Mix in being a product of a solid marriage filled with respect and loyalty.

Sprinkle some disenchanting early school years interactions that shaped a lot of thoughts on silent bullying, exclusion and friendships.

Counter that with warm middle and high school encounters that make up a chunk of my core memories.

Selfhood, relationships, and people who just come in passing but shape everything you look for, for the rest of your life.

Rocket speed through that period and crash into university where now looking back, who even was that?

Moulding, mistakes, mending and becoming. Really just becoming. And wanting to do it all over but then realising it happens this way for a reason.

A crash course for the twenties which really strip you of any idea you’ve formed of who you think you are.

Cementing skepticism and critical thinking as key ingredients for this evolving recipe.

A hint of sarcasm and traces of self doubt but nothing an allergy would need to worry about.

Kickstarting what you think is a career path, only to realise you stumbled into it by chance and one day simply dragged into another until it had been years.

Reconnecting. A lot of reconnecting at a time when connecting seems hard. Because there’s no campus. And there’s no big parties. More small circles. And noticing things. More importantly, noticing people. In a different light.

Is that you? Why didn’t we ever talk like this before? And pause there for a while. Have it change everything you thought you knew about yourself and what you love.

A dash of regrets. Okay, more than a dash.

Collective instability. Uprooting. Generational trauma dressed up as resilience most of the time.

Connecting to land beyond geography. Learning identity beyond passports, borders and politics.

And slowly, silently, losing respect in conversations with both the close and the strange who cannot extend the bare minimum of dignity to the notion of identity itself.

Sociology. 

Making peace with loss and endings. Accepting that some people will only ever live inside of you now. That there is no version of this life they will witness with their own eyes. Yet carrying them quietly into every prayer. Nodding silently to them through disappointments and achievements.

Songs, playlists. Music. Art. Books. Lots of books.

Mumford & Sons.
Neverending White Lights.
The Lumineers.
Hozier.

Midnight Library.
A Little Life.
It’s Kind of a Funny Story.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Women Who Run With Wolves.
Animal Farm.
Metamorphosis.
Farewell Waltz.
A Short History of Progress.
Far From the Madding Crowd.

And much more. But notably a pinch of each for a lot of flavour. Enough to create this specific flavour.

2016. 2019. 2022. 2024.

Brewing fearlessness and simmering discernment for the side dishes.

Appreciating kindness and making it the default in the face of anything.

Unapologetic protection of energy. Understanding energy. Tuning into it. Fostering it.

Faith that started like a candlelight and is now an unstoppable burning fire.

Add in the full understanding that stability and consistency are the highest form of love. Passion is a condiment. Good to keep there without making it the main source of nutrition.

Looking my man in the eyes and wondering if I dreamt this all up. The life, the love, and the companionship. Our magical children.

And womanhood.

The woman inside. Rising to the surface some days more easily than others. Beyond being a mother or a wife or a friend or anything at all.

Just the quiet understanding of what it means to be born into a body constantly addressed, if not judged. A mind constantly challenged, if not dismissed.

Realising that sometimes simply being a woman is an argument in itself.

Motherhood.

Responsibility. Unconditional love. A journey of its own. A noble yet underestimated part of a woman.

An ingredient that fits no other part of the dish easily. One that arrives and reshapes every other ingredient around it. The child inside, the woman inside, the partner, the lover, the friend.

A seal over every version that ever existed, and every version still to come.

The recipe of thirty three.