Jules Blaine Davis - The Kitchen Healer: The Journey to Becoming You

Jules Blaine Davis

Sounds True

Boulder, CO 80306

2022 Jules Blaine Davis

Sounds True is a trademark of Sounds True, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author and publisher.

Published 2022

Cover and book design by Linsey Dodaro

Cover photo by Molly Donna Ware

Pages : Photos Miranda HayekBlossom Blue Studio.

Pages : Photos Molly Donna Ware.

Pages : Photos Jules Blaine Davis.

Page : Photo Cynthia Perez.

BK06390

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Davis, Jules Blaine, author.

Title: The kitchen healer : the journey to becoming you / Jules Blaine Davis.

Description: Boulder, CO : Sounds True, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021059806 (print) | LCCN 2021059807 (ebook) | ISBN 9781683649205 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781683649212 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Healing--Religious aspects. | Self-realization in women. | Spiritual life. | Cooking--Religious aspects. | Cooking--Psychological aspects.

Classification: LCC BL65.M4 D345 2022 (print) | LCC BL65.M4 (ebook) | DDC 203/.1--dc23/eng20220521

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021059806

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021059807

for Her

for all of our mothers

everywhere

to ocean & beauty

may you always become you

love you x x x x

mama

Courage, my love

you are enough

Courage, my love

you are everything

T he door is open, and you are right on time. As you walk up to the front porch, you see a pair of biggish black Vans, smallish rainbow boots, high-top garden galoshes, and fuchsia sneakers near a tattered doormat that says You are gorgeous. As you lift your gaze to the windowsill, you see rocks and shells, a few ceramic hearts, and the word LOVE painted in hot pink on a piece of driftwood. You can take your shoes off here, drop your bags, and let go of anything that might be in the way of you being here. As you look through the screen door, you see a lit beeswax candle on the dining room table with a heart-shaped wood board next to it. You hear musicRising Appalachia, Alicia Keys, or Chaka Khan, depending on the mood. As you make your way inside, you feel a warmth of goodness and love that brings you closer to the kitchen. On your way, you see the heart-shaped wood board with sliced Gala apples, white nectarines, some goat gouda, rice crackers, and a small bowl of Castelvetrano olives.

This is for you.

Everywhere you look, you see a kind of messy beauty inside day-to-day things, like a wide wood bowl holding a soft mountain of unfolded linen and cotton napkins, or a cracked cake plate offering the seasons bounty. Fuyu persimmons, Gold Nugget tangerines, and a heart-shaped rock with the word courage painted on it. These are daily moments made sacred by the way they are offered inside the flow of a freely creative aesthetic. There is nothing to hide here. This is permission everywhere. Permission to feel all your senses, to take everything in and receive the ease and freedom that is here. The aroma of a cake, light and rising, guides you gently into the kitchen. This is where you will find me, steeping our love tea, opening a wide vat of golden sage honey to stir inside our time together.

I see you, and I am so happy you are here.

The cabinet is open for you to choose from a variety of porcelain teacups, ceramic mugs, and handmade clay vessels. They are close together, a few nestled one inside the other, yet each one has its own feeling. Choose a vessel that feels like home in the palms of your hands. You can take your time here. As you turn around, you will see a wall of wood boards, open salt bowls, a block of butter on a round blue plate next to three eggs nuzzled together in a little pink pinch pot by the stove. There is a freedom that comes with placing the ingredients you use daily out in the open. When you can see, feel, and be with what you love, you become more connected to yourself. This is not clutter. It is intentional and has the essence of YOU embodied everywhere. This daily invitation to acknowledge, honor, and remember what you love awakens everything. Permission everywhere not only supports your healing, it makes space for you to embody possibilities you couldnt seeuntil now.

• There is nothing to do.
• There is nothing to fix.
• There is no rush.
• This is for YOU.

T his book, like my kitchen, is a soft place to land. It is also base camp for the journey ahead. We will return to the kitchen again and again as you make your way toward yourself. In the warmth of the kitchen, you might feel an opening or an unraveling toward a spaciousness within you. This might bring up a longing or a yearning for something you cant yet name. With the tinctures of permission, freedom, and beauty, you might begin to feel a hunger not only for a piece of olive oil cake, but for this deeper sense of yourself. You might not even know that you are hungry. Thats okaymany of us have no idea how hungry we truly are. We run in circles around our lives and call it a living. We book our days over-full, with the right thing to do or what needs to get done. This is how we have been conditioned to live. You have no time for yourself, so you go missing inside your own life. You keep giving, going, and doing, trying to stay safe and save others from their pain. You repeat the words I know when someone tells you that you need to take a break, but your actions say, I will get to me later. You are so busy carrying these old stories from your childhood, your lineage, and your culture that you forgot you have a self, a body, a story to write, a life to live, and a legacy to become.

You ask others what they are hungry for, maybe you forgot to ask yourself: What are you hungry for?

You are not alone.

You are hungry for the love inside permission and beauty and freedom. You are hungry for the lightness inside ease, flow, and authentic connection. You are hungry for Mother Earth and the intimate relationship waiting for you inside a wood board love and a carrot-ginger soup simmering on the back burner. Even if you dont like ginger, all of a sudden, you are hungry for it. You are hungry to be seen and heard and felt. You are hungry to know who you are, beneath the errands and the busyness and all the doing.

You are hungry to become YOU.

As you feel the unconditional love flowing through the kitchen, a new way of doing and being will emerge. Curiosity and willingness lead the way to the creativity and truth of your living. We are going to find permission everywhere as we move through this journey together. We will find it in the pantry, in the cabinets, and on the kitchen counters. We will feel it in the rhythm, cadence, and flow of your days and nights. We will discover your values and leave behind the stories that are in the way to you claiming the life you long to live. We will go at your pace with a love nudge from me. I will meet you where you are. I will offer recipes from