Ania, the line that stayed with me is: “We are shaped by our environments in young age, and unless we pause long enough to truly become aware of this, we then create environments that reinforce that shape.” So much of what we call personal failure is often an environmental mismatch. We keep trying to become healthier, calmer, or more alive while remaining inside systems and settings that continually reward survival rather than flourishing. Thank you for offering a vision of nourishment that is not about fixing people, but about creating conditions where people can remember who they were before constant adaptation became necessary.
You absolutely are right about the personal failure part.
I think this mission has really resonated for me because I did all the ‘right’ things according to our society growing up. I got good grades. Went to a good college (graduated top of my class). Became self employed and very successful in my career. I put lots of effort into my longterm relationship, my hobbies, my health, was always there for the people in my life, donated to charity when I could - and yet at 35, my body protested very loudly and I needed to take time and rest. That life I had worked so hard for, it didn’t allow that at all, because it was so much constant work to hold it up and I never even realized how unnatural that was before.
It was only then that I begun to really pay attention and listen to others and see that we are all struggling.
The solutions the same system that hurt people offer don’t work - because what I learned the hard way, was that healing meant I couldn’t go back to a pressure cooker environment again. I feel great now, strong and healthy - but if I don’t listen to my body and my soul, my body doesn’t whisper anymore, it screams.
And I feel like I started listening to a higher power at that time too - when I survived losing everything, when I healed after listening that I needed to take care of myself even when it felt like certain death to not be juggling all the things, I realized I wasn’t as alone as I believed and it’s definitely been guiding me ever since. It is how I got dropped into the middle of nowhere in Mexico with such wonderful humans, among other things.
Ania, the line that stayed with me is: “We are shaped by our environments in young age, and unless we pause long enough to truly become aware of this, we then create environments that reinforce that shape.” So much of what we call personal failure is often an environmental mismatch. We keep trying to become healthier, calmer, or more alive while remaining inside systems and settings that continually reward survival rather than flourishing. Thank you for offering a vision of nourishment that is not about fixing people, but about creating conditions where people can remember who they were before constant adaptation became necessary.
You absolutely are right about the personal failure part.
I think this mission has really resonated for me because I did all the ‘right’ things according to our society growing up. I got good grades. Went to a good college (graduated top of my class). Became self employed and very successful in my career. I put lots of effort into my longterm relationship, my hobbies, my health, was always there for the people in my life, donated to charity when I could - and yet at 35, my body protested very loudly and I needed to take time and rest. That life I had worked so hard for, it didn’t allow that at all, because it was so much constant work to hold it up and I never even realized how unnatural that was before.
It was only then that I begun to really pay attention and listen to others and see that we are all struggling.
The solutions the same system that hurt people offer don’t work - because what I learned the hard way, was that healing meant I couldn’t go back to a pressure cooker environment again. I feel great now, strong and healthy - but if I don’t listen to my body and my soul, my body doesn’t whisper anymore, it screams.
And I feel like I started listening to a higher power at that time too - when I survived losing everything, when I healed after listening that I needed to take care of myself even when it felt like certain death to not be juggling all the things, I realized I wasn’t as alone as I believed and it’s definitely been guiding me ever since. It is how I got dropped into the middle of nowhere in Mexico with such wonderful humans, among other things.