The Book of the Lamp — Read free with Kindle Unlimited · Kindle eBook: $0.99 · Paperback: $5.75.
🩺 For nurses and everyone who cares for others
🌱 Flourishing Nursing Forward™
Helping people flourish, while building a world where nurses can flourish too.
● Nurses’ group: AVAILABLE NOW · FREE ◐ Framework & programs: IN DEVELOPMENT
Educational and community-based. Not a certification, accredited program, or clinical service.
🏛️ Flourishing Nursing now has its own professional home. The philosophy, evidence library, nurse coaching resources, programs, presentations, and the American College of Flourishing Nursing and Nurse Coaching live at FlourishingNursing.org. This page keeps the story of how it all began, here on Kitchen Monk.
What becomes possible when nurses have the education, tools, relationships, and community they need to help people flourish?
That question is the heart of this movement. Nurses already walk beside people through birth, illness, recovery, and aging. Flourishing Nursing Forward invites nurses, nurse practitioners, nurse coaches, certified nursing assistants, students, and every colleague on the care team to also walk beside people toward health: in kitchens, on trails, at tables, and in communities.
Why do we live? To love. To serve. To help one another flourish.
Celebrating Chef AJ
Good food. Shared laughter. A moment worth keeping.
Chef AJ, thank you for the joy, encouragement, and love of whole plant foods you have shared with me. This memory from TrueNorth Health Center in 2023 still makes me smile.
Nathanael & Chef AJ · A carotenoid-scan moment · Tap the video to play or pause.
Thank you, Chef AJ, for being part of this chapter of my flourishing journey. Here’s to nourishing food, human connection, and making room for joy.
Stay connected with Kitchen Monk™ & Flourishing Nursing™
KEEP THE JOY GOING · CHEF AJ’S OWN YOUTUBE CHANNEL
Keep watching Chef AJ
Enjoy the recorded celebration below, then explore Chef AJ’s own uploads, newest first.
On YouTube, choose Play all to start at the newest available upload and continue through the collection. Use the playlist menu to choose another video; turn shuffle off to keep the order.
The collection opens on YouTube because its current player restricts playback on other websites. Continuous playback depends on YouTube, video availability, and your browser. YouTube updates the uploads list as new public videos become available.
Our vision: make nourishment visible — read Nathanael’s story
Our vision: make nourishment visible
“An ultimate goal of Flourishing Nursing™ and Kitchen Monk™ is to help everyone enjoy God-made whole plant foods so consistently that their nourishment is reflected in their carotenoid scores.
Thank you, Dr. Alan Goldhamer, for making the scanner available to help people learn about their carotenoid status. My hope is that more healthcare organizations and certified lifestyle medicine clinicians will explore carotenoid screening as a routine nutrition measure alongside traditional vital signs. That’s this lifestyle medicine nurse practitioner’s vision.”
Nathanael Elijah Smith, MSN, APRN, FNP-C, DipACLM
Skin carotenoid scores can help estimate carotenoid-rich fruit and vegetable intake. They do not measure overall health or prove someone’s complete dietary pattern; this vision is not a claim that carotenoid screening is an established vital sign. Read the research.
More about this memory
This is what Flourishing Nursing™ aims for
This joyful 2023 moment with Chef AJ captures what Flourishing Nursing™ aims for: nourishing food, compassionate encouragement, human connection, and room for joy. We want people—and the nurses who care for them—to have the support they need to flourish.
Watch the video and read the TrueNorth 2023 story →
A personal memory and an expression of our aims. The scanner reading is one part of the story, not a measure of whole-person flourishing.
🏮 Nurses light the way. Someone should light it for them, too.
Every lantern on this trail was hung by a nurse: at a bedside at 3 a.m., in a school hallway, on a home visit down a gravel road. We care about what nurses do. We also care whether nurses themselves flourish.
A moment by the Lamp: can you remember why you began?
Illustration created with artificial intelligence assistance.
🌱 The Nurse Needs a Garden Too
Nurses carry long shifts, heavy workloads, grief, and the quiet weight of caring for others day after day. Nurse wellbeing isn’t a luxury. It’s part of the work. Your life belongs in the care plan too.
- 🥗 Nourishment: real food that fits a real shift.
- 🌙 Rest: protecting sleep, including on night shift.
- 🤝 Connection: peers who understand, and leaders who listen.
- 🏥 Systems: workplaces where flourishing is possible, not just willpower.
💙 If you are a nurse in distress, please reach out to someone you trust or a professional. In the United States, you can call or text 988 at any time.
● AVAILABLE NOW · FREE · KITCHEN MONK
🧰 The Flourishing Nursing Coach Ninja™
The right tool. The right person. The right moment. Pause, notice, ask, choose, connect, and know when to call another helper. Plus a salute to Nurse Blake’s Code Calm, because nurses need places to find calm too.
Keep in mind: the toolbox is free to read here. Code Calm is an independent book, sold separately.
🧭 Where to go from here
◐ IN DEVELOPMENT 🩺 PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION
🌱 The framework
Flourishing Nursing asks not only “What disease are we managing?” but “What does this person need to flourish?” A developing framework, not a recognized specialty or accredited program.
◐ IN DEVELOPMENT
🚶 Move with people
Nurse-led community walks, rides, and gentle movement are now forming. Founding nurse leaders are welcome.
FREE · KITCHEN MONK
🍲 Cook with people
Food skills, teaching kitchens, and family meals, alongside registered dietitians and chefs.
FREE · INDEPENDENT RESOURCE
🥣 Start a free group visit
Ardmore Institute of Health’s free Full Plate Living curriculum, in English and Spanish, for clinicians who want to lead group education.
💛 Nurses who inspire us · 📚 Keep learning
🤝 Connecting, not competing
Nursing is enormous, and no single organization holds all of it. Flourishing Nursing Forward encourages nurses to explore the excellent communities that already exist: for standards and practice, nurse practitioners, holistic nursing, nurse coaching, and nurse-led business.
Independent organizations. They do not sponsor, endorse, or affiliate with Kitchen Monk™.
🌳 Rooted in evidence-based lifestyle medicine
The American College of Lifestyle Medicine describes six pillars: nutrition, physical activity, restorative sleep, stress management, positive social connection, and avoiding risky substances. Kitchen Monk adds its own storytelling framework of nine pathways, including purpose, community, stewardship, and, for those who want it, faith and compassion. That extension is ours, not the American College of Lifestyle Medicine’s.
This is never nurses instead of anyone. Healthcare flourishes when every profession brings its gifts to the same garden.
🌿 Interdisciplinary Roots
Flourishing Nursing Forward™ developed through years of learning across nursing, lifestyle medicine, prevention, nutrition, Food as Medicine, patient education, behavior change, and interdisciplinary mentorship. Earlier chapters of Flourishing Nurse Ninja Nathanael Elijah Smith’s journey included mentorship from lifestyle-medicine physician Dr. Ron Weiss, DipABLM, portions of which remain preserved through archived Chef AJ programming.
Learning from other disciplines didn’t lead away from nursing. It deepened the belief in what nursing can become. We learn from physicians, dietitians, chefs, therapists, community health workers, patients, and families. Nurses then bring those lessons together at the human point of care.
Historical mentorship, not endorsement. Dr. Weiss is independent and has not reviewed or endorsed Flourishing Nursing Forward™.
⭐ A Mentor’s Recognition. Former mentor Dr. Ron Weiss, DipABLM, publicly recognized Nathanael during an archived Chef AJ discussion. Watch that moment, and the Lyme disease conversation, with embedded players and timestamp buttons.
★ A milestone · August 24, 2026
🎤 Flourishing Nurse Ninja Nathanael Elijah Smith, FNP-C, DipACLM, presented “Moving Nursing Forward: The Journey” to the American College of Lifestyle Medicine’s Nursing Member Interest Group. It was part of the continuing development of this vision and does not represent American College of Lifestyle Medicine endorsement.
🌲 Oregon spotlight: Dr. Charlie Ross, DO, teaches free community classes on food as medicine through Live Lifestyle Medicine in Eugene, with Scott Wagnon, PA-C. Shared with admiration from public sources; no affiliation or endorsement.
📰 Nurses leading, not watching. In Women’s Wellness / OptiMYz, Chief Flourishing Chef Robin Jeep describes Nathanael’s view that nurse practitioners can bridge the gap between medical knowledge and everyday life.
🌱 Robin’s next chapter: Chief Flourishing Chef Robin Jeep is co-author, with Nathanael, of The Book of the Garden: The Cup of Flourishing.
🏥 We believe healthcare can become more human.
🍳 We believe kitchens can become classrooms.
🏘️ We believe communities can become extensions of care.
🌱 We believe nurses themselves deserve to flourish.
🤲 And we believe the work begins wherever someone chooses to care for another human being.
🌿 Where to next?
Flourishing Nursing Forward™ and Flourishing Nursing are developing, educational Kitchen Monk™ initiatives. They are not clinical services, certifications, or accredited programs, do not change anyone’s scope of practice, and are not endorsed by the American College of Lifestyle Medicine or any professional organization. Written by Flourishing Nurse Ninja Nathanael Elijah Smith, FNP-C, DipACLM · Last updated October 2, 2026.
“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” 
