February was a cruel month. 

The war in Ukraine started as I watched and grieved and cooked and ate and sat in silence with anger and sadness with my friends, unable to fully capture the powerlessness they felt watching their country burn, and their families safety remain at risk.

But May… A time for spring, renewal, change, and new beginnings, brought back more tears in my eyes and anger and silence and shock and denial and all of the waves of grief you feel when you find out someone you know and spent so much time with has died.

It seems like every time I plan to write a newsletter, explaining my lack of commitment to this space and updates on events and plans that seem to fall a part, life happens, and my silly little newsletter feels meaningless compared to the magnitude of reality, so I give myself room to feel, to recover. Moving slow is my new norm, and it feels good to be at peace with it.

I’ve been wanting to write about change for some time, now. About staying open, and finding what grounds you.

Now all I can think about is learning how to keep your heart tender and soft. About forgiveness, empathy. About friendship and the healing powers it holds, and how we don’t put enough emphasis on this important relationship.

Friendship is detrimental to our quality of life.

If you follow me on Instagram you know my friends and I lost someone close. 

To those of you who have gone through the death of a loved one with so much life ahead of them (or behind them), I feel your pain. 

I’ve lost a lot of people in my life, but this is the first that seems difficult to intellectualize as a way to cope.

Ella passed away on Monday, May 2nd.

It rained lightly on the day of her passing, and it rained lightly the day my friends and I bought 4 vases for each of us to fill evenly with 26 white roses to bring to her memorial the following day. 

On the day of her funeral, it rained hard, as if Mother Earth was mourning the loss of someone undeserving of this fate.

As my friends and I toasted to Ella’s life and ate at her favorite sushi restaurant surrounded by her family, I couldn’t help but think how grateful I was to hold my friends hands and cry together through this ordeal. To not be alone, and witness the support and love extended to not only each other, but to her family.

I wouldn’t wish this experience on anyone in the world. And yet, I know this won’t be the last time we feel pain this deeply. I was never afraid of death, but this brought the beauty of life and inevitability of mortality to light.

My heart continues to break for my friend, but my heart is completely broken knowing her own mother was unable to attend her daughter’s funeral, because she wasn’t granted a visa to leave Ukraine and enter the US. Not even in a time like this.

Thank you to my friends who didn’t know Ella but still donated to her memorial fund.

Thank you to my friends and family who did meet her, and shared their condolences and love. 

In this newsletter, I would like to share borscht recipe Ella has made and shared on several occassions.

She was a great cook who prepared traditional Ukrainian meals. But borscht is something that always felt comforting and familiar enough for me share. Borscht, a traditional Ukrainian meal, is a symbol of unity and family.

I’ve known her for two years now, and and my friends and I all spent many many moments huddled over a table with her, eating together on random days, shopping for food, hanging out on the couch, on my fire escape, in the park, the beach. The type of mundane and intimate things you crave to share with people, but take for granted.

Love Through Borscht

If you’ve never tried it, borscht is a deep red coloured soup with cabbage, beets, potatoes, carrots, onion and garlic, and sometimes beans. It can be vegan, vegetarian; with beef, pork or even chicken, then served with sour cream and dill.

Ingredients:

• Beets

• Cabbage

• Potatoes

• Carrots

• Onion

• Garlic

• Dill

• Tomato paste

• Vinegar and sugar

• Bay leaves

• Water or broth

• Salt and pepper

Directions:

• Prep veggies: You want to start with cabbage first because it takes the longest time to cook. While cabbage is cooking, you can prep other veggies for borscht.

• Cook cabbage in broth with bay leaves and peppercorns for 20 minutes after bringing to a boil. Chop beets, potatoes, carrots and onion in the meanwhile.

• Saute onion and carrots in a bit of olive oil until translucent, about 5 minutes. This makes onion flavorful making entire borscht recipe more delicious. Do not skip.

• Then add beets and a bit more oil, cook for another 5 minutes.

• Transfer sauteed veggies to the pot along with potatoes, tomato paste and salt. Cook covered for 20 minutes. In the meantime, prep garlic, dill and other seasonings.

• Season borscht with vinegar, garlic, sugar and pepper. Stir, turn off heat and let borscht soup stand for 10 minutes covered to allow flavors to “marry” each other. Add dill and your borscht recipe is ready to serve.

Refrigerate borscht in a large pot you cooked it in for up to 5 days. Reheat by simmering on low in small pot only amount you are planning to consume. Freeze in an airtight glass container for up to 3 months. Then thaw on a counter overnight and reheat.

I end this newsletter with the hopes that you hold your people close. I hope you show vulnerability and allow yourself to feel vulnerable to the people you love and trust. I hope you find yourself surrounded by people who make you feel safe. I hope you know when not to be strong.

“The only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are- not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving— and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you…”

- Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

Talk to you soon,

Teresa