The Book of the Lamp — Read free with Kindle Unlimited · Kindle eBook: $0.99 · Paperback: $5.75.
🥷 Every flourishing member of the nursing team is a Ninja: Certified Nursing Assistant, Licensed Practical or Licensed Vocational Nurse, Registered Nurse, and Advanced Practice Registered Nurse. Free, self-paced, no application.
This page is professional material; its long-term home is FlourishingNursing.org. Looking for everyday health help?
🧰 Flourishing Nursing Forward™
🥷 The Flourishing Nursing Coach Ninja™
The Right Tool. The Right Person. The Right Moment.
One human being. Many possible tools. And the wisdom to know which one belongs in this moment, and when to call another helper.
“Ninja” here is playful shorthand for prepared, observant, and calm. It never means working outside scope.
🌱 The Plantrician Project — Thank You for Lighting Our Lamp
Power of the Plate helped light a new lamp for Kitchen Monk™ and Flourishing Nursing™. From San Diego, we brought home more than education: we brought home belonging, interdisciplinary friendship, practical tools, and a renewed commitment to move nursing forward.
🎓 Plantrician education led by Jill Edwards, MS, CEP, DipACLM, Director of Education. Explore free Quick Start Guides, Plantrician University, open-access science, Plantrician Providers, Power of the Plate, scholarships, culinary education and systems-change resources.
💃 Dedicated to Jill Edwards — our Chief Flourishing Educator™. 🌱🩺 Scott Stoll, MD — Co-founder & Board Chairman of The Plantrician Project and our Chief Plantrician Guardian. These are honorary titles created by our organizations.
Moving Nursing Forward: Read the science → Learn the practice → Connect with support → Bring it home.
Kitchen Monk™ and Flourishing Nursing™ independently recommend educational resources from The Plantrician Project. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, this does not indicate sponsorship, partnership, endorsement, or organizational affiliation. Honorary titles are ours, not Plantrician Project positions.
🌿 Leadership lesson from TrueNorth: founder Alan Goldhamer, DC leads an organization whose public team includes clinicians, nurses, kitchen staff, administration, housekeeping, facilities, concierge and scheduling. Health-promoting work is carried by whole teams. That same principle guides our conviction that the people doing the caring must be able to flourish, too.
🪔 Why this matters to Nathanael: he honors The Plantrician Project for helping keep the heart in medicine—bringing evidence, food, human connection, and interdisciplinary care back together. That vision resonates deeply with the nursing leadership Nathanael has followed throughout his professional life, including the work of 🥷 Dr. Karen Laing, whom Flourishing Nursing™ honors for carrying forward a modern nursing tradition of whole-person care inspired by 🥷 Florence Nightingale.
Our gratitude is wholehearted: The Plantrician Project has spent years helping clinicians and communities imagine healthcare that nourishes people, relationships, and the systems around them. We want nursing to stand beside that work, strengthen it, and help carry it farther.
🌿 Learn together. Help the world heal and flourish.
Featured: Lifestyle Medicine 2026 Online, November 8–11, 2026. Explore lifestyle medicine with an international learning community, then continue with 🥷 Dr. Karen Laing’s Lifestyle Nursing course through the Integrative Nurse Coach® Academy.
The conference can broaden your perspective; the course gives the nursing team a structured way to bring that learning into everyday conversations, education and care. Thank you for being here—and for helping carry 🥷 Florence Nightingale’s spirit of compassionate service forward. 🪔🌍
🥷 Our 2026 Flourishing Nurse Ninja™ invitation: Flourishing Nursing™ will recognize anyone who completes both Lifestyle Medicine 2026 Online and the Integrative Nurse Coach Academy’s Lifestyle Nursing course as an Official Flourishing Nurse Ninja™. This is our honorary community recognition; it does not change your professional role, license or scope of practice. See the recognition details.
💚 #KitchenMonk #FlourishingNursing #LifestyleMedicine #NurseCoaching #LearnTogether
🤔 What Is a Flourishing Nursing Coach Ninja?
A nurse or nurse coach who carries more than one tool. Not only “here is your diagnosis.” Not only “here is your medication.” Not only “eat better” or “exercise more.” Instead, one quiet question:
What does this human being need right now?
Sometimes the answer is nutrition, movement, sleep, mindfulness, breath, connection, nature, purpose, coaching, or cooking skills. Sometimes it is a registered dietitian, a physical therapist, a psychotherapist, a medical evaluation, medication, surgery, or emergency care. And sometimes it is simply someone sitting beside another person and helping them feel safe enough to take the next step.
The Flourishing Nursing Coach Ninja™ is a developing Kitchen Monk™ educational framework created by Flourishing Nurse Ninja Nathanael Elijah Smith, FNP-C, DipACLM. It is not a certification, credential, or clinical service, and it does not change anyone’s scope of practice.
🌱 A Seed From a Mentor
🌱 The Moment That Planted a Seed
Sometimes a single idea from a mentor keeps growing long after a conversation ends. An archived Chef AJ Q&A featuring Nathanael’s former lifestyle-medicine mentor, Dr. Ron Weiss, DipABLM, contains one such moment for him, at approximately 59:40–1:00:14.
Nathanael remembers that brief exchange as a nudge to think more widely about the tools that can belong in care, including mindfulness and other lifestyle approaches. That small moment became part of a much larger question for him: What if nurses became extraordinarily skilled at helping people discover the right evidence-informed tools for flourishing?
Dr. Ron Weiss, DipABLM, with Chef AJ
The Doctor Is In: March Q&A with Ron Weiss, M.D. · YouTube · streamed live March 17, 2023
An archived conversation from Flourishing Nurse Ninja Nathanael Elijah Smith’s earlier lifestyle-medicine journey that helped inform his later thinking about whole-person nursing, coaching, mindfulness, and the importance of having more than one tool. We don’t quote or summarize Dr. Weiss’s words here; please watch the moment in its original context. Archived medical discussions may not reflect current evidence and are not medical advice.
🙏 Thank You, Dr. Ron Weiss
Thank you for the mentorship, and for raising questions that kept growing. This archived conversation helped inspire Nathanael’s later thinking. The Flourishing Nursing Coach Ninja™ is Nathanael’s own later creative framework; Dr. Weiss did not create, name, review, or endorse it, and he is not affiliated with Kitchen Monk™.
Learn more about Dr. Weiss’s work through Ethos Primary Care, the farm-based primary care practice in Long Valley, New Jersey, where he serves as Executive Director, and the nonprofit Ethos Farm to Health (formerly the Ethos Farm Project). Ethos describes a whole-person lifestyle approach that includes whole-food, plant-based nutrition, and it has offered a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program.
Ethos Primary Care and Ethos Farm to Health are independent and do not endorse Kitchen Monk™.
❓ What “Ninja” Actually Means Here
✖ It does NOT mean superhuman
Not knowing everything. Not never needing help. Not practicing outside scope. Not replacing physicians, therapists, registered dietitians, physical therapists, emergency care, or evidence-based treatment. Not trying to solve every problem alone.
✔ It means prepared
Notices. Listens. Asks. Pauses. Assesses. Coaches. Educates. Connects. Refers. Collaborates. Follows up. Adapts. Calm, compassionate, evidence-informed, and wise enough to know when another professional needs to take the lead.
A nurse may have many tools. Wisdom is knowing which one belongs in the moment.
🧰 What’s in the Flourishing Toolkit?
👆 Tap any tool to open it.
🥕 Nutrition
Whole-person nutrition education, food and grocery skills, cooking confidence, meal preparation, culinary medicine, 100% plant-based eating through The Kitchen Monk Diet™, food-access support, and community resources. Medical nutrition therapy comes from a registered dietitian.
🚶 Movement
Walking, cycling, swimming, dancing, chair movement, strength, and mobility, meeting each person where they are. Physical therapy or rehabilitation specialists when needed.
🌙 Sleep
Sleep routines, circadian rhythm, rest, and recovery. Structured programs such as cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia where indicated, and recognizing when a sleep problem needs medical evaluation.
🪶 Mindfulness
Mindful breathing, body awareness, grounding, noticing thoughts without immediately reacting, mindful eating and walking, brief pauses, guided meditation, and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction where appropriate. Mindfulness can support stress regulation, awareness, coping, and behavior change for some people and in some conditions. It is one tool, never a universal cure.
🤝 Connection & community
Relationships, peer support, support groups, shared medical appointments, and belonging. Isolation makes almost everything harder.
🌲 Nature, purpose & meaning
Time outdoors, what matters most to this person, and, for those who want it, faith and spiritual care.
💬 Listening & coaching
Curiosity before advice. Goals the person chooses. Small, doable next steps. Follow-up.
🩺 The wider team
Physicians, nurse practitioners, registered dietitians, physical and occupational therapists, psychotherapists and other mental-health professionals, pharmacists, community health workers, and specialists. Medication, procedures, and surgery when clinically indicated. Emergency care when it’s an emergency.
🔨
“If your only tool is a hammer…”
🥕🚶🌙🪶🤝🌲🩺💬📞
Flourishing Nursing carries a toolbox.
🪶 Mindfulness: One Tool, Not the Whole Toolbox
Mindfulness can support stress regulation, awareness, coping, and behavior change for some people and in some conditions. It does not cure medical problems, and it never replaces evaluation of serious symptoms, medication, psychotherapy, or emergency care when those are needed.
🪶 The Mindfulness Feather
When you feel overwhelmed: pause. 🦶 Feel your feet. 🌬️ Notice your breathing. 👀 Notice what is around you. ❓ Ask what you need. 👣 Then choose the next step.
⏸️ The Pause Before the Tool
PAUSE → NOTICE → ASK → CHOOSE → CONNECT
⏸️ Pause. Slow down enough to actually see the person.
👀 Notice. What is happening physically, emotionally, socially, environmentally, practically?
❓ Ask. “What would help most right now? What feels possible? What matters to you? What’s getting in the way?”
🎯 Choose. Select an appropriate nursing or coaching approach, together.
🔗 Connect. When the need goes beyond nursing or coaching scope, connect the person to the right professional or level of care.
Never fall in love with your tool.
Fall in love with helping the person.
A nutrition expert can start seeing everything as nutrition. A fitness professional, everything as exercise. A mindfulness teacher, everything as meditation. A physician, everything as diagnosis. A coach, everything as behavior change. The Flourishing Nursing Coach Ninja keeps asking, “What does this person actually need?”, and works within scope, alongside an interdisciplinary team.
🔗 The Ninja is a connector. Often the greatest skill isn’t performing an intervention personally. It’s knowing who can help, where they are, how to reach them, whether insurance, transportation, or telehealth makes it possible, whether the person feels safe and understands the plan, and whether anyone follows up.
⚠️ Know When to Escalate
Mindfulness is not emergency medicine. Breathing exercises don’t replace evaluation of serious symptoms. Nurse coaching doesn’t replace medical diagnosis. Lifestyle tools don’t remove the need for medication, procedures, psychotherapy, emergency care, or specialist treatment where clinically indicated.
🚑 Call 911 (or your local emergency number) for new or severe chest pain, significant shortness of breath, stroke symptoms, a severe allergic reaction, fainting, sudden neurological change, severe bleeding, major trauma, imminent danger, or any rapidly worsening condition.
💙 Thoughts of suicide or a mental-health crisis? In the United States, call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, any time. If someone is in immediate danger, call 911.
A resource for the people who care for everyone else
🌊 Before We Can Help Others Find Calm, Nurses Need Places to Find Calm Too
The Flourishing Nursing Coach Ninja is not a burned-out nurse handed an even longer checklist. Quite the opposite. A flourishing nurse rests, recovers, receives support, recognizes limits, builds boundaries, asks for help, processes trauma, sleeps, moves, eats, connects, laughs, grieves, and heals, and remembers that being a nurse does not require becoming invulnerable.
📘 Resource · Book
📘 Code Calm: A Nurse’s Guide to Surviving and Thriving
Nurse Blake (Blake Lynch, BSN, RN) + contributing nurses
Burnout • Trauma • Mental health • Boundaries • The emotional weight of caring for others
Nurse Blake has shared publicly that Code Calm grew out of his own time as a patient in mental-health treatment, where he noticed how many of his fellow patients were nurses. Written with a group of nurses and a paramedic, it gathers honest stories and practical tools for navigating burnout, trauma, mental health, and boundaries. Its sales support the Nurse Support Network.
Kitchen Monk™ celebrates resources that invite nurses to care for themselves with the same seriousness and compassion they bring to others. Code Calm is a timely contribution to that conversation.
Connect with Nurse Blake
Kitchen Monk™ is not affiliated with Nurse Blake or Code Calm. We share it because it may be relevant to the Flourishing Nursing community. It is a self-help resource, not a substitute for mental-health care.
🎖 A Flourishing Nursing Salute to Nurse Blake
We salute Nurse Blake for using his platform to bring attention to burnout, trauma, compassion fatigue, stress, sleep, boundaries, mental health, and the emotional realities of nursing. This is simply our editorial appreciation, not a title or appointment. Nurse Blake is independent: he has not joined, advised, or endorsed Kitchen Monk™ or Flourishing Nursing.
🧺 The Caregiver’s Calm Toolbox
A Kitchen Monk™ educational companion inspired by the broader need for nurse well-being. Not part of Code Calm and not an official partnership.
✋ STOP
Recognize overload.
🌬 BREATHE
Slow breathing, when it helps.
🌿 GROUND
Come back to what you can see, hear, and feel.
🛋 REST
Recovery is part of the work.
🌙 SLEEP
Protect the foundation.
🚶 MOVE
Gentle movement can shift your state.
🥣 EAT
Nurses deserve nourishment too.
🤝 CONNECT
Isolation amplifies distress.
🙋 ASK
Seeking support is a professional strength.
📞 REFER
Know when formal mental-health or medical care is needed.
🪔 RETURN
Come back to what matters.
🛡️ Flourishing Nursing Is Not Martyrdom
Nurses cannot sustainably care for everyone while abandoning themselves. Professional dedication should not require chronic exhaustion, missed meals, ignored trauma, sleep deprivation, emotional suppression, or sacrificing every boundary.
A healthy nursing profession needs health systems that support the people providing the care: rest, recovery, sleep, peer support, mental-health care, good leadership, safe staffing, and healthy work environments.
🗺 The Flourishing Support Map
The Ninja doesn’t have to provide everything. The Ninja knows how to connect people. As the Kitchen Monk Community Map grows, we hope it can help people find: lifestyle medicine physicians, nurse practitioners, registered dietitians, nurse coaches and health coaches, physical therapists, mental-health professionals, culinary medicine and teaching kitchens, community health workers, exercise professionals, sleep resources, mindfulness programs, food support, nature programs, Move With a Nurse™ gatherings, support groups, and faith or spiritual care when desired.
The interactive map is still in development. In an emergency, always use emergency services, not a directory.
🌿 Want to go deeper into nurse coaching?
The Coach Ninja is a Kitchen Monk framework, not a coaching credential. For formal education, certification, and community in nurse coaching and holistic nursing, learn directly from these independent organizations:
Independent organizations. They do not sponsor, endorse, or affiliate with Kitchen Monk™ or the Coach Ninja framework.
A glimpse of flourishing with Chef AJ
Bring passion for nourishing food together with compassion for the person in front of you. This 2023 moment with Chef AJ is a personal glimpse of that spirit.
Watch the 67-second video and read the TrueNorth 2023 story →
Signature Ninja Pathway 1 of 4
🥷🥣 Flourishing Culinary Ninja™
Feed people. Teach skills. Build confidence. Know your limits.
Free, 100% plant-based cooking skills for anyone on the nursing team (and anyone who eats): four starter activities, a teaching-route guide, and honest details on independent training such as the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine’s Food for Life. The whole pathway lives in one place.
🥦 The Kitchen Monk Way of Eating™
The Kitchen Monk kitchen is entirely plant-based. You do not have to be. Every recipe we share is 100% plant-based, and we strive toward cooking with no added salt, oil, or sugar. No Ninja has to eat a certain way to belong. If you’re curious, try it in your own kitchen first, then share what you’ve learned within your role. Plants over perfection.
The article is from the independent T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies; no partnership or endorsement. Anyone eating only plants needs a reliable vitamin B12 source, and people taking diabetes or blood-pressure medicines should check with their clinician before big changes.
🛤️ Choose Your Ninja Path
Four signature pathways. One shared foundation. Start anywhere.
Every pathway begins with the same foundation: Pause → Notice → Ask → Choose → Connect. Every pathway grows the same way: 🌱 Seed (explore) → 🌿 Sprout (practice) → 🌳 Sapling (demonstrate) → 🌲 Evergreen (contribute). Skills, not status.
PATHWAY 1 · 🌿 GROWING
🥣 Flourishing Culinary Ninja™
Food skills, cooking confidence, 100% plant-based culinary education, affordable meals, and community cooking.
Electives inside: Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine Food for Life instructor training (optional, under its own license) · American College of Lifestyle Medicine Culinary Medicine Curriculum · Teaching Kitchen Collaborative · The Plantrician Project
PATHWAY 2 · 🌿 GROWING
💪 Nursing Ninja Heart Lift™
Lift the nurse. Lift the plate. Lift the heart. Whole-person wellbeing: nourishment, movement, connection, and positive wellbeing skills, for yourself first.
Electives inside: Full Plate Living (Ardmore Institute of Health) · The Lift Project · HeartMath® free resources (HeartMath certifications come only from HeartMath). These are independent programs; none created or endorsed Heart Lift. Experiencing a program is different from being authorized to facilitate it.
PATHWAY 3 · ◐ IN DEVELOPMENT
🚶 Move With a Nurse™
Accessible movement plus human connection: walking, wheeling, chair movement, stretching, strength, dancing, and time outdoors. Movement is bigger than exercise.
Electives inside: Move Your Way® (federal Physical Activity Guidelines tools). Community gatherings are still forming.
PATHWAY 4 · 🌱 SEEDLING
🪴 Who Nurses the Nurse?
Nurses are allowed to receive care. Caregiver flourishing, peer support, healthier workplaces, and systems change. We do not ask the nursing team to flourish by carrying more unsupported work.
Electives inside: Healthy Nurse, Healthy Nation® and the free American Nurses Association Nurse Well-Being curriculum · Code Calm (above).
➕ Want more? Everything else is an elective you can add to any pathway: the Free Flourishing Academy (public health, motivational interviewing, global health, pain education) and Community + Clinical electives (diabetes prevention, blood pressure, teamwork, city projects, and group visits or shared medical appointments). Collect tools, not trophies.
The four pathways are Kitchen Monk™ and Flourishing Nursing™ learning frameworks, not certifications or credentials. We don’t issue any other organization’s credential. Independent programs keep their own names, requirements, costs, and licenses; verify current terms directly with each one. Listing does not imply sponsorship, endorsement, or partnership. Learning does not expand scope of practice; follow your licensure, employer policy, and professional standards. Every recipe and cooking example we share is 100% plant-based.
ELECTIVES · FREE INDEPENDENT RESOURCES
🎓 Free Flourishing Academy
Build a broad nursing toolbox before paying for another credential. Add any of these to whichever pathway you’re on.
🩺 Public health
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention TRAIN. Free learning for public-health and healthcare professionals, including thousands of courses and free continuing education on many activities. Explore health promotion, emergency response, infectious disease, prevention, communication, and more.
💬 Conversation skills
Motivational interviewing. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers free motivational-interviewing training focused on opioid, pain, and substance-use conversations. Its core skills for supporting behavior change and shared decision-making carry over to many other conversations. Use it as communication education, not as a substitute for credentialed behavioral-health care.
🚶 Movement (pairs with Move With a Nurse™)
Move Your Way®. Free federal tools based on the Physical Activity Guidelines, including resources for adults, older adults, pregnancy, families, and healthcare professionals.
🌿 Nurse well-being (pairs with Who Nurses the Nurse?)
Healthy Nurse, Healthy Nation® + Nurse Well-Being. Free nurse-focused resources covering mental health, physical activity, sleep, nutrition, quality of life, safety, resilience, leadership, and facilitator training.
🌍 Global health
World Health Organization Academy. The World Health Organization’s free course The Primary Health Care Approach: A Short Course launched September 21, 2026: five self-paced modules, about 90 minutes, with a free World Health Organization Academy Award of Completion. Use it to strengthen community-centered and systems-level thinking.
🫶 Pain & whole-person care
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pain education. Free modules include a nurse’s role in integrated pain management and managing pain without opioids, with free continuing education available for eligible activities through Centers for Disease Control and Prevention TRAIN.
📒 How to use this academy: choose one learning path for yourself, one skill for patient or community education, and one systems skill for your team or city. Keep a simple learning log. When a course offers continuing education, claim it directly from the accredited provider. When it does not, treat it as professional development rather than continuing education.
Independent resources. Availability, cost, accreditation, and eligibility can change. Verify current terms with the originating organization. Completion of a course does not expand scope of practice or create a Flourishing Nursing™ credential. Key details checked against official sources September 28, 2026.
ELECTIVES · FREE INDEPENDENT RESOURCES
🏙 Community + Clinical Electives
Learn a skill. Use it with a team. Build something your city can keep.
🩸 Diabetes prevention
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention PreventT2. A no-cost, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention–developed lifestyle-change curriculum with 26 modules covering food, movement, stress, sleep, motivation, social support, heart health, and long-term behavior change. The curriculum can support in-person or online delivery. Organizations seeking formal National Diabetes Prevention Program recognition must separately meet Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recognition standards.
🫀 Heart & blood pressure
Million Hearts®. Use evidence-based clinician tools for self-measured blood pressure, hypertension control, cholesterol management, medication adherence, tobacco-cessation systems, cardiac rehabilitation, and cardiovascular prevention. Community leaders can also use the Municipalities Toolkit to support healthier local environments.
👥 Group visits & shared medical appointments
Lifestyle education can be delivered through group visits, shared medical appointments, nurse coaching, peer support, and interprofessional teams. These need organizational, billing, and clinical implementation support, not just recipes. Start with free curricula whenever possible and add formal training only when it’s useful for your role and community.
🤝 Teamwork & patient safety
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality TeamSTEPPS® 3.0. Evidence-based teamwork tools for communication, leadership, situation monitoring, mutual support, diagnosis improvement, simulation, and patient/family partnership. Use the materials for staff development, student education, huddles, simulation, and team improvement within organizational policy.
🏙 City projects
Turn learning into local infrastructure. Pair a nurse, community health worker, dietitian, movement professional, behavioral-health partner, culinary educator, faith/community organization, school, library, parks program, or local public-health team. Start with one free class, walking group, blood-pressure initiative, cooking series, caregiver circle, or prevention program, and measure what helps.
Use Million Hearts® community tools, National Diabetes Prevention Program provider resources, and the rest of this academy as building blocks rather than reinventing every curriculum.
💡 Free-first rule: before purchasing training, check whether the same competency can be learned through a credible government, nonprofit, professional-association, university, or open-access source. Pay when formal certification, supervision, continuing education, implementation support, or deeper specialization adds real value.
These electives organize independent educational resources; they are not Flourishing Nursing™ certifications. Formal program recognition, accreditation, licensure, continuing education, and certification remain with the originating organizations and applicable regulators.
📜 The Flourishing Nursing Coach Ninja Oath
I will pause before I prescribe a tool.
I will listen before I educate.
I will ask what matters.
I will not reduce a human being to a diagnosis.
I will use evidence.
I will know my scope.
I will call for help when help is needed.
I will care for the caregiver.
I will remember that rest is part of health.
I will keep learning.
I will connect rather than control.
I will help people discover their own capacity to flourish.
Nurses Who Inspire the Coach Ninja
These lifestyle medicine nurses already live what the Coach Ninja describes: prepared, observant, calm, evidence-informed, and generous with what they know. Their public work inspires this framework, and we celebrate them with gratitude.
🥷 Meryl Fury, MS, RN
🥷 Josie Bidwell, DNP, RN, FNP-C, DipACLM, FACLM
🥷 Deborah Chielli, MSN, APRN, AGNP-C, DipACLM, FACLM
🥷 Janine Santora, MSN, APRN, FNP-C, SCRN, CNRN
🥷 Kathy Berra, MSN, NP-BC, FAHA, FPCNA, FAAN
🥷 Caroline Trapp, DNP, ANP-BC, CDE, FAANP, DipACLM
🥷 Susan “Susie” Spell, FNP, DipACLM
🥷 Krista Dewar, DNP, ARNP, FNP-C
🥷 Karla Rodriguez, DNP, RN, CNE, NC-BC, DipACLM, FNYAM
🥷 Elizabeth Simkus, DNP, FNP-C, DipACLM
🥷 LaTaya De Jesus, DNP, APRN, DipACLM
🥷 Elizabeth Winings, DNP, APRN, PMHNP, DipACLM
🥷 Elizabeth R. Click, DNP, ND, RN, CWP
🥷 Carolyn Sweetapple, RN, PhD, MBA
🥷 Lauren Turner, MSN, FNP-C, DipACLM
🥷 Trey Bennett, MSN, NP, DipACLM
🥷 Kara Mosesso, MSN, ANP-BC, AOCNP, DipACLM
🥷 Kathleen P. Wilson, PhD, APRN, CPNP, FNP-BC, BC-ADM, FAANP, FNAP, DipACLM
🥷 Allison Leppke, DNP, MPH, APRN, FNP-C, DipACLM
🥷 Amy Becklenberg, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC, FAANP
🥷 Joanne Evans, MEd, RN, PMHCNS-BC
🥷 Tammy Robertson, RN, BSN
🥷 Cody Stubbe, MSN, RN
🥷 Erin Sinnaeve, DNP, FNP-C
🔗 Find each nurse’s verified public links here:
🌱 Are you a Certified Nursing Assistant? The roots of Flourishing Nursing have their own path. Every lifestyle medicine lesson you learn counts toward becoming a Flourishing Certified Nursing Assistant Ninja.
A celebration of public work, not a title, award, certification, or credential. These nurses did not apply for, accept, or endorse this list, and none is affiliated with Kitchen Monk™ or Flourishing Nursing unless stated elsewhere. Credentials are listed as they appear publicly and may have changed. If you’re named here and would prefer not to be, tell us and we’ll remove your name right away.
🪔 From The EVERgreen Chronicles™
🐺 The Seawolf and the Toolbox
One misty morning on the Oregon Coast, the Great White Seawolf found a great wooden toolbox washed up beside the driftwood. He expected swords inside. Instead he found a lamp, an anchor, a compass, a bowl of warm soup, a pair of walking shoes, a pillow, a single feather for breathing, a listening shell, a heart, a map, a telephone, a small first-aid cross, and a circle of rope tied end to end, like a community holding hands.
“Which one is the strongest?” he asked. Willow, the Wise Owl, settled on the lid.
“Wisdom is not carrying the most tools. Wisdom is knowing when each belongs, and when to call another helper.”
This is a story, not biography or medical advice.
🦉 For Kids: The Flourishing Guardian Toolkit
🪶 When I’m overwhelmed, I can pause.
🌬️ I can take a slow breath.
🧑🤝🧑 I can talk to a trusted grown-up.
🤸 I can move my body.
🌳 I can get outside.
😴 I can rest.
🍎 I can eat nourishing food.
🏷️ I can name my feelings.
🙋 I can ask for help.
Grown-ups handle medical decisions.
🌱 One Small Conversation Can Plant a Very Large Seed
Thank you to Dr. Ron Weiss for the mentorship and for helping raise questions that kept growing. Thank you to the clinicians, nurses, coaches, teachers, patients, families, and communities who keep teaching us that human health is bigger than any single intervention. And thank you to Nurse Blake and the contributors behind Code Calm for helping bring the well-being of nurses themselves into the center of the conversation.
The lamp keeps moving. The toolbox keeps growing. The nurse keeps learning. And nobody has to flourish alone.
🌿 Where to next?
Educational content only. The Flourishing Nursing Coach Ninja™ is a developing Kitchen Monk™ framework, not a clinical service, certification, or credential, and it does not change any professional’s scope of practice. Nothing on this page is individualized medical, mental-health, or nutrition advice. Please talk with a qualified clinician about your own health. Dr. Ron Weiss, Ethos Primary Care, Ethos Farm to Health, Chef AJ, Nurse Blake, and Code Calm are independent and do not endorse Kitchen Monk™. In an emergency, call 911. Written by Flourishing Nurse Ninja Nathanael Elijah Smith, FNP-C, DipACLM · Last updated October 2, 2026.
🎬 Holistic Nursing & Nurse Coaching · Video Library
Choose an organization below to watch its publisher-maintained upload collection. New public uploads are included by YouTube when the collection loads. These are recorded videos, not a continuous live broadcast.
🌿 ▶ American Holistic Nurses Association
Professional association: holistic nursing education and community.
▶ Open the full collection on YouTube · Publisher’s channel ↗
🏅 ▶ American Holistic Nurses Credentialing Corporation · Holistic nursing and nurse coach credentialing
Credentialing organization: certification information and nurse-coaching perspectives.
▶ Open the full collection on YouTube · Publisher’s channel ↗
🎓 ▶ Integrative Nurse Coach Academy
Education provider: nurse-coaching conversations, webinars and interviews. Training and certification are separate.
▶ Open the full collection on YouTube · Publisher’s channel ↗
🔊 Open one collection, press Play and enable sound. Playlist playback can continue to subsequent videos; autoplay and sound depend on WordPress, YouTube and browser settings. Use the YouTube link if embedding is unavailable. Free viewing does not imply free continuing nursing education credit, training or certification.
📚 American Holistic Nurses Association resources and research · American Holistic Nurses Credentialing Corporation’s official video library · Integrative Nurse Coach Academy webinar information
Three independent organizations; no endorsement implied. Their channel collections can include varied topics and guests. We link and embed rather than copy recordings. Source identities checked October 17, 2026.
✝️ Nathanael’s Faith: Jesus, Our Anchor, and Our Hope
A personal faith invitation from Nathanael: Riverside Fellowship in Hammond, Oregon, is my anchor church. Its teaching points to repentance, faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection, confession of Him as Lord, and salvation as God’s gift of grace. Receiving Jesus into our hearts means personally trusting and following Him.
Riverside’s salvation teaching · Its Jesus Class
My mom, Nina Delores Smith—Momma Eagle—is a devout Jesus follower. During my visit home for our special Jesus-loving reunion, I returned to Riverside for two Sundays. I treasure that homecoming and the faith and love woven through our family’s story.
Read the full explanation: accepting Jesus, resurrection, the Rapture, Tribulation, Christ’s reign, and everlasting life → The guide distinguishes Pensacola Christian College’s published position from wider Christian interpretations and Riverside’s own salvation teaching. Read Momma Eagle’s faith and reunion feature →
Our faith reflections are shared as an invitation. People of every faith and none are welcome and deserve compassionate care.
With Momma Eagle—Nina Delores Smith—may we renew our strength in the Lord and “mount up with wings as eagles” (Isaiah 40:31, King James Version): a poetic image of hope, not a promise of literal wings.
“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” 
