May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and while the conversation in our community has grown — slowly, steadily — we still tend to reach for the expected answers when we talk about healing: therapy, medication, prayer, community. All of these matter. But there is one remedy that many of us walk right past every single day, literally growing beneath our feet.

Meet Erica Jones, a Columbia, Maryland native, private chef-turned-farmer and food educator, founder of Edesiagurl, a food education platform rooted in local farming, culinary wellness, and community health. She is what I'd call a keeper of the earth. When I sat down to talk with Erica recently, I wasn't prepared for how deeply the conversation about soil, sunlight, and seeds would wander into the territory of the soul.

"There's something with the microbes in the soil," Erica told me, her voice grounded and clear. "If you're not wearing gloves and you're putting your hands directly into the soil, you are receiving a layer of healing from the earth — a groundedness that can only be received if your hands are in the soil."

She's not speaking in metaphors. She's speaking in science.

Researchers have found that Mycobacterium vaccae, a naturally occurring bacterium in soil, may trigger the release of serotonin in the brain — the same neurotransmitter targeted by many antidepressants. Getting your hands in the earth, it turns out, is not just therapeutic folklore. It's biochemistry.

For Erica, the connection runs even deeper. After a breast cancer diagnosis five years ago — now in full remission — and a challenging season of building her business from scratch, she found that returning to the garden was what brought her back to herself. "The winter was difficult," she admitted. "When it's cold and dreary, it affects me biochemically. But spring is here, and I feel the renewal. I'm back in nature, and things are as they should be."

That rhythm — dormancy followed by renewal — is something our community knows well, even if we don't always name it that way. Our grandmothers grew greens in backyard gardens. Our great-grandparents farmed land as a matter of survival. But somewhere between the migration north and the rise of convenience culture, we got disconnected from the earth — and perhaps from something that was quietly sustaining us.

"Nature gives you an opportunity to blank-slate the mind," Erica said. "You can feel the sun hitting your face, feel the absorption of that sun into your cells — and that's something you don't notice unless you are in nature."

This is what practitioners now call grounding or earthing — the act of making direct physical contact with the earth's surface. Studies suggest it reduces cortisol levels, calms the nervous system, and improves sleep. For communities carrying the compounded weight of generational trauma, health disparities, and daily stress, this kind of accessible healing deserves our full attention.

Erica shared the story of a friend who was a mental health therapist — someone who ultimately left his clinical practice to create YouTube content about gardening, because he had witnessed firsthand how profoundly it transformed his patients. "He was coming from the mental health standpoint," she said. "So it's a real thing."

She now works with young boys at a Howard County elementary school through a garden program, watching children who have been labeled "problems" find focus, pride, and peace in a square foot of soil. She runs "Taste of the Seasons" cooking workshops that connect people to local, seasonal food. And she dreams of 50 acres — 50 football fields of food growing naturally for the community that surrounds her.

The lesson for Mental Health Awareness Month is this: healing doesn't always look like a couch and a co-pay. Sometimes it looks like kneeling on the ground,  digging into the earth with your bare hands, watching something you planted with intention slowly come alive.

Our ancestors knew this. Maybe it's time we remembered.

More information on classes, cooking, and coaching can be found at Edesiagurl.com and on social media.

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Michelle Petties is a TEDx speaker, Food Story coach, and the award-winning author of the memoir Leaving Large: The Stories of a Food Addict. After gaining and losing 700 pounds, Michelle discovered the secret to overcoming stress and emotional overeating. Her free workbook, Mind Over Meals, reveals her core principles for losing weight and keeping it off.