Food is the natural medicine that changed my life and is healing me. If I hadn't discovered food as medicine I would not be homesteading, appreciating natural beauty as much as I am now, learning herbalism, growing my own and wildcrafting my own food and medicine.

Food as medicine gave me the courage to live a greater portion of my life outdoors in nature under the sun, in the moon rays and breathing fresh air.

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The greatest gift that food has given me is the courage to face my fears, learn to embrace my whole self, fess up to my denial and pursue a more meaningful life.

This journey is still in progress and you are reading my blog post from a snapshot in a moment of time in the middle of a great healing process.

Discovering the joy in homegrown food was a multifaceted education. Gardening taught me to slow down and embrace nature's pace rather than demand instant results. I continue to learn this lesson and dive deeper into the idea that slowing down is speeding up. The slower I go, the closer I look into nature's magnifying glass the faster I heal.

Looking deeply into nature has given me a taste of the beauty of the spiral that is suggested by Fibonnaci's golden ratio. The spiral of life that is presented at every turn, every scale, every depth begins to leap out at me. It is easiest for me to see those spirals in plants and trees as they unfold their branches, leaves and blossoms in incredible displays, reaching for the sky. And then the sky explodes those spirals into cosmic and galactic works of art. It gives me peace knowing that I live both within those spirals and they also unfold within me on the micro level.

I am within as I am without.

Those cosmic dances are un-moving in our human eyes, like an oil painting on a wall. I look and absorb and wonder. Just as I look at the trees and plants and wonder how fast they grow, how they move, what they feel.

A time lapse camera can speed up the presentation and we can hold a new tangible proof and watch the spirals unfold with our own eyes. But every scientific evidence, every piece of knowledge that I read, am taught or observe in nature gives me an even greater gift:

The awareness of a beauty that cannot be proven, captured or described. It can only be appreciated.

The beauty of nature rests in my heart.

Nature is helping my heart heal. My heartstrings were pulled and bruised long ago when I was born into this world. My heart feels the pain of many generations. I was born into a world that is quickly losing its connection with nature, its spiritual practices, its culture and communities.

Though my heart hungered for a deep spiritual connection, a closer connection to nature and a place in a community I could call my own - my mind was unaware of this longing. My mind was convinced that it could satisfy this deep hunger and thirst with junk food, alcohol, television, and blind consumption with an easy expendable income.

When I say easy expendable income, what I really mean to say is that I was blind to any of my responsibilities as a consumer.

I was blind to all of the invisible hidden costs of my consumption habits: my carbon footprint, embodied energy of the products I consumed, exploitation, global warming, deforestation. In short I did not know I had a choice.

Learning and knowing those tragic truths gave my heart new sadness for my mind to ponder. But my mind's first reaction was denial in order to protect my heart. Once I knew I had a choice, I tried to avoid it.

My subconscious said "Not that choosing to live out of the status quo would have any impact whatsoever." "Oh really? There is life outside of the matrix." The matrix I speak of is the matrix that chooses for me what life I live, what I consume, how I get where I am going and ultimately what I am thinking.

Growing my own food was a gateway into healing my heart and spirit and a gateway out of the matrix. Gardening opened new possibilities of appreciating life and new pathways into choice.

My journey began slowly as I gardened in my spare time and I picked up a hobby of learning to identify wild and native foods that grew in my local mountains and even in public parks or landscaping in suburbia.

As a novice gardener in a food desert and a knowledge desert working with soil that started almost barren of life I struggled with fertility and growing things like tomatoes and eggplants. Yet what did grow flourished! My eyes were opened to the abundance that nature is capable of providing, if only we are to embrace nature.

It astonished me that I could produce many bundles of organic herbs from one plant in one season and I didn't even have to buy a plastic container to store it in like they do at the supermarket. And because I learned to embrace abundance my garden was filled with dozens of different kinds of herbs. And I could harvest as much as I want at its absolute freshest - just before I prepared a meal. You can't get that at a supermarket.

The herbs in my garden were grown from seed which was incredible in itself. The joy and wonder I experienced from watching seeds that appeared lifeless and inert suddenly spring to life was exhilarating! I planted so many seeds of so many different herbs and veggies... and as I was an amateur gardener many of them died or did not flourish. But I stopped caring about the success of each individual seed because the ones that did grow and thrived provided such deep satisfaction.

I became driven by the passion to watch life unfold in front of me. I discovered that common culinary herbs have herbal benefits. I started putting handfuls of herbs and lots of garden greens into everything I cooked. My instincts told me to keep adding more of those nutritious plants into my pots and into my diet. It tasted good and I felt good.

My idea of dirty began to change.

I stopped washing vegetables and herbs that came out of my garden. After all I did not use herbicides or fungicides. Removing the action of washing what I ate before I prepared it equally removed one layer of fear and disgust from my life. Fear of the unseen, disgust for dirt. Why did I have those burdens?

I discovered that the garden would change every day and I was called into the garden in the morning, after work, on the weekends and looking around watching those changes happen. Seeds sprouting, blossoms forming, fruits dropping, insects pollinating and on and on beauty unfolds before my eyes. All I have to do when I am in the garden is open my eyes! Or close them and feel the beauty that surrounds me.

In retrospect the best thing about being called to the garden as often as I could justify with respect to life's other duties and interests was it was that I was not called out of fear for missing out on joy; I was called in pursuit of the delight in natures wonders - they never let me down.

Since then volunteering and working for farms and homesteads, being in nature more often and growing food in my garden has delivered me into a fresh perspective out of the grasp of the scarcity mindset and into living a life in recognition and awe of nature's abundance. The cornucopia of fruits, squash, corn and other multitudes of food goes far beyond a holiday meme during thanksgiving time.

Growing my own food has given me an attitude of year round gratitude that I can tap into when I am in the garden or the natural world.

I am changing my ways, I am humbling myself, I am laboring in the soil, working through my fears and accepting my suffering. I live in the shadows of the grasp of the matrix, the pull of greed, the tightening grip of fear and the masked hunger of spiritual depravity.

When I started pursuing herbalism I went in with a yearning to heal my ailments. I wanted to empower myself with healing abilities and the knowledge of plants.

The plants appeared in great numbers and called out to me from the forests, the gardens and the books. I am curious about all the plants I see around me. I make salves, tinctures, dry herbs and eat them fresh. I taste them, smell them, touch them. I drink their teas and infusions. I save their seeds, eat their seeds and spread their seeds. I learn to identify more and more plants and herbs.

And I prayed to plants and asked them for help learning. Could they talk to me? Could they teach me?

Eventually a message appeared. I did not know the herbs were communicating to me but now I see that they were. I learned that I was looking to the herbs for spiritual healing more than I was asking them to heal my bodily ailments.

I discovered that I was peeling off another layer of trauma delivered by the modern culture I was born into. Except this time instead of hungering for junk food to fill the voids, now I hungered for herbal and homesteading knowledge. I craved the answers that I thought would make me whole.

The answer lies within my question. The plants showed me that I am already whole.

As I write this I understand that as I have peeled back another layer I am now looking at the next deeper layer. Each layer is the same as the last and yet when confronted with it I am still eluded. Elusive wisdom how will you disguise yourself next time? The mystery is embraced. I will embrace the lesson again so that I can embody the natural rhythms of the spiral.

Perhaps I will fade in and out of that spiral the rest of my life. In and out of consciousness. In and out of understanding. In and out of the matrix. Deeper into appreciation, farther from knowing. Deeper into the shadows, farther from grasping. I'll fall off the wave and get up to surf again, not knowing what the next set will bring.

I am excited about that proposition today. Will I embrace that excitement tomorrow? I remind myself, it is OK to let go.

If it were not for homegrown food where would I be today?

Today I desire to use my passion to share with others. To share knowledge. To share inspiration for growing food and medicine. To share plants and trees and seeds. To share food.

If for nothing else I look forward to grow my appreciation for nature and food and to encourage that joy in myself so that I can share that joy and love and compassion with others.

When I started on my journey of growing my own food I did not know where it would lead me. It was a hobby that became a passion. My taste buds loved the home grown food and the joy I received from being around plants kept me in the garden. The food and the plants help me learn what it means to be human.

I never knew that my garden would lead me toward a path of healing and gratitude for life. I am just at the beginning of this journey and am so excited to see where it leads!

Thank you for reading! I wish you abundance and joy in your life.

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