About three years ago we adopted a Yorkshire Terrier from a family in the Bronx in NY. The family we adopted the dog from had 5 small children and a pitbull. The owner of the dog said they were moving and could not keep the dog. Mocha as the dog was then named, was not all that attractive. She was scared, scrawny and had a scraggly haircut she was quite a pitiful sight. I was a bit leary of the whole thing, what if the dog was sick? What if she was a biter? My husband Jeff believed it would be alright; I had faith in his confidence, so we took the dog home. She remained a very frightened animal for about 6 months. If you raised your voice she would cower, if you raised your hand she would run to a corner, she wouldn't go down the stairs and she didn't bark.

I have often wondered what her life was like, with 5 kids and a pitbull to torture her. Why did she cower in the corner? Did the kids chase her and mishandle her? Was she put in the same pen as the pitbull? I will never know the answers to her early life. I just figured she had a few internal emotional scars that would heal over time. We all are not unlike my Yorkie (who I renamed) Molly, we all carry our own personal scars, our past histories, that effect how we respond to the world.

I was raised by a Polish father and an Italian mother. Their culture influenced what I ate as a child. My mom was raised in a home where pasta was the meal of the day, rarely did her family have fresh vegetables or fruit. As a result of this her mom died of diabetic complications early in life. When my mom finally had a family of her own; she made sure we had fresh vegetables and fruit in the house all the time. She knew the evils of sugar, fatty meats and canned vegetables. She tried her best to commit herself to helping us eat healthy. She took her food history, her personal scar and used it to improve her families life.

Repeating our past is easy, it takes very little thought. We do it when we pull the same box of crackers off the shelf in the supermarket or make the same mac and cheese meal we have been making for our families. It takes thought and patience to change our food histories and heal the scars.

I have scars from my past beliefs about food that I will always carry with me. But like my mother I don't want to repeat them in my children and like with Molly (the dog) I know they take time and patience to heal. For me the GTD heals my past food history by providing a way to navigate the future. I know when we change the pattern of the past and heal our scars that we give the greatest gift to the future both for ourselves and families.

Slowly Molly (my dog) began to come out of her shell. It has been 3 years from the day we brought her home. Now she is a happy, wonderful dog, who loves to alert us with her barking, her hair has grown, she has gained weight. Her scars have become less visible.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. Robert Frost