Notes on nourishment

On fatigue, female wisdom and learning to digest life

I’ve never wanted to be one of those millennial women writing about how they’re healing from the ills of modern life. Like a wellness version of the Spice Girls, each has cornered a particular woe: Emma Gannon is the burnout one; Alice Vincent covers heartbreak and gardening; Olivia Petter does the difficulties of dating-in-your-30s and Dolly Alderton is all over the highs and lows of female friendship. 

While there is clearly a gap in the market for someone to nab fatigue – and god knows I’ve endured it enough to make me at least a potential candidate – I have always preferred stories that feel more epic. Ideally involving mountains and raptors and trans-Atlantic love affairs. Still, we work with the material we’ve got, and for me right now that is the language of my own battered body. 

It’s striking that I cannot think of the equivalent millennial writer boy band. Do women suffer more from these modern ills, or are they just more likely to write about them?

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After nearly a year of crippling fatigue, my own reluctant foray into the world of healing has revealed something rather embarrassing: I really don’t know how to nurture my body at all.

In fact, when I revealed my diet of lettuce, fruit, croissants and caffeine (ok and historically the odd cigarette), my acupuncturist visibly shuddered. Given the weakness she has identified in my spleen and kidneys and something I didn’t quite follow to do with stagnant energy in my liver, apparently I should be favouring bone broth soups and weird grains like millet. Apparently I should be eating oxtail.

This is both a surprise and an affront. I’ve always believed that I look after myself very well, thank you very much. I exercise and take cod liver oil. I barely drink. Hell, my evening routine involves meditating, a three step skincare regime and some stretches – what more could this fleshly vessel reasonably expect of me?

My dear friend Hebe Dickins, a somatic  coach and nervous system specialist who has helped me immeasurably, laughed and said, “But Imo, are these things actually restorative or are you just completing another to-do list by the soft glow of candlelight?”

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To clarify, these sporadic eating habits are not an attempt to be thin. If anyone else cooks, I am an enthusiastic two-helping diner. But preparing three balanced meals every single day while working more than full-time as a writer is a magic trick that has forever evaded me. 

Living alone exacerbates this. With no one to orbit around, I can happily shovel something straight from the fridge unobserved before leaping into the next chapter of my day. Apparently this shovelling is part of the problem. Apparently I should sit down and chew my food many, many times.

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Recently, three female friends whom I met on a Mexican beach miraculously found their way to the small Devon town I now call home. On seeing my enfeebled state, they whisked into action. Blue maize tortillas – something I have never before seen in the UK – were miraculously produced, organic beef bones slow-boiled and root vegetables peeled while I shivered on the sofa with the baby. 

The womb-like energy that filled my house during this visit was pure medicine. With my curtains drawn against the blazing sun, we ate giant corn cooked with turmeric and ginger, saffron chicken, succulent lamb skewers and quinoa salad by candlelight. We brewed fresh ginger, apple and blackberry tea, and drank endless cups of cacao (made from unprocessed beans, rich in both iron and magnesium). After every meal, dozing on the sofa as they chatted, I felt the comforting heaviness I remember from childhood, falling asleep to the hum of my parents in the kitchen below.

After several days, all I could think was, “Christ, if this is what being nourished feels like, I really have been miles off.”

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It also made me wonder why almost everyone teaching me these lessons about nourishment seemed to be a woman.

My assumption is that this is down to the good old patriarchy. After all, for thousands of years, women have been the first port of call when someone pukes, shits or starts sweating in the night. Indeed, wealthy women in pre-Industrial Revolution Europe frequently collected and copied recipes for medicines into household books, which were passed down as inter-generational heirlooms. Hannah Woolley, who was a little like the 17th-century Martha Stewart, favoured a powder of oriental bezoar, crab eyes and pearls to treat melancholy.

Food was another form of vernacular medicine that was historically held in the hands of women. Nourishing recipes were often scattered amongst the tinctures and healing syrups in those same household books. Woolley’s Cornish cakes – made with red wine and spices – certainly seem like they would have bolstered a convalescence. Less effective, perhaps, would have been her recipe to treat breast cancer: an ointment of goose dung and the juice of celandine flowers.

However, I wonder if there is perhaps another reason women have accumulated so much knowledge about tending sick bodies: female bodies are themselves disproportionately affected by certain forms of illness. A 2025 analysis of NHS England records found almost four women diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for every man. Apparently it's most common in high-achieving ‘doers’ and ‘people pleasers’ (I take comfort from this because it makes it seem like my condition has nothing whatsoever to do with the frankly quite wild lifestyle I courted until a year ago). 

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So as the dog days of summer exhale into autumn, I study the dusty cookbooks in my kitchen, gravitating towards ingredients that have grown in the rich, dark underground.

Recognising that I have a lot to learn, I call more women in my life to ask how they nourish themselves. One drinks a daily cup of cacao made with bone broth and thickened with ghee. Another says she speaks to her food, reflecting on the incredible process that each ingredient has made to get to her kitchen and thanking it for taking the journey. 

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As my mind begins to open to more holistic ways of approaching this strange illness, I notice my body leaning towards different environments too. This is the first year I have not travelled abroad in living memory, and a certain (if slightly tedious) peace emerges from trudging the same footpaths over and over.

I avoid sun-beaten Dartmoor and the clifftops – there’s enough air up there to blow you away – and instead head for shadowy green places, church-like tunnels of oak trees where wood pigeons coo and the whisper of rain hangs in the air. The countryside is scruffy and engorged. The valley echoes with the sound of geese preparing to fly south for winter. 

Even the squirrels are on the nourishment train, standing up like armoured meerkats to scan the hedgerows before bedding down for winter.

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And so this newsletter is a reminder to anyone else who also needs extra nourishment during this season in their life: buy whole ingredients produced with care, cook them with kind (ideally female) friends and for God’s sake, chew your food.

If I’m learning anything from my unwilling cameo as ‘Sleepy Spice’, it’s that there are limits to how much we can actually absorb when we’re constantly consuming rather than savouring life. 

Sometimes you have to chew over the same thing for a while in order to draw out its goodness.

Thank you for reading.

Love,

Imogen x

September wayfinding: provisions for the month to come

I eat the stars, Sarah Wilson Weirdly easy reading given the subject matter, this book asks how we can live fully in the face of systems and climate collapse. Honestly, way more uplifting than it sounds…

New Year Retreats I’ve decided that I want to see 2027 dawn somewhere beautiful with a clear mind, so am researching meditation retreats either on re-wilding projects or regenerative farms. A few on my radar: Sharpham House, Cabilla and Erth Barton.

Meera Sodha’s tomato curry This tangy, tasty recipe uses up a glut of late summer tomatoes and has a pleasing sourness from the tamarind paste. 

F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Crack Up In this three-part series of essays first published in Esquire, Fitzgerald describes a mental and physical breakdown he suffered in his 30s, something he puts down to ‘a call upon physical resources that I did not command, like a man overdrawing at his bank’.

Somatic experiencing with Hebe Dickins Yes she’s a close friend but Hebe is also a nervous system specialist and the only person who has been able to make me understand my fatigue and suggest practical techniques to work through it. Her online therapy offering can be found here, and she is holding an in person workshop  in Devon on 24 October.

My stories elsewhere

From magazine articles to social media

I haven't been well enough to make any travel stories this year other than this one, which I am really proud of...

'I haven't felt this present for months': sail back in time on a Thames barge – Guardian

I have also launched an Instagram page for my brand storytelling services over on Lepere Luxury

Of course, you can always buy my book

 The Ethical Traveller: 100 Ways To Roam The World Without Ruining It