A few weeks ago, as Jon and I got back from our usual morning walk, we looked up at one of our trees and noticed that the leaves on this particular one were, for some reason, the only ones in the neighborhood turning color. Almost to say “I’m ready; let’s get the show on the road!” I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be great to embrace all change that way?
This past year, for me, has been riddled with a wide gamut of change; most profound, a year ago August, after an all-of-a-sudden diagnosis and a five month fight, my father died from inoperable pancreatic cancer. Although this era was, for me and my family, beyond-belief heartbreaking, watching my father’s physical demise also taught me much about what life is so much about; doing our best to master the day to day quality of the inevitable; personal and collective transformation. To change on purpose instead of giving unforeseen shifts the power to take us down emotionally and, ultimately, spiritually. To use perceived hardship as an opportunity to uncover hidden strengths (and missions) yet unexplored. Watching my father die changed me forever; in some ways I will be forever scarred and yet in others, eternally grateful.
I’ve never enjoyed learning something and keeping it to myself. Teaching is what I do best and it’s what I believe is my life’s purpose. Up until somewhat recently, my teaching was limited to my professional acumen, as a Certified Culinary Professional who, in addition to sharing my technical skill, I would do my best to also let anyone and everyone know what I knew to be true, as a devoted mother and as a creative being, about the restorative powers inherent in a home that made shared meals and thoughtful home cooking a priority. Not just for parents and children, but for anyone of any lifestyle to, at whim, proactively reaffirm their ability to take what ever life in the outer world dished out and assert “the ultimate quality of my life is within my control.”
Since I began teaching and writing professionally I have often been called a “kitchen evangelist” which, up until these dark days with my father, seemed OK as a blurb to sum me up. To the public, I was led by my culinary know-how and a strong philosophical bent which I brought into a very wide range of places, including Rikers Island where, almost nine years ago, I raised the money and gathered the materials to create a teaching kitchen on the female side of this correctional facility. Specifically located in a space deemed a “high school,” this is where the adolescent population is mandated to study toward their GED. This teaching kitchen was put together through, and continues to be supported by my not-for-profit organization, Hands-On-Food, Inc.
What most didn’t (and don’t) know, though, is that for the last eight years, in addition to teaching cooking, I have also been on a very personal journey, voraciously studying human potential through metaphysics, the mind-body connection and ancient wisdom about spiritual truths. I leapt onto a new road toward personal growth and, with the confirming application of each new discovery I felt the oh-so-familiar tug to share what I learned; to deepen the scope of my teaching beyond the merits of the home kitchen. It’s in the spirit of sharing this new dimension that this is written, in hopes of helping you to benefit from what I learned during a tragic time about how to emerge a more awake and deliberate person; one with a deeper mission.
The daily downward progress of the cancer took its toll on everyone, especially my mother but I, too, was bordering a breakdown. The crisis in my family challenged my personal growth to the hilt and brought me to my knees. My father’s disease produced an enormous accumulation of fluid in his belly along with a persistent awful taste in his mouth, both of which totally robbed him of his appetite. Poetically, as a devout nurturer, I felt for the first time since my son, when in his teens, had his broken jaw wired shut for two months that the amount of restorative power that I, as a cook, could provide was paralyzed. Nothing worked. No matter what I did, no matter how many fruit tarts, buttermilk pancakes, blueberry or bran muffins, sautéed onions …No matter how many vats of red sauce swimming with tender meatballs I’d make or voluptuous sandwiches I’d tote to his weekly chemo sessions, the most he could manage was a couple of half-mouthfuls. My father was literally disappearing in front of us. I was a total mess, feeling completely helpless and unable to give him even momentary spurts of pleasure at a time that was so devastating. He rarely complained but would often sit staring out silently, only occasionally confiding his terror of the impending unknown. Once the chemo proved futile, he became resolved to die at home aided by hospice care. And, with the pull-back of that throttle came an even fuller thrust of helplessness; the realization, for all of us, that it was now just a matter of time.
Soon after, one pivotal morning, I woke up and my heart was pounding. It was really hard to breathe. I guess you would call that an anxiety-attack…I called it hitting the wall. I was drowning in grief—overwhelmed with sorrow and exhaustion. I felt spent, empty, crumpled up and over. (Not good.) I realized that I had allowed everything I learned and knew to be true about how to understand and utilize challenges to go right out the window. That’s when I forced in a deep breath and, to myself I begged, “Am I going to let what’s happening to my father kill me, too?” Then I remembered what I knew but just forgot; that I always have a choice. Not a choice of whether my father eats or doesn’t eat, or whether he lives or dies. My choice was to either get swallowed up by being privy to his process or to get up and become bigger and stronger in the face of something that felt insurmountable. Once I really saw that the nature and size of this problem wasn’t shrinkable, it became crystal clear that I wasn’t supposed to fix my father. I was supposed to use this situation to deliberately become more muscular, both literally and metaphorically, in comparison. To equate the enormity of helplessness that I felt in direct proportion to the degree of stretching I needed to do in order to accomplish the new life-level work I was yet to do. I needed to change from being one more domino in a slew of negative effects into a positive cause for those that I could help.
Before this chapter I had no idea how physically debilitating emotional grief could be. I saw myself internally as Rocky at his flabbiest. So my first move was to, quite literally, build up my stamina. From that day on every morning before I went to my parent’s house, sometimes before sunrise, I’d hit the gym. Determined to drip with sweat, this had nothing to do with my waistline, thighs, butt or biceps; it had everything to do with my inner core. My goal was to feel lighter, not in pounds but in my heart; stronger, not in my ability to lift but so I could plow through the space of mere enduring into the realm of creating positive change. In a few days I started to get itchy to resume my teaching in jail but this time I knew it had to be in a more far-reaching way. Having been devoted for years to the sometimes grueling path toward personal growth and development, compounded by this now tragic point in my family, I felt truly intimate with the many challenges inherent in the process of changing into a version of myself I wanted to see. This made me continually more aware of and frustrated with the incongruent nature of my classes on Rikers. My own struggle taught me that having “the wonderful world of cooking” as my sole focus with these troubled teens, whether for personal or vocational purposes, just wasn’t good enough. Especially since I knew (and statistics proved) that upon their release most would likely revert to any or all of the destructive surroundings and behaviors that landed them in jail in the first place.
Just like I learned with my father, that even the most succulent roast chicken can’t fix everything, it was now time for me to also teach these teens the spiritual principals and self-mastery tools that have helped me to gain the inner strides and outer manifestations that I once only dreamed about. And now, after a year of teaching this course on the male side, I’m finally able to bring a new series of both, cooking and personal growth classes to the incarcerated adolescent females.
The Point: It’s often at the lowest times of our lives when we can also find the impetus (and muster the guts) to begin a higher form of service. It’s not what happens to us that defines us, it’s what we do with what happens that tells our story. We always have a choice; to either sink into the haze of darkness or to push through to reveal new dimensions of light. Either choice creates change in our world.
Tags: adversity, cancer, death, family, family sickness, parent's death, spiritual awakening
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