Writing about life experiences is a serious act. Sometimes I feel called to write with the same urgency as a kid dishing up at fast Sunday dinner. I often dismiss this almost primal hunger for words, letting them slip past me like glimmering beads of water on a stream. Not that they’re ever completely gone, the important ideas always circulate back but never in the same way. That is to say I don't always respect the original thoughts, the first draft that feels too raw and personal to even acknowledge. Treating this - writing that is - like an optional act has meant certain ideas insist on coming back… making me unfocused in school and conjuring me out of bed to find the nearest piece of paper. Words haven’t always felt this natural and pertinent, writing was for school, reading was how I should have been spending free time. Once free and exciting, writing somehow became uncomfortable and forced. I was unprepared for this sudden ravenous need of flowing words, a sense of creativity I thought was lost in the young girl who lit up from writing short stories and taping beloved quotes around her room. There was a long period of my life from middle school until, well, now where I thought this part of me was gone. I stopped writing because I started believing I didn't know how to... something so natural became distant and life was hard enough that it didn’t feel possible to dig through the ashes and find an ember of that younger more carefree fire.

The thought of growing up used to terrify and even disgust me. Even while I was still a child I felt a deep fear that everything would change and I would lose all the comforts and joys of that time; the thought of becoming a teenager made me sick. And for most of my adolescence this feeling remained, transformed into nostalgia for the past, fear of the future, and of risks. Everything made me anxious and I used simple comforts as a shield against my changing world. I’d watch Dumbo and the sound of music until I knew the scripts by heart, asked for a second and third hug from my mom every night, and baked my way through troubles with family and school. Maybe the only way I got through and kept some of my softness was by protecting myself but it also made me lose some of my bravery and confidence. The fierceness of a curious child was buried deep under fear and shame that I wasn’t even aware of but which held on like a leech, draining my spark. These past 2 years, by bringing back risk and experimentation into my life through different schools, jobs, and cities, that ember of inspiration is burning strong and I feel more connected to younger parts of myself than ever before.

All these years, Sylvia Plath’s fig tree analogy has deeply resonated with me but I didn't realise it was sneakily holding me back from just taking action and living my life. I’m trying to let go of this belief that certain versions of myself are lost and am replacing it with the possibility that everything is in constant motion and what’s important will always circle back. So now I can just exist where I am without thinking another part of myself is rotting on some other tree from an entirely different planet. This year I've been eating all the figs I can get my hands on - literally.

Somehow this all connects back to my deep love for bread. I often made bread with my grandma as a kid and when moving to France bakeries were symbolic of a trivial time - after school goûter with mom, tearing into a bag of warm pain au chocolats on a train to some old castle in Paris one. I've always known it was something important and worthwhile but even after basing school projects around cookies and graduating early to study bread, there was a lingering belief that I had a reason to be ashamed of this beauty I saw and needed to compensate for it with another degree. However, during my short time at university in the Netherlands I couldn't let go of this need for bread in my life, and I focused a lot on what I was giving up rather than where I was. But to live an experience, or in Sylvia Plath’s terms, eat a fig while obsessing over all the other figs you could have chosen - their colour, ripeness, whether it was organically grown (lol) is actively disrespectful to the fruit you are currently eating, one that was meant for you the moment it was planted. Sylvia, I get it but I disagree.

With this new experience at the national institute of boulangerie, I'm practicing gratitude and presence to show my younger self that the life she always dreamed of is attainable even if it requires a bit of controversy. That girl was layering 5 floral patterns in one outfit - she already knew a predictable life would be a little too boring. I’m proud of how far I’ve come because now I don't see adulthood as unbearable but as a chance to honour all the parts of myself in living exactly the way I want. Isn’t it wonderful to have the agency to treat yourself the way you dreamed when you were a kid? If that means my days are spent rolling dough until my joints stop working, then what a beautiful way to pass time - bringing life into the world from my very own hands. Besides, it can't be a coincidence that all my best writing has been about bread, right?

What inspired me to write about childhood was Kitty Tait's book Breadsong which I started in high school before any prestigious culinary schools, stages, or understanding of that world. Her book was a testimony of another young life changed by bread and it became a sort of guiding lightbulb of the possibility for this to become a real career, a hope I tucked into my heart until I had the chance to explore it on a larger scale.

At the end Kitty writes,

“I look back at that 14-year old who could not make any sense of why she existed and I want to show her where she is now”

and wow I felt that in my soul. Now, whenever I start to question where I am too much I think of myself at these different ages and I invite them all into my warm home for tea and toast. We all know things the others don’t yet and I look at that 5 year old girl, hands carelessly covered in butter. We both just smile and laugh.

So I guess this blog is about bread, but in writing about bread I’m also writing about identity, courage, nourishment and love.

All of these are intertwined and don’t exist without one another.

That last sentence remind you of anyone else?

Beatrix Furr