Category Archives: relationship

Feed Your Starter!

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NaBloPoMo 2021:  Do Good, Kid

Friends, this is SO exciting, I’m growing a successful sourdough starter!! 

I scoffed at the pandemic sourdough craze for two reasons:  1. I hate fads, and 2. I hate labor intensive cooking.  Then this summer I binged Michael Pollan’s works, and got inspired to make bread from the “Air” episode of his Netflix docuseries Cooked, based on his book of the same title.  He made bread making, such an intimidating undertaking, feel accessible and rewarding.  I started experimenting, throwing together flour, water or soymilk, lots of baking powder, and then whatever else moved me.  Early attempts included coriander muffins, ginger-maple-buckwheat pan bread, cornbread, and pumpkin loaf.  No yeast and slack measurements resulted in varying levels of rise and density, and overall happily edible success (mostly)!

I started thinking maybe a sourdough starter would be a fun, next-level project.  It’s only flour and water, so failure would at least be inexpensive, and success could open up a whole new world of home cooking!  Wouldn’t it be awesome to make something of us, our family, including the microbes that inhabit our house, namely those under the kitchen sink?  And then have that something feed us and others, perhaps for years or even generations?

Ta-daaaah, I’m so happy to report that as of Day 7, it’s alive!  Sven, as Daughter named it, reliably doubles in volume between twice daily feedings, and emanates a sweet, fruity fragrance.  Scooping out a portion every day to ‘discard’ (save in fridge), then mixing in more flour and water, is a messy proposition (I really dislike messy).  But it makes me so happy to see it growing and thriving–giving. 

This week, in a flash of cosmic inspiration, I apprehended a greater meaning for ‘Feed Your Starter’ as a life action mantra!  Sourdough starter is a natural leaven—something that makes dough rise.  Oxford Languages also defines leaven (n.) as “a pervasive influence that modifies something or transforms it for the better.”  A simple internet search of ‘sourdough recipes’ yields pages and pages of baked foods that this humble slurry of flour, water, and microorganisms transforms, into foods transcendent to just flour and water alone.  Sourdough bakers, I’m learning, are an ardent and dedicated tribe, always seeking the perfect crumb or ear.  They are passionate.

Sometimes people ask, “What really gets your motor running?” or, “What gets you up in the morning?”  In other words, what starts you?  What boosts you, helps you rise, gives your life more complexity, aroma, flavor, and texture?  And how do you keep it, this starter of yours, alive?  What’s your feeding schedule and routine?

Starters are such great metaphors!  Let’s say it’s your WHY.  It is unique to you, its creator; a product of everything about you.  You tend it, nurture it, protect it.  Feed it often and well, give it a hospitable environment, and it grows—bigger, faster, stronger.   If life gets such that you need to cool the growth, shelve it for a while, it’s okay with that, too.  It can happily relax in the back of your fridge for months until you take it out again. Then, when you’re ready, a little time and attention reawakens the bubbly fervor as if nothing happened.  It can endure for generations, inspiring people you may never meet to keep making delicious, beautiful things for all to enjoy, that benefit all.

A sourdough starter can activate and enhance so much more than a loaf of bread—just as your WHY can inform, inspire, and elevate any number of Hows and Whats in your life and others’. 

And you can share it! In this way, it resembles Simon Sinek’s idea of the Just Cause. One of the five criteria to have a just cause is inclusiveness—everybody can participate. Whenever you feed your starter, you take a portion off. You can throw it away (it’s actually called the ‘discard’) or use it; books of sourdough cooking include myriad ‘discard recipes’. But how much better to give it away? Invite someone else to join in this beautifully messy and loving labor of making something? They can take it home—feed it, nuture it, protect it, grow it—make it their own. And now you’re connected.

I think that’s why I’m so excited about my starter.  To me it represents abundance, growth, progress, and connection.  The thing I love most is that in another week or so, I can confidently give some to my mom and my sisters, and we’ll all share something really special, something that brings us close in yet another way.  I’ll make things with it to share with my friends, and if they wish to adopt their own descendant, I will be more than happy to oblige.  So I’ll keep feeding Sven joyfully, just in case.

Listen to Connect

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NaBloPoMo 2021:  Do Good, Kid

When you see the doctor, how long can you speak before being interrupted?  How long can someone speak to you before you interrupt them?  What kind of listening is happening in these situations? What do these disruptions do to the flow of conversation?  Of relationship?

This post took off as a call to Always Seek Stories, then Find All of the Stories, then Listen More Deeply, and then Listen to Understand, before finally landing on connection—it’s where I always land, isn’t it?  What am I after here, what is the bottom line?  I really just want us all to truly hear one another.  Right now we declare, opine, profess, criticize, and judge far too often.  We filter our inputs through bias, anger, tribalism, and passion; we meet others with guard up and weapons drawn, ready for a fight.  What we need from each other is to sit down, shut up, and listen.

It can be exhausting, though.  Because to really listen deeply and hear, often what is not being said, is a master practice in slow, patient presence—in self-control and regulation.  It is a quintessential requirement of true empathy and friendship, to put our own concerns and inner chatter aside and open fully to another person’s experiences and expressions—especially the subtle ones.  Is this even in our nature?  Perhaps it was when life was much simpler—when all we had was each other and nature, and survival was only and ever about just being, whether alone or together, doing or resting—when tribal life had fewer layers and levels, and our attention had only a fraction of the distractions we have today?  Back then, individual survival depended fundamentally on survival of the group, so interpersonal cohesion and cooperation was literally a matter of life and death.  One could argue the same is still true; we are still humans, an innately social species.  But it seems, at least in the United States, we increasingly see our own individual survival as threatened by people around us (especially people whom we perceive as different in any way) rather than sustained.

Mom and son plan her move from the home he grew up in to assisted living.  He will drive in from another state for the big day.  She declares (demands?) that he should come a day earlier than they agreed, but does not say why.  He feels impatient and tells her no.  Wife asks husband to help her move a new rug to its final position on the floor—tonight, please.  He says no, it’s not flat enough yet, and it will take too much time.  What are the deeper requests and needs beneath each of these appeals and rebuffs?  My friend is the son; I am the wife.  We reflected together recently on what our loved ones may have felt that they did not say, what lenses we each wore in these conversations, and how they filtered (and/or distorted) our responses.  He may go earlier to help ease mom’s anxiety about a big life transition; Hubs and I moved the rug after I explained that I wanted our houseguest to feel more comfortable.

Listening to connect means more than attuning to other people.  It includes monitoring and studying our own inner ‘weather report’, as I read it described somewhere.  If I’m feeling cloudy with a chance of lightening, that may distort my perception of whatever enters my atmosphere, compared to when I’m sunny.  If I listen and hear myself first, I can calibrate my inputs as well as outputs.  I may decide to steer clear of storms I see brewing in others, until my own ether is less reactive. 

By tuning my own strings, I can play better harmonies more nimbly.  I feel confident in my ability to attune to others; I can drop wholeheartedly into the movement of melodious exchange, in resonance with other instruments in the orchestra.  When I relax into simultaneous presence to self and other, I narrow the distance between us.  We become one in collective, each individual contributing something unique, independent, and inextricable at the same time.

Thanks for following along this past week, friends!  Hope you enjoy reading these posts as much as I’m enjoying writing them!

Choose Your Cohorts Wisely

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Who do you want in your boat out at sea?

NaBloPoMo 2021:  Do Good, Kid

Who are or have been the most influential people in your life?  Did you choose them for that purpose, or did they just happen to you?

Looking back on clinical rotations throughout medical school and residency, I still smile or shudder.  We had fun and learned eagerly on my general pediatrics team, when the attending regularly took us outside for teaching rounds.  On another rotation, we missed teaching conferences for hospital rounds all month, and every day was moral drudgery.  The culture, explicit and implicit, of any group, large or small, determines the bulk of the experiences among the people in it.

We do not choose our families of origin, nor our acquaintances of proximity early in life.  In adolescence, forces beyond our comprehension push us in and out of social groups, often at high mental and emotional cost.  If we are lucky, we find and can stick with people who stimulate us, challenge us to think and learn, and help us discover our best selves.  Who did you have growing up who did this for you?

At some point as adults, we need to take responsibility for our social contacts.  If I hang out with people who overeat and overdrink when I really want to lose weight and get healthy, I need to ask myself some important questions. It’s not that they intend to sabotage my efforts at self-care.  They are who they are and do what they do for their own reasons.  But I cannot underestimate their influence on me when I’m with them.  The human need for acceptance and belonging is primal, and manifests primarily in group norms.  No matter our fervent intentions and strong core values, given enough time and exposure, we are all at risk for succumbing to the pressures of conformity.  So when we have an opportunity to select our tribal membership(s), such as for work, it’s better to be clear about what kind of culture we value, and whether our choices align with that standard.

The older I get, the less energy I have to waste. How will I spend this precious resource—my time and attention? What value can I bring to my relationships, and how will they feed me in return? Straight up social reciprocity is a natural human trait, but I’m aiming higher. I want to be my best self and make a meaningful contribution, and I seek others who want the same. Once we find each other and recognize that shared, greater goal—that higher ethos—our mutual return on investment in relationship becomes synergistic and exponential, and benefits more than just ourselves. We are better, together, for society at large.

Focus, goals, and personalities evolve over a lifetime.  Mutually enriching relationships in a previous life phase may wane in significance over time.  Or we may grow closer with age, flourishing in parallel rather than divergence.  I think either is okay, if it’s done with awareness, intention, and grace.  Cultivating meaningful relationships is a lifelong practice in these three skills.  If we find and run with others committed to this lifelong training, then we may all realize the fruits of its mastery–or at least of progress–faster, and hopefully with a little less suffering and a lot more fulfillment.