What happens when the Earth is depleted, and we're trying to nourish ourselves from her?
We're living in an era of soil depletion. We're also living in a time when we're coming face to face with the implications of how we've treated the Earth. I've always thought of the Earth as a feminine body in many regards and I can't help but see the parallels between how we treat her and how we treat women. We extract, demand more production, exhaust the resources, and then we wonder why things aren't thriving.
Look at what we're asking of women's bodies. Fertility, healthy menstrual cycles, pregnancy, postpartum recovery, navigating menopause, maintaining strong bones into our 60s and 70s. These are incredibly mineral-dependent processes, and we're seeing women struggle with many of them.
I don't believe the way we treat the Earth and the way we nourish women are the same conversation. And the state of our soils is a real part of this conversation.
We've built an industrialized food system largely around producing more, faster. Monocropping, depleted soil biology, farming practices that prioritize yield over the long-term health of the land. And there is research showing that certain nutrients in some of our crops have declined over generations. For those of us who've been paying attention, it's sobering. We're trying to nourish ourselves from a food system that isn't always nourishing us back.
So, to supplement or not to supplement?
In the HTMA world, supplementation is a huge part of the conversation. At the root of the mineral-balancing framework I trained in, developed through the work of Dr. Paul Eck, is a very specific approach to targeted supplementation. It’s badass and proven to be effective. We're not necessarily just throwing isolated minerals at the body and hoping for the best, the framework considers mineral relationships, ratios, and how nutrients work together.
For example, when we're looking at magnesium, we may also be considering calcium and other nutrients involved in mineral metabolism. It's not always as simple as taking a magnesium capsule because your magnesium looks low. Not all supplementation is created equal.
And where I get heartborken is when we become so reliant on supplements that we forget about everything else. We forget to eat enough. We forget the plants. We forget prayer, spiritual practice, getting our hands in the soil, growing a garden, buying food from farmers who actually care about the health of their land.
We forget that nourishment is a relationship, not just a protocol. And I don't want to see mineral balancing become another world where we're so focused on the numbers and capsules that we lose sight of the bigger picture.
My roots were in the Earth long before they were in HTMA.
I spent almost two years living on a regenerative farm in Costa Rica called Punta Mona, which has since evolved into the EcoVersity world. My upbringing and so much of my adult life have been enriched by herbalism, medicine making, plants, gardening, and the old ancestral ways of relating to the Earth. This is the world I come from. And now here I am, working with hair mineral analysis, laboratory data, mineral ratios, and targeted supplementation. And I don't want to choose between those worlds.
I want to be a bridge.
Between herbalism and mineral science. Between ancestral ways of nourishment and modern tools that help us understand what our bodies might need. Between growing our food and recognizing that sometimes food alone isn't meeting a particular person's needs.
Because here's the kicker: Sometimes supplementation really is important.
Especially when we're talking about significant nutritional deficiencies, pregnancy, postpartum recovery, or a woman hoping to have another child while still rebuilding her own reserves. And while I will always advocate for food first, I also recognize that eating more isn't necessarily the entire answer for every woman. We have to consider digestion, absorption, individual nutritional needs, and what someone's body is actually working with.
We couldn’t possibly eat enough potatoes AND digest them properly to push us out of burn out…and yes, potatoes actually contain more potassium than bananas but more on that later. ;)
We don't need to turn food into an impossible mathematical exercise where we're trying to eat mountains of potatoes to correct every suspected mineral imbalance. Thoughtful, targeted supplementation has a place, and we aren’t doing ourselves justice by refusing to consider it simply because we believe in natural health.
But supplements aren't going to regenerate our soils.
And this is the part I really don't want us to forget. We need both. We need targeted supplementation when it's appropriate, and we need regenerative farming initiatives.
We need to buy local. Support farmers who are building their soil rather than continually depleting it. Grow gardens. Compost. Diversify what we grow. Put our hands back in the Earth. We need to put our trust back in the Earth and not let supplementation take that trust away.
Instead, let supplementation help us navigate where we are right now while we work to change the narrative. Because we're not going to supplement our way out of a broken relationship with the land, and we're also not going to resolve every nutritional deficiency by simply eating another salad. Both things can be true.
No one is separate from the Earth.
One of the reasons I love HTMA is that it gives us another physical window into the mineral terrain of our bodies. And to me, that is such a profound reminder of our connection to the Earth. We are quite literally made of elements that come from the natural world. Our food, our water, our environment, our nourishment—none of it exists separately from the land.
And no one gets to escape that relationship.
Not even the people who have profited the most from industrialized systems that have contributed to environmental destruction. You can have all the money in the world, but you still have a body that depends on the Earth. We are all part of the same web. There's something both sobering and empowering about recognizing that.
As my husband and I begin building a regenerative farm on the land we call home, this relationship between our internal terrain and the literal soil beneath our feet feels more alive to me than ever. I want to keep learning from both: from the laboratory and the garden, from the mineral chart and the plants, from modern science and the wisdom of the people who came before us.
I want to look at a woman's mineral patterns, yes. But I also want to know: Is she eating enough? How is she sleeping? What's happening in her relationships? Is she getting outside? Does she have a spiritual practice? What is nourishing her, and what is continually depleting her?
Because supplementation is a tool, it is not the whole of healing. And the answer, at least for me, isn't choosing between modern mineral science and the old ways. It's remembering that they can belong in the same conversation. May we use the tools available to us without forgetting the Earth that made us.
May we nourish our bodies while also tending the soils that nourish us, and may we never become so enamored with fixing ourselves that we forget we're part of something much bigger. That is the kind of mineral balancing I want to practice.
And this is ultimately why Wild Marrow was created.