This month:
There’s a quiet belief many of us carry, {{first_name | friend}}.
A belief that we need to be completely ready before we begin something. Or we expect the thing we want will someday happen, and only then will we be able to step into the moment.
For a long time, I lived there. In that hesitation, and that delay.
Before 2020, food was a thing I had always loved, but it sat just to the side of my life’s work. It was always close by, but I never owned it with pride. I cooked for us at home—by instinct, and quietly—every night. I hosted so many amazing parties. And I experimented with recipes. But I couldn’t justify saying out loud (or even quietly) that what I made was all mine.
Because food belonged to Floyd. It was his world—so refined and celebrated by everyone who got to taste it.
I let that be enough to hold me back.
Then came a moment I couldn’t step around.
In 2018 or so, Floyd and I had started working on a line of spice blends with Ethan and Ori of Burlap & Barrel. Then Floyd died in 2020, and I was left to carry the work forward.
One day, we were mixing the first blends of our masalas at the co-packer for B&B, when Ethan gave me a taste and asked me, “Does it taste right?”
I had a spoon in my hand, and I froze. A huge decision was in front of me. Despite those years of cooking—of knowing flavors through education and instinct and memory—my skills suddenly felt out of reach, and I was stopped completely by fear.
In that moment, all I could do was reach for Floyd—my forever-anchor. I remember saying to him, “I’m going to step into this. Please stay by my side as my guide and my strength.”
And something shifted within me. I felt clarity and calm. I said to myself, “You know this.”
I tasted the spice blend, adjusted, and said yes!
This experience didn’t make everything ahead certain. But it changed how I move. I no longer wait to feel ready. Instead, I trust myself. Because I now understand that the perfect version of myself was never going to just arrive. She would be built in the moments I chose to believe in my instincts, and act.
Now, when hesitation shows up, I identify it. More often than not, I begin anyway.
I step in.
So this May, as beautiful but imperfect things awaken and push forward from the earth anyway, I ask you: Where are you still waiting for the moment to materialize?
And what would it look like if you just stepped forward anyway?
With love,
Barkha