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Lessons On Coming To Life With Monique Wellise

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What does it take to live a fulfilling and meaningful life? We hear valuable lessons from Monique Wellise, author of the book Finding Mo: A Handbook For Coming To Life. She talks about spending time in nature, immersing into meditative practices, raising her consciousness, and constantly tapping into her creative mind. She shares how she deals with Hashimoto’s Disease, cultivates her unique wisdom through divine love, and her biggest life realizations thanks to the companionship of her dogs. Corinna and Monique also discuss about the necessary urgent action to achieve soil regeneration and empower farmers utilizing regenerative agriculture methods.

 

About Monique Wellise

Care More Be Better | Monique Wellise | Coming To LifeMonique Wellise is a writer, educator and sales leader that’s deeply moved by the impact nutrition, mindset and consciousness can have on health and humanity. She has been a passionate nutrition industry professional for nearly three decades. Her background includes training at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, the American School of Herbalism, extensive work with the integrative medical community and alliances with some of the nutraceutical industry's most well-reputed brands. Monique resides in a small town in the Sierra Nevada foothills with her two dogs. She immensely enjoys reading, writing, yoga, walks in nature, singing, dancing and just being.

 

Show Notes:

02:37 – Finding Mo

06:16 – Pulse Read And Hypothyroidism

13:40 – Pain

18:21 – Wisdom From Within

22:19 – Divine Love

28:33 – Dog

31:49 – A-Ha Moments

34:49 – Soil Regeneration And Regenerative Agriculture

43:52 – Episode Wrap-up

 

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Lessons On Coming To Life With Monique Wellise

Welcome to another episode of Care More Be Better. I’m thrilled to introduce you to an old friend and colleague, Monique Wellise. Monique and I worked together for years at Nordic Naturals. We often took long lunch walks and talked through business and life challenges. We shared a lot. We laughed together and we may have even shed a few tears together.

We even happened to share a birthday. The running joke for a while was that as we occupied the seniormost division seats, I was on the retail side and her on the professional, to be in one of these jobs, you had to be born on September 7th. Monique is a writer. She’s an educator and a sales leader who is deeply moved by the impact nutrition mindset and consciousness it can have on health and humanity.

She has been passionate about the nutrition industry for the three decades in which she’s worked in the space. Her integrative training includes work with the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and the American School of Herbalism, extensive work with the integrative medical community, and alliances with some of the most reputable nutraceutical brands.

Monique resides in a small town in the Sierra, Nevada foothills with her two dogs. She immensely enjoys reading and writing. We’re going to talk about her book, Finding Mo, which is a handbook for coming to life, as well as spending time with her animals, yoga, walks in nature, singing, dancing, and just being. With that, I want to welcome her to the show. Monique, I’m so glad you’re here.

Corinna, it’s so fun. Yeah, we share a birthday. It’s so funny.

It’s one of those moments of commonality.

Time flies. It was a long time ago but yes, we share a birthday. Oftentimes, we’d share a cocktail on our birthday when we lived in the same town.

Finding Mo

I wanted to start out learning a bit more about what finally inspired you to sit down and write Finding Mo.

It was angst. I have a nagging inner voice, which would come up for decades. Every time my inner voice would go, “I’m not fulfilled. I’m not happy,” I would tell it to shut up and be grateful for what you have because I have so much and so many people in the world have so little. The inner voice would get a talking to and I would go about things. I’d write in my gratitude journal to get myself out of my funk.

I hit a bad wall funk in 2020-2021. It got to a point where I said, “Something has got to give here.” At the end of the day, I would feel completely and utterly drained and exhausted like, “This can’t be life. There’s got to be more.” Mo is Monique in Finding Mo. It’s about me finding myself. Mo is also about finding more. At that time, when I hit that wall, I enrolled in an integrative nutrition health coach course, thinking that it was something I could do in retirement and do some more learning.

Care More Be Better | Monique Wellise | Coming To Life Finding Mo: A Handbook For Coming To Life

On the nutrition side of it, I didn’t learn a lot there, but there were a lot of exercises of introspection and looking at your whole life. In one particular exercise, we were to create a vision statement for ourselves, how we would see ourselves as a health coach, and what would that look like. I rolled my eyes because of a vision statement exercise, but I started writing and it started flowing. I saw myself as an author and someone who inspires others to live healthier and fuller lives. That felt right to me.

That was an a-ha moment for me. A couple of months later, I have a Franklin planner, still old-fashioned but I came across a quote that said, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come to life and go do that because that’s what the world needs.” People have come to life, and I started bawling because I didn’t feel alive. I felt half alive. Looking at it that way, that was the whole inspiration for Handbook to Coming to Life.

I’m not the only one who feels guilty about all the suffering in the world. I’m not the only one who stops him, herself, or themselves from moving forward because why should I have it all? Why should I be self-actualized when so many have so little? That quote and that mindset that it is a responsibility and the thing that the world needs has flipped a switch for me and it has become my why. I started seeing myself living my best life and being the best version of myself. It is a responsibility. No more excuses. This could make a big difference to the world. I firmly believe that if we can all be the best version of ourselves by living fuller going inward, we can have a big social impact. That’s my why and why I wrote it.

Pulse Read And Hypothyroidism

At the end of chapter one, I wanted to read what you put in here. There are two primary points to take away and this is something that you have touched on already. One, telling your inner voice to shut up while ignoring your purpose is selfish. The world needs you to come alive. Two, finding and living your purpose may bring your health into balance.

You touch on this a little bit further in the book as you reveal that you have Hashimoto’s, which is hypothyroidism. I was hoping for a moment that you could talk about that because this concept that blocking your creativity creates thyroid problems is interesting. I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism while we worked together at Nordic Naturals in 2009. I have also been on this type of it’s the only medication I take but it’s the medication I have to take every day.

I’ve been working to reduce the amount of medicine I take. I’m making progress. What has helped me is leaning into creativity. That’s my personal belief. Also, shifting to more whole foods and plant-based eating. That seems to have dramatically impacted it, to the point where I felt like I was overmedicated and had to take it down pretty considerably. I’d love to hear more about this. I’d love your thoughts.

It’s fascinating. There’s so much to unpack there, but not expressing your creativity is a big deal. It’s a big deal for women and everyone. I don’t know how spiritual we’d want to get here but if you talk about the throat chakra. The throat chakra is where your thyroid is set. If you do not speak your voice and your creativity is blocked, it can manifest as health issues. I know there is a school of thought that the throat chakra is the root cause of hyperthyroidism. The integrative practitioner that I had seen, I said in the book that I couldn’t believe the man does a pulse read. It’s the longest pulse read I’ve ever had.

Talk about what a pulse read is.

I see acupuncturists regularly and a pulse read is very common. Usually, they can see where in the body there might be block chi by doing your pulse read. If your pulse is right at the surface, you might be fighting something. This particular doctor was trained in Ayurveda. He was a medical doctor and an acupuncturist as well. He did the longest pulse rate I’ve ever experienced. Maybe 2 or 3 minutes.

He said, “You’ve been very frustrated for the better part of two years and you’re not living your purpose.” I’m like, “What? You got that from a pulse read?” I have been frustrated for two years because I had been immersed in issues related to inventory logistics with my company. I had to do it or the wheels were going to fall off. It was rough. That was eye-opening for me. I said, “Okay, block creativity. Me not living my purpose.”

This was all leading up to the tears. It’s my responsibility to come to life. I also have been working on my Hashimoto’s, which is an autoimmune condition. You can measure your level of the antibodies that are attacking the thyroid. With a lifestyle mindset, I had successfully brought those numbers down. Things got stressful for a couple of years. They went up again but I need to have them measured again. My intention is to reverse that and get off of medication altogether.

I’ll share this with you. I had a weird rash that I went to the doctor for. This is the first and that I can ever recollect that my temperature came in at the textbook 98.6. For those who are managing hypothyroidism, this will sound like, “Whoa.” I’ve been taking less but it’s the first time. People who struggle with hypothyroidism often are cold. They all run cold. Commonly, I would be about 97.2. That’s about where I lived. 97.6 some moments, but almost never above 98.

That impacts you from a metabolic standpoint, an immune system standpoint, and an energy standpoint. All of these things can be affected by that. I’m not saying there’s one solution, but when you open your mind and when you focus on how you’re physically doing as well as how you’re mentally doing. I do workout every day. I lift heavy weights. That’s the workout that I enjoy. That can also impact your body temperature positively.

I think all of these things coming together while also transitioning to plant-based eating means I don’t have the same endocrine disruptors that are constantly barraging my system as when I consumed more animal products. Some science backs this up, but it’s a challenging thing when you’re told by your doctor. This is what I was told by my doctor. They wanted to medicate me. I needed to take the medicine. If I didn’t take the medicine, they’re trying to shock me into taking it, “You could end up in a coma. How does that feel?”

I’m like, “I’m going to end up in a coma because I don’t take my hypothyroid medicine and all of the synthetic stuff that they prescribed me,” which is supposed to work just as fine as the natural stuff, but that didn’t work well for me. While I can say that I’m mostly plant-based, I’m still taking a porcine thyroid root. That means it’s desiccated porcine thyroid. That’s from a pig.

I am not yet completely vegan and I might not ever be if I can’t get off of this thing. From an ethical standpoint, that’s also tough for people who are ethical vegans. That’s not what brought me to that journey. I also don’t love the idea of having to consume a drug for my entire life. How does this make you feel or what are your thoughts around that?

I don’t like that my body is attacking a healthy organ. I also believe that we don’t listen to what we’re told necessarily. You know your own body best. With the right goals, intentions, and lifestyle, we can change. We can deprogram what has been programmed. You turn genes on or off by lifestyle. There are a lot of studies into epigenetics and the fact that we don’t have to accept it. Take control and hold the vision. I’m happy you’re on the same path.

Pain

It’s awesome to see. One of the things that I found very transparent and beautiful about your book is that you lean into talking about pain and how pain is something that frankly is unavoidable throughout our lives. You might deal with the loss of a loved one. You might deal also with confronting challenges that are painful in your life. Physical pain, notwithstanding as well, but there’s a quote that you put in here too, “There is a high price to pay for avoidance. We limit our potential.” This is you. That’s in your language. It’s from two sentences that I’m merging together.

This encapsulates a lot of what I see as a purpose of this book because if you’re telling your inner voice to shut up, then you’re never going to lead the path that you most intrinsically desire. You’ll never get there. You’re going to be stuck. Whatever that stuck looks like could look fine from the outside. It could be the Instagram-perfect life. It could also be your own personal hell at the same time.

You never would have known. From the outside, I looked like I had a perfect life. I was thankful for it. I lived by the ocean. I had a family and a healthy daughter. I had my own health. In that chapter, I’m talking about going inward and looking at the discomfort and the pain and looking at the root causes of your angst instead of trying to squirm away and hide from it.

You think that was from the chapter Love Another Foundational Food. It’s about self-love and the practice of introspection to try and understand why and to see the pain, let it wash over you, learn from it, and emerge from that. There is a high price to pay to run away from whatever cobwebs are in our psyche that drive us to do what we do or avoid or live a life that doesn’t serve us or others. For me, meditation has helped me understand. Writing the book helped me understand what motivated me. The writings of Bruce Lipton were also very influential and his explaining.

He's also a local to Santa Cruz. He lives out here.

He’s a hero but he talks about the first six years of life is when our subconscious downloads all the programming. Not that our parents didn’t have the best intentions, but you’re a sponge then and you set the program that’s going to be your operating system for the rest of your life. Be aware of what that operating system is and the program that’s running in the background. A martyr program was running in my background. I didn’t know that until I dove in and looked for it. Now I get it. Now that I’m aware of it, I can avoid it. I don’t need to be a martyr. I deserve to live a wonderful life. I’m going to serve the planet better and my community better if I am the best version of myself.

To continue on this journey, I will provide people with a couple of tools here. Bruce Lipton led a course on the Commune platform which is OneCommune.com. I believe the podcast is also called Commune. I was going to go. It was a few hundred dollars but it was also on a weekend. It was impossible to go down to Topanga and be there for a full day with Bruce Lipton.

I was like, “That would be heaven,” but I wasn’t able to make it work for my family. I do know, however, that it will be out live on the Commune platform if it isn’t already very soon. I encourage people to check that out if they have a subscription. I have a lifetime account. I also had the pleasure of being on Jeff Krasno’s Podcast related to that, not related to Bruce Lipton, but I talked about Omega-3s with him. Specifically, I’m a fan of the show and I encourage people to check it out.

Wisdom From Within

The other is even paging through this and everything that you shared about finding your purpose and leaning into that and having these meditative moments. You talk about transcendental meditation in this book. You even in the foreword wrote, “An honor to Joar Opheim,” who’s the Founder and CEO of Nordic Naturals, who encouraged his management staff to all lean into Transcendental Meditation as well. It’s this whole concept that the late Wallace J. Nichols brought to the world with his Blue Mind work.

I just learned the day that we’re recording this, which is June 21st, that he passed away earlier this month. I had him on the show specifically to talk about his work with Blue Mind, and how being on, in, under, and around water could center us and bring us to these moments of truth that could also nourish our beings in a way that they might feel subjugated, and help us discover what our true purpose is.

I was listening to that episode again because I wanted to re-air it on this platform. I found myself reflecting on his interview as I prepared for this one because so much of that wisdom seems to be shared. It isn’t an accident that Gautama the Buddha and Jesus Christ and all of these other leaders throughout many different religions seem to agree on a lot of these concepts that we get wisdom from within. That God is within us. That spirit is something that is within us. That’s not outside off in the sky.

To truly worship, you have to love this self because that’s within you. This is a healthy reminder for people, whether they be religious or not or spiritual truly or not. We can be on a path of self-discovery and admit that we need to love ourselves to get to this space where we can capture the inherent wisdom of the universe. I don’t know how else to put it.

It’s all there. As I say in the book, I do not fall into any religious bucket. I was raised religiously. I wrote a chapter in the book called So Jesus and Buddha Walked into a Bar. As I was on this journey of introspection, I had a light bulb moment. I said, “The teachings of Christ and Buddha are completely well aligned.” It is about knowing the self and going inward. I thought it was a light bulb moment.

I did a little research as I was writing that chapter. I said, “There have been books and books written about the parallels between Christ, Buddha, and Krishna.” There have been spiritual leaders throughout history who understood the way. The way is by going inward and being connected with the world around us and being connected with our community, and raising the vibration as well by being joyful.

The Howard Thurman quote that inspired me, “Do what makes you come alive because that’s what the world needs.” When you are alive, your vibration is higher. You are more creative. You are more collaborative. Instead of being outraged, let’s collaborate and be creative and solve. Spread that like a virus and we’re going to head toward a better world in doing so.

 

When you are alive, your vibration is higher. You are more creative and collaborative.

 

Divine Love

Another thing that you do with this book is to share your moment of what sounds like divine love. Can you talk about that moment?

It was quite an experience. I’ve had a few experiences that have blown my mind, but I was in my twenties and I was in a devoted relationship. I thought he was my soulmate and learned after two years of struggle that I had been betrayed. I was devastated as one is. I was sobbing on the couch one day. Going into that, I knew I had to lean into the grief, and that it was going to take me a long time to process the grief.

I wasn’t drinking. I wasn’t smoking anything. I was just leaning into the grief. I’m sobbing on my couch one day. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, I felt this warmth and this light around me. I stopped crying and I felt this love. It was so palpable. I reached up my hands and it changed my life. I look at that experience as having been one of the best experiences of my life because I experienced that. I knew at that moment that I was loved, I had always been loved, and I would always be loved.

If we can all tap into that, and you can’t tap into it when you’re scrolling on your phone and you’re distracted. You only tap into that when you go inward. It was a powerful experience. I’m grateful for it. I’ve talked to a lot of people who have had similar experiences. It’s not all that rare but they don’t happen when you’re not tuning in.

 

We can all tap into divine lap. However, it is much hard to reach when you are scrolling on your phone or overly distracted.

 

I reflect when I hear that story on the moments within my life when I have gone inward. For me, it takes being alone, and alone for stretches of time. Not just an afternoon. I traveled throughout Europe in my early twenties and I felt like I tuned into something bigger than me. I could assess where I needed to physically be and even would re-encounter people I had met earlier in my travels in another town hundreds of miles away just because I was like, “I need to stand here for a little longer. I’m not sure why, but I need to do that.”

To understand that at the same time, I’ve hosted this podcast and interviewed many people, almost 200 at this point. One of whom was Captain Liz Clark, who wrote the book Swell: A Surfing Sailor’s Voyage of Awakening through the Pacific. While she was alone, she describes this moment when she looked up into the sky and she saw this cloud person that was a woman leaning back. It spoke to her as if it was inside her. I’ll lead people to that episode in which I interviewed Captain Liz Clark because as much as you can be a skeptic when you hear something like this. As she described it, I was covered in chills.

I’ve got chills now.

I had the same experience when I listened to her audiobook and she was telling the story in her voice. I also had this experience when I interviewed an artist who was talking about the task a professor had given him of painting the wind. During this moment, he was like, “How do you paint the wind?” He’s struggling and he’s out here on this mountain face. That’s the episode with Alexander Inchbald. He’s painting the wind then he hears the wind speak to him as if it’s coming from within.

You can’t say it’s not true. It’s the person’s individual experience. It’s as true as the words I’m speaking now or the perspective that I share. There’s some divinity in that. Whether it’s the soul or God, whatever it is, it’s the thing or the web that is connecting us and revealing itself with the moments of truth that enable us to see that we are but one part of a much larger puzzle.

I get back to thinking about one of my favorite books of all time, which I was introduced to by a literature professor in college undergrad. It was by Lewin Thomas called Lives of a Cell. He talks about the biology of a cell as it relates to our entire environment. The whole planet could be seen as one single cell, and the atmosphere as the membrane of the cell. Each thing within it could even be a strand of DNA or a part of a DNA piece. If you start to think about things from an even bigger perspective and airlift out of your present moment, then you can see that these things have to be connected. There’s no other way but for it to be connected.

There are bits of profound wisdom. We need to care about more than the sole but the whole. The whole has to integrate this idea of a soul. It has to integrate something more of the soul. Even as someone, perhaps like yourself, I don’t believe in necessarily God as defined by a particular religion but I cannot say that it doesn’t exist, whatever this entity is. I cannot say that it doesn’t exist within us.

Dog

I feel like we are each. I don’t fully just say, “People are humans.” I look at my animals and I look at all life. I see the same thing. You also relate one moment in this book where you are connecting with your dog in this very profound way, Leo, who I’m sure you miss every day. If perhaps you could share that story, people might also be able to relate to these moments and this communication that we can have without being able to speak.

Beautiful story. I would love to listen to that episode. I got chills when you talked about that. These experiences are available to all of us when we ask for it. Sometimes when we don’t ask for it. The dog story, I’ll digress. I’d like to read a little passage about a-ha moments that I wrote because I feel like it was relevant to what you were saying if we have time to do that.

My beloved dog, my soul dog was my soul mate. He passed away in 2016. A couple of years before that when he was getting older, we caught each one another’s eyes. We looked into one another’s eyes for a moment and this moment was different. I looked into his eyes and he looked into my eyes. I felt this palpable love flowing from us and he flowed it too. We were both so moved. It just flowed.

It flowed back and forth and it was as palpable as that divine, love, and experience I had many years prior. It’s beautiful. I periodically have reminders of this greater whole and all of the love. Whatever it is, it is loved and it wants us to be loved. It wants us to love others and share that. Tap into it. Imagine a world we could have if we were all operating on that level and with that consciousness. It’s about raising consciousness.

Another one of Bruce Lipton’s books is Spontaneous Evolution. Bruce and a lot of his like-minded colleagues or thought leaders consider us to be heading toward a sixth mass extinction. He provides evidence of this in that book but also hope. There’s a lot of hope too in raising consciousness. That’s what this is about. It’s my effort to raise consciousness.

A-Ha Moments

We’re deep in the Anthropocene, which is the sixth distant extinction. We’re in it. We can see it demonstrated in the number of species that have died off in our oceans and on land. It’s not slowing down. That’s the sad truth. Bruce Lipton’s work is something people should go to read and absorb. You mentioned wanting to read a couple of you’re a-ha moments from the book. Why don’t we go ahead?

Let me see if I can find it. If you want to ask something else, I’m going to see if I can find it. It was just quoting another author who had written one of those books on the alignment between Christ and Buddha.

One of the concepts of Buddhism that I’ve always thought was interesting is that of this reincarnation and the concept of reincarnation. As humans become the biggest swelling population on earth, we have over eight billion people now and that keeps growing, you start to think, “Maybe that’s part of the reason that we have fewer species.” We’re just overtaking in a way.

I don’t know that I necessarily agree in a one-for-one perspective of any concept of reincarnation but the realities of it are that our soil goes into one individual or another because we consume the nutrients at the latter. It’s almost like we are all at the end of the day made of that stardust that originated life on earth. There’s that connection too. Did you find the quote you wanted to read?

I did. Author Richard Hooper in his book Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, and Lao Tzu: The Parallel Sayings. He says, “If the words of certain teachers move us and if we were to examine our thoughts while reading them, what often strikes us the most is not that these teachers are telling us something new but they are reminding us of something we already knew but perhaps had forgotten. It’s as though we had always known these truths at some deep level, so we respond with, ‘A-ha, yes, of course. I knew that all along.’ These teachers reveal the truth that has always been within us.” I found that so profound and so true.

Care More Be Better | Monique Wellise | Coming To Life Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, and Lao Tzu: The Parallel Sayings

One of my favorite spiritual leaders of today is Sadhguru. One of the things that he says when people press him is he doesn’t read anything. He hasn’t read any of these spiritual texts. He just knows how to listen. He goes inside and listens to this for the profound truths that he then shares. Every interview with him is a complete mind walk.

Soil Regeneration And Regenerative Agriculture

I might use another expletive mind because I feel like every time I hear him, I learn something different and new or perhaps I’m hearing it differently now than I heard it yesterday. One of the things that he’s very much an advocate for is soil health now. He’s been out there speaking about the need to restore our soils because we’ve essentially napalmed them with glyphosate and a ton of other chemicals and fertilizers which have destroyed the beautiful matrices of our soil, which is foundational to health.

I mention regenerative agriculture in my book. I watched Kiss the Ground and Common Ground, and Natural Factors. I had the honor of interviewing one of the filmmakers, the writer for Kiss the Ground and Common Ground because we have a regenerative farm. I’m so moved and I feel so much hope that the answer is right beneath our feet. If anyone hasn’t watched those films or isn’t tuned in to the regenerative agricultural movement, if this can happen on a big scale, it’s probably the biggest thing we can do for the planet.

Soil restoration as well as drawing down carbon. We’ve had on this show Paul Hawken, who wrote Drawdown and Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation. We’ve also had Tom Newmark, who you know from his work at New Chapter. He also is the cofounder of The Carbon Underground. We had John Roulac on this show as well, who was the executive producer of Kiss the Ground. He funded it and got that to come through.

We’ve featured many of the contributors from Common Ground as well, which is the more recent film by the same group, including Kelly Ryerson and other activists, who were involved in the film. This work is going to continue. Whether you continue to eat meat, the only meat you should eat, in my opinion, is organic regeneratively grown. There are now certifying bodies, the rock certification, which is regenerative organic certification. There’s also Regen, which is led by Gabe Brown, which is also the version that John Roulac and the founders of Common Ground would support.

It is simply because while it doesn’t require organic certification, it helps farmers move in the direction of organic and a 5 or 6-step process so it can be more inclusive. Many of these farmers can’t just go from 0 to 100 in lickety-split. They have to make progress and change. I very much appreciated that about the Regenified Movement within the organic field. Also, somebody else I’m going to be bringing on hopefully soon is Tim LaSalle who was the Godfather of the Regenerative Organic Movement overall.

Exciting. Let’s hope.

It is hopeful. While I am mostly plant-based, I’m not able to say goodbye to that medication no matter what I do now. My husband and my kids are not. I still buy regenerative organic meats in my household. What I’m doing to get them because they aren’t reliably available in my local store, is buying them online from regenerative organic farms that are in the Midwest and that bear the regenerative feed certification. There are resources available and I’ll be sure to include links to that.

Are such products available on Thrive?

No. Thrive is pretty heavily leaned into the whole rock world for regenerative organic certification. I don’t know if they’re necessarily offering those meat products. I haven’t seen them yet.

There’s your farmer’s market and ask the farmer about the farmer's practices. That’s great to support local organic produce by interviewing your farmer’s market local producers about their practices.

Care More Be Better | Monique Wellise | Coming To Life Coming To Life: One way to support local organic produce is to interview local producers about their practices.

 

Make more impact that way. A lot of people are raising backyard chickens to get their proteins or even rabbits, which is how I grew up. I was born in a hippie commune. We had a lot of produce that we grew. We raised rabbits and chickens for food. There are other ways to do this, but not everybody is whole.

The livestock are an important part. The planned rotational grazing is an important part of regenerative agriculture and livestock when they graze in quadrants. There are amazing stories in Common Ground and Kiss The Ground of land that was desertified and has been brought back to life. It doesn’t even take that long.

I witnessed this occur also on a horse farm in the New River Basin area of Oakdale in California. One of my friends, Connie, procured a farm. It was just river rock and nothing. What she did was, through grazing animals gradually with the horses, she rebuilt the soil and now they have thriving pastures. Her horse farm is in Oakdale. It’s hot in the summer and whatnot but it’s paradise for horses at this point. That soil wasn’t even there before she took on the property.

We can fix it and healthy soil is going to draw down carbon from the atmosphere. We have a choice. We can head toward the Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome landscape, which is what I see, or we can have a greener world for generations. United Nations says we have 60 harvests left if we’re on the same trajectory. That’s potentially our lifetime and certainly our children. It’s scary and important that we get involved now.

One of our largest exports is topsoil. The fact that we’re exporting our topsoil is also very alarming because what do you end up with then? We talked about this with Paul Hawken where you essentially end up going from soil that’s healthy and thriving and has its honeycomb of mycelium within it that holds moisture, that sequesters carbon, that supports life to something that is dirt through plowing and dowsing with chemicals, either chemical fertilizers and also pesticides. It’s become dust. We learned this during the Dust Bowl. By degrading our soil in this way, it all blew away. We need to take steps to prevent that and it starts with education.

Time is running. The clock is ticking. We need to stop blowing it.

This all inspired me with people that we’ve mentioned here, even yourself, Monique Mo, for coming out and saying, “You need to find your purpose. It’s important to do that. Listen to yourself. It’s not a selfish ask.” These are all things that we need to do. I have applied for a PhD program in Sustainability Education at Prescott College. Pretty soon, I expect to start those studies. I think I will be accepted. I’ve interviewed three of their professors on this show. I’m very hopeful that by the time the school year rolls around for my kids, it will also be rolling around for me.

I have a quote at the beginning of each chapter, but there’s a quote that says, “Walk on the way and the way appears.” You don’t need to have a plan. It doesn’t need to be a big thing. It doesn’t need to be a drastic change. It is just one small step toward what you think you want, and then other things can fall into place from there. You’re walking the way, Corinna.

 

Walk on the way and the way appears. You do not need a plan. It does not need to be a big thing or a drastic change. It is just one small step toward what you think you want and other things will fall into place.

 

That’s right. Thank you so much for joining me, Monique. This has been an absolute pleasure.

My pleasure. Thank you.

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Episode Wrap-up

To find out more about Monique Wellise and her work, visit FindingMo.life. As a reminder, we are launching our new Cause Before Commerce site this summer, CircleB.co. This site will host the same great content you find on CareMoreBeBetter.com while also providing helpful tools to live a little greener, a little more socially aware, and locally engaged. You’ll find how-to guides and DIY tools to renew what you have, replace things you buy, and reduce waste.

CircleB.co will also offer plastic-free products from housewares and clothing to supplements and personal care items. All of these are circular in design, minimize waste, and seek to limit or eliminate plastic waste. You can explore our landing page now to learn more about this upcoming launch, just visit CircleB.co.

Thank you now and always for being a part of this pod and this community because together, we can do so much more. We can learn to love ourselves a little bit better and step into who we are truly meant to be. Thank you.

 

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