Food has always been the still point of my turning world.
Eating and gathering together is a beautifully universal instinct, as we are a community-craving species.
I grew up in an Adventist household where many Friday nights were spent watching Veggie Tales and setting dinner tables (a job given to little me), while watching my mom prepare elaborate meals to be shared with friends for bible study, holidays, or spontaneous yet organized dinner parties.
Majority of my favorite memories were made in a warm home, full of friends and family, which smelled of good food being baked in the oven or sautéed on the stove in a cast iron pan alongside many, many pots. My aunts are all incredible cooks, and no, I’m not being biased. I am forever grateful for the culturally diverse meals and traditions my family exposed me to; always experimenting, remaining open to trying something new. That curiosity has stayed with me forever, both in the comfort of my own kitchen and beyond.
Being an Adventist, the topics surrounding health, wellness, and vegetarianism were nothing new (and acted as the equivalent Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). And though my mom is a meat loving woman, we had the best of both worlds.
Despite having a healthy body and colorful meals provided everyday, I, like many young teenage girls looking for approval and striving for perfection within the limiting and unrealistic bounds of traditional beauty standards of the early 2000s, restricted myself of food, forming a year long relationship with myself that was both punishing and unforgiving.
This is where my infatuation with nutrition and the mind body connection began. Watching my once nourished body become unwell and then nourished again through certain foods, opened my eyes to the importance of various nutrients, making a lasting impact on my outlook towards my relationship with both food and myself.
A few years later, I began having extremely bad period pain- the kind that cause you to miss school, track meets, and unable to move or keep down food. I was prescribed hormonal contraceptives, and took them religiously from age 16 until my 21st birthday. My doctors believed that I had endometriosis, and didn’t give me many options to heal, other than pills.
My stomach would bloat, closely resembling an expecting mother in her second trimester. My moods were up and down- riddled with PMDD, and my breasts were fibrocystic- and this was all considered normal by healthcare professionals.
In 2015, I decided enough was enough, and took matters into my own hands. It was then that I found healing through plant-based eating, and exploring my intuition. Within a month, my cysts disappeared and my pain subsided. Taking myself off of hormonal contraceptives meant one full year of anxiety, depression, and lack of ovulation, etc. After, my body regulated itself, and I was discovering my body for the first time it felt like, both mentally and emotionally. It was empowering. I was empowered.
In 2018, I enrolled myself in the Institute of Integrative Nutrition, promising myself to help those also suffering from menstrual pain and disorder, and graduated in 2019 as a certified holistic health coach. One month before finishing my certification in February 2019, I began hosting community dinners in Bushwick in partnership with Mayday space. Through word of mouth and Instagram, I was soon invited to cater for large and small events in the wellness, fashion, and sustainability world like Sustainable Brooklyn in partnership with Mara Hoffman, Lunya, The Solutions Project, and Black Girl Magik. Thus, Veggie Mom Club was born.
Just as my family gathered and cared for each other through food and community, my first forms of outreach began through the dinner table, becoming my way of sharing my services and spaces with strangers and familiar faces.