Latest / Still Standing: Stories of Resilience, Survival & Strength / Why Burning Dinner is a Radical Act of Self-Love | Still Standing
Transcript
- I just set fire to a perfectly good lasagna, and for the first time in years, I didn't feel like a failure. I felt like I was finally learning how to breathe. Let me take you back to last Tuesday evening. The sun was dipping below the horizon, painting the kitchen windows in shades of bruised purple and orange. I had decided, with a sudden surge of domestic ambition, that I was going to make a complex Italian bolognese from scratch. Not the jarred stuff. Not the quick weeknight pasta. A real, slow-simmered, twenty-page recipe involving soffritto, red wine reduction, and hours of standing over a stove stirring until my arms went numb. I wanted control. That’s usually what cooking feels like when everything else in life feels slippery. If I can’t control the sauce, maybe I can at least control the dinner plate. So, I followed the instructions. Step one: dice the onions until they weep. Step two: sweat the garlic without burning it. Step three: add the meat and brown it evenly. I was doing great. I felt capable. I felt like a person who knew what she was doing. And then, step four happened. Or rather, steps four through forty-seven happened while I got distracted by a text message, or maybe I just zoned out into that deep, quiet reverie where you’re thinking about whether you should call your mother or if you should just let the silence stretch a little longer. When I snapped back to reality, the smell hit me first. Not the rich, savory scent of tomatoes and herbs, but the sharp, acrid tang of charred sugar and blackened onion. I looked down. The bottom of the pot was a landscape of disaster. Black crust clinging to the stainless steel like a stubborn tattoo. I stood there, spoon in hand, staring at the ruin of my evening. My heart did that familiar little flutter—the one that says, 'You messed up. You always mess up. You’re not good enough.' But this time, something different happened. I didn’t yell. I didn’t throw the pan in the sink and scream into a towel. I just… stopped. We need to talk about why that moment stopped me. Why didn’t I just scrape it off and order pizza? Why did I stand there in the fading light, feeling this immense wave of shame? Because for so long, I’ve tied my worth to my competence. In my old life, in the corporate world where I spent a decade climbing ladders that turned out to be leaning against the wrong wall, mistakes were expensive. They were layoffs, lost clients, missed deadlines. They were quantifiable failures. Cooking was supposed to be the safe harbor, the place where I could prove I was still capable, still competent, still human. When the lasagna burned, it wasn’t just food. It was proof, in my mind, that I was losing my grip. That I was too scattered, too tired, too broken to manage the simple, sacred act of nourishing myself. But here is the truth I’m trying to learn, piece by piece: the burnt sauce doesn’t define my soul. It defines my attention span on a Tuesday night. And that’s okay. We live in a culture that demands perfection in every domain. We curate our feeds, we polish our resumes, we smooth over our edges so no one sees the cracks. We treat our lives like projects that must be completed on time and under budget. But resilience isn’t about never failing. It’s about what you do when the project falls apart. It’s about looking at the charred remains of your effort and asking, 'What did that cost me?' Did it cost me my dignity? Or did it cost me five dollars worth of groceries and ten minutes of pride? The answer is almost always the latter. But we rarely let ourselves believe it. So, I did something radical. I took a bite. I know, I know. Most people would have thrown the whole thing away. But I needed to know. Was it edible? Could I salvage it? I scraped off the top layer, tasted the middle. It was salty. It was bitter. It was definitely not what I intended. But it was also… food. It was warm. It was made with care, even if that care was misdirected. And in that bitterness, I found a strange kind of liberation. There is a bravery in trying a new recipe and accepting it tastes bad. There is a courage in saying, 'This didn’t work, and I am still worthy of love.' We are so afraid of being the person who fails publicly, or privately, or even to ourselves. We hide our attempts. We delete the photos of the collapsed soufflés and the dry cakes. We pretend we always have it together. But I think there is something deeply healing about admitting, out loud, 'I tried, and it was terrible.' It strips away the illusion of control. It reminds us that we are humans, not machines. Machines don’t burn lasagnas. Humans do. Humans get distracted. Humans get tired. Humans have bad days where the best meal they eat is cold toast eaten over the sink. And that is enough. That is more than enough. When we accept the bad outcome, we stop fighting reality. We stop wasting energy on regret and start using it for presence. We begin to see that the value of the attempt isn’t in the result, but in the willingness to try at all. Think about the other ways we punish ourselves for small failures. The email sent with a typo. The appointment missed because you fell asleep. The gift bought that misses the mark. We carry these tiny shames around like stones in our pockets. They weigh us down. They tell us we’re not good enough, not smart enough, not disciplined enough. But what if we treated them like the burnt lasagna? What if we said, 'Okay, that happened. It’s ugly. It’s messy. But I’m still here.' This is a small act of rebellion against the hustle culture that tells us we must always be optimizing, always improving, always winning. It’s a refusal to participate in the narrative that says your value is contingent on your performance. I remember an episode we talked about recently, where we discussed finding peace in those empty hours before the house wakes up. We talked about how the morning silence is a sanctuary. But today, I want to suggest that the kitchen chaos is also a sanctuary. It’s a place where we can practice being imperfect without consequence. Where we can fail safely. Where we can learn that the world doesn’t end if the dinner is bad. In fact, the world often continues, beautifully, even when our efforts fall short. The sun still sets. The birds still sing. Your partner still loves you, even if you serve them slightly charred pasta. Your friends still laugh with you, even if you trip over your own words. The connections that matter most aren’t built on perfection. They’re built on the shared recognition of our humanity. On the nod across the room that says, 'I see you struggling, and I’m still here.' Take a breath with me. Just one. Deep in. Hold it. Let it out. Feel your shoulders drop away from your ears. That ache you feel when things go wrong? It’s not a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of caring. You care about the food. You care about the impression you make. You care about showing up well. That’s beautiful. But it’s also exhausting. And sometimes, we need to give ourselves permission to care less about the outcome and more about the experience. To enjoy the chopping of the vegetables, even if the final dish is ruined. To enjoy the act of trying, even if the result is disappointing. This is how we rebuild trust with ourselves. Not by achieving perfect scores, but by forgiving our misses. By sitting with the discomfort of failure and realizing we can survive it. I used to think resilience was about bouncing back quickly. About fixing the mistake, cleaning the stain, erasing the evidence, and moving on as if nothing happened. Now I know better. Resilience is about staying with the mess. It’s about looking at the burnt pot and saying, 'This is part of my story now.' It’s about integrating the failure into your identity, not as a flaw, but as a feature. It’s proof that you are alive, that you are trying, that you are risking something. And risk is the price of admission for a life fully lived. A life without failure is a life without growth. It’s a life played safe, behind glass. And I don’t want to live behind glass. I want to live in the kitchen, flour on my nose, sauce on my shirt, laughing at the absurdity of it all. So, here is my invitation to you this week. Try something new. Cook a recipe you’ve never made. Write a poem you’re afraid to share. Send the email you’ve been drafting for days. Ask the question that makes your voice shake. And then, whatever happens, accept it. If it tastes bad, eat it anyway. If it sounds off, keep singing. If it fails, let it fail. Don’t rush to fix it. Don’t rush to apologize. Just sit in it. Let’s sit in that for a second. The freedom of letting things be imperfect is intoxicating. It opens doors you didn’t know were closed. It allows you to discover parts of yourself that only emerge when you’re not performing. You might find you’re funnier when you stumble. You might find you’re braver when you’re scared. You might find that the people who love you don’t care about the outcome at all. They just want to be there with you, in the messy, beautiful, chaotic middle of it all. We are not here to be perfect. We are here to be present. To show up, again and again, even when we’re tired, even when we’re unsure, even when the lasagna burns. Because showing up is the bravest thing of all. And every time you do, you are building a life that is yours. Not the version of you that everyone else wants, but the real, flawed, wonderful you. The one who burns dinner and laughs about it. The one who tries and fails and tries again. The one who is still standing, not despite the scars, but because of them. Thank you for being here. For listening. For showing up, exactly as you are. I’ll see you next time. Take care of yourselves. And if you burn dinner tonight, send me a picture. I promise I won’t judge. Maybe we’ll order pizza together.