Before the diaries: voices from the field

Dr. Sood helped us see that what weighs on these women is burnout, not a lack of knowledge or will. He described the cumulative strain of uncertainty that daily life places on the mind, and two ways to answer it: lighten the demands, or build the capacity to meet them. He holds that resilience is a habit, practiced in small ways, and that is how many women described their own coping, from counting to ten to prayer. His insistence that any program be simple, save time and feel good quickly is where the experts and the women met most clearly: on Day 5 the women, too, asked for small steps. His idea of the people who pass the "2:00 a.m. test" became the Day 4 question. The answers showed how much rests on mothers and close friends, and that two women had no one to name.

Tony Quintana's view from the ground sat close to what the women would later write. From food banks, restaurants and community events in New Mexico, he sees tiredness, not ignorance, behind most food choices, and he counts his own household in: some nights it is nuggets and tater tots. He showed how identity is carried on the plate, in the fear of losing one's "man card" and "Hispanic card", and how much quiet say women have over what a family eats. His practice is practical and respectful: cook with what the food bank actually hands out, bring help people need, and tell a community that it is the expert in its own culture. He warned that shame and scare tactics fade within months, and that climate is best spoken of through the land, crops and harvests people already know.

P. Angelicia Simmons works on education and social action in North Carolina. She named the local terms of trade plainly: when two pieces of fried chicken and a biscuit cost less than two dollars, a family's choice is made before it begins. She describes neighborhoods where liquor stores and dollar stores stay and the grocery store leaves. She voiced a belief she hears around her, that plant-based eating is for "rich white people", and answered it by pointing to the communities that live beside industrial hog farms. She believes in the creativity of people who make much from little. Her ideas for change start where people already gather: the church, the family table, a neighborhood Saturday of local vendors, food and art. Her work begins with being available, and that helped us hear the women's wish for someone alongside them.

Jasmine Leyva made her film because plant-based media kept speaking to the same audience. Her central lesson is that the messenger matters as much as the message, and that a good advocate knows when to step aside for someone a community already trusts. She described a mother's arithmetic between a pack of hot dogs and costlier food, and the billboards that make fast food feel normal. She warned against vilifying anyone, against expensive wellness events in neighborhoods that cannot afford them, and against trading one junk food for another. She sees soul food as creative resilience, and roots as a way in. She also foresaw what the women showed us: most people do not connect their plate with the climate. When the women designed their own healthy-food ads on Day 3, 7 of 42 filled them with people of different races and bodies.

Jacque Salomon brings plant-based food education to communities in the Phoenix area and nearby tribal lands. Her events are built to feel like a family gathering: free food, music and familiar dishes, with the experts folded into the evening. She has written practical guides to eating plant-based on food assistance and from the dollar store. She speaks without blame and refuses the role of savior. She helped us understand stress and indignity, including racism, as part of what drives food choices. Her principle, "We can only help from an overflow", named what the women showed us from the other side: many of them have no overflow left. She said as much of everyone in 2020: "we're all sick, we're all exhausted". She believes in peers supporting peers, side by side, in the places that need it most.

Jody Kass brings three decades of coalition work, from affordable housing in New York City to cleaning up toxic sites in poor neighborhoods. Her lesson for SHAKTI was that making healthy food available is necessary but not enough: demand and support have to change too. Her organization's local groups and short jumpstart programs, sometimes run through churches or doctors, let people see their own results. She urged us to think of change as something done together: with a partner, a family, a whole community, or a restaurant that adds one dish so everyone can eat out together. She was candid that talk of climate makes eyes glaze over unless it is translated into everyday terms. She is firm that messages must rest on science, and that people already hurt by the food system must never be blamed for it.

Lauren Ornelas brought the clearest warning against easy answers. Healthy food is expensive, even plain fruit and vegetables. Reaching it can mean two buses, and some families have only a microwave to cook in. She called it offensive to tell poor families they can simply eat rice and beans. She sees the rights of farmworkers and food workers as part of the same struggle as the rights of animals. She advised speaking of climate through disasters people have lived through, not distant ice caps. She is honest about culture: her ancestors were not vegan, and she will not pretend otherwise. On resilience, she pointed to what women do for their children, while saying the word itself felt unfamiliar to her. Her view speaks directly to what the women told us about cost.

Mariana Arellano-Corbello spoke from Mexico about how food carries status and history. Meat often signals a family moving up, and the idea that milk is essential arrived through industry messaging. Many traditional dishes are already plant-based. She warned outsiders against importing strategies that ignore local culture, and believes lasting change has to come from within, more often through example and good food than through argument. She described the pressure on women to accommodate and please, and the power of a woman deciding to listen to her own voice. She was honest about the gap between loving animals and eating them, the same gap many women described on Day 3. And she corrected a common assumption about who resists change: not only men. She insists that slaughterhouse workers, in dangerous and low-paid jobs, are not the enemy.

Kylie Buckner has worked as a newborn intensive-care nurse and educator since 2001. She sees pregnancy and diagnosis as moments when women are ready to learn how their bodies work. Her coaching is gentle and practical: change one meal at a time, eat abundantly rather than restrictively, keep track of what you eat, and learn to say "no thank you" to protect your choices. She was candid that women of color often lack culturally fluent places to find support, including in programs like her own. She told us that a community can become a second family when one's own family is not on board. Her advice for tight budgets, from frozen produce to bulk beans and local markets, is practical. The women's accounts add the other half: such advice travels furthest where there is time, energy and a kitchen to put it to work.

Stephanie Redcross West has coached plant-based entrepreneurs since 2009. She showed us that Black women are both underserved and under-seen in plant-based spaces: there is warmth in the community, but not enough support, and Black-owned businesses rarely make the headlines. She reminded us that women make food decisions on behalf of others, so serving women means designing products and services with them in mind. Her own change was gradual, and concern for animals came later, through one person who took the time to explain. She has watched colleagues change simply by working in a nurturing, non-judgmental team. She sees resilience as something built with allies. That matched what the women asked for on Day 5: not a lecture, but someone alongside them.

Ramona Cadogan has worked in education since 1993 and competes as a Masters weightlifter. She hears cost named more than any other barrier in the Black communities she works with, and her answer begins with staples such as beans and rice, and with community resources such as pantries and churches. Her coaching starts with listening, makes each plan feel designed for the person, and keeps in touch through regular check-ins. She wants women to know that lifting weights will not make them bulky, and that strength belongs to them too. Her presence as a coach, being there when fear gets in the way, speaks to what the women asked for most. Their diaries add to her answer: to them, cost also includes time, energy and the risk of food no one at home will eat.

Erin Sinnaeve's coaching starts with the big picture, so that clients can reach their own conclusions. Then she gives them practical tools: what to eat, how to shop, how to cook. She avoids the word "vegan" because it lists what you cannot eat, and prefers "plant-forward", which lists what you can. The women's own words, such as "flexitarian" and more vegetables on the plate, showed the same instinct. She was frank that trust in medicine is not simply given. She described how deeply some Black patients mistrust medical professionals because of how they have been treated, and how trust has to be earned over time. That matched the careful, sometimes wounded trust in doctors that several women described.

Hema Reddy founded a plant-based food company in Austin. She showed us how families keep their lineage alive through food, and how a cuisine rich in spices can make plant-based eating feel like abundance rather than loss. For younger shoppers, she said, taste is non-negotiable. She often sees the mother try a new food first and then bring it to the family, which matched what the women told us: they are the ones who decide what the household eats. She offered a simple test for any food: can you trace it back to the ground? She was candid about her own circumstances, and that candor helped us ask how much time, skill and money a new way of cooking asks of a family, a question the women's weeknights answered in detail.

Jennifer Martinez, who describes her food culture as Tex-Mex, gave us the most honest account of what changing your plate costs inside a loving family. Turning down a grandmother's food can feel like turning down her love. Plant-based versions of family dishes can taste good and still not taste like home. Asking for vegetable tacos at a family meal can become a fiasco. She found that one ally at the table is enough to start a new tradition, and her practical advice is to keep the dish and change what goes in it. That is exactly what many women were already doing, from cauliflower rice in jambalaya to spaghetti squash for spaghetti. She also showed us how identity can feel caught in the middle, between the family's way and one's own.

Dr. Lindholm spoke from years as a surgeon serving tribal communities in the rural Southwest. She described a vast rural food desert: few grocery stores across great distances, many more fast-food outlets, high produce prices, and homes without running water or internet. Her most important lesson for SHAKTI was that in poverty people live from one emergency to the next, and on those days what to eat is the least of anyone's problems. She sees hope in young people who watch their elders' illnesses and look for other choices. She offered a household rule: keep your shoes by the door, and when anyone says let's walk, everyone goes. She urged that any research make privacy and purpose clear from the start, because communities have so often been used. Her experience reached beyond the three communities in the diaries and widened our view.