You know how people say the kitchen is the heart of the home? My kids will never say that.
Cooking was always an obligation but I threw myself into it when I became a mom, determined to teach my children tools for a healthy lifetime. I did get creative but it didn’t usually involve concocting aromatic, mouth-watering dishes passed down through the ages or visually seductive recipes pulled from rows of cookbooks.
Partly for my kids but mostly to inspire me, I focused on fun ways to teach the chemistry of how food works in our body. I created card and dial games for the kids to select their balanced meals including a ‘meals around the world’ game to inspire them to try new flavors. I took great pride in arranging the colors on the plate, making leaf-shaped sliced bananas and thoughtfully arranged broccoli trees. But my kids, now 9 and 14, had experienced other choices through friends and the leaning-tower-of-icing cupcakes celebrating birthdays at their school. My time had come and gone. This was the litmus test: would my approach to healthy eating stick?
The IMAC flaring from the little office nook designed into our kitchen was the only thing that got any heat. But the desk was meant for simple tasks like paying bills and jotting notes, not for the storm that was brewing.
Still at Belmont, I was taking my first nutrition course. My husband was traveling every week so by all accounts, I was a fully-funded single mom. Life was full, managing the household, teaching and rearing my children, going to school and fostering the puppies. I wasn’t journaling.
The course in nutrition left me hungry for something more (yeah, I know). The teacher and I didn’t have the same world view. I designed my own course for kids, pulling together a course outline. Carefully documenting my sources while researching the science behind what I intuitively knew, I started thinking about the tools I would use to teach the material, children’s books and a website with online videos would be perfect. But the enthusiasm by those hopes were quickly singed by the voice of reason: “You’re not qualified to write a book or design a website. Just how long and how much money is this little idea of yours going to take? You’re not the type to enlist the help of others, you have no friends and you’re definitely not a salesperson!”
Something inside hit the pause button. I’d like to tell you what it was, but that’s why I’m writing the series. There are times in our life where on our path, we meet an edge that where we’re thrust into a dark chasm where faith in yourself and your thoughts will be tested or where you’ll turn back. I was in that space.
I stopped taking classes. I didn’t know what I wanted, but knew that my current path wasn’t getting me there. Vulnerable to something I couldn’t see, I felt I had to make money doing something, but what? I wasn’t going back to corporate America.
I got a call from my stepdaughter. Hanging up, I dismissed her suggestion with a seductive laugh and a roll of the eyes. But synchronicity was busy in the days that followed, kept pressing the idea. Listening, it forced me into depths I never knew, scraping to hang on to a ledge that led a path and a journey I never would have imagined. The Universal Rules were intervening, confusion and conviction working hand-in-hand, taking me to where I refused to go.