Setting the Table: Vol. 18
Five years, a breath between & where expectations come from...
Every Thursday, I'm setting the table for your weekend…a little collection of reads, recipes, fun things, and whatever else caught my eye this week. It's the moment before the chaos when you get to decide what kind of experience you want. NOT a to-do list…just really sweet possibilities.
I made myself a cup of coffee this week and actually sat still enough to drink it while it was hot. It was that moment I knew things were shifting.
The catering gigs wrapped up, and I’ve got a nice little quiet stretch before the next round of events, and I’ve just been...existing in our apartment at a normal pace...catching up on sleep, cooking things I actually want to eat, watching Millie be eleven in real time and feeling something that feels like overwhelm…but in the very best way.
She graduates from fifth grade in a few weeks. I can’t fully explain what that means to me, but you know I’ll try to anyway.
Millie started kindergarten in New York City in September 2020. The world was in the middle of pandemic-everything, school was hybrid, and she went some days and stayed home other days, and her teacher was a little square on a screen, and she was five years old, and she just...kept going. I think about that time a lot…the absolute audacity of being five in 2020 in New York City, showing up in a mask with a backpack, not fully understanding any of it, and just freakin’ going.
In the five years since, her dad and I separated and then divorced. We each moved twice. We both got remarried within the same year, and Millie’s parental unit grew from two to four almost overnight. Two households, two rooms to keep track of her things, two very different versions of Sunday morning. She navigated all of that while she was eight, nine, ten years old.
She struggled to read for longer than was comfortable...it didn’t really click until third or fourth grade...and I watched her working twice as hard as everyone else for half the result and I could see it wearing on her in ways she had no words for (or would never speak them out loud to us). Then came her ADHD/Anxiety diagnosis in third grade…followed by an IEP where things started to click and her school actually showed up in ways I wasn’t sure they would. When the support finally matched how her brain was actually working, she began to take off.
In the margins of all of that: ballet, baking classes, photography class. Two school musicals...Matilda and then Charlie Brown. Girls on the Run. Broadway Dance Center every year. Therapy. A talent show with her best friend this spring. Her first little boyfriend. She grew approximately two feet and somehow, in the middle of all of it, became a whole person.
She is so sharp. One of the funniest people I know, which I am taking at least partial credit for. She is silly and goofy (that’s probably what I should actually take credit for) and fierce and stubborn in exactly the right proportions for everything she’s been asked to handle. She has come through situations that would level most adults and has emerged with more curiosity and resilience than I had at twice her age.
Middle school isn’t ready…I am genuinely not ready.
Millie, however, is SO ready it’s almost annoying.
Come set the table for the weekend…ours will likely be covered with mood boards and shopping lists as she puts together her “LEWK” for graduation day.
THE GRAZING PLATE
(quick bites, short reads, things to nibble on)
A Sunday Reset for Feral Women Who... from The City Apartment Diaries
"Feral women who" is the entire energy, and you KNOW if you KNOW. Read this one on Sunday morning before the week starts its very specific nonsense.Is Community the Newest Side Hustle? from Still Unlearning
I've touched on this before, and I'll keep touching on it: the way we've turned every human need into a product worth monetizing deserves more scrutiny than it gets. Good questions being asked here.Momentum Loop Theory: Step Into a Loop from Midnight Crumbs
Hannah again, because she keeps writing exactly the thing I need right when I need it. Small actions build loops…loops build momentum, and I have been leaning into this and my own momentum loop all week.
THE UTENSILS
(tools, recipes or things that help you do the work)
The Fridge Check-In
I heard from so many of you after The Fridge is Lying to You. Your messes, your guilt, your photos, your stories...I loved every single one and I want to keep it going. We are in this together and knowing that is genuinely what makes it better.
The one-minute audit: did you do it? Did you open the door, look at what was actually in there, and throw something away...even just the guilt? Because that is the whole exercise…it’s not to have a totally cleaned fridge (although YAY if you got that far!)…it’s the throwing away of the guilt that we are here for. If you threw that away this week, you did the work.
Tell me how it went. I mean it, I really want to know.
THE VESSELS
(what holds us, what gives our chaos shape and space)
Table for One: New York City from A Tiny Bit of Advice
I credit New York City with bringing me back to myself. The gumption, the independence, the most ALIVE energy of a city that has absolutely no patience for nonsense and somehow also makes room for everything you are...I'm 7 years in, and I feel it more now than I did in year one. This piece put language to exactly that. Read it if NYC has ever done anything for you, or if you're still waiting for it to.Between Wanting, Uncertainty, and Possibility from Kindred Mothering
"I used to seek worthiness by doing, accumulating, and achieving. While I'm still human and deeply entrenched in this societal depiction of worth, I have chosen another way." That hit me square between the eyes, and I keep re-reading it this week.
THE GLASSWARE
(the bubbles, the refreshment, what quenches)
Have you listened to our playlist yet?
Millie and I have been singing it loudly and proudly all week and I would LOVE for you to join us. Save it and share it…sing it with someone, loudly. It has the BEST energy for these warm days and there is something very good for the nervous system about just opening your mouth and screaming along to Alanis in your kitchen. Trust me on this one…get loud.
THE NAPKIN
(for wiping away the week’s mess, the reset)
Expectations from a Wounded Place
Okay, so this is more of a thought-share…a thing my therapist said this week that I wanted to put in your hands.
I have very high expectations...of myself, of the people I love, of the people I’m around. Most of the time, the people in my life have no idea these expectations exist, let alone that I’m quietly keeping score when they don’t meet them. Virgo red flag? Yes, maybe. I’m working on it.
But what really caught me by the ponytail this week...my therapist said: “Expectations aren’t necessarily bad or good. It’s where they’re coming from that often tells you more. Are your expectations coming from a wounded place, or are they coming from a healed place?”
I literally laughed out loud and raised my hand. My expectations, especially the ones I hold for myself, are coming from a very wounded place…they have been since the wounds took shape. I have held myself to a standard that a hurt version of me set a long time ago and called it discipline.
So in the same motion as throwing the guilt out of the fridge, I’m doing a one-minute audit on my expectations. Which ones only ever produce disappointment? Which ones were set by a version of me who needed to earn everything to feel like she was worth anything?
Those I’m setting down…and you know? I already feel lighter…less anxious and less angry. Baby steps, I guess?
Two audits this week: the fridge & the expectations. Both asking the same question underneath: what are you holding onto that’s only making things heavier? What can you actually set down right now without waiting for the perfect moment to do it?
You don’t have to understand it all…or resolve it with a bow tied neatly on top…you just have to notice what’s there...and give yourself permission to let some of it go.
THE DESSERT PLATE
(the sweet stuff, pure joy, no justification needed)
The Big List of Whimsical Artists by Lauren Sands
Whimsy is the word of the moment, and this piece dives into it, head first.
“When we follow a whim, we’re being playful with our personal curriculum. It’s not about learning the right thing in the right way. There is something loose and organic about chasing whims that leaves room for magic. Rigor and fun can coexist when you take your curiosity seriously. It just needs time and air.” Being deeply curious is the most fundamentally whimsical act there is.
What whim are you following this week?
Happy Thursday, turkeys! Be kind to yourselves out there!
xo, Jess
Setting the Table drops every Thursday. This Sunday on The Steady Table: Your Gut Already Knows...what a divorce, a 33-pound weight loss & a whole lot of kimchi taught me. I'll meet you there. ♥
Totally did some cleaning out after that last post!! 🙌🏼🩷