From Red Bottoms to Rich Soil | Niya Brown Matthews on Healing, Food Sovereignty & Community Power

In this episode of Compost, Cotton & Cornrows, host Dominique Drakeford sits with Niya Brown Matthews, a self-taught, first-generation farmer and community educator based in Atlanta, to explore what happens when healing, food, and purpose intersect.

Niya shares her powerful pivot from a fast-paced corporate life filled with boardrooms, red bottoms, and constant motion to building a farm alongside her husband during the pandemic. What began as a commitment to restore their health and relationship to food quickly became a larger calling—one rooted in community stewardship, resilience, and legacy.

Through the lens of gardening, Niya reframes sustainability as more than self-care or aesthetics. The garden becomes a living classroom, teaching timing over control, observation over perfection, and presence over performance. She speaks candidly about healing from illness, releasing curated expectations, and asking the essential question at the center of all lasting work: what’s your why ... and can it last?

This conversation is for anyone navigating a pivot, craving alignment, or rethinking what real wealth looks like in a world shaped by climate change and burnout. Growing food is named for what it truly is: an urgent and necessary currency, one that restores health, strengthens community power, and offers instruction when we’re quiet enough to listen.

🌱 Topics covered:
– Healing through growing food
– First-generation farming and food sovereignty
– Community stewardship and sustainability
– Leaving corporate life for alignment
– Health, resilience, and legacy building
– Why sustainability must be bigger than self

🎧 Listen, reflect, and grow with us.
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