Kathy’s family sold the farm in 2015. Today, she is an avid backyard gardener growing the majority of her family’s seasonal produce needs.
Simple, Attainable, Sustainable
Kathy Bero is a best-selling author, keynote speaker, Reiki master teacher and integrative health coach.
Kathy spent nearly 20 years advocating for our environment, sounding the alarm on climate change and the long-term impacts we would all suffer because of our collective actions compromising the health of our ecosystem.
Kathy traveled extensively, teaching leadership skills to women around the world so they would have the tools they needed to work for beneficial environmental changes in their communities. In 1997, Kathy decided it was time to follow her own advice in her own backyard and give sustainable farming a try. In 1998, her family purchased 60 acres of land mostly under the plow and restored the oak savannah and prairie lands while setting aside five acres for her family home, horses, organic produce and pasture raised livestock.
In 2005, the unexpected happened and Kathy’s idyllic rural lifestyle was turned upside down with a diagnosis of inflammatory breast cancer and a high-grade tumor in her head and neck. With children aged two and seven, she desperately began her healing using conventional cancer treatments, which stripped her physical and mental strength while pushing her dangerously close to death. At the end of 2008, with no evidence of disease (NED) and without the support of her medical team, Kathy shifted gears and chose to embrace the teachings she received from food scientists, meditation and reiki to evolve into a powerful self-advocate with a dedicated trust in her innate abilities to complete her healing.
Since that time, Kathy’s steadfast belief that true health care reform is integrative, starting with clean, high quality food paired with energy healing modalities that help to release stress, connect us to our inner healer and deepen our spiritual connection. Starting with what she calls the easy button, learning to eat with the intention to heal, has an immediate impact on our gut health. In this way, we not only improve the quality of our lives but prevent disease, improve disease outcomes and prevent recurrence. No longer are her beliefs dismissed and recovery considered a fluke. Kathy has been chosen to participate in the Harvard University PPM NEER Study, looking at 100 people with an exceptional recovery from cancer.
In 2009, Kathy founded, with the support of her local hospital system, the non-profit NuGenesis Farm with a mission to teach others how to use food as medicine and eat with the intention to heal. The name is derived from Nutrition and Genesis, meaning back to the beginning when food was clean and valued. After eight successful years, NuGenesis made room for the now empowered area communities that embrace the principles of using food as medicine in their own programming. Today, NuGenesis Farm is no longer a unique concept and stands as just one model for improving the health of communities across the globe.
To hear more about Kathy’s work at NuGenesis, watch the video below.
E.A.T. An Unconventional Decade In The Life Of A Cancer Patient is a best-selling memoir in journal format written from the 18 journals Kathy kept during her 10-year recovery from inflammatory breast cancer and a high-grade head and neck cancer. It is a painfully honest example as to why our medical system must do better.
Despite taking advantage of what conventional medicine offered, Kathy’s body was failing, leaving her to live half dead each and every day while trying to raise two small children and take care of a barn full of animals. As she tallied the limitations of medical protocols, Kathy chose to accept the challenge cancer had offered her and discovered she had exactly what it took to change her life and thrive cancer free. This is a manual of hope for anyone confronting serious illness or simply looking for a more proactive approach to wellness.
Don’t be fooled by the title. In addition to learning how to eat with the intention to heal her body, she did so much more to heal. She stresses that it was incredible to realize that staying cancer free is simple, attainable and therefore, sustainable.
“When one door closes another will open, if you just turn the knob” – Kathy Bero
Simple, Attainable, Sustainable
HEAL JUST FOR TODAY
Integrative healing is all about achieving optimal health through the balancing of your mind, body and spirit, using a variety of therapies and modalities. Adding a qualified integrative health coach to your team can lead to managing stress in a healthy way while incorporating lifestyle changes unique to your needs. To prevent chronic disease, improve disease outcomes, or prevent recurrence most of us have absolutely no idea how to turn the information swimming around on the internet into action using an evidence-based approach. That’s why Kathy’s program Heal Just For Today is so effective.
Heal Just For Today provides simple, attainable, sustainable tools designed to help you become a powerful self-advocate. Some call it holistic healing. Some call it alternative healing. Kathy calls it intentional healing that only requires your attention just for today. In addition, she offers consultations that address your specific questions and assistance planning for meetings with doctors and other members of your team because integrative healing does not exclude your medical practitioners.
Heal Just For Today is tailor made for you and your lifestyle, starting with learning to eat with the intention to heal. If you think you know how to use food as medicine, you might find that Kathy’s coaching dispels some pervasive myths and provides a framework for effective evidence based results. From there you’ll move to learning how to release and manage disease promoting stress. Finally, Kathy will teach you how to easily access your innate healing abilities for a complete healing. This is often the most surprising and life changing part of the program.
From Kathy’s point of view, having healed from two rare and aggressive cancers using this same approach, the difficult part is deciding if you’re all in just for today. Because if you’re not all in, you’re not in at all.
Simple, Attainable, Sustainable
Reiki is a safe and gentle energy healing modality that activates the parasympathetic nervous system to promote relaxation and healing. The qualified Reiki practitioner delivers reiki to your body through gentle hand placements that balance and strengthen the flow of energy through blocked or disturbed lymph and electrical pathways in your body, decreasing pain and enhancing your natural ability to fight illness and heal. Reiki is used in hospitals and hospices all over the world, helping people become energetically balanced physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
Kathy discovered the power of Reiki in 2006 during her battle with head and neck cancer. Unsure of what it even was, she started sessions with a Reiki master and surprised even her doctors with the obvious lack of side-effects from radiation therapy to her head, neck and mouth. Today, Kathy is a Western Reiki master teacher and Jikiden Reiki practitioner who enjoys sharing it with others. She relishes the honor of being a part of your healing process.
Kathy inspires through her writing and speaking. She is a keynote speaker, having spoken to a wide variety of audiences hosted by a diverse set of organizations across the globe and currently shares her deep knowledge of integrative medicine to prevent chronic illness and improve chronic disease outcomes. Kathy’s passion for using an integrative approach to health care grew from her own battle with two rare and aggressive cancers, which she has chronicled in her second book E.A.T. An Unconventional Decade In The Life Of A Cancer Patient.
Kathy has been a long-time advocate for living clean and co-executive produced the Emmy award winning documentary Worth Fighting For. Today, she is a best selling author, advocate for simple, attainable and sustainable change, speaker on topics such as using food as medicine and eating with the intention to heal, adopting stress-relieving practices, becoming your own best advocate, parenting through chronic illness, and employing energy healing modalities to transform into the best version of yourself.