I’ve been thinking a lot about the state of the world, our global society, and the decline in health, wellness and vitality among the people I see around me.
Quite honestly, it’s heartbreaking for me to witness the decline of culture across all walks of life, from the abject poverty and homelessness staring at us in the face daily, to the plasticized opulence that’s stolen the souls of people in exchange for fast-fashion and filtered/ augmented media portraying falsities.
What’s happened to wholesomeness, simplicity, truth, and purity?
What happened to chivalry, respect, honor, and innocence?
I ask myself these question almost on the daily as the world continues to spin seemingly out of control with no end in sight.
In this questioning, I’ve actually come to put my finger on an answer that’s simple, and makes a whole lotta sense when I really think about and feel into it.
I truly believe this is the answer that we’ve all been looking for, as to how to save our society as it teeters on the brink of devastation.
May you read it and understand the true power of what the kitchen and hearth means in the greater context of our lives, our family, and our greater global culture.
Our deep ancestral ties with the concept of hearth stretch back way back in our early beginnings as nomadic hunter-gatherers, when sitting around the fire became the central point of the community.
Food was cooked around the fire.
Stories were shared around the fire.
Community was built around the fire.
Safety was felt around the fire.
Fire is what revolutionized our human existence and forged the bonds of families and communities that helped them endure even the most desperate and destitute times.
As long as we had a fire, we felt safe, warm, nourished, and protected.
As we progressed in our evolution as a species and the development of cultures around the world, the fire and the hearth remained a central place within each home and community.
Most often it was the women who tended to the hearth; all together shelling peas, rendering lard, baking bread, and making nourishing soups and stews for the hard-working men.
The hearth became the place of power for the women- it was their domain.
With their hands they formed the foods (the foundation) of the families and children that all of us come from.
If it wasn’t for the women tending to the heart all those centuries and millennia, we wouldn’t be here today.
It’s the devotion to the hearth that kept our lineages alive during war, famine, drought, disease, and every other hardship humanity’s endured over time.
What an incredible place of power.
Think about it for a second: Have you ever noticed that at house-parties, people tend to flock to and hover in and around the kitchen?
Or the deep sense of peace and wellbeing that comes over us when we walk into a house and we can feel the warmth emanating from the kitchen and small the aroma of whatever is cooking?
Or how children and pets love to be in the kitchens with us, even though we ‘shoo’ them away continuously?
The kitchen is magnetic.
The hearth calls to us and pulls us in, to be warmed by the fire and nourished by the magical creations pouring from this place in the house.
The kitchen and hearth are the heart of a home, and it’s from this location that deep healing on multidimensional levels occurs.
It’s embedded deep into our DNA memory, and is a missing piece for many of us in this modernized world.
Unfortunately, modern feminism taught us and engrained into us that the kitchen was a place of oppression for women.
That the daily tasks of tending to the hearth kept us from ‘living our potential’ and ‘achieving success’ in the ways that men have done.
Over the past fifty years we’ve seen a rise in women exchanging the aprons and wooden spoons for executive business suits and high-powered careers, leaving the hearth cold and empty.
While this progress has been revolutionary for many women, giving women opportunities that all of our grandmother’s didn’t even have a sliver of hope for, it’s important to consider at what cost this ‘progress’ has fostered.
The heartbeat of many homes slowed down and hardened with convenience and fast foods, and even more so now with food delivery services where we don’t even need to make any sort of effort beyond tapping our phones a few times in an app.
Chronic illness, auto-immune disease, mental health conditions, and an overall haze of unwellness and disease has gripped Western society since women abandoned the hearth for money and power.
Where at one time we could count on nourishing home-cooked meals created by hand by people we love to warm our bellies and souls, we now rely on foods cooked by people who really don’t want to be doing so (who really wants to work at Panda Express or any other convenience food location? Truly?), packaged in plastic or styrofoam, and served to us semi-cold, limp, and in a way that has zero heart and soul to it.
What happened to the fires that built communities and kept people’s souls alive in times of hardship and desperation?
A return to the hearth (kitchen) and the remembrance of the path of devotional cooking our grandmothers of all of our lineages practiced within is what our dying culture needs.
We need foods to warm our bellies, awaken our hearts, and nourish our souls.
It’s time for women to remember their power in the kitchen, and to relearn the ways that kept society alive and thriving for generations.
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In my upcoming course, Kitchen Hearth Heart Heal, we’re remembering and reclaiming the lineage of being the breath of life in the heart of our homes.
Are you with me?
Course information & Payment Plans:
https://kitchen-hearth-heart-
xoxo
Denell