For nearly 20 years now, I’ve been fully immersed in the local food movement, investigating and promoting the ways that it helps to heal the earth, build community resilience, improve local relationships, enable healthier partnerships between humans and livestock, and improve our well-being.

That last attribute has been an interesting sticking point for our family over the past few years. Essentially, since I am nearing 40, I grew up in the local food movement. If it is supposed to promote good health, how is it that the members of my family still developed illnesses that were exacerbated by food intolerances…even though the foods we were eating were local, raw, sprouted, free of GMOs, and the like?

I will admit that, back about 10 years ago, in the height of my hubris surrounding local and sustainable foods, I didn’t really consider that illness could afflict me or my family, so long as we held the moral high ground with our diet. After all, we had the necessary nutrients, the rights enzymes, and none of the toxic poisons.

But life didn’t unfold that way. Each of us still developed our afflictions, from wandering eyes, to cavities, to type I diabetes, to neurological and digestive issues. We’re all happy and active and loving our lives, in spite of our personal travails. And along our healing journey, we’ve figured out that not all local foods agree with our bodies. That doesn’t, in my opinion, suggest that all local foods that don’t happen to sit particularly well with my family should be eliminated from everyone’s diet. Nor does it mean that we can’t satisfy our nutritional needs locally. There’s still plenty around here to eat. It just means we need to exercise care, and pay attention to what we eat and how our bodies respond.

This has been a powerful lesson for me with my work. It has helped me to develop compassion for all the other well-meaning souls who are trying to find their ways on the sustainable path while heeding their own dietary restrictions. In spite of this, I received a sharp letter from a reader last week, expressing anger that I should publicly admit that certain sainted local foods don’t agree with me. Apparently, as local food advocates, my family is supposed to be secretive about our afflictions. We’re supposed to let people believe that our health is perfect. By carrying on that image, if my readers or customers suffer illness, they should believe that the problem must be with them…perhaps they have made grave nutritional errors. Perhaps it was something their mothers did wrong while raising them. By carrying on this rouse, I would be teaching “As long as you adhere to a perfect local diet, then nothing should ever go wrong for you or your children.” Balderdash.

We are more than our food. We are mind and spirit, as well as body. When anything in the body-mind-spirit trinity is out of balance, illness can begin, no matter what you eat. And illness is one of our great teachers.. Addressing it requires attention to all three parts of this trinity, and it can result in deep joy, tremendous learning, powerful spiritual growth, and profound healing…even if we never technically shed the illness. I am like everyone else, learning my lessons, and constantly attending to my own balance in order to achieve my highest purpose. And like everyone else, my balance gets disrupted on my journey. That’s part of the adventure of life. As a writer and local food advocate, I’d feel dishonest if I attempted to hide these experiences.

As each of us learns to balance our body, mind and spirit, not all of us can eat dairy, even if it is raw, even if it is full-fat, even if it is organic, even if it is local. Not all of us can feast on every vegetable and fruit, even if they are heirloom varieties from open-pollinated seeds. Not all of us can live free of animal products, even if the vegetables are biodynamic, even if the tofu is local and properly fermented. Not all of us can eat grains, even if they are whole grains, even if they are sprouted, even if they are not genetically modified, even if they were grown next door. Not all of us can tolerate meat, even if it is grass fed, even if the farmer who sold it to us is a saint. All of these are good foods. All of these will play an important part in sustainable, locally-based food systems. But they don’t all work for everybody at all times.

As the local food movement expands, we must learn to exercise compassion as each of us works to balance the body, mind and spirit. We need to deepen our understanding of illness and well-being, and accept that self-recrimination and blame are simply not conducive to the healing process. If the local food movement matures successfully, there will be ample diversity in the dietary options, enabling all of us to have our constantly shifting nutritional needs met as life brings her many lessons to each of our imperfect souls.

Shannon Hayes works with her family raising grassfed meat on Sap Bush Hollow Farm in Upstate New York. She is the author of The Grassfed Gourmet, Farmer and the Grill, Radial Homemakers, and most recently, Long Way on a Little: An Earth Lover’s Companion for Enjoying Meat, Pinching Pennies and Living Deliciously. This article appeared on Grassfed Cooking.com.