“Mama!” she yelled. “You’re done working!”

When I opened the door, she was standing there in the hallway waiting for me with a grin that stretched from one side of her face to the other. My daughter was three years old, a smiling ball of sunshine in an otherwise gray and heavy day in November 2021. Yes, I was done working for the day, but I was anything but happy. I was depressed, so much that I had to cold-breathe through tears before I’d opened that door. I was frazzled, anxious, and buzzing like a bad electrical connection. At the end of that particular workday and just before opening my office door, I’d received an email from human resources that felt like a gut-punch and would ultimately lead to termination if I didn’t resign first.

Choice weighed heavy on me.

Link to Andrew’s inspirational essay:

Dwell by Andrew Boryga

I Used To Be The Main Character. Then I Had Kids.

We were trying to start the bedtime routine recently—bath, pajamas, teeth, books, etc. But it was late in the evening, my kids were tired, and they weren’t having it—especially my four year-old son. There were tears, lots of groans, and flailing limbs at the dining table. We proposed what we thought was a brilliant, if not psychologically exploitative idea: “Let’s race to the bathroom…

Read more

a year ago · 19 likes · 12 comments · Andrew Boryga

The American Dream, to my former embittered self, was a story people used to tell themselves and certainly wasn’t available to the tired masses working themselves to the bone for bottom scrapings, and for as long as I can remember, I’ve carried that supporting-cast outlook, put out that supporting-cast energy.

Even after divorcing my dreams-hating ex and finding support in true partnership, I didn’t know how to be anything but the support system. Perhaps it’s because I was the first-born grandchild in my family, always responsible for helping out with the little ones, but I never had a lot of faith in myself and what I wanted from life.

Back when my friends and I were first testing the word “college” when discussing our futures, I had resolved not to attend a formal degree program. I wanted to be a hair dresser. There was a technical program nearby, and I could graduate with a certificate in about 18 months. But peer pressure took that career path from me.

Between guidance counselors, teachers, and friends who just couldn’t understand why I would choose not to go to a four-year university program (thanks, public school system indictrination), what I wanted fell to the wayside. I ended up enrolling in a Bachelor’s degree program at a local private college, accepting the six-figure price tag and the decade of debt that came with it, and following The Way.

After college, I began moonlighting as a freelance editor, a passion I found while poring myself into English literature and philosophy studies. But when family members and friends asked when I was going to get a Real Job, I caved to the pressure again, hung up my freelance dreams, and found a nine-to-five job pushing paper at a non-profit health insurance company, where my soul festered.

Fast forward to late 2017 when I learned I was pregnant. The joy — oh, the sheer rapture! — I felt knowing I was carrying my daughter (Yes, I knew untuitively I was carrying a little girl well before our growth scan.); the responsibility I felt knowing she was carrying my potential future grandchildren. While pregnant, I learned a lot about my body and its needs, and during those months, I began eating for my daughter’s health. She was going to need a robust microbiome, after all, and I could support her.

Then 2020 happened.

In March that year, my partner lost his job and became a full-time stay-home dad out of necessity, and I was sent to work from home. Two weeks, they said, We’ll all be back in the office before April. I laughed out loud at the “two weeks” messaging, knowing full well that’s not how disease spread works (remember, I worked alongside medical professionals in the non-profit health insurance industry and have since learned to question the entire field of virology), but I dutifully packed up my desk and drove my office home to support my colleagues.

Being home full time from March 2020 was a gift I never knew to ask for.

By April of 2020, after working remotely for roughly a month, I felt newly awake and alive. Something in me had shifted with the decrease in workload and commuter stress, and though I was still technically working full-time, in some ways the decreased load felt a little like a sabbatical.

Without the commute or daycare pickups, I suddenly had an additional twelve hours each week back in my schedule.

• I started our first kitchen garden in the backyard and began looking ahead to what I now know are our rewilding efforts to preserve Vermont’s magnificent greenery and native habitats. We hope to certify our suburban yard as a wildlife habitat later this year.

• As I learned more about food and some really gross food additives, I began baking my family’s bread and learned how to boil and bake deliciously chewy bagels, something I still do weekly to support my family’s well-being. (Our six-ingredient bagels are far healthier than the 30+-ingredient varieties available in most grocery stores.) I also learned to preserve the food we grew ourselves.

• I’d also started working on my novel in progress, one that had been bonking around my noodler in various forms for about a decade and was finally ready to come out, and I was making plans to start building my author career online.

In fact, from the spring of 2020 to the early months of 2021, I felt better about myself, my family, and our future than I think I ever had before then. And I know my daughter had ushered in that change, unbeknownst to her. I couldn’t be on the sidelines when she needed a protector and advocate. I wouldn’t remain in the background when she needed a wolf to stand beside her.

And donning my wolfishness I was, though I wouldn’t realize it until that terrible day in November 2021 when I received a life-changing email from my employer’s human resources department:

Get the COVID-19 vaccine on or before December 31, 2021 or be terminated.

If you’ve ever been asked to compromise your values or receive consequences, you know that choice with coercion is not choice at all. You are also probably familiar with that white-hot cold that spreads over the skin, prickling, when your head and your heart are unaligned.

I was a young mother with a stay-home partner and a young daughter, both of whom relied on my paycheck. Yet, I would not have that damn experimental slurry pushed into my body. To accept that hypodermic juice was to accept the murder of my personhood, and I knew what I had to do, despite the roil in my belly.

So when my daughter yelled, “Mama! You’re done working!” I picked her up, squeezed her tightly and told her, “Yes, honey. Mama is done working.”

But the words meant something bigger than they had any other day.

After resigning from that terrible job that paid the bills but left me feeling spiritually impoverished, I decided working for someone else just wasn’t for me anymore, and I threw myself into the world of freelancing, the only thing I’ve wanted since I graduated with my Bachelor’s degree 16 years ago. Frankly, it was time to see what I was made of: If not now, when?

And when I saw my daughter that day in November 2021, I knew that I needed to protect her in a way nobody had protected me—by preserving her dreams.

Children rarely listen to what we say, but they model how we behave, how we carry ourselves, what we accept, and what we don’t accept. If I wasn’t willing to unabashedly pursue my dreams, I knew I could never really urge my daughter to pursue hers, not in a way that would sound like anything but hypocrisy or the wistful musings of an aging parent out of touch with the “real world.” But independence is the real world; we must all stand on our own feet because nobody is coming to save us. Freelancing highlights the need for fierce independence.

I won’t lie and pretend working for myself has been easy. It’s been exhausting, depressing at times, and downright scary. My partner and I have paid bills late and worried about food, have little set aside for emergencies, and just keep on keepin’ on. Yet, no matter what challenge has come our way, we’ve managed to navigate it, managed to find enough cash just to cover what we needed to cover. With all the risks that freelancing comes with, the rewards are sweet, and the tenacity with which my partner and I must now operate has extended into our personal lives.

Editing full time means I perform paid work or administrative tasks that lead to paid work for about 30 hours a week. Those extra ten hours each week, plus the lack of commute, amounts to about 20 hours of unused time back in my schedule, time I’m using to pursue creativity in my life, time I can give to my partner for his creative pursuits.

My partner is learning the finer details of American Traditional art style, working hard to replicate common forms. He’s also expanding his musical pursuits and adding vocals to his strings repertoire. Plus, he’s become an adept homeschool parent during the workday when I’m noodling over authors’ manuscripts.

I’m writing my novel now and have submitted the first chapter to a writing contest for consideration. And I’m learning how to play drums, starting with just five songs I can listen to on repeat for days. I’ve even began sharing original drawings with folks via MetaStellar’s Writing Advice of the Week column.

But the biggest change I’ve seen has been in myself, for which I have my daughter to thank.

Moving from a supporting cast member to the main character of your own story isn’t fun and isn’t easy. Just like the move to freelance work, stepping into your main-characterhood is exhausting, frustrating, depressing at times, and can be downright scary. But it’s also exciting, and the world opens at your feet.

Parenting my daughter, sharing with her how important our dreams and aspirations are—so important that to deny them is to deny humanity—has given me a refreshed outlook on my own life, my own dreams.

I’m not willing to engage in spiritual death to follow The Way any longer.

Instead, I’m now the main character of my own story, and I get to decide which road I take to acheivement.

After the vernal equinox, my daughter and I wait patiently for the violets to begin opening, knowing that — not far behind those delicate blooms — the bumblebees will begin waking.

As we’re rounding out the first week of No-Mow May, and the first bumblebees have appeared (including one that needed rescuing from our screened-in porch), I’ve made my second* wild harvest of the season:

Wild violets.

While I’ve always appreciated wild violets for putting out flowers when the other plants seemed to be hibernating, it was only recently that I learned how powerful wild violets are for healing.

The piddly bits . . .

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Now, moving on . . .

Wild Violets Are Food For Bees, Bunnies, and Humans

There are no more perfect symbols of spring than bumblebees and baby bunnies. Bumblebees love violets for the nectar, and I’ve spent afternoons watching bunnies nibble violet greens for the hydration and nutrition.

Most of the gardeners I know, myself included, look forward to spring greens: Arugula, watercress, and collards. But many folks overlook the bounty of fresh spring greens that just appear in our yards every season, of which wild violets are but one variety.

Wild violets are best harvested in the morning before the sun gets too hot and the flowers begin to wilt.

Both the leaves and flowers of wild violets are edible**. The younger leaves and flowers are soft and tender and make for great salad additions. The older leaves can be cooked in soups and stews or steamed to tenderize them and neutralize any bitterness.

But if all you can reasonably do is violently yank a handful of violet flowers and leaves from the ground in sheer rapture, throw those babies in a salad, dress as normal, and enjoy.

Just remember to check for little bugs hiding in the blooms first.

Wild Violets Are Powerhouse Medicinals That Don’t Get Enough Credit

Since turning to a terrain-based lifestyle, emptying my life of Big-Pharma intervention, and seizing control over my health and wellness to great benefit, I’ve learned to lean into plant medicines, “folk” remedies. And while in my younger years I’d have laughed at those old-fogey recipes, I know understand just how much folk remedies truly matter for overall human health.

Frankly, it’s strange that more people trust Big Pharma to whip them up yet another chemical cocktail than trust themselves to brew their own cup of healing tea, or make their own balms, tinctures, and infusions.

Why throw ever more at multi-billion-dollar corporations who don’t know us, don’t care about us, and need us to remain ill so we can be good customers? Anyhoo . . .

When used medicinally, wild violets help the body detoxify, strengthen the immune system, and stimulate lymphatic drainage. They can also reduce imflammation, soothe the bronchial passages, and work as an expectorant — a well-rounded clearer-outer of gook.

From sore throats, to colds, to sinus infections, whooping and dry hacking coughs, inflammation, arthritis and joint pain, scrapes and bruises, to hemorrhoids, to dermatitis, to insect bites, wild violets do it all.

Some folks are allergic to violets, but reactions are few and far between when used correctly.

Wild Violet Tea For the Win

As far as folk remedies go, you almost can’t go wrong with the right tea. Teas can be ingested, of course, for a number of ailments and maladies, but (unsweetened) wild violet tea can also be applied externally as a wash to treat skin conditions and irritation.

The flowers freshly picked this morning will be dried and preserved for tea, so my family can enjoy these health benefits year-round.

To make a basic wild violet tea, you can either use all flowers (if you have enough) or a 2:1 leaves-to-flowers blend if you’re short on blossoms.

To your mug, add:

• 2 teaspoons of dried wild violet leaves plus 1 tsp of dried wild violet flowers OR 2 teaspoons of dried wild violet flowers

• 1 cup of boiling water

• raw honey (optional to taste, but skip if making tea for external use)

Allow the tea to steep for about five minutes. Then strain the tea and drink.

Wild violet tea can be safely given to children, too. My daughter even eats a fresh blossom here and there as a “yard snack.”

So, what’s your favorite way to use wild violets?

Footnotes

*The first wild harvest of the season was fresh yarrow greens, which I infused into an oil, blended with calendula-infused oil and beeswax, and turned into Boo-Boo Balm, a year-round staple for us.

**The roots and seeds of wild violets are not edible. They may cause nausea and vomiting, so stay away!

Related Articles on Healing:

A bit of historical context . . .

Just over 100 years ago, a group of wealthy white men, spearheaded by John D. Rockefeller and Dale Carnegie, made a plan to gain even more wealth and power by selling industrial waste products like coal tar, which could be manufactured into pharmaceutical drugs and resold to consumers under the guise of “health care.”

At the turn of the 20th century, John D. Rockefeller owned Standard Oil, then the biggest oil company in the country, and he was filthy rich. But sufficient cash is never enough for the parasitic class, and Rockefeller wanted more money, more cultural influence, more power. So, he worked with some wealthy friends to change the landscape of the American health care system permanently, and not for the better.

Once Rockefeller’s petrol-chemical drugs were ready for market, the group of rich white men used their massive influence to push for licensing laws for medical providers, which resulted in the near elimination of all folklore and natural medicine by design. Rockefeller and gang used their considerable influence to ideologically capture all the medical schools in the country, forcing them all to conform to the new American Medical Association, which the white knights designed with intention to promote allopathic (read: drug) treatments.

Suddenly, remedies that were thousands of years old were classified as “alternative” and shunned. Many alternative health doctors were arrested.

When evidence began to show that Rockefeller’s new drugs were causing cancer, good old Johnny went ahead and founded the American Cancer Society and suppressed the evidence while promoting his own philanthropy.

Suppressing evidence may seem par for the course for the parasitic class, but when I was working in the health insurance industry, I didn’t know any of this troubling historical context. I was, however, led to the research that would uncover the dark history of the Western medical model in America.

Here are some things I heard during my time in the health insurance industry that caused me to do my own research and ultimately turn away from Western medicine and health insurance.

Most drugs are only genetically appropriate for about 30% of the total population.

When you isolate the portion of that 30% of people who actually could benefit from the drug in question, the drug itself becomes immediately unprofitable, which is a huge problem for Big Pharma. To fix this pernicious problem, regulatory bodies require insurance companies to design drug formularies with unintended consequences, in which the spray-and-pray method of drug trialing (aka: step therapy) is promoted.

Step therapy is the reason most folks must often try pill after pill after pill before finding a drug that, they perceive, adequately slows or stops symptoms without causing catastrophic symptoms of another kind. If you’ve ever needed to trial one drug for 30 days before trialing yet another drug, you’ve experienced this problem first hand.

Now, this genetic statistic is not something you’ll find in a Google search. Hell, I have no source for you other than sharing that these words came out of a registered pharmacist’s mouth while discussing a high-cost drug and a profiteering pharmaceutical company trying like hell to sell said drug to more people to recoup its research costs.

What’s more shocking to me is that, despite pharmaceutical companies knowing that their drugs are only suitable for about 30% of the population, those same companies have zero mechanism to identify the genetics responsible for such suitability.

Pharmaceutical companies don’t know which genetic combinations will produce suitable customers for their drugs (which is how Big Pharma views the economics of medicine; they’re not in it for you, they’re in it for themselves).

Additionally, doctors prescribe more drugs when they receive cash from the pharmaceutical company who makes them. As Patrick Radden Keefe wrote in his book, Empire of Pain, “The doctor is feted and courted by drug companies with the ardor of a spring love affair,” one commentator observed. “The [pharmaceutical] industry covets his soul and his prescription pad because he is in a unique economic position; he tells the consumer what to buy.”

I ’member hearing ‘Say No to Drugs’ in the 90s.

The efficacy rate of the annual flu shot is about the same as the efficacy rate of placebo.

When sitting in a meeting room one day in autumn, the conversation flipped to sending out reminders to folks about annual flu shots. The insurance company was regulatorily required to get a certain percentage of the population vaccinated against the flu. What shocked me, though, was that members of leadership knew the vaccine was shit, comparable to placebo, and around the table were jokes of mailing placebos instead of vaccine reminders, which would have cost less and resulted in about the same decrease in severe illness.

Placebos are roughly 35 - 50% effective at treating symptoms depending on the disease being treated. For the past 8 years at least, the efficacy of the flu shot was comparable to placebo. When prescribing a saline shot is as effective as injecting the flu shot and comes without all the potentially nasty side effects and the possibility of severe vaccine injury like Guillain-Barré syndrome, the vaccine is the problem.

I’ve not had a flu shot since 2018 and won’t have another. I’ve also not been vaccinated against COVID-19 or any other disease and don’t bring my daughter in for annual shots or boosters.

I value our lives and health too much to play Russian Roulette with ineffective shots.

The International Classification of Diseases removed all cause-of-death classes associated with vaccines.

In 1979, the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) was updated to remove all cause-of-death code classes that were associated with vaccination. Even with clear evidence that a vaccine caused death, the medical examiner present literally can no longer classify the death as a vaccine death because such classification doesn’t exist.

By the time the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act was passed in the United States in 1986, vaccine death had been eliminated from mortality statistics by medical coders, not doctors, and this evidence was used to pass the legislation making it impossible for Americans to sue vaccine manufacturers after their loved ones were maimed or killed by their pharmaceutical products.

Now, a number of parents can identify the vaccine given resulting in their infant’s sudden death or severe injury. Though the American medical system works hard to deny the vaccine-SIDS link, an analysis of VAERS data shows direct causation between vaccine administration and SIDS.

Some fast facts from the linked article and corresponding PDF, which I encourage you to read for yourself:

• Fifty-eight percent of all infant deaths reported to VAERS occurred within 3 days post-vaccination;

• 78.3% occurred within 7 days post-vaccination.

• The remaining deaths occurred between 8- and 60-days post-vaccination, an average of 11 per day (564/53 days)

Instead of acknowledging that infants are dying due to vaccination, the medical establishment blames innocent parents for suffocating their infants.

Some clinicians don’t know how to read, interpret, or apply medical evidence standards.

Some of the hardest cases on which I worked involved folks who were being battered by poorly applied or misunderstood medical standards of care. If you’ve never glanced through a medical policy (count your lucky stars), know that those policies are often filled with jargon that most laypersons aren’t equipped to understand. I, myself, had to learn hundred of medical glossary terms to navigate those documents. But what shocked me was discovering that clinicians inside the system in which I worked—both treating doctors and clinical nurses—also sometimes failed to understand correct medical policy application.

One of the duties of my leadership position was to explain complex medical policy criteria to the folks who needed help navigating the allopathic insurance system. But several times, instead of educating the patient seeking care, I educated the clinicians about what the policy language actually said and recommended updates to medical policy language to clarify the guidelines for the medical reviewers making decisions.

Every time I hear someone say, “Trust the experts,” or “Stay in your lane,” when it comes to medicine, I think of these medical policies and the people whose lives would have been unnecessarily ravaged had I trusted the experts and not looked into the problems myself.

Standards of medical care and treatment are largely based on Pareto’s principle (though regulatory agencies and insurance companies won’t tell you that)

There’s a reason health insurance companies employ prior approval processes and appeals before agreeing to pay for many services. Like the problem with identifying the right drug for a specific patient, providers have a hard time identifying the right treatments for a specific problem, which leads to lots of costly overtreatment and patient stress navigating those treatments.

When there is no clear-cut guideline for a service provider or insurance company to identify who can benefit from a treatment within the AMA-controlled standards of medical care, Pareto’s principle is relied upon in this manner, give or take:

• Insurance company receives prior-approval request for service. 80/20 rule shows patient is likely in the 20%. Service is denied. Patient/provider may appeal.

• Insurance company receives first appeal for service. 80/20 rules shows patient is in the 20% of the 20%. Service is denied.

  • Patient/provider may submit second appeal only in specific circumstances by state law. (Pareto’s principle applies at the second appeal, too, so the folks in the bottom 20% will never receive approval for their care, even if said care would save their lives.)

  • For everyone else, patient must either pay cash for service or go without the service.

I remember a few particularly difficult cases on which I worked while in the insurance industry, the kinds of horror stories that kept me up at night, found me weeping by myself in silence, crushed my caregiving soul. My role was to help people navigate the system, but I learned in doing so, that the system hates them, that there’s a reason navigation is so difficult.

There is a deep-seated cultural problem with the provision of medicine in America that meant I couldn’t functionally operate as a patient care advocate. Instead, I was a glorified paper-pusher, helping people get denied for care over and over because they weren’t in the 80%, and there was no box big enough to accomodate their experience and certify their medical need, especially when those same patients were tired of allopathy and wanted to seek alternative health treatments, including ayurveda, folk medicine, and more.

Preventive care leads to over-diagnosis and unnecessary (and costly) treatment

One of my least favorite days in the health insurance industry was a day in which one of my workgroups discussed preventive care specific to the Affordable Care Act’s no-cost preventive care provision. Like vaccines, there were certain regulatory metrics the company had to meet, like reminding folks about annual exams, mammograms, and colorectal cancer screenings, things like that.

There’s an ongoing promotion of the idea that catching disease early and often means eradicating disease before it becomes debilitating and costly: Treat now for a low cost or treat later for a high cost.

The problem with this promotion is that the assumption that preventive care saves lives and money is functionally incorrect.

Really, it’s a bald-faced lie.

• Mammograpy screenings for asymptomatic women lead to overdiagnosis and overtreatment. According to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, “Women were more likely to have breast cancer that was overdiagnosed than to have earlier detection of a tumor that was destined to become large. The reduction in breast cancer mortality after the implementation of screening mammography was predominantly the result of improved systemic therapy.” The national expense of false-positive mammograms and associated overdiagnoses of breast cancer cost an estimated $4 billion per year. And this doesn’t include the psychological harms the patient must deal with when being told they have cancer.

• Colorectal cancer screenings share a similar problem, in that preventive colorectal cancer screenings lead to overdiagnosis, unnecessary biopsies and surgeries, and psychological distress.

  • To add to this problem, common drugs used to treat acid reflux and gastroesophageal reflux disease increase the probability of getting false positives in colorectal cancer screenings by about 13%. From the article, “‘In the analysis of 89,199 tests, carried out on 46,783 participants, during 2010 and 2016, we obtained a 6% positivity rate and the proportion of false positives was 53%,’ explains Víctor Moreno, coordinator of the research.”

During the workgroup, the ethics of sending reminders to folks was discussed, expressly because of the rate of false-positives, the psychological mind-fuckery that occurs when you’re told you have cancer, and the fact that no real savings are produced even when screenings mess up people’s lives.

In the end, we had to send the reminders because the government said so.

The pernicious inception of cancer

One day, I answered a phone call in which a person asked whether cancer treatment would be covered by insurance, since the cancer was caused by radiation and chemotherapy used to treat a different cancer. Unfortunately, I started hearing that story everywhere, even from new connections on social media.

The inception of cancer looks like:

• Diagnosed with and treated for cancer A; cancer A eliminated/in remission

• Diagnosed with and treated for cancer B caused by cancer A treatment; cancer B eliminated/in remission

• Diagnosed with and treated for cancer C caused by cancer A and B treatments; cancer C eliminated/in remission

• So on and so forth

Of course, the inception of cancer protocols and corresponding treatments often just guarantee a person will experience a treatment-related death, which nobody wants to acknowledge, least of all the pharmaceutical companies getting rich from selling you cancer-causing chemotherapy treatments.

Talk about a death-race to the coffin.

Protect yourself and your family from white-knight allopaths who will kill you before they admit their folly

Medical errors are the third leading cause of adult death in the United States for a reason.

If intuition is telling you something is amiss with your health care and you can’t quite put your finger on it, trust your instinct but know the answers you seek may not be easy to find, assuming you can find any answers at all. Much information has been suppressed or left untested because of the American Medical Association, which controls the provision of medicine via standards of care in the United States.

To pursue real health and wellness, I turned to the terrain theory of disease, which promotes a physiology-first approach to any and all treatments and solidifies the human as a part of the ecological whole. This means I’m now a firm believer and user of folklore medicine, especially since virology has been disproved.

Mother Nature has already given us every bit of medicine we need. The petrol-chemical drug industry is interfering with Mother Nature’s gifts.

Here are some natural swaps I’ve made to eliminate my former reliance on allopathic medicine:

• Traded in my primary care MD for a naturopath, who is always open to discussing plants and natural remedies first. (This is a big first step. If your MD won’t discuss plants, lifestyle medicine, or “alternative remedies,” they’re nothing but a glorified drug peddler. It’s okay to fire them and find a provider who aligns with your values.)

• Traded in my albuterol asthma inhaler for mullein leaf smoke and tea, which I source from my own backyard for $0. I smoke the leaf, which clears lung congestion and mucus fast, and when my daughter needs cough support, she can safely have mullein leaf tea flavored with organic, locally sourced honey for an extra health boost.

• When experiencing pre-menstrual anxiety, I found such anxiety corresponded with chocolate cravings, my body’s way of telling me I needed magnesium. Now I eat more magnesium-rich foods and supplement on the extra rough days to keep anxiety at bay. I sleep better, experience far fewer highs and lows, and have more comfortable menstrual cycles overall.

• Depression and anxiety come directly from an improperly balanced gut microbiome, no matter what anyone tells you. There’s still lots of “it’s a chemical imbalance!” misinformation out there, but the chemical-imbalance theory has been thoroughly debunked. If depressed or anxious, you’re missing critical micronutrients and need to load up fast.

  • Organ meats and supplements, and nutrient-rich animal products like grass-fed beef tallow can repair even severe damage to the gut-microbiome.

  • If you drink alcohol, stop. There is no amount of alcohol that can be safely metabolized without disrupting your gut microbiota.

• When headaches happen, I look inward to determine the source. Often, poor hydration or sleep are the causes. Drinking sea-salted water helps me hydrate quickly, but I can’t always take a nap in the middle of the day (and really, I’m not a napper). When I can’t tackle the headache with salted water, I supplement with turmeric, an anti-inflammatory root, which works better and faster than ibuprofen ever did and doesn’t threaten to destroy my stomach lining.

If you do want a resource for plant medicines you may find in your backyard and how to use them, The Lost Book of Herbal Remedies more than pays for itself.

I’m sure I’ve missed a few swaps or resources, and I’m sure I’ll have other stories to share about my time in health insurance, but I’m spent.

Now, I’d love to hear from you!

• Why are you interested in natural and alternative medicines?

• Have you found help and healing in alternative medicine?

• Do you have a favorite natural-remedy swap to share?

• Did I share anything that royally pissed you off?

Lay it on me, and always remember: Health is wealth.

Happy healing!

♡ Fal

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Contemplative philosophy, especially of the nature-forward variety, fosters healing. Remembering that we are each star seeds borne of universal energy is magnificently humbling, exciting, and gratifying all at the same time. I’m never so powerful as when I am at my smallest and most insignificant.

Each morning upon rolling out of bed and grabbing a mug of coffee, my daughter and I make our ways into the living room for our daily dose of quiet time. Often, she’ll choose a stuffed animal or ten and occupy herself with fantastic conversation, while I pick up my book of the day.

This morning, I expected to revel in my cosmic insignificance in Thoreau’s Walden, especially as I look forward to an author call and a focused writing block for The Novel Nest writers community. (If ever you want to feel insignificant and cannot get outside to see nature or the stars, start a marathon project like writing a novel where you feel as though you’re progressing at a snail’s pace even as your thoughts race miles ahead.)

And showing up for authors in The Novel Nest has given me a fair bit of anxiety, an anxiety many new homesteaders face when scaling back and moving toward minimalism:

Anxiety about my clothes.

Anxiety About Clothing and Confidence Starts Early

Several years ago, I read a story about how self-confidence and body dysmorphia in little girls often presents by age six. The primary source of that dysmorphia? Moms.

Moms are hard on themselves. I can be, too. But we’re often hard on our daughters without realizing it, and it’s time to do better.

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve had issues with clothing, body positivity, and confidence. I remember my mom poking at her post-partum belly (after my younger brother was born) in the mirror and grimacing at the extra wiggle. I remember her pulling on an outfit, pulling it back off, and slamming the hanger back onto the bar in frustration. I remember flamingo-legged shoe parades and handbag-matching experiments. I also remember that, in the back of my mom’s closet, hung the pretty dresses.

Around age five, I was super into dresses. I loved how flowy they were, how freeing. How I could climb and play without fabric holding me back. But while at school one day, another kid asked with (perhaps perceived) snark in her voice: Why do you wear dresses every day?

Sometimes the simplest questions can feel like a finger jab in the chest, and her question, innocent as it may have been, took the joy out of dresses for me. I was too shy and embarrassed at my dress faux-pas to answer, but I put away my dresses for the foreseeable future. From that point, I lived in pants.

Through high-school and college, and even when I entered the corporate workforce, my fashion sense was essentially non-existent. I never really understood colors and textures and patterns and body shapes and cuts. And frankly, the idea of learning all that stuff was exhausting. I just wanted clothes that fit, were comfortable, and looked decent enough.

But struggling with body image means that even a great outfit can make you feel like a whale. Worse, it leads to a different kind of anxiety.

Classism and Wastefulness Lives in Dress Codes

About a year ago, I read a business book that almost made it onto my very short list of books I did not finish for one simple reason: The author dedicated an entire chapter to dressing professionally, so that folks take you seriously in the business world. But when “professional” attire has such a large range of acceptability, it’s hard to know where to begin.

The professional attire for a plumber is quite different from the professional attire of a door-to-door salesman is quite different from the professional attire of a laboratory technician is different from the professional attire of a . . .

While I understand, on some weird cultural level, the focus on professional clothing, fashion, as a concept, remains as alien to me as a wild animal from another part of the planet, as mysterious as a sea creature from the depths of the Mariana Trench.

In my life, the fashion industry hovered at the periphery of my pop-culture knowledge at any given time. Sure, I watched America’s Next Top Model like many other young women in my life, but that’s mostly since I’ve loved Tyra Banks since her Coyote Ugly days. (Y’all gon’ make me lose my mind, indeed, Tyra!)

But, like Piper Perabo’s character, I, too, dislike clothes shopping and am not afraid to laugh at something I just know I’m never going to wear. Shorts with a zippered crotch, anyone? (IYKYK)

The luxury of changing ones wardrobe with the changing seasons is never something I understood. Maybe it’s because I didn’t have a lot when I was growing up, maybe it’s because I wore jeans that were too short, and shirts that were stained, and outfits that needed to be mended, but there were a million other things to spend that precious on, like food, family activities, educational supplies. We didn’t need fancy clothes to spend time together. We only needed them when we ventured out into the world.

I bloody hate stripping down to my skivvies in public to try on items that really should be washed and rid of chemical contaminants before any person wears them ever. Your skin is like a sponge. Poison on means poison in. Instead, I prefer to order my trusted eco-wash 311 Levis every so often (going on six years with my current jeans). And I’m the person who, once I find a top I love, want that top in all the colors so I don’t have to shop again for a good long time.

Today, many American adults spend an average of $160 per month on new clothes. That’s nearly $2,000 a year in superfluous spending. Unless you live inside a rock tumbler where your clothes are being battered 24/7, spending $160 per month on clothes is a first-world luxury of epic proportions that reeks of wasteful consumerism.

I don’t play the wasteful consumer game anymore. Other than procuring unmentionables and a swimsuit for my post-partum Mom bod (a lovely polka-dot one piece), the last time I went out clothes shopping for myself was back in April 2019, when I got only a couple of items—secondhand—for daily wear. Items that are still in rotation today.

At this point, I see little value in having new clothes.

The Fashion Industry is a Supervillain

When most people think of clothing, they think of the fashion industry, the runways, the models, the mannequins, the seasonal styles, the consumption.

I get it.

It’s easy to get caught up in the glitz and glamour and the famous Tyra Smize. It’s also easy to casually forget about the gritty underbelly of a problematic industry.

When I began connecting famous clothing brands to child exploitation and slavery, and sexual assault of fashion models, and more, I couldn’t unhear the stories, couldn’t unsee the damage.

But even if all my humanitarian concerns about the fashion industry were addressed to my liking, there still remains the fact that many decent people, when frantic over fashion, overlook or choose to ignore some uncomfortable environmental truths, like:

• Eighty-five percent of all textiles go to landfill dumps.

• Fast fashion uses so much water that clothing production dries up natural water sources causing droughts.

• Washing synthetic clothing and fabrics releases microplastics equivalent to 50 billion plastic bottles each year.

• The fast fashion industry produces more pollution than all international flights and maritime shipping combined.

Fashion, like the weather, changes with the seasons, so environmental waste is a known side effect. Very many good people get caught up in keeping up with the fashion joneses that they forget about ethical consumption.

‘Reduce’ and ‘Reuse’ Come Before ‘Recycle’ in the 3Rs Hierarchy

Maybe it’s the size (teensy!) of my refurbished dresser, or the length of my closet bar, or my general dislike of unnecessary clutter, but when it comes to clothing, less is more.

My approach to clothes shopping rests on two questions:

• Is it practical?

• It is comfortable?

Comfort is fairly self-explanatory, though the definition of the word changes for everyone. For me, practicality comes down to what I can do in my clothes.

• Jeans are good for strolling, writing, and gardening; yoga pants are good for stretching and sleeping (and cradling my menstrual belly when needed).

• Tanks, tee shirts, and sleeves of one kind or another, be they from flannel button-ups, cotton hoodies, or whatnot, make up the bulk of my wardrobe.

• I’m all about layers.

If I can’t wear a piece in more than one setting, it’s difficult for me to justify the cost—both the financial cost of buying something so broadly useless and the ecological cost of contributing to the fast-fashion industry.

Old Clothes, New Outlook

Maybe it’s because I’ve noticed an increase in the number of personal-style coaches on LinkedIn. Maybe I’m noticing more content because of latent feelings related to the filtered-everything reality that seems to be Instagram. Maybe it’s because the cold weather has landed in Vermont and I’m considering my own comfort over the coming months (hello, flannel!). Regardless of the source of my recent considerations, Thoreau’s quote gave me pause.

Why do people insist on having new clothes when they haven’t changed or done enough to justify such newness?

Why do Americans pump billions of dollars into an industry that makes money by making us feel fat and ugly?

Why, when there’s a closet or dresser full of appropriate wearables, must we procure more and more?

Why, when we already have enough, are we gluttonous in our consumption?

Why don’t more Americans pull back? Repair holes? Stitch seams? Upcycle?

Why don’t more folks dye old clothes that need a refresh, or cut pieces into new styles?

Why are folks putting perfectly good, if “outdated,” pieces of clothing in plastic garbage bags rather than donating them to the next person?

Maybe a change in outlook, a review of what is truly necessary, is required.

Home Is Where Your Newfound Confidence Starts

If you’re new to homesteading and the scaled-back lifestyle that comes with it, know:

• Your clothes don’t show your expertise or your credentials. Your work does.

• Your clothes won’t make you beautiful or respectable. Your work does.

• Your clothes won’t get you hired or fired. Your work will.

• Your clothes don’t care about you. You do.

If you pour your entire identity into your appearance, into clothing, into making yourself appear bigger and more glamorous than you are, into buying all the new and fashionable clothes you can, you may be crushed under the weight of superficiality, of ego. You’re particpating in comparison culture, which is a bane to homesteaders just getting their feet under them.

That bigness you crave will render you powerless to an ever-changing rat-race of an industry that not only doesn’t care about you but doesn’t care about the planet either.

Since you’re homesteading or plan to homestead in the future, chances are you care more about family and the planet than keeping up with current fashion trends. And if you need some farmstead fashion inspiration and energy, Tonya at the Wild Carrot Farmstead has a way of making you feel beautiful even when wearing cargo pants.

Instead, your confidence comes from what you do with your hands, the items you create, the plants you grow, the things you teach your children, your stewardship of Mother Earth.

When we do good, we renew ourselves. We become Thoreau’s changed wearers deserving of new clothes.

I choose to remain insignificant and unfashionable to maintain my powerful connection to Mother Earth. And now, when I appear on camera to my clients, I will thank my practical clothing for the comfort and warmth.

It was music that saved me, music and lyrics, and the poetic marriage of writing and melody that re-ignited my inner fire. But my friend hadn’t been so lucky; she hadn’t found her comet. Instead, she wanted to step into the black hole, lose herself to the gravitational pull of harm. So, I did something I never thought I'd do in a million years and organized a suicide-prevention event at my high school.

It was not easy.

I described my experiences with early childhood sexual abuse. I talked about the return of memories that had once been repressed. I told of the persistent memory hole left behind even after starting to heal. (Even today, there’s a solid period of my life of which I have no memories.)

By sharing my story with my friends and classmates, they saw that they weren't alone, that we were all dealing with some really heavy shit, circumstances and realities that pressed down on our shoulders like the world pressed down on Atlas. Some of us were being crushed under the weight, but when we banded together, we found the load was just a little bit lighter.

After that event, I heard from many classmates, some of whom I'd barely spoken to before. Though I was nervous about what people would have to say, what they might think of me, I found that my story had been positive.

Through sharing, I had validated their experiences, created safe and open connections, inspired courage toward change, and broken stigmas. It was a lot. I was only 17, after all, and I didn't know how much my story mattered until I shared it.

Your story matters, too, a lot more than you know.

You've overcome debilitating fear. Someone out there needs to hear it.

You clawed your way back from rock bottom. Someone out there needs to know it's possible for them to do the same.

So, take that first step. Write down your story, and share it. You might just change someone's life.

♥ Fal

Are you ready to kill your lawn?

It’s the end of February, and many Vermonters — myself included — start our seeds mid- to late-March or early April, so gardening preparations are underway.

Over the past several years, I've become something of an environmentalist supporting sustainability in Vermont’s local ecology.

One way I make a real difference is killing my turf grass lawn in favor of organic, native ground cover, and other edible medicinals.
- Wild strawberries
- White clover
- Wild violets
- Dandelions

All these ground-cover plants make for hearty, nutrient-rich topsoil, protect against soil erosion, and provide a safe, soft, and comfortable place for my daughter to play.

And eventually, my family will never have to mow the yard again. This means time back in our summer schedules and fewer emissions from the gas-powered push mower.

While our yard transformation isn't complete and we still have a long way to go, one big thing has already happened in our yard space.

I told a friend a while back about the cardinals who frequent our yard, which have quadrupled, and that's not an exaggeration. We had one bonded pair when we bought our home in 2016. Now there are four bonded pairs and so many more birds, too. One day last spring, my daughter and I observed more than a dozen different birds from our front window.

I believe my Vermont community is well-positioned to show how sustainability and true environmentalism - not greenwashing - are done. And I bet you can show your community how to do it, too.

Here are some steps my family takes each season as we work toward a truly sustainable future:

Lean Into No-Mow May

Would you bring your lawn mower into a grocery store?

The question may sound absurd, but it’s a rational question to ask because every time you mow, you cut down the food Mother Nature provides for the early pollinators.

You’re mowing down Mother Nature’s grocery store.

So skip the mower this May, and let the pollinators do their jobs so we can eat come harvest season.

But don’t stop at May. Expand no-mow May into April and June, too, or — minimally — check in with your neighbors to ensure everyone is staggering their mows. Because if the whole community mows their lawns June 1, you’ll run into the same no-food situation you risked in May.

Mow Around the Keepers

Of course, you’re already mowing around those massive hostas, your ornamental flower beds, those sweet, sweet lilac bushes. And you’ll continue to mow around those bits once you pull that rip cord for the first time and listen to that little motor purr.

(I love mowing, if you can’t tell.)

But while you’re mowing around the pretty stuff, the stuff you planted, consider mowing around the native plants that popped up in your space during the month of May, too.

When I mow for the first time each season, usually mid-June, I give a wide berth to wild violets, strawberries, and lettuce, white clover, wood sorrel, dandelions (medicinal, though not native to my area), mullein, and plaintain.

All of these plants can be safely foraged and eaten by small children. My daughter loves finding “yard snacks,” and since we’re a homeschool family, our yard provides lessons in plant biology.

Note: Please don’t eat a plant from your yard (or anywhere else for that matter) if you don’t know what it is or don’t know that it’s safe to eat. Let’s not go dying on each other from accidental poisoning.

Seed with Natives

At times, our yard spaces can look a little scruffy. My dog leaves behind brown, dead grass spots in the area we refer to as the “poop garden,” so seeding is sometimes a necessity.

When we need to put down seeds, we head to the Vermont Wildflower Farm for ground cover wildflower seed mix or native grass seed mix, depending on what we’re looking for. We choose native plants because native pollinators need local foods but also because native plants develop longer and sturdier root systems, which prevent soil erosion, because they’re evolutionarily adapted to our area.

If you’re not in Vermont and need some direction on finding native seed mixes, check out American Meadows.

Do your research, though. Many seed mixes marketed as “native” include non-native plants, which can become invasive if left unchecked.

Look Before You Yank

Transforming a turf yard into a native habitat takes time, patience, and a healthy appetite for cuss words — at least, for me. Despite the strategic mowing and seeding, plants thrive in chaos and pop up wherever they damn well please.

Every time I see a too-long stem where the ground cover should be, I want to go grab my gloves for a good ole yanking sesh. There’s something so satisfying about pulling a plant right down to the root.

But before you go a-grabbin,’ find out what the plant is. I use Plant Snap, which works fairly well, and I check local resources to learn about endangered plants in my area, so I can remain extra vigilant.

For example, there’s now a rose bush in our front yard that my family didn’t plant, and there is an endangered rose species in Vermont. I’ll wait until a few blooms appear and we can properly identify the type of rose growing before deciding whether to yank it, move it, or leave it alone and just protect it.

Because if an endangered rose decided to put down roots in my front yard, it’s getting its own tomato cage of protection — no mower oopsies here — and we’ll eventually propagate the plant to encourage its re-population.

TL;DR

When planning your gardens this season and adding new ornamentals to your space, make small changes over time to kill non-native turf grasses and create native habitats for all the little critters and birds who depend on your local ecology, your local biome, to thrive.

And skip the chemical pesticides and weed killers that leech into the groundwater and present hazards to us all.

Are you killing your turf lawn? Have a favorite method that has worked well, a resource for those just getting started, or just want to chat about how tasty yard snacks can be?

Leave a comment below!

Happy growing!

<3 Fal

You know the type: A young woman who wears copious amounts of thick, heavy makeup that often cracks and streaks at the end of the day, smears on the hands of those who would touch it, leaves smudges on windows and the bottom rims of sunglasses.

I was big into the smoky eye look and worked hard to cover up every single freckle or blemish I had. But several years ago, I read an article in a psychology magazine that changed my perspective.

In the article, I read that most little girls develop self-confidence issues or body-image issues by age six, and those issues are almost always directly or indirectly caused by their mothers.

The article stuck with me, especially as I had just learned I was pregnant at the time, and it changed the way I raise my daughter, a far deviation from the way I was raised.

Growing Up Self-Conscious

My maternal grandmother stepped in as a care provider on days when both of my parents had to work. Later, she provided after-school care. Though never one to publicly declare she was dieting, my grandmother seemed to constantly watch what she ate and analyze what she wore. She was angry a lot, questioned others’ choices, and hated to have anything out of place. It got to the point where I didn’t want to visit her, let alone be in her care for hours each week, because she made me feel bad, even though I could rarely pinpoint any one thing she said or did that gave me that sense of badness.

When I was a little older, I overheard my mom’s oldest sister tell her three daughters, “A moment on the lips, forever on the hips,” when they had asked her for sweet treats. At the time, we girls were young enough not to be worried about being fat yet. We were too busy dressing up and playing pretend, but those words stuck around. I still think about them from time to time, and I wonder if it affects the way my cousins feel about themselves.

And my mom wasn’t immune either. Though she tried like hell to shield me from the appearance-based judgement pervasive on my mom’s side of the family, she herself suffered because of it. My mom had a midlife crisis at age 25 because she thought she was getting old, that her life was essentially over. She was a yo-yo dieter, used excessive amounts of baby oil for tanning every summer, sold cosmetics as a side hustle, exercised daily, and generally hated the idea of getting fat. She used to say she was thankful to have gotten her aunt’s (thin) genes, rather than my grandma’s heftier ones.

By the time I was a teenager, I wore a size larger than my adult mother wore, and while she never commented on the fact that I was bigger than she was, she remarked that I wouldn’t be able to borrow the nice clothes she’d saved for me. It didn’t matter that I was already a few inches taller than my mom, that my body was/is shaped differently from hers. I felt like I’d done something wrong, that I wasn’t good enough for my mom’s fancy clothes.

But I never really thought about any of this until October of 2017. When I was just about six weeks into my pregnancy — far too early to actually know anything about the tiny peanut I was growing — I knew intuitively I was having a girl.

After reading that article, I looked at myself in the mirror and saw evidence of a disordered relationship with food and my body passed down from the women in my family.

I was terrified.

For myself and the body-image issues I had unwittingly adopted.

And for my daughter, who would be affected by my bullshit if I didn’t learn to heal from it and move on.

The “Before”

I am a natural redhead with green eyes, which I think makes me somewhat of a unicorn in the genetic world, given the rarity of recessive genetic expression. And growing up, I felt like I was constantly hearing compliments about my hair.

“It’s so beautiful, you must love it.” Blech.

“What a great color with those freckles.” Bang head on desk.

And my favorite, “So many women would kill for that color.” Then fucking take it already.

For as long as I can remember, the good things people said about me centered around my physical appearance, specifically my hair color.

And I had nothing to do with it.

I was told I should be proud of my red hair, but why the hell would I be proud of a genetic accident?

When you take a kid who experienced early childhood sexual abuse and lived around women with body-image issues, the odd focus on my physical appearance resulted in a young woman who hid herself from the world.

When I was 18, I dyed my hair and eyebrows a deep purple. Then, I kept dyeing it for twelve years.

I was damn good at covering up every inch of my natural self to meet a beauty standard I hadn’t even properly defined and wasn’t consciously aware of.

But after reading that article and learning I was pregnant, I was convinced my little girl would be born a redhead.

So, during my pregnancy, I got comfortable letting my box-dye hair go. I wanted a healthy pregnancy above all else and was worried about the fumes from the dye, but I was more worried I’d accidentally wreck my little girl’s outlook on life before she had a chance to live it.

Intuition is a powerful, motivating thing.

And I did the right thing.

Not only was I indeed pregnant with a girl, she made her first appearance in the world with a head full of red hair. By the time I returned to my corporate job complete with my breast pump, about half of the boxed dye was gone. But the work on myself was just getting started.

While the boxed dye was a thing of my past, except for the parts that hadn’t grown out of my head yet, I was still wearing copious amounts of cakey makeup.

But as nature has a way of self-correcting, my daughter was born under the cancer sun — a water sign. A lover of water she is indeed, and as many cancer-sun-born people are, she is also deeply observant and intuitive.

Since the day she was born, I have consciously refused to say negative things about myself. I didn’t want her to pick up on those little jabs adults think kids don’t hear (but they definitely do).

When she saw me using the bathroom scale, I told her how excited I was to see how big I’d grown (talk about lying through one’s teeth). I didn’t want her stressing out over a number.

When she saw me looking at the purplish stretch marks on my belly, I told her I saw the Cheshire Cat in the lines. Then I asked her what she saw.

“Purple stripes!”

My self-image still wasn’t great, and I was still wearing quite a bit of makeup despite the mindset work.

I knew I needed to reframe what a healthy lifestyle meant for me so that I could move past where I was and grow.

And because “healthy” involves the physical, emotional, and spiritual, I started small.

After my daughter turned about two, we created our first backyard garden. That first gardening summer, we ate lots of fresh veggies we grew and picked ourselves, and our garden has become a great source of pride for us both. But more than that, the garden has taught my daughter about healthy, colorful food in a way that is completely separate from physical appearance.

At the same time, gardening helped me reframe my relationship with exercise. I hate exercising so much. I was never one for consistency at the gym. I friggin hate treadmills, or jogging. But I love using hand tools for gardening and have developed a deeply respectful relationship with my pitchfork and my weasel. I got stronger that first summer and lost a few pounds by happy accident.

And that same summer, my daughter and I started visiting the lake nearby. While my daughter had no qualms about wearing a swimsuit in front of others, I’d grown up in a family of neurotic women who talked incessantly about working through the winter to get that coveted beach body.

I’d been chubby my whole life, self-conscious my whole life.

When my daughter caught me getting dressed after a shower one morning, she asked me,” Why is your belly so puffy?” (Talk about a deflated balloon moment.)

But I told her it was puffy because it was once her home and needed to be big enough for her to live in. That explanation satisfied her toddler curiosity, and she moved on. I went out that very same day and got myself a cute one-piece swimsuit — green with white polka dots.

Then, I took her to the beach, shed my shorts and tee, and reveled in her giggles at the wet sand that covered us both.

The work was far from done, though. Because when my kiddo was three, she started sprouting her own freckles in a spray across her nose and cheeks. And while I finally understand why adults tell kids their freckles are cute, I needed to get right with myself.

There were a lot of reasons why I started seeing an acupuncturist in the fall of 2021, but one of those reasons was to pay homage to the person I used to be while ushering in the woman I was becoming. I needed to release that old trauma and stress to make room for beauty and light — the tools of a confident woman.

Around the time I began acupuncture, I was also transitioning to a lifestyle based on the principles of terrain theory and, with it, transitioned my makeup routine to something less toxic.

Gone were the tubes of Maybelline.

Gone were the palettes of eyeshadows and blushes.

Gone were the jars of heavy foundation, pressed powders, and scented creams.

After peeling back the layers of the old me, I finally had space for the new person I was becoming to shine through.

The “After”

Now that my daughter is older, she’s much more aware of the words I say and picks up so much more understanding than most give her credit for. She’s smart, taps into her intuition, and trusts her emotions even when she hasn’t learned the words to describe them yet.

While she’s aware of and knowledgeable about her body, we place little focus on the body as a whole, and we don’t make comments about others’ physical appearances in general. At home, we stress the importance of competency, not cosmetics.

I replaced my old toxin-filled eyeshadow with activated charcoal.

I traded in the mica-based bronzer for cocoa powder.

I dumped Bath & Body Works lotions in favor of unrefined coconut oil.

And underneath the food ingredients that now pass for makeup are the very visible freckles I grow myself with every new day in the sun.

And I can eat my makeup too.

My daughter helped me tap into my bravery by doing nothing at all except existing, and I will be forever grateful for her presence in my life.

Teaching her how to love and honor herself has allowed me to love and honor myself in big ways that are new and exciting and full of potential. Ways that are full of hope. I tell my daughter often that the most unique, the most special, she can be is herself because there’s no one else like her in the whole world. And for the first time in my life, I believe the same for me.

I believe the same for all of us.

Because tapping into our unique selves is the path to confidence, the path to happiness.

My makeup shelf now looks like this:

One jar of home-infused calendula coconut oil for moisturizing; one jar of fair-trade cocoa powder for bronze cheeks, one repurposed ramekin of activated charcoal that doubles as eyeliner and shadow. That’s it.

No more synthetic colors, scents, or preservatives. Lots more self-respect.

Challenge yourself to replace your toxic cosmetic goop for all-natural, edible stuff you find in your kitchen. Learn to eat your makeup, and love yourself in the process.

<3 Fal

So, how did I get here?

Allopathy Is a Scam

The American medical system (the Western medicine orthodoxy) champions allopathy in disease and health management. Allopathy is a system in which medical doctors are licensed to practice and treat symptoms and diseases through medication, surgery, radiation, pharmaceuticals, and other therapies and procedures. By nature, allopathy requires a focus on external intervention to achieve, sustain, or maintain health.

And this is well in alignment with the germ theory of disease, which posits that external and invisible microorganisms in the atmosphere, soil, and water are the fundamental cause of all disease. And there are a number of people around the world who are terrified of germs. There’s even a term for it: mysophobia.

In the realm of germ theory (which people forget is just a theory), the only defense a person has against malevolent pathogens is aggressive vaccination, sterilization of the environment, and playing the avoidance game: declining to be around animals, farms, and other “dirty” places, for example. And all American standards of care are based on allopathic methods, which means that most if not all insurance coverage is also based on those same allopathic methods.

And there’s some serious money to be made in the practice and promotion of germ theory and allopathy. In 2020, for example, the U.S. antibacterial products market shot up to several billion dollars and is expected to grow throughout the decade. Behind all this is a message of progress in healthcare. The CDC reports that “advances in public health and health care have increased life expectancy by approximately 30 years and led to dramatic changes in the leading causes of death.”

30 years.

But behind the increase in life expectancy was the shift from acute and debilitating conditions to long-term chronic conditions. The CDC goes on to report that “heart disease death rates have declined by almost two thirds during the past 50 years, and stroke rates have declined by more than three quarters…these major declines have resulted largely from declines in smoking and improvements in diet, detection, and treatment.”

Did you catch that?

The CDC reports that the majority of positive change in healthcare is due first to lifestyle change—reductions in smoking rates and improvements in diet.

Lifestyle Heals

When I worked in the corporate health insurance space, there was a poster in the stairwell that read: if your dog is overweight, you’re not getting enough exercise. Why that poster wasn’t in the elevator, I don’t know, but the message is true. The American Kennel Club describes obesity in dogs as a “major health threat hiding in plain sight.”

But when people attempt to talk about the dangers of obesity, a form of malnutrition, in humans, we’re met with a brick wall of body positivity. Now, don’t get me wrong. I will neither support nor tolerate body shaming of any person for any reason at any time. Hard stop.

However, failing to talk about the dangers of obesity in humans because it’s an uncomfortable topic is disastrous. Obesity carries several major consequences for obese individuals, including (as reported by the CDC):

• high blood pressure and cholesterol

• type 2 diabetes

• asthma

• sleep apnea

• joint problems and pain

• gallstones and gall bladder disease

• anxiety and depression

• low self-esteem and quality of life

• bullying and social stigmas

• strokes

• premature death

And if you’re saying to yourself, “Fal, I know this. But an obese person affects nobody else,” I would tend to agree with you in theory, though not in practice. Because the reality of the Western medical system, especially the interrelationship between health care and health insurance (which are not the same thing), means that all Americans bear the financial brunt of obesity. In 2019, obesity-related medical costs in the U.S. were nearly $173 billion. And on top of that, obesity-related illness results in workplace absenteeism to the tune of $6.38 billion.

Those are staggering numbers.

And it’s not just obesity that is problematic for Americans. Poor hydration is linked to early aging and chronic disease. In fact, NBC reports that poorly hydrated people “were 50% more likely to show signs of physical aging beyond what would be expected for their years.…They also had a roughly 20% increased risk of premature death.” And CNN Health reports that “about half of people worldwide don’t meet recommendations for daily total water intake.”

Sleep is also a problem. Poor sleep is typically underrecognized as a public health danger though it’s strongly associated with morbidity and mortality. In a study available in the National Library of Medicine, “more than 80% of older adults who report sleep disturbances describe at least one major mental or physical disorder, particularly depression, heart disease, pain, and memory problems.”

Another aspect to add to the list? Exercise. Because regular physical activity is associated with important health benefits. In a Science Direct article linked by the CDC, research found that lack of exercise was associated with premature death, cardiovascular disease, ischemic stroke, type 2 diabetes, colon and breast cancers, and depression.

Most people know (or should know) that eating a properly balanced, nutrient-rich diet with fresh, organic vegetables and fruits is a basic requirement for health, as are maintaining sufficient hydration levels, getting proper amounts of exercise, and getting enough restorative sleep. These are all the basics of what it means to maintain the human body.

These influences in human health—diet, hydration, exercise, sleep—represent four of the six pillars of lifestyle medicine. They also make up the foundation of the terrain theory of disease.

Terrain Theory Will Win In the End

Terrain theory comes from the work of French physicist, chemist, and cellular researcher Antoine Bechamp, who held that disease starts within the human body itself as a result of stresses—emotional, psychological, and physical—upsetting the homeostatic balance of innate health.

Bechamp’s discoveries led him to the conclusion that our bodies are essentially mini ecosystems with a homeostasis that is individually and uniquely ours. The Weston Price Foundation summarizes Bechamp’s work to say that “when an individual’s internal ecosystem becomes weakened—whether due to poor nutrition, toxicity or other factors—it changes the function of the microbes that are naturally present in the body, producing disease. In other words, microorganisms only become pathogenic after environmental factors cause the host’s cellular “terrain” to deteriorate.”

So terrain theory posits, generally and broadly, that it is not the presence of a malevolent, invisible germ that makes us sick but the state of our inner terrain that produces sickness. In essence, while germ theory “others” illness and makes it external, thus creating victims of the ill, terrain theory internalizes illness and recognizes that we all have the power to get and remain well with proper attention on the state of our terrain. In the terrain theory of disease, humans are not victims of microbes. Instead, fighting and preventing disease is directly within our control.

But this doesn’t sit well with the modern oligarchs in charge of the governmental alphabet agencies overseeing health standards and the corporations who get super wealthy adhering to them all the while Americans suffer with debilitating disease and chronic condition management.

Politics and Politicking

While I’m not going to tell you that germs don’t exist, I am here to say that there’s more to the story than we’re being told.

Because while Popular Science calls terrain theory a “pseudoscience,” and a “fringe set of beliefs,” it comes from the 19th century—right around the same time Louis Pasteur was popularizing the germ theory of disease. But Pasteur had political connections (are you surprised?), including Emperor Napoleon III. Pasteur likely achieved his level of notoriety because his perspective was popular with the science and politics of his day.

In fact, as the Weston Price Foundation reports, the germ theory of disease is “dear to pharmaceutical company executives’ hearts.” Most of the major pharmaceutical companies we know today got their start in the 19th century (again, are you surprised?).

And the most egregious part of the politics behind the promotion of germ theory is in the denial of indigenous and traditional medicines—lifestyle medicines, including plant medicines—used to treat and cure disease.

While Western medicine mostly just prescribes specific drugs to treat diseases, thus capturing patients within the Big Medicine money-making scheme temporarily or permanently, Eastern medicine focuses on the person as a whole to address root causes, rather than treating their symptoms. This includes body work, of course, but it also includes medicine focused on the mind and on the spirit. And this appears to be in line with Hippocrates, who famously said that “Everyone has a doctor in him or her; we just have to help it in its work. The natural healing force within each one of us is the greatest force in getting well.”

Because natural medicine was once common sense.

People knew that the immune system was everyone’s innate, internal defense system. A birthright. And the terrain theory of medicine was practiced long before germ theory came about, even if it wasn’t yet titled as such.

But within the American health system, terrain theory is denied. And the denial of the terrain is a disaster for diversity in health care. People aren’t one size, but Western medicine, allopathy, attempts to squeeze people into ill-fitted boxes to carry out the standards of medical care and treatment, often regardless of individual considerations, including cultural preferences and traditions. The American health system, despite its “progress,” flies in the face of diversity, is antithetical to diversity.

So, what’s next? How can we heal the medical system in America?

Change Your Perspective, Change Your Life

One of the biggest changes I’ve made over the years is my perspective on plants and plant medicines. When I was a snot-nosed kid rebelling against my pot-smoking parents, I went hard in the paint for germ theory. I screeched at parents who refused to vaccinate their children. Complained about those who spoke against Frankenfoods and cellular radiation. Really, I was a shitty teenager.

But years later, after curing myself of asthma, allergies, depression, and anxiety by leveraging my power under the terrain theory model, I can’t believe how far I’ve come—and how much time I previously wasted on a germ-theory model that only ever resulted in temporary relief and side effects, never cures.

Getting the entirety of the United States on the terrain-theory train sounds like a burden I’m not willing to undertake. I mean, it’s hard enough practicing a terrain-theory lifestyle against what’s considered “normal,” thank you very much.

But if we are going to positively change health care in America for the betterment of all Americans, we must start taking the human terrain—and the terrain theory of disease—seriously.

Radical Wellness Heals a Sick World

Living a terrain-theory focused life has meant some serious, positive benefits. I no longer have chronic GI upset, nor do I get acid reflux. And I don’t mean I don’t get it as often; I mean I don’t get acid reflux at all anymore. It’s gone.

I used to be chronically fatigued, but since prioritizing sleep and practicing yoga daily (or almost every day; nobody is perfect), quality, restorative sleep happens naturally. The fatigue is gone, and I have so much more energy than I used to. In fact, that energy from sleep is what allowed me to start daily yoga. Now, it’s something my kiddo and I can do together—bonus!

Pharmaceuticals, both OTC and RX, have no place in my medicine cabinet. Where I once relied on an albuterol inhaler to manage chronic asthma, following lifestyle change, asthma is no longer a chronic condition affecting my daily life. And instead of albuterol, I use a plant medicine readily available in my geographic region (for free) that most people think is a weed. Instead of an anti-psychotic, I used adaptogens to manage a bout of severe anxiety, but with continued lifestyle change, I no longer use acupuncture or ashwagandha.

And I no longer carry health insurance. While there’s decidedly some benefit of having protection in the case of functional, medical emergencies, the majority of health insurance spending—and the reason insurance is so expensive—is on chronic conditions.

Since American health insurance doesn’t cover herbal medicines, or pay for organic groceries, or gym memberships (or equipment), or Eastern medicine techniques, or anything terrain-related, the monthly cost of insurance was just that—a cost. And it was without benefits for me.

Adopting Terrain Theory in Practice

If you do nothing else for yourself this year to adopt a terrain-focused lifestyle, change your diet. There is absolutely no question in my mind that diet is of utmost concern for success in a terrain-theory model. Currently, the Mediterranean-style diet is the one most often recommended, the one my naturopath recommended to me, which includes fiber-rich, polyphenol-laden fresh fruits and veggies, spices, is full of omega-3s, and cuts out ultra-processed food.

My partner and I used to eat lots of frozen foods, too tired to cook after long work days. We drank lots of alcohol. I even smoked cigarettes. That changed before and during my pregnancy, and I never looked back.

From the Food is Medicine piece, here are four food-focused tips you can implement today to start you on the path of repairing your terrain.

1. Trash the Numbers. Avoid synthetic food dyes, flavorings, and perfumes, artificial sweeteners, and preservatives. If the ingredients include numbers (e.g. red 40), it's junk. Get rid of it.

2. Raise a Food Forest. Plant (native) fruit trees and shrubs, and if you haven't started gardening already, make this your year to raise food for yourself, your family, your neighbors, even your local food shelf. Share the wealth, share the health.

3. Shop Local + Organic. Visit farmer's markets, co-ops, and rub elbows with your local farmers and gardeners. We need them around, and they have extensive knowledge most are willing to share about the food system. Just ask.

4. Cook and bake from scratch. I now make all my sandwich bread from scratch using about six basic ingredients—far fewer than grocery stores loaves. Need a recipe? Send a note! And remember to practice patience with yourself as you learn the art of breadmaking, because it isn’t easy.

And the biggest tip: BE PATIENT WITH YOURSELF.

It’s hard to maintain a healthy lifestyle—at first. After about a month of making conscious terrain-focused choices, making those choices will become easier and faster. You’ll know what to look for, what to stay away from, and be able to deduce the reasons for your cravings faster. Because food cravings are an early sign of deficiency, be it mineral or vitamin.

And because food isn’t everything, check out this article on 10 Ways to Cultivate Your Internal Terrain from Dr. Hoffman.

If you’re interested in terrain theory, want to talk about making lifestyle changes for health, or want to share your approach to a terrain-theory lifestyle, leave a comment or send me a message.

I’m one of those annoyingly positive people who believe we truly can change the chronically sick world for the better. And I believe it starts with food.

Cheers!

❤ Fal

But after years of not being able to predict when my cycle was coming due a short luteal phase and having to deal with the aftermath of menstrual surprises (sorry, undies), well, I was willing to try anything.

In our home, we have a simple rule: try it once. If you like it, great! If you don’t, at least you tried and now you know. Since I was already dabbling in tarot cards (The Moon is one of my birth cards, and I don’t believe in coincidences.), I put on my big-girl pants, filled that pitcher full of water, set it outside in the grass (covered, of course) on the night of the full moon, and waited.

That first pitcher set forth a path of perspective and change I didn’t expect.

Moon Water & Menstruation

So what happened?

On that first post-full-moon morning, I yanked open the front door before sunrise, excited to try something new. I mean, we know the moon affects the tides, so I figured the moon had to do something to this pitcher of water, however miniscule, and I wanted to find out exactly what that something was.

I normally drink somewhere between a half gallon and a gallon of tap water each day, so hydration is kind of my jam. The day after the full moon, I vowed to drink that entire pitcher of moon-charged water. Every. Last. Drop. And I did!

And something interesting happened: my energy increased.

I’m going to put this bluntly; I was skeptical. I mean, c’mon. Energy from a pitcher of magic moon water?

I chalked up the success to the placebo effect initially. But I kept up with the moon water. Each new moon and each full moon, I dutifully placed my pitcher in the yard (or in the house in a huge window, depending on the weather), and I kept up the practice for months.

Somewhere between months 4 and 6, I noticed more interesting things happening in my body. Not only did the moon-charged water consistently deliver a dose of energy, it also regulated my menstrual cycle.

My cycles shortened, my cramps lessened, that weighty OMG-there’s-a-stone-in-my-belly feeling all but disappeared, and, as if my uterus suddenly got a personal assistant, I began to track my cycle based on the moon.

Moon Water in Ayurveda

As one who practices a lifestyle deeply rooted in terrain theory and a general interest in natural healing, including ayurvedic medicine, I am not interested in any pharmaceuticals for menstrual health. Too many known risks and side effects, and far too many unknown risks for my taste. Using the power of the moon appealed to my holistic health mindset.

According to Ayurveda, the 28-day menstrual cycle and the 28-day moon cycle are closely related for a reason. And there is a synchronicity for many. Nearly 30% of biological women menstruate during the new moon, which means their fertility is at its peak during the full moon. (Flo Health)

How’s that for a she-wolf? (Awooooo!)

Though the magic of moon water may be explained in scientific terms.

Structured Water for Hydration

We know that water can exist in all three states of matter: liquid, solid, vapor. But water can also be in a more mysterious fourth state: liquid crystal water, or structured water. This happens when water is in its natural state of movement, such as a river or ocean. The molecules arrange themselves into a structured, ladder-like hexagonal pattern. Instead of H₂O, structured water arranges itself as OH₄.

Neat, huh?

But this molecular arrangement is the same as the molecular arrangement for quartz crystal. And when we consume structured water, we consume also the ability of the water to absorb, store, emit, amplify, and transduce energy—just like quartz crystals can. And studies are showing more benefits.

In long-term studies on animals and structured water, researchers found some interesting positives, including: “increased rate of growth, reduced markers of oxidative stress, improved glycemic and insulinemic responses in diabetics, improved blood lipid profile, improved semen and spermatozoa quality, and increased tissue conductivity as measured using bioelectrical impedance analysis.” (Lindinger, Journal of Animal Science)

And there are serious potential health benefits for humans including faster hydration and healthier proteins. (HealthNews)

So, what does this all mean? Consuming structured water can increase energy, slow down aging, and decrease inflammation. (Dave Asprey)

It’s like having a powerhouse in your glass uplifting both your physical and mental health.

So, how can you make it at home?

Making Moon Water

First, keep in mind that even if you can’t see the moon, such as the new moon or on nights with particularly dense cloud cover, the water in your pitcher will still make use of the moon’s energy.

• Fill up a glass or ceramic container full of mineral water (I add a pinch of sea salt to tap water).

• Stir, both clockwise and counterclockwise, to dissolve the salt and create the feminine and masculine vertices in the water. You’ll need to stir continuously for three to five minutes.

• Place the container either directly on the ground outside or in a window.

• Retrieve your pitcher before sunrise (lest the sun cause some of that energy to dissipate).

Have you attempted moon water or structured water for divinatory reasons, health reasons, or just for fun? Let me know about your experience in the comments.

♥ Fallon

“Constipated? You probably need fiber, but your doctor will give you colace if you ask,” she said.

I was constipated, I did need the fiber. After two bowls of cereal a day for about three days, the craving (and my pesky constipation) disappeared. That’s when my research into food truly began, and what I uncovered led me to a life rooted in terrain theory and true wellness.

A Failing System

While the COVID-19 plandemic highlighted the monumental failures of the American health care system in helping individuals protect themselves against disease and devastating medical debt, the American health care system has been failing for decades. There is a strong link between vitamin D deficiency and COVID-19 disease severity and death. In fact, nutritional deficiencies are the most common causes of depressed immune system function, and many struggle with vitamin D deficiency, especially in winter months without proper sun exposure.

A 2021 study conducted at the New York University School of Global Public Health found that "Consumption of ultra-processed foods has increased over the past two decades across nearly all segments of the US population." Ultra-processed foods are consumable products that are industrially manufactured and ready to eat or heat, include a long list of additives, and are mostly without whole foods. It's unsurprising that of the top twenty-five most sold food items in the United States, chicken nuggets, doughnuts, potato chips, cookies, and soda all made the list. While the Centers for Disease Control reports causal links between malnutrition and preventable chronic diseases, fast-food sales are growing faster than the US economy.

While many Americans expect their health care providers to understand the importance of nutrition for disease prevention and management, most would be surprised to learn how few hours, usually less than 20 hours, of nutritional training most doctors receive. In fact, education for allopathic providers mostly leaves out training for the number one cause of preventable death: malnutrition. Health care providers may contribute to diet-related chronic diseases and deaths due to sheer ignorance about the importance of nutrition. But health care providers are also at the mercy of predatory prescription drug marketing from the same pharmaceutical companies that profit off American malnourishment. Big pharmaceutical companies usually spend more money on marketing than research and development.

Keeping our immune systems healthy through proper nutrition is the best defense against disease. Fixing the American health care system and protecting ourselves against the next pandemic requires us to look at the food we put into our bodies daily. Unfortunately, we cannot rely on government agencies to keep us safe.

The Folly of Government Intervention

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the federal regulatory body tasked with ensuring food additives are safe for human consumption, but the FDA is failing. In 1958, Congress passed an exemption from safety testing for food additives that were "generally recognized as safe." This exemption allowed food manufacturers to bypass safety testing for common ingredients like vinegar, salt, and vegetable oil. But the FDA proposed and finalized a broader food safety exemption in 1997. Now, food manufacturers aren't required to conduct independent safety reviews before using chemical additives in processed foods. American foods may contain up to 14,000 chemical additives, many of which are banned in other countries. Additionally, the FDA relies on funding from drug companies, receiving almost three-quarters of its funding directly from drug marketers.

Big Food is also guilty. There are many federal agricultural subsidies to help pay for the production of corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, sorghum, dairy, and livestock, the products of which are often converted into highly refined grains, high-fat and high-sodium processed foods, and high-calorie juices and soft drinks. Ultra-processed foods filled with chemical additives are the most affordable food choices for many American families because agricultural subsidies keep ultra-processed foods artificially cheap.

And the most troubling issue with all of this is that while GRAS food additives are on the rise, that rise corresponds with an increase in chronic conditions.

The True Cost of Poor Health

Poor nutrition choices account for $50 billion in health care expenses in the United States each year. They account for about 20 percent of the total costs from heart disease, stroke, and diabetes, three diseases that account for nearly a million deaths each year combined.

Americans have a chance to fix the health care system and bring economic prosperity to our households. We can greatly reduce malnutrition, prevent disease, and free ourselves from the devastating financial consequences of poor health.

It starts with changing how we eat.

Living Well: Starting a Terrain-Focused Lifestyle Practice

When you come to terms with the fact that food is medicine, you must also recognize that every bite of food you put into your mouth is either medicine or poison—a daunting reality. But making sustainable, incremental changes to ween yourself off the Franken-food system and into true health.

When I started my terrain-theory lifestyle, I started a backyard garden the same year, and I did this intentionally as part of homeschool learning for my kiddo. But staring at all those veggies made me want to eat them. Eating them made me feel good. Feeling good allowed me to see how I could do better. Rinse and repeat.

The good news is that it’s 2023, and you don’t have to go full DIY like my great-grandparents did.

Here are a few things I did that you can start doing today.

1. Trash the Numbers. Avoid synthetic food dyes, flavorings, and perfumes, artificial sweeteners, and preservatives. If the ingredients include numbers (e.g. red 40), it's junk. Get rid of it.

2. Raise a Food Forest. Plant (native) fruit trees and shrubs, and if you haven't started gardening already, make this your year to raise food for yourself, your family, your neighbors, even your local food shelf. Share the wealth, share the health.

3. Shop Local + Organic. Visit farmer's markets, co-ops, and rub elbows with your local farmers and gardeners. We need them around, and they have extensive knowledge most are willing to share about the food system. Just ask.

4. Cook and bake from scratch. I now make all my sandwich bread from scratch using about six basic ingredients—far fewer than grocery stores loaves. Need a recipe? Send a note! And remember to practice patience with yourself as you learn the art of breadmaking, because it isn’t easy.

5. DIY your personal and home care products. I used to buy kitchen and bathroom surface cleaners, but I’ve switched to a solution using orange peels and vinegar. Need a recipe? Send a note! (This recipe really is easy. I didn’t even have to buy a container, just used an empty glass jar that would otherwise have gone to recycling.)

Do you practice any of these wellness activities already? Have a favorite wellness practice? Let me know in the comments.

Happy thriving!

<3 Fal