Simple Raw and Natural

  November 20, 2025 Healing the Ordinary Beauty is woven into the things we often overlook - nourishment, rest, small habits, and all of your simple daily rituals. They aren’t sparkly or applause-worthy, yet they hold our lives together. In a world that rewards urgency and spectacle, these ordinary acts feel almost subversive. Healing rarely arrives in dramatic breakthroughs. It grows slowly, in the choices we make again and again. This morning, while reading An Altar in the World , I was reminded that the sacred isn’t hiding somewhere distant or unreachable. It’s right here in the sweeping of the kitchen floor, the soft light entering the room, a warm bowl of soup, the way we help one another without fanfare. The book invites us to look at our everyday lives and see them as altars.  I’m think that this is where real transformation actually happens. Healing doesn’t require that we change everything.  We just need to pay attention. When I chop vegetables, make my smooth...

  November 9, 2025 The Taste of Steadiness There’s a kind of quiet alchemy that happens in the kitchen where the feminine works her magic, bringing healing and even a bit of justice with her spoon.  It’s how she stirs, not just the soup, but the energy of the house. Healing food isn’t only about what’s raw or pure or green.  It’s also about what’s warm, soft, and cooked.  The raw heals through clarity with the burst of lemon, the crunch of cabbage, the pulse of life untamed by fire.  The cooked heals through comfort, the slow stew that is grounding after you’ve been in your head for too long.  Roasted root vegetables remind us to stay here and stay steady. Both have their purpose.  The raw awakens, the cooked restores. When I eat healing food, I feel both of those voices working together.  The wild and the patient.  They remind me that steadiness has many forms.  It might taste like lentils with garlic, or a baked pear that melts against...

  November 9, 2025 Healing Food as Metaphor Healing food is more than nutrition.  It’s a language of restoration.  When we choose healing foods, we’re saying yes to life again, to renewal after depletion. Think of ingredients as symbols of some inner need: Broth speaks of gentleness and the infusion of strength through patience and warmth. Greens remind us of forgiveness by turning sunlight into nourishment. Beans represent endurance and humility - small, plain, and sustaining. Lemon and salt show us that sharpness and contrast are necessary for balance. Bread is the ancient metaphor for connection.  When it is broken and shared, it represents trust. To prepare and eat healing food acknowledges that we are both fragile and resilient.  The body is connected to the soul.  The kitchen becomes a sanctuary for the healing of wounds while the soup simmers on the stove and love and care transform it into flavor. Still Curious. Still Growing, Still Grateful. by Jan...

 November 5, 2025 The Myth of Doing It Alone We often hear stories about the great minds of history: the inventors, artists, philosophers, and writers who seemed to move the world forward by the power of their genius. But the truth, when you look a little closer, is that no one ever did it alone. Behind every “self-made” success, there were quiet conversations, secretaries who typed pages of notes, editors who coaxed rough thoughts into clarity, and wives or friends who believed when no one else did. Greatness has always been a form of collaboration, a shared space where one person’s vision meets another’s support. That’s how I see artificial intelligence today. Some say it will make us lazy or dependent, but I don’t believe that. I think it is simply the modern version of a long tradition: a thinking partner, a listener, and a way to explore ideas more deeply. It does not replace creativity; it expands it. The spark still comes from within us—the curiosity, the values, the...

  November 4, 2025 Starting Over (Again and Again) I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve started over. With food, with routines, with writing, with faith. There was a time I thought that meant I was inconsistent or weak, but I’m starting to see it differently now. Maybe starting over is just what we humans do. We try things, we drift, we come back. Sometimes we come back with a little more tenderness, or a little more understanding. Sometimes we come back simply because something inside us refuses to give up. I’ve started over so many times with my health — drinking more water, eating in a way that supports healing, remembering that how I treat my body affects my mind and my spirit too. The same goes for my habits. I fall off track, get distracted, and then quietly begin again. It used to frustrate me, but now I see it as practice — not failure. When I studied with Dr. John Fielder, the nature cure doctor in Australia, he often would say, “Trust the process”.  Just like a sna...