Words that Never Leave You: “You’re a guest in a warzone. You should eat what you are given.”
Part Forty-Four in an ongoing series from Hollie's book "Words That Never Leave You: Fifty Pearls of Wisdom and Reflection from Survivors Across the World."
In an abandoned Eastern Ukrainian village beset by a near-winter freeze and the ceaseless bombardment of Russian bombs, I tried to hunt for “healthy” food in a place without electricity and running water, a shattered existence coated in imagined blood.
“You’re a guest in a war zone,” my aid worker friend Andy asserted, not unkindly. “You should eat what you are given.”
Indeed, I was a welcome visitor in a bleeding nation where far too many had lost everything they had ever known and dreamed of in their lives. Concerning myself with health worries is a luxury not belonging to work downrange. I often hear of the admirable pursuits of keto and veganism and organic-only and wholefood eating regimes in my “other” life far away. I have entangled myself in that Google jungle countless times. But unless it’s a life-threatening allergy, picky eating has no place on the precipice of life and death.
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