Friends, welcome to Bleach and Sugar Cookies, my virtual test kitchen and little nook of the internet. If you're here, you're probably aware that some recipes are only for cleaning the fucking countertops, while others are sweet. Both are welcome in this area.
You can't make a gorgeous cake in a kitchen that the health department has condemned. And my life was a culinary crime scene for years. The only tool I had left was a bottle of bleach, the ingredients had gone bad, and the surfaces were covered in the stain of old grief. I scorched the ground upon which the kitchen was built in addition to burning it down. This post serves as the introduction to my new cookbook, which tells the tale of my kitchen renovation from the ground up. Here's my rebuilding formula.
Let's begin with this dish's name: From Bleach to Bloom. My twenties and early thirties were characterized by the flavor "bleach." An attempt to sterilize a recipe gone horribly wrong, it was the harsh, chemical taste of a life stripped of all emotion. I reached for it as the ingredient to numb the pain of losing my fiancé, to sanitize the trauma until everything tasted like nothing and was antiseptic white. Bleach was used when cleaning the mess seemed too permanent.
However, "Bloom" is this messy, continuous process of relearning how to cook. It's not about presenting a flawless, Michelin-starred dish. It's the messy beauty of kneading dough for the first time, getting flour everywhere, and then watching in awe as something beautiful and obstinate starts to rise. It is vibrant and genuine, even though it has dirt under its fingernails and most likely some eggshell in the batter. This is how that process unfolded.
My recipe for catastrophe
You have to acknowledge that the old recipe is poison before you can learn a new one. It wasn't a movie epiphany, my last taste test of a life gone bad. The date was Halloween 2020. While the world was shut down, I was listening to a stripper friend of mine gripe about how the lockdown was affecting her bag. Her goals, schedule, and realistic, well-structured life hit me like a ton of bricks as I listened to her talk about them. She had a recipe to follow. I was merely creating a mess. My life was a mess of ruined ingredients and unwashed dishes rather than a life. She had a life. I had… habits.
The spark that ultimately ignited the gas leak was that conversation. A toxic stew of using alone, sleeping in my car, taking showers at QuikTrip, and starting arguments just to taste something sharp was my lowest point. Long before the holiday, I was a ghost haunting my own kitchen.
After years of eating bland, unseasoned food, the first 30 days of sobriety were like attempting to cook while all of your senses were working simultaneously. My sensory processing was already a mess because I had been diagnosed with PTSD. All of a sudden, every sound was a clanging pot, every light was a harsh oven glare, and my temper was constantly boiling. Living with other women in a treatment facility was like being in a test kitchen. We were all burned cookies attempting to determine whether we were salvageable. My honesty was unvarnished and overly spicy, my jokes were half-baked, and I was harboring a rage that I couldn't control, gathering small arguments like trading cards.
Half-baked opinions and old haunts
But that uncooked, over-seasoned state is not limited to the kitchen. You have to serve the dish eventually, and for me that meant returning to Kansas City's eerie streets. I had to drive past the eateries that served my favorite poisons on my way to the grocery store because I couldn't just throw out the old recipe book while I was recovering here. My grandmother lived in the Midtown area where I used to live. Once, when I was sober and standing on her block, I had the impression that I was reading a menu in a foreign language. Everything was the same, but I had lost my ordering skills. For the first time, I wasn't on the menu, but the ghosts were all there.
It was culinary culture shock in and of itself to find a recovery meeting where I felt seen. When I entered these Leawood rooms, I was given an unseasoned recipe for humility. Character flaws like "ego" and "pride" would be mentioned to me. A certain amount of pride and ego isn't a spoiled ingredient, honey; it's the salt and a damn survival kit for a Black woman who had to make her way through this world. In settings that want you to shrink, it's the preservative that keeps you from rotting. When someone tries to touch your hair without your permission or when you're the only person in the room, it's the armor you need to keep your head held high. In order to create a recovery recipe that didn't require me to overpower my own flavor, I had to learn to leave the things that fed me alone.
That's what this journey is all about. It's not just about putting down the bottle; it's about overcoming the emotional shock of switching from my mostly Black community's soulful, all-you-can-eat buffet to the carefully planned, small-plate atmosphere of a corporate Leawood setting. For the sake of others' comfort, I will not change my code. Take it or leave it—I'm serving my real dish. I recently discovered that my voice is more powerful when I reserve it for the main course—for the battles that really count. Their palate is intimidated by me; I'm not a scary food. I no longer feel bad about my spice.
The Menu Items: A Future-Proof Recipe
The foundation of the life I'm creating at the age of 35 is my refusal to apologize and my choice to serve my own food in rooms where I was previously instructed to eat what I was given. I've returned to school and am working toward a master's degree in counseling. Consider it like attending culinary school for the soul; if you can survive a kitchen fire that lasts ten years, you might as well learn how to instruct others in fire safety.
My life's menu now appears to be different. Right now, the only "P" I'm focused on is my paperwork because I was ghosted last year and put on the back burner until the flame went out. My group of friends went through a complete purging of their pantry. An old recipe that no longer fed me—a close friend who relapsed—had to go. It was a gutting process, but it created space for new ingredients, such as my coworker, a fiery Black woman who is the ideal wine partner for my main course—she just gets it. My younger sister, who was only 13 when my kitchen first caught fire, is back in town. Together, we're relearning how to cook and creating a new recipe for our bond. What do you know? Seldom do I feel alone. My own business is like a well-balanced, gratifying meal.
My open kitchen is my blog. We will discuss ambition and the decision to build a brand-new restaurant because you want a seat at the table. Being a lighthouse for other people of color in recovery settings that can resemble a country club looking for soul food is what we'll discuss.
Both bleach and sugar cookies belong here since both are necessary for a complete existence. You need sugar to create something worthwhile, and you need bleach to clean the countertops. What is a component of your life that you used to believe was a weakness but now recognize as your special spice? Let's work this out together.
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