Collective Knead began during the chaos of COVID.
At a time when the world was flooded with conflicting messages about health, nutrition, and survival, I felt compelled to create a small space where things could be simplified. As a mother, teacher, student, and nutritionist, I wanted to help people navigate through the noise, to declutter the confusion and return to something more grounded and human, especially when I saw kids losing their parents at such a young age, unnecessarily so.
So I stepped far outside my comfort zone.
I taught myself basic web development, built a website from scratch, researched and wrote articles on health and nutrition, developed recipes using local ingredients, and experimented with natural skincare remedies to help heal topical health issues. Along the way, I worked with clients facing everyday health challenges, trying to guide them back to balance in a world that seemed increasingly unbalanced.
It felt meaningful. It felt like purpose. But life, as it often does, had other plans.
I was pulled into the world of finance and restaurants in a way I never anticipated and, truthfully, never desired but I had bills to pay. The food industry had always been part of my life, but instead of creating recipes and working intimately with food, I found myself building financial models, formulas, budgets, systems, and protocols for a group of restaurants.
It was relentless work.
The food industry is demanding in the best of circumstances, and for a woman it can be especially unforgiving. The pace is relentless, the expectations high, and the pressure constant. Over time, I pushed past physical, emotional, and mental limits that I didn’t even know existed.
And when you stretch yourself that far, there is always a cost. The cost, for me, was my health. So this is a journey of trying to restore balance… Of slowly rebuilding the systems within my body and mind that were pushed too far for too long.
There’s a quiet myth that exists around people in the nutrition and health world, that we always eat perfectly, that we never fall into bad habits, that we never reach for junk food during moments of stress or exhaustion.
If those people truly exist, I am certainly not one of them.
My first love has always been food, and like many people, my relationship with it reflects the emotional landscape of my life. Stress, fatigue, and pressure have a way of finding their way onto a plate. And that realization brought me to an uncomfortable truth: I cannot truly heal my body until I begin healing my mind.
But when I lifted my head up, to start this journey I realized, my website had crashed…
Years of work, research, recipes, and writing disappeared overnight. For a brief moment, I was devastated. It felt like losing a part of myself — something I had built quietly in the early hours of the morning and late at night between life’s many responsibilities.
POOF Gone!
So this version of Collective Knead might not look nor tell the same stories, but it will however tell a story nontheless…
It will be less idealistic and far more honest about what it means to be a mother trying to nourish a family while navigating work, exhaustion, and life’s unpredictability. Years ago, I might have been the person waking at 3 a.m. to ensure every dinner was freshly prepared, breakfast was ready, and lunches were packed. That person, however, no longer exists.
Healing requires space. It requires honesty. It requires time that we often forget to give ourselves. If I am going to restore my health and find balance again, I know one thing for certain: I must nourish not only my family, but myself.
So... currently, my survival seems to depend largely on my daughter’s ghastly green smoothies, endless cups of manna brew, and ginger tea but hopefully not for long. You will most certainly meet her throughout this journey. She represents a beautiful intersection between old wisdom and new thinking, and without question she is the quiet force behind much of what Collective Knead is becoming.
And perhaps this new chapter is not about perfection, but about something far more meaningful…. Learning, healing, and kneading life back together, one day at a time.
JOIN US!