Kate Kavanaugh (she/her) is trying to figure out what it means to lay the groundwork. For herself, for human health and ecosystem health alike, for farmers, for the next generation, and beyond. After many years as a vegetarian, Kate’s health began to decline precipitously. She turned to meat for answers and found an entire world of curiosity before her. She noticed that through holistic management, farmers were working to restore ecosystems and grasslands with the help of ruminants. This seemed intimately connected to her own health journey and—curious to help restore the Western grasslands she called home through regeneratively raised meat—she opened a whole-animal butcher shop, Western Daughters, with her now-husband in 2013.
Blending her knowledge of regenerative agriculture, nutrition, anthropology, health, and biology, Kate is now in the midst of yet another life change spurred on by meat. She moved to a farm where she grows almost all of her own food, lives with the rhythms of nature, and explores the question of what it means to lay the groundwork through her podcast—the Ground Work Podcast. When she’s not exploring the intersections of human and ecosystem health, you can find her playing with goats in the sunshine.
In this episode, on the intersections of Rest + Work, we talk about:
[08:45] Too much healing becoming too much of a good thing.
[19:31] Spiritual and mental journeys often being a mirror for your physical journey.
[19:43] The earth is a mirror of our individual pain and vice versa.
[20:11] Allowing healing to sometimes be passive—letting it happen rather than making it happen.
[22:11] Reclaiming your self-sovereignty when you’ve been outsourcing your healing to others.
[31:00] Healing as a birthright—nature *wants* to heal, and humans are part of nature.
[38:16] Our dental journeys, include dental cavitations, airway work, and sleep issues.
and so much more.
Prefer to see this conversation instead? Watch the full episode on YouTube. You can also find more on our conversation and links to everything we discussed by checking out this episode’s show notes.
Listeners can find Kate online, at:
Ground Work Podcast
Ground Work Collective
Western Daughters
Personal Instagram
Ground Work Instagram
Western Daughters Instagram
You can also find meat from a regenerative farmer near you by going here—a search engine of more than 2,000 regenerative farms with a robust set of filters in order to find exactly what you want.
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Podcast Production Credits:
The Podcast Babes
Related Reading & Listening
Find most references mentioned in our conversation by checking out the episode's show notes. But, here are a few bonus resources related to our chat—
There's a portion of this conversation where Kate and I get into some tender subjects around fertility and how it relates to soil health and nutrient density. Here's an episode of Kate's podcast, called "Finding Fertility with an Ancestral Diet + Practices with Sarah Kleiner," which I think does a great job of digging into nuance around this even more. I also love that Sarah talks with Kate about how "healing" often looks like doing less, rather than doing more.
Another episode of Kate's, with Carrie Bennett, I think also does a bit of discussing hormones, fertility, and our relationship to light. If not, Carrie's Instagram is flooded with info on the topic.
"We tend to think our purpose here is to make money, or make children, or build a business, or make a name for ourselves, or change the world in big systemic ways. But do we consider that it might be our purpose to be JOYFUL?"
Most of us know about "the hero's journey," but this podcast episode on "the heroine's journey" rocked my world a bit because it so specifically mirrors the process I'm experiencing right now and what I discuss with Kate.
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