CONTENTS

6

Wild Swimming For The Soul

Finding wellness in water can be as simple as drinking a glass or running through a sprinkler. For Ashlea Walter, it’s open-water swimming in Lake Michigan—where she finds a release from gravity and worries that seem to only live on land. No matter how you choose to immerse, you’ll be rewarded with an instant mood boost.

16

Feeding A Healthy Community

Culinary medicine—connecting patients and providers with healthy locally grown food—has long been the goal of Groundwork Center for Resilient Communities. Now, they’ve opened a first-of-its-kind teaching kitchen in Traverse City to further that mission.

26

Living With Lyme Disease

Prevention is important, but for those battling Lyme disease, a swift and accurate diagnosis can be a life-changing step toward wellness.

34

Mental Health Help For Up North Kids

Roughly 22 percent of American kids will face a severe mental health issue. But getting support and treatment for the under-18 set and their families is limited and infinitely complicated. Thankfully, Northern Michigan families can lean on the Grand Traverse affiliate of NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

42

Where The Better Angels Work

Hospice volunteers guide patients and loved ones through one of the most emotional, challenging and beautiful parts of life.

ON

Open-Water Swimmer Ashlea Walter

Photo by Andy Wakeman

photo by Dave Weidner

SO HAPPY YOU’RE HERE!

For this inaugural issue of Health & Wellness our writers and editors met several Northern neighbors willing to show their own paths to better health and true wellness.

Writer Shea Petaja talks with a fellow local living with Lyme disease who reveals how she discovered and faced that diagnosis and, most important, the ways she is beginning to heal.

Artist, activist and elected official Ashlea Walter shares why she is a “wild swimmer”—dedicated to waking early to swim the bays and lakes surrounding her downtown Traverse City home. (Hint: She says the healing quality of water helps her harness deeper calm and mindfulness.)

Readers will get a first peek inside Groundwork’s teaching kitchen at Traverse City’s new co-op community center, Commongrounds. In the coming days, chef instructors and dietitians will gather around those state-of-the-art stoves to share nutrition science with medical providers. In turn, doctors and nurses can pass on this knowledge of culinary medicine to their patients.

From Manistee to Northport, you’ll hear the stories of comfort, courage and, yes, love from those who volunteer in hospice care or who have welcomed hospice support.

We’re also shining a light on a new mental health navigator on the block, who is helping one Northern Michigan family at a time receive care and treatment, especially kids.

This is just the beginning. We hope these pages inspire personal wellness, and treating our collective health with the greatest of care. -

The Editors

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