Not from a recipe. From watching her hands. From understanding that bread is simple—flour, water, salt, time—but that simplicity requires you to pay attention. You can't rush it. You can't force it. You have to wait for it to rise and then know when to stop waiting.

I think about that a lot lately. 🙏

There's this push in the world right now to be always doing something, always becoming something, always moving forward toward the next thing. And I get it—I do. There's value in growth. But there's also value in the things that don't change. In the practices that stay the same year after year. In knowing your place in something larger than yourself.

Bread making is like that. My mother learned it from her mother. I'm learning it from my mother. And maybe one day I'll teach someone else. It's not revolutionary. It's not going to change the world. But it means something to be part of a chain like that, to know that your hands are doing what other hands have done before.

I don't think about that as limiting. I think about it as rooted. 💪

People look at where I come from—the rural background, the traditional beliefs, the fact that I find meaning in things that have always been there—and they think I'm trapped. They think I'm waiting for something better, something more modern, something that will finally make me feel alive.

But I feel alive. I feel alive when I'm working with soil. I feel alive when I'm cooking something from scratch. I feel alive when I'm in the church listening to the same prayers I've listened to my whole life, and suddenly they mean something different because I understand more now.

That's not being trapped. That's being home. 🏡

There's a kind of strength in continuity. In knowing that you're not trying to be something new every day, that you're not constantly reinventing yourself to keep up with whatever's trending. You know who you are because you've always been this person. Your values didn't shift because the culture shifted. Your faith didn't waiver because it became less popular.

I think I'm more myself than people who are constantly performing new versions of themselves.

Do the things that don't change—the traditions, the people, the practices you've had your whole life—feel like anchors to you, or like weights?