though. I just felt this very intense, painful rush of adrenaline(this was my description of anxiety in the beginning) and it made me unable to talk, move, think or breathe. Everyone thought I was shy when in reality I just had crippling anxiety. The only people I didn’t feel severe anxiety talking to was my two brothers that are closest to me in age and my parents. Even my older siblings were terrifying talking to unless it was just small talk where they didn’t expect an answer. This lead to me not talking a lot, I ended up listening instead which actually ended up benefiting me a lot later in life. 

When I was 8 we moved to a new city with my mom and I started a school called “The Music Box”, which was a school where they did a musical show in the end of the year and every single grade performed. The student would pick a song and then they played all the instruments and sang the lyrics. They had auditions to see who would sing the lyrics and I ended up signing with another girl in my class. That was the first time I stood on a stage and I loved it! It was such a crazy feeling going from being “shy” and invisible to have everyone’s eyes on me. I will forever remember that experience. It lead me to take street dancing classes the year after, only for 1 semester and performance though.

When I was 11 I was thinking about my future and I realized I wanted to keep performing and that America would be the best place to do that so I told my mom that when I grow up I want to be an actress and live in Hollywood. Her response? “Sounds great. Do it”, and that was one of the main reasons I kept going at it. If she would have had a negative reaction to it I would never had pursued it, because my anxiety would have stopped me. But instead I kept performing any chance I could find. We couldn’t really afford classes but I got opportunities to perform in school and church choir. That way I kept learning more and I got more sure about that this was my passion and that I should keep going. 

I knew about how tough the immigration law were in America so I didn’t really know how I would be able to move and work there, but I knew I could figure it out. When I was 19 I did. I randomly found a blog written by a woman from Sweden who moved to Santa Barbra to go to college and she got a student visa to do so, so now that became my plan. I applied to Santa Monica College in Los Angeles and I got in. I had a boyfriend that I lived with in Sweden that I had to break up with to move, but this was too important to me and I wasn’t gonna be held back in Sweden. Not for anyone. So I applied for a student loan, got it approved, packed a bag and left Sweden. 

I have always been someone who enjoys being active and using my body. I would walk a lot and I was always climbing trees and running around in the woods. I never did it with the purpose to get exercise though. When I turned 17 I started circus school and that where I was introduced to working out and all the muscle groups. This is where skinny little me actually started to build a little muscle and some control of my body. I also learned how to have discipline and that “pain is just weakness leaving the body”. That was also where I started looking at athletic bodies with envy and I was jealous of all the talented people I went to school with, who had strength to do things I never thought possible by actual humans. I started to learn a little about working out, but I didn’t know enough to get any real results really. 

I have always loved walking. It would work as a stress reliever and would help with my anxiety. When I got older and started living with boyfriends I would use walking as a way to get some me time and get away. I would walk between 3-5 hours at a time at a fast pace, but never run. It felt too hard.

I was diagnosed with asthma when I was 11, which really sucked because we had a dog and 3 cats we had to get rid of. My brothers were not happy with me. Back then my asthma used to be so bad I had to use my inhaler just walking up the stairs in my dads house, so going from that to being able to run without problems is HUGE.

I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis when I was 25. It started about 3 months before I finally went to a doctor. I say finally because I was in so much pain I couldn’t walk. My feet were swollen and so painful it felt like I had big, rusty nails stuck in them. It took me about 6 more months before I got to see a specialist and get medication sorted out. Getting on meds was a huge difference, but I still had bad days where my my joints were swollen, mainly in my hands and toes. I started to look around for solutions for that. What kind of food should I eat/avoid? This is what lead me to taking the leap towards becoming vegan.

So now here I am in my living room in Los Angeles, writing this post about myself. I became vegan almost 5 weeks ago and I started adding running to my walks 2 days ago and it is going well. I am now starting to see results and I figured I should start this blog to kind of document my progress and what I’m learning. I will share vegan recipes, pictures from my life and work out inspiration, along with my thoughts about areas in life that are important to me.

Let’s do this