Growing Up in a Food Desert I grew up in a food desert, an area where access to fresh, affordable food is limited. Ironically, this was near active farmland, yet most of the food available to me was packaged, processed, or came from school cafeteria lunches. My early relationship with food was shaped by convenience and scarcity, not by nutrition or tradition. Over the years, I explored various diets, trying to improve my health. But most of them left me hungry, overwhelmed, or burnt out. It wasn’t until I began somatic therapy for PTSD that something unexpected shifted: I learned about beans as a foundational building block for long-term resilience.…