The Sacred Middle of Becoming

When I think about the Matriarchal Culinary Mystic, I think about the many phases of creation that happen in the kitchen. Every dish, every loaf of bread, every cake, moves through stages. The thought of gathering, preparing, mixing, and transforming  brings me great excitement and vision into what’s to come.

In this particular season of my life, I realize something……

I Am in The Middle

When I think of the middle, my mind always drifts toward baking. Maybe it is because baking demands patience, trust, and care. You cannot rush it or skip steps. Becoming asks the same thing of us.

Think about baking a cake.

The conception, is gathering what you need: eggs, flour, sugar, vanilla, baking soda, milk. Everything sits separately on the counter, each ingredient whole and complete on its own.

Then Comes the Communion

The mixing bowl.

The phase where flour is sifted, eggs are cracked into a separate bowl and gently whipped, milk is slowly poured in, and the mixer hums while separate ingredients begin learning how to become one thing. This stage is sacred.  You can gather all the ingredients in the world, but if they are never mixed, they never become.

And isn’t life the same?

The middle asks us to trust our ability to put things together. The lessons we’ve learned. The grief we carry. The disappointments we survived. The healing, still unfolding. The dreams we are building slowly. The pieces of ourselves we are reclaiming.

Sometimes becoming asks us to return to younger versions of ourselves and recover what life made us forget. For me, that has been confidence. Before life felt heavy. Before disappointment. Before feeling like every two steps forward came with two steps back.

I remember a younger version of myself who moved through the world differently. The sun felt warm on my face. The wind moved through my hair. Confidence seeped from my pores. Life stretched endlessly in front of me. And somewhere along the way, I lost pieces of her.

But in this season, I am remembering. I am returning to the mixing bowl. Not to recreate who I was, but to discover what all these versions of me can become together. Slowly gathering what belongs. Gently releasing what does not. Learning what needs to be folded in, what needs to be sifted out, and what simply needs time. Because becoming, requires honesty. We must address the disappointments. We must sit with grief. We must learn how to carry stress. We must face health challenges. We may even have to reinvent ourselves. And through it all, we must give ourselves permission to be both a masterpiece and work in progress.

The Alchemy

So I ask myself. Who am I behind closed doors? Who am I when no one is clapping for me? Who am I in this in-between season? What work am I doing while the bowl of ingredients is still mixing? What am I tending to while the pot simmers slowly? Because becoming takes time. Sometimes it is frustrating. Sometimes it is exhausting. Sometimes it feels like nothing is happening at all. Yet every morning, we rise. So the real question becomes. What keeps the mixer moving? What helps us keep showing up when life feels heavy? What practices steady us? What nourishes us? What helps us continue becoming when disappointment visits, stress arrives, or hard seasons refuse to leave quickly?

Because they will come. But even then, something inside us keeps mixing, stirring, and  believing. And maybe that is the sacred work of the middle.To trust that even when life feels messy, unfinished, or uncertain, something meaningful is still being made.

The Manifestation

One day, the batter will be poured. One day, the heat will meet the ingredients. And after enough patience, enough care, enough trust, something beautiful will rise. Not because the process was easy. But because we stayed with it long enough to become.