The Evolved Network emphasizes the importance of being seen rather than being “fixed.” Why is that distinction so vital for the youth you work with?
Because being “fixed” implies something is broken. And our young people are not broken. They are responding to the conditions they've been handed — often with more creativity, resilience, and soul than we know how to hold.
To fix someone is to make them an object — a project, a problem to be solved. It puts the adult in the role of expert and strips the child of their own meaning-making. But when we shift from fixing to seeing, something entirely different unfolds. We step into accompaniment. We allow space for their experience, even if it makes us uncomfortable.
At The Evolved Network, we don’t show up with answers. We show up with presence. That alone is subversive in systems built on correction, punishment, and control. We ask, What does it mean to be with this young person as they are — not as who we wish they were, or who a system says they should be?
Being seen is foundational to belonging. It says: You don’t have to perform healing for me to honor your story. And in that kind of presence, real transformation becomes possible — not because we enforced it, but because we made space for it to arise.
This is where the existential piece comes in — the idea that our identity is not something others define for us, but something we discover through experience, reflection, and choice. When a child is truly seen, they start to locate themselves again. They begin to say: Maybe I do matter. Maybe there is more possible for me than I’ve been shown.
And often, that begins with something as simple — and as profound — as asking, How do you like your eggs?
Gardening and cooking are both grounding practices. How do those activities mirror the emotional and spiritual growth you want to see in your participants?
Both gardening and cooking require patience. Attention. Trust in what you can’t see yet. And that’s what healing is, too.
In the garden, you don’t force a seed to grow — you tend the conditions. You make space. You learn to listen to the soil, to the seasons. You get your hands in the dirt. And sometimes, you wait. That mirrors the kind of relational work we do with our youth. We’re not rushing toward outcomes. We’re building a rhythm of care, where something deeper can take root.
Cooking, too, is about transformation. Not in the performative sense, but in the slow, sensory kind. You take what you have — even if it’s overlooked or imperfect — and through time, heat, and attention, it becomes something nourishing. There’s dignity in that. There’s revelation.
Our young people have often been treated like problems to be solved, or data points to be managed. But when they plant something and come back weeks later to find it growing, they start to believe that maybe they can grow, too. When they make a dish and see someone enjoy it, they realize they can create joy. That’s emotional and spiritual growth — not because we told them what to feel, but because they lived it in their bodies.
These practices ground us in reality — not the fast, fragmented one that exhausts us, but the slow one that reminds us we are connected. To the earth. To one another. To a rhythm that heals if we let it.
So when I say gardening and cooking are therapeutic, I mean they are ways back to ourselves. They are how we remember who we’ve always been — and who we’re still becoming.