Healing through Homesteading
Today I feel great. It hasn’t always been that way, and it won’t always be that way, but now as I sit here writing this I can say that I feel good. I have struggled with various health issues and I am sure somewhere along the line you have as well. Maybe you have been struggling awhile now. You aren’t alone. There have been many times I sat crying wondering why my body has betrayed me. Why does my body put me through so much pain? Why do I feel anxious about little things all the time? Why can’t I just be a normal functioning human? But, I have come to find out, it was actually me betraying my body. The typical American diet is trash and our bodies are not trash cans. And I am not just talking about what we eat (although that is terrible). Everything we consume frames us - what we watch, what we read about, the language we use, and who we surround ourselves with. Our bodies are beautiful ecosystems that need nourishment, movement, and diversity. Here I want to share my thoughts on how I am healing my body and soul with the positive influences of homesteading.
The first time I remember severe pain I was hospitalized with crippling back pain, out of nowhere, to which I never got an answer. It was in my young adult years when I had never really paid attention to my diet before. It was during this time I also started to notice that the anxiety and depression I felt often was affecting my day to day. Anxiety and depression are two words that get thrown around a lot these days -and for good reason. People are sad and stressed. Bad news is constantly shoved into our brains and our bodies are overworked in a commerce driven world where instant gratification seems to be the name of the game. Did you ever play a video game, where you found a cheat code to get all sorts of goods and level ups and essentially win without winning - and it is no longer fun anymore? Where was the challenge, the reward for your hard efforts? What was the point of playing the game anymore? My point is, we as humans NEED to be challenged. There is something inside of us that needs gratification and it is so much more fulfilling when it is a long term investment into something you worked hard to earn and that wasn’t just instantly presented to you.
As years passed and normal human commitments and deadlines piled up, so did the health issues. Panic attacks, migraines, heart palpitations, visual snow, chronic chest tightness, back and neck issues, hormonal issues (endometriosis) and maybe worst of all, this encompassing feeling like I just do not understand this world and I don’t belong. It is funny listing all these things in one short, summed up sentence, when in truth these ailments wax and wan and show up just when I think I am beginning to figure life out. So came the several doctor visits and medications to go along with it. At first I tried to ignore my issues, settling my anxiety with alcohol and weed, and went on living pushing those ailments aside until they no longer became just uncomfortable. They became unbearable and totally disrupting to every day functions. They take the joy out of living. And so I go back to the doctors, who prescribe more medications. Some help keep your symptoms away and some make more symptoms, but nothing “cures” them. But when my symptoms could not be cured and my doctor tried to put me on an anti-depressant because I was depressed because my symptoms could not be cured, I was fed up. When you go to the emergency room for the 3rd time because you honestly think you are dying your head hurts so much and are told the wait will be at least 6 hours, and you look around at all the sick patients, some on the floor, you realize you are just a number. If I were to keel over and die right here, my body would be removed and my seat and number would be filled with the next in line and business would continue as usual. As grim as this sounds, it was actually empowering. I realized that no one is going to care more about my health then me, and I started to realize what that entailed. I am not coming down on the individuals who work in the medical field, I truly believe many of these doctors are doing the best they can -but they are just one person too. With no real solutions from the medical field, I found myself with my nose in holistic natural healing books and decided to take my healing into my own hands. The best decision I have made is that I am solely responsible for my health. To take my reliance off the doctors and medications to lessen my chronic symptoms and to dig into the root causes of them.
I would say I began my journey into healing through diet. I started to pay attention to food labels and how certain foods made me feel. You realize that herbs aren’t just for garlic bread. They can be powerful medicines especially for chronic illnesses. And once you discover how great kale can make you feel -you get it. Then you discover how great it tastes when its actually FRESH and hasn’t been sitting on the shelf for the better part of a week. Then you pan sear some salmon and slap that on a bed of slightly sauteed kale in sesame oil and you wonder why you never ate kale before. Wanting the freshest food possible brought me to a farm, where I then started to work and fell in love with growing food.
I love everything about growing our own food. You will not find any food more nutritious. And the taste. The taste is unreal. I remember a time when I use to hate tomatoes, and for good reason. Those sad excuses sitting on the shelf after sitting for days in trucks being forcibly ripened with gas is not what a tomato tastes like. I find I have no trouble eating my fruits and vegetables when they taste this good, and now I have an extremely nutritious diet. The better I eat, the better I feel. I expected to have less heart burn and belly aches, but it helps with everything. From better sleep and energy to less aches and mood swings. Homesteading also keeps you moving -a foreign sensation to the sedentary modern lifestyle. Bending, kneeling, squatting, lifting and chasing chickens are all movements our body was designed to do -meant to do. It keeps us fit and nimble without feeling like we are working on our physique. The work can be hard sometimes, but you CAN do hard things.
Homesteading has instilled such a sense of peace and belonging into my soul. I can honestly say that the days I am at our homestead, and some days are serious work, I am at such a peace with the world and myself. It isn’t like I’ve got my head in the sand, ignoring all of life’s big problems. But I find myself content with the task in front of me consuming my attention while I glance over to see my love working on his project and hear the crow of our rooster and the bees humming. I purposely pause to look at how blue the sky is, how green the plants have gotten with all the sun and how the Earth is truly singing in the small patch of paradise we have created. THIS world is perfect, THIS is something I have honor in, THIS brings me so much happiness that I feel a joy so deep inside that I just smile to myself and think maybe the world isn’t all that bad. In these moments I feel right. Stepping away from the commerce driven reality and into a paradise that has already been so perfectly designed for us to find purpose in. I’m not a very religious person but I think there was a reason why Adam and Eve were created into a garden -it’s where we belong. I truly believe so. We have a role in this. As much as we like to think we are separated, we are aligned with nature. And I am not a number here. In fact, the design I lay out in the gardens inescapably affects the outcomes of what we reap from this land. Same goes for the fuel I put in my body and the conversations I have with myself and others.
Most days I feel at peace. Most days my ailments don’t get the best of me. Most days I put on some great music and dance in my kitchen as I can endless jars of goods and eat the world’s best food. Most days I feel such a sense of fulfillment. Most days I can spend with the people and animals I love in this little life of mine. I have found the “medicine” I need to heal.