Weekend Version: I’ve Got Time

Ingredients

• 2 large chicken breasts, chopped into 2 inch cubes

• 1 cup chopped carrots

• 1 cup frozen peas

• 1 shallot, finely diced

• 1 leek, chopped and thoroughly washed

• 4 cloves garlic, minced

• 1 tbsp fresh sage, chopped

• 1 tbsp fresh rosemary, chopped

• 1 tbsp fresh thyme, chopped

• 2 cups chicken stock or bone broth

• ½ cup heavy cream

• 2 tbsp salted butter

• 2 tbsp all-purpose flour

• 1 to 1½ cups milk (depending on desired thickness)

• Olive oil, for sautéing

• Salt, black pepper, ground sage, onion powder, garlic powder (to taste)

• Drop biscuit dough (your favorite recipe)

• Melted butter, grated garlic, and leftover chopped herbs, for brushing (optional)

Directions

1. Par-boil the carrots: Add chopped carrots to a small pot and cover with water (or chicken stock for extra flavor). Bring to a boil and cook until just tender. Drain and set aside.

2. Sauté the aromatics: Heat a drizzle of olive oil in a large skillet or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the shallot and leeks and sauté until softened and fragrant, about 4–5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook about 1 minute. Remove and set aside.

3. Cook the chicken: In the same pan, add a little more olive oil if needed and add the chopped chicken. Season generously with salt, pepper, ground sage, onion powder, and garlic powder. Cook until fully cooked through, breaking up larger pieces.

4. Build the filling: Return the sautéed vegetables to the pan with the chicken. Add the fresh sage, rosemary, and thyme and stir to combine. Pour in the chicken stock and bring to a gentle simmer. Stir in the heavy cream.

5. Make the béchamel: In a separate saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Whisk in the flour and cook 2–3 minutes. Slowly whisk in the milk until smooth and thickened.

6. Combine and thicken: Add the béchamel to the chicken mixture and stir until fully incorporated. Stir in the drained carrots and peas. Taste and adjust seasoning.

7. Top and bake: Spoon the drop-biscuit dough directly onto the filling. Bake according to your biscuit recipe until golden and cooked through. (If you want to skip this step, you can cook them according to the directions of your drop biscuit recipe separately and then add them to your pot pie mixture after! This saves you on time.)

8. Finish (optional but recommended): While the biscuits are still warm, brush with melted butter mixed with grated garlic and leftover chopped herbs.

Quick Weeknight Version!

• 2 large chicken breasts, chopped into 2 inch cubes

• 2 cups frozen mixed vegetables (peas, carrots, green beans, corn, etc.)

• 1 onion, finely diced

• 4 cloves garlic, minced

• 1 tbsp fresh sage, chopped (or 1 tsp dried)

• 1 tbsp fresh rosemary, chopped (omit if you don’t have fresh, dried rosemary will end up like twigs!)

• 1 tbsp fresh thyme, chopped (or 1 tsp dried)

• 2 cups chicken stock or bone broth

• ½ cup heavy cream

• 2 tbsp salted butter

• 2 tbsp all-purpose flour

• 1 to 1½ cups milk (depending on desired thickness)

• Olive oil, for sautéing

• Salt, black pepper, ground sage, onion powder, garlic powder (to taste)

• 1 can home style/buttermilk biscuits, baked, split in half, and buttered

Directions

1. Sauté the aromatics: Heat a drizzle of olive oil in a large skillet or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the shallot and sauté until softened, about 3–4 minutes. Add the garlic and cook about 1 minute. Remove and set aside.

2. Cook the chicken: In the same pan, add a little more olive oil if needed and add the chopped chicken. Season generously with salt, pepper, ground sage, onion powder, and garlic powder. Cook until fully cooked through, breaking up larger pieces.

3. Build the filling: Return the sautéed aromatics to the pan with the chicken. Add the herbs and stir to combine. Pour in the chicken stock and bring to a gentle simmer. Stir in the heavy cream.

4. Make the béchamel: In a separate saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Whisk in the flour and cook 2–3 minutes. Slowly whisk in the milk until smooth and thickened.

5. Combine and thicken: Add the béchamel to the chicken mixture and stir until fully incorporated. Stir in the frozen mixed vegetables straight from frozen. Simmer until heated through and thickened. Taste and adjust seasoning.

6. Bake the biscuits: While the filling simmers, bake the canned biscuits according to package instructions. Split each in half and butter the cut sides.

7. Layer and serve: Put down one layer of biscuits and spoon half of your filling over the top. Add your second layer and spoon the rest of your filling over the top. Add any remaining herbs and enjoy!

** Cooking is supposed to be fun and not stressful. Feel free to make substitutions based upon what you have available. If you don’t have fresh herbs and you’re out of dried options but you happen to have an herb spice blend on hand, toss that in there. Don’t have heavy cream, but you have half-and-half? Use that instead!

I remember the first time I ate an Oreo smeared with peanut butter. I was standing in my friends-grandparent’s-beach-house-kitchen (Say that 5 times fast). We were on our pseudo senior trip since we all decided not to go to Disney with the rest of our senior class.

While chatting and grabbing snacks, one of my friends pulled a tub of Skippy peanut butter out of the fridge and scraped an Oreo across the chilled surface. First, I was disturbed. Now the peanut butter is gonna taste like Oreos… weirdo.

But then the memory dawned on me. The Parent Trap! The scene of Hallie and Annie in the cabin at summer camp, dipping Oreos into a tub of peanut butter and sharing their quirk of this favored snack. I thought that was something they only did in the movies.

Somehow I made it 18 years without it. But then I tried it myself.
And… my life was changed. What a glorious combo.

There’s something about cold peanut butter and Oreos. It’s like a magic paring in an unexpected but totally appropriate way.

It got me thinking… only a few things could make this better.
Butter, whipped cream, and a salted chocolate ganache.

I told my husband about my day dream and he insisted he would eat the whole pie if I made it happen. But for so long, I couldn’t find the time to get in the kitchen to make anything. Life is slower these days, and I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my first slow week. I wanted to figure out how to make that pie.

So, here’s what I came up with and I can tell you, among the people I’ve made it for… It’s nearly gone within moments. Inhaled with lots and lots of googly eyes. Soft, whipped, crunchy cookie texture, a little salty and not overly sweet. I can’t stop thinking about what Hallie and Annie would have to say.

So here’s my ode to them, in a grown up way. Plus a full step by step guide with pictures, a shopping list and tips!

It’s rich, it’s nostalgic. It comes together in three parts: a crunchy Oreo crust, a fluffy peanut butter mousse, and a silky salted chocolate ganache. I can’t get over it. It just takes a little patience and a fridge with some room in it. First things first, the shopping list!

Shopping List – Peanut Butter Mousse Pie

• Oreos (regular) - 20 cookies (1 standard package)

• Salted butter - 5 tablespoons

• Heavy cream - 2 cups total (1 cup for mousse, 1 cup for ganache)

• Vanilla bean paste (or extract) - 1 teaspoon

• Peanut butter - 1⅓ cups

• Confectioners’ sugar (powdered sugar) - 1 cup

• Cream cheese (full fat, Philadelphia) - 4 oz

• Semi-sweet chocolate chips (Ghirardelli or Guittard) - 1 cup

Optional toppings (pick your favorites)

• Flaky salt (fleur de sel is my fav but any finishing salt is great. Don’t use table salt or Himalayan salt etc… it’s not the same.)

• Peanut butter cups

• Peanuts

• Pretzels

• Potato chips

The Crust

You’ll need:

• 20 Oreos (regular)

• 5 tablespoons salted butter, melted

Start by grinding your Oreos in a food processor until they look like sand. Pour that into a bowl, add your melted butter, and stir until every crumb is coated and it starts to hold together when you squeeze it.

No food processor? No problem. Toss the Oreos in a Ziploc bag and gently press and roll over them with a rolling pin. It takes a little more elbow grease but it works just as well with a bit more effort.

Once your crumbs are combined, press them firmly into a pie dish. I like using the back of a measuring cup or a thick bottomed glass to really pack it in and get an even layer up the sides. Pop the whole dish in the fridge so the butter can firm back up and hold your crust together.

The Peanut Butter Mousse

You’ll need:

• 1 cup heavy cream

• 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste (or extract if you don’t have VBP)

• 1 and ⅓ cups peanut butter

• 1 cup confectioners’ sugar

• 4 oz full fat cream cheese (Philadelphia is the best, obviously)

Before you do anything else, stick your mixing bowl and whisk attachment in the freezer for about 15 minutes. A cold bowl makes for better whipped cream, and it is worth the wait.

Once it is chilled, add your heavy cream and vanilla and whisk on medium high until stiff peaks form. Don’t walk away! If you over mix it, you’ll end up with butter instead of whipped cream, so stop as soon as those peaks hold their shape. Set it aside in a separate bowl for a minute. It should look like this…

In your mixing bowl, combine the peanut butter, confectioners’ sugar, and cream cheese with the paddle attachment until its fluffy and smooth. You’ll want it to look like this!

Then slowly fold in your whipped cream, pausing every so often to scrape down the sides so everything gets incorporated evenly. Once it all comes together, set it aside.

The Salted Chocolate Ganache

You’ll need:

• 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (Ghirardelli or Guittard are my favs)

• 1 cup heavy cream

Place your chocolate chips in a heat safe bowl.
In a saucepan over low heat, warm your heavy cream slowly.

You are looking for tiny bubbles along the edges and a bit of a skin forming on top, that is how you know it is ready. Give it a stir to bring the milk fats back together, then pour it slowly over your chocolate.

Let it sit for a minute so the heat can do its work! It will slowly melt down the chocolate.

Once warm, stir gently until it melts together. As you stir, it’ll become glossy and smooth and turn into a hot fudge like consistency.

Now Let’s Build It

Pull your crust out of the fridge. Spread a thin layer of ganache over the bottom, using a silicone spatula to smooth it into every corner. This little layer acts like glue, holding your crust together so it slices cleanly later.

You can give it a minute in the fridge to set, or keep going if your hands are steady. Like this!

Spoon your peanut butter mousse into the center of the crust. Using an offset spatula (or a rubber one works fine too), gently tap and smooth it out toward the edges until it is even.

Like this!

Once your mousse layer is smooth, pour the rest of your ganache over the top and spread it out.

Like this!

This is where you get to have a little fun. If you want to leave it simple, at least finish it with a sprinkle of flaky salt, fleur de sel is my favorite. If you’re feeling adventurous, chopped peanut butter cups, peanuts, crushed pretzels, or even potato chips are all wonderful here.

The hardest part of this whole recipe is the waiting. Pop it in the fridge for at least 4 to 6 hours to let everything firm up properly. If you’re short on time, or you just love a firmer, denser bite, the freezer works beautifully too.

Slice, serve, and enjoy every bit of it.

In the spirit of maintaining transparency in the most overwhelming season of my life, I’m choosing to leave the hole of despair to tell you… I’m struggling.

It’s all fun and games to ride the fence of life until you’re sore in ways that put a stationary bike to shame. I remember the first time I took a spin class a hundred years ago, I was so confused how anyone could live through such a torture as that.

The feeling of being smashed between the legs with a bulldozer wasn’t overcome by the absurd volume of house music they decided to play at deafening decibels. I didn’t forget about it either when they turned the lights down in a room painted with the darkest black paint and brightest EDM strobe lights you could imagine. And not even the excitable screaming from the completely shredded hot mom teaching the class could confuse me enough to stop thinking about it. No amount of “RIDE! RIDE! RIDE!!!” could outperform what I was feeling.

“What the HECK is wrong with this seat. How can ANYONE live through this torture?!”

Somehow, I was the only person to leave that room with a tomato red face, freckles prominently spotting my complexion as I clearly was out of my league when it comes to fitness. If the 10 year old yoga pants couldn’t tell on me, the fact that I looked like I had just finished 11 days in the desert walking backwards while everyone else had one perfectly placed bead of sweat dripping from their tight, barely moveable, beautiful faces, would.

I questioned the validity of their workouts. Surely, I was suffering and they were having fun, so at the very least, I should have burned more calories.

It only felt fair.

“How did you enjoy your first ride?” she asked, glimmered with barely a hair out of place.

“Oh, me? Yes! Thanks!” What was I even saying? I think my brain cells were still swimming with the thumping and vibrations of a Britney Spears Toxic Remix on turbine decibels.

“Did you like it?” She persisted.

“Everyone seems so effortless!
I just… am not sure why it hurts so bad”.

I mustered up the energy from the last remaining cell in my vibrating body to share with her my drop of comedic disdain to find a nice way to say, “I don’t think this is for me, babe.” “Wait, were you sitting down? You’re not supposed to sit down. The seats are designed to be uncomfortable so you stand up and get a better workout.”

I’m sorry, I just hallucinated. Did she say the seats were designed to make it feel like I fell 3 stories onto playground equipment on my baby maker on purpose?

“Why in the world would they do that? That seems… unfair.” I laughed, attempting to look chic with my lobster red face as if she would agree with my assessment.

“Well, it’s meant to give you a quick break, but if they made the seat comfortable, you’d never stand up and push through the rest of the workout. You don’t burn as much sitting as you do when you really give it your full effort. Don’t worry, it’ll get easier each time.”

Yeah, ok Brenda, but I’m not coming back soooo…. Best of luck to you and your den of torture.

And I didn’t go back.

Sitting here, feeling the swells of emotions as we begin to close this life changing chapter, I kept thinking that sitting on the fence was killing me. But it wasn’t really a fence. It’s much more like Brenda’s hellion spin bike.

I’m willing to do the workout of starting over, I’m willing to receive instruction, I’m willing to work hard and lock in on what my goals are… but, I don’t want it to hurt.

The truth is, I want a nice, leisurely drive through the soft rolling hills, meadows blowing on either side. I want to GO somewhere. Find the other side of the tunnel of this season of life, see the sun shining and sing songs from Sound of Music that make me feel like everything is going to be ok. I want a French baguette from a local boulangerie in my wicker basket made on Nantucket Island, and I want to feel the gentle breeze.

But here I am, on Brenda’s bike of hell in a dark room that smells like sweaty socks and rubber, in complete darkness, with disorientating sounds and strobe lights fighting for equal rights to stop my heart in a cardiac episode of some sort. I’m on a bike, going nowhere, without even the comfort of a seat to take a rest.

The only way out of this den is to stand up, and dig in with MORE effort. No sitting, resistance gears on max sprint, face flushed from sobbing my eyes out and vibrations from Brenda’s encouragements to “STAND UP AND DIG” ringing through every last auditory bone.

You know what Brenda.
I DON’T WANT TO DIG.

I want to sit.

I want to enjoy an already downward bike path towards happiness and harmony.
I can hear the thumps of Toxic beating through my chest in the distance.

I don’t want to suffer, and when I’m suffering, I want a way out.
But this time, if I sit down, I’m going to split down the middle.

What is up with wanting to skip over the hard parts and get to the rewards without crawling? Sure, it feels so great to reach the other side and know how hard you worked to get there. But, wouldn’t it still feel amazing to just have it handed to me on a silver platter?

I wouldn’t know.
And maybe, as much as I think I’d like to, the effort of digging deep is what makes it feel so rewarding after all.

I remember when we started our company, we didn’t even own a printer or a pair of scissors. Everything we did was ‘the hard way’. But I barely remember it now. Back then, the standing and digging felt so rewarding. Now, it feels like pain.

The muscle atrophy has set in from sitting and wallowing in the feelings of “what will we do now”.

If i’m being honest, I don’t want to get back on that dreaded bike to who-knows-where. Darkness surrounding me, unsure of what’s next. Completely lost in the untold noises and sensations I’ve not felt. But every time I sit down to try to take the easy way out, it only hurts more.

I don’t want to suffer.
I want comfort.

I want to celebrate all of the colors of life without any discontent. I don’t want to worry about what’s next. I don’t want to feel the weight of my decisions. I don’t want to feel the stir of where the next opportunity will come from.

I just want to sit.

I can still feel the vibrating of the spin cycle soundtrack as I wallow.

Brrrrrt.

Brrrrrrrrrt.

Brrrrrrrt.

Brrrrrrrrrrrt… I snap out of my gray cloud when I feel the vibrations. The phone is ringing.
“In the middle of a moment of despair? Really?” I thought.

It’s my dad calling. I pick up.
We talked about how scared I am of the unknown. Of what’s to come. He said something to me that I’m holding close to my racing chest.

“Anxiety is sin’s ugly cousin.”
It hit me through the heart.

I realized I don’t have to be overcome by the dark den.

I want to pretend that I don’t have any control of how I’m feeling. That what is happening is simply happening TO me and I am an innocent bystander with no say in the matter.

But the reality is, I chose this. I chose to walk into the unknown.
Into the darkness. Into whatever is next.

So, I also have a choice in whether or not I let it scare me… In whether or not I complain about the discomfort, or if I allow myself to dig deep, stand and pedal.

Whether or not I chose to sit and suffer or stand, and dig, and pedal past it is up to me.

I chose to dig.

I think I might be having a midlife crisis. Or a quarter-life crisis. Or maybe a third-life crisis. I don’t really know how many crises I’m going to have in my lifetime, or how long I’ll get to live to experience all the flavors of them.

So I’ll just say it plainly: I’m having a crisis, in light of shutting down our company.

I don’t really know who I am without this giant portion of what has made up my identity for so long. I understand fully that what you do for work doesn’t equate to your worth or your value.

But it’s easier said than done to pretend that what you do, day in and day out, doesn’t shape who you are as a person in some way. Not for nothing, but even bank robbers are defined by their day job, whether or not they go home to a family at night. Of course, the only thing I was ever slinging was non-toxic skincare. So it’s not the same. But you get my point.

I’m struggling to figure out what comes next. I don’t necessarily feel like I need all my ducks in a row, because so much of what’s coming for my family is out of my control anyway.

Maybe the desire to figure out what’s ahead is just my way of trying to navigate the variables of what happens next, even though I know that’s not something I can adequately prepare for.

I don’t know how many other people out there are like me, making a life altering change right in the middle of normal life continuing on the way it always has. I’m certain it looks crazy to many people… making this choice. And honestly, I get it, from an entirely different perspective.

There’s a million reasons business wise why this was supposed to be. But more deeply, I think about how much this has done to my body.

I remember who I was before.

When I think about who I’ve been, I know there are plenty of versions of that woman who cannot come with me into whatever season is next. But I choose to hold space for every version of myself that’s gotten me here, even the ones I’d like to pretend I have nothing in common with anymore.

If I think logically about the days ahead, what’s clear is that nothing is truly in my control. That’s been obvious in the way I’ve tried to resolve every underlying issue in our company over the past 2 years, only to watch us have the most absurd closed doors imaginable up until last week. Whether that was getting 40 views a day on our stories with 36K followers… or going from 4-5 figure weeks down to $69 days. How can you even keep the lights on like that?

There was no arguing with it.

“Post more!” “Rebrand!” “Sell!” “Make reels!” “Buy ads!” “Sell live!” “Sell more!” “Sell!!!” “Sell!!!!” The only thing I wanted to sell was my phone and run away to the furthest forest I could find to hide and start over in silence.

I wasn’t even sure what to do with myself. It was so clear that what I’d wrestled with for the past two years was finally coming to fruition. I could feel it slipping through my fingers and I was grasping at it like clutching grains of sand.

The harder I grasped, the quicker it fell.

I knew ultimately this was going to happen at some point, because there’s only so much “running” from the will of God you can do. (Ie: Adam and Eve, Jonah… I wasn’t trying to wind up naked in a whale. I mean… you get it).

He’s sovereign, and you can’t flee from providence. Once I stopped running from what I feared was in front of me, I realized this was much more like an offering than a punishment.

I really struggle, deep down, with wanting to do the right thing, and I deeply suffer under the weight of not wanting to fail. It’s hard for me to process that I might not get it right, and it’s genuinely painful to admit I could make the wrong decision.

Not because I’m afraid of being wrong, but because there’s a place in me that’s concerned I’ve disappointed the Lord, or that I’m going to be punished somehow for making a mistake.

When I sit and think through the real reasons I’ve struggled with this transition, I don’t like what comes to mind, and I hardly want to say it out loud. But I think someone out there might find value in it if they’re broken like me.

I really don’t want to be poor.
Again.

I experienced poverty the way a lot of lower middle class kids do growing up. I had two hard working parents who did everything they could to provide for us. My dad worked in sales early on, then left to work at the water department and my mom has been a florist since she was in highschool.

In the generation I was raised in, (millennials), a lot of our parents were only considered financially successful if they had college careers. Which is why for so many millennials, college was drilled into us as an absolute non-negotiable. You rarely hear that same demand now, because so many people are going back to trades, or skipping all of it entirely and going straight into social media influencing and doing TikTok dances for money.

Honestly, if some 20 something guy, whose prefrontal cortex isn’t even fully formed yet, can make a couple thousand dollars off of a thirst trap dance video… I’m hardly surprised he’d chose that over manual labor. Although I do miss the days when young men could build a shelf on willpower, math and a tape measure. But that’s neither here nor there.

I was raised without a lot of extras but I didn’t notice at the time. To this day, I still believe the pinnacle of wealth is a fully stocked garage drink fridge and name brand snacks. Some of my favorite meals growing up, I only found out later were “poor kid meals.” I snacked on tortilla chips and shredded cheese microwaved together, or margarine spread across stale saltine crackers, for most of middle school and high school.

I’m wary to talk about this openly, because I never want my parents to feel like I’m shaming them for doing their best financially. This isn’t about them. They did the best they could with what they had. This is about how those feelings of lack laid dormant in me until they grew to adult sized.

When it was my turn to go out on my own, I always had a wild hair to be successful and I knew I didn’t want to work for someone else. I didn’t come from a family that paid for college with stocks, or that knew how to help me apply for grants. I don’t think my parents knew the first thing about FAFSA or financial aid. But I was hellbent on going to college, because I thought it was my way out of whatever struggles were headed my way because of the class I was born into.

If I’m honest, for years I believed I could climb out on sheer willpower, which is probably why I started dozens of little “companies” in the years between fresh out of high school and mid marriage with a baby.

There were a lot of… phases.

Wire wrapped jewelry.
Calligraphy and custom wedding invitations.
Abstract paintings.
A flower cart.
Flipping furniture.
You name it, and I had a business name and logo made for it, stickers printed at Staples and I was ready for such a time as this.

That’s why I was so confused when my skincare company actually took off. I was used to things being hot for a season and then fading. This time, the hot just kept going. Though… it was the first time I created something with the passion to help someone else.

Once I let myself settle into the idea that I might not spend my life collecting quarters off carts in the Aldi parking lot just to afford bread, I decided I didn’t want to go back there. That’s a real story, in case you’ve never heard me tell it before, tucked into some inspirational post about our company.

When John and I got married, we busted our tails just to make ends meet, and honestly, we were just so happy to be together that we didn’t mind. Then we had a baby, and all of a sudden I didn’t want to be poor anymore, because it isn’t fun to romanticize living in a cardboard box with nothing but love when you also have to take care of an infant, buy diapers, and keep them warm and safe.

In those early days of parenthood, we struggled so much.

I’d left my job in the beauty sales world to be home with our son. At the time, I’d been making double what John was making as he fought his way up the ladder of ‘apprentice promises’ that never seemed to fulfill themselves. I still don’t fully understand how apprenticeship is supposed to work, how someday you’re meant to make enough to buy a brand new Escalade just like the business owner you work for, while you’re making ten dollars an hour crawling into crawl spaces under a house, in dirty plumbing water, trying to fix a sump pump somewhere in a hole that’s never seen daylight.

One time, John’s boss offered him money to take me on a date “anywhere” if he got into a hole with stagnant water to fix a sump pump. John jumped right in, got his $80 cash and took me out to a fancy… Brazilian Steakhouse… the ever classy Rodizios. We even got dessert that night. You couldn’t tell us nothinggg.

That was John. He was always doing whatever he could to provide, and he never seemed to catch a lucky break, which felt so unfair for someone who put in the work.

When I left my job, we knew we’d be less financially stable, but we didn’t yet understand how hard things would actually get. We thought eventually he’d start making the money he’d been promised. Those days never really came. Many times we barely had enough to get by.

I can’t even remember full meals I cooked back then. I’m pretty sure we lived off roasted chicken thighs and whatever vegetable was on sale. Whatever day of the week a large cheese pizza went on sale, we were first in line for that deal. I actually still have a Christmas ornament shaped like a slice of pizza from our first year of marriage, because it felt so fitting. We lived off pizza and a prayer.

I’ll never forget the day I walked into the Aldi parking lot with maybe five dollars in my pocket, and noticed a handful of carts left astray after a rainstorm. I walked up to each one and quietly pushed them back to the building, locking them into place with the chain that spits out a quarter, the one that’s supposed to keep people from abandoning carts in the lot in the first place. I collected several, until I had myself a handful of coins. I thought, wow… “I can buy a loaf of bread that wasn’t even on the list.”

When I think about closing my company and walking away from our income, even though things have been genuinely difficult the past two years, sales nowhere near what they used to be before the market became oversaturated, our overhead so high with inflation that we struggle to turn a profit even on good weeks, I think about that young girl in the parking lot holding a handful of coins.

I feel her pain.
I feel her fear.

I feel her worry that this is as good as it’s ever going to get. And I worry about going back to that place.

But when I think about her, I also remember how I lived off of faith in Christ in a way that felt so much more like bread than anything I could have bought with that handful of coins. I trusted him in ways that let us do the craziest things, and we lived with such incredible faith through that season and every season after, because we had seen God do things on our behalf that we never could have engineered ourselves.

For years, my mom used to tell me, “You really have to start writing these things down. Someday you’re going to write a book on everything God has done for you.” I never started that book back then. Maybe it’s not too late to start now, as I let myself remember what it felt like to truly trust that God would provide.

When I think about what’s ahead of us in these next days, I joke that I’m in the middle of a third-life crisis. A lot of the time I really don’t know where to start or what’s next.

I’m pink-slipping myself from a job and a paycheck, for peace. For so long my body has suffered under the weight of stewarding something so emotionally heavy. It’s one thing to sell power washers or printers. It’s a whole different ball game to be in a lane that helps people heal when they’re at their lowest, and then to willingly walk away from it. The weight of that, the stress of leaving people to find a new path forward, could genuinely wreck me emotionally if I let it.

A friend of mine from back home said something the other day that lifted such a yoke off my shoulders. She said, “the weight of all that SMEAR became is not yours to carry.” I’m so thankful she said that to me. The weight of what it became was never something I could control.

I got on the internet and told people the truth about skincare, but God was the one who drew in those sales and turned people’s lives around with a tiny little jar of product. At the end of the day, I need to trust He’s going to take care of those people the same way I trust He’ll take care of us.

I truly don’t know what’s next, and when I think too hard about it, I get heart palpitations, wrestling with not knowing where Brit ends and SMEAR begins. But I think that’s exactly what God wants me to find out.

Why am I so afraid?
What am I actually afraid of?

There are plenty of people who live below the poverty line the way we did for most of our marriage, until just the last few years. I know what it feels like to have an empty fridge and negative dollars in the bank for weeks at a time. It’s not fun or comforting. I find it irritating when someone says “money doesn’t buy happiness”. Wrong… it doesn’t buy JOY but it definitely buys Disney tickets, jet skis and trips to Cape Cod… so.

It’s frightening to sit and wonder where your next meal is coming from, or how the lights are going to stay on. If I’m honest, I don’t want to go back to that. And if you’re currently in that place, I understand, and I feel for you deeply.

But it’s not really about money, is it?
I think it’s far more about control.

I think it has much more to do with believing I’m a better provider for myself than God is. It’s about not wanting to be uncomfortable, wanting to live with the least amount of dependence on Christ as possible. That’s my own sinful nature, seeping out of my pores when I let myself tell the truth.

No, I don’t want to relive those days. But when I think about where my heart was in that desperation for the Lord, it was in a very different place. I needed him for everything, so I trusted him for everything. I think that’s why so many extremely wealthy people find themselves so deeply disheartened, so dark.

There’s some kind of cloud that seems to cover the very wealthy that has nothing to do with money itself. When you have that many resources, you can provide things for yourself that you don’t need to wait on God for. And I don’t think we were ever meant to live that independently from our need for Him.

I don’t think there’s more holiness in being poor, necessarily. Weath is a gift that allows us to live generously.

But I do think poverty can hold a virtue that wealth tends to forget.
When you have nothing, you truly understand that He is everything.

Maybe this crisis isn’t about who I am.
Maybe it’s far more about what I believe.

Do I trust Him to provide and is He still good when I lack?
May I continue to say “yes”.

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I wanted to write a thoughtful and cohesive letter to my longtime customers who have become friends to us. I know the question we’re getting over and over again is “where do we go now?” that SMEAR is closing its doors. I want to explain why this is more than a question on shopping and how I want to accurately convey my thoughts.

I’ve sat with this question for a while now, because I think it deserves a meaningful answer.The honest truth is, I can’t recommend another company because there is so much I simply cannot control.

I can’t control their quality.
I can’t control their ingredients.
I can’t control whether or not they’re telling you the truth.
I can’t control whether they use the same methods we do.

And I can’t control whether they have the kind of integrity and transparency that leads a company to make the hard decisions… the ones we’ve made over and over again.

Even if it appears the ingredients are the same from the label’s perspective, there are very few regulations in place to ensure that is actually the truth. Coming from the place of owning our company for many years, we have seen what it looks like to be faced with endless opportunities for half truths, excuses, and cutting corners. This is something we feel incredibly passionate about when it comes to our product, and it’s quite literally the reason why we have fought so hard in this space to stay around long term.

Seven years ago, when I first started SMEAR, it was on the heels of discovering the dishonesty in the beauty and skincare industry that I had worked in for decades. I had always relied on safety guards and protections like the FDA and other regulatory institutions, only to find out that these institutions were not actually working for us the way we may have anticipated.

Did you know that it’s actually the responsibility of the company to make sure the ingredients in their product are correct? Or that it’s the responsibility of the company to be transparent in their explanations of their product? It’s also the responsibility of the company to notify their customers if any of those pieces are amiss, and to make sure they’re following regulations and guidelines.

A common one I see in the tallow industry is claiming a suncare product is SPF* (whatever the number is here). This immediately takes your skincare product into a drug product and is illegal to sell without claiming it as such and subjecting it to drug regulations. And, still… hundreds of tallow companies sell them anyway. Why? No one is watching but you.

Most of the companies you see have never been checked by any regulatory facility, and may very well continue throughout their entire company’s career without ever having that kind of protection in place. That looks like decades of business with nobody watching over you but yourself.

For this reason, I’m personally unwilling to put my stamp of approval on another company. Because I don’t know if that company is adhering to the same standards we put ourselves through. People have the best of intentions, and people have good hearts, and people have opportunities for error that are potentially not at their own doing. But people also have the propensity to choose profit over people. That is something I’m unwilling to make the determination for, on behalf of others.

Being one of the pioneers of modern tallow skincare, jumping into this scene before it was popularized, I have earned a lot of loyalty from my customers over the years. Ultimately, making a decision on who you should shop with next is offering them the loyalty you have shown to me, and I don’t know if I would ever be willing to put my name on someone else’s decision making. It very well may be the same ingredients, and they could even do their processes exactly the same. But when push comes to shove, are they willing to lose everything in order to maintain that same integrity? That’s something I’m not sure about, if I’m being honest with you. Because how can I possibly know what someone else would do in the face of a crisis, the way that we would?

I want to share something with you that I haven’t talked about publicly before, because I think it explains where this conviction comes from even more personally. A few years ago, a very close personal friend of mine, someone who worked for my company, ended up leaving and starting her own tallow brand. She allegedly used our jars, our copy from our website, and most painfully to me personally, before and after pictures of using SMEAR to promote her products. You can even see the after pictures were taken at our own workshop.

This was probably the most painful part to me, beyond the betrayal, because she was building brand loyalty off of products I had developed, created, and ultimately gave to her for free for a long time. The heartbreak in all of that wasn’t the loss of money, or that she might take my customers, or anything along that line.

The heartbreak for me personally was that she chose to build that company off of a lie about my reputation and our products performance. My personal opinion is that she likely saw an opportunity, was up close and personal to our processes and decided to recreate it for financial gain.

I can recall, for the first few months, the way that disoriented me as a business owner and as someone in this space. My wish isn’t to bring ill will or drudge up the past, but merely to explain my hesitations. I share it because it shows something important. This wasn’t a stranger. This was someone in my closest circle, someone I trusted completely, someone I had shown grace to again and again. Even there, behind closed doors, in the closest proximity to me, I had the wool pulled over my eyes, and then had it used against me. If that kind of blindness can happen with someone standing right next to me, someone I loved and trusted that deeply, how could I possibly vouch for someone I only see from the outside, someone whose heart and character I have no real way of knowing?

I did learn, in the years following, that I can’t treat everyone like they’re going to betray me the way I felt after she left. But what it did teach me is that I cannot put my reputation on the line for someone else, because no matter how much I think I know someone, their heart, or their intentions, you never truly know what someone is capable of until they’re tested. I could not sleep at night if I gave you the names of companies to shop with who I know nothing about. I don’t know how they would function if placed in a high pressure situation. I don’t know if they would choose to do the right thing when faced with extreme financial loss, or what they would do if given the opportunity to make a mistake.

I’m very thankful for the experience of what happened with my former employee, because it showed me that the only person you can be responsible for is yourself. It has given me a deep desire to be a person of integrity, to do the right thing, and to let my reputation speak for me. My reputation, I believe, speaks for itself.

Which brings me to what I think you’re actually asking.

I don’t believe the real question underneath all of this is simply “where should I shop.” I think what’s underneath it is something closer to wanting my blessing, because of the loyalty and community we’ve built together over the years. And I want you to know, I see that, and I value it more than I can fully say. I value that you care about my voice, that you trust my word, that my opinion means something to you. And it’s exactly because I value that so deeply that I refuse to risk it by handing you a name I only found by Googling around to see whose ingredients look similar to mine.

Here’s the truth about how we’ve operated for seven years. We kept our eyes forward. We didn’t spend our time watching other tallow companies, checking in on what they were doing, or comparing notes. We didn’t look to the right or the left. We stayed focused on doing our own work well. So if I turned around now and started researching other brands just to hand you a name, I’d be doing exactly what you’re capable of doing yourselves, and doing it with no more insight than you already have. I don’t think that’s what’s valuable to you right now anyway.

What I think is actually valuable is teaching you how to advocate for yourself and your family. I would hate for you to feel lost while making the next right decision, unless I was the one making it for you, because if that were the case, I would have failed in my ultimate role in this skincare space. My goal has always been to teach you how to distinguish what ingredients you feel comfortable with, what quality you feel comfortable with, and how to check whether or not a brand is built on integrity and transparency. Ultimately, you’re shopping with humans, and you have to decide who you feel like you can trust.

That’s not a decision I can make for you, and it never really was.
You chose SMEAR because you trusted us. You did it once and you can do it again.
Someone out there will earn your trust.

You have every ability to make the decision on quality, ingredients, and integrity, and you get to decide where you put your dollars now and who you want to support. You’re capable of making that decision and I trust you completely to take what we’ve built together and use it well, wherever you land next.

I will always be here to cheer you on as you continue to move forward in these next days of life. If you have questions, I’m here… But I have a feeling you’re more than capable of doing this without me.

We make the decision, though gutted, to close our doors with our heads held high and our hearts bursting full.

When I started this company in a shared kitchen, where we lived with 11 people, with a $25 gift card to our name, I could have never predicted it would become everything it is today. I could have also never predicted at the height of our success that we would see the days that are unprecedented that we are living in.

The honest truth is business has changed. As one of the pioneers to tallow skincare, we never thought there would come a day where the market was saturated with other companies. That’s how business goes. Something is working, and on the heels of its success, many people come to take a slice of the pie. As a business owner, I completely understand. This reality, however, began to make it very difficult to reach our customer base as they were finding options closer, cheaper, and without shipping.

We have carried the financial burden of SMEAR for the last 2 years amid incredible price increases. Our heart was to make Smear accessible for as many people possible as people were already suffering in every other way financially. Although it was with the most sincere intentions, we incurred loss every month.

Last year, we had some interesting moments for our business back to back. We had some of the most incredible months for our company ever where we were shouted out a number of times by a truly generous friend with a huge platform, and it completely wiped out our shelves. It was so overwhelming that it took us weeks to rebuild our supply and we were overjoyed and in over our heads.

On the heels of our great success, the following month, we had a production line issue and we were faced with the decision:

1. Sell these products because nobody would know the difference but us.

2. Throw away six figures worth of product and start over from scratch.

We threw it all away.

I still recall the feeling in my chest of crippling anxiety as we made the decision without a second of pause to take the loss. I sobbed in our warehouse, flopped over a palette of jars somewhere. I remember a friend of mine saying “it’s crazy how quickly you made that decision. I would’ve had a hard time because nobody would have known. It probably would’ve still worked similarly. But you didn’t even take a beat before you made the choice”.

To me, it wasn’t even a question.

My integrity is all I have. I wouldn’t risk that for any dollar amount. So, we threw away six figures worth of product and never gave you the sob story about it. We just kept moving forward.

With those few months of great success prior, we realized that social media was the future for marketing. We knew, after one generous shout had sold out our shelves, that they could offer something we could never tap dance for.

But this proved to be difficult in the days to follow. We now have recognized that much larger companies were offering high payouts to their affiliates, many, who didn’t even use their products. Companies giveaway g-wagons, brand trips, flights to Paris… many things that our family owned company cannot compete with.

Mom and pop shops continue to thrive in this environment, with no overhead and all profit retained. The problem is we are too big to go back to our tiny kitchen but too small to compete with large companies.

Very quickly, we realized we either close our doors or empty our life savings to try to salvage it. But I don’t want to go out on a loss.

I want to go out with time. Time to say goodbye to this company that I love. Time for our customers to get what they need from us. Time to finish our production runs and sell every last jar from our shelves. We want time. So that means we get to be honest with you about why we’re doing this and bring you along for a journey you didn’t really ask to be a part of.

The stress of tap dancing for sales in a company that I feel so much passion and purpose over has created a type of stress I don’t know if I can put into words. But my body has suffered tremendously these last few years and for my health and my children… I need to make a pivot. How do I want to go out?

Kicking and screaming? Or overwhelmed with gratitude for a season of our lives that I can confidently say I poured my soul into.

I don’t know if you’ve ever watched a company close its doors or if you’ve ever been welcomed behind the scenes to see the incredibly painful conversations, the tearful moments, the memories relived… but we’re offering that to you. You’ve been such a part of our journey, that it feels like you should see us leave the way we intend to. With integrity, transparency and hope for the future.

We don’t know what’s next.

But we hope you’ll be on this train with us to the next stop.

With hope and gratitude,

B

We make the decision, though gutted, to close our doors with our heads held high and our hearts bursting full.

When I started this company in a shared kitchen, where we lived with 11 people, with a $25 gift card to our name, I could have never predicted it would become everything it is today. I could have also never predicted at the height of our success that we would see the days that are unprecedented that we are living in.

The honest truth is business has changed. As one of the pioneers to tallow skincare, we never thought there would come a day where the market was saturated with other companies. That’s how business goes. Something is working, and on the heels of its success, many people come to take a slice of the pie. As a business owner, I completely understand. This reality, however, began to make it very difficult to reach our customer base as they were finding options closer, cheaper, and without shipping.

We have carried the financial burden of SMEAR for the last 2 years amid incredible price increases. Our heart was to make Smear accessible for as many people possible as people were already suffering in every other way financially. Although it was with the most sincere intentions, we incurred loss every month.

Last year, we had some interesting moments for our business back to back. We had some of the most incredible months for our company ever where we were shouted out a number of times by a truly generous friend with a huge platform, and it completely wiped out our shelves. It was so overwhelming that it took us weeks to rebuild our supply and we were overjoyed and in over our heads.

On the heels of our great success, the following month, we had a production line issue and we were faced with the decision:

1. Sell these products because nobody would know the difference but us.

2. Throw away six figures worth of product and start over from scratch.

We threw it all away.

I still recall the feeling in my chest of crippling anxiety as we made the decision without a second of pause to take the loss. I sobbed in our warehouse, flopped over a palette of jars somewhere. I remember a friend of mine saying “it’s crazy how quickly you made that decision. I would’ve had a hard time because nobody would have known. It probably would’ve still worked similarly. But you didn’t even take a beat before you made the choice”.

To me, it wasn’t even a question.

My integrity is all I have. I wouldn’t risk that for any dollar amount. So, we threw away six figures worth of product and never gave you the sob story about it. We just kept moving forward.

With those few months of great success prior, we realized that social media was the future for marketing. We knew, after one generous shout had sold out our shelves, that they could offer something we could never tap dance for.

But this proved to be difficult in the days to follow. We now have recognized that much larger companies were offering high payouts to their affiliates, many, who didn’t even use their products. Companies giveaway g-wagons, brand trips, flights to Paris… many things that our family owned company cannot compete with.

Mom and pop shops continue to thrive in this environment, with no overhead and all profit retained. The problem is we are too big to go back to our tiny kitchen but too small to compete with large companies.

Very quickly, we realized we either close our doors or empty our life savings to try to salvage it. But I don’t want to go out on a loss.

I want to go out with time. Time to say goodbye to this company that I love. Time for our customers to get what they need from us. Time to finish our production runs and sell every last jar from our shelves. We want time. So that means we get to be honest with you about why we’re doing this and bring you along for a journey you didn’t really ask to be a part of.

The stress of tap dancing for sales in a company that I feel so much passion and purpose over has created a type of stress I don’t know if I can put into words. But my body has suffered tremendously these last few years and for my health and my children… I need to make a pivot. How do I want to go out?

Kicking and screaming? Or overwhelmed with gratitude for a season of our lives that I can confidently say I poured my soul into.

I don’t know if you’ve ever watched a company close its doors or if you’ve ever been welcomed behind the scenes to see the incredibly painful conversations, the tearful moments, the memories relived… but we’re offering that to you. You’ve been such a part of our journey, that it feels like you should see us leave the way we intend to. With integrity, transparency and hope for the future.

We don’t know what’s next.
But we hope you’ll be on this train with us to the next stop.

With hope and gratitude,

B

It’s hard to grieve as a mom. They worry.

I hide so I can feel.
I feel, so I hide.

I know I’m making the right decision but I’m in aching pain.
I trust, but I’m scared. I want to let go and I also want control.

I am a women split in two, a thousand times over.

In the quiet moments, in the middle of the night when everyone else is asleep, on the drive home from the grocery store while everyone keeps moving… that’s when I feel it all.

I sit and I cry from somewhere deep inside me.

Somewhere, from a corner of my childhood bedroom .
A little girl who wanted to dream big dreams and find a way out…
I cry for her.

I cry for the mother in me who couldn’t afford to buy bread.
Who would return stray shopping carts to collect quarters for milk.
I cry for her.

I cry for the woman who missed out on so much, to sacrifice for what was in front of her. Only to find herself needing to let go all the same.

I cry for the woman who’s desperate to control an outcome she couldn’t have predicted.

I cry for all of these versions of who I’ve been and who I have become.
I didn’t take into account the way the end would make me feel.

But I feel it all.

I find the tears flooding from my eyes again.

I’m tired.

All I can think to do is write about it. I have to get it out of me somehow. I keep catching myself holding my breath and forgetting that I need to breathe to stay alive.

I feel this overwhelming sense of fear mixed with equal parts panic and betrayal.

The panic because I can’t believe we’re here… the betrayal because we shouldn’t be here. Not after all of this hard work.

But hardship falls on any lap it chooses.

And it’s picked us. So we must learn how to navigate the path while the waves look like they might swallow us whole.

Running a business is not for the faint of heart. It comes with so much disappointment and responsibility that it never feels worth it. But no one told me that when I first started so I didn’t get to choose. I was just excited to get my products out there. I didn’t know that someday it would take everything out of me to peel myself off the floor in tears and despair to show up the next day to do it again.

1 million years ago when I started my company (at least it feels that long), my heart was so vibrant with passion to get these products into the hands of other people. And there was so little competition in my space, that I actually spent all of my time educating instead of marketing. I never really had to sell my products… but I did have to teach people why they were beneficial. No one was using tallow it seemed.

Over the years, the competition swelled.

Many new holistic tallow companies sprung up as people saw the rise in success of tallow skincare.

Many of these new businesses were started by people who were once my customers. I think one year we counted 13 customers started businesses and used the direct copy from my website. I’m talking copy and paste… entire descriptions, tallow blends, even the names of my products and some of my own pictures.

At one point, the call came from inside the house. One of my own employees who I deeply loved and cared about, quit and started her own tallow business. She even used the pictures she took at our workshop of her being healed by our products to market her own. In our jars. With our descriptions.

It was the most out of body experience and the deepest, betrayal and pain I have ever felt… because I loved her. She was my friend. And because she made up lies about me to justify it all.

In fact, this pain cut me so deeply, that I’ve never said this out loud on the Internet.

Back then, when I was living in the heat of the betrayal that came from inside of my workshop, I was seeking council from trusted friends and ministers. I had all the legal protections, but I couldn’t bring myself to go after her. It felt so ugly.

I struggled with the injustice and in the middle of a conversation, my good friend shared a story with me. To this day, it’s one of the most marking conversations I’ve ever had.

He shared a story of a diplomat from another country that he once met. While he was in this man’s office, the man’s son came running through the doors in a panic. The man’s son looked at his father and expressed his concern. “Father! They’re stealing from us! They’re taking crops from our fields and selling them in the market. We must stop them!”

The air was sucked out of the room, but the diplomat remained unchanged by this news. He looked at his son and said, “I plant extra”. Confused, the son pressed him saying “what do you mean?”

The diplomat looked at his son and said calmly…

“I always plant extra for those who will steal from me”.

I hated those words the first time I heard them. I didn’t want to hear a story like that. It felt like the power to find justice was ripped from my fingertips at first. But I continued to recite the story to myself over and over again in the days, weeks, months to come. Slowly, the lesson became my reality.

I realized that ultimately, if I truly believe God gave this company to me and asked me to put my hand to this plow, then they were not ever stealing from me. I started my company while I was dirt poor, with a $25 gift card my dad gave me and some ingredients I had in my house. God gave me all of this.

None of this was mine anyway.

They were stealing from Him.

And, and in His sovereignty, He had offered not only mercy and grace… but blessing to them. Was I able to question what God chose to rain on those figurative fields? In many ways, I was surely also undeserving of any blessing. What made me think I deserved more?

I signed up for the cute version of business. The farmers markets, the social media tags, the extra grocery money and sweet branded t-shirts…

I didn’t sign up for the overnight success, the intense competition, the crippling failures, the millions of opportunities to test my integrity or all of the hours I’ve spent sobbing over pallets of jars while I hide during a breakdown from my employees…

I didn’t sign up for that part.

I just wanted it to be easy.

But it never was.

I can think of 100 times where I could’ve made an excuse to take the easy way out. But I didn’t.

I can think of a dozen times I sat on the warehouse floor in a puddle of tears, begging God to let me sell the company.

I signed up to help people.

But I didn’t know it would come with years of disappointment as I choose to slowly raise my family instead of pushing with investors to explode into the retail market.

And if you’re not first in the market, you’re last.

I’m last a lot because my priorities are different.

I choose to raise my family, to do the right thing by my customers, to never cut corners on cost or quality.

But sometimes it’s just so hard to keep up.

Watching other businesses fly by us when we were here for years before is a pain that I can’t really put into words. It has nothing to do with them, but everything to do with me. It makes me question if this was all for nothing.

But what if it had nothing to do with business?

What if it was the means by which God would finally get to the bottom of my desperate need for control?

What if this was the only way I would ever learn true dependency? My eyes leak like broken faucets as I write these words on paper. They rinse me from the inside out.

I had been so hopelessly committed to making this about failure that I never saw what this was all about.

All of those times I dragged my disabled body through the halls of our warehouse instead of giving in to my disability, God taught me perseverance.

All of those times I chose to let go of the injustice of being stolen from, God taught me mercy.

All of those times I chose to not make excuses, like when we made $100,000 of products with the wrong ingredient that we were sent, and we threw every last jar away instead of saying “no one would know”… God taught me integrity.

All of those times I questioned if we should call it quits… and God told me to keep showing up even though it’s hard… God taught me faithfulness.

This whole thing has been upside down. I have always thought this was a business issue, but the issue was my unfinished business with God.

This was about my soul.

Will Brittany show up today and trust me even though it looks like it’s caving in? Will she continue to trust me beyond what she can see? Will she be ok if this fails?

The truth is, I wasn’t ok.

I wanted it to succeed into a legacy for my kids. But maybe, legacy is more than what we build outside of ourselves.

Maybe legacy is building character when we’re at rock bottom. Maybe legacy is what we teach our kids… like trusting the Lord no matter what. Maybe it’s simply showing up and saying “I don’t know what to do, but YOU do. So I’ll follow You.”

Maybe success is showing up, time and time again when no one would even know how hard it is. Maybe it’s fighting through tears to try one more day even though it seems hopeless.

Maybe it’s not about me at all.

I fear that fairytales have done us a great disservice in our most susceptible years of establishing relational what-nots.

Heroic but challenged prince flees his charmed kingdom life and escapes to foreign wood. Insert damaged but brilliant maiden, picking fruit while in hiding from her broken upbringing. Prince sees maiden. Maiden is promptly swept off her feet. Brief battle of swords with some irrelevant character for her hand and BOOM. Sunset ride on a braided horse and…

HAPPILY EVER AFTER, the end.

What’s the end?

Perfection, obviously.

I see no need to undress the intimacy of relational magic with… communication. Gross.

If I have to ask for price charming to do the dishes so I don’t punish him with resentment, because I’m overwhelmed and overstimulated, then clearly he doesn’t love me. After all, he should just know.

What’s comical in these dubious fairytales is that the only character who “just knows” is either a crystal ball, magic mirror or some unethical spin of divination from an evil temptress. Isn’t it weird that we want to be loved by the prince but known like the witch?

Fairytales have surely sucked the marrow from the bones of true relationship. To be known requires talking. We open up, we flush out our thoughts and we’re received or rejected.

I suppose for fear of rejection we often return to the desire to be seen as through that magic mirror. Something about this charmed prince from his perfection has us wishing to romanticize the part that the love story isn’t really about.

We see the sweep, the kiss and the ride off into the fiery sunset where nary a single chemtrail exists. But for some weird reason, they never show us Cinderella arguing with Prince Charming over who last vacuumed the floors or why  he forgot to make a Valentine’s Day reservation before every good restaurant in the city booked out.

It’s like they don’t want us to know that every main character still has unswept rugs.

So here we are, another holiday rolls around and for some reason we anticipate our perfect daydream lover is going to simply know exactly what we want to see under the figurative twinkling tree.

But, I would like to petition justice for Prince Charming’s.

I bet if they knew our unspoken expectations, a fat percentage of them would put the effort in to show up to meet us in that way.

Because, if they really love you, they’ll read your mind.

No, wait… they’ll hear you.

Isn’t that more romantic than telepathy? There’s something so vulnerable about saying “it would mean a lot to me if you decorated for my birthday” instead of waiting days in advance to preemptively start a fight over never feeling valued or appreciated. Not for nothing… if you expect them to let you down, they probably don’t know what you want.

And isn’t that sort of unfair playing ground?

Sure, you’d probably “just know what they would want”. But not in every situation, just the ones you happen to be more sensitive to because of the forward in your fairytale that made you that way.

Everyone’s metaphorical forward is different. You’ll be hard pressed to find one that’s exactly like yours so it’s better to enter your ride-off-into-the-sunset-era without the expectation of having parallel plots.

You know how in rom-coms there seems to be this unexpected love story? It’s like this:

Artistic but quietly inquisitive girl who looks at life through a glass-half-empty lens meets boy who exists to challenge every moral clause she thinks she’s above. Boy sees girl. Girl lets down walls. And under the sparkling disco ball on the freshly waxed basketball floor, they fall in love.

It’s just so much better than fairytale stuff. So what, Prince Charming sees pretty girl and threatens to run away from his fortune. Whatever.

What I think is far more romanced is the story of two broken people, pushing past all of their stuff to find the best in each other and overlook the worst until the worst starts flowering again with gardens. You know what makes the rom-com superior to the fairytale? The rom com is about the communication between the characters that draws them together, not about the evil trying to separate them.

There’s something about the humanity of them. The chatter, the banter, the pressing and frustrating, the way they slam against each others weaknesses until they strengthen… it’s the boom box over the shoulder underneath the bedroom window. It’s so much better than perfection.

It’s messy but it’s real.

It’s people realizing they’re better together because with the other character, all of their sharp edges seem to soften.

No crystal balls, no magic mirrors.

Just two people, choosing to show up today better than the day before. Because they see the person in front of them, and everywhere there’s a scar, they see a prism.

The fairytale lie says “choose me and I’ll be known”.

The rom-com says “I’m known, and I’m still chosen”.

Magic is not intimacy.

But intimacy can make magic.

**This message is sensitive towards abÜse dynamics and should not be considered in unhealthy power dynamics. This message is intended where love is present but partners are missing each other because of a lack of communication. If this is not your circumstance, my heart goes out to you.

Help is out there.

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This is a single serving to cure that sweet tooth, but it can easily be doubled OR turned into a batch! Choose the juiciest berries in season for the best flavor!

Ingredients:
• 3 tbsp organic heavy cream
• 1/2 tbsp powdered sugar (confectioners sugar)
• 1 tsp vanilla bean paste (my FAV is Vanilla Bean Project!)
• Small pinch of good flaky salt (not the same as table salt, don’t skip this! A fleur de sel is best)
• 1-2 cups of fresh washed and dried berries in season (strawberries and blueberries are the clear winners in my book).

Directions:

Refrigerate your metal or ceramic bowl along with a metal whisk for about 15 minutes before starting. This will help your crème stiffen.

Add your heavy cream, powdered sugar, vanilla bean paste, and flaky salt to the chilled bowl. Whisk by hand in figure 8 motions until the cream thickens. You’re going for a thickened cream, not whipped cream with peaks. The texture should feel almost like melted vanilla ice cream… you want that super silky and luxe in-mouth-feel.

Once thickened, add your sliced berries and gently toss them into the crème.

Top with any extra textural pleasures like…
• Raw pumpkin seeds
• Chocolate chips or chocolate shavings
• Fresh mint
… if desired and enjoy immediately!

If you’d like to prep it advance, keep the crème separate and refrigerated until you’re ready to serve. Once ready, toss your berries in your SSVB crème and serve!

I truly believe the worst part of a recipe is having to read about someone’s great grandmother’s next-door neighbor before you even get to the ingredients. I promised I wouldn’t do that. This is the most annoying thing you’ll ever read from a recipe I write. You’re welcome!

Ingredients:

• 8 pasture raised eggs
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 bag shredded hash browns (16 oz)
• 3–4 oz extra sharp cheddar cheese
• 8 chicken or turkey sausage links (I like Jones brand)
• Fresh chives
• Seasonings to taste (I used salt, pepper, nutritional yeast, onion powder)

Preheat your oven to 350°.

In a separate bowl, mix:

• 1 bag shredded frozen hash browns
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• Seasonings to taste

Evenly distribute the hash browns into a greased 12-count muffin tin. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until the hash browns are no longer frozen.

Once thawed and partially cooked, use the back of a spoon or a 1/4 measuring cup and gently press the hash browns down into each muffin tin so they come slightly up the sides.

At this point, you can:

• Bake another 15 minutes for crispier hash browns
OR
• Move onto the next step if you prefer them softer.

In a separate bowl, whisk together:

• 8 pasture raised eggs
• 3–4 oz extra sharp cheddar cheese grated
• Fresh chopped chives
• Seasonings to taste

Optional:

• Add 1/4 cup heavy cream for richer eggs
• Blend 1/2 cup cottage cheese into the egg mixture for extra protein

Cook your chicken or turkey sausage separately, chop it up, and evenly distribute it into each muffin tin.

Pour the egg mixture evenly over each muffin cup, filling them almost to the top.

Bake at 350° for about 17 minutes.

Check the center with a skewer or knife, you just want the eggs set in the middle. Cooking too long will affect the texture upon reheating which we want to avoid! Depending on your oven, you may need another couple of minutes.

Let cool, then store in an airtight container in the fridge.

To reheat:

• Best option: toaster oven, air fryer, or convection oven until warmed through
• Quick option: microwave (but the eggs can become spongy, not preferred but works in a pinch!)

Macros Per Breakfast Nest:

-185 calories
-13g protein
-6g carbs
-11g fat