The Ingredients We're Made Of

This week, I created and prepared an original recipe from one of my novels, and somewhere between googling complementary herbs, chopping vegetables, and devouring the finished dish, I realized it was never about food in the first place. The official ingredient list may be largely meat and potatoes, but in the journey from chopping block to oven to table, my recipe took on the flavors of family history. By the time I sat down, beaming with pride, the bowl on my table was seasoned with something deeper and more savory than sage, something far more fragrant than thyme.

In The Freedom Series, readers see the women of the Safe House healing from various forms of domestic abuse, and because of my mother's survival story, the Safe House program is very close to my heart. The program I wrote over a decade ago is still so uniquely holistic, it doesn't exist in the real world—but in the infinitely imaginative pages of women's fiction, it's a recipe for wisdom, belonging, and identity. Finding a home at the Safe House is more than escaping danger. Within its walls, healing family wounds, cultivating personal growth, and savoring hospitality are only part of the recipe.

Because beyond the storytelling on the surface, The Freedom Series serves readers a chance to look more closely at the generational influences that shape us, sometimes whether we want them to or not.

So often, we remember a favorite dish by the name of its main ingredient—like a cheeseburger, which is not known by its condiments, but is enriched by them all the same. I think we do that with stories, too.

We relate to the main characters. We notice their interactions. We critique their speech. Occasionally, the transformations we witness as we read go on to inform our family traditions, flavoring our lives with bits and pieces that warm our hearts and inspire our minds. Sometimes they teach us lessons about faith and family that we couldn't have learned otherwise, like a dish beautifully served at just the right moment. These main characters, in many ways, are the story; a cheeseburger, after all, must have both the cheese and the burger. But beyond the main ingredient, there's a nuance that only comes from condiments.

In a story, this richness of flavor shows up in supporting characters like Violet.

There's a scene in STILL FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM where the Safe House residents gather for a Thanksgiving potluck. For various reasons, many have no families of their own, and this is a chance for broken women to stand shoulder at a time that would otherwise be tainted with loneliness and fear. A physical therapist teaches a little boy to carve a turkey. Food is prepared largely from the produce of the program's garden. One woman offers a casserole flavored by her grandmother's influence. And while those few paragraphs offer little in terms of the recipe's contents, Violet's recipe is in many ways a nod to my own family matriarch—the grandmother who still seasons the moments of my life.

My grandmother would have marveled at me this weekend. The kid who once hunted and eliminated every piece of onion in every dish ever served stood fully grown in her kitchen, sharp knife in one hand, smelly onion in the other. She'd have been just a little smug as she watched me dicing, her faded eyes twinkling with silent mirth. She might've shaken her head as I peeled sweet potatoes, because I still peel a little too much potato away with the skin. She probably would've left the kitchen entirely when I decided not to peel the russet potato at all.

I thought of her hands as I measured herbs and seasonings, not with measuring spoons but with sight and scent and the cup of my own palm, and I wondered if this recipe might've tasted familiar to a farmer's daughter from rural Kentucky.

I could almost feel her peering over my shoulder. "Are you sure you need that much salt?" (I did.)

The wrinkles that mapped her life on her face would have shifted and rearranged as she arched an elegant brow. "That looks like a lot of broth...might be too much." (It wasn't.)

She would have snorted, quietly amused, if told her how much this little recipe means to me. She would have dismissed the sentimentalism if I said, "But it matters, because recipes don't just change and preserve food. They nourish and preserve people." And she'd have outright rolled her eyes at the idea that the ingredients of our lives influence our flavor—"Silly. It's just food!"

But I think she would have loved this dish that was quietly named in honor of everything she represented, because we really do become what we've been fed. We're all uniquely flavored by the words, the love, the grief, and the grace that make us who we are, and while my grandmother was never openly poetic, she was wise enough to know truth when she saw it.

*****

The funny thing about food is that sometimes life and death are in the preparation. And not every ingredient begins as something healthy or nourishing—some require a guided transformation before they become part of something good. Raw beans often contain dangerous compounds that must be broken down, olives are intensely bitter before time and patience make them delicious, and even a rhubarb plant has parts worth preserving and parts best left behind.

People are not so different.

Family legacy means we inherit ingredients left behind by previous generations. We witness their traditions, absorb their wisdom, bear the brunt of their fears and wounds. Sometimes we carry the weight of hopes and dreams they couldn't reach—or never reached for. Some of those things arrive healthy and fulfilling, while others need healing and discernment. And some ingredients, no matter how long they've been part of the recipe, were never meant to stay there.

Healing from the past may not mean rejecting everything that came before us, but it does ask us to learn the difference between honoring a chosen legacy and repeating a toxic pattern. And maybe that adaptability is what makes a recipe so magical. A cook can preserve and enhance what makes a dish special, while changing the things that no longer serve those gathered around the table.

In life, just as in the kitchen, we're shaped by what we receive, and we're responsible for what we pass on. The ingredients may have been handed to us, but the recipe is still being written.

This week, embrace the unique flavor of your life and the lessons you've learned. Linger over moments of joy, and savor the flavors that make you happy. Don't be afraid to add a little salt when life seems bland, or rewrite the whole recipe when it's no longer working the way it used to. And no matter what kind of life you're cooking up...

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