Mango & Gnocchi EP 1
Mango & Gnocchi with Roshni Kavate and Rebecca Servoss
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
grief, food, postpartum, feeling, talk, people, cooking, work, life, mango, body, eat, sense, NICU, ancestral, deep, excited, podcast, stories, navigating

Rebecca: 
When you ask yourself “What is your grief craving?”, what is the food that zooms into your heart? For me it was gnocchi. It just came without a thought almost.

Roshni: 
Yeah, I cannot imagine anything but the sun ripened, still warm, juicy mango that you eat with your hands and your teeth and the juice is just dripping down your arm and you're like licking it with your tongue. That totally takes me back.

Roshni & Rebecca:  
You're listening to the Mango and Gnocchi Podcast. I'm Roshni, and I'm Rebecca. And we're asking the question, what is your grief craving? We are both nurses, grief experts, and avid home cooks. We’re the founders of Marigolde, a grief wellness platform rooted in food, culture and rituals.

Roshni:
We created the Mango and Gnocchi Podcast to highlight the power of our collective food stories. Stories that nurture us, bring us joy, and bring us out of our minds and into our hearts.

Roshni: 
Welcome, this is our first ever episode. We're so excited you're here. I'm here with my co-host, Rebecca. Hey, Rebecca. How's it going?

01:17
Hey, Roshni, it's great to be here. I'm so excited that we're finally bringing this podcast to life.

Roshni:
How are you feeling?

01:26
I'm feeling really excited. And just, I feel like some pathways are opening up to do what we've always been talking about, which is like giving people this platform to really explore food and storytelling, one of our favorite things that we've discovered through our work together. So I'm feeling really good about this.

Roshni:
Yeah, we talk a lot about our feelings and other people's feelings. And we talk a lot about eating and what to eat, and what we ate and what we're going to eat. So we figured we should just make a podcast about it and invite, you know, really wonderful people, and writers and activists, cooks, and ask them, you know, how are they navigating the world around them? All the ups and downs of life? Grief? Okay, so let's talk about Mango and Gnocchi. And what are you excited about?

02:23
I'm excited about so many things honestly, Roshni, but I think that the main thing that is really standing out to me is that we have the opportunity to hear so many different perspectives, and personal stories about navigating grief and navigating difficult times within the relationship of food, and cooking, and traditions. And I absolutely love listening to people's personal stories, and really seeing like, how they've digested their life experiences, and what wisdom they came away with. So I love that a lot of our guests are chefs, or people that are working with food professionally. Because I really feel like we're gonna have some exquisite perceptions from people on how their practices of cooking food or working with food, and even the foods of their lineages and the places that they live in, have really carried them through times of grief and times of huge transition. I'm curious, what are you most excited about for this podcast?

Roshni:
You know, I get butterflies every time we email somebody and say, will you be on the podcast? So for me, I think it's just opening up our world to speak to incredibly interesting people who are also so curious about the world and have so much to offer to us and our listeners. And I love that we're not just looking at grief from a very singular sort of loss of a loved one or a death of a loved one type of lens. This encompasses just being alive, being human, you know, little heartbreaks, the grief of capitalism, colonization. So I think not leaving anything untouched, and making space for all of it. And we're exploring how people make meaning through art, how they're cooking, how is it through gardening, through raising kids to taking care of elders. And like you said, weaving in that ancestral story. That, to me is so fascinating. And I feel like we're really touching and experiencing sort of the pulse of life. And it makes me very grateful that we can open ourselves up to magic each time.

Rebecca:
Yes, what a great way to express that, because it really is magic in the composition of our conversations with people, and their willingness and vulnerability to share their stories is really what creates that magic. And I want to touch on the fact that this isn't a podcast for like, “I am someone who's got it all figured out”, and “I figured out how to navigate my grief” —and “I'm really good at cooking”. You know, I don't want that element of perfectionism here… 

Roshni:
What, really? I don’t get an A?

Rebecca:
You get an A! No, but, I was thinking about, you know, the catalyst for my interest in this topic really comes from my imperfection, and those moments of maybe not doing the “right thing” as I navigated grief. And I think back to one specific time in my life, when I had my second child, and my immediate postpartum experience. I noticed that, like, my cravings were really off and kind of distorted. Like, I was craving things that would kind of tip me out of balance, and I wasn't quite sure what to do with that; but I did notice it. And with the wisdom that I have now, I look back on that. And I know that it was just that severe imbalance and a severe depletion. You know, the makeup of the body can sometimes make us crave things that would further create imbalance. And it can be hard to intuitively go for that which will balance us. And so as I've learned over the past several years about the different attributes of food, and really being tapped into that, and paying attention to what your body is telling you, that's really what inspires me to know this more. And I am so excited to see other people's perspectives on this, like what feeds us and like, what is our grief, craving? That question is, it's so multifaceted, because our grief might be craving something that we might judge as not good for us. And you may be given a food by someone that you weren't expecting, that just hits the spot without you knowing. Like with this postpartum experience that I'm talking about, I was completely vegetarian during that pregnancy. I grew up vegetarian, most of my life, I never ate meat. So my body didn't crave meat, you know. And I lost a lot of blood during that delivery. And I just didn't know how to replace that. And my mother in law made me this bone broth. And everything in my mind was like, No! I don't want to drink meat soup.

Roshni:
No meat juice?

Rebecca:
But I knew that I needed something that I wasn't able to tap into. I had that sensation, and the sipping on that first sip of the broth that she made me with so much love. It changed everything. Like actually, that moment changed the way that I ate at that point. And that was like 13 years ago. Her wisdom for what I needed really kind of saved me in that moment. That's my long, roundabout way of saying that, these food stories aren't meant to be like, “I've figured it all out”. We want to meet our guests where they're at, and hear their stories, unedited. And you know, where you are. Grief is messy. And we're, we're here for all of it.

Roshni:
Yeah, and we welcome all foods, all ways of dealing with it. I think there's a lot of judgment, like you said, around grief, there's a lot of judgment around eating, even the words we use for different foods. And we're such a health obsessed culture. And that meaning is so loaded, like what does it even mean to eat healthy, the privilege you have, the access you have. The definition of health is so, so different for so many people, but I think within our culture, it's very narrow. And if you don't sort of fall within the line, you are ostracized. I mean, even within healthcare, we saw like, with our patients, it really affects them getting the right care on time. And there's a lot of judgment on how you're treated, you know, based on just assumptions of how you eat and what people think about it. So I'm just so grateful that this show is kind of stepping away from that mold of you know, when you talk about food, the first thing that comes is, this is healthy, this is not, this is junk, that's not. And we just don't have to be in those same kind of binaries, we can just talk about, what is your body needing? How are you nurturing? How do you build trust? How do you find balance? What does that look like? And, really accepting all ways of being.

Rebecca:
I totally agree. Like, you know, when you talk about feeling ostracized based on the way you are eating or not eating, diets that you're following are falling off of, we can even get such a deep sense of feeling ostracized within ourselves, right? That judgment goes so deep. And that's what we're trying to veer away from, because, you know, seeing many, many situations as nurses through our careers and working with people, one on one, and in our classes and courses that we've held, there is such a spectrum of what is right for you, and I really want to get deep into— how do you know when you're feeling balanced? Or how do you know when your intuition is leading you towards a food that really will nurture you.

Roshni:
And you know.  When you know, you know. And a lot of times, that's really connected to our memory, our sense of belonging. I think that's so important that we don't talk about, we talk about food and health and nurturing in this context of, you know, ingredients, or just because like how it looks on Tik Tok or Instagram. But, it's so much deeper than that. And I think the stories we've heard so far already from recording with guests, you really get a sense of how it's really tied to generations and generations of people feeding each other. There's a lot of meaning about who made it, why did you eat it, and the science of culture, right, rather than the vitamins or how many omega acids or whatever; the healthy score that Whole Foods came up with, those are all arbitrary.

12:25
And it's interesting how much of our food wisdom, not our food knowledge from, you know, the internet and studying, or seeing these scales from like Whole Foods, per se, the food wisdom that resides within us, is coming from a place of love, a labor of love, like one of our guests recently was talking about how his grandmother didn't tell him how much she loved him, but she always showed it. And that love that work goes into food and is passed down to us in this subtle and unspoken way. And I think that's part of what you say, “when you know it, you know it”. When food is nourishing to you, it has that subtle elemental essence of love and intention.

Roshni:
I would love to hear from you about how you got to the work you're doing now. What are the stories that inspired you, and a little bit about yourself? Like, what are you inspired by creating these days? What are you thinking about?

Rebecca:
What’s definitely at the top of my mind these days is my ancestors. It's really been the past few months, a really big part of my life. And I think that it stems from, you know— I have three kids and they’re, they’re getting older, two of them are teenagers. And I'm looking at the trajectory ahead where they're gonna move out and be adults on their own. And I'm just reflecting on what I've been able to teach them during their childhoods, and, you know, is that enough? And, will it carry them through? And it just makes me think about becoming a good ancestor and being a good descendant. And so I'm really trying to just see with clear eyes, see my place in that spectrum and start being more intentional about it. As far as how I got here, I believe that my whole career in health and wellness stemmed from my first pregnancy, and my first postpartum experience. That was really the catalyst to everything that I'm doing right now. My first child was born with a heart condition, and I was really planning like a very natural birth. I wanted to have a home birth, and I was doing all this research. And my mom had three home births, so I was like, you know, “this is in my blood, I got this”. And I was so excited about that. And bam, we went to the 20 week anatomy scan, and the ultrasound tech got really quiet and was like, "I need to go talk to the doctor”.  And I was like, “what's going on?” And, you know, they came back, (lots of waiting later), and they said, “Your child has a defect in the heart that we can see, so we're gonna have you, you know, talk to your midwife, and we'll follow up with a plan for this.” And just suddenly, it was like, Nope, you're having a hospital delivery, no, ifs, ands, and buts about it, and it just became highly medicalized. I just was not prepared for that, you know, going through that experience. My baby was born. I didn't get to look at them. They just took them away to the NICU. I was alone in this postpartum liminal space, and I just felt like, there was nothing to ground me. My only goal of my primitive body was to get back to my baby. So I wasn't paying attention to like, how well I was doing or anything. Yeah. And after that difficult postpartum experience, my baby, you know, got the heart taken care of in the NICU and spent some time there, and came home healthy, is doing great...

Roshni: 
Yeah, off to go to art school, almost.

Rebecca:
Almost, yep! He’s doing great. And I just kind of was like, following breadcrumbs. And I didn't know this then, but I think that this was the way that my grief expressed itself, and had to work itself out. It was like this tangled ball of yarn. And I spent the past 17 years just slowly pulling the threads out and untangling it. And just understanding the texture of my grief and why everything happened the way it did and how that could be better for other people.

Roshni:
Yeah. Do you want to share about how that sort of set the stage for your whole life? I mean, you studied poetry, you were a poetry major. And here you are doing very different things than when you started.

Rebecca:
Yeah, definitely. I originally went to college for my undergraduate degree in poetry, and I thought, oh, I'm going to be a writer, and I had this really like, romantic view of what my career could be. But after I had that difficult postpartum experience, I was sitting on my bed thinking, there has to be somebody who helps people like me in this situation right now. And I had no idea what that was. But after some internet searches, I found postpartum doulas, and I was like, "Oh my gosh, there is somebody who helps people in this situation”. So I trained to be a postpartum doula. And that went on, you know, as I saw, more and more of like how people could be supported during this time in their lives. I became a birth doula, lactation specialist, and eventually went on to be a nurse… and I worked in postpartum for a couple of years. And for the past five years, I've been a NICU nurse. I've even worked with babies who had pulmonary stenosis, just like my baby did. And I think, you know, seeing what the real experience is in the NICU from both sides— from being a NICU parent and a NICU nurse, I became really interested in bereavement and supporting people, not only parents, but also staff, through losses and the bereavement process. So now I'm working as a co chair of the bereavement team at the hospital I work at, I'm just really interested in helping people unravel their grief and find the gems in it so that they can live a more vibrant life on the other side of that grief.

Roshni:
Well, you're doing beautiful work, and thank you for taking care of so many families. It's definitely not easy doing this work.




Rebecca:
Thank you. Roshni. I would love to know what brought you here. I mean, you're an artist and a grief expert. You've been a nurse for over 12 years. I would love to know what brought you here today, through your journey.

Roshni:
You said you followed breadcrumbs, I think I've, I've just been following mango crumbs, you know. And I don't really know what that means from a practical way. But I think I'm trying to find that sense of, you know, time being suspended. That you're really, in your body, you're smelling this fruit, it's summer, you're surrounded by either your friends or your loved ones. And it's this just like a moment of ecstasy and acceptance, all of it. There's just so much beauty in that moment. And I think a lot of my work was trying to bring that energy in as an artist, that's what I'm trying to create. This constantly connecting back to that memory within ourselves, but also imagining this cosmic universe that we can create in this present moment, or in the future, you know, like, what you were talking about, the ancestral work.

I think that's what drives me is, I've seen my grandparents and my parents struggle so much, but yet also retain this, like sheer joy. And so much of that manifested through cooking, hosting, of caring for each other, very simple pleasures, you know, like eating peanuts together. My dad you know, loves like, Indian beer, those spicy peanuts, or snacks. And I really learned this language of deep simplicity, but it's actually a very layered and sophisticated taste. And I just thought that was such a counter to all the ways in which we feel life can be a lot sometimes. And I didn't know I was navigating my own intense personal grief, you know, having— born in India, but then I grew up in California, from my teenage years. And just all the confusion and loss I was feeling from that experience, even though from the outside, people think, oh, once you come to the US, it's an amazing life. It's great in some ways, but it's also absolutely isolating, just confusing, your loss of identity and trying to find a space for yourself in this world. I’m still kind of shocked; but, you know, it is so hard to be a teenager and a young person in the US. And you're navigating that all on your own, and you're so far away from your family. And I think even for my parents, I can see that now, how incredibly isolating it was for them, they didn't have any friends. And you know, like the four of us became this pod, really hoping and rescuing each other. And I think about my grandmothers, how being born in the time they did, growing up in the kind of culture they did, they didn't have access to education or independence in the same way that I do. And at this moment, I'm just absorbing all of those inheritances, and looking at my own privilege, my own opportunities that I'm able to create for myself. My gifts, and also my responsibility. So that's, that's where I'm arriving. And it feels like for me, I want to contend with all of that, and create a life that's deeply informed. And where I'm creating not only beauty, but purpose at the same time as I move forward. And a life that's not you know, that is not just solely rooted in struggle, because that was so much of my family's life, and I think that's, you know, we talk about this a lot. If you look at our text exchange, it's a lot of crying emojis about just that kind of ancestral energy that we both you know, your family from Italy, is also carrying, right? How do you kind of live in a way where you feel just infinitely supported and powerful, even though the memory in your body or the way you move or the way you think can be quite the opposite to that feeling.

Rebecca:
That’s, that's our life quest, isn't it? I'm glad to be on the journey with you. It's not easy. You know, Roshni, the way that you explained your vision for your art is deeply sensory, and I see that you find some comfort in being in those sensations. Can you tell me a little bit more about that and also how that connects to your relationship with food and cooking?

Roshni:
I think the way I see the world is through such a sensorial sensual lens, I have a very heightened sense of smell, sense of touch. I think it's just my immune system and nervous system, in good ways. And in very challenging ways, that's sort of par for the course, is when you have a heightened nervous system and your immune system, it can be great, and also not very great in many ways. But I feel like I can sense things in sort of these, you know, multi dimensional ways, like my sense of touch, my sense of smell, it's very strong. I can just think about something and the memory comes right back, I can be in that moment. You know, even talking about the mango, I can smell the least, how it's almost kind of that has that vegetal herbal herbaceous note, whereas the fruit has this sort of like earthy smell, like you can smell the sun on it, the warmth, you know, that has a smell to it. And when I'm creating my art, I'm trying to evoke those senses, have someone experience a visceral reaction. And I think I'm a very visceral person, I have an hence all the big feelings, you know, that just like come. And to that I have to then process very slowly. Yeah, it's fun being in my mind and my body on most days, if I can have a sense of humor about it. And the way it connects me to food is just; I feel like it's my superpower. My ability to create flavor, the way I think about it, it excites me, it brings me so much joy. I definitely don't like cooking for the sake of you know, eating lunch every day. But I love feeding people talking about food with people going to markets, you know, when I'm traveling, and just watching the ways in which people's hands just expertly move. If you've seen someone make tortillas or make tamales or like in India you're wrapping or like making different kinds of roti’s, bhakri’s, wrapping sweets, there's just like this deftness in the hand, and I think that's so fascinating. Yes, it's repetitiveness, you learn a technique. But it's almost second nature, the way our bodies move when it's cooking. And I think you can tap into something deeper when you enter that space, and it becomes an act of performance, but you're bringing all the people who've come before you into that moment, just with how you move how your hands move, how you're stirring. So it's less about sort of like “chef technique” of you know, flipping omelets or chopping, that really getting into your body and smelling. And I think that's where the intuition really comes in, because, you know, what, you know, what works in that moment. And there's no doubt about how it is and you know, if it's missing something, you can always adjust it because you know what it needs. For me, that's very empowering. And that's what I hope people will, like lean into more of too, when we talk about food. You know, I think people start kind of being self deprecating and say, Oh, I'm a terrible cook, I don't know how to cook. But we certainly know good taste, we know what feels good in our body. Of course, cooking is just some of those techniques, and playing around with it, I  mean, for me knowing how to eat and listening to that message means you know how you're feeling like what is the underlying emotion underneath it. I think that's where I'm most interested in, is that connection and why; you know, getting curious, asking it for more information.

Rebecca:
That's so beautiful. And I really see I've seen that in action with you. When you're cooking for others, this sort of alchemy starts to happen. You have this ability to cook something that's like really rich and regal feeling, and bright and delicious, and just colorful— and it looks like it took four hours to cook but you cooked it in like 20-30 minutes. It's amazing.

Roshni:
Wait, what was that? I don't remember.



Rebecca:
Like, okay, for example. So for our listeners, one of our first offerings that we created together with Marigolde was a course called Ancestral Kitchen and all of the recipes in that course are stunningly quick to make, which blows my mind, because you created these recipes that are like, you know, they hit all of the marks that you'd need them to for nutrition and nourishment. And yet they're so quick and easy to make and feel. It really does just require you to be a bit intuitive and just feel what your body is needing. And it comes together so quickly.

Roshni:
The cashew fenugreek chicken curry. Is that it? Yeah, that's what I'm thinking when you say that. Oh, yeah, that dish is so good. And I eat almost everything, but I cannot stand cashews. I think because I grew up eating so many stale cashew nuts and every festival or wedding you go to an India they always include like some nuts and betel leaf and you know, it's just part of the ritual, and the nuts would be so stale. And eating a bad cashew nut will really ruin your palate. And yeah, but in this dish, you soak the cashew nuts, fresh cashew nuts and then make it into a paste and add it to this like deep, very aromatic, flavorful chicken curry with you know, like a stew. It has cloves and cinnamon and fennel seeds, little bit of garam masala. And then you know, again, like that kind of earthy, herbaceous note from dried fenugreek leaves and fresh spinach as well. Yeah, it is a great dish. I might need to make that this week. So thank you for the inspiration.

Rebecca:
Yeah, and thinking the same. And then the way that you approach making laddoo too, it's very intuitive. And I love watching you do it because I feel like I tend to approach recipes sometimes with like, how do I do it “right”, like, how are you “supposed” to do it? And you are more like, “I think I need a little hazelnut today. And some chestnut sounds good. Oh, and cacao.” And it's just like you're very present with the ingredients and really having this conversation with them.

Roshni:
Oh, thank you. I feel like I don't even, I can't even take credit for it. It's purely again, like I'm just channeling my grandmother and my mom, they are so deeply, just so instantly connected and a treasure trove. You know, that's what's so amazing is I can just tap into that. And I think that is what I've been thinking a lot about, is that anticipatory sense of loss of you know, have I learned enough? Will I remember everything? There's this sense of urgency and deep fear I have that I haven't heard all the stories. And you know, with each generation, you're really losing this loss of culture, and wisdom, around so many things. And we think you know, we're sort of the smartest, kind of most clued in, you're absolutely the most educated generation, we do have so many resources. But I do have this underlying deep, deep anxiety that I'm forgetting, and I won't know how to make and be and tap into those kinds of, you know, memories. Already, you know, with my grandmother being gone, I feel like it was too soon. I didn't know 10 years ago that Oh, I should have learned all these things. I should have recorded all these stories and with my mom and feeling the same way. I need to hear everything. How does she weave, how does she choose this color? How does she make this garam masala? Like, why this blend of spices? And now I sort of take it for granted. And you know, just call her on speed dial like 10 times a day. Oh, yeah. How do you make that? What's in that? And no, it's turns out good. But it's definitely nowhere near hers. And even she says her food is nowhere near her grandmother’s, so I can just feel this sort of like every generation, you're losing a significant part of yourself, and I just want to remember and document everything. I think that's where my mind is; is holding on to, you know what is also realistic and possible, and kind of giving myself some grace around that. But also deeply, deeply anxious of how will I remember this all, soak in all this information, take in all these stories, and find out who my family is, what are their stories, what like what has fed them and sustained them? And how can I keep it you know, I don't have as much control over how that information gets, you know, to the future generations, but at least for me to know, I've been as connected as possible. Is that something you've been thinking about? I know, we talk about that a lot. I'm curious, how does that manifest day to day for you, and especially since you have children, and you're also taking care of your in laws, and you're living in a multi generational household?

Rebecca:
Yeah, that's painful. I'm just witnessing you, in that expression that's painful to feel that sense of diminishing from the source, almost, but I feel like what you're doing is exactly what you need to be doing. So try not to be too hard on yourself. And yeah, I do feel that sense. And it's interesting, because in my family, we have so many different ethnic backgrounds that we're working with. And I feel like for me, coming from a European background, which I know a lot more about my Italian ancestry than I do about any of the others. And so I'm definitely on a quest to find out as much as I can, and be connected to my ancestors and be able to learn from them, even though they're gone. But my husband's family is Chinese, and his mother, I'm so grateful for her presence in our lives, because she does, like willingly show anyone who wants to learn, you know, how to make her dumplings, how to make her long life noodles. She invites you into her cooking process. Yeah. And it's very sensory, just like you were talking about. I mean, all of the ingredients, how the smells come together, she often tells stories of her childhood while she's making food, and she just loves passing on stories. So I'm so grateful that my children have that, even that my husband has that. It's such a vibrant connection. I have found that with me putting more attention on my ancestry, and what type of foods have sustained my ancestors, you know, those recipes of resilience, I look to those foods and what ingredients were in them as sort of like a thread, you know, back…

Roshni:
 it's almost clues you're looking at. Yeah, what are some of those foods?

Rebecca:
For me, it's been a lot of herbs and really connecting to a lot of the herbs, so rosemary, thyme, oregano, tomatoes, white beans, olive oil, like those ingredients have been just speaking to me lately. And,

Roshni:
And gelato?

Rebecca:
Always.

Roshni:
Ancestral foods of resilience. Start your day with gelato, end your day with gelato. 

Rebecca:
I love that. That's my ancestral foods of joy. Like those white beans, and escarole and olive oil, these are like such grounding foods, and they really speak to my body. And I really crave that type of food. Yeah, I'm just trying to be available to listen, I feel like that's what I'm being called to do. And I feel that pressure, like you're saying that, gosh, everything's slipping away. And time moves so fast. And there's so much pressure to carry on as much as we can. And I was thinking about this earlier today that when I first started looking into the meaning of my maiden name, or like any ancestry, any like little wisps of questions that I started having, we didn't really have a strong robust internet at that time, like the sources weren't all there. And it was a lot of like, looking in libraries and trying to find books that you relate to and now it's just like super powerful the resources that we have. So I think that can feel overwhelming too because there's so much information and it's hard to feel connected to it all.

Roshni:
I want to circle back to a little bit of your work and ask as someone who works around grief, bereavement you know, as a NICU nurse, you are constantly surrounded by loss. You know, it's there, it's present. I'm curious, how do you nurture and support your patients? And how do you do that for yourself at the same time? What does that look like— nurturing, resting, what you talked about earlier of giving yourself permission and being imperfect.

Rebecca:
It's really kind of more simple than you would expect. But when I have a patient or family, who is losing, or has just lost a baby, I mean, the pain is unbelievable. There's no way that you could say any words that would ever make them be like, “Oh, thanks, I feel better now.” Like, there's no taking away that pain. So what are you left with? Being present to witness it with them. And so I rely a lot on listening, and storytelling, and I encourage my patients, on when I say my patients, I mean, the family members or parents of the babies, I encourage them to tell their story. Tell me your birth story. What was it like? How did we get from there to here? I want to hear it all. And I make time for that. And I talk so sweetly about the babies, you know, little physical attributes, because it's really difficult in the NICU to see your baby with like, IV lines and feeding tubes and oxygen or being on a ventilator. It's, it's really like this awful juxtaposition to like this brand new, perfect, beautiful glowy newborn body to like all these medical…

Roshni: 
Well I mean its definitely PTSD, right? 

Rebecca: 
Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. 

Roshni:
And we're not laughing about it, “haha”, it is, I think, most parents experience PTSD. And I'm sure even for the medical professional, it's there's an element of that. So that is a very real part of that experience.

Rebecca:
And what we're both trying to do for our colleagues and medical professionals with Marigolde is to not keep compartmentalizing post traumatic stress disorder, and not keep putting it away and moving on. But actually making space, however small, to be present with that grief in the moment and see it for what it is, and be able to take a moment to yourself and say, “Gosh, that was so hard. I just saw that. I just witnessed that.” And, you know, let your heart feel it for a moment. So often we're just like, “okay, cannot think about that right now”, I have to go chart, I have to do this, that, I have to finish this and that for everybody else. And you never get the chance to like revisit it and process it. 
Roshni, I'm curious, we didn't talk much about this yet. But I know that you were a palliative care nurse for several years. And I'm curious what wisdom you've gleaned from being a witness to other people's grief, and if you have any stories of foods or drinks that people were called to during times of grief?

Roshni:
Oh, you know, I think well, the first thing I want to say is the idea for this podcast and this whole kind of framework came to me during my time working as a palliative care nurse, because it was so fascinating. And it caught me by surprise, each time we would have a meeting with the families and talking about what's happening, how are they feeling about it, you know, what are they hopeful for. And usually, these meetings go on for about two hours. And it's instant intimacy, you know, it's like you walk into the room and you tell, I'll hear deep dark worries and secrets. It's incredibly humbling to be in that space where somebody is just so trusting, and will share their whole heart with you, their whole life story, what they're afraid of, I think that was such a great gift when I started working as a nurse and doing that I was in my early 20s. And so on the outside, you know the world we live in, this ecosystem of social media and virtual reality, and all of that, whereas my professional life is so deeply profound, you know, the contrast of that is still jarring to me how you can have this instant human to human connection and then in the outside world, there's all this performance and show of authenticity. So I think that what is deep authentic connection, and how you talk to people and how you're around someone, what questions you ask, you know, that's something I took away, that still continues to, you know, really enrich my life. 

And it was during these conversations that we would ask, you know, what are you hopeful for? And I cannot tell you how many times, but almost every single time, people would say, you know, what I really hoped for is to be able to eat the kettle style potato chips, again, you know, this was a person who had pretty advanced Parkinson's, and he just wanted to go to Costco and get his like, you know, those massive like two-for-one bags of chips and just eat it himself with his own hands. And I'm going, “wow, that is the most profound potato chip story I've ever heard”. And every time I eat potato chips, it's like, Yes, I'm eating on behalf of this person, you know, like, soaking in that same joy. And I'm sure there's a million blog articles about how potato chips are so bad for you, whatever. So I think it was a way to look at just the ordinary simple joys of life that have so much meaning, there are people who had moved to the US, you know, when they were really young. And for them as they were dying from cancer, which was a lot of people, they wanted to be home back on the homeland, eat bitter melon, and this go back to like eating a very specific kind of fish that's only available in this narrow season, it was being able this person who was unable to swallow anymore, they just wanted rice porridge, that, you know, they were eating a version of it now, but they were really craving the silky chicken porridge with scallions, you know, simple things like that. Like, they couldn't eat chilies anymore. They couldn't chew. But for us, it's like, oh, wow, like just that simple experience of chewing and swallowing and feeling all the kind of vibrant flavors. It felt so ephemeral, that once it's gone, you obsessively just think about it and crave it so much. And that left a huge mark on me. I think that's where I sort of started to think about, okay, how is my grief story connected to my food culture? How do I nourish myself? What does that mean? And I realized a lot of how my family navigated, you know, they had absolutely no mental health support, that wasn't even a concept for them. But they really did that through the language of food and cooking.




Rebecca:
Wow, we’re such sensory beings, the things that we crave, when we feel like this life might slip away, has nothing to do with a mental process, a thought. It's all based in sensory information that lives in our bodies.

Roshni:
Yeah. And I will tell you, barely anyone would say, I want to be fully cured. Because they just deeply knew how far gone that process was, like how that wasn't a realistic picture for them. But a lot of them wanted to live longer, to be with their families longer, to have these long meals, to be eating again, going fishing again, barely anyone said, oh, I want to be cured of this condition. It was amazing how people accepted what was happening to them, and yet still living and finding those little pockets of joy. And it doesn't mean they were in denial of what was happening. Of course, everyone is incredibly sad, and there's a lot of heaviness. But during those times, I'm sure I was quite depressed with my own life and my own things, but I thought of it in such a fatalistic kind of way. And this experience really opened me up to just the duality of all of these experiences, that you can hold on to both this idea of deep pleasure and ease for a moment, even though these other big things are happening to you, and how we can choose to focus on certain things, and that can take over our day, and that ebbs and flows. X

Rebecca: 
Right, that’s real acceptance and integration. You know, I haven't had that experience yet of being in a place where I have to accept like a possibly fatal condition or a huge disease process that I would have to live with. But the way you're speaking about it, it sounds like people really handled it relatively quickly, and realized that what they want to choose to focus on is living in the moment, now, and tasting feeling exploring what they could now.

Roshni:
Oh, you said it so beautifully. Absolutely. Because I think so much of how we live is future-oriented, and imagining a reality that almost doesn't exist. But we're trying to live in this fictional reality, right? When, and even the ways in which we talk about life, it's all about future-oriented, it's like, do this now so you can be this certain way, it's not really, we don't live day to day in a way where we're, you know, waking up and saying, “I'm prioritizing pleasure and joy, in these ways.” It's a lot of at least, oh my gosh, the American way— suffer, suffer, suffer. So one day, that one day, you'll be, you know, I don't know, whatever, rich and happy. And that day never comes, that will never come. And all you have are these moments.

Rebecca:
Yeah, and you are like working your life away to make a better life for your children. And then you're never around to be with them. Because you're working all the time. It's so painful. Yeah, there's got to
be a better way.

Roshni: 
Yeah and I hope people will, you know, pause a little, share a meal together, show their little child, this is how we cook it this way. This is how we chop this, you know, like, really empower them. And we don't have to, like, you know, make and do everything for our kids, they can be part of it, and I think really including them in our life.


Rebecca:
Absolutely. Yeah. Not waiting till later to teach them all these things.

Roshni:
Yeah. So when I see your child, Toby, I'm sure they'll be making noodles for me. Hand cut noodles, only please.

Rebecca:
I'll tell him to start studying. 

Well, I’m really looking forward to upcoming guests and talking about all things food and pleasure, the bittersweet stories of our family lineages and the lands that we live on, the ingredients we're working with, and our level of presence, while we're feeding ourselves and feeding the people that we love.

Roshni:
We hope you'll join us every month. We're so excited to chat to all our guests, and we have such a wonderful lineup. So please send us an email, get in touch with us if something resonates, if you want to be a guest or share your story, or even have questions— we love, love giving advice if you don't know already. And we're quite good at it too. So if you have a burning question, if you're wondering, you know, how do I make this soup? Or how do I you know, navigate this really deeply challenging moment. We're here for all of it. You can send us a question, email us, and we'll share with all of you just so we feel less alone and more connected.

Rebecca:
If you haven't already, go ahead and subscribe to the podcast. And leave us a review on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts from. And don't forget to sign up for our newsletter at wearemarigolde.com so you can be the first to know when new episodes drop.

Roshni:
You can also find us @wearemarigolde on Substack and Instagram and we would love to hear from our listeners; you! Drop us an email, direct message us, share your food story, ask us questions. Do you want advice? Do you want recipe ideas? Or even — let us know, what is your grief craving.