Grow Health, One Seed at a Time

Discover how small, mindful steps in your garden and kitchen can root you back into resilience, health, and hope - before a crisis forces your hand

How a health crisis unearthed my path back to resilience — one small step at a time

Twenty-one years ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. Strangely, I’m grateful for it.

You might be wondering: how could anyone be thankful for something like that? And what does it possibly have to do with growing food? Let me explain.

That diagnosis was a turning point - a CATALYST FOR CHANGE. It forced me to look hard at my choices, my health, and the systems I had trusted without question. I owned my dis-ease. I did the work. I took responsibility for my healing. And over time, I found my way back to health. Not just by treating the symptoms, but by rebuilding the foundations of wellbeing from the soil up.

Today, growing food isn’t just a hobby for me. It’s part of how I grow resilience, energy, and real health — and help others do the same. 🍎

I’ll be honest: sharing this part of my story feels vulnerable. But if opening this door helps even one person shift toward better choices - before a crisis forces the change - then every bit of discomfort is worth it.

Because the truth is, it’s all connected: our health, our food, and the broken systems we’ve been taught to trust.

Rooted in Real Food

I grew up on a typical quarter-acre block in suburban Sydney - but it wasn’t just lawn and hedges. It was a backyard grocery store and mini orchard, alive with food.

We ‘shopped’ just metres from the kitchen door, picking fresh ingredients straight from the veggie patch or fruit trees. Mum cooked every meal from scratch with whatever was growing that season. Our survival - and our everyday meals - were directly tied to the health of our garden.

The important job of collecting eggs (in my dress!) and putting them in the bucket

From an early age, I knew where food came from and how it grew. I had my own small part to play too: raking leaves and chicken manure, turning compost, collecting eggs, planting seeds, harvesting dinner. 🐔🥚🥚

I also spent long days roaming my grandparents' farm, soaking up the quiet rhythms of growing real food. Nothing was wasted. There were no 'green waste' bins back then - everything had a purpose. Fireplace ash, chicken and cow manure, grass clippings, eggshells, and kitchen scraps were all folded back into the soil, feeding the next season’s harvest. It was a simple, circular way of living that made sense without needing to be explained.

Junk food wasn’t an option. Fast food wasn’t on the menu. At the time, I didn’t think much about it — it was just life.

It took a major health crisis for me to truly understand what a gift that childhood was. And why reconnecting with real food would become part of my healing and my mission.

Money was tight - very tight. But that never stood in the way of eating well. Dad built floor-to-ceiling shelves in our outdoor laundry, where Mum carefully stored all the bottled and preserved fruit and vegetables we grew. Jars of peaches, plums, mulberries, tomatoes, and beans lined the walls like treasure.

I fondly remember our laundry shelves, stacked with colourful jars of stored food

We lived zero-waste out of necessity, not ideology. Every part of the harvest had a purpose, a second life. Nothing was thrown away. Scraps from the kitchen fed the chickens or were folded back into compost, returning to the garden - and eventually, back to our plates. It was a simple, natural loop: the garden fed us, and we, in turn, fed the garden.

Looking back, I can see how deeply those experiences shaped me, even when I didn’t realise it.

Trading Roots for Convenience

When I left home at twenty-one, I unknowingly began trading deep-rooted habits for something far more fleeting. Bright supermarket aisles dazzled with endless choices.

Convenience became the new currency, and I was swept along with it.

Without giving it much thought, as I was working full-time, my trolley filled with boxes, packets, and ultra-processed foods. Things that would have felt so foreign in my childhood kitchen. At the time, I didn’t question it.

I didn’t see that with every easy choice, I was quietly losing my connection to where real food begins - and to the health that once grew so naturally from garden soil and pantry shelves.

“Food in the supermarket is anonymous, detached from its origins, lacking history, nutrient density, and life force. It is food as pure commodity, and we need better food than that.” - Sandor Ellix Katz, The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved: Inside America’s Underground Food Movement

In 2004, my world flipped upside down. I was a young mum, busy with life, never really thinking twice about my health — until the day I heard the word no one ever wants to hear: ‘cancer’.

It felt like the ground disappeared beneath me. In that moment, everything changed. Looking back, it wasn’t just my health that had unravelled - it was my connection to the simple, sustaining truths I’d once lived by.

Somewhere along the way, I had traded roots for convenience.

Now, I had a chance - and a choice - to find my way back.

Choosing Health, One Small Step at a Time

Up until then, I had always taken feeling good for granted. But suddenly, I realised: health isn’t something to assume — it’s something to cherish. That was my wake-up call.

I knew I had to make a choice: to walk a new path on my wellness journey, one step, and one conscious decision at a time.

It wasn’t about a sudden, radical change. It was about remembering. Returning to the garden, to the soil, to real food - it stirred up something long buried but never lost.

What I discovered along the way was simple, but powerful: every bite matters.

Every small choice can serve as a building block toward healing and hope.

One afternoon, I opened our pantry and really looked. I picked up boxes and jars, started reading labels and realised I couldn’t even pronounce half the ingredients, let alone understand what they were doing in something called 'food.'

Numbers, preservatives, chemicals, genetically modified fillers ... It made my stomach turn. As I dug deeper, I learned these hidden ingredients were doing silent damage. Breaking down the gut flora, that beautiful, intricate ecosystem inside us that quietly sustains our health.

It was the beginning of a whole new way of seeing what we eat - and what it means to truly nourish ourselves. The more I learned about our food systems, the more unsettled I became. I uncovered things I wish weren't true - and today, it’s even harder to look away.

So, we started a ‘green journey’ as a family. Little by little, we untangled ourselves from the grip of supermarket convenience. Those tempting aisles filled with foods that look harmless but tell a different story underneath.

I realised that the same industries feeding us food stripped of nourishment were often the ones profiting from our sickness, too.

It opened my eyes to just how deeply the system is designed to keep us dependent. First, on food that undermines our health, then on the medicine that manages the symptoms.

And once you see it, you can’t unsee it!

But the beautiful thing is: you can choose a different path.

I had many months of recovery to reflect on my childhood and the decisions that had led me to this point. I started my return to wellness journey with deep gratitude for a second chance and an opportunity to honour my parents’ investment in my health. I now had the chance to put those early life lessons into practice as a parent and instil them in my own family.

No cancer journey, though, leaves you unscarred. I came to the painful realisation that my plans to have more children were not to be. I grieved. Motherhood is a privilege and a role I cherish, especially now with precious grandchildren.

I threw myself into studying sustainable agriculture, biological farming techniques, Permaculture and organic gardening. I felt like I had come home.

My new food gardens gave me a chance to ‘mother’ in a different role. Like an extended family, I nurtured my plant ‘babies’ and poured my love into the soil.

I have been privileged to sow seeds to ‘birth’ thousands of baby plants and nurture them as ‘toddlers’, raise them into strong ‘adults’ and see them off as they leave home to land on our table or end their lives to serve another generation of plants in my garden as compost. The cycle of life.

I’m intentional with the plants I choose to grow because I’ve taken the time to get to know them, like family. Each herb, flower, vegetable or fruit brings healing and health benefits that I would never have learned how to use if I hadn’t had a health crisis. I treat them with reverence. I honour their role and place in my garden and our lives.

The gardens I grow now - and help my clients co-create - focus on nutrient-dense foods and medicinal plants, and knowing how to use them to optimise wellbeing.

A kind of preventative ‘health insurance’ policy — rooted in the soil, not the pharmacy.

Those early lessons - closing the loop between kitchen, garden, and table - have taken root again in our home and now in our daughter’s and her children’s lives.

These days, I’m also teaching my 3-year-old granddaughter the joys of soil, seeds, where her food really comes from, and how to cook and eat it with love.

In so many ways, it feels like my life has come full circle.

And that feels so good.

Seeds to Plant 🌱

Maybe you, too, have memories tucked away - of gardens, kitchens, or simple foods that nourished more than just the body. Now may be the perfect season to remember, to reconnect, and to begin your own small steps toward health and resilience.

🌱 Start by noticing what’s really in - and ON - your food.
🌱 Try cooking one simple meal from scratch each week.
🌱 Plant something edible — like a pot of herbs.
🌱 Honour the scraps: compost, reuse, close the loop.
🌱 Remember: every small choice nurtures health, hope, and resilience.

Health, like a garden, is not built in a day. It’s grown — choice by choice, season by season, seed by seed. 🌻

Wherever you are on your journey, it’s never too late to nourish what matters.

To let new life take root - in your soil, your kitchen, your heart. 💚

May the small seeds you sow today grow into a harvest of health, hope, and abundance for tomorrow.

I’d love to hear what seeds you're planting - whether in your garden, kitchen, or your life. Feel free to leave a comment and share your story. ✍🏼

Thanks for reading - and for being part of a community that’s growing something better, together. Cheers, Anne

🌼 If this gave you food for thought, a coffee helps me keep cultivating more.

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