Meat and Meaning, Life After Butchery

Sometimes, the universe brings people into your life at just the right moment. This happened to me in May 2023 when I received an email from Primal Supply Meats, informing me of their closure. With Electric City Butcher already closed and my second shop, Graze and Gather Meats, on the brink of shutting down, I couldn't help but take notice. Over the next several months, I was impressed by the company's genuine communications and heartfelt concern for its customers as it slowly wound down operations.Though I had never met the owner, Heather Marold Thomason , we had orbited each other in the tiny world of whole animal butchery.In October 2023, Heather showed up on my virtual doorstep again. I was trolling the Internet as I contemplated the idea of writing again, dusting off my creative fiction curiosities from college, when I stumbled across Heather’s writing on Substack, a platform she’d been using for a few months and now had more than 10,000 followers. Her deeply personal HUNGRY HEART was salve for the small business wounds I was still tending. When I dug a little deeper, the similarities piled up like cuts of meat on the butcher block. We both started out as marketing professionals before dropping everything to apprentice as butchers. We both had admiration for creating a local, regenerative food system. We started our own businesses in hopes of being part of that solution. And we both closed said businesses within weeks of each other, only to choose writing as the next leg of our life journeys? This kind of synchronicity couldn't be ignored.I wrote her an email. A fledgling pen pal relationship ensued, that then budded into a kind of recovering entrepreneurs support group. That morphed into an ad hoc writers workshop, and it has now blossomed into a new friendship full of future possibilities.In this month’s Enlightened Omnivore PodCast, I’m thrilled to share Heather’s story with all of you. You’l enjoy her thoughtful words, infectious energy, and compelling determination to persevere. She’s already had so many life lessons, with many more to learn. I hope you have as much fun listening as I did recording our chat together.Enlightened Omnivore is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit enlightenedomnivore.substack.com/subscribe