The practice, and how it started with purpose and passion
This is my very first blog and the best time to share what brought me here. I would like to invite you to read through this short piece to discover the things we may have in common – and also the unique offerings I bring to the table. While we may share fundamental life experiences (being women, being parents, being over 40, for example), we may not share the same level of passion for digging deep into the complicated world of food, health and nutrition. That’s what makes our experiences together rich and rewarding!
So, I am extremely curious about connections. Nothing exists in isolation – not people, not nature, not illness. So what happens to all that lives on this planet when we are bombarded by toxins in the air, in the water, in the soil… and now in our bodies and our minds. I am exposed to a lot of different modalities of health – mind, body, and spirit – and have found amazing connections in both where illness or dis-ease originates and from where it can start the healing process.
It is my passion to bring my brand of wisdom, and to invite in the wisdom of the people I work with, to focus on health and healing that we need. There are different doors into this work, and mine is through food.
My purpose is to help people nutritionally get back to themselves. When we clear the debris from our bodies, particularly our brains, we can access what is true to us – our ways of knowing and being. With that, we feel less driven to outsource the tending to our needs.
Guiding me is my own experience
As many would, I follow my own experience to access learning. I became curious about feelings of blame, shame and fear – where I have experienced a lot of dis-ease. In my practice, I tend to attract people who also want to be freed from those feelings and seek nutrition advice to address the stress and anxiety that often goes with them.
My early career was spent measuring cognitive ability, learning disorders, ADHD, autism, and psycho-education assessments for the school district. After assessing hundreds of individuals, I started to look at mental health differently. I saw the outputs of the assessments, but became increasingly curious of the outcomes of what I observed as numbers, and more importantly about root causes of what appeared to be pathological.
Always interested in nutrition and lifestyle, I took a look at mental health from a nutritional perspective. And so began the journey of marrying my backgrounds of nutrition and psychology, to study and become a Registered Holistic Nutritionist, and further my education specifically on mental wellbeing through nutrition by studying Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAPS), and became a Certified Gaps Practitioner.
All our experiences are different and paths to recover our own; in my practice, I have learned the questions to ask, and how to listen for the nuggets of wisdom brought by individual experience. Acknowledgement, acceptance and understanding open the doors, and give way to self-love and self-care.
Trusting the process
If your heart led you there, trust what has been laid in front of you, and serve that. You don’t need to know why your heart led you there, only that you were led.
It’s as though something gently, calmly, firmly, knowingly reached out to you, and pulled you lovingly through its doors. Trust that you will use your senses to guide you once inside.
Trust yourself, trust your instincts, and be curious.
