Spirit‑Led Wellness: Mind, Body, and Nutrition with Heather Wolfe 02-02-2026

In this podcast, Rachann Mayer is joined by holistic wellness coach, nutritionist, and registered dietitian Heather Wolfe. She guides you through the ever‑evolving wellness journey with depth, compassion, and clarity, exploring the mind‑body connection, practical approaches to weight management, and the role of spirituality in healing, You’ll hear insights drawn from years of clinical practice, and lessons learned from writing a monthly wellness column and creating a vegetarian cookbook. 

Transcript

Audio file

RCP Podcast Heather Wolfe Wellness Coach Total Release Date 2-2-26.mp3

Transcript

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Today's podcast is brought to you by Mariah Belle Manor Kennel, offering dog boarding, bathing, and daycare in an eco-friendly environment.

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Our pet care with a personal touch is not just a motto, it's really what we do.

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Our touch extends to the food without preservatives, quality and natural shampoos, inclusive boarding, and a green living environment.

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Sounds like I might want to check in.

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Visit us anytime on our Facebook page, Mariah Belle Manor Kennel, or MariahBelleManorKennel.com.

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Enjoy your program.

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Welcome to Raising Connections, connecting your community to others through Critters, Companions, Commerce, and Agriculture.

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I'm Ray Shan Mayer.

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Let's raise some connections.

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Here we go.

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Today, as always, we have a fun and interesting guest.

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Welcome, Heather Wolf.

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You are a health coach and wellness instructor.

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Where are you from, and how did you get into this field?

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And how to unpack a story in a few sentences.

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Now, thinking about, right, how did I get to be where I am today, which is, by the way, I am seated at my dining room table in Vermont.

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I have got a cup of tea in my hand here, and I have a cat very

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out the window next to me.

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So my critter companion today, Clara, is joining us and looking at a very snowy landscape where my family has called home for seven generations.

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So I'm on ancestral lands for my family here through the generations.

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So this

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poem came to mind because as we talk about ancestral lands, you know, acknowledging, right, you know, the native people who were before the white colonists, we have Abenaki peoples here for many, many, many years before.

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There's this poem that pops to my mind from Linda Hogan, who's Chickasaw.

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And she says, walking, I am listening to a deeper way.

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Suddenly, all my ancestors are behind me.

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Be still, they say, watch and listen.

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You are the result of the love of thousands.

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Like that's maybe the first way I would describe how I got to be where I am is because of the love of thousands, because of those who've walked before me.

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I grew up on a log cabin just a mile up the road from where I am now, really close to the land.

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Environmental ethic and stewardship was instilled in me.

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We grew our own food.

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We had a composting toilet.

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We composted food scraps.

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We raised chickens.

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It was a very homesteady and holistic upbringing.

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And my mom cooked.

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She cooked all our meals and we didn't have finances to go out.

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And we live in a rural area.

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So that was a really special thing to go out.

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So I learned how to cook beside my mom, how to grow our food.

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And this, I think, informed my career choice to go into the field of nutrition, which I guess it was probably ninth grade.

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health class when we were invited to kind of do a little passion project and I chose to look about what does a teenage body need to energize and fuel and for nutrition to grow and develop and be your best.

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So that morphed into going to college, getting a degree in nutrition and dietetics, working in that field professionally for several years before I started realizing that you can only get so far

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are with facts.

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So you're having someone tell you eat more fruits and vegetables, right?

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Drink more water, exercise more, stress less.

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Sounds like a pretty normal recommendation for our lives.

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Yeah, exactly.

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And we know that.

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We've heard that.

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So, you know, as a dietitian, as I'm helping you listen to people and giving them nutrition advice, I saw this gap between translating the knowledge into lasting behavior change.

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So that's what led me to the health coaching

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to really get those tools to support individuals in lifestyle improvement on their wellness journey.

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From the poem forward, so many things caught my attention, but what is the difference between a nutritionist and dietitian?

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It really comes down to accreditation.

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Anybody could theoretically hang out a shingle and call themselves a nutritionist, right?

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You could take a course on nutrition and hang up your shingle.

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To be a dietitian is a registered

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licensed credential.

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So going to a dietitian, you know that they have gone through an accredited program, they've sat for nationally boards and been certified, and they are doing continuing education to maintain their credentials.

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So there's a lot more rigor and certification to make sure you know what you're getting.

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It kind of like you're in the world of medications, right?

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We have medications and then supplements.

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Supplements

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don't go through the rigor that prescription medications do of testing and validating and third-party testing.

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That makes a lot of sense.

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You've taken some courses, but there may not be a standard that you have had to prove of your knowledge base.

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Most registered dietitians also will use the word nutritionist.

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On my credentials, I will say, I am a registered dietitian nutritionist because some people don't understand what is a dietitian, where they may recognize the word nutrition.

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Oftentimes when I think dietitian, I think diet.

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I often don't think nutrition, but those two go very hand in hand.

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Yeah, I agree.

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In our world, right, words have meaning and we have come to think about diet as dieting or restriction or I'm on a diet versus really the meaning of diet is just the foods that we eat.

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That is my diet.

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And your background being so rich in basic life-enriching skills, is that what led you to be an eco-minister as well as a nutrition and dietitianist?

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Right.

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Values are important in this conversation that we're having because it really does ground us in our why, right?

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Why we do what we do.

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And for me,

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about wellness, it's very holistic.

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Many people who come to me for health and wellness coaching come because they want to work on weight management or eating better, moving more, sleeping better.

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What we traditionally think about around health and wellness, and we know it's so much more, right?

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So the areas of wellness include social connection, they include finance, they include work and play,

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and spirituality.

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So for me, I used to think about them in silos, right?

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I have growing up in the Mennonite church, right, having the Anabaptist values of peace and simplicity and service and community really informed of who I am and how I show up in the world.

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And then I had my career as a dietitian and then, you know, a health coach.

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And then I had this epiphany when putting together this cookbook project where I'm like, oh my,

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These are all ones.

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How I look at food and the choices that I make around food really are informed by my values, which is a spiritual conversation.

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What a take on wellness of all the different components.

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When someone is seeking out the services for a nutritionist or a dietitian or someone to help them achieve the wellness goals that they have in their lives, is it important for them to find

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someone who is aligned with their values or someone who has values, maybe that bio that we read when we're looking at our different service providers, is that alignment helpful or is the professionalism of the provider always an underlying piece?

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Hope is that latter statement that the professionalism of what a dietitian or a health coach or any health provider who is partnering with you on the wellness journey would bring to the table to really explore where you are with your wellness and where it is that you want to go and that the path forward is a value-based decision-making based on your values, not my

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my values as the partner.

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And so that said, we always have to be evaluating our relationship.

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So if we partner with someone and it just doesn't click, then that's the point where to say, huh, you know what?

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This rapport, right?

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This relationship may not be the best match for me.

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Let me explore a different partnership versus writing it off altogether of like, oh, I met with a dietitian once and she didn't connect, he didn't connect, they didn't connect.

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So I'm not going to go

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see another.

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So I would say, yes, your values lead in this conversation.

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The click between provider and recipient is so important because lifestyle and wellness is more than just actions.

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Like you pointed out, in order for us to receive services from a provider, what should we go in expecting?

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You really want a

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a good listener.

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I've come to the understanding in my role after decades of practicing that I show up holding space for someone.

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How is the provider creating the container for a safe, non-judgmental conversation to really listen deeply to what's going on in your world?

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What is wellness

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look like to you because you have lived experience and you've learned from that, right?

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Most of us have tried things, we've collected wisdom from real world experience.

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So remembering that you are the expert in your life.

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And so the dietitian, the coach, the provider is here to partner with you, to listen, to ask good questions, and guide you in the direction that you want to go.

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So I think, you know, a quick way

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to just say, is this going to be as a good fit?

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How did you feel like they listened?

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That's a really great way is how do they listen?

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And you said something that resonated with me and May with our listeners, to listen deeply.

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What I think you might have been saying, or what I interpreted that to mean, was to hear more than just the words, but to hear what's behind the food, what's behind the diet, what's behind the wellness, where is the spirit?

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Because all

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All of those feed into personal wellness.

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When we go into a session, many folks have made New Year's goals of losing weight, getting more exercises, those things that you started talking about in the very beginning that resonate with lots of us.

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We've hit the end of January, beginning of February.

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The 21 days of excitement maybe haven't turned into a habit for us.

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And we may be now seeking out the nutritionist, the dietitian, the person who can

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help get us over the hump and into a success that we would like to participate in.

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We've signed up for a session.

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We've found someone who can truly listen and hear us.

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What should we bring to those sessions to make the sessions successful?

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Thank you for this preparatory question, right, which is really important.

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Before I meet with a new person for the first time, I give an invitation to do a little self-reflection to

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prepare for to be successful.

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And that is largely an invitation to get some clarity for yourself before you come in on what is most important to you.

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Why are you coming?

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What are your hopes?

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What motivates you?

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We can set goals in our society, in our culture.

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We are great goal setters.

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The resolution season, we are still in

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that.

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And we can do resolutions, we can do goals, we can follow a plan for a time.

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And as you alluded to, it often fizzles.

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So in doing this work of asking what's most important to you, again, that's a values question.

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Where are your values?

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That is an anchor, right?

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It anchors us in something bigger.

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We can expect life to happen, right?

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The storms of life

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will come.

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And so if we use this analogy, right, being on a boat, we're going to get whipped and tossed and overturned unless we can anchor.

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So the values act as that.

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And then once we get clarity on what is most important to us, then we can tie any goal setting we do to the anchor.

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And if we can see and maintain that connection, it is less

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likely the storm will blow us off course.

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What a wonderful visual way to describe how and why we fizzle out.

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That's beautiful.

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I saw this in my mind.

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It made so much sense to me.

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Yeah.

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Thomas Merton has a lovely little poem.

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If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live or what I like to eat or how I comb my hair, kind of those more superficial things, but ask me what I am living for.

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in detail.

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Ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.

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So that's the heart of this is getting to that.

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What is it that I want to be pulled towards that positive future?

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What does wellness mean to me?

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And then what's getting in the way?

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What's keeping me from stepping fully into that?

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And that's where health coaches, dietitians, health providers can help you

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close that gap, the discrepancies between where we are now, where we want to be, and just step by step at a time, move towards that vision and values.

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We'll be right back and continue this conversation.

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Welcome back to Raising Connections.

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You've connected for myself and the listeners.

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It's not just food.

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It's not nutrition.

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It's not wellness.

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It's what you're living for and how those pieces play into our lives.

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Is our nutrition and our activity level supporting us and what we want to accomplish?

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That is a really holistic way and that is your specialty.

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That holistic way of looking at diet and nutrition and wellness.

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Do you find when people come to a holistic nutritionalist or dietitian that they have the aha moment that you just created for our listeners?

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Yeah, well, it resonates with soul.

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It's something that, again, it's kind of like peeling the onion, like we're taking back these kind of more superficial layers that we've stayed with.

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And, you know, it gets down to the heart more of, oh, okay, yes.

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I hear the universal, yes.

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And kind of that exhale of like, oh.

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This is what I desire.

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And finding that desire for each person is their own homework because none of us have the same desire.

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Yeah, no, I use the analogy of a road trip.

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Often when I'm trying to describe someone who's interested in health coaching, we have all these discovery conversations that, you know, we're not committed, we're just exploring.

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and in conversation.

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It's like a road trip, right?

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We are all on a wellness journey.

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And there may be times in the journey where we want or need to invite someone to come in the passenger seat to sit alongside us and help hold the map and help guide us to where we want to go.

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And each of us is different.

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Like I never assume I know where someone's going or should go, right?

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Because that would be, you know, just telling and assuming.

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So I guess

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bit curious and are you going to Florida or California or Canada, or are we going to Hawaii and down under?

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Everybody has a different destination.

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So we have to hold the space, be curious, and help people articulate for themselves where and what wellness means.

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Is that journey how you encourage people and live your own life with an engaged spirit?

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Yes, because the journey is where the riches are.

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When we say it's the journey, not the destination, really.

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How are we showing up for the here and now, which kind of brings in the mindfulness component of very wise meditation teachers will say, you know, present moment, wonderful moment, right?

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Endless moment we are living in, and that's all we have.

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We have

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this moment now.

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So how are we showing up in this moment, which is the journey?

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We are committed to be in the direction, right?

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We want to face the direction of a positive future and feel pulled toward that.

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And we have to show up for the here and the now and who is present with us and what is present with us.

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Does that who is present and what's present affect and come from our community, our locality?

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who's around us, who we're choosing to surround ourselves with, and that eco-ministry, that kinship spirit with the earth and the world and that holistic approach.

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Yeah, because that's our grounding.

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It's a constant connection.

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I love in your podcast title, Connection, Raising Connection.

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So seeing how am I connected, interconnected with everything around me, that interrelated

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Kidness would be another way to say that same thing.

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And you use the word kinship.

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And in the eco-spirituality space that I identify with, it is seeing the created world as kin, as related, as interconnected.

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That's right.

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How I engage with the world, I am a part of it, not apart from it, and all flourishing is.

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You said something that, again, may resonate and make connections with our listeners, that community and the way we interact with our world and those interactions that come back to us.

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In addressing a holistic point of view, do you find it helpful to address eating concerns that may not be helpful or healthy?

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Yeah, so having a healthy relationship with food and body frequently comes up in this wellness space that I work in.

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And when we look at long-term success, what is it that helps someone make change and then stick with it?

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There are a couple things that evidence-based has revealed to us.

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One is identity, right?

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If we have, I am someone who goes for a walk on my lunch break.

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I am someone who offers gratitude before my meals, right?

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Identity really matters and stepping into identity.

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But the other one, which you are touching on, is our support system of our environment, with the physical environment around us and the social environment connectedness.

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If we have those supports in place, we have a candy bowl versus a fruit bowl on the table.

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If we have friends who like to meet to go out for pastries versus meet to take a walk.

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Surrounding ourselves with supportive environments and social supports really is key for long-term success when you're talking about community and environment pieces.

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Sometimes that community support can look different than what we might assume that support could look like.

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For example, you're a monthly columnist for Faithful Living and authored a cookbook, Sustainable Kitchen.

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These could be supports and part of the community that support our healthy and wellness journey.

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What is your column, Faithful Living, about?

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Yeah.

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And again, like kind of rooting back to values.

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And for me, and we've talked about journeying, right?

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This is a lifelong journey that we're on and we all evolve and learn and grow.

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So I think, you know, my epiphany around weaving together different core values around faith and health and sustainability came together with the publishing of Sustainable Kitchen, which is a plant forward

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cookbook that came out in 2020.

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Again, when you're writing, you have this gift of reflecting, like time to just sit with your thoughts and reflect and put them together in some cohesive manner and share that with the world.

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I had those aha moments where, right, wait, these things aren't separate.

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That really, I guess if I were to step back and look at the big picture, it's a love story.

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This cookbook, I called it my passion

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project because it really did bring together these different areas that I cared about and showed me that it is this holistic, grounded, it is a way to engage with the world that we get to do multiple times a day, every day, because we all must eat.

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That then brought about the opportunity to now be a monthly columnist for an Anabaptist

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faith-based independent journal where I get to write a new column around faithful living and eating and, you know, any topic of my choice, and to have the opportunity to kind of reflect more, to write, to share out, see what resonates, and I hope support people on their journeys, that maybe it'll spark some little aha connections for others as they read.

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And I include new recipes every month too, so I always am hoping people can get hands

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on, right?

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Because this really is about lived experience and connection, right?

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It really does come down back around to connection and interconnection.

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And when we're touching our food, when we are mindful to how food is grown, raised, how we buy it and cook it, I see it as a way to live out my values with intention and with integrity.

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I love that.

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That intention and that integrity, and what you're taking into

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into your body to nourish your body can also nourish your soul.

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In your monthly column, you talk about diets not only food planning, but diet can be what you're putting into your brain.

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And the brain and the body and the mindfulness together brings about that whole wellness.

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How often do you find that folks are out of balance in one area and another, and when the balance is restored, their success is regained?

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It's a

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conversation that is common.

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I would say the majority of individuals engage a health and wellness coach or, you know, dietitian or other health professional because of the physical body.

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They are desiring improved health and wellness in their physical body somehow.

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Sometimes it's weight or blood sugars or cholesterol or heart.

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There's so many ways that people are thinking about that physical

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realm and when we invite the reflection.

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So no matter how they enter, we are inviting that holistic, okay, but you'll also tell me about all these parts because we know what is happening in our physical realm is connected.

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And so a common one I'll name is stress.

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The stress levels in our society, I would say most people are coming in with very high levels of chronic stress and it shows up.

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physically in the body in different ways.

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So we're just exploring, right?

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It's a conversation where we're exploring and we're making connections and having these realizations that, ah, if I want to be my best physical self, I also need to attend to my stress, my mental health, or my spiritual health.

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If I don't feel connected to something bigger than myself, well, where is meaning

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purpose.

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So that touches that spiritual realm.

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And I find many people, when we are doing the ratings of where you are in different areas, spiritual health is, wow, whoa.

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Many people will say, well, I don't have anything to say here, or it's not important to me.

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I don't know, because it's not something that is as attended to as focusing on physical health.

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So we kind of can have the conversation, and everything is always invitational.

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If they don't want to go there, right, there is

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no prescribing advising, but more just raising awareness.

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So yeah, your podcast title is so great, right?

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Raising connections.

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We're trying to do that.

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We're raising connections, raising awareness and mindfulness so that if they can be empowered to see how perhaps to be successful in this one area, it is attached to these other pieces too.

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That mind, body, wellness connection connected to our earth, connected to our

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food connected to our communities really forms a nest.

00:27:13 Speaker 1

And that nest and those folks that we choose to feather our nests with really makes a difference in our world and our wellness.

00:27:22 Speaker 1

How often do you find it's important that it's not just our tangible community, but in a digital day and age, it's also part of, like the folks listening to this podcast, the folks listening or reading your articles, it's that extended community as well.

00:27:37 Speaker 1

well of like-minded individuals.

00:27:39 Speaker 2

Yeah, I mean, there's so many ways to define community.

00:27:42 Speaker 2

And I love the expansiveness, or the invitation to expansiveness that technology allows for us, but also just stepping outside the box or say like, how do we create the community that we need?

00:27:58 Speaker 2

There's so much possibility in that.

00:28:01 Speaker 2

And so, yes, right, accessing, finding people and maybe like, you know, use, you know, people

00:28:08 Speaker 2

Again, we have a bias, I think, towards human-centric community, but thinking about the critters and the companions, right?

00:28:16 Speaker 2

How do we also hear from the kinship of all creation?

00:28:20 Speaker 2

And so I think there's also this beautiful, and this is maybe the wild church ego minister in me coming out that I don't always need to read more from a human being or to hear more from other human beings.

00:28:35 Speaker 2

Sometimes what I need to do is go outside.

00:28:37 Speaker 2

and be quiet and listen to the wind and walk among the trees and hear the birds and be still, which again, then helps ground me back to, wait, what is most important to me?

00:28:52 Speaker 2

I can hear maybe a little more clearly than if I just fill my days with noise and are looking outwardly to external voices to inform me of what I should be

00:29:07 Speaker 2

be paying attention to.

00:29:09 Speaker 2

So I think there's a balance, right?

00:29:10 Speaker 2

And we need both.

00:29:11 Speaker 2

We do need sounding boards and we need quiet and we need listening and we need talking.

00:29:18 Speaker 2

So I don't know if that makes sense, but again, maybe it comes back to the holistic balance and a broader definition of community.

00:29:25 Speaker 1

Absolutely.

00:29:27 Speaker 1

The connection I think you've made for our listeners and the community that you make and the connections you make for the folks that you serve as a nutritionist and a holistic wellness coach really

00:29:38 Speaker 1

sounds to me like feed your body, feed your mind, feed your soul, find your balance, and take the time for wellness so that you can perform the gifts that you were given.

00:29:52 Speaker 2

Beautiful.

00:29:53 Speaker 2

Beautiful.

00:29:53 Speaker 2

I'm seeing the nest woven in your words.

00:29:56 Speaker 1

If you could leave our listeners with one thought, they've heard the program, they're like, ooh, wellness, holistic, nutrition and dietitian.

00:30:05 Speaker 1

It might be that we may have folks sitting in our audience thinking, I never really thought my New Year's resolution about diet, health, and exercise might lead me to taking a walk in the woods to be quiet with the wind to figure out why I want to eat every chocolate bar I see.

00:30:21 Speaker 1

A lot of community wellness

00:30:22 Speaker 1

centers and hospital centers offer wellness programs.

00:30:28 Speaker 2

Finding a partner in the journey can really be encouraging, and we know accountability is, I would say, something that often clients who partner with me say is so valuable, that again, they can have some knowings, internal knowings, but having to articulate and show up and be accountable is really priceless.

00:30:48 Speaker 2

And so local hospitals are places to find dietitians and

00:30:52 Speaker 2

health coaches, community centers, libraries are excellent resources for, again, both digital and things in books and podcasts.

00:31:01 Speaker 2

So many, many different ways.

00:31:02 Speaker 2

And just word of mouth is surprising when you start talking.

00:31:06 Speaker 2

Some will be like, oh, you know what?

00:31:07 Speaker 2

I've met with someone or I have a name.

00:31:09 Speaker 2

So just asking the questions of your providers, your friends, your families, being curious.

00:31:15 Speaker 2

I think that mindset of curiosity will take you far.

00:31:20 Speaker 1

I appreciate you taking the time to come.

00:31:22 Speaker 1

and talk with us and have us approach health and nutrition and dietetics from a very different perspective, the holistic, the ecocentric, the kindred spirit version.

00:31:35 Speaker 1

If we would like to participate in your community by purchasing your book or reading your articles, wherever you might find them.

00:31:42 Speaker 2

The cookbook, Sustainable Kitchen, is available anywhere where you buy books, whether that's online or an independent bookstore.

00:31:52 Speaker 2

And then my faithful living and eating column is published monthly, third Thursdays at Anabaptist World online.

00:32:02 Speaker 1

Thank you for joining us and making some really interesting connections.

00:32:08 Speaker 1

I hope we've touched some listeners and they've renewed their goals for this year in a way that helps them reach some success.

00:32:16 Speaker 1

Thank you, Heather.

00:32:17 Speaker 2

With a lot of gratitude, and we know, right, the practice of gratitude has helped benefits.

00:32:22 Speaker 2

on its own.

00:32:24 Speaker 2

So thank you for creating this space for the conversation today.

00:32:27 Speaker 1

Absolutely.

00:32:28 Speaker 1

I hope the connections we've raised today stay with you as you engage your community through Critters, Companions, Commerce, and Agriculture.

00:32:36 Speaker 1

Join me again next week.

00:32:37 Speaker 1

We'll make some more connections.

00:32:39 Speaker 1

This program is a production of Raising Connections Media Company, hosted and produced by Rashan Mayer and edited and mixed by Robin Temple.