Author: Stephanie Bosch

Mexican, Spanish

Farm to Table, by Way of Mexico

Featuredby Stephanie BoschLeave a Comment on Farm to Table, by Way of Mexico
Farm to Table, by Way of Mexico

Farm to Table, by Way of Mexico

There is a chef in St. Louis named Gerard Craft.

If you’ve eaten in this city with any degree of seriousness over the last twenty years, chances are you’ve eaten his food—or eaten food influenced by him.

I have.

I’ve been eating at Craft’s restaurants since Niche, the little Benton Park restaurant he opened in 2005 when he was only 25. I followed his cooking through its many incarnations—Taste, Brasserie, Pastaria, Porano, Sardella, Cinder House, Bowood and beyond. I watched restaurants open, close, transform and sometimes disappear altogether.

And in the process, I watched a young chef become one of the people who fundamentally changed the way St. Louis thought about food.

Through all of it, there is one thing I have always loved about Gerard Craft’s cooking:

He lets food taste like food.

That sounds ridiculously simple.

It isn’t.

There can be tremendous technique behind one of his plates—fermentation, preservation, handmade pasta, live fire, impeccable sourcing and a dozen decisions made before an ingredient ever reaches the diner.

But the technique isn’t the point.

The ingredient is.

A tomato gets to taste like a tomato. A vegetable doesn’t require twelve components and a pair of tweezers to justify its existence on a plate. Craft can do extraordinarily complicated things with food. What I’ve always admired is that he doesn’t seem compelled to prove it with every bite.

The chef does the work.

Then he gets out of the food’s way.

Craft won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Midwest in 2015 for Niche, becoming the first Missouri chef to receive the honor. And then, remarkably, he closed the restaurant that had made his name.

Not because Niche had failed.

Because it hadn’t.

After nearly eleven years, Craft closed Niche while it was still successful and critically acclaimed. There is something I have always respected about that decision. Sometimes evolution means having enough confidence to stop doing something extraordinarily well and ask yourself what comes next.

Then came COVID.

Restaurants changed. Chefs changed.

We changed.

Craft’s restaurants were hit along with the rest of an industry suddenly facing circumstances none of us had ever experienced. Restaurants closed temporarily, concepts changed, and the definition of what it meant to feed people had to be reconsidered almost overnight.

And still, as St. Louis dining emerged into something different, I kept eating at Craft’s restaurants.

Because underneath all those incarnations, I kept finding the same philosophy that had drawn me to his cooking in the first place:

Start with something good. Respect it. Understand exactly what you’re doing to it.

And don’t screw with it just to prove that you can.

Which brings me to El Molino del Sureste.

Oh. My. God.

Chef Alex Henry Montes De Oca was born in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula and spent part of his childhood there. His path as a chef eventually brought him through Gerard Craft’s kitchens before he developed a culinary language entirely his own. In 2026, Henry was named a James Beard Award semifinalist for Best Chef: Midwest.

I knew about the acclaim when we went to dinner.

What I hadn’t put together was the Gerard Craft connection.

But something about the food felt familiar almost immediately.

Not the flavors.

Not the cuisine.

Not the plating.

The philosophy.

We sat at the bar at El Molino, which looks directly into the kitchen. For a chef like me, there may be no better seat in a restaurant.

Watching another chef work at their craft is like being handed a backstage pass at a concert. You get to see the rhythm, the timing, the concentration, the economy of movement. You watch the hundred tiny decisions that disappear by the time the finished plate reaches the dining room.

And then I saw what Alex Henry was working with.

A 36-inch flat-top griddle and a two-burner induction cooktop.

That’s essentially the stage.

I sat just a few feet away and watched extraordinary food come out of a workspace simpler than some home kitchens.

No enormous exhibition kitchen. No culinary theater. No flames shooting toward the ceiling for Instagram.

Just a chef, heat, ingredients and an extraordinary amount of intention.

Alex himself was kind, appreciative and almost shy when I complimented his food. There was no swagger coming from behind that bar. No sense that we were supposed to be impressed by how difficult any of it was.

The confidence was on the plate.

And nowhere was that clearer to me than in the Pescado al Papadzul.

The pescado of the day was red snapper, served with pipián de papadzul, a rich, earthy sauce made from ground pumpkin seeds; salsa frita, a deeply flavored cooked tomato and chile sauce; pescarrones, crispy fish similar in spirit to chicharrón; briny trout roe; and fresh herbs. My husband paired it with a Spanish Albariño, whose bright acidity, citrus and minerality cut beautifully through the richness of the fish and pumpkin-seed sauce.

What fascinated me was the thought given not simply to flavor, but to texture.

The trout roe provided those tiny bursts of briny salinity. The pescarrones did something completely different: they brought a crisp, savory bite against the tender snapper and silky sauces.

It would have been easy for all those flavors to simply blend into one another. Instead, Henry gave your palate something to move through: tender fish, creamy pipián, bursting roe, crisp pescarrones, fresh herbs.

Every component had a job.

That is the kind of detail that tells me how a chef thinks.

The crunch wasn’t there because the plate needed another garnish. The roe wasn’t there because roe looks impressive on a menu. One provided texture. The other provided salinity. The sauces brought richness, earthiness, acidity and depth. The herbs brought freshness.

Every element contributed something specific to the bite.

And that is a very different thing from making food fussy.

In fact, I think it’s the opposite.

Fussy food asks you to notice the chef. Intentional food asks you to notice the food.

El Molino itself begins with perhaps the most elemental ingredient imaginable:

Corn.

The restaurant’s namesake is an actual molino—a mill. Locally grown corn is nixtamalized and ground in-house into fresh masa for tortillas, tostadas, tamales, sopes and other preparations grounded in centuries of Mexican culinary tradition.

Think about that.

Missouri-grown corn. Ancient Mexican technique.

Farm to table, by way of Mexico.

And that, to me, is what makes Henry’s cooking so interesting.

This isn’t Mexican food transported wholesale to Missouri, nor is it Missouri food dressed up as Mexican.

It is a chef understanding both where he comes from and where he is.

There were beautiful sauces. Acid. Chiles. Herbs. Smoke. Fresh masa. Seafood. Vegetables that were still allowed to taste like vegetables.

There was plenty happening on those plates.

It simply never felt fussy.

Restraint should never be confused with simplicity. In fact, restraint may require considerably more confidence.

You have to understand technique thoroughly enough that you no longer need to demonstrate it. You have to trust an ingredient enough to let it remain recognizable. And you have to know exactly when you’ve done enough.

A locally grown ear of corn doesn’t have to become unrecognizable to become extraordinary.

A beautiful piece of snapper doesn’t need to disappear beneath the chef’s ego.

Sometimes the most sophisticated thing a chef can do is know when to leave the damn thing alone.

And then I learned that Alex Henry had worked under Gerard Craft.

I laughed.

Of course he did.

Because I hadn’t recognized Gerard Craft’s food in Alex Henry’s cooking.

I had recognized something far more interesting.

I recognized the lesson.

Do the work.

Know your ingredients.

Master your technique.

Respect where the food came from.

Think about what every element contributes to the bite.

And then have enough confidence to get the hell out of its way.

That may be one of the most beautiful things about mentorship in a kitchen.

A great chef doesn’t teach the next generation to reproduce his food.

He teaches them how to see food.

Eventually, the student decides what he wants to say with it.

Alex Henry clearly has.

Make no mistake: this food is his. It comes from his family, his memories, the Yucatán, the ingredients available to him in Missouri and the culinary voice he has developed for himself.

But sitting at that bar, watching him create it all on thirty-six inches of griddle and two burners, I could see the lineage.

Not imitation.

Inheritance.

Gerard Craft found his language in Missouri.

Alex Henry is speaking Yucatán with a Missouri accent.

And perhaps the highest compliment I can give him is this:

With all the thought, technique and painstaking detail that went into that dinner, I never once felt as though Alex Henry was trying to show me how talented he is.

He was too busy showing me what the food could do.

And holy shit.

It did.

Mental Health, Psychology, Relationships

Compassion Learns Where the Fence Goes

Featuredby Stephanie BoschLeave a Comment on Compassion Learns Where the Fence Goes
Compassion Learns Where the Fence Goes

Last week,  I was let go from my job.

I was numb.

And then I cried for four or five hours.

Not necessarily because I wasn’t going to be the Catering Manager anymore. Not because I couldn’t imagine my life without the job. The truth is, I had written my resignation letter on June 6 and held onto it for nearly three months.

I think I cried because what happened didn’t align with what I was told had happened.

And that mattered to me.

It still does.

I am deeply attuned to timing—to endings and beginnings, to the strange ways life tells us when something has run its course. I’ve learned to pay attention when something inside me starts whispering that a season is changing.

Sometimes I listen.

Sometimes, apparently, I need a little assistance.

Maybe that’s part of what happened here.

I knew in June that something wasn’t right. I knew it strongly enough to sit down and write a resignation letter.

But I didn’t send it.

I stayed.

I stayed because the problem was never Gateway.

The problem was Goddess.

I loved Gateway. I loved the work, the people, the pace, the production, the insanity of it. I loved walking into a building where three studios might be operating simultaneously and nearly 900 plates could move through the dining room in a day. I loved solving problems. I loved the relationships I built there. I loved discovering that I could walk into that kind of environment and not only survive it, but lead inside it.

So I ignored the letter sitting there.

Maybe that’s another thing I’ve learned.

Sometimes you know when it’s time to leave long before you’re willing to go.

You feel it. You write the letter. You put the truth on paper.

And then you stay.

You stay because there are still people you love. Because there are things you’re learning. Because there are pieces of the experience you’re not ready to surrender. You stay because you keep hoping something will change. Because maybe if you try harder, communicate better, give a little more, forgive one more thing, it will finally become what you keep believing it could be.

But there comes a point when staying in something that continually hurts you begins to hurt you more than leaving ever could.

And I believe life has a way of dealing with that.

Call it the universe. Call it God. Call it circumstance. Call it whatever you want.

I believe there are times when we know we’re supposed to leave something and refuse to do it ourselves, so eventually the decision gets made for us.

And sometimes it isn’t gentle.

Sometimes the door doesn’t quietly open and invite you to walk through it.

Sometimes it slams behind you.

Sometimes the ending is painful and humiliating and final precisely because you kept finding reasons to stay through every quieter opportunity you had to leave.

Maybe that’s what happened to me.

I had already written the resignation letter.

I already knew.

And I stayed anyway.

Maybe the universe didn’t take something away from me.

Maybe it finally removed me from something I couldn’t bring myself to leave.

That doesn’t make the way it happened hurt less.

But it changes what I think the pain means.

Maybe I wasn’t wrong to stay as long as I did. Had I left on June 6, I would have missed people and experiences I wouldn’t trade now simply because I dislike the way the story eventually ended.

Maybe I needed to stay long enough to get what I came there to learn.

But maybe I also needed to learn that once the lesson is over, staying doesn’t earn you extra credit.

Sometimes it just makes the exit harder.

And when I wouldn’t close the door myself, it closed for me.

Not gracefully.

Certainly not the way I would have chosen.

But completely.

And maybe that’s the lesson underneath all the others:

When something continually breaks you, leaving isn’t failure. Sometimes leaving is the boundary you should have drawn long before the universe drew it for you.

So after four or five hours of crying, I eventually found myself asking a different question.

Not Why did this happen to me?

But:

What was I supposed to learn from it?

And maybe the lesson wasn’t simply that shit rolls downhill.

Maybe Gateway was never just about Gateway.

There are places we enter believing we’re there to do a job, and only later realize we were there to learn something about ourselves.

Gateway became a classroom in competence, leadership, power, loyalty, communication, boundaries—and ultimately, letting go.

I learned the work there.

Not theoretically.

I learned it by doing it.

I learned how to walk into chaos and start organizing it. I learned how to make decisions when there wasn’t time to deliberate endlessly. I learned how to solve problems before anyone had time to ask whether they could be solved. I learned how to take care of people while still getting the job done.

And perhaps most importantly, I learned that I was good at it.

Sometimes, if you’re extraordinarily fortunate, the work also puts a teacher in your path.

That summer, mine was Colette VanLoon.

Colette doesn’t work for Goddess.

She works for Paul McCartney.

She has spent four decades in the entertainment industry and has been Paul’s backstage coordinator for eighteen years. In my world, that’s about as close to rock ‘n’ roll royalty as it gets.

She hadn’t planned on spending her summer at Gateway. She came in to help Goddess because her sister, Kim, works there.

And somehow, through that strange intersection of timing and circumstance, I got six weeks working beside her.

Six weeks of mentorship from someone with forty years of experience doing this work at the highest level.

You cannot learn that from a book.

You cannot read your way into forty years of knowing what happens backstage when the stakes are high. There is no textbook for the instinct that comes from decades of walking into rooms, reading them correctly and knowing what needs to happen next.

I got to watch it.

I got to ask questions.

I got to learn from it.

And Colette gave me something beyond the mechanics of the work.

She had the benefit of coming into the environment with decades of experience behind her and seeing it through a lens I simply didn’t have yet. Her perspective gave context to things I had already been noticing and feeling for myself.

She didn’t create my concerns.

Remember, the resignation letter was already sitting there.

But sometimes the most important thing a mentor gives you isn’t an answer.

It’s a lens.

Colette helped me trust what I was already seeing.

The illusion was no more.

There is something almost poetic about the fact that one of the greatest gifts Goddess gave me was bringing Colette VanLoon into my life.

For six weeks, I got an education I could never have bought.

And I’ll carry that one with me.

I also learned something about the kind of leader I never want to become.

I experienced a style of management that, from my perspective, relied heavily on fear and intimidation.

The problem with intimidation is that it only works when the person on the receiving end is willing to be intimidated.

I am not intimidated.

I’m not easily frightened by titles, authority, raised voices, posturing or someone else’s need to establish dominance. Unless you’re a serial killer holding me captive in your house of horrors, I’m probably not going to be afraid of you.

But underneath the joke is something I believe deeply:

Intimidation is not leadership.

There is a difference between having authority and needing someone else to feel small in order to prove you have it. There is a difference between commanding respect and demanding submission.

Fear can produce compliance.

Intimidation can produce silence.

Neither one produces trust.

And this summer taught me something else about what happens when you begin using your voice.

You can express yourself calmly. You can take accountability for your own part. You can say, Here’s what I could have done differently, and here’s what I need to be different going forward.

People respond to that in very different ways.

Some people hear you.

They may not agree with everything you say, but they recognize that you’re speaking in good faith. Sometimes they even appreciate it. They adjust their behavior. The relationship gets better because honesty has created room for mutual respect.

And then there are people who double down.

Your calmness doesn’t calm them. Your accountability isn’t met with accountability of their own. Your boundary isn’t received as information about how to work with you.

It’s experienced as a challenge.

That taught me something important:

You can communicate a boundary respectfully. You cannot control whether someone receives it respectfully.

And another person’s reaction to your boundary doesn’t automatically mean the boundary was wrong.

Sometimes healthy communication improves a relationship.

Sometimes it reveals one.

There was another lesson in all of this about loyalty.

I originally hired a staff of fifteen.

By the end, I was the last one standing.

I don’t say that as some declaration of martyrdom. Hospitality has turnover. People leave. Circumstances change. Seasons are hard.

But one particular experience stayed with me.

An employee walked out in the middle of a shift. Her departure left six uncovered shifts behind, and the responsibility for figuring out how to staff them landed with me.

And we did it.

My staff rallied in a way I will never forget.

People canceled doctor’s appointments. They came in on scheduled days off. They rearranged their lives. Some worked sixteen-hour days. I covered shifts myself.

Together, we filled every hole and kept things moving.

I was incredibly proud of them.

Later, the employee who had walked out was rehired because she was needed to work dressing rooms.

There was no conversation with the people who had absorbed the consequences of her leaving. There was no acknowledgment of what they had sacrificed to keep things running.

Not even a simple thank you.

Two of my employees quit after she was brought back.

That stayed with me.

Not because I believe every management decision requires consensus. It doesn’t. Leadership sometimes means making decisions people won’t like.

But leadership also means understanding that decisions communicate something.

My staff didn’t need a parade.

They needed to know that what they had done mattered.

They needed to be seen.

Never ask people for extraordinary loyalty and then treat that loyalty as ordinary.

People remember whether you noticed.

They remember whether you thanked them.

They remember whether you stood up for them after they stood up for you.

If my people show up for me, I will show up for them.

If they carry something heavy, I will notice.

If they give more than the job requires, I will never behave as though I was simply entitled to it.

And when they save my ass?

I’ll say thank you.

Every single fucking time.

And somewhere in all of that, I had to acknowledge something about my own loyalty, too.

I gave a lot to this job.

I missed vacation. I came in on my days off. I showed up with thirty minutes’ notice when I was needed. I was often the last person there at the end of the day.

I stayed when staying cost me something.

And I don’t believe any of that entitled me to special treatment. I understood the job I had accepted. I understood that leadership sometimes means being the person who shows up when nobody else can.

But there is a difference between expecting someone to do their job and treating their willingness to continually go beyond it as though it costs them nothing.

Sometimes all I needed was:

Thanks for coming in. I know this was your day off.

Or:

Thanks for staying. I know you had somewhere else to be.

Hell, once it could have been:

I know you had tickets to see Brandi Carlile at Madison Square Garden. I know what you gave up to be here. Thank you.

That’s it.

Not a bonus. Not an award. Not a parade.

Just recognition that there was a human being on the other side of the job description.

Because people will do extraordinary things for work they care about and people they care about.

But extraordinary effort should never become so expected that nobody remembers to say thank you.

That experience changed the way I think about leadership, too.

Never become so accustomed to someone’s dedication that you stop recognizing it as a choice.

Because God, did I learn something about carrying things this summer.

Responsibility. Expectations. Other people’s problems. The needs of my staff. The demands of production. The things that needed to happen because somebody had to make them happen.

There is pride in knowing you can carry a tremendous amount.

There is wisdom in knowing when to put it down.

Being capable of carrying something does not mean it was ever yours to carry.

And maybe this is where the lesson reaches beyond work.

I’m tired of giving and giving and giving and getting almost nothing back.

I’m tired of being the person who stays longer, tries harder, forgives more, carries more and keeps believing that if I just show up one more time, give one more chance or prove myself one more way, eventually someone will understand what I’m worth.

I’m tired of people recognizing my value only after I’m gone.

And maybe most of all, I’m tired of staying in places I already know are toxic because some part of me still believes I can love them into becoming something different.

Or that if I work hard enough, give enough or become indispensable enough, I can somehow earn the treatment I should never have had to earn in the first place.

That’s a hard thing to admit.

Because there is something noble about loyalty.

There is something beautiful about perseverance.

There is something admirable about being the person who doesn’t give up easily.

Until there isn’t.

Sometimes staying isn’t loyalty.

Sometimes it’s abandoning yourself in order to prove your worth to people who have already demonstrated that they don’t know what to do with it.

And I don’t want to do that anymore.

I don’t want to keep auditioning for a place in rooms where I’ve already proven I belong.

I don’t want my absence to be the thing that finally makes someone understand what my presence was worth.

I don’t want to keep pouring myself into people, relationships, jobs or situations that require me to become depleted before I finally give myself permission to leave.

Maybe that’s the fence.

Not a wall around my heart.

Not becoming cynical. Not withholding love. Not keeping score every time I do something for another human being.

Just finally understanding that reciprocity matters.

That being generous doesn’t require being endlessly available.

That compassion doesn’t require self-abandonment.

That loyalty doesn’t mean staying indefinitely.

And that knowing my worth means I have to stop repeatedly placing it in the hands of people who require me to prove it.

I don’t need to give less.

I need to become more discerning about where I give.

Because I don’t want to become someone who loves less deeply because I’ve been hurt.

I want to become someone who finally understands that loving deeply includes me, too.

This was also the first time in my life I’ve ever been let go from a position.

That was new.

But if I’m being truthful, I wasn’t entirely surprised.

For some time, I had felt the temperature changing.

I felt increasing pressure after I began pushing back—after I started questioning decisions, challenging things I believed needed to be challenged, and speaking up when I found myself dealing with the consequences of decisions I hadn’t made.

There were times when I felt I was cleaning up messes I hadn’t created.

Eventually, I stopped doing that quietly.

I pushed back.

I asked questions.

I challenged authority when I believed authority needed to be challenged.

And I understood that doing so might have consequences.

What I wasn’t prepared for was what happened when I was let go.

I have always understood that people make decisions I may not agree with. Businesses make decisions. Managers make decisions. Sometimes those decisions mean you lose your job. I can accept that.

What I had a much harder time accepting was being given an explanation that I did not believe was true.

Maybe that sounds naïve, but I genuinely never believed someone would look me in the eye at one of the most vulnerable moments of my life and tell me something untrue simply because saying it made the situation easier for them—or because it would make the ending hurt more for me.

And it did hurt.

Not because I believed what was said.

Because I couldn’t understand why it needed to be said at all.

Being fired was enough.

There was no reason to make me question my value on the way out the door.

There is a difference between being difficult and being unwilling to make someone else’s difficulty invisible.

I don’t know what role my willingness to push back ultimately played in the decision to let me go.

But I do know this:

I can live with losing a job because I spoke up.

I would have had a much harder time living with myself if I had learned to stay quiet.

That’s one reason an inquiry is underway, and I’m willing to let the facts establish what happened rather than pretend I know every conversation that occurred behind closed doors.

But I know my own experience.

I know when I began feeling the pressure.

I know when the dynamic changed.

And I would rather live with the consequences of having spoken up than keep a position by becoming someone who doesn’t.

I can learn diplomacy.

I can learn when to choose my battles.

I can even learn that sometimes being right isn’t the same thing as being effective.

But I will never learn to confuse silence with professionalism.

There is still an inquiry underway into what happened at the end, and I intend to see it through.

Not because I want my job back.

I don’t.

What I was subsequently told had happened does not align with what I experienced.

There is a discrepancy there, and I intend to understand it.

If the record is wrong, I intend to correct it.

Because this isn’t about winning.

It’s about integrity.

Mine.

There are things I can walk away from.

A job is one of them.

A title.

A paycheck.

An organization.

Even a place I genuinely loved working.

But my integrity, my work ethic and my heart are different.

Those are mine.

And if you call those things into question, I will fight you to the end of the fucking earth for them.

This isn’t a fight to get something back.

It’s a fight to set the record straight.

Sometimes boundaries aren’t about walking away quietly.

Sometimes integrity requires you to stand exactly where you are and say:

No. That is not an accurate account of what happened, and I will not allow someone else’s version of events to become the unquestioned record simply because it came from higher up the organizational chart.

I can hold compassion for the people involved and still demand accountability.

Those things aren’t contradictions.

And there is one fence in particular I know now:

You may take my position. You do not get to take my character with it.

I’ve been through the fucking thing now.

I know where the sharp edges are.

That’s not bitterness.

That’s experience.

There is a kind of compassion that exists before you’ve been tested, and another kind that exists afterward.

The first believes that caring deeply will somehow be enough.

The second understands that caring deeply without boundaries can get you chewed alive.

Compassion learns where the fence goes.

Maybe that’s the real lesson.

You can learn competence, authority and leadership without surrendering your heart and compassion.

You can become stronger without becoming harder.

You can understand hierarchy without worshipping it.

You can recognize politics without becoming political.

You can learn how power works without allowing power to become the thing that defines you.

You can forgive without volunteering for the same lesson twice.

And you can love something while acknowledging that something within it wasn’t right.

I don’t want to leave this experience carrying resentment.

I’ve carried enough.

Something doesn’t have to end well for it to have been worth something.

I can be deeply disappointed by how something ended without rewriting everything that came before it.

Both things can be true.

I can wish the ending had been different.

And I can remain profoundly grateful that I was there.

Because I still love Gateway.

I love the people there, and I will miss some of them deeply.

I also know that some of those relationships won’t end simply because my employment did. There are people I expect to stay in contact with, friendships I hope to carry long after this summer becomes a story about something that happened once.

Because those people were there.

They saw me.

They watched me work.

They saw my dedication, my compassion and my leadership. They saw the long days, the problems solved and the people cared for. They saw who I was when things were going beautifully and, perhaps more importantly, who I was when they weren’t.

So I’m not worried about what the people who actually worked beside me know about my character.

I know what I brought into that building.

And I know there are people inside it who know, too.

That’s one of the reasons I refuse to let the way this ended rewrite the summer that came before it.

I can be angry about the ending and still love the place.

I can challenge what happened and still be grateful for what happened there.

I can leave without pretending I never belonged.

A job can end without every relationship inside it ending with it.

And some of the people I met at Gateway are people I very much hope to carry with me.

I’ve done a lot of things in my life.

I’ve had the extraordinary privilege of being able to do almost everything I’ve ever really wanted to do, and I don’t take that for granted. I’ve reinvented myself more than once. I’ve walked into rooms where I didn’t know exactly what I was doing and figured it out.

And I leave this summer feeling as though I somehow accumulated ten years of experience in a single season.

Some of it was exhilarating.

Some of it was exhausting.

Some of it was beautiful.

Some of it hurt like hell.

I’ll take all of it.

I’ll take the lesson and move on.

I was offered a position as a tour caterer this fall.

It was an incredible opportunity, and I was genuinely honored to be asked.

But even as the offer was being made, somewhere in the back of my mind I already knew I wasn’t going to take it.

Touring would mean being gone for a month at a time, sometimes longer.

And I knew I couldn’t do that.

My children still need me.

Maybe they don’t need me in all the ways they did when they were little. That’s the strange evolution of motherhood. The job changes constantly, but it doesn’t simply disappear because your children get older.

At the end of the day, before the career, before the adventure, before the money and before whatever impressive thing I might be able to put on a résumé:

I take care of my people.

That’s who I am.

I spent twenty years as a stay-at-home mother.

I wouldn’t trade those years.

But now I want something that belongs to me, too.

My independence and autonomy are deeply important to me.

I want my own work.

My own money.

My own path.

My own name on something I built.

I don’t have to choose between being a mother and being ambitious.

I have to decide what kind of ambition fits the life I actually want.

And then my daughter reminded me what that life looks like.

When I told Avery what had happened at Gateway, her response caught me completely off guard.

“Oh, thank God.”

I laughed.

But I don’t think I fully understood until that moment how much my being gone had affected her.

I had spent the summer measuring the cost in sixteen-hour days, exhaustion, staffing problems and everything else that comes with trying to keep a complicated operation moving.

I hadn’t stopped to consider that someone else had been keeping track of those hours, too.

My daughter.

That night, Avery curled up next to me on the couch.

She gave me back rubs.

We snuggled together and watched a movie.

Nothing remarkable happened.

A

And somehow, after the summer I’d just had, it felt remarkable.

There were no radios going off.

No staffing problems to solve.

Nobody needed me in another studio.

Nobody was asking me to carry one more thing.

My daughter just wanted her mom.

And her mom was home.

I couldn’t have asked for a better Band-Aid.

But there was something else in that moment, too.

I want to be the kind of mother—and the kind of woman—who can look her daughter in the eyes and know that I lived in a way I would be proud to see her live someday.

I want her to know that being honorable still matters.

That honesty matters.

That integrity matters.

That sometimes doing what you believe is right will cost you something.

And that the cost doesn’t make it wrong.

If my daughter ever finds herself in a room where staying quiet would be easier, I want her to have seen a woman who was willing to speak.

If she ever has to choose between protecting her position and protecting her integrity, I hope she remembers which one her mother chose.

There will be other opportunities.

Other kitchens.

Other projects.

Other doors I haven’t even imagined yet.

But there will never be another season of my children’s lives exactly like this one.

My career can wait for another opportunity. Their lives won’t wait for me to come home.

And perhaps there is another reason I’m supposed to be home this fall.

I finished my novel just before I started working at Gateway.

Then Gateway happened.

For the next several months, the book waited.

Now I think it deserves what I couldn’t give it this summer.

My time.

My editor loves it.

She believes it could do well.

I guess we’re going to find out.

Because of all the things I’ve been fortunate enough to do in my life, at the end of the day, I think my heart has always belonged to writing.

Because writing has always been more than something I love to do.

It’s how I understand things.

When something happens that I can’t quite make sense of, I write my way through it. I put the pieces on the page and move them around until I can see the shape of what happened—and, more importantly, what it meant to me.

Writing gives me distance without requiring me to disconnect.

It lets me feel something completely and still step far enough outside of it to ask better questions.

In fact, that’s what I’ve been doing here.

Last week, I cried for hours.

Today, I wrote.

And somewhere between the first sentence and this one, the story changed.

I didn’t get my job back.

I didn’t get all the answers.

Nothing about yesterday became untrue.

I just gained perspective.

Maybe that’s what writing has always done for me.

It doesn’t change what happened.

It changes the distance from which I can see it.

And sometimes that’s enough to finally understand where the fence goes.

So this fall, I’m going to write.

I’m going to send the queries.

I’ll take the rejections if they come.

And I’ll keep sending them anyway.

I’ll give this book its chance.

And I’ll give myself mine.

Gateway taught me that I can do hard things.

Goddess taught me that being capable of carrying something doesn’t mean it was ever mine to carry.

Colette taught me to pay attention.

My staff taught me what loyalty looks like.

My children reminded me where home is.

And somewhere in all of it, I learned what kind of leader I want to be—and what kind I never want to become.

Tell the truth.

Put down the weight.

Rest.

Take the lesson with you.

I’ve been through the fucking thing now.

I know where the sharp edges are.

I know what isn’t mine to carry.

I know where the fence goes.

For twenty years, I gave my time to raising the people I love most.

Now I’m ready for some time that belongs to me, too.

Not instead of them.

Alongside them.

And I know exactly what I want to do with it.

I want to write.

Mindfulness, Sacred Appetite

There Are No Accidents

Featuredby Stephanie Bosch1 Comment on There Are No Accidents
There Are No Accidents

For the last several days, something has been bothering me.

Food.

More specifically, the amount of perfectly good food I have had to throw away at the end of the night.

Working in catering, there is inevitably waste. You plan for people who don’t show up. You prepare enough because running out isn’t an option. And at the end of service, sometimes you find yourself standing over trays of beautiful food knowing exactly where they’re headed.

The trash.

We’ve worked with charities at Gateway before, and we’ve made efforts to donate what we can, but it has always been hit or miss. Inconsistent. And lately, throwing away good food has started to genuinely wear on me.

Because I know better.

I know there are people not very far from the building where I work who are hungry.

Maybe this bothers me so deeply because somewhere in me, I remember what an empty refrigerator looks like.

When I was a little girl, my parents divorced, and for a while things were hard. I remember opening our refrigerator one day and seeing almost nothing inside. There were condiments—ketchup, mustard—and I think some butter. That was it.

For about six months, my mother had to accept federal assistance to help us get through that time.

I was five years old, and I loved milk. I remember being so excited when I learned that a social worker was going to bring us some. In my five-year-old mind, I knew exactly what milk looked like and exactly what I was waiting for.

Then she arrived with milk in a box.

And I cried.

It’s such a small memory, but I have carried it all these years. A child doesn’t understand federal assistance or divorce or why a refrigerator that once had food in it suddenly doesn’t. A child only understands that she wants milk and that somehow even the milk doesn’t look the way it’s supposed to anymore.

Sometimes I wonder if that’s part of why I became a chef.

Maybe somewhere inside me, I have always needed to feed people. And when I say feed, I mean something much larger than putting food on a plate.

To feed someone is to nourish them.

To provide for them.

To care for them.

There is something inside me that is cared for, too, when I know someone else has been taken care of. Knowing that someone is fed, that for at least this moment they have enough, satisfies some deep need in me that I don’t think I fully understood until now.

Maybe that’s why it is so difficult for me to throw good food away. Maybe it’s why helping people who don’t have enough has never felt abstract to me. I know what it is to be a child who opens a refrigerator and doesn’t find food there.

And I was given an extraordinary gift in the middle of all of that: my grandmother taught me how to cook.

She gave me more than recipes. She taught me what you can do with food. You can take what you have and make something from it. You can put a plate in front of someone and, without saying a word, tell them: I see you. You matter. I want you to be nourished.

Perhaps becoming a chef was never only about loving food.

Perhaps it was always, in some small way, about making sure the refrigerator wasn’t empty.

And tonight, the universe did something interesting.

One of our runners came up to me.

“Are you the catering manager?”

I told him I was.

He hesitated.

Then he asked if I would ever be interested in donating our leftover food.

He works with an organization called All Hands On Deck: STL, an all-volunteer nonprofit whose philosophy can be summed up in one word:

S.H.A.R.E.

Share Health And Resources Equitably.

They rescue food that might otherwise be discarded and redistribute it through free grocery shares and pop-ups throughout St. Louis, particularly in communities where access to nutritious food and other resources can be difficult. Their work extends beyond food, too—connecting people with resources, supporting community health and working toward stronger, more sustainable neighborhoods.

As he was telling me all of this, I could hardly believe the timing.

“Yes,” I said.

Absolutely yes.

And suddenly the food I had been worrying about throwing away wasn’t going into the trash.

It was going to people.

The Question He Almost Didn’t Ask

He stayed late tonight to help me pack everything.

And he was grateful.

But so was I.

Maybe even more so.

Because somewhere along the way, while we were packing containers and standing around the kitchen after everyone else had gone, the conversation stopped being about food.

We started talking about spirituality.

About the natural world.

About what God actually is.

About what happens when human beings take something sacred and build institutions around it.

We talked about Robin Wall Kimmerer and Braiding Sweetgrass, a book we both dearly love—a book that, in many ways, is about reciprocity. About understanding that our relationship with the earth, and ultimately with one another, was never meant to be transactional.

We are supposed to receive.

And we are supposed to give back.

At some point, I asked him about his tattoo. Then I showed him mine—Om Mani Padme Hum, the mantra of compassion, rising out of a lotus. He showed me his in return: a lotus, too, but with the sword of knowledge rising from its center.

There was something quietly beautiful about that exchange, two lotuses carrying two different ideas that were not really so different at all—compassion and wisdom, the heart and the knowing.

He also had the Lakota words Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ—“all my relations”—an acknowledgment that the boundaries we draw between ourselves and the rest of the living world are not as absolute as we pretend: people, animals, plants, trees, earth.

All related.

All belonging to one another in some way.

And maybe that was why the conversation felt so familiar to me.

I had been telling him what I have come to believe—that while we are here, we are supposed to help. To ease suffering when we can. To stand beside those who cannot stand entirely on their own.

Christianity calls us to care for the least among us; Buddhism asks us to cultivate compassion for all sentient beings. And there we were, talking about these things while carrying pieces of the same philosophy permanently on our skin.

Different traditions, different symbols, different roads perhaps—but beneath them, the same quiet recognition: none of us is here alone.

At some point in the conversation, he said something so simple that I knew immediately I was going to borrow it:

“I get Jesus. I don’t get the church.”

Exactly.

There is something profound in separating the sacred from the structures we’ve constructed around it.

Maybe God is much bigger than religion.

Maybe God is generosity.

Maybe God is reciprocity.

Maybe God is the instinct that tells us food should feed someone instead of filling a dumpster.

Maybe God is the little voice that tells a man to ask a question he almost didn’t ask.

There Are No Accidents

Before he left, he invited me to join the Native Women’s Care Circle for a water blessing along the Mississippi River next Sunday.

I’m going.

Afterward, I learned that this wasn’t simply a small local gathering. The Native Women’s Care Circle is a grassroots, matriarchal, Indigenous-led prayer group devoted to the health and welfare of Native families and communities and to stewardship of the land and water.

The St. Louis circle is part of a much larger tradition of weekly prayer along the Mississippi inspired by the Nibi Water Walks.

Years ago, Ojibwe elder Sharon Day called upon people along the river—from its beginnings in Minnesota toward its journey south—to gather on Sunday mornings and continue praying for the healing of the water.

Here near St. Louis, Native women have been gathering along the Mississippi for years to do exactly that.

I asked Terry what time I should be there. He explained the timing to me as “Indian time.”

“Whatever time you get there, but around 9:00 AM.”

I loved that immediately.

He also began explaining what I will experience. You don’t simply walk down to the Mississippi and take water from it. You approach the water as something living and sacred. You ask permission to receive some of it.

A small amount is gathered into a vessel—traditionally, copper vessels are used in the Nibi water-walking tradition—and the water is held in prayer before ultimately being returned to the river.

There is something about that that already moves me deeply: you ask the water.

Not because the water belongs to us, but because we belong to a world made possible by it.

There is another Indigenous teaching Terry shared with me that I keep thinking about: water has memory. I don’t mean that as a scientific claim, but in the spiritual sense in which water is understood as more than an inert resource.

In Ojibwe teachings, nibi—water—is regarded as a sacred, living and moving being, something that carries stories and connection. In the Nibi Water Walk tradition, water gathered at the beginning of a journey is carried in a copper vessel and ultimately returned downstream, in part as a way of reminding the river of its original state.

I find that idea extraordinarily beautiful. The Mississippi flowing past St. Louis has already traveled through countless places and lives before it reaches us, carrying the story of the land with it.

And long after it passes us, it keeps going. If water carries memory, then standing beside the river in prayer feels less like speaking to an object and more like entering an ancient conversation already in progress.

We spend so much of our lives taking from the earth without asking anything. We turn on faucets. We divert rivers. We consume and discard. We behave as though nature is a collection of resources placed here for our convenience.

And here is a ceremony that begins with an entirely different premise.

Ask first.

Very Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Receive with gratitude.

Offer something back.

I’m so looking forward to standing beside the Mississippi next Sunday and participating in that prayer.

And as I drove home tonight, I kept thinking about how strangely these things happen.

For days, throwing away food had been bothering me.

Not intellectually.

It was bothering my heart.

I wanted another answer. I just didn’t know what that answer was yet.

And then someone walked into my dining room.

Someone I might otherwise have known only as one of the runners working in the building.

He asked me a question.

And he told me later that he almost didn’t.

That part stays with me.

Because how many moments in our lives hinge on something that small?

A question we almost didn’t ask.

A phone call we almost didn’t make.

A person we almost didn’t introduce ourselves to.

A door we almost didn’t walk through.

We tend to imagine that the important moments of our lives will announce themselves. That there will be some unmistakable sign telling us, Pay attention. This matters.

Usually there isn’t.

Usually it’s just someone standing in a dining room saying:

“Are you the catering manager?”

Tomorrow Morning

Tomorrow morning at 11:30, All Hands On Deck will hold a pop-up in the city.

And tonight, instead of throwing away perfectly good food, we packed it.

Tomorrow someone will pick it up.

Someone will bring it home.

Someone will eat it.

Maybe someone will feed their children with it.

Food that was headed for a dumpster will instead become nourishment.

And hopefully this isn’t a one-time donation.

We exchanged information. We talked about what we could do going forward. And for the first time since this started bothering me, I feel like there may finally be a relationship that allows us to consistently move surplus food out of our kitchen and into the hands of people who can use it.

That alone would have made tonight extraordinary.

But I think I received something else, too.

I met a kind soul.

I had one of those unexpected conversations that reminds me there are still people wandering around this world asking the same questions I am—about spirituality, purpose, nature, service and what we’re supposed to be doing with the short amount of time we’re given here.

Perhaps that’s why tonight doesn’t feel accidental.

I don’t know exactly what I believe about the invisible forces moving through this world. I’ve become increasingly comfortable admitting that I don’t need to know.

But I believe in paying attention.

I believe in synchronicity.

I believe there are moments when something we’ve been carrying quietly meets an answer coming toward us from a direction we never thought to look.

And I believe sometimes grace is much less dramatic than we’ve been taught to expect.

Sometimes grace doesn’t part the sea.

Sometimes it doesn’t arrive accompanied by thunder or revelation.

Sometimes grace is a man who almost doesn’t ask a question.

Sometimes it’s two people talking about God in an empty dining room.

Sometimes it’s an invitation to sit beside water.

And sometimes it’s simply taking something that would have been thrown away and putting it into the hands of someone who needs it.

Maybe there are accidents in the universe.

But tonight didn’t feel like one.

Mental Health, Psychology, Relationships

Sometimes Imitation Isn’t Flattery: Sometimes It’s Hunger

Featuredby Stephanie Bosch
Sometimes Imitation Isn’t Flattery: Sometimes It’s Hunger

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Brunch, Summer Recipes

Peaches, Pickles & Pistachios

Featuredby Stephanie Bosch
Peaches, Pickles & Pistachios

My Mediterranean summer began with a simple intention: to slow down and savor life through beauty, pleasure, and, of course, good food.

Summer, to me, means no alarm clocks—just warm sun, open water, and days allowed to unfold at their own pace.

It is the season of effortlessness: lingering mornings, sun-ripened food, and the freedom to be fully present.

Perhaps that is my version of la dolce vita—not extravagance, but the luxury of time and the pleasure of simply being.

The Italians call it la dolce vita—“the sweet life.” It’s the art of recognizing pleasure in the everyday: a long meal, a ripe tomato, an afternoon in the sun, or a table surrounded by good friends and good wine. It isn’t about extravagance. It’s about being fully present for the beauty already around you.

Federico Fellini’s 1960 film La Dolce Vita gave the phrase its enduring glamour through its dreamlike vision of postwar Rome. And then there was Anita Ekberg—impossibly chic, statuesque, and luminous in that black strapless gown, wading through the Trevi Fountain as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

Anita Ekberg via The Guardian

That is the essence I’m trying to capture: effortlessness. Beauty that isn’t forced or overly arranged, but simply a way of being. Ekberg didn’t appear to be performing glamour; she inhabited it. Sensual, unapologetic, and completely present in the pleasure of the moment.

That same philosophy follows me everywhere, especially when I travel. I love discovering restaurants that reflect a place so vividly—whether through tradition, creativity, or both. I’m always thinking about how I can carry those ideas home and reinterpret them in my own kitchen.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing recipes inspired by some of my favorite restaurant experiences, along with a Southwestern-inspired four-course dinner I’m hosting for a few neighbors. There’s plenty of deliciousness ahead.

For now, we’re staying in the Mediterranean—at the sun-kissed peak of summer.

This brunch began with a JUST Egg omelette filled with creamy vegan feta and fresh chives, then topped with tender sautéed asparagus, dill and basil flowers from my patio garden, and minced dill-pickle pistachios.

The contrast is everything. The crunch of those salty, briny pistachios against the tender asparagus and soft, creamy omelette is unreal. Finished with lemon juice and cracked black pepper, it’s bright, citrusy, herbaceous, and perfectly balanced.

Then there’s the toast.

Ripe heirloom tomatoes and homegrown peaches melt beautifully into one another—juicy, sweet, tart, and just acidic enough to keep things lively.

Fresh mint and edible basil flowers from my patio garden ties it all together, while vegan ricotta adds creaminess, texture, and a gentle neutrality against the crisp edges and tender center of lightly toasted artisan sourdough.

A drizzle of hot agave brings one final spark of warmth and sweetness.

The heirlooms were locally grown, though my garden tomato plant is doing absolute gangbusters. With any luck, the next version will come straight from my own backyard.

Nourishing, vibrant, beautiful, and deeply satisfying—this is summer, layered. Nothing fussy or overworked. Just sun-ripened ingredients allowed to be exactly what they are.

La dolce vita, brought home.

 

 

 

 

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Asparagus, Feta & Chive Omelette & Peach & Heirloom Tomato Ricotta Toast

  • Author: Stephanie Bosch
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Description

A celebration of summer at its sun-kissed peak—ripe peaches, heirloom tomatoes, fresh garden herbs, creamy vegan ricotta, and bright, briny crunch layered across a vibrant Mediterranean-inspired brunch. Sweet, savory, herbaceous, and deeply satisfying, it’s summer at its very best.

Ingredients

Scale

Asparagus, Feta & Chive Omelette

  • ½ cup JUST Egg
  • 2 tablespoons crumbled vegan feta
  • 1 tablespoon chopped fresh chives
  • 5–6 asparagus spears, trimmed and cut into bite-sized pieces
  • 1 teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon finely minced dill-pickle pistachios
  • 1 teaspoon chopped fresh dill
  • A few fresh basil flowers
  • Fresh lemon juice
  • Freshly cracked black pepper
  • Pinch of salt, if needed

Peach & Heirloom Tomato Ricotta Toast

  • 1 thick slice artisan sourdough
  • ¼ cup vegan ricotta
  • ½ ripe peach, thinly sliced
  • ½ small heirloom tomato, sliced
  • 4–5 fresh mint leaves, torn or thinly sliced

Quick Hot Agave

  • 2 tablespoons agave nectar
  • ⅛ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes, or more to taste
  • Tiny pinch of cayenne
  • Small squeeze of fresh lemon juice

Instructions

Asparagus, Feta & Chive Omelette

  1. Warm the olive oil in a nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add the asparagus and sauté until bright green and just tender.
  2. Finish with a squeeze of lemon and cracked black pepper, then transfer it to a plate.
  3. Reduce the heat to medium-low and pour the JUST Egg into the skillet.
  4. Sprinkle the vegan feta and chives over the top.
  5. Cook until nearly set, then gently fold the omelette.
  6. Transfer to a plate and top with the sautéed asparagus, fresh dill, basil flowers, and minced dill-pickle pistachios.
  7. Finish with another squeeze of lemon and plenty of cracked black pepper.
  8. Enjoy!

Peach & Heirloom Tomato Ricotta Toast

  1. Lightly toast the sourdough until the edges are crisp and the center remains tender.
  2. Spread with vegan ricotta, then layer the peach and heirloom tomato slices on top.
  3. Add fresh mint and a pinch of flaky sea salt.
  4. Finish with a drizzle of hot agave and cracked black pepper, if desired.

Quick Hot Agave

  1. Stir everything together and let sit for about 10 minutes so the heat can bloom.
  2. Drizzle over the finished toast just before serving.

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Aging, Psychology, Women's Health

From the Empress to The World

Featuredby Stephanie BoschLeave a Comment on From the Empress to The World
From the Empress to The World

August has always felt like a threshold, a proverbial Gateway.

This month marks nearly ten years since I became vegan.

Well…almost.

I made it exactly 9 years, 11 months, and 29 days longer than I ever thought I would.

When I first made that decision, I honestly wasn’t sure I’d last a week.

It became nearly a decade.

It shaped me in ways I never expected. It taught me compassion, intentionality, and that our everyday choices matter. It challenged me to live closer to my values and to consider the impact of even the smallest decisions.

That part hasn’t changed.

What has changed is me.

Age has a funny way of humbling us. Midlife has a way of reminding us that what worked for the body at thirty doesn’t always work at fifty-four.

Compassion

Age has a funny way of humbling us. Midlife has a way of reminding us that what worked for the body at thirty doesn’t always work at fifty-four.

Over the past year, my body began telling me it needed something different. Despite working out consistently, I wasn’t able to build or maintain muscle the way I once could. I began experiencing episodes of vertigo and other health concerns that led my physician and me to take a closer look at my nutrition.

After working closely with my nutritionist—and after more than one heartfelt conversation with a few good friends as I wrestled with the moral conflict of it all—I made the decision to add sustainably sourced seafood back into my diet.

If you know me, you know this wasn’t a casual decision.

It wasn’t a cheat day.

It wasn’t convenience.

It certainly wasn’t because I stopped caring.

If anything, I cared enough to sit with the discomfort, ask difficult questions, and make a decision that honored both my values and the reality of the body I live in.

Fish.

Shrimp.

That’s it.

No dairy.

No eggs.

No beef, pork, or poultry.

Tofu and tempeh aren’t going anywhere. Most days I’ll still eat exactly as I always have. My diet remains overwhelmingly plant-based.

For years, “vegan” wasn’t simply how I ate—it became part of who I was. And for much of that journey, I wouldn’t change a thing. It taught me compassion, intentionality, and that our everyday choices ripple far beyond ourselves.

But somewhere along the way, I realized I was becoming more committed to the identity than to the question that had created it in the first place.

The question was never, How do I become vegan?

The question was, How do I live with the least amount of harm while honoring both the world around me and the body I have been entrusted with?

Those aren’t always the same answer.

Living in a world that isn’t built around your values can sometimes make you feel isolated. For years, I experienced that whenever I traveled or shared meals with others. During our recent eleven-day trip through the Southwest, every menu seemed to offer fish or shrimp. Tofu? I found it once.

I realized I was spending more energy defending an identity than listening to my body.

My choices matter.

They matter because they shape the kind of world I want to help create.

I will still buy cruelty-free, PETA-approved products whenever possible.

I still won’t buy leather.

I still oppose factory farming, needless suffering, destructive fishing practices, the destruction of rainforests, and the kind of corporate greed that values profit over life.

Those convictions didn’t disappear because my doctor told me I needed more protein.

If anything, they’ve become more intentional.

But my choices also have to sustain the life I’m actually living.

Compassion that extends to every living thing except yourself isn’t compassion.

It’s self-neglect wearing virtuous clothing.

So I’m choosing something that feels surprisingly liberating.

Not abandoning my values.

Returning to them.

Lessons from the Canyon

One evening, standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon beneath a full moon, I couldn’t help but think about echoes.

If you speak into the canyon, your voice eventually returns to you.

Not because the canyon is speaking.

Because it is reflecting.

Life has begun to feel that way.

The love we offer.

The compassion we extend.

The judgments we make.

The forgiveness we withhold.

The prayers we whisper into the silence.

Somehow, they all find their way back.

Perhaps that’s one of the canyon’s greatest lessons.

We are always living inside an echo of the life we’re creating.

May my words become kinder.

May my choices become wiser.

May my heart remain open, but never at the expense of my own worth.

May I have the courage to release what no longer serves me, the humility to change when truth asks me to, and the compassion to remember that I, too, belong within the circle of my own care.

And if those prayers return to me someday, carried on the winds of time like an echo across the canyon…

May I recognize them as the life I was quietly building all along.

Discernment

And perhaps that’s the larger lesson.

This was never really about food.

It was about learning the difference between living by my values and living inside an identity.

It was about realizing that integrity isn’t rigidity. It isn’t clinging to a decision simply because it once defined you. Integrity is having the courage to let your values evolve as your understanding deepens.

That lesson has quietly found its way into every corner of my life.

Age has taught me that not all things that sparkle are gold. Some opportunities are expensive. Some relationships are costly. Some identities become cages. Wisdom is learning the difference.

I’m learning that growth isn’t just about what we add to our lives.

It’s also about what we’re willing to release.

I’m letting go of anything that asks me to compromise my self-worth.

Anything that causes me to question my value.

Anything that expects me to give endlessly while offering little in return.

I’m no longer interested in relationships, jobs, expectations, or even identities that leave me more drained than fulfilled.

The older I get, the more I realize that the healthiest choices—whether they’re about food, work, relationships, or the stories we tell ourselves—have something in common.

They nourish life.

Including my own.

For much of my life, I believed love meant endurance. That compassion meant sacrificing myself. That if I just gave a little more, understood a little more, or waited a little longer, things would eventually become reciprocal.

I don’t believe that anymore.

Real love—whether it’s a friendship, a career, a partnership, or even the relationship we have with ourselves—doesn’t require us to abandon ourselves to earn our place.

Growth Rarely Arrives Wrapped in Comfort

This month also marks my first anniversary with Goddess Rocks Catering and Gateway Studios.

What a year it has been.

I’ve been stretched, challenged, humbled, exhausted, inspired, and given opportunities I never imagined.

Like the old Timex commercials used to say, “It takes a licking and keeps on ticking.” Some years feel exactly like that.

They test you, wear you down, and ask more of you than you think you have to give. And somehow, when you look back, you realize you didn’t just endure them—you were shaped by them.

And then there is my son.

Many of you know he had planned to join the Navy.

We made the difficult decision to step away from that path—for now.

We’ve come to understand that anxiety isn’t always something to simply push through. Sometimes it is the body’s way of protecting us from a wound that has never fully healed.

When my son was thirteen, he expressed suicidal thoughts on social media.

Like any parent, I was terrified.

The response at the time was rooted in a “scared straight” approach. Police came to our home, hoping that fear would become a deterrent.

Instead, fear became the wound.

Looking back, I don’t believe anyone involved intended to cause harm. I believe they were trying to help with the understanding they had.

But trauma doesn’t measure intentions.

It measures experiences.

Years later, we can still trace much of his anxiety back to that day. His mind understands he’s safe. His nervous system isn’t convinced yet.

That’s why we’ve chosen a different path.

We’re choosing healing before achievement.

Not punishment.

Not fear.

Healing.

As I think about stories like Megan Meier’s, I’m reminded how easily we can underestimate what young people are carrying and how profoundly words, experiences, and the digital world can shape a developing mind.

Children don’t need to be frightened into wanting to live.

They need to know they’re safe enough to heal.

As part of that journey, we’re looking into Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), an evidence-based approach to treating trauma. Rather than simply revisiting painful memories,

CPT helps people identify the beliefs that trauma leaves behind—the quiet stories we begin telling ourselves about safety, trust, control, and our place in the world.

Those beliefs often outlive the event itself. The goal isn’t to erase the past, but to help the mind and body recognize that the danger is over, allowing old wounds to heal instead of continuing to shape the present.

Medication absolutely has its place, and for many people it is life-changing. But I also believe that whenever possible, we should ask why before we only ask how do we manage this? Sometimes healing begins by uncovering the wound instead of simply learning to live around it.

Integration

Looking back over this year, I realize that has been my lesson too.

Healing requires honesty.

Sometimes honesty asks us to change our minds.

Sometimes it asks us to soften.

Sometimes it asks us to release identities that no longer fit.

Sometimes it asks us to stop identifying with the person we were long enough to become the person we are becoming.

My tarot card for this month was actually two that came out together The Empress and The World.

The Empress teaches us to nurture life.

Not just gardens, children, or ideas—but the whole ecosystem of our lives.

She reminds us that what we feed grows.

If we feed resentment, resentment flourishes.

If we feed fear, fear expands.

If we feed compassion, curiosity, wisdom, and love, those take root as well.

The Empress doesn’t ask us to sacrifice ourselves in service of life.

She asks us to participate in it. To care for our bodies, our relationships, our work, our communities, and the earth with the same reverence. She understands that nourishment isn’t selfish; it’s the very thing that allows us to continue giving.

Perhaps that’s why she appeared for me this month.

She wasn’t asking me to become someone different.

She was asking me to tend more carefully to the life I’ve already been given.

The World is the final card in the Major Arcana—the completion of the Fool’s Journey.

After innocence and experience, after love and loss, after certainty and doubt, after building, breaking, and beginning again, the Fool arrives at The World.

Not because life is finished.

But because something within has become integrated.

The World teaches us what it means to become whole.

Not perfect.

Whole.

There is a profound difference.

Wholeness isn’t the absence of struggle. It isn’t getting everything right, never changing your mind, or finally arriving at a place where life becomes easy.

It’s the quiet realization that the pieces of your life no longer have to compete with one another.

Your values and your health.

Your compassion and your boundaries.

Your heart and your wisdom.

Your past and your future.

The World reminds us that maturity isn’t about becoming someone else. It’s about gathering every lesson, every heartbreak, every joy, every mistake, and every triumph into a life that finally feels authentic.

Nothing wasted.

Nothing denied.

Everything transformed into wisdom.

Perhaps that’s why this card appeared for me this month.

Not because my journey is over, but because I can finally see how every chapter—even the ones I would never choose to relive—has shaped the person I’m still becoming.

Wholeness isn’t perfection.

It isn’t getting everything you wanted.

It isn’t winning every battle.

It’s reaching a place where your values, your choices, your body, your heart, and your life are finally speaking the same language.

Maybe that’s what August is.

Not a month of endings.

A month of integration.

A reminder that growth isn’t measured by how tightly we hold onto who we were, but by how courageously we become who we are.

Here’s to another lap around the sun.

May we all have the courage to heal.

The humility to change.

The wisdom to release what no longer serves us.

And the grace to become whole.

One Thoughtful Choice at a Time

So…why am I telling you all of this?

Because I want to be real.

I’ve reached a place in life where authenticity matters more to me than consistency for its own sake.

If my understanding grows, I want to grow with it.

If my body changes, I want to honor it.

If new information asks me to reconsider an old belief, I want to have the courage to ask better questions instead of clinging to familiar answers.

That doesn’t mean my values have changed.

It means they’ve matured.

As I continue writing and sharing recipes, you’ll probably notice the occasional sustainably sourced fish or shrimp dish alongside the tofu, tempeh, beans, grains, and vegetables that have always filled my kitchen.

Don’t worry—plants aren’t going anywhere.

Neither is my commitment to living as thoughtfully and conscientiously as I know how.

For me, this has never been about perfection.

It has always been about intention.

About trying to leave the world a little kinder than I found it.

About making choices that honor not only the planet and the creatures we share it with, but also the life I’ve been given to live.

That’s the kind of authenticity I hope to keep practicing.

One thoughtful choice at a time.

Mindfulness, Philosophy, Psychology

The Better Question

Featuredby Stephanie BoschLeave a Comment on The Better Question
The Better Question

Who’s Driving?

My journal would probably be painfully boring to most people.

It’s rarely a record of my day. More often, it’s a place where I chase questions. I write a thought, turn it over, look at it from another angle, and ask what might be hiding underneath. Somewhere along the way, I stopped journaling to remember my life and started journaling to understand it.

A few days ago, while journaling, I found myself thinking about agency.

How often do I tell myself that life is happening to me?

Someone called off work.

I had to stay late.

I had to step in.

But as I kept writing, another question appeared.

Did I really have to?

Or did I choose to?

And if I chose to…

why?

That simple question led to an even better one.

Who’s Choosing?

I’ve been on a huge Carl Jung kick this year.

To be fair, that’s not entirely new. As an undergraduate, I majored in psychology with minors in philosophy and religion, and had I continued on to finish graduate school, Jung very likely would have been the subject of my doctorate. His ideas have a way of lingering. Every few years I seem to find my way back to them.

This year, though, the pull toward Jung has felt different.

Maybe it’s because I keep finding myself drawn back to his idea of the collective unconscious—the shared psychological inheritance beneath our individual stories. Within it live what he called archetypes: universal patterns that appear in myths, dreams, religion, literature, and in the stories every culture tells. Different names. Different faces. The same human truths.

Lately, those archetypes don’t feel like ideas I’ve been studying. They feel like old friends I’ve been recognizing. I see them everywhere now—not as abstract psychological concepts tucked away in textbooks, but as living patterns quietly shaping the way we experience ourselves and one another.

Jung believed these patterns speak through symbols, giving language to experiences we often feel long before we have words for them.

That’s where tarot enters the conversation for me.

I don’t think of tarot as seventy-eight fortunes waiting to be revealed. I think of it as a symbolic language—a deck of seventy-eight archetypes that gives shape to the hidden patterns moving beneath the surface of our lives.

I’ve spent more than thirty years reading tarot, and like most readers, I learned the meanings of the cards.

The Ten of Swords means endings.

The Page of Cups means emotional openness.

he Eight of Cups means walking away.

I knew what the cards meant.

But I didn’t know the people.

Then one day, thanks to a rogue voice text, Gary showed up.

And once Gary moved into the neighborhood, everyone else eventually followed.

The Cast of Characters

Gary is my Ten of Swords.

Everyone knows someone who’s convinced the world has ended.

That’s Gary.

He’s dramatic. He occasionally lies face down on the kitchen floor. He definitely needs some ice cream, a blanket, and someone to gently remind him that tomorrow is still coming.

But beneath all that theatrical despair, Gary knows something important.

He knows when a chapter has truly ended—even when the rest of us are still trying to rewrite the last page.

That’s Gary’s gift.

His wisdom is knowing that some endings deserve to be honored instead of resisted. They ask us to grieve what was, lay it to rest, and trust that life is already writing the next chapter, even if we can’t read it yet.

But his shadow is believing every ending is the end of the story.

And once I met Gary, the rest of the neighborhood began to appear.

Donna is my Ten of Wands.

She sees someone carrying three bags of groceries and immediately asks for two of them. She’ll cover your shift, bring dinner to your house, organize the fundraiser, and somehow apologize for not doing more. Her healthy expression is service. Her shadow is believing everyone else’s burden is automatically hers.

Maggie is my Eight of Swords.

Maggie has a habit of checking every locked door. Except the one that’s already open. She can talk herself into believing there’s no way forward long before she’s taken the first step. She imagines every obstacle, every possible failure, every reason she can’t move, until the walls around her begin to feel real.

The funny thing is, Maggie is almost never trapped. She just believes she is.

Her healthy expression is caution, reflection, and the wisdom to think before acting.

Her shadow is mistaking fear for reality.

She reminds us that the strongest prisons are often the ones built from old stories, assumptions, and beliefs we’ve never stopped to question.

Hope is my Ten of Cups.

Hope always leaves the porch light on. She believes families can heal, hearts can mend, and joy can return after loss. Her healthy expression is faith in what’s possible. Her shadow is believing love can thrive without honesty, effort, and care.

Jack is my King of Wands.

He carries possibility the way some people carry umbrellas—always prepared for the future before anyone else sees the clouds parting. He has a way of saying, “Let’s go,” that makes fear sound like an invitation instead of a warning. His healthy expression is inspired leadership. His shadow is outrunning the people he’s trying to lead.

Sam is my Page of Cups.

Sam catches fireflies just to remind everyone that little lights still exist. He notices beauty everyone else walks past. His healthy expression is curiosity and wonder. His shadow is becoming so enchanted by possibility that he forgets to come home for dinner.

Grace is my Empress.

Grace never lets anyone leave hungry. She somehow knows exactly what you need before you do. She creates beauty not because anyone asked her to, but because that’s simply who she is. Her healthy expression is abundance, creativity, and nurturing. Her shadow is giving so much of herself that she forgets she deserves that same care.

Reginald—Reggie—is my Tower.

Reggie has absolutely no sense of timing.

He shows up uninvited, usually when you’ve finally convinced yourself everything is fine, carrying an imaginary clipboard that says, “This structure is no longer up to code.”

You tell him you’re busy.

He nods politely.

Then he tears the wall out anyway.

The funny thing about Reggie is that everyone hates him…

until about six months later.

That’s when you realize he wasn’t trying to ruin your life.

He was trying to save you from living inside something that was already collapsing.

His healthy expression is transformation. His shadow is waiting until collapse is the only language we’ll listen to.

Reggie never destroys what’s true.

Only what’s pretending to be.

The Neighborhood Comes Alive

None of my neighbors are simply “good” or “bad.”

Like people, every archetype has both a healthy expression and a shadow expression.

The healthy expression is the archetype living in balance. The shadow appears when that same energy becomes unconscious, excessive, or distorted.

Gary teaches acceptance until he mistakes every ending for permanent defeat.

Donna serves until service becomes self-sacrifice.

Grace nurtures until she forgets to nurture herself.

Reggie transforms until he waits for collapse to do his talking.

The goal isn’t to get rid of the shadows.

It’s to recognize them.

Because once we recognize who’s speaking, something changes.

We have a choice.

Something changed as the neighborhood grew.

I stopped asking:

What does this card mean?

Instead, I began asking:

Who’s here today?

For me, that’s where tarot came alive.

Not as fortune-telling.

Not as memorization.

But as a symbolic language for understanding the many patterns, instincts, and voices moving within us.

Once you know your neighbors, you stop thinking of tarot as seventy-eight cards.

You start thinking of it as seventy-eight ways of being human.

And somewhere along the way, I realized I wasn’t only getting to know tarot.

I was getting to know myself.

As the neighborhood grew, another figure quietly took her seat.

Judy.

She’s my Justice card.

Of course her name is Judy.

Judge Judy, if we’re being honest.

Judy doesn’t care much for excuses. She isn’t interested in blame, and she’s surprisingly unimpressed by victimhood. She has a way of listening to everyone’s story before leaning forward, lowering her glasses just enough to ask the one question no one wants to answer.

The morning she moved into the neighborhood, I was sitting with my journal writing about agency.

I pulled a card to understand why I was feeling the way I was.

The Ten of Wands.

Donna.

That made sense. Lately I’d been carrying everything.

So I asked why.

Justice.

Judy had entered the conversation.

It didn’t take long to understand why.

How easy it was to tell myself that life was happening to me.

Someone called off work.

I had to stay late.

I had to step in.

I had to carry it.

Donna was doing most of the talking.

When Donna is driving, life sounds like this:

“I have to.”

“I don’t have a choice.”

“No one else will do it.”

Judy listened patiently while Donna made her case.

Then it hit me all at once.  I imagined Judy leaning forward, looking at me over the top of her thick glasses, and smiling the kind of smile that tells you she’s already heard every excuse you’re about to make.

“Stephanie…”

“You’re answering the wrong question.”

I sighed.

“The question isn’t what you’re choosing.”

(Let’s a little silence do its work…)

“It’s who’s choosing.”

That stopped me.

Because the moment the question changed, everything changed.

Damn it, Donna. 

Maybe I was choosing to stay late. Or maybe Donna couldn’t imagine leaving.

Maybe I was choosing to help because I value responsibility. Or maybe I had mistaken worthiness for usefulness.

Maybe I was choosing to carry something because, in that moment, it was the kindest thing to do. Or maybe I had forgotten that not every burden belonged to me.

Those choices weren’t the problem.

The problem was believing I didn’t have one.

From that day on, my journal changed.

I stopped asking, What should I do?

Instead, I asked the question Judy gave me.

Now Who’s Choosing?

The truth is, I don’t want to evict Donna from the neighborhood. The world needs people like Donna. She reminds us that showing up matters, that service matters, that love often looks like carrying something heavy for someone else.

I just don’t want her driving all the time.

If I had to choose who I’d rather see behind the wheel, it would be Grace.

Grace is my Empress.

Grace doesn’t love by sacrificing herself. She loves by creating enough.

When a problem walks through the door, she doesn’t immediately ask, “What can I carry?” She asks, “How can we care for everyone?”

She knows that kindness isn’t measured by how exhausted you are at the end of the day.

She knows that boundaries aren’t walls. They’re gardens. They protect what needs to grow.

Grace trusts that saying no to one thing sometimes allows you to say a wholehearted yes to something even more important.

She isn’t afraid to ask for help. She isn’t afraid to delegate. She isn’t afraid to believe that other people are capable of carrying their share.

When Donna says, “I’ll do it.”

Grace gently replies, “Let’s find a way that works for everyone.”

When Donna says, “I have to.”

Grace smiles and asks, “Do you?”

And when Donna reaches for another burden simply because it’s there, Grace quietly places a hand on her shoulder.

“Just because you can carry it doesn’t mean it’s yours to carry.”

That’s the voice I’m learning to recognize.

Not because Donna is wrong.

But because Grace reminds me that love is at its best when it nourishes everyone at the table—including the one serving the meal.

These neighbors illuminate the patterns that quietly influence the way we love, grieve, lead, hide, hope, and heal.

When those patterns remain unconscious, they can make our choices for us.

But once we recognize them, something becomes possible.

We can pause.

We can listen.

We can choose.

Now, when I journal, I don’t just ask:

What should I do?

I ask:

Who’s choosing?

Is Donna doing it because she can’t imagine putting the burden down?

Is Gary making this decision because everything feels over?

Has Stormy already packed a bag before Claire has spoken the truth?

Is Grace reminding me to create instead of control?

Has Reggie been trying to get my attention for months while I’ve been busy wallpapering over the cracks?

Or has everyone gathered around the table before deciding which road to take?

My journal hasn’t become a place where I find answers.

If anything, it’s become a place where I ask better questions.

The most important one is almost always the same.

Not:

What should I do?

But:

Who’s driving?

Because maybe that’s what agency really is.

Not control.

Not getting everything right.

But recognizing that, even with all these voices inside us, we still have the privilege of choosing who gets the keys.

Mindfulness, Relationships

The Culture We Carry..Musings from Real Life

Featuredby Stephanie BoschLeave a Comment on The Culture We Carry..Musings from Real Life
The Culture We Carry..Musings from Real Life

Some weeks don’t arrive in a straight line.

They come in waves.

The phone rang at 9:30 last night.

I glanced down, already knowing it probably wasn’t good news.

A torrential storm had rolled through St. Louis. The power glitched, all three elevators at the studio went down, and my team was standing in Studio 80 staring at a hot box full of dinner and an entire serving line, trying to figure out how they were going to get everything downstairs.

Before I had time to process that, another change for the following morning arrived almost simultaneously.

I was sitting on my couch watching television.

Or at least, I was trying to.

That’s the thing about leadership.

It doesn’t always knock politely.

Sometimes it calls after dinner.

Sometimes it interrupts the quiet moments.

Sometimes it reminds you that while your body may have gone home, your mind never really did.

But this wasn’t where the week began.

It was simply the latest wave.

Earlier in the week, one of my employees lost her brother.

Another called because her sweet puppy dog had been hit by a car and died.

Two more called in sick.

Another left work to console her grieving friend.

By the end of the week, I had also worked over sixteen consecutive days on top of that.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, I found myself in tears over an ice cream machine.

Of course, it was never about the ice cream machine.

It never is.

Stress has a funny way of refusing to stay where it started.

It bleeds.

Work follows you home.

Grief finds its way into your patience.

Fatigue settles into your conversations.

Somewhere in the middle of all of it, I realized I’d become less interested in finding answers and far more interested in asking better questions.

Because “why” rarely changes the moment we’re standing in.

Better questions do.

Somewhere along the way, a friend of mine, Donny, challenged the way I think about problems. Not by giving me an answer.

By asking a better question.

What can I solve… and what must I let go of?

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately.

I’ve spent most of my life solving problems.

Truthfully, I love solving them.

Give me a room full of uncertainty and something inside me becomes incredibly clear. While everyone else is looking for the nearest exit, I’m already looking for the next right step.

For years I thought that meant I thrived in chaos.

Maybe because I was raised in it.

As a child I never knew what was coming next.

I learned to brace for the impact, recover quickly, and prepare for whatever came after that.

By the time I reached adulthood, I had moved eighteen times.

I even attended one school for exactly one week.

I wasn’t just learning new addresses.

I was learning how to adapt.

How to read a room.

How to make friends quickly.

How to become comfortable with uncertainty because certainty was never guaranteed.

Maybe that’s why chaos has never frightened me.

It feels strangely familiar.

Not because I enjoy it.

Because I’ve spent a lifetime learning how to find my footing while the ground was still shifting beneath me.

Now I wonder if I’ve misunderstood my own gift.

Maybe I don’t love chaos.

Maybe I love bringing clarity to it.

Those aren’t the same thing.

For years I believed every difficult situation was asking something of me.

Work harder.

Be more patient.

Find another solution.

Hold on a little longer.

Because not everything is a puzzle waiting to be solved.

Some things don’t change because we become more patient.

They don’t resolve because we sacrifice more of ourselves.

Some situations simply reveal themselves over time, and our only real choice is whether we’ll keep carrying something that was never ours to carry.

Maybe that’s what this season has been teaching me.

Not how to carry more.

But how to recognize what actually belongs in my hands.

My husband tells me not to answer the phone after work.

“Let it go to voicemail.”

On the surface, it sounds like healthy advice.

But every time he says it, something inside me resists.

Because the phone isn’t just ringing.

A person is.

People sometimes assume that because my staff calls me after hours, I’m rescuing them.

I’m not.

I’m not coming into work to do it for them.

I’m answering the phone to teach them how to do it without me—creating a back-up plan in real time.

Rescuing creates dependence.

Guidance creates confidence.

I’ve never wanted people to depend on me.

I’ve wanted them to leave stronger than they arrived.

I’m not trying to build followers.

I’m trying to build leaders.

One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that stress moves.

Some people pass it to the next person.

They yell.

They criticize.

They blame.

I’ve spent years trying not to become that person.

I don’t distribute my stress.

I carry it.

Sometimes that’s a strength.

Sometimes it’s a burden.

This week reminded me of something I’d almost forgotten.

I kept wondering who was going to support me.

Then Sidney walked through the door.

“How can I support you?”

A few minutes later, MaryClare asked the exact same question.

Cassandra smiled and said,

“What do you need me to do?”

My team doesn’t step in because they’re afraid of me.

They step in because they care.

That’s not compliance.

That’s compassion.

Somewhere along the way we stopped being a group of people who happened to work together.

We became a team.

All for one.

One for all.

When my staff and I hang up the phone, we don’t say goodbye.

We say,

“Love you. Bye.”

That didn’t happen because someone wrote it into an employee handbook.

It happened because culture isn’t written.

It’s lived.

Years ago, I would have refused their help.

Today, I accept it.

Not because I need saving.

Because helping matters to them, too.

Being useful gives people purpose.

Contributing creates belonging.

Accepting help isn’t taking something away from someone.

Sometimes it’s giving them the opportunity to become the kind of teammate they want to be.

Then another question found me.

Who notices?

Every week I write schedules.

Handle administrative work.

Decorate rooms.

Run wherever I’m needed.

Most of that work is invisible.

When it’s done well, people assume it simply happened.

I don’t do those things for praise.

I do them because they need to be done.

But every once in a while…

someone notices.

On the Fourth of July one of my colleagues looked around the rooms and simply said,

“The room looks really nice.”

Such a small sentence.

Such a generous gift.

Not because I needed validation.

Because someone saw the work that usually goes unseen.

It made me realize I’d been asking the wrong question.

Not,

Who needs me?

Need is everywhere.

People need things every day.

The better question is,

Who appreciates my presence?

Who notices?

Who asks,

“How can I support you?”

Those are my people.

After a week like this, my first instinct is always the same.

Walk away.

Walk away from the stress.

Walk away from the uncertainty.

Walk away from the people who demand more than they appreciate.

I’ve learned not to trust my first instinct.

Not because it’s wrong.

Because it’s usually exhausted.

So instead of asking,

Should I walk away?

I’ve started asking a better question.

What if I just keep walking?

Not away.

Forward.

Toward the people who appreciate my presence instead of simply expecting it.

Toward relationships that offer clarity instead of confusion.

Toward work that gives me purpose without requiring me to lose myself.

Toward peace.

Maybe that’s what asking better questions has been teaching me all along.

Not to change the circumstances.

To change my direction.

Because when everything around us begins to fall apart, we don’t reveal our intentions.

We reveal our culture.

The culture that teaches people whether to blame or support…

whether to criticize or encourage…

whether to demand someone’s presence…

or appreciate it.

In the end, I don’t think our legacy is measured by the problems we solved.

I think it’s measured by the people who became stronger because they crossed our path.

Maybe that is what we’re meant to carry.

Philosophy, Psychology, Uncategorized

You Shall Henceforth Be Known as… Gary

by Stephanie BoschLeave a Comment on You Shall Henceforth Be Known as… Gary
You Shall Henceforth Be Known as… Gary

On Tarot, Jung, and the Strange Lives of Symbols

A few weeks ago, I was having one of those wonderfully deep conversations with my mentor, dear friend, and spiritual guide.

Those conversations have a way of wandering through psychology, philosophy, mythology, tarot, Carl Jung, and what it means to be fully human. We never really know where they’ll end up.

On this particular day, she and I were talking about the Ten of Swords in tarot—a card that’s often misunderstood. Most people see catastrophe. I’ve come to see it as something quieter.

The end of one chapter so another can begin. Acceptance. Surrender. The moment we stop arguing with reality and begin walking toward whatever comes next.

At least…

That’s what I thought we were talking about.

Somewhere in the middle of our conversation, voice-to-text quietly decided to contribute.

I never noticed.

My mentor simply replied,

“Who’s Gary?”

I blinked.

“Gary?”

I scrolled back through the conversation.

And there he was.

Gary.

Somehow, a perfectly ordinary word had been transformed into… Gary.

I laughed so hard I had tears in my eyes.

There wasn’t a Gary.

There didn’t need to be.

Just one ridiculous voice-to-text error and two friends laughing until we cried.

Nevertheless…

“You shall henceforth be known as… Gary.”

And somehow every time the Ten of Swords appears, I smile.

“Well… Gary’s back.”

There’s something wonderfully merciful about that.

The Ten of Swords is one of the most serious cards in the deck. It speaks of endings, loss, surrender, and the painful realization that something has reached its conclusion.

And then… along comes Gary.

A ridiculous voice-to-text mistake that somehow transformed one of tarot’s most intimidating images into an old friend.

I’ve often wondered if that’s one of the quiet gifts life gives us.

Just when we begin taking ourselves—and our suffering—a little too seriously, a bit of levity seems to drift down from heaven.

Not to diminish our pain.

Not to mock it.

Simply to remind us that being human is, at times, wonderfully absurd.

Perhaps wisdom isn’t found in becoming more serious.

Perhaps it’s found in learning when to laugh.

Even at Gary.

It sounds completely absurd.

Because it is.

But the longer I thought about it, the more fascinated I became—not by the mistake itself, but by what happened afterward.

Two people instantly knew exactly what “Gary” meant.

That’s how symbols are born.

A symbol isn’t merely an image.

It’s an image carrying experience.

A story.

An emotion.

A shared understanding that can no longer be separated from the thing itself.

Once that happens, the symbol is never just the symbol again.

Gary was never really Gary.

Gary became an ending.

One of the things I’ve learned after thirty-five years of reading tarot is that it isn’t nearly as linear as people imagine.

Life isn’t linear.

Neither is the psyche.

Some days we’re the Fool.

The next we’re the Hermit.

A week later we’re somehow back with the Five of Cups wondering how we got there.

Tarot, much like life, can feel like a soap opera.

The characters change.

The scenery changes.

The conversations change.

The themes, however, have a funny way of repeating themselves.

That’s where patterns become interesting.

Sometimes the cards don’t tell a story in order.

Sometimes they wander, just as we do.

But every now and then something remarkable happens.

A pattern appears.

The Ten of Swords.

Then, almost mysteriously, the Ace of Swords.

An ending.

Followed by illumination.

For a long time, I wasn’t quite sure why that pairing fascinated me so much.

Then my friend Maureen, a lighting director, told me about something in the theater called a ghost light.

After the audience has gone home, the actors and musicians have packed up, the scenery sits quietly in the dark, and the stage is empty, one solitary light remains.

Not because a performance is happening.

Because it isn’t.

The ghost light quietly illuminates an empty stage.

It marks neither the production that has ended nor the one that is about to begin.

It simply holds the space between them.

Ever since Maureen shared that with me, I haven’t been able to look at the Ace of Swords the same way.

To me, it has become the ghost light.

The Ten of Swords is the curtain call.

The Ace of Swords is the ghost light.

Not a promise that everything will suddenly make sense.

Not a reward for surviving the ending.

Simply enough light to see that the stage is empty.

Enough light to recognize that whatever comes next has not yet been written.

A clean slate.

Perhaps that’s why those two cards continue to capture my imagination.

Not because one predicts the other.

But because endings have a curious way of making room for illumination.

Perhaps that’s why those moments catch my attention.

Not because I believe the cards predict the future.

But because they remind me to notice the patterns already unfolding within me.

Sometimes repetition is just repetition.

But sometimes…

Repetition is trying to teach us something.

I’ve been collecting questions for as long as I can remember.

Not answers.

Questions.

Maybe that’s why I majored in psychology and minored in philosophy and religion. Looking back, those weren’t separate interests at all. They were simply different paths leading toward the same destination.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by one question.

What does it mean to be human?

Carl Jung once wrote,

“Astrology represents the summation of all the psychological knowledge of antiquity.”

The first time I read that quote, I wasn’t struck by the astrology.

I was struck by the psychology.

Perhaps astrology, like tarot, mythology, dreams, and great literature, isn’t simply trying to explain the world.

Perhaps they’re symbolic languages through which human beings have always tried to understand themselves.

Jung also wrote,

“Learn your theories as well as you can, but put them aside when you touch the miracle of the living soul.”

That sentence has stayed with me for years.

The map matters.

Theory matters.

Symbols matter.

But none of them are the territory.

The territory is always the living human being standing in front of us.

The map is forever changing because we are forever changing.

The older I get, the less interested I become in certainty.

I’m far more interested in wonder.

And perhaps that’s what these essays are really about.

Not finding answers.

Simply collecting better questions.

Mental Health, Mindfulness, Self Help

Drying My Wings

Featuredby Stephanie BoschLeave a Comment on Drying My Wings
Drying My Wings

This afternoon at the pool, I found myself rescuing flies from the water.

One after another, I would scoop them out and place them gently on the concrete, hoping they might dry their wings and take flight again.

There were probably a dozen of them.

Only three survived.

The rest had already exhausted whatever fight they had left.

As I watched the survivors slowly gather themselves, I felt unexpectedly grateful.

Grateful to give them another chance.

Another sunrise.

Another warm breeze.

Another flower to land on.

Another small, ordinary day in the life they had almost lost.

Perhaps that sounds silly.

But in that moment, I found myself thinking about how precious life really is.

Not just ours.

All life.

How quickly everything can change.

How fragile existence truly is.

And how rarely we stop to appreciate the simple gift of being here at all.

We move through our days assuming there will be more time. More opportunities. More conversations. More chances to become who we are meant to be.

But watching those tiny creatures struggle against the water reminded me that none of us are promised endless tomorrows.

We only get so much time here.

But perhaps that was what unsettled me most.

Not the flies themselves.

The reminder.

The reminder that life keeps moving whether we are ready for it or not.

That time passes whether we make a choice or avoid one.

That entire seasons of our lives can disappear while we are waiting for clarity, waiting for certainty, waiting for someone—or something—to finally reach a conclusion.

And that is when I began to understand what was truly exhausting me.

The Cost of Ambiguity

For a long time, I thought my discomfort came from caring too much.

It didn’t.

The truth is, I cared deeply about the values I was trying to uphold.

I cared about being patient.

I cared about being understanding.

I cared about extending grace when it would have been easier to walk away.

I cared about holding the line when things became difficult.

I cared about honoring what something meant to me rather than abandoning it the moment it became inconvenient.

Those things still matter to me.

In many ways, they always will.

What I eventually realized, however, is that patience and self-abandonment are not the same thing.

Understanding and acceptance are not the same thing.

Compassion and endurance are not the same thing.

There comes a point when the qualities that once felt like strengths begin asking something too expensive in return.

Not because they are wrong.

But because they are no longer being met with movement, clarity, or reciprocity.

What made it so difficult was that resolution never belonged entirely to me.

I knew where I stood.

I knew what mattered to me.

I knew what I was willing to offer.

I knew what I was willing to build.

Yet there are certain situations in life that cannot move forward through the efforts of one person alone.

At some point, they require clarity from everyone involved.

And eventually, I had to accept that no amount of patience, understanding, or grace could create movement where a decision had not yet been made.

Life continued moving forward while everything else remained suspended.

And that is where the exhaustion began.

Not in the caring.

Not in the hoping.

Not even in the waiting.

But in realizing that I had spent too much time holding space for an answer that was never mine to give.

The longer I sat with that realization, the more I understood that my exhaustion had less to do with pain and more to do with time.

I have a tremendous capacity to carry difficult things.

I can endure more than most people realize, and I often do so with grace.

But grace is not the absence of pain.

Strength does not mean something doesn’t hurt.

It simply means you continue forward despite it.

I’ve reached a point in my life where I know what matters.

I know what brings me peace.

I know what takes it away.

And when I am faced with the choice between holding on to something that continually causes pain or letting it go and choosing my own happiness, I will choose myself.

Not because it is easy.

Not because I don’t care.

Not because I never hoped things would be different.

But because I have learned that hope alone cannot carry a relationship, a friendship, or a situation forward.

At some point, we must accept what is rather than remain attached to what could be.

What Remains

What surprised me most was the clarity that arrived from such an ordinary moment.

A fly.

A swimming pool.

A handful of tiny lives struggling against the water.

Yet somewhere between reaching into the pool and watching those few survivors dry their wings, something shifted inside me.

The lesson became impossible to ignore.

Life is precious.

Time is precious.

And no matter how much we care for someone, no matter how deeply we hope, there comes a point when we must decide whether we are truly living or merely waiting.

Perhaps that is why I felt compelled to write this.

To publish it.

To speak it aloud.

Not because I have all the answers, but because I finally have enough clarity to trust the path in front of me.

The flies did not change my life.

They simply reminded me of something I already knew.

And that reminder was enough.

The clarity wasn’t gentle.

In many ways, it arrived wrapped in disappointment, grief, and a measure of humiliation.

There is a particular kind of hurt that comes from realizing you have remained in a situation long after it stopped honoring your worth.

Not because you lacked self-respect.

Not because you didn’t know better.

But because you cared.

Because you hoped.

Because you believed that patience, understanding, and love might eventually be met with the same in return.

The hardest truths are rarely the ones we do not know.

They are the ones we have known all along but were not yet ready to accept.

Clarity rarely asks whether we are comfortable.

It simply asks whether we are finally ready to see.

And once I saw it clearly, I could no longer pretend otherwise.

Not with resentment.

Not with bitterness.

But with acceptance.

With gratitude for the lesson.

And with the quiet understanding that some paths are not meant to be followed forever.

They are meant to lead us back to ourselves.

The flies in the pool did not know how much time they had left.

Neither do we.

What we do know is that today is here.

This moment is here.

This life is here.

And once you truly understand that, you stop spending your days waiting for people to become who they could be.

You begin choosing what is best for you.

Not because you stopped caring.

But because you finally started caring about yourself, too.

Today, I know which choice I would make.

I would choose peace.

I would choose joy.

I would choose the life that allows me to wake up each morning feeling grateful rather than depleted.

I would choose my own happiness.

Every single time.

And there comes a time when the most loving thing you can do for yourself is step out of the water, dry your wings, and trust that you were made for more than merely surviving.

You were made to fly.