Why I Wrote The Resilient Living Systems Playbook
“Healing isn’t about fixing what’s broken. It’s about remembering how life restores itself.”
Healing as Design, Belonging as Practice
For years, I thought of healing as something I had to chase—something out there that I needed to find, fix, or earn. Doctors, protocols, supplements, and countless well-intended plans all offered fragments of truth, yet none of them addressed the deeper question that my body kept asking: What if I am not broken? What if I am simply out of rhythm with Life itself?
Nearly a decade ago when I began studying biomimicry—the practice of learning from nature’s strategies to solve human challenges—I discovered an entirely new way of seeing life. Engineers looked to lotus leaves to design self-cleaning surfaces. Architects studied termite mounds to model climate-smart buildings. After facing some debilitating health challenges, I began to wonder: Could we also turn to nature for guidance on how to heal?
Because the truth is, nature has been practicing resilience for billions of years. Forests don’t rush to fix themselves after fire—they regenerate. Coral reefs don’t avoid disturbance—they adapt through partnership. Every ecosystem on Earth carries patterns for repair, recovery, and renewal.
What if our bodies work the same way?
From Breakdown to Belonging
The Resilient Living Systems Playbook grew out of both curiosity and necessity. My own journey through chronic pain, fatigue, and injury became the proving ground for everything I now teach. When medicine reached its limits, I turned to nature not just for peace, but for patterns—for the logic of how Life restores itself.
I began to see my body as an ecosystem, not a machine. Every cell, tissue, and organ functions like the networks in a forest: diverse, interdependent, constantly communicating. Healing isn’t about controlling symptoms—it is about creating the right conditions for resilience to re-emerge.
That realization changed everything.
A Living Field Guide
This book is the result of over a decade spent weaving science, story, and systems design into a framework for healing that honors complexity. It’s not a protocol—it’s a perspective, a way of observing how Life organizes itself, and applying those principles to our own well-being. It gathers 21 living strategies from nature—each one a doorway into seeing health more aligned with the natural world.
Examples include:
Mussels that grow stronger by anchoring into movement—teaching us how to build strength through tension, not avoid it.
Forests that thrive through mycorrhizal networks—reminding us that connection is essential to recovery.
Butterflies that dissolve into fluid during metamorphosis—modeling the beauty and necessity of letting go.
Mangroves that filter salt and flex with the tide—guiding us to create healthy boundaries without losing connection.
Each model is paired with reflection prompts and simple embodied practices, followed by real-life case studies that blend science, ecology, and lived experience—showing how systems thinking comes alive through individual adaptation.
The result is a book that feels both ancient and practical: a compass for navigating change, loss, repair, or the everyday recalibration of living in a fast, fragmented world.
Healing as a Design Process
Nature doesn’t separate form from function—every design serves a purpose. The same is true for healing. It’s not about forcing the body to comply. It’s about learning from the intelligence that already knows how to thrive.
Each chapter follows the same rhythm:
→ a model from nature
→ the strategy it uses to thrive
→ what it teaches us about health
→ simple practices to try in daily life
In this way, the playbook becomes a living field guide—a companion for anyone navigating change, recovery, or the quiet longing to feel at home again in their body.
It’s for those who sense that health is not just physical, but relational.
For those who’ve tried everything “right,” but still feel disconnected.
For those who want to remember what it means to be part of the living world, not apart from it.
“Healing is not linear. It’s cyclical—like seasons, like tides, like breath.”
The Design of the Book
Visually, the playbook reflects the same philosophy it teaches. The artwork—rendered in soft watercolor and natural gradients—mirrors the texture of living systems. It blurs the boundary between art and science, reminding readers that the two are always intertwined.
Each page is designed to breathe. There is spaciousness between ideas—much like the pauses between breaths, or the quiet between waves.
It’s a reading experience meant to slow you down, to help you feel the rhythm of life through language, image, and reflection.
The Why Beneath It All
At its core, The Resilient Living Systems Playbook is about returning to relationship—with your body, your community, and the planet that makes both possible.
When we heal through the lens of nature, we begin to remember that resilience is not built in isolation—it’s grown through connection.
That boundaries and rest are not luxuries—they’re biological truths.
That belonging itself is medicine.
Our individual health cannot be separated from the health of the ecosystems around us. The soil, the sea, the sky, and the stories we carry—they all inform how we live, and how we heal.
In a time when disconnection has become normalized, this book is my offering toward reconnection—a map for remembering that we are already part of the living web.
A Conversation Between Science and Soul
As former Communications Director for the Biomimicry Institute, I spent years helping innovators tell stories of how nature solves complex human problems. Engineers learned from sharkskin to design antibacterial surfaces. Designers studied the Namib beetle to collect water from fog.
This book takes that same scientific rigor and turns it inward. What if we looked to biology — not just to build better technology, but to build better health, better communities, and better ways of being?
“Every cell in your body is a microcosm of the living world. To heal is to remember that connection.”
An Invitation
The Resilient Living Systems Playbook: A Practical Guide to Living and Healing Like Nature releases next week on Tuesday, October 28, 2025.
It’s written for practitioners, seekers, and everyday people navigating the cycles of stress, recovery, grief, or growth. It’s for those who want to move beyond “fixing” and begin designing for wholeness.
If you’ve ever felt tired of fighting your body—or the world—this is a call to realign, to listen, and to live with the wisdom that’s been here all along.
Because healing isn’t about becoming more perfect.
It’s about remembering we were never separate from Life in the first place.
Stay connected: Join the mailing list at healwithamore.com/newsletter for insights, updates, and events exploring living systems approaches to health and resilience.
“Healing is not a solo act. It’s a return to relationship—with your body, your community, and the living systems that hold us all.”
