Leisha I am exhausted.
The preparation over the last few weeks has been intense, brutal, satisfying, concerning, and fortifying. I feel confident. I know what I am doing, I know the material, and I know the purpose. But I also feel as though I have been doing the job of an entire office.
Every day has carried its own responsibility. I have been making sure things are organized, understood, tallied, coordinated, and communicated. There are meals, rooms, schedules, shopping lists, participant information, staff roles, teaching plans, transportation, budgets, and all the small details that make something flow. It has been a lot.
The real work has not just been making decisions. Most of those decisions were already alive inside me. The real work has been getting what is in my head out into the world in a way that others can understand and carry.
And then there is my personality. The INTJ in me can see systems, structures, patterns, gaps, risks, outcomes, and possibilities all at once. Some describe this type as the architect, the strategist, or even the commander of a vision. It is said to be one of the rarer ways of moving through the world, and for women, even rarer. That explains a lot to me. It explains why I have often felt not gotten, not understood, or too far ahead in what I can see. I can hold a full map in my mind, but that does not mean everyone else can see it. This is where I have to slow myself down and remember that what feels obvious inside my head still needs language, patience, and steps for someone else to understand.
For years, Living Ground has lived inside my mind and heart. I have carried the systems, the philosophy, the flow, and the connection between soil, food, microbes, blood, people, gardens, kitchens, and community. I can see how it all fits together, but seeing something and communicating it are two very different things.
There comes a point when a vision has to stop belonging to one person. It has to become instructions, recipes, schedules, maps, checklists, training, conversations, questions, corrections, and eventually confidence in someone else.
That has been one of the hardest parts for me. I live inside this vision every day. I know where everything fits because I have been building it piece by piece for years. No one else has lived inside it the way I have. So, when I ask someone to do something, I have to remember that they are often seeing only one piece of a much larger puzzle.
That is not their failure. It is my responsibility to build the bridge between what I see and what they see.
I also know I am asking a lot of my team, my family, and my friends. I know this is not normal. It is not a regular event, and it is not a regular workshop. It is asking people to stretch, to learn, to notice details, and to carry more than they may be used to carrying.
At the same time, I am learning how to transfer the load more evenly. Not everything can live on my shoulders, and not everything should. Part of building something real is learning how to let pieces of it move into other hands without losing the heart of it.
And then there was the stick bug, who kept insisting on being in my space. It would not leave, and of course I had to look up the symbolism because that is what I do. The stick bug speaks of patience, stillness, camouflage, persistence, and learning how to move carefully through the world without forcing everything. It felt almost ridiculous and perfect at the same time. Here I am, exhausted and trying to hold so many moving pieces together, and this little being keeps showing up as a quiet reminder to slow down, stay steady, adapt, and trust the strange intelligence of nature.
There is another layer to all of this too. My mommy is not doing well and is struggling with her health. My sister is also challenged with similar afflictions to the ones I carry. I want to go visit them. I need to go as soon as possible. I need to get through this, finish what is directly in front of me, and then go be with my family.
And here I sit writing, as if I have time for this. But this is my medicine. It is how I process and manage my life. I love to share, to tell stories, and to let the words somehow become part of the healing. Writing helps me take what feels tangled inside and give it shape. It helps me understand what I am carrying.
That reality is sitting underneath everything. While I am organizing meals, schedules, rooms, teachings, and people, there is also the pull of home and the people I love. There is the ache of knowing I am needed in more than one place at the same time.
This workshop is not simply seven days of teaching. It is the beginning of a model, a way of bringing together terrain health, live blood analysis, gardens, kitchens, microbes, food, observation, and community into one living experience.
The first time anything is created, every recipe has to be written, every process has to be tested, every gap has to be discovered, every misunderstanding becomes information, and every small failure becomes part of the next version.
It is easy to look at something once it is flowing and assume it was always that way. It was not. Effortless is usually the result of countless unseen hours, quiet corrections, long days, tired bodies, and people choosing to keep going.
These past weeks, I feel as though I have been moving an entire operating system out of my head and into the hands of others. That is exhausting, but it is also necessary.
Because something important has happened. The workshop no longer exists only in my head. It now exists in documents, recipes, gardens, food, participant files, room assignments, staff training, shopping lists, schedules, conversations, and people.
It has become something others can now help carry. This is the intention.
There will still be problems. There always are. Every event has unexpected moments, especially when many people, meals, teachings, rooms, gardens, and emotions are moving at the same time.
But there is a difference between chaos and complexity. Chaos is when nothing connects. Complexity is when many connected systems are moving together. Today, I do not feel like I am standing in chaos. I feel like I am standing inside complexity.
That is a very different place.
As I sit here, tired beyond words, I realize the preparation phase is almost over. Soon, people will arrive, the lists will become conversations, the schedules will become experiences, the recipes will become shared meals, and the lessons will become understanding.
The vision will no longer belong only to me. My hope and dream. I really do not like to feel I am pushing others into a vision that I see, but when I recognize that maybe they “see it”, I am willing to do whatever it takes to make this happen.
And perhaps that has been the real work all along. Not just building a workshop, but building something that can finally exist beyond the boundaries of my own mind.
