179 What Happens After Happily Ever After? Alison Kay Returns

Welcome BACK today to Alison Kay, one of the co-hosts of the Ancestral Kitchen Podcast, who’s here so we can announce a collaboration that I’ll get to in just one minute. 🙂

I learned today that before Alison was the leader of a community intentionally choosing to procure and prepare food in ancestral ways, she was a life coach…

And nothing has ever made more sense than that discovery.

Indeed, in our last episode together, we heard how Alison has gently but resolutely smashed one goal after another in her life, beginning with completely altering her health and body through her relationship with food. We wrapped up our last episode with Alison as she lived her happily ever after as an ex-pat in Italy, cooking spelt sourdough pizza for her husband and child while looking through an enormous picture window at the rolling sunlit hills as far as the eye can see.

But we pick up this episode with Alison, back in the UK, living at her mother-in-law’s house. And here is where Alison proves her fitness for her former career as a life coach. She describes for us today how she lovingly, gently, and still ever so resolutely opened her hands to let go of her own dreams, welcome the dreams of others, and found she had all new dreams of her own, even bigger and better than before.

We talk today about so many of the big things of life - change, love, dreams, and lovingly and supporting our partners through deep conflicting life philosophies.

Finally, Alison will invite you to share your own ancestral food stories through a new portal on her website. As you’ll hear, Alison feels an urgency to gather, curate, and protect the agricultural and culinary wisdom of our foremothers and forefathers.

I feel a similar urgency, as I know that, beyond the practical wisdom for our kitchens, every story she collects will contain lessons of love and resilience. So, while Alison curates this repository of practical knowledge, she will also pass along the information of willing participants (and only willing participants, there are strict privacy laws in the UK) to me, so I might explore and share these legacies with you as well.

With that in mind, I invite you to visit the link to the Ancestral Kitchen website, listed in the show notes - or just go to Ancestral Eatingpodcast.com and you’ll find your way around - see what she’s looking for, and perhaps submit a little (or a long) snippet for her community.

Highlights

Leaving Italy - when, why?
Signing up for communal living with a complete stranger (who is having a baby!)! - What, How, Why!!
The very unique town of Stroud of Gloucestershire.
Anatomy of making a huge decision together as a family
Small business ownership in Italy - why it’s almost impossible and how history has shaped this difficulty
How to make a marriage work between two creatives with wildly different approaches to work and creativity: “done is better than perfect” vs. “I can’t put out sub-par work.”
How to let go of the identity of being different - of being an outsider.
A REFRESH: Ancestral eating - what it means
A collaboration between Alison and I, to record and explore the different aspects of our listener’s food stories

Key Quotes

There was a lot of loss leaving Italy and leaving that dream behind, but a lot of other dreams have come to the fore.
Having this available as an option… and then meeting the lady and seeing the house… and seeing all of my concerns fall away. Everything I was worried about just kind of dissolved while I was there.
You know there will be challenges, but they feel like challenges I would like to grow into, challenges that will make me a better person.
He only started saying he wasn’t happy last than a year ago.
We were paying 50% in tax from the first penny we earned and we weren’t allowed to claim any write-offs.
I remember looking at them and just thinking, “I am so in love with these two”, and just feeling SO vulnerable.
As it became clear that Rob wasn’t happy to be in Italy, I began to feel - if he wasn’t happy, then I wasn’t happy.
We don’t want a dream to escape from reality - we want to reshape our reality
The most I actualize the things I want to do, the more I let go of things.
It’s almost like I’ve always worn a badge saying, “I do things differently.”
I miss in person friendship and I sabotage it sometimes by always insisting I’m different.
I have no culinary history and I feel a loss and it's part of the reason I’m doing the work I do. Throughout history, this has been passed on from mother to daughter and I can feel this is missing in my life…. And where it still exists, it is a beautiful thing and should be cherished.

Listen to Alison Now

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Alison's Storied Recipe: Spelt Sourdough Pizza Dough

Sourdough Spelt Pizza

Visit Alison at The Ancestral Kitchen Podcast

www.AncestralKitchenPodcast.com

Share YOUR Ancestral Stories with Alison here!

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