PODCAST: Wintering Like a Butcher

In this episode of Enlightened Omnivore, I sit back down with my good friend and butcher doppelganger, Heather Thomason.The first few minutes with Heather are always the same: a quick audio check, a little screen glare, the shared relief that yes—this sounds good, we’re here.Then the real catch-up begins.Heather’s been on the podcast a few times now, and each time feels like a different chapter of a fulfilling life. The butcher chapter. The non-profit chapter. And now, something new.This time, Heather doesn’t arrive with a new title or a big announcement. She arrives with warmth on a cold day. With the quiet honesty of someone who’s stopped forcing clarity.“I’m wintering,” she says. Cocooning. Not hiding—just listening.And I know exactly what she means.It’s that season when you stop “doing” long enough to feel yourself again.Heather shares about stepping away from her nonprofit role—less as an exit, more as a clearing. She loved the people. She cared about the impact. But somewhere along the way she noticed the simplest truth:This isn’t my life’s work.Saying that out loud takes a specific kind of courage. The kind that doesn’t come from certainty. The kind that comes from finally trusting your own temperature gauge.Putting Down the Pen, Picking Up the BrushHeather and I first connected through writing. Her HUNGRY HEART Substack was my first introduction to the platform. If you haven’t read it, it’s worth your time. Her early posts felt eerily parallel to my own feelings after closing—like someone else had already written the thing I was circling. Her work inspired me to start Enlightened Omnivore.For Heather, writing felt like the obvious container for her creativity.Until it didn’t.She describes the feeling without drama: the page started to feel like a job. The discipline didn’t feel like devotion—it felt like pressure. The words weren’t flowing. The identity didn’t fit.And then, almost accidentally, she returned to an older self.A class. A paintbrush. The smell of oil on canvas. That sensation of your hands remembering something your mind forgot.Within weeks, she was walking outside and seeing differently—light on bark, shadow on snow, the way trees hold their posture through winter. She started taking photos on hikes the way painters do: not documenting a moment, but collecting a future one.There’s a particular kind of happiness that shows up when you’re back in the right medium.The rest of the episode meanders around two friends with such busy lives that they need a podcast to catch up.At some point, the conversation drifted—like it always does—from craft to emotion.I tell her about my sad movie experiment. She tells me about the books she’s reading and what’s coming up in her garden this year. This episode is as close to a conversation at my kitchen counter as I’ve gotten all season. I loved it. I think you will too. 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