Learning How to Eat, Pray, Love—Part 1
“Parle come magni. It’s a reminder when you’re searching for the right words – to keep your language as simple and direct as Roman food. Don’t make a big production out of it. Just lay it on the table.”—Elizabeth Gilbert
Cooking a nourishing meal
December 29th, 2025
📍Salida, Colorado, USA 🇺🇸
Greetings from the wilderness!
This weekend found me packing my bags for Mexico and reading through my journals from the last year. It was at the end of November 2024, while preparing to return to Salida, Colorado, after spending two months in San Miguel de Allende (SMA), Mexico, that I began my Morning Pages practice—three pages of daily, stream-of-consciousness writing popularized by The Artist's Way.
Reading through those pages now feels like opening a time capsule. Not just memories of cities and people and movement—but proof. Proof of how far I've traveled on my growth journey since launching as a digital nomad in July 2024.
With only a few days left in 2025, it feels like the right moment to begin a reflection on this past year of wilderness wanderings. The best way to describe it, I've been learning how to Eat, Pray, Love.
My first trip to SMA in October 2024 marked several firsts: my first international solo trip and my first season navigating life newly separated at 43. Becoming a digital nomad and the separation were both a long time coming.
As an Enneagram 8 with a strong 7 wing—a challenger with a lust for life and an appetite for adventure—I genuinely feel wired for a nomadic existence. That wiring makes more sense when I remember my childhood: growing up overseas, moving throughout Asia because my father worked in international banking. My nervous system learned early that home could be fluid.
During the pandemic lockdowns, when the world suddenly closed in, that old longing to explore didn't disappear—it intensified. Quietly at first. Then insistently. I didn't know what shape it would take (my husband and I had originally planned to travel together), only that it was now or never.
The four years that followed were a slow unraveling and a careful preparation: career shifts, vaccinations, diet changes, selling possessions, learning to say goodbye, and releasing good things to make space for something greater. The greatest, it turns out, is this adventure of becoming myself again.
EAT
One of the most significant transitions this past year has been my relationship with food—and by extension, my relationship with my body.
After eight years of being vegan, I learned the hard way that there's a vast difference between a meat-free diet and a truly nourishing plant-based lifestyle. Under chronic stress, my meals had slowly devolved into heavily processed meat substitutes and refined carbs—convenient, familiar, and deeply unsustaining.
Travel forced my hand. I knew if I wanted my body to carry me across continents, something had to change. In the six months leading up to my launch, I slowly reintroduced eggs and dairy, then fish and chicken. While I still believe that a healthy plant-based diet is best for the body and the environment, these days, I eat mostly pescatarian while traveling.
One of my favorite ways to orient myself in a new place is through its grocery stores. I love spotting familiar packaging wrapped in foreign words—recognition and disorientation coexisting on the same shelf. I wander slowly, phone in hand, using Google Translate to decode ingredients. I notice which foods are abundant, which are scarce, what's seasonal, and what's imported. I pay attention to small details—like whether eggs are refrigerated or stored at room temperature—a lesson in cultural food systems. I always carry my own reusable grocery bags, a small ritual of respect for the place I'm temporarily calling home.
I believe one of the best ways to experience a culture is through its food. The grocery store, I've learned, is one of the fastest ways to understand how a culture feeds its people—and what it values enough to place on the shelf.
But I don't travel long distances just to eat at home. I love a good meal out, and I've had some excellent experiences, From arctic cod in Iceland, bratwurst in Berlin, fish and chips in London, coconut shrimp in Guyabitos, countless tacos in Bucerías, to an unforgettable omakase seafood meal in Tulum—my body has been clear in its response to being an omnivore again.
It approves.
But this shift wasn't just dietary. It was relational.
Over the past year, I've learned the joy of cooking simple, nourishing meals for myself. I've learned that I reach for sugar when big emotions surface. I've learned that the grocery store is where most self-control battles are either won or avoided entirely. I've experimented with intermittent fasting and discovered that my body prefers intuition over rules, presence over prescription, listening over control.
Now, when I eat, I slow down. I pause. I give thanks for the food—the hands that prepared it, the growers, the transport, and the behind-the-scenes labor that brought nourishment to my plate. I eat the rainbow, savoring flavors and textures. I eat with all of my senses.
In doing so, I've realized something quietly profound: Eating well is not just about fuel, it's about attunement. And sometimes, it's prayer…
With Love, unconditionally—
Jennifer
P.S.—I’d love to hear from YOU! Rather than emailing me or dropping me a DM, please post a comment below 👇
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