The unexpected grief of being well nourished

I picked up a gallon of raw milk for the first time today. As I took each 1/2 gallon jug into my arms, a whole heap of unexpected grief washed over me. I choked back tears that I shouldn’t have while I was talking with Farmer Daphne. I wish I’d let her seen how moved I was (am) by the care and stewardship she and her family practice for the land they’re leasing and the cows they generously love.

Once I got in the car, the tears flowed almost the whole 40 min way home. It was like holding those jugs of milk (that I’d then placed into their mini cooler with ice packs and strapped into the front seat) had touched some ancient memory residing in the very matrix of my cells. Memories that connect me to a lineage of cattle ranchers and goat farmers, a lineage where being in this intimate of a relationship with food wasn’t just a privilege but a necessary to survive, a prerequisite to thrive.

Grief is often talked about in the form of loss. Something you once had that’s no longer here. A person you love who can no longer receive your love (not in the same way at least). These are understandable forms of grief.

But what of the grief for the things you never had? The grief that whispers its presence through dreams and sensations.

Or what of the grief that comes when you’re at a crossroads and you have to make a choice between one and the other? The grief that walks with you when you’re at that split in the trail, you can’t go both ways, there’s only one, and you must choose, which means not choosing the other. There’s a loss of possibility, of what could be.

What about that grief?

That kind of grief is confusing, and at times lonely. People don’t understand it or why you’re upset about something you never had.

I often get asked “why are you so sad?” when I speak of my grief, which only pisses me off because sad is such a boring word to me. I’m not sad. Most of my grief has a fiery essence to it. I’m enraged that food sovereignty has been systematically stripped away from me, from us. Native seedkeepers are sent to prison for trying to grow the food of their ancestors. The descendants of enslaved people rarely have the opportunity to steward land despite the land being made of their ancestor’s blood, sweat, tears, songs, and memories. Big Ag sues tiny farmers when their GMO corn is found growing amongst the tiny farmer’s organic corn. Family farming operations are pushed to buy into the industrialization of food by growing plants that rely on synthetic inputs and basing their stability on future production, which could easily be wiped out by a flood, a fire, a severe windstorm, or a pest outbreak. All things that are so far out of control, we could never predict. Is that really stability? We could, of course, have a way to predict what might be coming if we had the wisdom of ancestors and their relationship to place passed down through the generations. There’s always order to the chaos. We just don’t have a wide enough scope to see it because we only think about our lifetime. If 7 generations of wisdom had been kept alive by a place’s people, we would know the patterns.

A friend from Bolivia told me that growing up, there was an older man who would carry fresh raw milk from his farm on his back to their house. They would gather the thick, luscious cream and put it on their version of a baguette, sometimes with sweet jam. I teared up when she shared this. What a sweet memory, and god, do I want that to be a part of my life here. To be that intimate with the people and beings involved in nourishing me.

I grieve for the way of life that was community centered. My ability and (unearned) privilege to buy into a herd share (because Colorado has made it illegal to buy raw milk without “owning” a cow…just another way to control access to nourishing food) so I can be well nourished is my tiny little action to see more of what I want in the world: food sovereignty, community care, and the birthright to be well nourished. Where I choose to place my attention and what actions grow from that attention are the only things I can control. So I make those choices with love and devotion not only for myself and my body (and the potential body that could be formed and birthed from my body), but I make them with love and IN DEVOTION TO the world I want to create, am creating.

I grieve for the choices I have to make along the way that will send me down different paths. And the path I don’t take (and that you don’t take) needs to be grieved too, especially when that split in the path leads to two entirely different life experiences.

I’m in conversation with several friends about kids. Do we want them or not? If we do choose to, then there’s the grief that comes from no longer living a life that’s easy, one where I can do what I want when I want how I want. If we choose not, then there’s the grief that comes with a life where we don’t experience another level of our humanity through parenting. We can’t have both in this instance. It’s one or the other. And at some point, a choice will have to be made. And a ritual to honor that choice and that grief will be held to also hold me in who I’ll be becoming. But for now, I’m in the in-between, biding my time til Creator says, “it’s time. Which one?”

Oh, then there’s the deep grief that arises for the younger version of me who was struggling so much with her body and food. The grief for all the times I didn’t allow myself to be deeply nourished by the food I greatly enjoyed because food and exercise were the only things I could control during a time when everything felt chaotic and I didn’t believe I had a choice or a say in the matter. The younger version of me who believed nourishment meant making herself smaller and smaller until there was almost nothing left, yet being praised along the way for how flat her belly was and how strong her arms were. The version of me who wanted so desperately to be told that she was good enough, not because she was so disciplined with her workouts or so committed to her “health”, but because her enoughness has been inherent from the beginning. She wanted to be told she’d always been enough and always would be enough, regardless of how her body looked or how well she followed the rules.

Who knew that picking up a gallon of raw milk would have me processing so much grief. Perhaps it’s because food is information. And when we feed ourselves the information of nourishment and Aliveness, our cells recognize it. Because this is the kind of food that every single one of our ancestors ate and what our biology and physiology is made from. And while I love a creamy box of mac and cheese and I can house a bag of chips faster than most people, my body feels numb after. It’s not pulsing with Aliveness the way it is when I eat food fresh from my garden, or raw milk from a well-loved cow fed lush green grass, all grown under the same sun that grows the food in my garden. So when we invite this kind of information into our bodies, our bodies light up with recognition and remembrance. It connects us to the First Mother and to all the mothers along the way who fed us the nectar of life. It gives us the resources to hold the grief and the anger, which ultimately means we can hold more joy and more pleasure.

We are worthy of being well nourished, designed to be well nourished, really. And yet, with that, comes waves of unexpected grief awakening us to the reminder that it doesn’t have to be this way, was never supposed to be this way. This kind of grief seeds hope of a greater possibility for ourselves and all the ones who come after us.

This kind of grief can only be soothed with devotion, mobilizing it into action so that others may reclaim their birthright to be well nourished, to be in intimate relationship with the land and their food and their community, to remember their body as the holy ground it is, made of mountains of muscle, forests of fat, rivers of blood, thickets of bones. That is you. You are That.