I want to be her.

I want to be her—even if I can’t remember who she is. When I first began homesteading three years ago, I watched a video of a young woman farmer giving a tour of her CA preservation shelves. These shelves were in her living room because she had a teeny tiny kitchen and jars for days to store.

This concept of her food spilling over into other parts of her home, tromboncino squash hanging off her shelves and propped near her books was the most romantic idea to me. I want to be her I thought. This is who I am supposed to be.

I harvested my herbs, filled jars, planted tromboncino so I too could hang these funny squash from my shelves all over my house. My living room bookshelf became home for the jars filled with catnip, sage, dried flowers, oregano and every other leafy thing I harvested.

I am her. I became her. I was living in my fantasy of the homesteader who grows and preserves enough food not just for one year, but years. And I felt like shit.

One morning I woke up, feeling nauseous as I always did, ate breakfast as I always did, then threw up. My body was done. I could feel it, it was in pain, sick, begging me to figure out what was wrong.

My mornings were filled with vertigo, a horrid cough, sinus draining, nausea, brain fog, irritability, exhaustion, pain. But I was a homesteader, doing everything right, eating amazing food, digging in the earth, putting my bare feet on grass filled with clover and dandelion, drinking brews of herbs from my garden. I AM HER! She was glowing and gorgeous and alive.

But my body was dying. I could feel it. Heart palpitations, edema, migraines, uterine pain, bladder pain, knee pain. The day after I threw up I eliminated food after food after food. I had brought myself to two meals a day of broth, meat, mushrooms and peas. I was still sick.

I was able to eat one food, beef. And salt. Lemon seemed passable too. I was a homesteader with bookshelves filled with plants, two freezers jammed with frozen vegetables, a pantry overflowing with colorful jars of jams and chutneys and sauces and I could eat one food.

Beef.

Not just any beef, only 100% grass fed and finished, not aged and frozen immediately after harvesting. Yes, it took me months to figure this all out. Elimination diets take a long time. I felt amazing for the first time in decades. I wasn’t bloated after I ate. I had almost no pain. I was getting energy back.

Each morning I woke up and was shocked I didn’t feel like throwing up. I had accepted this as just a normal part of who I was. My body that was so swollen and had gone up a full shoe size and three dress sizes was now deflating. I could feel the water pouring out of me. My shoes were falling off. My belly that always looked pregnant after a meal just stayed the same after I munched my burgers with salt.

I spent hours—which added up to weeks—researching, understanding, trying to find the root cause of what had been hurting me since I was a little girl. I wanted to know why I had been ‘the sick’ one, allergic to everything my whole life.

The first thing I discovered was that beef, salt and water is called the carnivore diet and many people with Lyme, MS, CIRS and all sorts of autoimmune issues call on this diet to heal them. I had found it through listening to my body. Many people add in other meats, eggs and dairy—some will also add some berries, fruits and honey—but no one on carnivore eats plants.

I couldn’t eat plants. None of them, not cooked or raw, not fermented or frozen.

When my mouth craved something other, I would add in olives and capers, mix them with the meat. When I was out and had nothing to eat I would keep a tub of sardines in my bag and eat them greedily. My entire body would break out in hives. They would start at my ankles or wrists and then spread through my body. I would scratch till bloody waking up with scabs all over my legs.

I eliminated all histamine related foods, which included left-overs, all my meat would need to be cooked fresh. The reason I couldn’t have aged meat was the histamines. Canned seafood, histamines. Olives and capers, histamines. Fermented foods, histamines. After a hive break out I would swell up in my feet and hands, something I had been dealing with my whole life and never understood.

My heart would palpitate. All those ER visits to monitor my heart, it was nothing more than histamine intolerance. The random breakouts of hives over the years, histamines. Histamines, histamines, histamines. I believe I can heal this as I heal my gut which is the goal of carnivore.

Our bodies learn to adapt. When I started growing my own food, fermenting everything and eating lots of ‘old’ food my body went into histamine overload. One of the ways my body coped was to send fluid to my joints as a way of protecting them. The swelling that I’ve experienced my entire life was simply my body trying to compensate for the histamine overload.

I made a list of what I was working to heal from: candida, SIBO, parasites, interstitial cystitis, diverticulitis, food allergies, dust mite allergies, vertigo, migraines, brain fog, exhaustion, anxiety and for the first time in my life a deep deep depression.

When I discovered something called CIRS, chronic inflammatory response syndrome, it was like all the pieces of the puzzle came together. After exposures to mold during certain points in my life, each of my chronic illness (that no doctor could explain) would manifest. I had every single marker for CIRS.

When I began learning more about CIRS and histamine intolerance I would hear functional medicine doctors talk about things that had confused me for years about my health. It was all coming together and making sense.

The carnivore diet plus a parasite cleanse in the beginning of the diet helped me to feel 60% better. The rest has been emotional, learning to no longer be someone who thrives on stress, hustle, productivity and performance. I had to peel back my life to expose the underneath, to get honest and to step into my peri-menopause years letting my dream of ‘being her’ gently go.

Two years ago as I began to homestead and eat more and more plants with histamines and oxalates and lecitins, we experienced a family trauma. One of my kids was admitted to a CBAT (community based acute treatment) center for two weeks and after that my job became helping this kid to heal. I was in constant fight or flight, my relationship was strained, I was trying to keep my coaching circle going.

I would sleep at night fully dressed, I set my alarm for every two hours to check on my kid. Every part of my routine changed and the hypervigilance that I stepped into was non negotiable. I was in it, and there would be no balance at this time. I get pissed when I hear ‘put your oxygen mask on first’ when dealing with your kids. There are no rules in parenting. When you are in crisis you show up and find yourself later. Parenting is seasonal and we never know when the wind will shift, but it will, and it does.

My kid was up against OCD that made simple tasks like eating near impossible. Depression would take them into a sleep that could last days. Body dis-morphia was intense. Gender questioning. Sexuality questioning. Eventually a bi-polar diagnosis after two years of really hard living. They also went into a transgender youth program to help them transition to trans-female and they came out to their entire school during senior year.

Finally, a name change, Eli became Harvey. We grieved the loss of Eli while we celebrated Harvey’s becoming and healing. My oldest child describes the last few years as emotional whiplash, it has been an entire family journey. We are exhausted and finding our joy bubbles again.

Now I am healing. Dave is healing. The other kids are becoming and all of our nervous systems are settling. I got a puppy who has been one of my healers, her love and devotion fills us. I hike a few miles every day in the woods, twice a day with the dogs. I eat a lot of beef, yesterday I ate seven little hamburgers. The garden is growing, fennel popping through weeds and blades of grass covering onion shoots. I don’t have to eat the veg to grow them.

The vision of myself as her is no longer one I can hold onto. Nothing is as it was two years ago when my kid was in crisis. Nothing is as it was six months ago when I stepped into my healing. Nothing is as it was five years ago when I had my last drink of alcohol. Nothing is as it was eight years ago when I met Dave. Nothing is as it was so that now we can all become.

I fed most of the squash on my bookshelves to the chicken but the freezers are filled with puree that I will find a way to use for chili for those in my family who will eat it. I am not preserving any herbs this year but there are piles of garlic scapes to turn into paste and fresh mint and lemon balm. My bookshelves are emptying ready to hold something else in place of all the jars. Space is being claimed on wooden shelves and in my body and spirit.

Next year I will grow more flowers. I hope to be able to eat some lettuce and cabbage after a full year of gut healing. I will have two kids in college in September and my mind is already dreaming up new projects and ideas for when I have more space.

I’ve spent the last fourteen years teaching about three things: she who was, I am and becomings. Past, present and future selves and how it all is essentially one swirl of spirit and time and integration. There has been magic and joy and surrender and seasons of our souls. I became a homesteader and a carnivore. I retired from coaching. I have spent hours in therapy with Dave so we can become a team and each other’s biggest supporters. I found sobriety. I became her.

She is not the her that was outside myself, she came from within. She came from a place deep inside, stirred from this Autumn season of life. She is the woman who lives in the invisible years now, a weaver of story, time and truthfulness. Her garden wild, her gut strong, her love palpable. Her presence is more real than her fantasy of self. Her past of playing victim replaced by her kindness and trust.

And I want to be her.

Less jars, less worry—more stories to write, more fires to stir, more time to bless. Bless this journey to her. Bless this journey to you. The wind will shift, the season will change, as it does. This is what we can know for certain, the thing we can all hold as truth, change will come for us. We will become and watch as others do. Gently extend your tenderness to this change. Bless it. Feel the wind blow through, root down and find her.