Soul Food

My doctors warned me that the stretch following the first round of chemo could be rough, and they were right. These last few days I’ve been just slammed with exhaustion and nausea, lying in bed all day. It’s been miserable, a lot like recovering from a tough bout with a seasonal flu. Mercifully, the symptoms have started to subside, and with each passing day I get a little strength back.

Maybe you can identify: extended periods of confinement and isolation can really do a number on us. We just don’t feel like ourselves. Our bodies and minds can start to shut down, fast.

What’s helped me through is just getting back to some of the basics: rest, hydrate, eat a little something, connect with loved ones. So often, when things get rough, my temptation is to tense up and power through — quietly, doggedly — and I forget how healing and restorative it can be to give myself over to a good conversation, a good story. Last night, an friend called out of the blue, and I hopped out of bed for a beautiful, soulful 15 minutes of oh my God, how are your kids? and give our love to your beautiful family and if there is *anything* I can do, just…. And around the dinner table tonight, as we savored a home–cooked meal a neighbor brought, we vigorously debated the justice of Major League Baseball’s suspension of Joe Kelly, with references to ancient laws of retaliation, vigilante justice, and what Martin Luther King, Jr., had to say about unending spirals of violence.

It gives me life. We’re wired for this kind of connection, this banter, this embodied, deeply felt knowledge that we are not alone.

Further confirmation of this came during my hours of wandering YouTube and Netflix, when I came across the Netflix series Street Food: Latin America. Months ago, I had gotten hooked on the related Street Food: Asia not because I’m any sort of great cook, but because of the incredibly moving human stories each episode tells about food vendors (often women) who have found their small, gorgeous place in the world where their unique genius, long unrecognized or even actively suppressed, can flourish and be a source of individual and communal vitality.

The episode that wiped me out this week was set in Salvador, Brazil. I don’t want to spoil any of it for you, but I’ll just say that it was such a finely textured portrait of foodways as a source of identity, spirituality, joy, and resistance in the face of aggressive dehumanization that I immediately began to share it with friends and think of ways that I might use it in class. I wept, I cheered, and for a little while I forgot about the struggle. ❤