Natascha Demner: Where the Light Shifts, So Does the View
Interview by Jenna Fleming
Photography by Michael Mundy
Natascha Demner’s story is one of transformation. Speaking with her, I was struck by the peace with which she talks about the changes in her life: some of them exciting and joyful, some of them unimaginably difficult. Hindsight is 20/20, but the way she describes the twists, turns, and upheavals that life has brought her goes deeper than a simple description of the past. She seems to have a trust that things will work out, maybe as a result of her deep connection with nature.
Having grown up on the edge of the woods in Vienna, Austria, Natascha moved to New York City in the early aughts to pursue a career as a jewelry designer. After over a decade establishing a successful business in the city, the fates aligned to lead her upstate. The story of how her family came to live in Sullivan County sounds like something out of a film: “It was like a goosebump moment,” Natascha recalls. She quickly fell in love with the area, the Catskills providing a welcome contrast to her busy life in Manhattan.
But then everything took an unexpected turn in early 2020, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer before the beginning of the pandemic. Through a time which she describes as “painfully beautiful,” she found the support of family and friends to be more important than ever and discovered a passion for helping others through functional medicine health coaching. As she embarks on a new phase of her practice, Natascha reflects on the path that brought her to where she is today, the importance of community, and how nature continues to ground her.
To start off, can you speak a bit about your background?
I was in the jewelry business for many years, designing and dealing in 20th century and antique jewelry. That was a family business which I was running and making into my own. Then we moved to Tuscany for my husband’s work – he’s an architect. We lived in a small medieval city called Arezzo for three years, right on the main square. Our youngest son was born there and it was a beautiful place. Very quiet. When it was time to come back to New York, I didn’t think I could be in the city anymore, especially with two small toddlers.
What first brought you upstate? How did you come to settle on the Western Catskills in particular?
My good friend had moved upstate. She was always talking about her town, Callicoon, and I was curious. I started searching for properties as one does. We decided to drive up and check it out. We arrived in Callicoon and drove over the bridge to Pennsylvania, to get cellphone reception on the other side. As we drove over the bridge, my husband said, “This is the Delaware. This is where I went kayaking when I went to camp!” He grew up in Rome, but his family sent him and his brothers to summer camp in the States for five years in a row. He recalled being a camp counselor there, in a place called Lookout, Pennsylvania. And as we got to the other side, there was a sign that read: “Lookout - 8 miles.” It was just amazing. And then when we arrived there, the gates were open and it was Alumni Day, and we were with our kids. Then we bumped into my husband’s counselor from back in the day, who was still the sports director. From then on, it was kind of clear: Callicoon became the place.
What an incredible story. Can you tell me about how you found your home upstate?
Every house we looked at was too close to the road, or too noisy, or it didn’t have a sunset. My husband is very high on sunsets; he really wanted a lot of light. We thought maybe we should look at land, so our broker took us to a hill in the Beechwoods. We climbed on top of the car to see this incredible view and we fell in love. We built this lovely home. My husband designed it. And then we started coming up on weekends. But then it started becoming harder and harder to go back to the city on Sunday nights. We had these two very rambunctious boys in a large one-bedroom in the city. When we learned about the Homestead, a Montessori school in Glen Spey, one thing led to the next, and in 2017, I decided to move upstate fulltime with the boys while my husband worked in the city during the week.
“Every house we looked at was too close to the road, or too noisy, or it didn’t have a sunset. My husband is very high on sunsets; he really wanted a lot of light.”
Recently we moved back to the city – not entirely, we’re weekend-ing again. I’m still going to spend a couple of days a week here by myself. The first few weekends when the boys started their new schools in the city, it was obviously very intense. Upstate, you take the bus from the bottom of your driveway. Everything is quiet. In the city, you take the subway to travel to school, and you constantly have to be alert. It’s a lot. They would come home exhausted and ask to go upstate. So I think that’s deeply ingrained in them: to appreciate nature and silence.
What does a day in your life in Callicoon look like?
I start my day very early because my boys have to get ready for school. When they were going to Homestead, I usually woke up at 5:55 in the morning. People always ask, ‘Oh, but isn’t it dark? Aren’t the winters hard?’ It is so dark and it is so lonely, but I love it. Our house has a lot of large windows, and it faces east-west so we get the sunrise on one side and the sunset on the other. It never feels like there is not enough light. Here, I wake up and just breathe for a few minutes, then I make breakfast and get everyone sorted out. Afterwards, I meditate for 10 to 15 minutes and then get ready for the day. When it’s nice out I try to go outside a little bit in the morning and I always check on the garden. I also have a very active community of women that live on my road and we take morning walks together. And then I sit down at my computer, I see my clients, and I work. I usually cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I cook a lot here. I work some more in the afternoon and then the boys come home. Sometimes I have a couple more client calls, but I try to move my body as much as I can.
Many people in rural areas live sedentary lives because their surroundings are largely unwalkable. How do you build movement into your days?
I have a trampoline inside and outside. Trampolining is a really great way to exercise, especially when it’s cold outdoors. To get up from the computer and jump for five minutes, it really gets the blood moving. I usually interrupt work and sitting every hour or so to jump for a few minutes. I try to just get outside into the fresh air as much as I can, and maybe if it’s nice, I’ll take my shoes off and walk the ground.
I see that you love gardening and growing your own food. How did you get into that?
It started with a small garden and then it just grew. It brings me so much joy to see something that I planted grow. I think it’s really helpful for the nervous system, especially in this world where we’re on screens so much, just being outside in nature and allowing the green into your eyeballs. In fact, when we’re in the city, I go to the park every day because it’s hard for me to be surrounded by buildings. It’s not natural. It’s not how we were built.
“Don’t be surprised if the people closest to you are not able to be there for you in the way you might need. You may take your support from someone who you haven’t seen in years or who you don’t know that well.”
I did want to ask if you would be comfortable talking about your cancer experience. It’s such a difficult time, and it must have brought some really scary and challenging moments. What kept you going?
For me, it was kind of intense because I got my cancer diagnosis in February 2020. I had a double mastectomy on the 18th of March that year, which was right at the beginning of lockdown. The timing was actually good because my husband was home with us. My mom was originally supposed to come, but she wasn’t able to travel. I had three good girlfriends that came up and stayed with us. Two of them stayed for six weeks. We just had this bubble where there was always someone to help. It was very supportive, like a little community. I never really felt isolated. I went through chemo for three months; I was triple positive. And I decided that I couldn’t worry about COVID, I had to worry about the cancer.
I’m really glad to hear you had such a wonderful support system around you. Speaking from my family’s experience of cancer, it is such a fraught time and one that throws things into deep relief. Going through such an intense and heightened experience really does strengthen those bonds and make the connections all the more meaningful.
I have a lot of clients who are cancer patients, and I always say to them, look for your support system and be open to the idea that the people who support you may not be your closest people. Don’t be surprised if the people closest to you are not able to be there for you in the way you might need. You may take your support from someone who you haven’t seen in years or who you don’t know that well. One of my biggest supporters was a high school friend who I was never that close with. She would check in with me every week and send me poetry. Sometimes the support can come from the strangest places.
It sounds like community has been a big part of your life.
Community has always been really important to me, starting with my family. When you move to New York, there’s the New York family. All New Yorkers came here from somewhere else mainly, and you just become each other’s support system. We have a big group of friends and the kids grow up together. They’re like cousins. It’s really important to have that when you’re so far away from your blood families. I think moving upstate does that to a lot of people, too. I moved and was dealing with my own health challenges, becoming more curious, and wanting to be more of service. Being in a quieter environment where it’s not always run, run, run and busy, busy, busy, but rather, stopping, feeling, and being more in touch with your nature and yourself was what gave me the strength to start this new career in health coaching.
I really love that the title of your course, Reboot and Nourish, tells you exactly what it involves. But for someone who might be unfamiliar with functional medicine, can you talk a bit about what your work encompasses?
Functional medicine is root cause-based medicine where the person is looked at as a whole. We try to discover where the root of their disease or condition lies. It’s done by taking a very detailed history, looking back at the timeline of a person’s life, examining what they’ve gone through and doing some detective work. I partner often with a functional medicine doctor, helping people to create diet and lifestyle changes, supporting my clients on their journeys as they implement what’s advised by the doctor, and helping them find ways of making those changes realistic. I started with group programs and courses like Reboot & Nourish, and now I work very much one-on-one with people that have different health conditions.
Being a breast cancer survivor, I’ve worked with a lot of cancer patients. Some of my clients have autoimmune or heart conditions or other health concerns. I am also trained as a women’s midlife specialist to support women through the perimenopause and menopause transition. Along with Pamela Mayer, who’s wonderful, we created a course called Empowered Menopause to help women find community and figure out how to best support themselves through the menopausal transition.
It is so bold to start something new like that. Why was it so important for you to devote a whole program towards helping women understand the experience?
It’s such a big change. It’s more and more in the conversation now, but there’s still a lot of confusion and noise out there. It’s a time of life when women can really benefit from community, supporting each other, and learning together. There are hormonal changes, but really the entire person is so important, and how we deal with symptoms that we may be feeling. It’s all about how to be in our best health going forward.
As you’ve alluded, your life now looks a lot different than it used to, and maybe different from how you expected it would at one point or another. What are some of the throughlines that have stuck with you through all of life’s changes?
I think as you grow and as you age, you learn what is most useful and how to best take care of yourself and those around you. The little bit of quiet from upstate and the community that we have here, I’m still very tight with. I think coming back to the city now – the city where everything moves so fast and people don’t really look each other in the eyes – after having spent the last few years a little bit slower and a little bit more connected, where you say hello to every car that goes by, I think that really changed me. I hope to be able to bring that with me forever.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
