Leisha When I was around thirty, living in Canada, I felt something I couldn’t really explain. It wasn’t loud or dramatic; it was just a quiet pull that kept returning. I felt a steady urge to get out and get closer to something real. At that time, I had no skills. My family had just sold everything, including rental homes and gas stations, which looked like a solid life from the outside, and we bought a little log cabin that we believed was “in the bush.” It wasn’t. It was small town Ontario, still connected, still supplied, and still very much inside the system we thought we were stepping away from. That realization took time, but something had already shifted in me.
I started gardening, although I did not do it well, and I was simply trying. I planted food and figured things out as I went, reaching for some version of self sufficiency without really understanding what that meant yet. We had a large workshop that we turned into what we thought would be an Airbnb, but that idea did not last. The space slowly filled with people who needed a place to stay. These were people on the edges of things, people who did not quite fit into the systems that are supposed to hold them. Without planning it, we became something like a shelter. That is where I really learned, not in the garden, but in people. I made many mistakes. I did not know how to hold boundaries. I gave too much, and then I pulled back too hard. I wanted to help, but I did not always know how to do that in a way that was actually helpful. Compassion without structure became chaos more than once, and I had to learn that through experience.
At the same time, I kept going with the practical things. I learned how to sprout indoors through long winters, and I learned how to preserve herbs. I practiced canning and jarring whatever I could grow, and I tried to stretch a short season into something that felt more stable. It was not pretty, and it was not romantic. It was messy, but I kept going.
When I came to Ecuador, I really did not have much. I had two suitcases and a bit of money, which was not much at all. I was also in a place where I was questioning everything. I questioned my life, my direction, what I believed, and what I was doing. It felt like everything had been taken apart, or perhaps I had taken it apart myself, and I was not sure what would go back together again. I asked if I could camp on a piece of land just to have some time in nature. I set up a tent and made a fire pit to cook on. That was all I had at the beginning. Then I found that I could not stop creating.
I built a treehouse using simple materials that I could find, and I created platforms for people to sleep. I shaped an outdoor kitchen from adobe taken directly from the land, and I made a pizza oven and a BBQ area. Eventually, I added a proper sink and stove, and I built a large family table out of raw wood where people could gather. I created a space, and people came, mostly young people. I carved trails through the land, and I brought a small canal of water to move gently through the fique forest. I started growing food again, and this time there was no winter shutting things down. I brought in turkeys, chickens, and goats. I made cheese, and we made bread. It felt like freedom, and it felt real. It also felt like survival at times, and I did not always know which one it was.
It was a great deal of work, and it did not stay simple.
It grew over time. More people arrived, more ideas were shared, and more collaboration developed. There were more conversations, more structure, more rules, and more personalities involved. I felt the weight of that, because it was not just land, it was people, and people bring everything with them. I love people, but I also learned how much energy they require. I saw how quickly things can shift when there are too many needs in one space, and I experienced how difficult it is to hold something steady when everyone is moving through their own challenges. There were times when it exhausted me more than the physical work ever did, and I did not always know how to balance that.
Somewhere in all of this, my work began to deepen. I had already been working with live blood for years, using it as a way to understand what was happening in the body. When I started looking at soil through a microscope, something clicked in a way I did not expect. Soil and blood are not the same, but they speak in similar ways. They are both living systems, they are both responsive, and they both provide clues all the time. That realization changed how I saw everything. I began to understand that even in natural health we are still often trying to fight. We fight symptoms, and we fight what we think should not be there. I was doing the same thing in the garden. Even when my methods were “natural,” I was still trying to control and correct rather than understand.
That shift changed my approach. Instead of asking how to get rid of something, I started asking how to create an environment where it simply does not want to stay. This applies to the body, to the soil, and to the way we live. It raises the question of what kind of environment we are creating, both internally and externally, and what that environment invites or pushes away without force.
Now I am here in Ecuador, but in a different phase of this journey. The land produces, and I can grow food all year. At the Project, we are not just supplementing our needs; we are sustaining a good portion of them. The project itself has grown into a store, a café, and a hostel. After years of building, it is now moving into education. I reflect on that often, because I do not fully know if this is the thing I was being called to all those years ago. I feel it, and I question it at the same time. Some days it feels exactly right, and other days I feel like I am still in the process of becoming it.
However, I do know that this space holds what I talk about. People can see it, taste it, and experience it. It is not just words, and that matters to me.
I have people in my life who see the world very differently. Some feel strongly that something is off and that there is a kind of pressure building in everything. You can see it in how people behave, how quickly things escalate, and how little space there seems to be for patience. Others do not see it that way at all. I find myself somewhere in the middle, because I can feel the pressure too. I feel it in everyday interactions, in how people move, and in how they react. Everything feels just a little more strained than it used to. You do not need an explanation for that; you can feel it.
Underneath all of it, no matter what people believe, I see something consistent. People want to feel free. They do not want to feel controlled, contained, or dependent on systems that do not feel human. To me, that kind of freedom is quiet. It is not loud or rebellious, and it does not need to prove anything. It feels like peace, and it feels like being able to breathe without tension.
This is where the irony becomes clear for me. I have a deep desire to teach self reliance and to share what I have learned. I want to help people reconnect to food, to land, and to themselves. At the same time, I am still inside the system. I use platforms, I rely on infrastructure, and I participate in the very thing I am also trying to step away from. Sometimes this feels aligned, and other times it feels like a contradiction that I cannot fully resolve. I am linked into it, and so is everyone else. There is no clean exit, and there is no moment where you are suddenly outside of it all.
So what is self reliance?
It is not about leaving everything behind, and it is not about isolation. It is not a perfect off grid idea. It is a shift, and it happens slowly. It is less dependence on what you cannot touch and more relationship with what you can. This includes the soil, the food, the people around you, and your own ability to adapt and respond.
What I see now is that when systems become strained, people feel it. They feel stress, irritation, and disconnection, as though something is building with nowhere to go. You can ignore it, but ignoring it does not remove it. It simply means you are reacting instead of adjusting. I have lived both sides of that experience, and I see the difference when you can grow food, when you know how to preserve it, and when you understand how to work with living systems instead of against them. You are still in the world, but you are less fragile within it.
At Living Ground, I still feel like I am standing on a threshold. I do not know if this is the final form of what I am meant to build, and perhaps it is not meant to be final. It may continue to shift as I do. However, I know that every step, every mistake, and every season of trying to figure this out has brought me here. I am still learning, still adjusting, and still finding that line between being part of the system and not being entirely dependent on it.
If someone asked me where to start, I would say to start small. Grow something. Learn how to preserve something. Pay attention to what you rely on. Do not wait for a perfect plan, and do not think you have to leave everything to live differently.
Self reliance is not an escape. It is a return. It is not a return backwards, but a return to something real. And maybe that is enough.
