The Liz Moody Podcast - Kale & Caramel’s Lily Diamond — Essential Oils, Natural Healing With Herbs, Dealing With Grief, And Self-Love

Episode Date: June 20, 2018

Lily Diamond (@lilydiamond) is the woman behind the beautiful Kale & Caramel blog, where she shares fresh, creative recipes, travel tips, and more. Her cookbook, Kale & Caramel: Recipes for Body, Heart, and Table features 80 vegetarian and vegan recipes created around various herbs and flowers. She’s also a beautiful writer and she’s really, really smart (she might not tell you this, but she went to Yale). Lily spent the first few years of her life on a California commune (basically, a cult—we get into this in the episode!) before moving to Maui, where she lived a mango-studded version of a paradise. She grew up relying on natural healing—and then her mother got sick from cancer, challenging all of the beliefs Lily had been raised with. In this episode, we discuss what made Lily become vegan—and what made her stop; her process of moving through grief and how her mother’s death changed her life; how to use plants and essential oils for healing; her self-love and self-acceptance journey; and so much more. For every episode of the Healthier Together podcast, there will be a corresponding giveaway and a challenge based on some of the guest’s shared wisdom—one week we might meditate, and another we might try a new skincare routine or tweak our diets, all in the name of actually getting healthier together (versus just listening to a podcast). Come join in (and enter to win!) on Instagram @lizmoody, or using the hashtag #htpodcast. Enjoy! This episode, we mentioned: – Big Berkey Water Filter – Tongue Scraper Healthier Together cover art by Zack. Healthier Together music by Alex Ruimy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the second ever healthier together podcast episode. The healthier together is all about coming together and sharing our knowledge to live happier and healthier lives. And this is the second ever episode of it. So welcome, welcome. Each episode, I will have a guest and I have some amazing, amazing guests this season. I have best-selling authors, world-famous doctors, award-winning chefs, TV stars, movie stars. I have a celebrity hypnotist. I have basically the coolest people on the planet and I somehow got them to sit down with me so that I could pick their brains and find out their stories and share them with you guys. So this is the second episode and it is no exception from any of that. Today's guest is Lily Diamond, who you might

know as kale and caramel. Lily is the author of the beautiful kale and caramel cookbook and she's the woman behind the kale and caramel blog, which is like an exhale of a blog. I go there and just look at the beautiful pictures. and all the delicious produce and herbs and flowers. And I feel like I'm living in California, which I wish I was sometimes. But yeah, it's just, it's pure magic. Lily is, first of all, so Lily is kind of a genius. She went to Yale and she's a brilliant writer.

But she also has this kind of insane background. She started out her life on a commune in California before growing up in Hawaii, where she was completely immersed in this life of natural healing. She'd get sick and her mom would pick herbs from the garden to heal her. And she ate organic food and she plucked mangoes from the yard. And she basically had the kind of childhood that I have always dreamed about. But I mostly ate hot dogs that were microwaved. They were kosher.

But yeah, that was my childhood. So Lily's living this sort of magical life in Hawaii and really steeped in the natural world. And then her mother got cancer. And it challenged all of these books. beliefs. We dig into this in this episode and we dig into how Lily was really shaped by her grief and how she moved through it and how it really changed her impression of what the natural world can and can't do in terms of healing. I think that she came out from it with a really, really interesting perspective that I'm excited to share with you guys. And also, if you've ever

lost someone or just been afraid of losing someone, this is a must listen to. Lily's story and her wisdom is so profound. And she also has the most beautiful sense of our place as people in the world, in our bodies, in relationship to other people, in relationship to the environment. And she shares how she got there. And she shares kind of her thoughts on all of that, which I really took away and I've been sitting with since our conversation. We also talk about her favorite healing herbs and essential oils. So if you've ever been interested in any of that, this is a great starter episode. We talk about how to get comfortable in your own body. We talk about the role of ambition. We talk about how intuition plays into health and how to tap into that. We also get into

food a lot. Lily used to be a vegan. She's a very strong vegan for a number of years. And we talk about her journey into veganism. And then we talk about her journey away from it, which is really interesting and how she eats now and how she feels is the best way to eat for her body now. And if you haven't checked out Lily's beautiful cookbook yet, it will teach you the healing power and utter deliciousness of herbs. And if you want to feel the therapeutic power of food, but also really kind of their, I don't know, their sexiness and their sensuality, it's a must read. So I'm going to leave the link to her cookbook in the show notes. And I will also leave the link to her Instagram and her blog in the show notes so you can find her everywhere that she is.

Thank you guys again for listening. This is my first little batch of three episodes, and it's the beginning of what will hopefully be a much longer, larger journey. And it is such an honor to have you guys all here at the beginning of it. I already feel so much healthier and happier from everything I've learned from all the people that I've interviewed so far. But I feel like I've just been sitting on all this information and I want to shout it from the rooftop. So it's such an honor to finally get to share these things with you. And hopefully it will start to change your lives. So I'm really excited about that. In the name, of that, I have introduced something that I'm calling the healthier together challenge. It's just, I'm going to pick one sort of salient, interesting bit of advice or wisdom from every single episode, and then I'm going to turn that into a challenge. So maybe we'll all meditate together. Maybe we'll all tweak our diet in some way. Maybe we'll all try a different skincare hack or something like that. But the point is just to take the lessons that we're learning and make them real and actually change our lives. So I would love for you guys to come and join the challenge every week. You can find it on Instagram at Liz Moody. You can also find it under the

hashtag HT Podcast, HT, like healthier together. So come check it out. I think we all do it together. We can support each other and we can actually get healthier together. That's the goal. See what I did there? I'll also be doing a giveaway for every episode, whether it's a book that the person I'm interviewing wrote or a product that they love that they feel like has actually really changed their life. So always check on Instagram for that at Liz Moody. And that is it for today. If you love this episode, please, please subscribe and leave it a review on iTunes or wherever you're listening. It's so so important, especially in the early stages of a podcast to help people find it and and be able to listen to. So I really, really appreciate anybody who takes the time. I mean, I appreciate you

listening, period. But you take the time to write a little review. I appreciate you. a little bit extra. So thank you so much for doing that. All right. And without further ado, this is Lily Diamond. All right. So thank you so much for joining me today, Lily. I really appreciate it. I'm so happy to be here. So the first thing I want to talk to you about is something I have always been fascinated about with you. You grew up in Hawaii with crazy hippie parents, which I feel like is my dream in life. But my parents were the opposite of that. They gave me like boiled hot dogs for dinner and didn't know anything about natural remedies. So can you tell me a little bit about what life was like growing up?

Did you have a sense that it was different than the mainland or were you just like, all children have avocado trees in their backyard? I think when I was young, I definitely had a certain amount of, you know, myopia about my world. And I did feel like, well, this is just normal. I run outside and crush hypiscus leaves and put them in my hair and pick avocados and passion fruit and apple bananas and strawberry guavas and all of that. And as I grew older and particularly, you know, I know you and I have talked so much about reading and the worlds that we get to access and occupy as readers.

And I think as soon as as soon as I really started to dive into books, which was very early, and my, you know, my, even before I, myself was reading, my parents would read to me every night before bed. And I read a lot of books that were not centered in Hawaii at all, which, you know, is its own complexity of, you know, social and ethnic identity. But that's a, that's another topic. But I very quickly got the sense that like, okay, there's a much bigger world out there. And, and I, and as I, grew older, I think I both felt very appreciative of, you know, my life in Hawaii, but also really excited to explore the world beyond Hawaii. And, you know, I was, I was fortunate that, you know, my parents worked very hard and owned their own business. And because of that, they had some

flexibility to travel during some of the school breaks that we had. And so I got to see the world beyond Hawaii in a way that really made me want to explore. Do you, when you, so you were in Maui, right? And you were in sort of the farm area of Maui? Yeah. So, okay, I grew up on, on the island of Maui, on the slopes of Haleakula crater. So the Haleakala Mountain or crater, as it's technically called, the peak elevation there is about 10,000 feet above sea level.

it snows up there in the winter. I was so surprised by that when I went to Hawaii and they're like, yeah, it snows on the mountain. I was like, what? Yeah. So, I mean, one of the most incredible things about Hawaii and I think something that really influenced me deeply in just how I perceive the world around me and my connection to the earth is that Hawaii has, I think about 13 out of the world. 15 or 16 microclimates, which is just crazy if you think about it. I mean, everything from rainforest to cloud forest to desert to, you know, the Mediterranean climate. Where I grew up was a more Mediterranean climate. And we were at about 1,700 feet elevation. So, you know, it would get

chilly at night. But the weather is sort of ridiculously perfect a lot of the time. Did you feel Hawaiian or did, like, do you feel like you kind of self-identify as a Hawaiian person? Or did you always feel like because your parents were almost ex-I want to say expats, even though it's not a different country, because the culture is so different. Did you feel like that almost expat child syndrome? Well, I never felt like an expat per se, but I certainly felt othered. And, you know, there's very, very complex geopolitical and sociopolitical history of colonization in Hawaii, and that those tensions are current and they're present. And, you know, not only am I white, not only did my parents come from the, you know, continental United States over to Hawaii, but I'm also

deeply white. I'm a red head with very white skin and, you know, that like in the literal sense of whiteness. Like I don't have, you know, the melanin that my skin needs to tan. And so growing up, kids in school would, I mean, whatever, you know, kids are mean to everyone all the time in school. But there was definitely a lot of questioning around, you know, what, like, what's wrong with you? why don't you just go to the beach? What's wrong with your hair? What's wrong with your skin? In a way that's very interesting.

The whiteness, the way that it has, you know, it has taken on the role in dominant culture that it has in much of the Western world has that hold in a certain way in Hawaii, but also does not. You know, it's not that in many ways, it's not the dominant culture and the native Hawaiians and the what's called local culture, which is a sort of mixture of Asian influence, Polynesian influence, other Pacific Islander

influence, Filipino, Portuguese influence, all of that gets mixed up altogether in Hawaii and it becomes this sort of third other culture that is really the dominant culture there. And that was a culture that I never could really feel a part of. That's interesting. Were your friends all mixed? Were they some people whose parents had kind of moved out there and some locals and did everybody kind of hang out together?

Or was there a separation? There was definitely a separation. I almost said celebration. There's a celebration and a separation. No, there was definitely somewhat of a separation. And yet, I think, you know, a lot of it as with any, you know, racism, any ism is hereditary. It's passed down. It's how the parents are talking to the kids about it.

And so, you know, I think that gets. mirrored in in the hallways in school and in the classrooms and in the cafeteria. So I think it was it was both. And I mean, my, you know, my best friend growing up was a half Jewish, half Eastern Indian. So, I mean, there was a lot of, you know, there was a lot of mixing happening all around, I would say. And your parents were hippies who lived on a, I know you lived on a commune until you were two, had they been on the commune for a while before you were born? They had. And it wasn't, you know, it wasn't a commune in the strict sense that, like,

I think, you know, one of the defining elements of a commune would be that, you know, everyone is living together and not everyone was living together. There were pods of people who lived together. And then a sort of, you know, cultish tinge to the whole experience. The group was called the Alive Tribe and they, you know, in really in the late 70s and then 80s were doing all of these psychospercial release workshops with people and all of, you know, the sort of pseudo-shamonic New Age spiritual work that has become part of our modern day parlance with, you know, people like Gwyneth Paltrow and such taking an interest in these things nowadays. But we lived there until I was two and it was, you know, I still have some connection with some of the other kids who are there. And that's really interesting to, you know, hear some of their experiences. I haven't had a ton of opportunity to talk to them. But at some point I would, I would

love to sit down with all of them. Can you imagine how interesting that would be? Just like here. Was it the kind of place where people didn't had to like get out or escape later? Or did it just sort of naturally dissolve as the 60s and 70s passed? Or how did it end? It naturally dissolved. I think probably in the late 80s and early 90s. So a bit after my parents left. And I have, you know, I've grilled my dad about, I know why my parents left. My, they, there was some money being asked for and my parents weren't super comfortable with that. And my dad also really loves sports. He loves to watch sports.

And they were like throwing him tons of shade about watching football. And he just was like, I'm out. Like I can't do this anymore. I need to be able to watch football, which I find hysterical. But I've grilled him about whether there was ever any, you know, funky sexual stuff going on, because usually that's what does it. And he says that there wasn't. So one of the founders, one of the founders actually follows me on Instagram and comments on stuff.

And like she's very up to date with my world. Have you talked to her? No, I haven't. I mean, not, not, no, I haven't, I haven't spoken with her in, I mean, I think, I don't think I've ever really had a, and I mean, I certainly have never had an adult conversation with her. I don't know if I've seen her since we left when I was two. Do you, did it leave you with positive feelings about the idea of communal living?

Like, would you ever do, that stuff's kind of repopping. up and I'm certainly interested. I have fantasies of, you know, buying a farm in Sebastopol and having a nice version of a communal life. Do you ever, has that been ruined for you or is that still appealing conceptually? Definitely appealing. I think, you know, the roots of utopic living are always so seductive, right? I mean, the thought is like we need each other, you know, as as individual humans and as community, we all deeply need each other. And I think that idea of having a farm and everyone getting to, you know, have their own separate home, but coming together over meals and sharing community and, you know, building a world that is, you know, some, that represents the

kind of world that we'd all like to ultimately live in. Very seductive. So no, not ruined. Did you get a sense from your parents about what the downfalls were in their age of the communal living that we could solve now to make it more possible and better? I didn't. I think that, you know, one, again, my parents lived separate from the group and there were pods of people that lived together. but it seemed on the whole, just from what I know, that actually the group was, was, they were very good to each other. You know, they took each other in when they needed to be taken in and they helped raise each other's kids. Like the kids who were in the Alive tribe were 100% like my brothers and sisters up to the

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Hawaii. Why did they pick? Why? Did they just love it? No, my parents actually met on Maui in the 70s. They met in a parking lot of a grocery store and they saw each other from their respective vehicles. And then later that evening found each other again in this hippie enclave in the jungle over in Haiku on the north shore of Maui in a hot tub on this property owned by one of my father's best friends who the woman who my mom had traveled to Maui with also knew. And both my parents were recovering from divorces. And my mom, my mom, lived in British Columbia at the time. She is from, like, from a, you know, good Jewish family in South Bend, Indiana and had really left, left the state, left the Midwest. She lived in British

Columbia and had been studying aromatherapy and herbology there for a couple of years. And my father lived in northern California at the time with his son, who was around 10, who was from his first marriage, and he was, I think, just coming out of his second marriage, airing all of my father's dirty laundry on this podcast. And he had gone to Maui, met my mom, they became friends, they kept talking on the phone, went home, and apparently their first date, story has it, first date was a trip to a road trip to Central America and my father's VW Pop Dot fan with his son. Oh my God. That's amazing.

And they just, he did, did your dad invite your mom and was just like, we're going road trip and baby? Yeah. He asked her to come down from Canada and she went, which is, it is actually bonkers. It blows my mind that she actually went because she. She is not my mom passed away about, it'll be 10 years ago this summer, and she was not an adventurous, like, you know, an adventure-seeking, wander-lusting type of human at all. So I, you know, I haven't, I hadn't, I did not have the chance to sit down and ask her about this as an adult, but my sense is, she must have really liked him to go on this trip. And she actually got sick on the trip.

and she actually got sick on the trip and came back halfway through. What happened? She ate some ice in Guatemala and got, I think, like hepatitis C. Oh my God. Yeah, and had to come back and take care of herself. Oh, my God. Take antibiotics, et cetera. That's such a love story to live up to.

Yeah, I know. So they lived out the, you know, hippie, VD. W van dream road tripping. And she, even though she got sick, she was still interested and ended up eventually moving down to California to be with him and his son. Oh my God. That's amazing. So, okay, they move to Hawaii together.

And you grow up surrounded by wellness, sort of in all senses, right? You're growing your own herbs. and if you get sick, you're getting tinctures that your mom is making and aromatherapy and all of that. Can you tell us a little bit about what that type of childhood was like? Yeah, absolutely. I grew up with my mom concocting a lot of the remedies that we took when we were sick. And it's interesting, I'm reading Jonathan Kaufman's book, Hippy Food right now. And it's a fascinating story of the subtitle of the book is how back to the last.

Landers, Longhairs and Revolutionaries changed the way we eat. Have you had a chance to pick it up? No, I have it sitting on my desk right now. But I have read it. I think you're, I think you're really going to enjoy reading it. And one of the, some of the history that he gets into of how, you know, the first strains of this hippie food movement came over from Germany. And a lot of it was from, you know, these German philosophers, including Rudolf Steiner, who was the creator of the Waldorf education, Waldorf schools and philosophy, which, you know, I ended up going to a Waldorf school on Maui. So I'm starting to put together all of these pieces that kind of influenced how my parents really chose to live. And a lot of that philosophy really vilified, you know,

like modern medicine and processed foods and all of the sort of, you know, current trends in, like, food and wellness that we're very obsessed with were, you know, coming to the U.S. starting in the early 20th century, like just the very beginning of the 1900s, which is just fascinating. And so my parents, so much of how my parents chose to live was really rooted in those ideas that, you know, we needed to get our food from London, so many of which are wonderful, right? But some of these ideas are also pretty extreme. And so I grew up with, you know, instead of taking antibiotics, my mom would take out a pendulum and use a pendulum for dowsing, which is, you know, basically you would hold my mom also study. homeopathy for years and years and years. And so in homeopathy and with other treatments as well, you often will douse using a pendulum where you yourself or you would have the person who needs to be healed, hold the whatever the proposed medicine or homeopathic remedy was.

and you use a pendulum to essentially you ask a question of it, and you use the pendulum to sort of tell you whether this is a good remedy or not. And so I grew up with that being completely normal. And, you know, my mom teaching me how to basically do Reiki, you know, she didn't use those terms, but to use the energy of the universe to, you know, flow through my body and through my hands to heal myself. and to, you know, be very conscious of thought and food and eating and where our food came from and how to use the plants that we grew to heal ourselves and all of that.

I mean, it was a very holistic approach to living and to healing. And then your mom got cancer 10 years ago? Yeah, she was diagnosed in. 2000, the end of 2006 and she passed away a year and a half later. So that, you know, completely broke open everything that I thought I knew. You know, my mom had sent me away to college with this beautiful little, you know, remedy case that she had laminated pages that I still have of like, you know, if your throat hurts, take this. If you're, you know, starting, if you're having allergies, take this. If your stomach is bothering you, you know, take, you know, this Chinese remedy. And that was what I knew.

And I knew to, you know, sort of be cautious of Western medicine. And, you know, even to know that there was that divide is, you know, I think very unique. Most people wouldn't have to label. Western medicine as Western medicine. It's just medicine, right? So she was diagnosed very late with stage 3C endometrial cancer. And did she opt for conventional treatment in addition to natural treatment? No, she did not. She had, she knew that she had endometriosis for years leading up to it. She had had other challenges with, you know, her reproductive organs and reproductive system. She had scarring in her fallopian tubes from a botched IUD removal from one of the very, very early IUDs

and didn't know if she would be able to have kids, actually. And she had me quite late. She had me at 38. I shouldn't say quite late. Let's scratch that. She had me at 38. and and so she I was a surprise because she didn't know that she was going to be able to have kids and you know she then had ovarian cysts removed when she was 50 and at that point they

wanted her to have a hysterectomy and she chose not to which is really interesting you know I'm certainly not a medical authority but it does seemed that if she had, it could have really changed the course of her life, potentially. And then at 62 was diagnosed with, well, she, prior to the diagnosis, she also knew that she had endometriosis and she was working with a naturopathic women's health specialist who was a a physician, and she was doing some natural hormone therapy, and then, you know, got this diagnosis and felt very strongly that the proposed conventional treatment of chemo and radiation would kill her faster than the cancer itself. And so she did a number of different alternative

treatment. She started working with an oncological nutritionist. She went to a sort of homeopathic oncological specialist and center for this particular special kind of therapy in Belgium and in Switzerland and was there for, I think, a month or two. And I moved home at that point to help care for her and just be with her while she was sick. And she then passed away a year and a half after she was diagnosed in 2008. When she passed, did she still firmly believe that Western medicine wouldn't have been helpful

for her disease? Yes, she did. Her conviction was so strong. It's interesting. One of the most agitating and profound, and profound questions that somebody very close to me asked me after she died was, did it upset you? Did it make you mad that she didn't do absolutely everything that she could?

And I realized when this person asked me this question that I actually didn't, her conviction was so strong. her belief in natural, you know, medicine and in the sort of harshness and perceived detriment of Western medicine was so profound that I didn't feel like there was even room for me to try to change her mind. Well, and I imagine in her mind she was doing everything that she could. Yeah. I think so. And she said, I will say that she wasn't, she didn't dismiss it point blank.

She had our family doctor at home on Maui look at the proposed treatment that the oncological surgeon had given her of chemo and radiation. And she asked him to look at the outcomes. and she said, if there is more than a 50% success rate with this treatment for the type of cancer that I have, I will consider it. And there wasn't. And I know now from my extensive medical experience watching Gray's Anatomy that a 50% success rate is incredibly high. Like that's a very, very high success, right? So I think that, you know, it seemed rational then. But I think if I, if I had done a little bit more digging, I might have done more protesting myself. I'm not sure. But I just kind of, I felt very, you know, I was 20, let's see, I was 22 or 23. I think I was 23 at the time. And I I felt like I knew nothing. You know, I didn't, I certainly wasn't, you know, an oncological specialist and I,

I could, I could do research, but, you know, looking at the conviction of the mind, of the mind in the face of death is a very fascinating exercise. And it helped, it really shifted me and my, my perspective on a lot as well. What did it shift? Well, at the time I was completely when I was helping to care for her, when I moved back home, I was hardcore animal rights activist vegan. And I had been raised vegetarian, but we start, as a family started eating fish and some animals, some, you know, seafood animal protein when I was about 13 and I never liked it. And so by the time

I was 20, I would always kind of pretend like fish was tofu to get it down, which is, you know, the opposite of, I think, what most people do. But I decided that I was going to stop eating fish when I was about 20, and then when I was 21, from 21 to 24, I was vegan. When my mom started working with the oncological nutritionist, she worked with, they wanted her to start having some animal protein, and they felt like, you know, she was a little bit depleted in that regard. And she, I was doing all the cooking at the time, and she asked me to, if I would be willing to make bone broth from chicken.

And when she asked me, she was absolutely mortified to be asking me. She was really embarrassed that it was going to upset me because I was vegan. And she knew that I, you know, I mean, I had never bought a chicken. I'd never cooked a chicken because I just, I didn't, I'm an omnivore now. But the reason that the food on cailing caramel and in my book is completely vegetarian, I don't know how to cook meat. And I feel like there are a lot of people who do. And so I leave that to them. But it was not anything I'd ever done before. And I could see that she was kind of scared to ask me. And I felt in that moment, like, I realized that I would have, you know, know, done anything to help her. And the fact that she was embarrassed to ask her daughter to make her some chicken broth was so, it was embarrassing to me. It was sad to me. And I realized that I also at the time I was teaching yoga full time and was very immersed in yoga philosophy. And I was

teaching yoga philosophy and I was espousing a lot of very specific clear teachings about how to live to large groups of other people. And I realized that a lot of the beliefs and the ideas that I was espousing on a day-to-day basis were not beliefs that when put, you know, to the fire or placed in the face of death, they didn't hold up for me. They weren't. weren't fundamentally true for me. I hadn't lived through them in a way that proved them. And I think it's really easy to believe things that we, that sound good and it's, and, and, you know, feel good and make sense when things aren't difficult. But when things were really difficult, I got to see what I actually believed in what just sounded good.

where did it leave you in terms of your belief of the healing power of plants and natural medicine and eating well as a protective health thing? I mean, you know, I'm a firm believer. I think most of the time I eat a plant-based diet because it's what feels good. And I think part of the challenge is that our society as a whole has gotten so far from eating what feels good and doing what feels good that we don't even know when something resonates well in our bodies. And so I think that's part of why the movement around, you know, pure eating and superfoods and wellness and cleansing and all of that has taken hold is because

people want to get back to a state where they can actually just feel what's going on in their bodies. What a gift that is, right? When you're able to feel the way that something influences your body, that's a gift. And I think being able to listen to our bodies in that way is a tremendous tool. And I'm at a point where I want to use all of the tools that I have available to me. I want to use the plants and the, you know, the spirulina and the aschaganda and whatever else. And I also want to use the medicine that has been developed over the past, you know, however many centuries that can now also work hand in hand with natural medicine to heal us. And I think together, and I really think that's like, that is who, we get to be, and it's part of what's exciting to me about this particular moment in time,

and is that if we get away from the extremism of one movement or the other, we get to see that we really have this opportunity to have both sides working together to bring us further and deeper into health and wellness, and then into health and wellness, not just on a physical bodily level, but on the level of consciousness and really understanding our interconnectedness as a whole, you know, human people than we ever have before. So you didn't have a sort of crisis of faith or even like an anger or resentment at natural medicine where you were like, well, my mom put her faith and trust in you and you sort of failed

her and now I'm going to go completely the opposite direction? I did in the sense that I went to, you know, the doctor who, you know, my traditional medicine medical doctor after she died. I think I don't even know if I had a primary care physician at the time. So like, you know, I belong to Kaiser and would just go to specialists. And so I think I got a primary care physician and I went to them and I said, look, this is my, medical history, I want you to test me for absolutely everything that you possibly can. And that's really been my approach since then. I've had genetic counseling to try to get them to do genetic testing from genetic screening for me, but they won't, which, you know, is, I mean, I'm sure I could pay for it out of pocket. It's very expensive. But I don't have enough risk factors. They have like a sort of, you know, calculated formula that, that shows risk factors and then allows them to test.

But because the kind of cancer that she had is not generally hereditary, aside from a few particular strains, which I don't have the markers for, they won't give it to me. But I've really committed to doing what she didn't do, which is saying I'm going to use every possible route that I can that I have to take care of myself. And I'm going to find out everything that I can far before, you know, there's, hopefully there's a problem. Knock on wood.

You know, so have you not tried 23 and me, or would one of those not have the information at the level you would need it to be? It's so funny you ask that. My saliva sample is in the mail to them right now as we speak. However, I didn't opt for the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, screening, the medical screening portion of it because, yeah, they don't have the testing that I'm looking for. The testing that I'm looking for is specifically is related to a bunch of cancers and other things. And 23 and me has like late stage Alzheimer's and stuff like that. Yeah, I really want to get the medical test, but I only want to know about it if I don't have any markers for anything. I want like the, you're in the clear and you can't really get that.

Totally. Even if you give it to a friend and they don't tell you something, you're like, well, I'm fucked there, you know. Right. And I scanned through all of the markers that they test for and each one of them felt like, yes, this would be great to know. And none of them were things that would have profoundly shifted the way that I am living right now at all. And so I felt like they were all things that I would just,

find out about and then I would be waiting for the gauntlet to fall at some point without being able to really do anything. So I decided not to, but they do keep your samples. So I figured, you know, if at some point I decide to return to it, I will be able to select that. So you're just trying to find out where your red hair and all of that comes from? I'm curious. Yeah. Well, I've been thinking of doing it for a long time and my father, uh, calls. me a couple weeks ago and asked if I wanted to do it. And so we both did it. And I told him, great, we can now find out if I'm actually your daughter. I was talking to a friend about that. Yeah, I was talking to my friend about that. And she said that it comes with all of these warnings

because like one of the FAQs for it is why do me and my siblings DNA differ so much? And it's like, well, because you're not actually siblings. And it's, it's unveiling all of these secrets. and people's families that have been long buried. Yes, I've heard some great stories about that too. It's amazing. Yes. Really wonderful. It's crazy.

Yeah, I'm excited. Yeah, I really, I want to try it at some point for sure. I'm just, I'm a little nervous. But I am, I think because in America, I have all of these friends in other countries and even in smaller towns where they grew up and they're in the same town that their mother and their grandmother and their great-grandmother and their great-grandmother was in, and I didn't have that situation at all growing up.

I have almost no sense of my heritage, so something like that is really appealing to me. I always used to joke that it's the best benefit of being royal, like Harry and William know their family's lineage for over a thousand years, which must be insane. Truly, yes, that's such a good point. Yeah, I am trying to put together, well, not my, but just in my mind and, you know, collect the information so that I have family trees on both

sides. And I have relatives who are, you know, varying degrees of interested and very active in compiling all of that. So I feel like I have a certain responsibility to continue in that vein and sort of preserve the knowledge that we have already. I love that. I very rarely get genuinely excited about skincare, but this is one of the most innovative products that I have come across in years, and I'm so obsessed with it. I've been telling all of my friends to get it, so now I need to tell you guys. Here's some science first. Your skin isn't just getting older. It's being actively broken down by something called senescent cells. These are cells that have stopped functioning but refuse to die. They sit there releasing inflammatory signals,

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It is actually rolling the clock back at a cellular level. I've been using the face moisturizer for almost six months now and I love it so much. It feels amazing. It goes on really smoothly. It's not tacky at all. And I actually see a difference, which I just feel like is never the case with skincare. You want to always like see a real difference and you're kind of like, do, do I? Do I? And this I genuinely do. Because it's clearing the senescent cells, it doesn't just target one thing. So my skin looks firmer. It looks glowier. The texture feels dramatically smoother. And I feel like you can see that too. I also love the body moisturizer. It dries down really quickly, which is always a pet peeve of mine with moisturizers.

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For a limited time, get 15% off with code Liz at oneskin.com. slash Liz. Again, that's 15% off at oneskin.co with code Liz. When you think about strength and resilience, like your ability to feel energized, to recover well, to stay strong as you get older, what do you think that actually comes from? Most people say working out or good nutrition, and yes, of course that matters. But there is a biological foundation underneath all of that that most people are completely overlooking. I have been diving deep into this lately with the team at timeline, and what I've learned has genuinely shifted how I think about my own health.

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We're like noticing these things and we're adding in more protein. We're trying to fix it with more supplements. We're trying to do harder workouts. And those things do help. But timelines research suggests that we also need to be supporting the cellular machinery underneath. And that is exactly what their supplement, Mitopure, does. It contains Erolithin A, which helps your body clear out damage mitochondria and support

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This has become a staple supplement for me. It is my top way to support how I want to look and feel as I age. Support yourselves and how you age with mitopure gummies from Timeline. Visit Timeline.com slash Liz and save up to 39% on your mitopure gummies. That is timeline.com slash Liz. So after your mom died, you've written for me over at My Muddy Green about your grief. and then you also write about it really beautifully in your book. And it seems like it was just this really formative event

in creating the person that you were moving through this grief after your mother died. Can you speak to that a little bit? Yeah, it was an incredibly challenging time in my life, not only because of this kind of breaking open of life worldviews that her cancer was for me and for my family. But I also was coming out of a breakup. And I had been with somebody.

I'd built a life with this man in Michigan who I thought I was, you know, I kind of, it was my first really big, deep love. But we worked together. We taught together. We lived together. We really, we were building a lot. life together. We talked about writing books together and our breakup happened literally a few days before my mom was diagnosed. And so when I moved back to Maui, it was not only my moving back

to help care for her. It was also leaving behind this other life that I had begun to build. And in her death, I simultaneously lost kind of these two pillars of who I thought I was and the grief. And, you know, I've always been a deeply emotional person, even, you know, from the time I was very young and very kind of subsumed often by my emotions, some of the biggest work I've had to do, certainly on my mind and in myself has been in learning to live and function as somebody who feels really deeply. And I just was feeling so much, so intensely, so much sadness and so much loss that I felt like I have to find some way to be with all of this. Otherwise, it's going to, I'm going to drown in it.

And I turned to the only thing that really I had ever known as a constant in my life besides, you know, my parents and the love that we really shared as a family, but that was then kind of fractured, which was writing. And I left behind teaching and the world of yoga. and I just said, you know, I need to get back to things that I can hold on to that I know are really solid for me, which, you know, ha ha, what can we hold on to really nothing? But, you know, still, I needed something within myself that felt like a center point. And for me, that was being able to sit, you know, and look at an empty page and write. And so after my mom died, I,

I started working, well, I started, I took a course called The Art of Memoir with an incredible author named Rebecca Walker. And she just happened to be teaching it on Maui. And I found out about it. I thought I was going to have to go, I was preparing to go to some retreat, you know, writing retreat far off somewhere. And it turned out this master class was happening. and I took it and I started writing a book that eventually became a memoir about my time with my mom and through her illness and her death. And that process was deeply, deeply cathartic for me. I ended up just shelving the book, though there are pieces of it that are in kale and caramel,

which, you know, as you know, it's a narrative. cookbooks, there are stories woven throughout, and some of those are drawn from the pages of that first book that I wrote. But really, that book, you know, was the summation of my grief. And it's imperfect, and maybe someday I'll come back to it, but it's imperfect in and for, you know, all of those ways that come out of that grief and the kind of single-mindedness, I think, that that grief casts over you because in the wake of so much loss, it's like you almost don't even know how to locate yourself or the make sense of the world that you live in because the things that have sort of held you in the way that you look at

the world together are gone. And so for me, my writing and being with that really helped me move through it. Does it feel like you're still moving through it? I haven't lost a parent, although it's one of my biggest nightmares. And I always wonder if there's like a moment where you wake up and you're like, this is the world now and it's not my preference, but I'm okay with it.

Or if every day you kind of have to like wake up and continue to move through this terrible thing. No, it's better now. it took about five years for me, which to me sounds like a long time. I don't know how it sounds to you or to other people, but I remember in the fifth year, I think maybe finally having, going through a holiday or a birthday or something without it feeling really tragic, without it feeling like there was something missing from the entire experience. And, And now there will be, you know, days or weeks where I'll go through them without feeling that

sense of, you know, this gaping hole in my life. But I do what it, what is with me constantly is the, the awareness of my own mortality, the, you know, ephemeral nature of all of life around me, including the lives of those I love. And it's sort of, you know, there's a beautiful Tibetan Buddhist meditation practice of death meditation where you, you know, you're asked to reflect on the fact that death is certain. You don't know when death will come.

And when death comes, you know, we leave everything behind. And I feel like I, you know, I live that. I live with that constantly. And ultimately, though it's, you know, of course, it's rattling. It's also, I think, a blessing. It's a blessing to remember that, you know, I only have a limited time here and that I better, better do something good with it. I almost just swore. I don't know if we're swearing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I swear constantly. Okay. Okay. Great. Well, then I'll, I will record that, you know, that our time is limited and I better fucking do something good with it. Does that affect you on, I feel like I have a greater ephemeral sense of that, but on a day-to-day

basis, I'll, you know, get sucked into doing what's pleasurable but devoid of any meeting whatsoever, i.e., you know, going on Instagram for hours or getting sucked into a YouTube hole where I watch every Hamilton video ever. And I leave my day feeling. like I did nothing meaningful and I could die any day and it was terrible. Do you feel like you don't have those days because you're more aware of the fragility of life? Wouldn't it be amazing if I said yes. I'd be like, teach me your ways. I can't watch Hamilton on YouTube anymore.

No. No, I absolutely have those days. And I actually think that, you know, the flip side of that urgency is total nihilism, which I never want to fall into of feeling like, you know, well, it doesn't matter what I do because nothing matters because we're all leaving anyway. But no, and I don't feel that way either. But I certainly do feel like I, you know, I try to be gentle with myself and to know, that if I'm in a pattern where I'm moving really slowly, that, you know, I know that on the whole,

I am a very productive person and I am very rigorous with myself and that if I'm moving slowly, it's for a reason, it's because there's something that is brewing that needs time to grow and needs time to be nurtured and in order to express itself in and through me. So, you know, you never know what's on the other side of those Hamilton videos, Liz. I hope it's meeting Lynn Manuel and him being like, I want you to creatively. He's my number two crush after Obama. Yes, those are some good crushes. Hamilton himself might be third, but I feel like that's less feasible.

I shared on an Instagram story yesterday the letter that Michelle and Barack Obama wrote to the students of Parkland, Florida. I saw it and I cried. So beautiful. A friend and a friend wrote back to me and she said, oh my gosh, even his handwriting is so stunning. This is why he's my perfect man. I'll never be able to, you know, escape it.

She was like everything about him is perfect, even his handwriting. It's literally, I can't, my mother-in-law for Christmas last year gave me like a special edition of time or Newsweek or something that was all devoted to his, presidency and I still have it in a drawer because I can't engage with him for too long or I just get too emotional. I know. I know. I know the feeling. Do you feel like part of the moving through your grief through you? I feel like your, what you do with plants and what you do with I don't want to say preaching because it feels preachy, but encouraging people to experience this

connection with the earth and with the therapeutic properties, both mentally and physically, that to me feels like a very, the fact that you devoted your life to it feels like a very daily way of keeping your mom with you. Do you feel like that? And was that sort of part of the process? It absolutely was part of the process. And definitely, you know, it was certainly the journey of the book and the narrative arc that the book takes of using these plants to explore different elements of the healing process through the healing properties that the plants themselves hold. And I think I am reminded of her constantly, you know, in the flowers that are, you know, sitting on the table next to the armchair, you know, when I walk down, down, when I walk down to

my car and I see, you know, the rosemary growing next to, you know, the parking area. I look out and see Sage on the hillside. Like I, she is with me and in all of those places, but it feels now like a more pervasive settles kind of a presence in the way that, you know, she has, she is in the, you know, the neural pathways of my mind in a way that supports me. instead of, you know, the kind of aching pain that that came before as I moved through that grief, if that makes sense. Yeah.

Okay. On a lighter note, you, the way the book is structured for anybody hasn't picked it up, it's segmented by herb or, I guess, flowers too. And yeah, are they all herbs, basil? I'm like, is oregano an herb? Yes. Yeah, so it's eight herbs and four flowers. Okay.

Herbs and flowers. In a very pragmatic sense, what is your favorite healing herb for medicinal use? And then what's your favorite flavor herb or flower? Your choice. My favorite healing herb, well, is actually a flower, is lavender. It's one that for me has just, you know, worked wonders both in terms of, creating calm and easing anxiety and then also, you know, helping to treat burns and minor skin conditions. It's just, it's such an all-purpose workhorse of an herb. It's also great for bringing

down fever. I grew up with lavender using lavender constantly. It also is a total signifier to me of comfort from my mom. It's that, you know, it's the essential oil that she would use most frequently in taking care of me when I was young. So there's definitely that, you know, memory comfort there as well. And flavor wise, I right now am just, and, you know, for, I go through, I don't go through crazy phases with herbs, but certainly, you know, a tried and true and current obsession is mint, fresh mint. I just think it elevates the flavor palette of, whatever it's paired with in such an amazing way. Like it feels like it actually goes in and create space in a dish and in the in the flavor palette similar to the way that salt does or can do,

you know, if it's not obviously overdone. But something about mint is just so refreshing. The flavor is so powerful, obviously. But I really feel like it's this space maker in dishes that that kind of enhances and allows the rest of the dish to shine even more than it already is. I love that description of it. How do you use mint? I love finishing savory and actually sweet dishes with mint. I'll put it. I love it in salads, like especially, you know, complex salads with other fresh herbs. I love throwing mint in, You know, even making eggs or an omelet with, you know, yogurt and throwing some mint on top in the morning or for brunches, making a big fruit salad.

And then at, you know, the very last minute before you serve, tossing some mint in is really beautiful. One of my favorite desserts ever is to just take an ice cream, something simple vanilla, and top it with olive oil sea salt and fresh mint, it will blow your mind. It's so good. That's amazing. Yeah. So, I mean, I just, it's incredible. It's one of my absolute favorites. And then for the lavender, so I write about this stuff all the time. And I feel like I write about it and I'm like, oh, lavender is it so calming. It's so stress relieving. And then I'm always like 10, okay, probably like 30% skeptical myself. Do you feel a real difference when you try to use lavender therapeutically? And can you like give me an example of of that? Yep. So I will, this go absolutely goes back to what we were talking about before with my approach to natural healing versus more traditional routes. I'm a huge

skeptic. And I don't necessarily believe in a lot of, lot of the touted treatments and, and, you know, homeopathic remedies and superfoods and all of that. What I do believe in is that our minds are incredibly powerful and that we tend to experience what we and see what we believe. And so I think in part that's, you know, that's why my mom had the experience that she did with, you know, with traditional medicine. She really, she had a very strong belief and that was what was born out. And with, you know, I think I say this in the book, or I've said it elsewhere, but with aromatherapy,

I really feel like, you know, there isn't necessarily, there have been a few clinical studies looking at aromatherapy, but not a ton. And what I do believe is that, you know, smell yourself. Like, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, conduct your own experiment, take the oils, smell them, and see how do you feel in that instant that you smell them? And whatever that is, I think I know that that is real. And so for me, I have this, you know, massive memory catalog of experiences around lavender and other essential

oils that influence me. But I also have, you know, a whole set of as yet untested or very new experiences smelling essential oils and just experiencing in that moment how they influence me. So what I know for sure is that I'm going to smell this and use this on my skin with lavender. I'll use it sometimes for burns, but in conjunction with other treatments. And so I couldn't tell you about it, it's use on its own. But for the mood uplifting and, you know, calming and all of those other elements, I will say that I do know for me it does make a difference. And I would urge anyone to say, you know what, like, yes, we do need evidence of fact-based, you know, double blind tested evidence of all of these things. I 100% believe that.

and I think we also get to use what feels good to us. And so try it. If it's something that feels good to you, great. If it doesn't, forget it. That makes a lot of sense. I'm going to maybe embarrass you right now because I want to just read something from your book. Okay. It's short.

Uh-oh. It's short. It's actually from the first page, but you're talking about longing. Okay, this is short, but I love it. From my earliest memories, I was the longing kind. I longed for friends. I longed for boys to like me. I longed for my skin to be darker, my waist to be thinner,

my parents to be more normal, myself to be cooler. I longed my way into college and after that I longed my way into being in love. I longed myself into jobs and spiritual frenzies and entire personas that were not really me. When my mother got sick and died, then too, I longed for things to be different. I longed for family. I longed not to feel fractured. I longed to feel some kind of home, sometime again. I longed for love.

And then one day, I longed to stop longing. I loved this idea of longing because I think it's something that I struggle with personally a lot. I'm the kind of person when I'm living in New York, I want to be living in San Francisco or London. And then when I'm living in London, I'm like, oh, my life would be better if I lived in New York. And I feel like in some ways it's really helpful.

it's it's propelled my life forward a lot. I've had a lot of career success and I think that humans need a certain sense of longing for momentum in their lives, but I also think that it can be dangerous because it encourages you not to be satisfied or present in the moment that you're actually in. So I'm curious with that. You kind of say that you are able to stop longing in that way. I'm curious how you did, that and then also sort of the role that you think longing plays in both a positive and negative way in your life now? Well, I think that having gone through, you know, this massive life shift that I did and asking myself to reassess how I wanted to live and what I believed and all of that naturally led to my looking at how I always wanted something.

I wanted to be something different than what I was and to look at this fundamental kind of discomfort with myself that I had lived with for so long. And a part of that is we're taught that and our capitalist culture reinforces that, that we're not okay as we are, that we need X, Y, and Z in order to be okay. And then, you know, from that point, we start examining ourselves in comparison to other people, and then looking at, you know, our lives in comparison to other people's lives. And that cycle is never ending. And if we don't stop it, it never stops. But what happened was I started, you know, I had always been, not always, but for years, I had been, you know, really deeply immersed in various meditation practices and a lot of those were incredibly,

you know, I was a seeker. Like my parents had been seekers and so much of like the New Age culture and spiritual materialism that came out of it was predicated on seekers and seekers wanting answers from from teachers and gurus and people who are going to you know make up anything that would assuage that longing right and i was after my mom died and after i kind of came out of this world of longing and and seeking um as i started to work on that first memoir that i worked on and i i began to work with the teacher who i mentioned um the author rebecca walker As we were working together and as I was working on this book, I started to learn and to see that what I really, the only thing I really needed to work on was, was myself. And that constantly

looking outward to try to fix or to change or to, you know, become something other than who I was, was deeply detrimental to the process of just understanding who I was, where I came from, and how those elements of myself were and could be, you know, were gifts and could be used to to change in whatever ways, you know, that I needed to and to also make positive change in the world around me. And not that, not that I wouldn't grow and wouldn't change, you know, elements of, of who I was, but that, um, that deep frenzied kind of need to become something else wasn't present, um, the way that it, that it had been before where it felt like there's something wrong with me. And I need somebody else to tell me the answers to make

myself okay. And really that was fundamentally about, you know, a constant vigilance of watching my mind and making my practice not so much about, you know, this aspirational longing of becoming some, you know, spiritual higher being or attaining some other kind of spiritual consciousness, but really the constant vigilance of working with my mind to be able to not have it sabotage me constantly so that my mind is actually thinking clearly and working with me instead of against me. So would that look like if you have one thought that's negative, you would actually catch that thought and counteract it with. if I'm happy with who I am and where I am?

Catching it, yes. But I wouldn't so much say counteracting it, as I would say getting to the root of where that thought came from to begin with. And then understanding where it came from, because we never want to just replace something with another thing that doesn't feel true, right? Because we'll react negatively to that, or at least I will. And I think most people will have that. Like you can't really trick yourself into being happy.

And I think happiness in and of itself is just as fleeting of a state as dissatisfaction. But to have, to be able to catch the thought that is disturbing and then trace it back to its source. And then from that place of understanding, oh, okay, well, I'm having this thought of dissatisfaction because I fundamentally believe that something is wrong with me. because of X, Y, and Z, and I know that actually that is not true, and therefore I can be free of that thought, and I can have other thoughts that are about, you know, this piece of writing that I want to do, or this, you know, casserole that I want to make to my friend who is sad today or whatever it might be, but just having the space to actually be free of the tyranny of the way that the mind can,

can terrorize us. So do you not, you said happiness is a fleeting state, do you not live your life in pursuit of happiness? I don't think I do, no. I mean, I want to be happy, yes, but I think I live my life in, in pursuit of, um, of balance, of reason, of creating beauty and of really creating deep and lasting change, both in myself and in the world around me. I don't think that happiness is sustainable because there will always be something that comes up that fucks with it, you know? Like, you can't freeze time and, you know, put yourself in like an echo chamber where someone is just like massaging you and feeding you ice cream. cream all the time. I would love it if that were the case. Well, and even I was in a situation a while

ago where I, for a story I was writing, I got a number of massages. And even that, once you have it in excess, this thing I thought I loved, I found myself sitting there sometimes being like, well, this is boring. Like, I'd rather be doing something else. Totally. Or they're not doing it right. Or they're talking to you or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. Um, okay. So I have a few questions that I'm trying to ask everybody. They're a work in progress. So do you hate them? Let me know.

But in the name of being healthier and happier, what do you think is the best way to spend 20 minutes every day? I think in the name of being healthier and happier, I would say find 20 minutes a day to connect with something that really brings you joy, whether that's talking with somebody that you love or find. finding a way to, you know, go outside and look at the sky or take a little walk and connect with nature or, you know, if you don't live in a place where there, you know, there are trees in nature around you, just looking at art or something that nurtures that sense of possibility and beauty in your life. I'm genuinely confused how Masterclass gets literally the absolute top people in every single field to teach every single one of their classes. I use it when I want to learn things directly, like the cooking class from Thomas Keller has all of the wisdom that you

would normally have to go to culinary school for. But also, I'm being honest, this is like a use case I don't hear a lot of people talking about. I'll just watch it for entertainment when I want to do something that's far more interesting than scrolling. Christina Aguilera taught me to sing. Shan Boodrum's Art of Mastering Confidence and Sex Appeal class is 10 out of 10. There's menopause classes with leading doctors. There's scriptwriting with Mindy Kaley. Literally, you name it, they're on masterclass and it is such a good way to get off your phone, but have something that's like not quite as long or hard to get into as a TV show or a movie and that it just keeps you entertained and interested. And you are learning. There are over 200 classes from the world's

best, all for just $10 a month when billed annually. And you get unlimited access to every class on the platform so you can learn at your own pace whenever you want on your phone, your computer, or even in audio mode like a podcast. If you're looking to stop scrolling and start consuming entertaining content that makes you feel excited and helps you learn, Masterclass is it. And the best part, every membership comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee so you can start learning risk-free. Right now, our listeners get an additional 15% off any annual membership at Masterclass.com

slash Liz Moody. That's 15% off at Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody, Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody, masterclass. Liz Moody. The number one rule of habits is to make the things that you want easier and the things that you don't want harder. Yet so many of us want to eat healthier, but so few of us actually take the steps to make eating healthier easier. That's where Marley Spoon comes in.

What I love about this company and what's different than all of the other companies out there that are doing like stuff in the same arena is that you can customize your choices based on the effort that you want to put in. So if you want them to send you ingredients, so you can make your own 20-minute meal and like get into your chef energy, they'll send it to you to all be in perfect portions so you'll eliminate waste. Great, that's sorted.

But they also have meals that you can just heat up. They have ready-made breakfast, which is always such a tough time of day to get a healthy meal in. They have grab and go snacks. Everything is made from farm fresh produce with high-quality proteins, and you can select by dietary preferences,

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My favorite recent meal was the creamy lemon chicken tray bake. I had one of those moments where I looked at my plate and I was like, wait, I made this and so quickly, like so easily. It's just so little effort for so much reward. Marley Spoon just makes eating well feel easy instead of stressful and honestly that is everything. This new year, fast track your way to eating well with Marley Spoon. Head to Marley Spoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody for up to 25 free meals. That is right, up to 25 free meals with Marley Spoon. That is Marley Spoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody.

So remember to get the offer slash Liz Moody for up to 25 free meals. I love the idea because I actually think a lot of people are divorced from the notion of what brings them joy and that's why we kind of fill our time with things because we don't.

We're like, oh, we'll just watch TV for hours or do Instagram and even when we go places that are supposed to be awe-inspiring you're capturing on social media because you don't know what that joy is supposed to feel like

but I like I like the idea that it just can be something that inspires questions or curiosity or it makes you feel different than the normal state of your being. I think it's more permission giving. Absolutely. I think we also feel like, well, we have to manufacture experiences that bring us joy. You know, whereas if you think, like, look at babies and they don't, they, you know, they don't even need toys. They just use like a cardboard box as like

the greatest toy in the world or like a pot. And, you know, we, you know, we, We don't do that and that's fine. We don't have to act like infants, but we also, I think, don't require as much joy coddling as we think we do, maybe. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting, which again, I think is that capitalism, we're told that we need all these things to attain to it. Totally.

Yeah. What purchase have you made that's helped you the most to become healthier? What a great question. Purchase have I made? Okay, this is a small thing. Can it be a small thing? Yeah, I think that's even better. Okay, I am obsessed with my tongue scraper. I've had a tongue scraper for probably, you know, 15 years, and I love it so much. I've replaced it once. I upgraded to a copper tongue scraper from my simple stainless steel one.

And I just, I love it. There's nothing like scraping all of that gross gunk off of your tongue and feeling like you have a mouth renewed to its state of glory. Do you do it in the morning or in the nighttime or both? Both. You're like, I do it all day. I do it like 14 times today. All day.

I have an alarm set on my. my phone every 15 minutes. You're like, I actually got to go now. It's timed tongue straight. That's awesome. I have one too. I use it probably a few times a week, but I do find it immensely satisfying. Although I've had friends with Chinese.

I know in I orveda, they're like, yeah, it's so great. You should definitely do it. And then in Chinese medicine, they're like, don't fuck with your tongue. That's how we diagnose you. So it's an interesting, I've had Chinese medicine friends tell me, like, don't do it. But I love it. So I do it. Right.

because they can't read your, they can't, yeah, tongue read. That's interesting. I'm like, read my pulse, man. Yeah. I also recently just got a burkey water purifying system. And I love it. I really, really love having confidence in the water that I'm drinking and not feeling like I'm taking in a bunch of excess and unknown chemicals and, you know, water treatments and particles and all of that. I mean, water and food, obviously, you know, just go so directly into our organ systems. And so it feels really good drinking well-purified water that I can just have on my countertop and refill as I need to, instead of having some complex, like, under-sync system.

Yeah, you want to know a fun, weird fact about me? Yes, please. I haven't drinking unfiltered water in seven years now. I'm, like, supremely anal about it, where... Zach and I once went upstate, and there wasn't... I forgot... I have, like, a travel water filter I always travel. and I forgot it.

And he went outside and, like, gathered fresh snow off of the ground. Oh, my gosh. And we melted that and then boiled it to get rid of any sort of whatever from the ground. But we drank that instead of drinking the tap water because we're really weird about it. That is amazing. But I think it's better for microbiome. I don't know. Yeah.

The idea of drinking all the gnarly stuff in tap water once you know what's in it is fairly revolting. Absolutely. Yeah. Have you ever been to a place in the world where you were like, okay, these people really got it right in terms of living a good life? And if so, where was it? I have to say, I think Maui is pretty high up there. It's, um, do you think it's, it veers too much in the, I, when I was there, I heard people complain that it veered too far in the other direction of living a good life, but maybe not as much of a, productive or contributive to the world at large one? Yeah, there's definitely,

I think there's certainly, um, uh, you know, a tipping point. Um, and it's part of why I left, which I think is also part of the problems that,

you know, as with any place that experiences, um, you know, I think they call it like brain drain, um, where the, the people who are from there choosing not to,

to go back and be contributed. to the community there in the ways that they are to other places in the world. It's not, it hasn't grown in certain cultural or intellectual arenas in the way, you know, the industries that sustain Hawaii are agriculture and tourism. And so, yeah, I mean, there's certainly a lot of room for growth. But I also think in terms of having the space to, for people to, you know, grow their own food and really live well and live on land that supports growing food and where it's easy to grow. And I think, which I don't know, I guess I think about that as part of like having, of living a good life because, It's something that, you know, as as food sourcing may or may not become more challenging,

that's something that we're all going to need. You know, we're going to need food. So. It's true. Yeah. Do you grow your own food in Topanga? I don't yet. My landlords here actually when I moved in asked if I, I asked if they had a garden.

and they said that there's the gophers and rabbits and, you know, coyotes and all sorts of animals that will eat anything right out of the ground. And so they need, they said, you know, we would need a greenhouse. And so they actually have, are in the process of building one on the land here. And so I think I may, I may be able to use that. There are, also building a little deck for me up here in my place. And so I'm hoping, I don't know how long they'll last before the rabbits and gophers find it. Do rabbits and gophers come up onto decks? I'm going to try to grow some herbs on my little deck when I can. I am not an expert in rabbits and go first, but I feel like there has to be some sort of herb. Like we can't use lavender to keep away

deer. Right. Stuff like that. So I feel like there has to be some being put there to dissuade them. Yeah. Is there anything you think that we could, like anybody living anywhere in like a shitty apartment in New York City or in Siberia could steal from the Hawaiian way of life so they could have that good life without moving? Yes. I do think so. The Hawaii's state motto is Uaamao Kea Okaaina Ikepono, and that means may the life of the land be perpetuated in righteousness. And my desire to, you know, have a strong connection to the earth, to understand my place as a human in connection to the earth and to the land and to have humility in the face of, you know, the earth and how to tread lightly and to understand that I have a

certain responsibility to take care of the land on which I live and, you know, to live in a certain way that causes minimal impact on the earth or as minimal as possible. All of that I think really, yes, comes from how my parents chose to live, but also just from this pervasive sense in Hawaii that people have that, you know, they are part of the larger forces of the universe and that they're humbled before them and that we really have much more to learn from the earth than we probably think we do. And so that is something that that has informed every part of my life. And I think that's something that anyone anywhere can take on and seek out as they go about their day-to-day lives. Is there something on a super pragmatic base sense that you think people could do to get that sense, even if they live in a city?

Yeah, I think just on a really fundamental level, take one thing in your kitchen and find out where it comes from, like all the way back to its source. I love that. That's like such an interesting idea. I feel like in my kitchen, I have stuff from probably most of the continents and maybe 25 countries in the world. So it's interesting to think about the journey they've all made to end up on my plate. Yeah, absolutely. I had a friend once came to Hawaii and was visiting the land where I grew up and I took her out to our little orchard. I said, you know, here, these are my favorite oranges ever, you know, pick one, you can eat it.

And she was scared to because she had only ever had oranges just off of the shelf from the grocery store. And I was so astounded. I was like, she's scared, like, she should be scared of the oranges from the grocery store, not the orange. This is literally from the tree. There's nothing healthier than this. And seeing that inversion of, you know, how we should. actually be feeling made me realize how, you know, how far from really understanding that cycle many, many people are, which is understandable because they have no reason to be aware of it.

Yeah, I really struggle. I'm like, yes, everybody should be in these cities so that we can have less of a negative ecological effect. But I'm also like, if you're stuck in the cities, then you never have that connection with the land that makes you want to be careful with it or save it, you know. Right. But I really do think I'm always looking for opportunities. You know, with my work with Kail and Caramel, I often work with food companies. And I'm always looking for opportunities to tell stories around farming because I think that just for people to understand, oh my gosh, like that's where I went to Canada a couple of years ago with a lentil. the lentil board. And just to be able to tell that story of like, look, these are the actual fields.

These are the actual people who are growing the lentils that you're eating. And just for people to make that connection in and of itself, you then think more about the food that you're choosing to eat and how you eat it and where you source it from. And I think just understanding that making those small connections is really helpful. I totally agree. All right, last question. What is the most delicious, healthy thing you've ever eaten? Wow. I think the most delicious, healthy thing I've ever eaten is a passion fruit,

like straight off of the vine or like the ground in Hawaii on Maui where they're like warmed by the sun and you just bite into it to crack the top off and then just slurp the whole thing out. That or a fig also like fresh from a thing. tree. Lily Coy. Yeah. I learned about that there.

That was my new world. And I was, I just didn't, I had no idea what it was. And I don't think I'd ever had a passion fruit. And then I literally just felt like bombarded by them. Oh. It's like, wow, I've never had so much fashion fruit my entire life. Yeah. And the flavor is just, it's just intoxicating.

There's something for me, Lillikoli and fig and pomegranate are my favorite fruits. And there's apparently I only like fruits with thousands of seeds in them. But um, and kind of like sexy fruits. Very sexy fruits. They're kind of the ones that are like messy and juicy. Totally. That's interesting. Yeah. It should be like a personality type test around how sexy the fruit you like is or something. Absolutely. Yeah. No, I mean, I just those three fruits for me, I could eat them. And there's something that is just so sensual and powerful and beautiful and nourishing and like the the flavors are so complex. So yeah, I would say any of those. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me. I feel like I have

8 million more questions, but I don't want this to become a five hour long episode. So I really appreciate you coming on. Thank you for having me, Liz. I cannot wait for the entire season of the podcast. I'm very excited. Thank you. Bye. Bye.