No gives back

This world is just bursting at the seams with horrific news. Black lives extinguished and threatened. COVID deaths. I would try to muster up the strength to continue this list but I just don't have it. My empty shell of a soul hurts too much.

This week lifestyle blogger Myka Stauffer's disgusting act came to surface. After financially profiting from adopting an autistic child from China she and her husband and their perfect blond, white family gave him up. I use the word "lifestyle blogger" as my body threatens to retch.

I know how difficult an autistic child who is prone to violence can be. I know how we struggle as a family with a teenager who has autism and bipolar. I get it. But as many times as I think that I can put him in residential or give up the fight, my heart knows I could never allow that. I scream and complain. There are times when I want to just go to sleep and never wake up. The stress, the exhaustion, the fear is all-consuming. But giving up on your child whether it is biological or adopted is not an option. She has the means to hire help to keep Huxley from hurting their other children. She has the means to get therapy. 

We are a middle-class family. We've paid tens of thousands of dollars on therapy, medication, and care. In the last seven years, we have two nights when our friend Jon has taken Andrew overnight to give us some respite. We know the struggle. We are the poster family for the struggle. 

I admit to sometimes feeling hatred toward my son. The things he says and does, the punches, the threats -- it hardens something in me. Deep down I love him more than anything and would never completely give up on him. There are times when I feel like surrendering but I know I could never do that. 

The Stauffers should be disgusted and ashamed. They went headfirst into adopting a child with special needs, profited from the adoption, and then decided it wasn't working. Life is hard. Life is a pile of steaming shit sometimes but if a mother or a father gives up on their child what does that child have left? The kindness of strangers. I hope Huxley benefits from the kindness of strangers.

The pain's gonna make everything alright

It has been what? Several decades since COVID dropped. We all thought we were stressed before, hello Xanax, my friend, let me introduce you to tequila.

It's been sixteen years and several days since we've been sheltering in place. Every couple of days I am overcome by suffocating despair. I feel like there is no possible way that I will survive this and by this, I mean living. Each day I struggle to wake up. How will the hours play out? Will there be screaming? Punching? Crying? Or will there just be quiet while he is left to play his video games and not be a member of this family?

People are dealing with this pandemic differently. For the longest time, I was consumed by worry for the world and truthfully I still am. Now I am worried about my husband's mental well-being. He now sees what days are like buried in the same four walls with Andrew. Negotiating every single thing. School. Showers. Dinner. When we have the strength we fight Andrew to do what is expected of him. When we don't - we don't. They argue and taunt each other like schoolyard bullies. I am not blaming my husband it is hard to remember you are an adult when gut-wrenching agony meets every breath.

We all have our rows to hoe. I try hard to not complain - you may laugh - but I do. I have to express my disdain for those whining and complaining about "missing their friends" "missing going out" "sad that their kids are missing their friends." Missing friends? I haven't had friends for sixteen years. Yesterday, I was supposed to zoom to sing happy birthday to two little girls I adore. I did make them cookies and they were picked up. After a few hours of fighting, the time was 6:15 - and I failed again. I missed the call.

Someone complaining about a leaky sink sends me into a rage. I wish I had a leaky sink as my biggest problem. I realize that I am sounding like life is a pissing contest - it isn't. It just seems unfair that my worry is if I will be punched in the face because I told him he shouldn't have eaten the cookies for breakfast and someone else has a drippy faucet. To be fair, Jim takes the brunt of the violence - because he demands that Andrew follow some semblance of real life. We are at the end of the line here and will have to make some hard decisions once this pandemic has stopped its course or a vaccine is available.

Until then I try to breathe.

White Toast with Butter, Redux

Today, I made Andrew eggs with toast soldiers as we have been watching and enjoying Heston Blumenthal's Fantastical Food reruns. Last night was the giant breakfast Heston made for UK commuters. I renewed my faith in the joy of food and the importance it plays in our lives. Food is not only life-sustaining, but it is also a conduit of bringing us all together, My post for Extra Helping today reminded me of the importance of caring for our community. Cook something for someone today, bake a treat and surprise a friend or new neighbor.

As I made my son eggs and toast today, I thought about Ann and am sharing our story below.

                                                                           *********


Every day I make Andrew breakfast. Two eggs and two pieces of toast was this morning's offering. Snowball (our American Eskimo who we saved from going to a shelter by the same people who allegedly loved him for four years) waits patiently for whatever remains on the plate but today Andrew asked for another piece of toast to finish up his eggs. I made it quickly before the eggs became too cold and unpleasant faces ensued.

Flapping began and I knew my time was up. Andrew didn't want it. I gave the eggs to a happy dog and even though I don't eat a lot of white bread -- something about its warm familiarity tempted me today. The first bite transported me right back to childhood sitting at my elderly neighbor's house for a bit of sanity and coffee accompanied by a piece of bakery white bread (not the cheap bread you can purchase with food stamps) with real butter melted into golden pools of hope.

I wrote a piece about my neighbor, Ann for a writing class at a college when I was in my late thirties. It will follow under this post. When all hope seems lost and exhaustion has seeped into every bone, a piece of white toast with butter can provide the same anchor as Ann always did.

This is Ann - right before she passed away. 

Remembering Ann


What experiences from our childhood influence the type of adult we become? A combination of people, places, and events contribute to the growth and nurturing of character and strength. Equally, negative experiences can warp one's character. Fortunately, the person who influenced my formative years was far mightier than my parents, whose own characters had been warped at some point in their misguided lives. My influential person was my elderly neighbor, Ann Miller.


Ann lived in a four-room structure, the epitome of a rundown shack. Roaches and mice, "my uninvited guests," she called them, gained entrance by slithering through cracks in the worn exterior and foundation. Curls of peeled paint hung from walls adorned with artwork and cross-stitched samplers. Buckets and pans placed sporadically would catch the rain that seeped in from the leaky roof. In the unforgiving heat of a St. Louis summer, an ancient fan, perched before a bowl of ice cubes, would whirl hot air around. The winter winds brought the cold faster than the tiny heater churned warmth in the living room. Despite the dilapidated condition of the building, Ann sprinkled the interior with antiques, quilts and other objects of art. More than the furnishings, the crumbling dwelling contained the most incredible power and strength and gave me an overwhelming sense of freedom and unconditional love. Ann was that power.


With Ann, I could shed tears and laugh. She'd serve hot toast with real butter and the world's best coffee in fine china cups while she told stories of beautiful far away places. We would discuss reading, writing and refined things. Time spent with Ann allowed the luxury of dreaming. I could hope to dream that I had a future. She told me repeatedly that I was beautiful, smart and talented. She drilled into me that everything my parents told me I was, and would not be, was a product of their illness. All the negatives were canceled for those moments I shared with Ann. She gave me a sense of "home," a safe haven.


Ann was comically serious, an intellectual who was lost in a fast-paced world. I was seriously comical, an aspiring intellectual lost in a sea of unacceptable behavior. I was old at age eight; Ann was young at age sixty-five. She was my best friend who just happened to have six decades on me. Although she never asked a single thing of me, I helped her with household chores and aided her in the care of her great-nephew, Jason, an infant left in her care a majority of the time. My unsolicited repayment was kindness, love and a sense of well-being.

Ann had known real pain: her mother had mistreated her (yet, Ann took care of her elderly mother for years); her first husband was an abusive alcoholic; her only daughter, son-in-law and baby granddaughter died in a hotel fire; and her second husband died after a sudden heart attack. Ann was evidence that a person could overcome painful obstacles, she was heroic.

A short, grandmotherly-plump woman with wild, white hair righted the wrongs in my life. My unlikely hero left the house one day with a toilet paper trail cascading out of her pants, which thought still brings me to tears of laughter.

A few special nights I slept over in a tall bed with an elegant headboard. Safely nestled in the glorious bed made up with white eyelet sheets, fresh scented pillows and one of her prized quilts, nothing could harm me. She told me repeatedly how precious I was and how she enjoyed spending time with me. Precious? Me? It was hard to believe a word so foreign to describe me.

Many wonderful memories she gave to me. Ann was thrilled when my senior English term paper, An Analysis of Ernest Hemingway, over which I toiled, received an "A." Ann predicted that I would be a great writer one day. When I escaped from an eleven-year marriage that was horrid from the start, I received Ann's full support. My mother told me "don't leave him...no one else will want you...so what if he hurts you." The woman who said these things I supported for twenty years after my father died. Because of Ann, I became the type of person that would behave in that manner.

Remembering the night of my high school graduation, I was exhausted after burying my father, three days before, who had not made life easy. Ann drove me home from the ceremony and honked her horn nonstop for three miles. She hooped and hollered out the window for the whole ride. That night, I smiled as I imagined the other graduates at their parties as I drove with the Medicare brigade's ring leader. I would not have traded places with anyone.

After a long battle with heart disease, Ann died. The last six months of her illness I felt betrayed by her when she developed panic attacks and dementia; she became so much like my mother. I tried to be with her as much as I could but it hurt me beyond consolation to see her so mentally weak. I was 33 years old and I should have handled the situation better.

How could my hero be defeated by something innocuous as an illness when she had successfully battled all my demons? I should have visited that four-room shack more often; I should have been her hero and stayed for one more cup of coffee from a fine china cup. For reasons that haunt me today, I was not strong when she needed me most. I should have done more. I hope she understands my fear and forgives my weakness. She led by example, taught me to be a better person. Because of my own fear of seeing her deteriorate, I hadn't been that better person for her. When covered in the warmth of a quilt she gave me, I think about Ann and know that she is now happy and reunited with all her loved ones. The little girl in me wants to believe that. Ann gave me a home when I did not have one; I feel in my heart that she is now, once again, home.

Mother's Day

It is that time of year again when everyone posts photos of their beloved mothers, grandmothers, and other females that hold a special place in their heart. For those of you who have/had parental figures they adore, I am very happy for you but I will never understand it or feel that type of love. I also will NEVER begrudge your posting happy photos - your families earned that love - you deserve to share it.

When you grow up surrounded by abuse and where the adults in your life threw people away as easily as yesterday's newspaper, things don't hold a great deal of sentimental value. When my dad died - when I was 17 and a few days before my high school graduation -  I was sad but still felt an enormous amount of relief. Soon after he died I moved out of my mother's house but continued to financially support my unstable mother. When she did die, alone in a hospital room eight years ago, I was overcome with grief for a short time. Then I got over it. You learn to get over things quickly and not put too much value on relationships when you never know where the next punch is coming from.

I felt the need to address Mother's Day - I don't know why - I have forgiven my mother for her mental illness and abuse, but I don't miss her. I don't miss anyone in my family - my sisters and I have been estranged for years as well - they too show the same patterns of abusive behavior to friends and to me and I learned a long time ago to let those kinds of people go for my own self-survival. I do feel an emptiness when I think about having someone to confide in - but I usually turn to my husband or writing to release my thoughts. It is odd for me to say these things - that I don't understand parental relationships - and still be an empath who takes in the world's problems.

I try to be a good human being - I don't want to say I'm a good mom - I'm not sure what that is. I'm certainly not Hallmark material - but I'd die for my kids - even while sometimes I wish I had become a nun.

Darkness surrounded by a world of light

This weekend in NY at the James Beard awards, it hit home how broken I am.

I was looking forward to this trip - meeting Marc, Kim, publicists I've enjoyed working with. I had breakfast with Skye McAlpine, the author of A Table in Venice, and was able to arrange a signing of her brilliant book at Kitchen Arts & Letters. I had the most amazing meal of my life with Marc and Jane at Estela in a quiet booth in a corner - but until we were in that booth - I was in a corner by the bar praying for death but loving talking with Marc and Jane. I'm broken.

I met Naomi Duguid who came up to me and asked who are you - and when I told her I loved her she said, "well, then let me embrace you". Another highlight was meeting Claudia Fleming, who my dear friends, John and Sandra, know well and who I adore, I was able to try her incredible desserts and hug her. I was in the same room with Melissa Clark, Padma Lakshmi, Samin Nosrat, Tamron Hall, Vivian Howard, Pati Jinich, Francis Lam, Andrew Zimmern, and other notables. I met the amazing Susie Chang and Hsiao-Ching Chou. I was able to hug Kat Kinsman and Nancie McDermott again. I'm spending the afternoon today with Rona and all day tomorrow with Christine at a writer's workshop and I adore them both. It's a dream weekend.

But I'm miserable. Several times yesterday at the reception, I felt like I was going to pass out. Being in the crowded room among all those people - I was suffocating. I just wanted to escape. It was too much - too much talking, laughing and noise. My head was swimming and I eventually drowned, I saw swirls of blackness and before I would allow myself to be consumed by the darkness - I would hobble over to a corner, a hallway and just try to remember how to breathe. I had to remind myself that I'm a fucking adult. I just wanted to cry and almost did break down a few times. It's been particularly hard the last month or two at home. I've had very dark thoughts about myself - I work to overcome them - I would never act on them, the disparity of my emotions is crippling. It takes an hour or twelve for that despair to dissipate.

Author meetings, publicists, friends - in a corner, I was totally fine. But after years of being alone in my world in NY and especially the last four years being alone in Colorado save my family, I have had little social interaction and have grown comfortable being alone. People tend to shy away from us. Due to all of this, I seem to not be able to handle social interaction - yeah I see the irony in this statement after getting up in front of 800 people and confessing my sins - total insanity. IACP was the nail, James Beard was the coffin in my hopes of being a normal person.

I understand Andrew so much better now. If that child feels one-eighth of what I was feeling, no wonder his anger is out of control. I tried to be strong - I tried not to spew venom, I tried to be as pleasant as I could be - but I just wanted out and almost snuck out several times to leave but as an adult I fought it hard. I couldn't pull names out of my head or speak coherently, I felt like I was drugged and I hadn't even had a sip of a drink. Andrew can't take off - well he has, but we go after him - so his anger comes out with physicality and vile remarks. Andrew can't write about it the following day to explain why he was a fucking lunatic.

Every time I come to a revelation, I vow to do better by him. When I go home I will appreciate being there for a few days, then I'll want to be anywhere but there. While I'm in NY, I want to be anywhere but here - except in my hotel room, alone in the quiet or on the street where I'm one of a million specks in an ocean.

Again, I vow to do better.

Calm your tits

If I hear "calm your tits" one more time - I will lose the tiny remnant of my mind which holds that  last fragment of sanity. That fragment she's a fighter but as gallant and resistant a wall she puts up - I feel her impending surrender.

Each day the ticking grows louder and I wonder which day will send me to face the admission that I cannot handle my son any longer. The rapid cycles are impossible to gauge. One moment, I'm dodging swings, being cursed at with every vile unimaginable vulgarity possible, ducking projectiles that are set on a course to my head, and the next I'm being hugged, told I'm loved and that he doesn't understand why he is like that and his remorse fills the space around us. He will be 14 in a few months, he is 5' 5" inches tall, he is strong and muscular and the rage that fuels his cycles makes him a force that cannot be contained.

This all wreaks havoc with my own issues. That fragment she wants to be better, she wants to believe that things will change, and a miracle will occur. She says that over and over to anyone that will listen - but she's a liar.

Coming Clean

On February 26th I posted this on Facebook while still in New York after the International Association of Culinary Professionals:

"I did something incredibly stupid or brave at the keynote address on Sunday - and I have feelings of pride and shame about it. Strangers have approached me after and I will be doing a full post on this one topic when I return home - but I just got this message from someone I love and respect and it meant the world to me.

Hi Jenny, _____ ______ told me how incredible you were at IACP's keynote address. She was so impressed and touched by you and the panel. I just wanted to say I'm sorry I missed it, but I take my hat off to you for being able to share your story. So many on social media only show how perfect they are, their lives are, their homes and families are. They're the cowards. You're the warrior."

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This is that post.

In the age of social media where we post photos of our dinner, video of our kid's first steps and bad news with as much exuberance as good news, many of us hide our truth behind a keyboard. I am one such person. 

Overall, I am a brutally honest person. Politics, injustice, my son's battle with bipolar and autism are all shared with vigor and abundance. But my issues, my dirty laundry, I don't share. I avoid confronting my demons with as much strength as I do when I champion those that are fighting injustice. I avoid social situations and meeting online friends. If people see me, I believed they wouldn't like me as much as they seemed to in the virtual world.

Growing up I faced abuse daily - verbally, emotionally and physically. Repeatedly told that I was stupid, ugly, needed to lose weight and more. I didn't deserve anything. There is no need to recount the beatings, blood spilled and solitary confinement punishments which started my path of self-loathing.  

When my father died a few days before my high school graduation, I thought I would be free of that overbearing hate, but my mother was left to take up the slack. I moved out at 17 just having graduated and shortly thereafter, I started working for a doctor. Six months after starting with the doctor, I had just gotten a cute haircut, I felt good - it was the first one that I paid for at a hair salon. The doctor told me "Nice haircut, now lose a few pounds and you'll look great." I was 5' 7" and 130 pounds. The next week I got the flu. I lost seven pounds. I found my answer to becoming what the doctor wanted me to be and what I thought the world wanted as well. Everything would be perfect.

For years, the see-saw of starving myself, forcing laxatives, exercising four hours a day, battles with pregnancy, gaining weight, purging, starving again led to incredible weight losses and eventually weight gain. At one point before my first marriage, I was so distraught and tired of fighting this battle, I took a handful of drug samples from the doctor's office and swallowed them all. I recovered. Even my first husband, when I was still 5' 7" and 120 pounds once said something about an inch he could pinch. I was never good enough and never felt worthy. Once I heard an older nurse from an office saying to a patient, "oh that's Jenny she's the office manager, she just walks up and down the hall looking pretty all day." Man, I loved that nurse - I worked seven days a week and ran the whole office, but she said I looked pretty.  

Years later I met a New Yorker, named Jim. I knew he was my soulmate. In an AOL chat room, I reeled him into my boat. When we made our plans to meet, I started starving myself so that I would be good enough when I met him - which just added weight - trust me - the more I purge, the more I gain. But even then, he loved me. He told my mother on the phone "I love your daughter". Even during our dating and marriage, I never felt good enough and this was not his doing. He and his family have always treated me as one of their own, always better than anyone who shares my blood. I was the one that couldn't be good to myself. I was the one who would self-sabotage our relationship because I just knew I would end up hurt and alone. It is better to be in control of one's own demise.

Jim and I married and after two years of trying to conceive, we had a child, Andrew. When that boy was about a year old, I started running again, keeping food down (no carbs because carbs are evil) and was in the best shape of my life. Wanting to keep up the good work, I found out about these over-the-counter diet pills that gave me energy and helped me to exercise even more. Trying to have another baby, while abusing myself and then being body slammed with Andrew's diagnosis - I lost hope. The over-the-counter diet pills stopped being carried, I was horribly depressed and stressed with the battles of having a special needs child and a husband who worked all the time to give us a nice home. This led to even more purging, which led to more stress on myself.  So began the avoidance of photographs, people, social events and general hatred of myself.

This weekend I attended the International Association of Culinary Professionals conference in New York - it's 40th anniversary. When I registered, I said - this will be it - I will get everything together and lose the weight - stop starving myself, stop vomiting up dinner - and look good. That right there is the kiss of death. I had enough stress in my life without putting all these horrid unrealistic expectations on myself. 

I didn't want to meet anyone and I surely didn't want anyone to see me. I looked awful - I remember getting on the elevator facing the taunt of the mirrored walls and my reflection and actually said aloud "you are disgusting". The doors open and someone walked in and I was sure they had heard me. While I am writing this I am in tears. 

On Sunday morning during the keynote address and panel about topics such as #metoo, mental illness, drinking, drugs and racial injustice - something stirred in me. And I knew that when they stopped for questions, I would stand up. Kim Severson (from the fucking New York Times), Michelle Rodriquez (Executive Chef at Del Posto), Michael Twitty (The Cooking Gene) and Kat Kinsman (Hi, Anxiety) and another panelist who discussed food packaging/trends, finished their discussion and asked "who will be brave enough to ask the first question?" I stood up and there was no going back.

Kim Severson asked my name and I told her (yesterday they didn't ask names - but such is my lot in life) and I introduced myself. I mentioned that I didn't want to make this about me, but it was going there. I thanked them for telling their truth and confessed that I really didn't want to come to this conference because I didn't want anyone to see me. I went on to say that I have dealt with mental illness in my family and myself and that my son battles bipolar and autism. I have spent years bouncing from anorexia to bulimia and that this panel gave me the courage to stand up in a room of 800 people I didn't know or had just met and owned that. There was clapping, I think. I was out of my body. I mentioned that while drugs, mental illness, drinking are all horrific -- most people get that. But when someone, like myself, doesn't feel she deserves to eat and enjoy it, then runs to the bathroom to purge with the end result of gaining even more weight - she has no control, she is a pig. People don't get that. As Michael Twitty said, "Just eat a salad." Why, I would just purge that as well.

A discussion began on this topic - Michael understood - everyone understood. I went back to my table and had support from Jane and Jamie next to me. After the questions were over, I  went up to the stage and hugged both Kim and Kat afterward (later I spoke with Michael Twitty and got a hug). People stopped me afterward and said really nice things. "Are you the woman..." (I had gone back to my room to change my top to throw them off my scent.) I felt empowered. I can fight this.

I do remember just shaking for a long time questioning why I had exposed myself when I was alone working in my hotel room. Then I would go back out for a session or meeting and someone would hug me - and the regret would subside.  All during the meeting and appointments with publicists over those days in New York, everyone was very sweet. People at parties and dinners - hip people - laughed at my jokes and were so pleasant. I am a good person, I do deserve everything good. Things will get better. I found my footing. I spoke my truth.

We all have our rows to hoe, visible and invisible battle scars, secrets and dreams. For years, I thought I could do this by myself. I would confide in Jim and rely on his support until something would cause me to veer off-track. If we open ourselves up to the world, the world will come to our side. As Kat Kinsman said, she put herself out there and compared it to a country field at night. One single firefly lights up, then another and soon you are embraced by the light of thousands of fireflies. I need to hold onto the world's light, take strength from it, and fight the darkness.