Welcome to Cultivating Beautiful
I Found the Words in My Garden
I wasn’t planning to write today.
I was planning to pull weeds.
I have raised garden beds on our little 2.5 acre homestead and if you’ve ever kept a garden you know what happens when life gets busy and you look away for too long. The weeds move in quietly. One day at a time. Until one morning you walk outside and the beds you planted with intention are buried under a thick blanket of green that isn’t yours.
That was this morning.
So I put on my gloves and I started pulling. And somewhere in the middle of that unglamorous, dirt under my fingernails work – I found her.
My eucalyptus plant. Still alive. Buried under the weight of everything that had slowly, quietly grown up around her. Suffocating. Reaching. Still fighting for light.
I stopped pulling weeds for a minute to think, because I know exactly what that feels like.
The Weeds I Let Grow:
Over the last several decades I let weeds take over my life.
Not the garden kind. The invisible kind.
Overcommitment. Saying yes when my body was screaming no. Serving everyone around me while quietly running on empty. Letting the needs and expectations of others grow up around me — one small, reasonable thing at a time — until I couldn’t see myself underneath them anymore.
I told myself I was fine. I told myself this was just what life looked like. I told myself I would rest when things calmed down.
Things did not calm down.
Two years ago my health crashed. My body — the one I had been managing with Type 1 diabetes for over four decades, the one I thought I knew — finally said enough. The years of overwhelm, of fight or flight, of giving everything to everyone else had taken a toll I couldn’t ignore anymore.
I had to stop. I had no choice but to stop.
And in the stopping — in the stripping away of everything that was smothering me — I started to find myself again. Less commitments. Less noise. Fewer yeses. More light. More breath. More space to figure out what I actually needed in order to thrive. More time deciding where my time is spent, with family, close friends and God.
Just like the eucalyptus.
She didn’t die under those weeds. She just couldn’t grow. The moment I cleared the weight away she had everything she needed already inside her.
I think that’s true for most of us.
Why I’m Here — Two Years Later:
I have been trying to figure out how to start sharing my story for almost two years.
I have started and stopped more times than I can count. I’ve waited for the perfect words, the perfect platform, the perfect moment. I’ve told myself I needed to have it all figured out before I could begin.
And then this morning a weed-covered garden showed me what I’ve been overthinking.
I don’t need the perfect words. I just need to show up and share what’s actually happening in my life — in my garden, in my kitchen, on this little farm, in my mind, in my faith — and trust that the women who need to hear it will find their way here.
So here I am. Finally. Two years of waiting and it took a Saturday morning in the garden to show me the way.
Welcome to Cultivating Beautiful. I’m so glad you found this place.
What We’re Cultivating Here:
This is not a perfect wellness blog. I am not a perfectly well person.
I am a certified holistic health coach who has lived with Type 1 diabetes for 41 years. I have celiac disease. I have had seasons where my health, my relationships and my sense of self were buried under so many weeds I wasn’t sure I’d find them again. I have rebuilt slowly and I am still rebuilding.
I have a little farm. With gardens and horses and beehives and raised beds full of plants that refuse to give up.
Here we talk about five things — the five areas of life I have found matter most when you’re trying to build a beautiful life:
Nourish — feeding your body with real, whole food. For me that means gluten free, blood sugar conscious and as close to the ground as possible. What we put in and on our bodies matters and I’ll share what’s working in my kitchen and on my homestead.
Grow — the inner work. Renewing your mind, releasing what no longer serves you, building the kind of resilience that doesn’t require perfect circumstances. This is the soil. Everything else grows from here.
Roots — slowing down enough to connect. To the land, to animals, to the rhythms of a life lived intentionally. Our farm — the horses, the beehives, the garden beds — is not just a backdrop. It’s a teacher.
Gather — creating a home that feels like sanctuary. Not a perfect home. A real one. Thrifted and tended and filled with things that matter.
Flourish — the whole life outcome of all of it. This is where coaching, community and the full Cultivating Beautiful experience live. Where we take everything we’ve nourished and grown and rooted and gathered — and we finally let it bloom.
A Note Before You Go:
I have spent two years looking for the perfect way to begin.
It was in my garden the whole time.
That’s what this space is going to be. Thoughts that come to me while I’m pulling weeds. Recipes born from managing blood sugar for four decades. Mindset shifts discovered in the middle of hard seasons. Farm life and faith and the slow beautiful work of cultivating a life that is genuinely yours.
No perfection. No performance. Just a woman on a homestead figuring it out and sharing what she finds.
Welcome. Stay awhile. We’re just starting to cultivate here. 🌿
— Jessica