LISA’S STORY

Everyone has a story. Today I thought I would share a very personal side, and why I am fiercely committed to bringing Good Health & Well-Being to the world.

LISA’S STORY

I look at my life today - full of health, friends, family, joy - and it’s hard for me to imagine where my life was 17 years ago.  

In the summer of 2005, I was a Champagne-drinking classical archaeologist with a masters degree from Oxford University and an expertise in Dionysos the Greek God of Wine (yes, really!). I was working in New York and Nantucket as a sommelier and fromager, and hosting a wine segment on television.

When my tenure at the show ended, my grandmother had just died the week before and I felt a raw vulnerability, loss, and profound loneliness.  She had been my rock and she was gone, and the ending of the segment was a blow to my desperately fragile sense of self. They say pain is the touchstone of change, and these losses exposed the trauma I experienced early in my life, but had desperately avoided. These seemingly unrelated events became a catalyst of clarity into my life: addicted to alcohol and prescription pills, paralyzed by anxiety and depression, and dealing with bronchial asthma, fibromyalgia, undiagnosed celiac disease, migraines, ADD, obsession with perfectionism, and low self-worth.  I could no longer avoid how my physical health, emotional well-being, and mental and spiritual state reflected the culmination of my undoing back to me. I needed help.

Back then, wine and pills gave me the illusion that I was freer, lighter, funnier, and a little happier than I really was:  the “me” I thought I was meant to be.

In October 2005, I packed up my Saab with my dog, wines, crystals, and self-help books, and headed to Santa Fe. I thought maybe the shamans and healers there could help me.

My aha moment came when I found myself walking the desert labyrinth of a treatment center for substance abuse and mental health. It wasn’t lost on me that this was my spiritual call to action for change to begin.

I had three main obstacles: 1) I was exhausted and had no energy because my body was so ill, 2) I had no guide, mentor, or resource for the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health I needed and was desperately seeking, 3) I was newly sober and needed to do this on my own without anything mind-alternating. They all felt like a heavy lift. 

As I was unclear about next steps, my best idea was to enroll at The French Culinary Institute in New York because, after all, I loved food. It was there I rediscovered a sense of purpose, creativity, and nourishment. As I rolled up my sleeves in the kitchen, I transformed classical recipes into healing ones, and food literally became my medicine: I cooked my way back to health. 

I recovered and healed in unexpected and beautiful ways by discovering the origin stories of foods I found at the farmer’s market, in local spice markets, at raw food cafes, and even the aisles of Whole Foods. It was at this time, I realized I was shifting from an archaeologist of wine to a culinary archaeologist, researching the properties and preparations of every ingredient I cooked. I kept a field guide of notes, just like I did as an archaeologist, observing the profound impact these high-nutrition, intentionally prepared meals were having on my immune system, as well as my mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health. 

Friends began asking me about my journey: my daily practices and rituals, what I ate, how I transformed sugar, flour, and butter-laden, meat-heavy dishes into beautiful and delicious plant-forward meals, and how I rediscovered my health and purpose.

The practices I discovered in the kitchen proved that eating healthfully never needs to compromise on diversity of flavor or variety, and living healthfully need not compromise on joy and spontaneity. Today, I am incredibly honored to share what I’ve learned with Stanford University’s BeWell Program, Ladderworks’ groundbreaking youth workshops to advance the United Nations SDGs, and many, many corporate partners and private clients.

That’s why I launched Lisa’s 1973: to share how food that’s delicious can also be good for you (and good for the planet!). This way of living and eating gave me my life and health back, and I hope it helps you, too.  And what better place to start than the kitchen!