Welcome to the Nurture podcast/ blog.

Let’s create the beautiful world our hearts know is possible.

Ginger Edwards Ginger Edwards

Garden videos from North Fork 53

Thanks for checking out our free garden tip series! Please leave any comments below and let us know what you would like to learn more about!

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Communitea Resilience Guide for COVID 19

First, wherever you are reading this I hope you, your family, and loved ones are safe. Brigham and I are staying put on the coast and working on growing our medicinal herbs and tea blends for this spring. We’re prepared to stick to the farm for the next 4-6 weeks, or as long as needed to help stop the spread of this virus.

I am hoping this blog post will help to:

  1. Tune into the resilient and nurture culture things that are happening right now .

  2. Share resources that can help you or someone you know get through this safely.

  3. Get grounded so you can help stop the spreading of stress, fear, panic, and anxiety. 

This is an unprecedented moment in history and one that people will be reflecting back on for generations to come. Let’s make it the story of how we all stayed in our hearts, helped each other through, shared resources and decided together to create a healthier more equitable and peaceful world going forward. Peace begins with a healthy, and calm YOU. Your energy now has a powerful effect on those around you. The deeper we ground into our mental, emotional, and physical self-care, the more resilient we will stay. And the more resilient we stay, the stronger we’ll be for our families, friends, coworkers, and community at large. 

“And The People Stayed Home

And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently.

And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.

And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.”

- Kitty O'Meara

Not every section below will apply to your situation. Take what works for you and leave the rest. I borrowed this whole format from MarieForleo.com (one of my fave coaches) and added to it with things that inspire me and I find useful so please check out her website for lots more info and guidance!

Herbal Resources

The DragonTree Apothecary and Dr. Peter Borton video blogs on COVID 19

Vital Ways Herbal School Page on COVID 19

Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine Immunity pages

Recipe and Home Cooking Resources

The Smitten Kitchen

Real Food Outlaws

New York Times Cooking

The Minimalist Baker

Oregon Businesses Help and Support

COMMUNICATION MATERIAL:

In an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19, Governor Brown released an Executive Order “Stay Home, Save Lives” on March 23. This new policy orders Oregonians to stay in their homes whenever possible and includes stronger language around approved activities and business operations.

Check the  Oregon Health Authority’s COVID-19 page daily for new messages, new social tiles as well as social tiles that have been translated in eight languages.

BUSINESS RESOURCES & ASSISTANCE:

RESOURCES FOR THE MOST UP-TO-DATE INFORMATION:  

TRAVEL RECOMMENDATIONS: 

  • Travel Oregon’s Travel Alerts

  • Check the CDC for countries with current travel restrictions

How To Manage Coronavirus-Related Stress, Fear & Anxiety

Here are some Marie Forleo TV episodes on fear, stress, and anxiety that will help you cultivate a calmer, stronger, healthier mental state.

If you’re struggling with the negativity around you, watch:

Stressed out about life, kids, money, work, health and… everything? Watch:

Virtual therapy/counseling:

Meditation apps:

Funny, Inspiring, and Feel-Good Responses During the Coronavirus

Did you know that research shows laughing is proven to reduce stress and improve your immune system? 

Here are some IG posts that are brightening my day:

If you’re looking for feel-good accounts to follow, here are some great resources:

How to Stay Active & Keep Exercising Without The Gym 

Staying physically active and getting regular workouts is critical right now. Working out keeps your immune system strong and your state of mind clear, calm, and stress free. I cannot stress the importance of staying active and strong enough! Here are a few resources to make sure you stay moving.

  • DownDog App has made all their apps completely free until April 1st. You can choose from hundreds of at-home yoga, HIIT, Barre, and 7-minute workouts. 

  • Glo is offering free online yoga, meditation and pilates workouts to help deal with anxiety.

  • Fitness Marshall is my favorite dance fitness guru on youtube!

  • Yoga with Adriene offers amazing free yoga classes on YouTube, and is welcoming to all abilities and body types.

  • This article from Glamour lists 31 of the best free fitness apps to try.

  • Ryan Heffington, a well-known dance choreographer in LA, is leading scheduled dance parties on IG Live for folks who are quarantined.

How to Educate & Entertain Kids That Are Suddenly In Your House — All The Time!

Here are some at-home learning resources and activities:

When in doubt, turn to YouTube! There are channels for:

Social distancing during coronavirus doesn’t have to mean total isolation or feeling lonely. Technology offers countless ways to stay connected to your family, friends, and community.

  • NextDoor has quickly become an essential way to connect with your neighbors while you’re hunkering down inside. You can connect with others, check in on the vulnerable around you, and if you have extra supplies or an essential that someone else needs, you can drop them at your neighbor’s door. 

  • Facetime, Skype, and Zoom hangouts: sounds obvious I know. But most of my dearest friends and family do not live in the same place. We have coffee dates, lunches and hangout time regularly. 

  • Netflix Parties. This Chrome plugin lets you watch your favorite Netflix show in tandem with friends, making you feel like you’re at a slumber party from the comfort of your own home.  

  • Take a virtual field trip! Watch sea animals at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, go on a tour of the Louvre, explore Yellowstone National Park, or hop on over to the Van Gogh museum.

  • This is a fantastic blog post written by a cancer survivor who spent nearly 9 months self-isolating last year and has some great tips on how to stay happy, healthy, and connected to the people you love.

Ways to Serve Your Community During the Coronavirus

At a time like this, we must keep the most vulnerable top of mind. Lots of communities have been hit extremely hard and we need to offer all the help we can. (And if you’re one of the people who needs assistance, please tell us in the comments how we can help. We’ll continue to update this blog post with resources as we get them.)

  • Donate to your local food bank. If possible, money is better than groceries. Why? Because local food banks can often buy food in bulk, helping them purchase more food at lower prices.  

  • Keep paying people if you can. Can you keep paying your kid’s daycare or house cleaner? Or if not the full rate, perhaps a portion?

  • Post on Nextdoor offering to do grocery shopping for those in your neighborhood who are at-risk.

  • Buy gift cards from local businesses to support them now while they’re strained or at risk of closing for good. 

  • Support your artists. Patreon held a Weird Stream-a-thon to raise money for artists financially affected by Covid-19. You can contribute to this fundraiser via PayPal here, or apply to receive support here.

  • Help out your local farmers by joining a CSA or ordering meat and dairy for delivery from a local producer. The closing of restaurants has hit farms hard and they are having trouble paying for labor during spring planting season. also: You could order teas from your local herb farm- hint hint.

Many thanks again to Marie Forleo and Travel Oregon for parts of this list. I have added my 2 cents and will keep adding resources as I come across them! Please do let me know in the comments if you have found a resource online that has inspired or helped you and I will be happy to add it here. We will get through this thing together! Sending so much love to you from our farm and retreat on the Oregon coast.

Drink tea. Be well!

love Ginger

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Love reclaimed

It’s the day before Valentine’s Day. I feel called to write this for all the Valentine’s Days that I felt disappointed or sad or just like a loser because I wasn’t having the experience I saw on TV or in movies. I didn’t have flowers and chocolates or a candle lit romantic dinner.

I had real life. Which meant working all day and coming home tired or having a boyfriend that is too broke to do anything or being single and just pretending to not care about any of it. This year I’m married and my husband is attending school in Portland all day tomorrow so I won’t see him at all. And…. I’m fine with it.

rumi-love.jpg

I realized somewhere along the way that love isn’t what happens to us on one day of the year or on a picture perfect date. It’s not exclusive to partnership either and doesn’t always look pretty or smell like roses. Love can be messy and confusing. Love is being broke and single and tired. Love is being married and working to put your partner through school. Love is taking care of yourself. It’s walking your dog. It’s recycling. It’s working through childhood issues. It’s letting go of judgement in a fight. It’s deciding to forgive yourself and move on.

Love is the ultimate power we share with all of life. The urge to create, to heal, to comfort, to nurture, to hold and protect, to inspire and to hope. It is the most human and also the most universal of energies. It is the reason we keep getting up in the morning no matter if it’s February 14th or if there is a heart shaped box of chocolates waiting for us from a secret admirer.

This year I have the urge to start reclaiming all the traditional American holidays and making them work for me instead of me getting worked up about not attaining some level of holiday perfection. Not that I’m particularly mad at sending cards or heart shaped candies. I do like Valentine’s Day in theory- but it’s time to run it through a nurture culture filter where we keep what we like and then design something better with the rest.

At North Fork 53 we held Hatsugama (first tea of the New Year) on January 1st because it felt like such a healing and honoring ceremony for our lives here on a tea farm. So repurposing Valentine’s Day for LOVE in my way will look different than yours. I encourage you to think about what fits your life, needs and style. We are all different and our hearts need different ways to express themselves. It’s less about how it’s done and more about intention shift. Most importantly it’s about not feeling constrained by rituals of a holiday that hasn’t evolved with our shifting culture and world.

What could Valentine’s Day reclaimed look like for nurture culture 2020?

For me I will be alone. My husband is in Massage School in Portland won’t be home until late that evening or the next morning. So I have time to think about how I want to honor LOVE in my own way. Honestly I do better loving him than I do myself so it’s more of a challenge to think of love not as romance but as deep nurturance. This is the most profound form of love. At our core we want to be cared for, acknowledged, seen and supported for the imperfect humans we all are. To LOVE another is to do this for them and to be LOVED is to be able to receive in return. It’s also the nature of LOVE to not get it right and to flounder, forgive, and try again. The challenge is to keep on LOVING through all of it.

Valentine’s Day in it’s commercialized form has taken this massive elemental mystical life experience and turned it into a narrow and exclusive club. It’s like taking the entire ocean and presenting it as one very expensive bottle of designer salt water that is only worthwhile if someone else buys it as a gift for you.

LOVE is the ocean. It’s the blood in our veins. It’s our birthright. It’s never not with us and we are never incapable of being loved or of loving. It of course starts with our own self. For as RuPaul so famously says “If you don’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?”

So the parts I’m keeping.

rumiquote.jpg

Sending cards to express LOVE. We don’t create letters or works of art that move through the physical mail much these days. Making handmade Valentine’s is now a rare act of self expression and caring in a world of emails and texts. Also who doesn’t like getting a Valentine in the mail? Send to everyone who you can think of who could use some LOVE. Use valentines not as a popularity contest in school but as a way for kids to learn to express LOVE in art and words with the world around them.

Chocolate. Yes. Cacao is powerful euphoric heart opening plant medicine. I’m not talking about Hershey’s. We have been cheated into thinking sugar and chemicals = chocolate. Not so. Dark chocolate in its pure form benefits the mind, body and spirit. Take cacao for the medicine it is and it’s good brain healing for this dark and cold time of the season. Herbal elixirs of rose, cacao, chili and vanilla can remind us how elevating real heart tonic can be.

Flowers. It’s February so it’s not bloom season for where I live in Northern Oregon. There may be a stray branch of flowering quince or an early daffodil or camellia blossom but for the most part spring is still a month off. I choose ditching imported roses for a colorful feast of red winter beets, glistening purple cabbage and red ruffled kale or making a bouquet of early spring branches with their new budding beauty to gift to yourself or to a friend/love.

Romance. If you happened to be partnered this can be fun but more often than not the pressure of getting it right just turns it into a performance rather than a good time. Romance mostly equals putting care and thought into something rather than money. It’s romantic to make a good meal and to sit and have a deep conversation. It’s romantic to give yourself time for a long bath or to read a great book. It’s romantic to listen, to believe in someone’s vision, to give your energy to a passionate cause. Let’s broaden the definition of romance to include deep attention, presence and creativity.

Nurture Culture will mean different things to each individual person. Perhaps what nurtures me and my creative soul is not what nurtures yours. Let this Valentine’s Day be about listening to your own heart to find out what makes it shine brighter. The main thing to remember is that we can create the world we want to live in. We are not losing if we do not match up with the imagery and expectations that are handed to us from the media and marketing agencies. We are also not losing if we do adore everything Valentines it makes us happy as is. We get to choose what we want to celebrate and how. If we choose LOVE we choose well. If we choose LOVE for self first we create R-evolution. If we LOVE ourselves and by doing so overflow LOVE out into the world then everyone wins.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Nurture Culture 2020 R-evolution in progress,

Ginger

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Sowing the seeds of Nurture Culture

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I’ve been working on my business development skills lately. Trying to create sales funnels, and learn about marketing platforms but honestly today my heart just isn’t in it. Two young children were swept off a local beach a few days ago and neither of them survived. There was an abnormally large tide coupled with 20’ waves pounding the north coast and I, along with many others went down to see it in action. The ocean is a majestic thing when it’s pitching its full weight against the offshore rocks and sending spray hundreds of feet into the air. It’s not a mystery why people went down to see it. What is a mystery is why I felt called to go to that specific beach at that moment. It’s not beach I normally go to walk our dog Rosco and I had actually just taken him on good long walk a bit further south in Oswald West State park. So why when I got back in my car did I have the notion to drive north and down to a winding, pot holed filled road along the ocean? I told myself it would be fun to get a different view of the ocean from there. What I got a view of was lined up rescue vehicles and a helicopter making low and slow sweeps in circles searching the churning white capped surf.

It made me stop and become aware of the tragedy taking place. At the same time I was happily just walking my dog a few miles away, another person’s world was being torn apart.

I drove home not knowing what had happened exactly but knowing that someone had very likely died that day and my heart was heavy. Later I found out it was a 4 year old and 7 year old with their father who had been swept in by a sneaker wave. He survived and the kids did not. Now how does one even begin to cope with such trauma? And if losing your children wasn’t bad enough you get to live, and then relive, that horrifying moment the rest of your life. How do you move on?

I keep on wondering why I ended up there. Maybe it was just a coincidence but I tend to not believe much in those anymore. As I watched the news of the tragedy unfold and spread throughout our coastal community online there arose in people anger and judgement towards the father. “How could he be so stupid” “Didn’t he see the danger signs?” Of course there also many voices of sadness and grief as well. And at first I was shocked to read what felt like mean spirited and heartless attacks on this poor man who had just experience the death of his children. I found myself being angry and judgemental about people being angry and judgemental.

Then as I sat with it some more, my heart spoke up. This is what it said:

“You were brought to bear witness that day to understand that life is precious and that life is fragile. The children that died were innocent and lost into the ocean’s arms. The grief and sadness in those swells released waves of emotion pent up in many people, so can you see how death became a healer in disguise? It is in these times that we reveal our shadows and the heart’s hidden pain. The choice to be in the heart is everyday and the path forward for humanity is to honor the reality that is life. Nothing is permanent, all that rises will pass away again and again. The lesson for you is to let go of fear and to see the fullness of living. The earth desperately needs the human heart to engage with it. Speak the words of peace and love. This will align you more and more with your light and power. Move forward in love. The truth is everywhere written in the living earth.”

That conversation with my heart lead me back to a concept that I was first introduced to by my friend (and amazing heart centered being) Iris Sullivan Daire (dreambirdstudio.com). “Nurture Culture” she called it. It is her vision of how she moves in the world creating art and healing with plant magic in the form of natural dyes and weavings. I immediately felt my heart respond when she said Nurture Culture in a way that happens when the brain gets an “aha!” moment- but this time that “aha!” was coming from my chest. It was as if the big picture that my heart and brain both needed to contain all the crazy ideas, projects, businesses and gardens that I keep creating and knocking down and creating again finally had a name.

In American Culture I often feel like a failure because I keep not arriving at the places we have all been told we are meant to go. Nurture Culture helped me realize that I wasn’t arriving mainly because I’ve been on a path towards a different destination all along. When I found a name for it I then realized it isn’t actually a place to go but a releasing of many layers of enculturated fear, shame, judgement and anger. It is putting the heart in the driver’s seat and using the brain as a helpful (if not always correct) navigation system.

In a Nurture Culture I wonder how we would respond to an event like a tragic accidental loss of young children in our community? In a Nurture Culture I wonder if we would know the ways to feel and express our grief without the need to make it right or wrong? In a Nurture Culture I wonder how we would treat the ocean differently and if we could honor the life within it as much as ours on land?

I don’t have the answers for anyone but myself. Each heart has a different journey and voice to express. If I have one purpose I am aware of it’s to hold space for others to connect with their own hearts. I believe in doing so we will heal, envision and create a future for generations to come that looks very different than the reality we find ourselves in today. One of peace, balance, health and love.

I guess that’s why I found myself at that beach a few days ago. To remind me that the time to create this Nurture Culture vision is now. Life is short and hearts all around me are in need. Let everything I do be a seed towards this vision. Let it help me see grief disguised as anger. Let these children’s deaths not be for nothing. Let this heart breaking moment be a gift that offers us our grief as a healer, unifier and inspiration to love even more.

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