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What does Healing From the Root mean?

From The Root Book Cover

Individuals, communities, municipalities, states, and nations have historical influences that have shaped our present reality. When we slap bandages on wounds and keep moving, we never heal our roots, or pull up the roots of the weeds that impede our progress. Our collective mending includes healing ourselves first, from the root.  Starting with individual healing, our broader communities are healed as well, and this restoration leads to healthier nations and a soothed global family. What applies to the individual applies to the whole and where we choose to apply our time, energy, and resources determines our direction. There are currently trillions of dollars that are wasted annually that can be recaptured and reallocated to better serve our world. The manner in which we manage our resources affects the quality of our mental and physical health, as well as our global relationships.

Here is one solution to recapturing and reallocating wasted capital, and for balance in our communities, that I put forth in my new book, From The Root, pp 76:

Invest in school and workplace programs, and media and entertainment platforms that focus on Healthy Communication in our communities. Human Infrastructure Municipal bonds (HI Bonds™, which I will elaborate on in the next chapter), can be created with the specific goal of Healthy Communication in mind. This will help to reduce the conflict and crime rates and their associated costs. The public and private sectors can formulate a strategy for the return on investment. This action will build the healthy, safe, and secure human infrastructures for our communities. Corporate incentive to invest: investment of this type will help to reduce or eliminate many or all of the employee-employer misunderstandings. And, additional investment incentives include: reducing bullying, divorce, suicide, depression, and acts of violence, and creating more peace in our societies—which according to the Institute for the Economics of Peace, will save trillions of dollars of wasted capital.

Please visit Amazon to purchase my new book, From The Root: 

Also, please check out the book: All God’s Children, by Fox Butterfield.

It’s worth the read! It helped me to see the roots of where our pain emanates.  I cite it in my book, to illustrate that the majority of us have come from roots of pain and heartbreak. When we can see that, we can begin to have more empathy for all of our fellow humans.

 

 

 

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The Power of Love…

Who would imagine how important a community garden of free food could be…I am so grateful that I was moved to start Urban Farming. As I have mentioned in a prior blog, this “calling” changed my life for the best. I have learned so much about our world and how we are all so intricately connected. Below, I will share an excerpt from my book, From The Root:

On this particular day, in the very beginning, we stood at the first official Urban Farming Community Garden on the corner of Collingwood and Cascade on the west side of Detroit. This was the same garden that would be featured on the Montel Williams Show only weeks after this encounter. A young woman approached me and told me how happy she was to be able to pick free food. Her voice was saddled with burden, and her face was visibly battled. Her story unfolded as we talked. She told me that she was desperately trying to transition out of homelessness. Our free garden gave her the ability to eat any time, day or night. 

She shared how soothing this was for her, as she pulled me aside and spoke in a soft undertone, offering more of her story. Many times she had been so hungry she’d had to beg for food. Tears welled up in her eyes as she told me that she had recently asked a man to help her buy some food. He demanded that she perform a sexual act in exchange. She felt dirty and worthless, with an increased broken trust in men. That man saw a woman in need and instead of protecting her and helping her, he took advantage of her. Clearly he was also a broken spirit, and likely from similarly rooted circumstances. The young woman broke down and cried, letting me know that the garden was a place where she could go to eat without compromising her dignity. That was why it was of such special importance to her that our gardens provided free food and free access 24-hours a day, 7 days a week.  I was moved and shaken.

–Page 44 and 45 of From The Root, A Memoir and A Roadmap for Balance in Our World.

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urbanfarming.org

#LoveIsContagious

#HealOurWorldFromTheRoot

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Imagine and Bring to Life… Be Free!

In the spirit of my new song, Be Free, I want to share some thoughts on how we can all get there- to that place of freedom that I describe in the song. (Find “Be Free” on iTunes, Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Google)

When we focus on the solutions and what we want in our lives and for our world, we begin to bring that vision to life. Conversely, when we focus on the problems constantly, and frame them in fighting and struggle terms, i.e.: “A Fight Against Hunger,” or “We’re fighting for our rights!” etc., then we keep ourselves mired in the “fight” or in the “struggle.” That is why, with Urban Farming, we quickly changed our soundbites to things like: “Creating an Abundance of Food for All in Our World,” or “Creating Abundance for All in Our Generation.”  These became more succinct and accurate statements of exactly what we are bringing to life. Here I will share an excerpt from the Preface of my new book, From The Root:

Imagine a world in which people have easy access to healthy food, feel empowered, and are educated with the skills for peaceful conflict resolution. In this scenario, individuals are able to participate and contribute their ideas to humankind. In this type of world, we will see balance and creativity, rather than extremities that exclude people and keep them from contributing to their own lives and to our world in fruitful ways.

My interest in our global balance has come out of a process. I have been in the music business most of my adult life. I was offered my first record deal by Prince in the same week that I was accepted into the Berklee College of Music. My life has been largely steeped in music and creativity. But recording a CD for Sony Records in Detroit, Michigan led me to see the vast amounts of unused land and the startling poverty in that city. I was moved to start a charitable organization called Urban Farming®. Armed with a global vision to create an abundance of quality food and quality opportunity for everyone in our world, I began by planting three community gardens of free food for people in need in Detroit. We started from a grass-roots level and rapidly grew, working in rural, suburban, and urban areas. 

There are now over 66,000 gardens around the world that are a part of the Urban Farming Global Food Chain®.  And out of my experiences both in affluent communities as well as economically challenged communities, I grew to understand the dire need for our world to heal from the root. That is why I was led to write my new book, From The Root. Essentially, the book is a Memoir and also a roadmap – full of solutions that will help balance our world and heal our relationships From The Root! 

Share the ways that you are healing yourself and your relationships, From The Root…