Our Story
The person who put this all together goes by the name of Andi… hello!
My life story winds through the many different homes of a military upbringing. I fell in love with the rich and abundant earth in Ankara, Turkey, where my much adored babysitter, Fatma, was surrounded by an air of deeply fragrant spices and herbs that were as nutritious as the maternal love that outpoured from her. No other home would again feel like the haven I felt in her presence. Once in the States, my childhood continued with a desperate feeling of loneliness. Dropping out of high school for my love of snowboarding brought me to another world of achievement that came with great expense – and an incredible amount of alcohol to fill a void I couldn’t see. I became a single mother to an incredible soul, my future best friend, and then embarked on a journey to heal the trauma in my past in an effort to become the best mother I could be. I wanted to gift my daughter with the sense of home that I felt as a child, in another country, with a maternal figure who was nurturing in every way. First, I had to confront the damage that came from living in a culture that unconsciously strips away nourishment in every form. After much support (and some might say a Dark Night) I was filled with a desire to inspire hope in those who feel their Souls are forever pulled with an empty ache they can’t name.
All genders possess the ability to nurture – it is in our nature – whether to raise a child, care for pets, ease our elders into the afterlife, or tend a bountiful garden. We also, most importantly, have the ability to nurture ourselves. We long for the richness that resides somewhere in our bones – yearning to come out to play. We wonder when it was lost and how we might coax it back out. Surrounded by faux… well, everything… we feel a surge of recognition when our hands bury into the earth, our eyes investigate the inner depths of a flower, the sun unhurriedly warms our skin on a cool day, and we smell what could only be named as blood-warmed fur raised at the back of a wolf’s neck. We are humans of the earth. We learned, once upon a time, to take from the earth gently – gracefully – even while shedding tears over the sustenance of animals we admired. We knew the precise spot in a field to find wild herbs that we would mix, with intention, into tonics to heal our ailments. We heard whispers in leaves and we listened. We read stories in the night skies and we understood.
I invite you to let Mother Earth pull you in and hold you against her soft, warm belly. You may have heard the saying, once or twice, that “You are what you eat.” I’m here to remind you that this is not only true, it is imperative to understand as you undertake your life journey. You are life itself. Your body is waiting to feast in the nourishment of earth and integrate ancient wisdom into its very bones. It has been so long…. can you feel your cells vibrating with hunger?
