This being human begins and ends with the stories we tell at the kitchen table.
The claim someone is literary, is to say they are well read and grounded in humane learning. Gastronomy is the art of good eating. When this two things come together, anything is possible!
Authors, and other creators of culture, have long connected storytelling to consumption, just as Margaret Atwood claims that “eating is our earliest metaphor.”
When you learn to consume and tell better stories, you change your life.
Literary Gastronomy teaches the art of cultivating conscious consumption of the world around us through the page and plate. Just as a character can be defined by their habits of consuming, Leopold Bloom and his feety gorgonzola sandwich, we can understand our needs, wants, and desires through not only what but how we consume: “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are” (Jean Anthelm Brilliant Sauveran).
What we consume goes far beyond the plate, it is how we interact with the world around us, what we consciously (or often unconsciously) choose to take in. The Transtheoretical Stages of Change tells us that the first step to changing behavior and thought pattern is to first become conscious. The stories we tell and the food we eat are the most primal and quick fire routes to consciousness.
In group courses, events, writing workshops, and 1:1 mentoring, Literary Gastronomy uses a blend of tools and theories to help you become your best self-healer. Because holistic means total well-being, the tools used here are diverse! From mythopoetic, narrative and biblio therapies to depth psychology, holistic health to integrative nutrition, and herbalism, gastronomy to mindfulness, cognitive behavioral therapies to nureo-psychology.
This unique blend provides clients an ideal space and practical tools to re-acquaint themselves with their innate ability to heal themselves through simple awareness. Workshops and classes provide not only knowledge of the topic, but how to apply the insight to transform your overall wellness. 1:1 mentoring allows for more intimacy, with Amanda guiding you on your own specific path of re-acquainting yourself with their inner healer.
Wellness is not just about curing ailments, it is about cultivating mindful practices towards our most vital self.
Through Amanda’s perspective on the human experience, in regards to healing and cultivating our highest state of conscious curiosity, clients are able to learn a variety of healing modalities and find the best fit for their needs, wants, and desires. Clients gain a deeper sense of self-awareness, cultivating self-empowerment to aide in becoming their best advocate on their wellness journey. In addition to self-awareness, clients gain a more complex and inclusive view of relationships and spirituality. Clients leave this work with a variety of ways to better handle stress, anxiety, as well as fostering confidence and a deeper sense of overall purpose and direction. Ultimately, they become resilient.
It is not just about what we consume on the plate, it is about the way in which we navigate the influences all around us. Where students will learn practical nutrition and wellness theories, like how to use diet to calm inflammation and how to develop vagal toning to regulate the autonomic nervous system, they will also learn more complex theories like individuation and liminality.
The scope of synthesis is complex and bold, and we deserve boldness, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do/ With your one wild and precious life?” (Mary Oliver). Let’s start developing more vitality in that one wildly precious life of yours. Join me.
Amanda’s story
Once upon a time…Don’t all good stories begin with some version of this phrase? The ever-wise Toni Morrison began her 1992 Nobel Lecture this way, noting that these type of stories are ultimately all the same as they bring us home: “I have heard this story, or one exactly like it, in the lore of several cultures.”
So, once upon a time I backpacked across western Ireland, stopping to write poetry in pubs. Once upon a time I taught a class to hundreds of college students on how to “sound [their] barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world” (Walt Whitman). Once upon a time I preformed long-form improv in a basement bar in New York City. Once upon a time I was a poet, an actor, a woman lost in trauma cycles, a curious child.
My life has taken many turns on my pilgrimage home to myself, through many unique settings. Yet in this chapter, the chapter of Now, I am the most founded I have ever been, as I seek to use the knowledge of my expertise and experiences to help other’s on their own path towards their healthiest, most vital self.
Not long ago, a student mentioned at the end of the semester that my course “felt like what [they] suppose church is supposed to feel like.” Any religious space is meant to remind us of our larger place in the cosmos, in that infinite oneness with all that was, is, and will be. I took this as a sign that I was pivoting to the right path. Academia served me for many years, but after a decade, I knew that I had outgrown that space. I had to create a boundless setting which we all shared once upon a time.
Before I began my time in academic settings, I took to the stage and the page to express myself. Creativity has always been the vehicle in which I navigate experience (I define myself as a writer and creator before all other titles). The more reserved aspect of my character took to poetry, myth, story, as a way of decoding myself and the world around me.
Eventually, my more social and performative part of self took to the vehicle of acting. At eighteen, I rebelled against the concept of college and moved to Los Angeles, then Dallas, then New York City. I auditioned, studied, struggled, preformed, fell madly in love with improv comedy, but ultimately that lifestyle could not hold my attention. I longed for more. After years of swearing I would never, I decided to take college writing courses. This pivot in my plot quickly sucked me into a demanding relationship of study, creation, non-profit work, and lecturing for many years. My studies took me to many thrilling settings: from West Texas to Western Ireland to the cradle of the Rennaisaince in Italy to Keep it Weird Central Texas.
Along this pilgrimage, two major themes shifted my character’s development: chronic illness and a love for gastronomy. I was a chronically ill child and teenager and in my early twenties I was hospitalized with Toxic Shock Syndrome and almost lost my life. I survived a week in ICU, blood transfusions, pneumonia, and my organs almost shutting down, only to be let out of the hospital as a shell of my former-self.
This is when I first turned to holistic health practices; a naturopathic doctor developed a diet and supplement regiment for me to try to find a resemblance of health again. My health stabilized for three years, until I was wrongly diagnosed with severe depression, eventually to be told I had hypothyroidism. Given a blanket diagnosis and medication, I was sent on my way with no idea what to else I could do to just feel ‘normal’. Where I had a diagnosis and medication, I was still chronically exhausted and sick most of the time. Years later, seeking guidance from another integrative doctor, I was finally diagnosed with Hashimotos, an autoimmune condition related to hypothyroidism. I changed my diet and lifestyle and found relief, but the biggest change was that I began to see myself as the leader of my health journey.
I sought out integrative and sympathetic doctors, refusing to accept “your labs look normal” when I knew I was not well. Even though I was in charge and “doing all the healthy things”…I struggled to maintain feeling optimal. In my early thirties, I was diagnosed with a massive fibroid, hormone imbalance, and endometriosis. When I say I can relate, I believe I can, I was made a “wounded healer” for a reason. After a major surgery to remove a watermelon sized tumor and endometrial tissue, I began a new aspect of my healing—more informed on what can cause disease, root-cause mentality, and how to heal myself from a place of loving, conscious awareness. I am now the healthiest I have ever been, but health is a journey not a destination and I am always adapting.
One aspect of my story which has kept me growing, grounded, and joyful is my meditative relationship with food. It started with cooking and wine courses while I studied in Italy. Next, I began growing my own herbs and vegetables. As I got older, I found a deep connection with feeding others, as Joy Harjo poetically notes that “everything begins and ends at the kitchen table.”
Food became my portal for healing, community, and creative expression. As a writer, I can become cerebral and myopic, but food brings me back into the physical world, as an embodiment practice. Trying to find a way to connect words and community to food, I came up with a book and wine club, Vino Verse and Vinyl. It made for incredibly fun monthly meet up with old and new friends.
From this, I was inspired to further research the intersection between food and literature, food and faith, as well as food and healing. Research organized into my development of an Honors level college literature course: Literary Gastronomy in American Literature. While teaching the course and discussing with students on the power of food for connection and awareness, I took my baby steps of growing herbs and miscellaneous vegetables further, I began to research and practice permaculture gardening.
The connections between food, literature, permaculture, and spirituality felt abundant. It is an endless space for me to grow, a home with no limits. I began speaking about these connections at conferences and found land to purchase with enough space to homestead.
At a synchronistic moment, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition came to my life. I fell in love with the program, I studied under healers I deeply admire: Dr. Mark Hyman, Dr. Deepak Chopra, Dr. Andrew Weil, Julia Cameron, Joshua Rosenthal, Dr. Terry Wahls, only to only name a few. I graduated the program as a Certified Integrative Nutrition Health Coach. During my certification program, it became clear that what I was doing with students in college courses was not giving them a grade, but giving them tools to find themselves, to build a church of their own within their body, mind, and soul.
My hero’s journey led to me to accept this deep truth: my calling is to mentor other’s on their path to healing through mindfulness, food, story, and holistic practices. This new chapter is sustainable, as I guide others to healing, I too heal. In this story, we are on an adventure which is unconcerned with an ending, but enraptured with the present moment. We all deserve the best life possible, we deserve vitality.
Let’s develop that story together. Once upon a time, we…
