As we begin another year around the sun, one thing is certain for folks in the Gather & Grow community: we want to cultivate a less stressed and more nourished life in 2025. Ultimately, we want to live well - to live simple lives connected to the land, our food and medicine, as well as our community. We want to cultivate a life full of beautiful moments that feel slow and present through the seasons. The “wellness” industry in the United States does not want you to actually be well in 2025. Rather, those big businesses’s rely heavily on you staying unwell, stressed and disconnected from the sources that truly help you thrive. We all know this, and yet it’s still hard to resist the magic bullets we are sold every year in January. Our feeds and emails are clogged with product advertisements, gym memberships, bio-hacks, and magic injectables that promise a year of skinny, happy, agelessness, and healthy.

We cannot bio-hack our way into wellness, longevity, connection, or presence. There is no magic bullet to replace nourishment from the source, nor the knowledge, skillset and discipline required to cultivate a lifestyle that is truly well.

We are over complicating our health and lifestyles here in the United States and it’s burning a hole in our pockets to no effect while also depleting us. The solution to cultivating heirloom wellness is so simple it’s almost too good to be true. Living well is not about buying a magic pill, but rather about cultivating simple heirloom skills and a lifestyle full of habits that nourish us in more ways than one.

If we look outside the United States’ scope of wellbeing, to the healthiest, least-stressed and longest-living communities in the world we have our 2025 roadmap to living well. So, as we head into 2025, why not simplify life and save some money by taking a page from the Blue Zones playbook? Join me this year in adopting some of the core habits practiced by these long-lived communities so together we can cultivate a nourishing lifestyle that roots us into wellbeing, community, and the earth.

*deep breath* I’m postpartum (again) with nothing to hold in my arms but myself and my grief. After two miscarriages in 9 months, one of them gentle and early, the other late and traumatic, my knees are brought to the earth. As much as it’s been a heartbreaking and physically challenging experience to navigate, there’s wisdom I’ve gleaned. It has pulled me into the depths of a spiritual and physical voyage - the likes of which have enlightened me of the sacred understanding of what it means to be a woman and the gift it is to bear life - and the burden of losing it.

Pregnancy loss and miscarriage (through choice or not) is demanding on the body, mind, and soul. It is no easy task to grow life and then to lose it. Our bodies and souls are never the same after, which brings me to my offering to you today.

I’m sharing the ways I’m holistically nourishing myself during postpartum loss - from nutrition and herbs, to mental and spiritual health rituals, as well as physical recovery exercises. My protocol is guided by my natural midwife and my Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor as well as my own knowledge & experience in holistic wellness. Here’s what I’m doing to care for myself during postpartum loss.