most importantly, i’m a momma
sower of seeds. 🌱
cultivator of community.
wide fun spectrum (enneagram 7)

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

I love real connection: a hang around a fire pit on a chilly night. Sitting and swinging on a front porch swing or rocker. Chatting over a good meal or sipping a warm cup of tea on cozy couches at a cool coffeeshop.

I love to travel, to journey, to truly experience a place and its people. And I love to learn about - and from - people.

I have many exciting possibilities to travel in 2024, and I am dubbing it my year of travel. It is not how my usual spring and summer go; I’m us usually up to my elbows in soil and seeds of all kinds, so I’m putting in some golden raspberry bushes, easy-to-care-for perennials like asparagus, rosemary and thyme, and I’m foregoing some annual favorites that need more care like squash, cucumbers and watermelons so that I can really lean into this season of adventure and movement. I’ll be putting down smaller roots, perhaps in places all over the world this year. I consider traveling and getting to know new people and places to be a great privilege, and I am filled with gratitude for these opportunities. On the list of possibilities:
Houston, TX
Breckenridge, CO
London and other parts of the UK
Brussels, Belgium
Switzerland (towns yet to be determined, so I’m open to suggestions)
Turin, Italy (Fingers crossed on this one. 🤞🏼 I’m hoping to be a southern United States delegate to the Terra Madre. This is a bucket list dream!)

Interests

growing. gardening. good food. building community, working with my hands, my heart and my head.

• photography
• music festivals
• cooking
• yoga
• sauna
• gardening
• thrifting
• homesteading
• hiking
• kayaking
• camping
• beaches
• mountains
• mindfulness
• family
• parenting
• community building
• fly fishing
• hammocking
• crocheting
• spiritual growth
• enneagram
• clean eating
• pickleball
• backyard chickens
• buy local
• cold plunge

Music, Movies, and Books

Mumford & Sons, Lumineers, Gregory Alan Isakoff, Noah Kahan, Brandi Carlile, High Women, Alison, Russell, Josh Ritter, Darlingside, Chris Pureka, Bleachers, Avett Brothers, Dolly Parton, Drew Holcomb,

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I think the most amazing thing I’ve done is raise two beautiful young people, who each represent a different part of me. It’s pretty wild - watching a little bit of your heart walk around out in the world and find their own path. I have learned so much from parenting these two beautiful souls.

I also founded and directed a nonprofit that educates and empowers young people through hands-on learning in school and community gardens. I never dreamt I would become a nonprofit director; I just wanted kiddos to know how their food grows. 🤪 When I resigned my position in the summer of ‘22, we were growing alongside 1300 young people each week. I’ve since founded a new company, called down to earth learning, where I build and rejuvenate garden beds and train educators who work with young people to integrate gardening into their teaching or youth empowerment programming. I truly love watching little people grow; they’re such natural gardeners. I feel incredibly grateful to be so connected to the earth in this way.

Growing kids. Growing food. Growing community. 🌱

Teach, Learn, Share

The grounding principle of my life is: why on earth, if not to grow? I love exploring a place through its food and land. I am educating myself more on my privilege and understanding more deeply all the ways this country was built on stolen lands by stolen hands. 😔 I have more to learn, and I am open to it.

One of my favorite poems is by Anais Nin:

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.

Living never wore one out so much as the effort not to live.

Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.

Perfection is static, and I am in full progress.

Abnormal pleasures kill the taste for normal ones.

Another favorite is Wild Geese by Mary Oliver:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

What I Can Share with Hosts

- a warm and welcoming home
-good conversation
- hilarious brother and sister antics from tuxedo cat siblings who are curious, snuggly and very loud purrers
- good, clean, homemade food
- tips on where to go to eat in East Nashville
- I’ll even take you downtown, but I might not join you in the touristy shenanigans; I am easily overstimulated by the press of humanity downtown at the honky-tonks.
- gardening tips 🌱

Countries I’ve Visited

Argentina, Australia, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, England, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Italy, Jordan, Lesotho, Malaysia, Mexico, Nepal, Netherlands, Puerto Rico, Saint Lucia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, United States, Vatican City State, Virgin Islands, British

Countries I’ve Lived In

Greece, United States