Hello, my friend!
One small housekeeping note before we dive in: the art opening I mentioned for the 18th has been pushed to the fall — September or October, a cooler night. Cross it off your calendar for now and I’ll keep you posted. :))
This week I’ve been thinking about the mind — specifically the well-worn roads mine tends to slip down — and how the earth has a quiet way of pulling us back. Today: a practice that actually works, a grain you need to meet, and a cookbook I’ve been looking for all over the house.
↓ In today’s email:
- This week’s inspiration: How to quiet a busy mind
- Latest blog post: Why Millet Is Your New Best Friend
- What I’ve been searching for: A great Italian garden cookbook
This Week’s Inspiration: Quieting A Busy Mind
Ideally, our orientation is open to the heavens but grounded into the earth. With that earth energy, we look to growing things — whether in pots on your back stoop or, if you are an urban dweller, maybe on the fire escape. Nothing delights more than picking cherry tomatoes warmed by the sun and fresh basil. Touching soil helps us feel connected to the earth and the food it provides.
In my 20s, I lived in New York. Now I’m a bit of a country mouse — hearing coyotes howl in the evening, cicadas, even frogs, and seeing the occasional egret and heron and hawk. Long before I should be awake, the sonorous chirps enter my consciousness and reverberate inside my body. How are you connecting?
The poet John O’Donahue believed there is a part of us that is always complete and beautiful. He said:
"There is a place in you where you have never been wounded, where there’s still a sureness in you, where there’s a seamlessness in you, and where there is a confidence and tranquility in you."
I aspire to that place. But finding it isn’t always easy.
I’m not alone in this, at least according to my clients. Our minds are busier than usual. Some of the strategies I used 20 years ago to help people calm down simply aren’t enough now.
In Chinese medicine, the busy mind often shows up as heat: agitation, irritability, a gut that won’t cooperate. What we can’t emotionally process sometimes makes our tummy hurt. Things we can’t quite let go of can show up as constipation. The gut and the mind are in constant conversation.
For me, recalibration looks like turning off my phone at 7pm, and soil and food. It’s in the abundance of Swiss chard, which is begging to be picked from my garden, the bolting kale, the fresh asparagus, green and purple, topped with French butter and Malden salt. The connection with the earth redirects my energy from the dangerous neighborhood of my head into my hands and into the soil.
How do you recalibrate? How do you steady an unsteady mind? I’d love to hear.
Latest Blog Post
Why Millet Is Your New Best Friend (Especially in Midlife)
Since we’re talking food, let’s give a quick nod to the ancient grain of millet. Am I overselling it? Perhaps — but this unsung heroine is having her day. Millet is gluten-free, low on the glycemic index, and from a Chinese medicine perspective, it nourishes the yin — the cooling, moistening force that we want very much to hold onto as we move through midlife. It also does something quiet and important for your hormones: its fiber helps move used estrogen out of the body rather than letting it recirculate and amplify symptoms. I’ve been eating it as a savory breakfast bowl every morning and I am genuinely not going back. The full post walks you through why it works and exactly how I eat it.
What I’ve Been Searching For
Vegetables from an Italian Garden: Season-By-Season Recipes
This is the book I have been looking for all over the house — we have two copies and I cannot find either of them. In the spirit of everything newly summer and gardening, it has been a great resource over the years for planning a garden to both enjoy and feed you. Season by season, it shows you what to grow and what to cook with it. Very much in the spirit of everything we’ve talked about this week — summer, soil, feeding yourself well. And I genuinely cannot find my copies.
Wishing you a week with your hands in something — dirt, dough, whatever quiets you.
Dr. Catherine