Taking The Fear Out of....Everything!

No Fear

A Facebook comment, a friend I adore, and the thing I've spent years unlearning.

I am supposed to be walking out the door right this second — the kids are ready for the library and my son has asked me roughly nine times when we're leaving — but I hopped on Facebook to answer a message, and I saw something I haven't been able to stop thinking about.

A dear friend had posted that she was headed to the dentist. Thirty-one years, not a single cavity — and yet she's worried that her kids, growing up here in Utah, are in for a mouthful of them. She wished there were more fluoride in our water.

She and I happen to see this one differently, and I said so — kindly, just my two cents. And then, standing there with my keys in my hand, I got to thinking about her, and about us, and about something a good deal bigger than fluoride.

The friend I disagree with about everything

Here's the thing about this particular friend: she is beautiful, she is healthy, she is one of the people I love and admire most in this world... and the two of us disagree about nearly everything in this arena. How we feed our families. How we think about treats. What we do and don't put in our bodies. Some of it is medical, and we land in genuinely different places.

And you know what? We adore each other anyway. Not a speck of judgment between us. Honestly, it might be one of my favorite things about our friendship — that two women can care about each other this much while cheerfully, openly disagreeing about so much.

What I've spent years unlearning

It wasn't always this easy for me, though. For a lot of years, I made choices out of fear — fear dressed up as "well, this is just how it's done." It took me more than a decade of reading, studying, praying, and sitting in more lectures than I can count to start noticing which of my decisions were coming from conviction and which were really just coming from fear or just following along ignorantly.

Some of my old assumptions I ended up keeping. Others I set down: I learned to ferment vegetables instead of always canning them, to cook more from scratch, to quit being scared of the plain, whole foods my great-grandmother would have recognized in a heartbeat. Little by little, I traded a low hum of anxiety for something steadier — informed, prayerful, on-purpose choices.

And let me be honest and humble about the bigger stuff, too — the medical questions where my friend and I part ways. Those are exactly the decisions I don't believe any blog should be making for you. They belong to you, your family, and a doctor you trust. What I want for you isn't to land wherever I landed. It's for you to be able to make your own calls from a place of peace and good information, instead of fear.

And can I tell you something wild?

When I first wrote this, my friend was wishing for more fluoride. In the years since, Utah went and became the very first state in the country to stop adding fluoride to its public water altogether.

The whole conversation has genuinely shifted. Some newer research — and a federal court — raised concerns about fluoride's effects at exposure levels higher than the usual recommended dose, and that's what drove the change here. At the same time, most dentists and public-health groups still hold that, at the recommended level, fluoride safely reduces cavities, and plenty of them are genuinely worried about what the ban will mean for kids. In other words: thoughtful, caring, well-read people really do land on opposite sides of this one.

So I'm not going to stand here and tell you what belongs in your water. I'll just tell you what I actually believe: talk it through with a dentist you trust — preferably a biological dentist -  and know that either way, feeding your family well truly does support healthy teeth. That part isn't controversial.

Which brings me to a little theme that's been rattling around in my heart for Celiac Shack lately: "Taking the fear out of... well, everything." So let me leave you with the question I keep asking myself — the one that friend's post stirred back up while I stood here with my keys:

What are the things you believe, or do, mostly because you're a little afraid? And what might it look like to trade some of that fear for a little more peace?

My son is now standing at the door with his shoes on and his patience entirely gone, so I have really, truly got to run.

Off to the library we go. No fear, friends.

Lots of love,

Steffanie

Nothing in this post is medical advice. Health decisions — including those about fluoride, vaccines, and what you feed your family — are personal, and are best made together with a qualified healthcare provider who knows your situation.