The taste of CHILDHOOD

The taste of CHILDHOOD 

And a glitch in my nervous system that found a favourable moment to come to surface in a HEALING way.

My grandmother died some 13 years ago. The loss was incomprehensible at that time, for both me and my mum. She was a pillar of strength (at least on the surface) for my mum and a safe space for me - she loved me dearly, unconditionally, and I'd spend a great deal of my childhood and early teens with her and my grandfather (another soothing presence in my life). The difference between my mum's mourning of her loss and my own was that she was visibly overwhelmed by it (weight loss, deep pain and sadness, rivers of tears), while I was, in many ways, emotionally paralysed (to be read as a FREEZE state). I couldn't connect to either my pain or my mother's, on the contrary, I'd feel the need to push the pain away, as well as my mother, as a consequence. I couldn't express my anger and the underlying sadness craving to penetrate the walls. The worst part in all this was the confusion. I didn't understand why I, such an emotional, intense and sensitive being, couldn't cry, why I felt nothing (which was so far from the truth, but I didn't know it then). And I'd feel both guilty and superficial - a stigma that would not cease to feel sticky up until more recently.

Growing up in a high alert (hyper-vigilance) environment, I would often pendulate between a fight (anger), flight (anxiety) and freeze (inability to express my intense  emotions) response to my surroundings and experiences. And oh boy, sometimes they all walked hand in hand at the same time.

It took me years of therapy and other healing endeavours to peel off layers of confusion around this inability to express my feelings. I didn't know how to feel safe expressing myself. As I understood that my body was in a freeze response over that experience (and others to come), and that I didn't really (know how to) process her death, the seed of freedom sprouted in me.

Out of all the delicious (pun intended) memories with Mami (it's how I used to call her), there's one in particular that is still so vivid, still tickles all my senses - her plethora of mouth watering cakes. I'd think it was mostly my nostalgic spirit, but who am I kidding, those were the yummiest and truthful cakes I've eaten to date and Mami was an incredibly skilful confectioner (no, this wasn't her job). Most of them were also very complex to create, so she would spend hours, if not days, on their making. Mami wouldn't go out of the house much (she would care for my mum' disabled sister 24/24) but she loved having people over and feeding them. Lots of food, in general, yet it was her cakes that stirred proper delight.

Fast forward to the present moment, when I've had mum visiting in London (it was just the two of us for more than 1 week), in an attempt to bond and do some mending to a once soothing relationship that has been degrading over time. Just before she came over, a sweet and intuitive thought struck me. I asked mum to dig for my grandmother's old cake recipes. A subconscious turned conscious desire to (re) connect through Mami's spirit and energy, and revive her passion. Yet it was only while we were caught up  in the baking process, or maybe even more so once we tasted the result, that I realised this intuitive idea was mainly embodied in my need to process everything to a deeper extent.

It recently came to me how much I resemble Mami. And it's not a coincidence how this moment came to being at a time when I'm excited to cultivate my penchant and intuition for gathering people and standing ground for genuine and uplifting connections, as well as my acquired knowledge on and love of nourishing and colourful foods. This recently took the form of my holistic beauty workshops, among other creative and educational endeavours. I have some stories to unfold and share, so stay with me, I would be grateful. 🎨💡🍀

Both sceptical of being able to reproduce something so grand, we embarked on the journey, nevertheless. This joint effort proved to be a success, we surprised ourselves ad each other. That first taste of the cake (Jumeghie, by its name) felt like bliss. My taste buds were so happy, but so was my soul. I could sense Mami's loveful embrace and her warm big smile. I wish she were here to see it, and taste it. To taste my love for her and her cakes, particularly as I’d become so fussy with food (health conscious and all) in my 20s, and wouldn’t eat the cakes as often and with the same pleasure as I’d used to. There was a time when I would take her magical skill for granted.

Apart from swapping some ingredients with healthier choices, and giving it a creative look (as I usually do), the taste of our Jumeghie is 90% as the one I remembered.  We managed to revive a skill and a passion we all thought was lost with Mami's passing. I hadn't eaten these cakes since before she died, which made this moment even more emotional. Something in my being simultaneously broke and expanded with this experience. And oh boy, this cake is tasty!

I’ve always been aware of how I resembled both of my parents, my father in particular, in so many ways I liked but mostly dreaded, and I had a sense of my similarity to my father’s sister, who died when I was 2y old, yet I’ve never reflected on how much of Mami is embedded in myself. And here I am, baking this (never) forgotten cake, at a time when I am taking so much pleasure in being creative with food, as well as in bringing people together in an attempt to build meaningful connections. 🥨

Here’s the original RECIPE, plus side notes on some alternative ingredients I’ve used.

I would love to hear your experience with the cake, if you ever come to bake it yourself (or maybe you’ll come and have a taste of it at one of my workshops/gatherings). 🎈

What’s a childhood memory that still dwells on your adult life in a powerful and revelatory way? How do you PROCESS it?

Morning rituals

As antidote to a world on autopilot.

We live in a time where looking at our phone is the first thing we do in the morning. We haven’t even properly woken up all our senses (this if we’re “lucky” enough to have had a good sleep), our eyelids still stick to one another, while our body is surely craving for hydration, yet we can’t help reaching out for the phone. And most often than not, it’s where the disconnection begins. We are bombarded with information at the onset of our day, which keeps the noise going throughout, and likely into our sleep as well. We have a tendency to rush everything (hence barely taking any pleasure in or awareness of anything) nowadays, including the way we set ourselves up for the day. I don’t think there has ever been a larger scale addiction with more dire consequences, not just on our health and wellbeing, but on our humanness and relationships, than our addiction to gadgets (and the online life for that matter). Johann Hari’s “Stolen Focus” sheds a bright light on this topic, and many others connected. I encourage you to read it.

Without further ado, here’s a few things I like to tune into during the morning to fuel my energy in the right direction:

☀️ I try to TAKE MY TIME with waking up, before embracing the whole army of stimuli. The way we take off will usually set the tone for how we’ll move about and how we’ll feel during the day. The act of rushing into doing will only exacerbate the mindset that there’s not enough time. Yawn, stretch, take a deep breath, scan your limbs or give yourself a big hug, and let the day unfold. We need to let ourselves BE for once.

🌱 THE TONGUE SCRAPER. I’d been aware of its health benefits, yet I’ve only included it in my daily morning rituals once I’ve watched a video of Monique from Cosmic Dealer (they make my current favourite guilt free chocolates, as well as teas and herbal coffees) talking so passionately about her relationship to the tongue scraper. She would even include it on her 3 things to get on a desert island list, so beat that! I don’t know how much you’ve paid attention to what’s on your tongue as you wake up, but just think about how much bacteria and excess debris we accumulate over the night. Whatever you push through your mouth, including a toothbrush, will only push all of the debris back into your body. Yuck! So yes, tongue scraper first, toothbrush second. Removing bacteria is key to preventing cavities, gum disease, and other conditions affecting the mouth. Tongue scraping will also favourise better digestion (the enzymes in your saliva help break down your food for easy digestion and tongue scraping helps activate those enzymes for better digestion) and boost overall health (by using a tongue scraper, you can remove the harmful bacteria and help boost your immunity).

☀️ A GLASS OF WATER on an empty stomach may save you from several health hardships. As trivial, simple or intuitive as it may sound to some of you, I do know people who skip this “step” and go straight into a big mug of coffee, for example, which will dehydrate an already dehydrated body even more. There’s a few things that will tell you you’re in need of water, from a dry mouth, the colour of your pee (should be a pale straw colour when you’re hydrated enough) to your fatigue level. And then there's the simple fact that you haven’t been drinking for…well, for as long as you slept. Drinking water in the morning will help your body recover from its nightly dehydration, just as it will improve mental clarity, will allow blood circulation and “flush out” toxins. Warm or room temperature water is the best on an empty stomach, and you can also add on some vitamins and minerals to it, by making your own enzymatic water. I love a mixture of rosemary and blueberries or pomegranate, fresh mint, lemon or cucumber slices. Get creative with it! 

🌱 One thing I never skip in the morning is my HOMEMADE LATTE, which can be a matcha latte (a favourite, you know that by now), a mushroom blend (a great one for natural energy and enhanced cognitive function), a cacao blend (feminine power, here you are!) or a turmeric latte (great as a PMS soother). Every sip of it brings me so much pleasure. I love to be creative with it and adapt it to whatever energy I’m in on that particular morning. 

☀️ Go out in the garden or on your balcony, or just open the window (if you have neither a garden nor a balcony, just like me) and LET THE MORNING LIGHT SEE YOU. Do it even if it’s a cloudy day. Take another deep breath and start moving your body, even if it’s for just a few minutes. It will make such a difference to your mood and energy levels. Dancing, in particular, helps me shake off any morning anxiety and release happiness hormones. Here’s a hand picked Spotify playlist I love to move my body on during the morning. I hope there’s something uplifting in there for you too. Just handle it with care. :)

🌱 If you are a fan of reading in the morning, go for something that would lift your spirit and preferably not work related, something you can immerse yourself in, even if for a few minutes, without feeling the need to distract yourself with something else, to fix and solve (the world outside, or your inner world). Both my mind and my soul have been so nurtured lately with this beautiful collection of essays and meditations on (human) nature. It pours light and hope over the seemingly unhealable cracks in humanity.

☀️ What I have been mostly enjoying lately, though, with spring making her presence felt (and sniffed), is taking notice of and engaging all my senses (particularly the sense of wonder) in the daily bloom of my new potted flowers and plants. Their bloom has become my own inner bloom and it instills hope. And while attending to their needs (water and light, mostly) I am attending to my own. I don’t know exactly what made them thrive like this, after a long period of not doing very well. It might be the coming of spring, yet it might as well be other, less obvious factors. In any case, I’m leaning into this energy.

It’s not easy to create and stick to rituals, and make time to (really) notice (the movement of our cells and the space around us) particularly in a big city where mere survival is a norm. We do need to be intentional about it. We need to break this pattern of functioning on autopilot mode (no wonder we’re so stressed about time and ageing). It doesn’t even matter that much if we frequently fail at it, the practice is much more powerful, as it will slowly but surely rewire our (individual and collective) patterns and ways of functioning, in a society that pushes our humanity to extinction. Yes, I deeply believe we need to resist that, if we want to LIVE.

We also need to relearn to do one thing at a time - there are studies confirming humans are not equipped to multitask! And whatever ritual you are following, it doesn’t matter if it’s just one thing (don’t skip the glass of water though!), be present with it. Avoid rushing into the online world first thing, nothing good will come out of it, and let’s face it, when is it ever that urgent? Whenever fall for that, I’d start feeling so sluggish and unmotivated, if not restless or angry at the world. And who really needs their phone in the same room they sleep at night? That’s what alarm clocks are for, and there are some really nice ones you can get now that mimic the sounds of nature and the natural sunlight, so no more dreading of that!

Don’t take this as a list, there’s already too many lists in our lives, in our agendas, on our (stretched beyond the limit) minds! If there’s anything we need right now, in this collective burnout phase, is to do less, rather than more or more efficiently. But also train yourself to prioritise what’s needed for you to be a happy and healthy functional being. Take whatever sparked your interest or resonated with you from the above, and create your own (pleasure) rituals. It may sound like it would take me a few hours to engage in all these morning rituals, yet they’d probably not count for more than 30 min in total. It's more about trying to be present with everything you experience, and if your mind takes over or if you’ve realised you’re doing things automatically (again), slowly snap out of it and come back to your present senses. Most importantly, don’t break down when you “failed” at creating a good day for yourself. A crappy day is a crappy day, let it simmer. Let it be rainy and cloudy. Tomorrow is yet another day, nothing is lost. And remember that no one gets it right all the time.

Of course, notions like rest, slowing down and even mere intentional breathing, feel like things for the privileged (people without kids and/or a stable income, successful freelancers who don’t need to bend over backwards to survive) but you’d be surprised that that’s generally not the case. Rosie Spinks has written an insightful and vulnerable article on exactly this topic. As she puts it “Those among us who have the most cushion to opt out of the MFB mindset often seem to be among the least capable of doing it”. I believe that, among other twisted mindsets rigorously and systematically fed by capitalism, it’s mainly our addiction to and misinterpretation of progress that stands in the way of our freedom. In all context, we need to remember that rest, pleasure and joy are our birthrights.

And it’s MOVIE time! 🍿

If you’ve managed to read (and I thank you for it 💛) all of the above, it’s time to take a deep breath and watch a good movie! I am an avid cinephile (and I love engaging in deep conversations on every good movie I watch) and so I agree with the rumours that this must have been one of the best years in cinematography, hands down. I would argue it’s particularly foreign, indie productions (which I favour in general, anyway) that stroke some big chords, but it’s a memorable year for a few Hollywood productions as well. These below are my favourite, with some extra honorary mentions like “Perfect days”, “Apolonia, Apolonia”, “The taste of things” and “American fiction”.

“Poor Things” was a masterpiece of all sorts (from cinematography and visuals - I loved that it was shot on film!, to the many allegorical messages, costumes, make-up and hair designs - exquisite!). Here’s an in-depth and marvellous glance at all these aspects, aka behind the scenes. Enjoy! 🎬