I was doing a reading for someone who shared that she’d been struggling with focus and memory. She was worried—wondering if something deeper might be going on. Later, I messaged her and asked if we could have a different kind of conversation—one not about intuition, but about food.
“Have you ever tried a whole-food, plant-based, no-refined-anything diet?” I asked.
She said she hadn’t, but was open to making incremental changes.
And I’ll admit—I flinched inside.
Not outwardly. I kept my tone steady, supportive. But inside, something tugged at me. Incremental sounded like hesitation. Like one of those well-meaning stalls people use when they’re not quite ready to change. It caught me off guard—mildly aggravating in a way I didn’t fully understand at the time.
Later, in reflection, I realized:
I’ve made nearly every major life change in small, uncertain, winding steps. I just didn’t recognize them as such until afterward.
The Irony of Resistance
That’s the tricky thing about discomfort—it often points to something we’re not fully owning. Her hesitation wasn’t what really bothered me. It was the way it challenged something I hadn’t fully admitted to myself: I still carry a fantasy that deep change should come quickly—through clarity, conviction, maybe even willpower. Not weeds.
She wanted to take the scenic route to change. And I, who has taken the scenic route for the past two decades, didn’t trust it would work.
But it has worked.
I quit smoking in 2002—not from a single vow or dramatic break, but through a series of quiet reckonings. I’d never even thought of myself as a smoker. I only smoked during times of stress or neediness, when something inside me felt unheld. I had a similar addiction to processed sugar that didn’t get resolved until more than a decade after a melanoma diagnosis. But slowly, those needs began to find better outlets. One small shift at a time.
And really, most of my changes came that way.
They didn’t arrive like lightning. They came like land slowly healing—first with tough, scrappy weeds no one admires. Then maybe clover. Then wildflowers. At first it looked messy. Uneven. Like nothing good could come of it.
But here’s the thing: the weedy period—the one that looks the worst—is often doing the most important work. Actual honest-to-goodness weeds break up compacted soil, draw nutrients up from deep underground, and begin restoring the balance that allows other life to take hold.
It’s not pretty. But it’s essential.
Over time, the roots of my convictions went deep, my internal “soil” got stronger, and the whole inner landscape eventually changed. Today I don’t eat processed foods or animal products at all.
The Unseen Power of Small Steps
There’s a strange kind of grief that can show up in the early stages of change. When I let go of food I used to use for comfort—or people who were only in my life because I couldn’t imagine life without them—I felt a kind of absence. Like something had been scooped out of me.
Back then, I couldn’t yet picture what would fill that space. I couldn’t see the strength or softness that might grow there. So it felt lonely. Empty. Sad.
But little by little, I started choosing differently.
Eating differently.
Surrounding myself with people who support who I am now—not who I used to contort myself to be.
Changing what I turn to when life feels unbearable.
And while none of those steps seemed particularly radical in the moment, taken together they’ve added up to something very real. Something solid.
How Values Take Root
I used to think values were things you declared: I believe in this now. I stand for that. But more often, they arrive like seeds. Quiet. Unassuming. You don’t even notice they’ve landed.
Maybe a person who has accomplished something you admire says something that lingers.
Maybe a film shifts how you see the world—about animal rights, or food, or healing.
Maybe an illness makes you rethink your own body, your own choices.
At the time, you don’t make drastic changes. You just carry that seed with you.
Over time, it starts to shape your choices. Not dramatically, but subtly: what you put in your grocery cart. Who you spend time with. How you speak to yourself.
One day you look back and realize: you’re living differently.
Not because you overhauled your life in a weekend—but because that value grew stronger than your resistance.
It didn’t arrive with a trumpet. It quietly took root and stayed.
The Long Arc of Healing
After my melanoma diagnosis in 2012, I followed the Gerson therapy diet for two years. I was deeply committed. Eventually, I returned to what I thought of as “healthy eating,” with some Mardi Gras–style lapses along the way. Years later, I developed basal cell carcinoma on my face.
Based on two authors’—Anita Moorjani and Lissa Rankin—mind-bending books that made a case for looking into root causes of cancer we often don’t consider, I started making a concerted effort to find my voice.
At the time, I still didn’t fully see the pattern. But looking back, it’s clear: healing wasn’t a finish line I crossed. It was—and still is—a landscape I keep tending. Every return, every recommitment, every small decision has helped shape a terrain I now trust.
If You’re on the Slow Path
So now, when someone tells me they want to make incremental changes, I take a breath. I remember that slow change is still change. That nothing done in the direction of healing is ever wasted.
If your progress looks uneven, tender, or slow—if your transformation feels more like compost than fireworks—you’re not alone.
You’re not failing.
You’re in the middle of becoming.