Foods That Heal

a restoration of heart, spirit, belly

Last week was Thanksgiving. My food assignments (mashed potatoes, gravy, pumpkin cheesecake, and a cocktail) went over well with minimal amounts of stress. My family managed to sit around the table, all on good behavior, and be present with each other. We ate in merriment and reflected on the past year, musing over what we were most thankful for.

While it wasn’t difficult for me to conjure up gratitudes, I had to wade through the murkiness of grief to get there. As some of you may remember, and no shame if you don’t, the only man I’d ever fallen in love with ended our relationship out of the blue back in March. My heart was shredded. It was an all-consuming pain I didn’t know I could survive. The fallout was awful. I never saw him again and probably never will.

As I look back on what has been one of the hardest years of my life, I see flashes of…food. Lots and lots of food. Maybe it’s the leftover turkey talking, but my journey toward being okay again was marked by so much food. My path of healing, the return to myself, was paved with the stuff.

So in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I’d like to reflect on the foods that healed me the most in 2025.

1. Pitchers of Domestic Beer - It was just a few weeks after March 7th (devastation day) when my friend AB was in town. Grief had me in a death grip. It was all I could see in front of me. The troops rallied for AB because she’s the kind of person that folks will march into battle for. I was able to rally that day even though all I wanted was to curl up in bed with my sadness.

   There were maybe 15 of us crowded around three pushed-together tables. We took up half the dining room at Manuel’s Tavern. Laughter. Friendship. My tribe. Pitcher after pitcher after pitcher of beer arrived because AB is also the kind of person that folks will accidentally blackout for. Without seeing how, my glass magically kept getting filled. As she made the rounds, AB eventually landed in a chair next to me.

   After a few superficial catch-up questions she asked about “the boy.” I felt it coming. I pinched my leg to keep from crying as I told her he ended things and that it’s been really painful. I gave enough details to satisfy the curiosity but not completely drag down the mood. That’s when she looked me in the eye and said, “damn…sucks to be that guy.”

   Simple. Clean. She stated it like fact. I’ll never understand why that sentence struck me so hard but it did. Lots of people were telling me lots of things in those early day but for some reason I grabbed onto AB’s words like a life raft.

   I think it’s mostly due to the fact that AB is immaculate with her word. She means what she says and she says what she means. She is a champion of folks only when they earn it. Being in her favor, being her friend, means something. So what she told me wasn’t fluff or pity or soft words. She didn’t have to say it. In her eyes it was just a fact. It sucks to be that guy. And with that one sentence I found the fortitude to hold my chin up just a little higher. It was my first quiver of self-esteem in a post-break up apocalypse.

   In any case, it was a good thing I lived in walking distance from Manuel’s Tavern.

2. Mediterranean Food - To be honest, I don’t remember what exactly was on my plate. I remember going out onto the street to find the UberEats driver. Living on a busy street, it was always easier go out and meet delivery folks than to wait for them to find me. I remember being on the phone with JS while I looked around for this unfortunate driver. But I cannot for the life of me remember what was actually in that delivery order.

   JS has a tradition with her long-distance friends. When it’s their birthday, she will thoughtfully select a meal to be sent to their house. She will then order food for herself. She and her friend will then sit and eat this meal over FaceTime.

   It was my birthday. I had been navigating the perilous waters of grief for over a week. The last thing I wanted was a birthday celebration. But sitting in my pajamas while someone sent me food long-distance and then chatting over FaceTime felt like something I could manage.

   While I can’t remember what the meal was, I remember it was stupid delicious. JS and I talked for hours. We went deep, as we always seem to do, while our conversation meanders around every and any topic. Interestingly enough, we talk a lot about friendship. We talk about it as a theoretical, practical, spiritual, emotional, social, cultural institution. JS takes friendship very seriously. She’s good at it too, demonstrating in concrete ways time and again how important her friends are to her. There’s something romantic in her approach to friendship.

   In those early days of grief, her serious friendship was a life line. She would listen to 20-minute long voice memos of my aching sadness. We would hash out how messy relationships are and how hard it is to be a feeling person. She listened to me say the same things over and over about a man I would never see again. We FaceTimed. She saw me. She buoyed me or anchored me (depending on what I needed that day). She tended to my spirit. Her friendships was essential to my survival.

   The one thing I do remember was a mind-blowing baklava.

3. Very Lightly Dressed Salad - When I say “very lightly dressed salad,” I mean laughably light. It’s a whisper of a memory of a vague notion of dressing. Each leaf of green should merely carry the suggestion of caesar. At least, this is according to my friend and former roommate EW. Salad not withstanding, she is an amazing cook and a world-class host.

   Sometime last spring she started hosting casual weeknight dinners with our small crew of friends. I’m probably the one to blame for it since I coerced mentioned how desperate I was for sweet potato gnocchi. While they weren’t weekly, these dinners started to become a regular occurrence. We would gather up at the end of the day, EW would cook obscene amounts of food, folks would bring the occasional side dish, and I’d usually play bartender.

   We would laugh and talk about fitness. The atmosphere was always light. These dinners came to have a rotating cast of characters depending on who was free. We eventually called ourselves The Gnocchi Folkies, because of course.

   After a few months of these gatherings, it dawned on me just how restorative they’ve been. There’s something profound yet simple about surrounding yourself with people who know you and like you. This crew in particular knows me in the coaching and fitness space - areas where I’m most confident and capable. Areas of self-esteem for me.

   Good people, good food, and very lightly dressed salad. I always leave those dinners full, in every sense of the word.

4. Frozen Pizza - I have always had a tricky relationship with the male half of our species. Anything could have caused it, I suppose. It could’ve been that icy relationship I had with my dad. It could’ve been the boys of McKinley Classical Junior Academy calling me faggot every day in middle school. It could’ve been my lack of involvement in sports growing up and the subsequent lack of connection as a result. It could’ve been entering the gay dating pool as an adult and finding gobs of pain and heaps of rejection. In any case, Patrick + Men = Eeeek!

   So I needed a little mental preparation before embarking on BD’s bachelor weekend in Chicago. Five men, one Airbnb, one weekend. No women. Three of the other four were already friends of mine. The other was the best man who I hadn’t met yet. 48 hours in the Windy City with nothing but boy energy, my own included. In spite of knowing 80% of the crew for years, I still had mild reactionary jitters.

   That trepidation turned into a weekend of river tours, a hole-in-the-wall bar underneath a subway station, playing pool for hours, a rooftop bar in the rain, and the spiciest Korean hot pot in the history of humanity. There was belly laughing, stupid running jokes, appropriately aggressive teasing, and matching shirts. As I stood in the kitchen of our Airbnb in the wee hours of the morning, a little drunk and a little high, shoveling piping hot Aldi pizza down my gullet, I thought, “boys aren’t so bad.”

   In fact, these were good men. They contained the best of masculinity. And they were my friends. This realization, spurred on by scalding hot cheese-like product, brought comfort to the brokenhearted boy and the brokenhearted man in me.

5. Mushroom Tea - Teeccino is neither coffee nor tea. It’s made of mushrooms and it is magic (think more porcini, less psilocybin). It gives the satisfaction of coffee without the caffeine or heartburn. And a few nights a week my best friend/roommate and I make a pot of it.

   It’s quickly become ritual in our house. We browse through the many flavors we have in our collection (amaretto and maple pecan being fan favorites) and brew a two-cup French Press. We deliberate what flavor of creamer would pair best and then settle into our respective couch positions.

   Then comes the talking. JA and I have been best friends since high school. I met her a literal **gulp** 20 years ago. So we have a lot of history to mine through. We talk about anything and everything. For hours. Then one of us will say that it’s time for bed and we make our way to our rooms bleary-eyed.

   In a twisted fate, JA was/is going through her own devastating heartbreak. It’s one of the reasons we moved in together over the summer. Her life had been detonated by her partner’s decision. So we found ourselves in our mid-to-late 30’s, newly single, newly unearthed, newly raw, and grabbed for each other. Soon after, we found Teeccino. And it has been the single most powerful healing mechanism in my year of sadness.

   Night after night when we sip on our caffeine free, acid free, coffee free, tea free, flavored mushroom drink we talk. We talk and we heal. It’s been a returning to self. A reminder of who I am. Someone acknowledging the innermost me, allows me to then do it for myself. Soulmates have a way of doing that. And after a few months of living together and shrooming together, I have found my footing once again. All from boiled lion’s mane and chicory. So simple.