Welcome to a New Liis on Life!

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Thank you so much for visiting Liis on Life! I am so happy to share this space with you and am looking forward to connecting often. Yes, this website is a play on my name… but it really does reflect a new energy for me, a new direction, a new purpose in life. If we are meeting here for the first time then a big hello to you!  And if some of you know me through my over 20 years in the fashion industry, I am happy to connect with you again.

Sometimes you blissfully walk through life thinking your future is going in one direction then all of a sudden a giant hand swoops down and declares, “Change of course! You are now going this way!” You find yourself on a completely different path, one you never envisioned or chose.  You protest, you reflect, you rage, and then a moment of calm clarity comes about and you realize the universe chose your experiences for a reason, that you attracted in your experiences for a reason – or a million – a million really, really important ones.  And you realize all your experiences are meant to be shared in order to help someone else in the exact same spot you were just in.

Looking back I was physically falling apart for years – but always with a smile on my face, always while keeping busy and moving onto the next project in my life. (Sound familiar anyone?) There were warning signs that my body was crying out for help. There was a growing disconnect with my mind, body & soul – they weren’t having the same conversation. The universe kept bellowing:

Hey Liis!

Can you hear me now?

Can you hear me now?

Can you hear me now?

HOW ABOUT RIGHT NOW?!

It wasn’t until I completely fell apart and started putting back the pieces that I realized all this, until I heard the universe LOUD and CLEAR. I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s, an autoimmune thyroid dis-ease in 2011, endometriosis in 2012 and the clincher, the rare dis-ease cerebellar gluten ataxia in 2013. My list of symptoms was enormous and the daily pain was off the charts.  Were there good times in there? Absolutely. Some great times in fact. Some travelling and some nights of dancing even. Some amazing career projects. But to say I have done a lot of soul searching, health homework and deep reflection would be an understatement. I feel as if I just completed a university degree I didn’t realize I had signed up for!

I like to call the last few years my “spiritual time-out.”  In all the pain and all the frustration, there were so many lessons, so much knowledge gained, so many moments of amazement and wonder. To the general public who have seen me on numerous TV appearances and in fashion campaigns, it may not have seemed like anything was wrong but every event – even if only one or two hours – required meticulous planning and then recuperation. From first adopting a gluten free life in 2011 to embracing a Paleo lifestyle in late 2013, I have grown to realize the healing energy of food, meditation and positive thinking and the power we have to change the course of our dis-ease, our happiness, our lives.

As I sat in my time-out chair, I did reflect on a lot, and came to new levels of understanding on so many platforms.  After labour, mothers will always say of course they would go through it all again in order to have their children. Although not a mother, I can relate to that sentiment – I have come out the other side with a new lease on life I wouldn’t trade for anything in this world.  There is no going back to “before.” I have wept so many tears of gratitude and sit in such gratefulness every day.  My friends now lovingly say, ”Aww Liis, are you crying from happiness again?”

I have created this space and welcome you here to learn, to grow, to laugh, to embrace your inner child and hug the hell out of her. To reach out to your future self and proactively take care of her right now, this very instant – and let her know how amazing she is. To love yourself today, just the way you are in all your amazing perfection. To live in joy daily. To shake up your routine. To ask questions. To not only think outside the box but live like it never existed. To cry tears of total joy. To surprise and amaze yourself. To do your health homework because it is really, really good for your mind, body and soul!

Let’s lose the obsession with what size is on the label of our jeans and daily weigh-ins and always calorie counting shall we? My shape and size has changed dramatically through all this and it is but one  small part of my story. My curvy body allowed me to travel the world with a career I loved, connecting with incredible people around the world. I honour my body throughout time, whatever shape or size. Weight and size is such a small part of who all of us really are.  This site is about body love for everybody and every BODY.

If I can help others from going through the same health issues and rude awakening I did, I sure want to try.  As this site grows, and as I continue to grow, I hope you will join me. I am so looking forward to it!

 

In Grandma’s Garden

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When I think of my grandma, and I say this with the utmost respect and awe, I think of dirt and dill. The yield she got out of her tiny garden was mind blowing. And it forms many of my fondest childhood memories.

We’d have many conversations about good dirt and bad dirt. One had to have good dirt. Very important. Good dirt was created by composting and tenderly cultivating the garden throughout the year. Take from the garden, put back in the garden. Several years after she has passed, I can still vividly see her hardworking hands holding a handful of rich, dark dirt. I can smell the fresh scent of it mixed with the aroma of onions and dill. The sensory experience of her amazing Hungarian cooking didn’t start the second you walked in the door of the house for a visit, it started weeks before in the garden cultivating the food for the meal for that visit. If it was winter, the experience started months before when she took fresh vegetables and pickled countless jars of pickles, beets, peppers and relish.

Luisa Windischmann

Luisa Windischmann

There was no better way to insult my grandma than to bring her fresh cut flowers. Why would anyone kill a flower before its time? Take it from the soil when someone else could still enjoy it? The rule in our house was that when visiting, potted plants as presents were the way to go. If it had roots and was in dirt, it was safe. It still amuses and delights me to know that her connection to the earth was so strong that this energy carried over to what we brought her for Mother’s Day and Easter and just becauses.

I believe the experiences we had as children stay with us and being in my grandmother’s garden, feeling the dirt in my tiny little hands, absorbing her lessons and knowledge is a part of who I am. Craving fresh vegetables is a part of my being because she instilled in me the love of being actively involved in the energy of the food that I eat. I still delight in encouraging others to try kohlrabi. To this day not many people know what it is. When I was younger, kids would ask,”You’re eating karate? How do you eat karate?”

The garden was a complete sensory experience – feeling the moist dirt in my hands as I tugged vegetables into a huge basket, smelling onions and dill mingled with roses and fresh cut grass, watching birds and animals nibble on sunflower seeds and leaves – and laughing hysterically as my grandpa shooed them away. And to this day, every time it rains, I can still hear my grandparents chime, “Well, it’s good for the farmers.” Rain was always a nourishing blessing, never a curse. And it wasn’t eating that was the most important part of my visits – the entire food cycle was vital and fun. I felt just as proud to take scraps out to the compost as I did bringing vegetables into the house. Subconsciously I knew every part of the process was nourishing the garden – and me.

I don’t feel the need to visit my grandma’s tombstone often because her energy is in a nourishing garden, in fresh picked vegetables, in the air, in the smell of dill at a farmers’ market or beautifully scented wild roses. But when I do go, I would never think to bring fresh cut flowers. She would be mad. I bring instead a large sprig of dill and the scent wafts over the beautiful grounds. I figure if an animal nibbles on it or carries it away she would be thrilled.

Ron Finely: A Guerilla Gardener in South Central LA

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“Food is the problem and food is the solution.”

I love Ted Talks. And I love the Ted Talk by Ron Finely. I have watched it several times and passed it along to others and his delivery gets me every time. Just the title alone piques one’s interest.

Ron speaks about living in a food desert in South Central LA and what he and others have done through gardening to change lives. Here is the crazy act he and LA Green Grounds did to almost get arrested: they planted gardens. In a city which owns 26 miles of vacant lots, they created gardens of fruits, vegetables and plants on strips of government land, land which is up to homeowners to maintain.  Not only have the gardens flourished, but the community has as well.

“Growing your own food is like printing your own money. “

Take less than 11 minutes out of your day to watch his thought provoking – and amusing story. It will make you think and it will make you smile. And maybe it will encourage you to go plant something too…