No Asterisk
On a single word that held a grief I didn't expect, the apology I handed Ruth Reichl & the introduction I owe myself...
There’s something to be said for going somewhere alone… the kind of quiet courage that pushes you past the anxiety and the what-ifs of going to an event solo. Especially when that room may or may not be filled with the greats of your industry…you walk through the door, unknown and unacknowledged by everyone except the ticket-taker. You dare to purposefully keep your phone in your bag even when every instinct says to reach for it. You pull your shoulders back and chin up while you look around to get your bearings.
Last Thursday, at a book event with Kitchen Arts & Letters (a New York institution in the independent bookstore world), I attended an intimate panel conversation with some of the most respected voices in food. I got there to find almost every seat filled, except a few scattered ones right smack in the middle of the front row. I took the one by the aisle, center-stage, with two women buzzing with excitement to my right. They were dressed in that sassy, creative, easy, expressive style that older New York women seem to come by so naturally, as if they’ve always known exactly who they are. I looked around the room silently, and I watched these ladies beside me gab and giggle on. I noticed they had wine, got up to grab myself one, sat back down, and then after another beat…I braved up, leaned over, and asked if they had been to events like this before.
Ten minutes later, one of them had my phone number and a loose plan to grab dinner soon. She lives one street over from me on the Upper West Side…who knows, I’ve probably walked past her a hundred times.
This is the version of me I’m most proud of…the one that’s open, present, unguarded enough to talk to literally anyone, finding some common ground along the way. I love this woman who puts her phone away and smiles at people and means it. She showed up at that moment…and then the panel ended.
I walked up to Ruth Reichl, which felt as surreal as it sounds. Ruth Reichl, whose memoir Comfort Me with Apples walked me through my thirties and felt like someone had finally dared me to dream bigger than what I thought I was capable of…who understood the hunger inside of me…the hunger not just for food but for a life organized around it, the hunger to step out from whatever was expected and into whatever was true. I shook her hand, and I shook moderator Julia Moskin’s (of the NY Times) hand. I said thank you, this was wonderful, so glad to meet you to both of them. And then I turned back to Ruth and told her how much of a fan of her writing I am, that it had genuinely changed something in me, and had given me permission. She asked what I was doing now.
And I heard myself say: I’m a private chef. And then, immediately…before she could even respond…before she had a chance to form a single thought about what that meant…I started explaining, excusing. Oh, I was a restaurant chef for a few years, but I had to step back because my daughter hated the hours, so for now I’m doing private work until she’s a little older, and then hopefully I’ll get back to that side of things.
That was the sentence I handed to Ruth Reichl.
Draped embarrassingly in justification and temporariness…quietly apologetic “for now” and “until” and “hopefully.” I scanned her face while I said it, looking for…I don’t know what exactly…validation, maybe? Or at the very least, the absence of disappointment. I walked away feeling deflated in a way I didn’t quite understand at the moment, and I haven’t been able to shake that feeling since.
My therapist asked me recently if I felt like I was being my authentic self when I walk into rooms like that one. I answered immediately…yes, absolutely, explaining that, actually, more than in most contexts, because when no one knows me or has any preconceptions about who I am, I get to just be the version of myself I actually want to be.
And yet…I kept talking, and I started to unravel in mere moments.
Because the truth is…I realized…I don’t actually walk into those rooms as myself. I walk in as a version of myself I’ve already decided is most likely to be received well. I read the room first…assess the energy, the crowd, the vibe. I decide what parts to put out there and what to tuck away. I decide which version of Jess is most likely to be accepted, most liked, most…safe.
I perform…I present that version for however long the event lasts, and then I walk out…tired in ways I used to chalk up to introversion or a long work week, but in reality…it’s actually the exhaustion of holding a shape that isn’t quite yours for two hours straight.
Almost every time, I leave these events underwhelmed…a little disappointed. I used to think it was them…and yet…more recently, I’m realizing it’s actually me…it’s that the real meal didn’t show up.
When I look at my life and think about who I am…I start running through the list: chef, mother, wife, eldest daughter, sister, writer, creative. But my therapist asked me to strip away all the roles and things that I DO…what’s left? And that’s the part I’m struggling to put into words…I’m not entirely sure who it is on the other side of that list.
What do I know to be true…who am I?
I know she has big, expressive earrings that are non-negotiable…literally the closest thing she has to a signature. I know she can spend three hours at a farmers market and feel like no time has passed, or at a thrift store chasing the thrill of the find…a perfect peach, a vintage treasure outfit, a jar of something unusual she doesn’t have a plan for yet. These are some of the small, steady joys of her life.
Wait…she is me.
And me…well, I love sushi more than anyone should. I love the restraint of it, and love how much precision it takes to make something look that effortless. I love scary movies and have a soft spot for 80’s & 90’s cult classics. I have a long-standing relationship with Schitt’s Creek and FRIENDS…and truly crave those long one-on-one conversations that go past midnight and dream and scheme. I love to climb, to push my body beyond what I think’s possible…and to walk around the city with no plan, popping into stores and cafes and shops that draw me in. I love the ocean, its terrifying vastness and the way it holds and moves and shapes…the waves that can wash over my legs and feet, leeching the parts no longer needed. I love to travel and explore…from a yoga retreat in Oaxaca where I crawled into a hot cave…naked for a rebirth Temazcal ceremony or to San Francisco for a photography workshop, both times understanding what it felt like to be entirely and completely myself…and loving every moment. I have an absolute obsession with notebooks and stationery…the physical weight of a good one in my hands, the right pen that spills the perfect amount of ink to effortlessly glide across the page, the satisfaction of clicking a mechanical pencil. Even in the world of tech, I remain a steadfast handwritten girl. I loved to make collages as a kid and still feel the pull of it when I see a stack of magazines or even when I push and pull a mound of clay between my fingers on a pottery wheel, something I’ve only done once but want to do more.
That girl…that woman…she’s in there…she’s been in there the whole time.
But that’s not who I introduced to Ruth Reichl last week.
I’ve been stuck on that “but” after I said I was a private chef…for days now.
The pause before the apology, the way I backed up before Ruth even had a chance to respond. I’m a private chef…but…
That singular word carried SO much weight in that moment. It harbored so much grief and shame I didn’t know was there…lurking underneath. I realize I do this constantly…any time someone asks what restaurant I’m cooking for, I can feel it before it even starts. In that shortness of breath, I feel my face get hot, my chest tighten and I try my best to convince my own heart and my mind…and the person in front of me…that stepping down as Head Chef of the restaurant wasn’t a step backwards, but it was a step I HAD to take to repair what was broken with my daughter after the divorce. I know the brutal reality was that I literally couldn’t afford not to step away at that time…emotionally, physically or financially.
And yet…even knowing that reality…living through that really hard time in my life, when I said that BUT…the one I said to myself and to Ruth…I am still very much so… embarrassed and ashamed that I had to leave, that somehow being a private chef feels like a step back, a demotion…like it wasn’t a real…or the job isn’t as hard or as challenging or as prestigious or as badass as being a restaurant chef. It’s in that moment, in those feelings, that I diminish the journey I went through…all the hardships, lonely and isolating moments, all the tears and the heartache, the losses and the abandonment, all the strength I found to pull myself up and out…to a better place, to a better…no, wait…to the most authentic and real version of me I had ever allowed to just BE.
I think I know where it comes from…I’ve watched women throughout my whole life talk about what they were good at in ways that made it sound like less than it was. I’m just a… For now I’m…I was supposed to, but…Hedging in advance, making room for someone to disagree by disagreeing first…don’t say the thing too loud, leave yourself a way out, take up space but not too much.
It’s the scarcity heirloom…the belief, passed quietly between generations like a good recipe, that there’s only so much room, so much permission, so much approval in circulation at any given time, and if you claim too much of it, it might get taken back. So you learn to claim less…pre-emptively…putting the asterisk…the disclaimer in that no one asked for.
I’ve been doing private chef work for almost two years, and I still describe it as a detour. Like a thing I’m “in between.” Like the real version of my career is still out there waiting for me to earn my way back to it…as if what I’m doing every morning at 7 am isn’t already exactly as real as it gets. I plan and source and prep and execute breakfast and lunch for 25 people each day…people who trust me with their nutrition, their family meals, the things that carry them through a given week. That IS the work. Private cheffing is exacting, intimate, demanding work that calls on everything I know. I didn’t default to it or take a step back…I’m cooking more creatively, more honestly, more intuitively than I ever did before…at home, in the restaurant or wherever I was…I am proud of the work I do. And yet, I’ve never introduced myself like that.
Women (including me) in my orbit use these disclaimers and excuses all the time…we find ways to make ourselves sound less impactful or less important. But these women are truly brilliant and generous and capable of more than they would admit, and yet…they move through rooms the way they’ve been told, in a hundred small ways over a long lifetime, that certainty is unbecoming. I’ve taken that mindset on my own…without even realizing it.
I don’t want to pass that down to Millie…I think about her watching me qualify myself out of my own story at dinner parties, watching me scan faces for something I should already know mid-sentence. I don’t want her to see me hand my confidence to the room for safekeeping before I’ve finished the thought. What’s she learning from those behaviors? That capability needs a disclaimer? That you lead with the apology so no one can be disappointed later? That if you hold the thing loosely enough, no one could ever accuse you of being too sure?
Ruth Reichl wrote about hunger and about the life you build when you stop apologizing for what you want. She told stories about stepping out from whatever is expected and into whatever is true. I read this in my thirties, and it cracked something open in me. Reading her, I felt like someone had handed me permission…and I took that permission…I stood in front of her and apologized for how I had used it.
The woman who walked into that room last week and took the middle seat in the front row…that was me. The one who started talking to the strangers beside her and ended up with a new friend and a phone number before the panel even began…the one that was open, present, curious, unguarded…that was me. She’s the one I want to and should have kept introducing. The woman who doesn’t have to read the room and decide how much of herself it’s safe to bring.
I don’t know if this is a scarcity problem or a worthiness problem or an inheritance that comes from being an eldest daughter watching the women she loves make themselves smaller first. Probably a combination of all three, threaded through each other in ways I’m still trying to unravel. What I know is that the “but” came along from somewhere…I wasn’t born with it.
Whenever it shows up, it doesn’t really matter at this point…what matters is that I realize I’ve been carrying it like armor…like a requirement. I don’t know exactly what I said to Ruth Reichl when I was scanning her face for the validation that I shouldn’t need…But I know what I wish I’d said…
I’m a chef here in New York, and I’m so glad to finally meet you. Thank you for sharing your story; it inspired me in more ways than I can say.
Just the thing, said cleanly, without the detour and the asterisk and the apology for having found what I do. She wrote the book…she’s written SO many books…and I’ve read them. I am where I am because of them and others…in this city, in this life, at this table.
That counts for something.
I think she would’ve been glad to know it…and to know me.