Sunday Dinner: setting the table for expansion.

A Soul Food series with words that nourish your soul, sending your taste buds through the depths of you, feeding you with creative inspiration to soak up the limiting beliefs like gravy on a biscuit.

Soul food doesn’t only originate from the loving, soulful energy of Big Mama’s cooking. Like many Black American culture staples, there’s some burnt bottom on the cornbread pan, reminding us of dark times.

We know the dark times are ahead as the wind gets more crisp and the days seem shorter. And although we were taught that joy comes in the morning, somehow grief startles us in our darkness. Soul food has always given us that comfort filling us up after the thief of the night comes to steal our joy.

Soul food lights our souls with the warmth of each bite, allowing us to move through the liminal space we face during discomfort. Don’t you know that’s why we call soul food, comfort food?

the empty dinner table symbolizes a space of nothingness where all things coexist, snack on this fatback while you transform and expand

Jacquie Verbal

I know you are looking for Sunday Service Announcements, but on Writer Circle Sundays, we will have soul food for Sunday Dinner.

Bow your heads and close your eyes while we pray over this food. Y’all know the rules, fix ‘em babies’ plates first.

Heavenly Father,

We are all gathered here today and I want to say thank you.

I pray my family learns how to find their light through comfort in liminal spaces. I pray you fill your cup before filling up everyone else’s. I pray that you read this comfort food for your soul and feel the nourishment throughout your body. I pray you can identify the menu favorites that keep you showing up at your full potential. I pray you learn that you transmute that grief and pain through the cycle of mothering your inner child.

Soul food is healing because we gather at the table to enjoy the comforting food prepared by the hands of women who show their love through their meals. We take what’s available in the kitchen and transform straps into filling meals that carry us into the morning. Soul food is the blanket that tucks those emotions away for the night, it reminds me of the reiki principle affirmation, just for today.

Some people call it sides; some call them fixin’s, whatever you call them we can agree sometimes all you need is a plate full of them.

In those moments we face liminal space the dark moments are our reminders to go deep within to find our light and the recipe that allows it to shine brighter, what’s on your dopamine menu?

I remember being vegan at my mama’s house for the holidays. My plate was filled with sides, knowing that the mac and cheese was dairy and the greens were cooked with turkey necks. Until I discovered recipes to carry soul food traditions for my family, I relied on these holiday soul food dinners to cure my seasonal “saddies.”

The first bite of those savory greens, so juicy and packed with flavor bursting in your mouth, feels like music flowing through your body uncontrollably, making you get up and dance. It’s comforting to the soul as the warmth from the greens slides down your throat, easing that tension like when you hear your jam play on the radio. Greens are a soul food side that will always be a staple to Black culture, just as music will always be the source for dance.

Music makes you feel good when you listen to it no matter how you feel, the music will say it for you even when you can’t find the words yet. When the saddies kick in, pick music as your dopamine side - pair it with an entree or have a bowl with a slice of cornbread.

Cornbread to a soul food plate is like writing to navigate our emotions. Through the thick of it, when our world feels like it’s being swallowed up, when the words won’t come out right, they flow like that green juice when it touches that corner of the cornbread.

As we transition from warmer days to Autumn blues, curate a dopamine menu that will help to govern your emotions during your season of liminal space. I’m not suggesting that liminal space and seasonal depression are the same, but I am saying that sometimes we aren’t always depressed. But instead, avoiding growth and expansion. Curating a dopamine menu has helped me be more aware of what makes me feel as good as a pot of collard greens smells on the stove simmering.

To govern my emotions sometimes I need a side of music to get those emotions flowing to bleed onto the pages. Kind of like macaroni and cheese, rich and creamy, filled with love and oozing with gooey emotions for us to unpack with every bite.

Get to the meat and potatoes of with a plate full of grief.

The entree, the heart of the dopamine menu, exists in duality, both in a healthy and unhealthy version. Vegan soul food menus are based with astrology, while traditional ones are marinated in faith. On this plate, you will be fed with a balance of both.

Chicken classics come in many forms: fried, baked, grilled, smothered in gravy, or glazed in barbeque sauce. The wing, the leg, the thigh, the breast, the feet, the intestines, what did I miss?

The chicken has evolved on the dinner plate as a soul food classic. Fried chicken, sometimes with a slice of white bread and hot sauce, is all you need fresh out of the grease. However, when it’s right out of the oven, falling off the bone and smothered in gravy on top of some creamy mashed potatoes you feel that warmth travel to your core.

It’s through the warmth from the love infused with every bite that we grow into our core identity. Our human design and birth chart blueprint are the recipe cards for who we are building out the menu to keep our dopamine levels balanced. In the South, the women teach their daughters that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. This old saying is proof that soul food is healing and comforting, and when you pair the right sides with your entree, you feel good.

Organize your dopamine menu, understanding who you are to your core. If you are a vegan soul food consumer, this shortcut might help you better build your menu.

• entree: sun sign - core identity

• sides: moon sign - governs emotions

• dessert: rising sign - external mask

Moving our body to help clear out stagnant energy is the controllable action we can take to govern our emotions. Our preference of movement is the entree item, your chicken either smothered, fried, or baked. A plate of fried chicken with some collard greens and macaroni and cheese might have you in your living room dancing your heart out in between purging the grief of no longer being the person you used to be. That’s what it’s like to be in a liminal space, in that temporary space between where you want to be and where you came from.

We have been working on ourselves to tap into our full potential. We want more because we know we deserve more. But sometimes, we still move and operate in the world as if we lack faith, believing we can have what we desire.

As

btheglitch

and I were on a call coworking on this draft, I asked for some descriptions of smothered pork chops because I grew up with only fried pork chops with white bread as a quick dinner. I could hear the smile break through the words and the happiness take over Satnam while describing the feelings stored away with this nostalgic meal. We shared storytimes of the grief packed away with these stored memories when exploring new food options to nourish the body.

The cultural grief of the Big Mama stories off the cameras because of the disease from the effects of soul food. That grief runs deep, what used to be meals prepared with us in mind with love oozing out of the hands preparing the food turns into heartache from the words “I don’t eat that anymore.”

Are we wrong for wanting change, a better way of living? It got me thinking, did the invites stop because due to unresolved grief turned resentment? We shared the memory of no longer being invited to the table and grieving the loss of those laughs and bonding moments. All while realizing the conversations at those tables are the ones we are deciding to no longer consume.

These discoveries are the result of a full plate from your dopamine menu. You are getting to know who you are at your core and it can be scary, especially when you have never met or experienced this version of yourself. This is why grace is so important.

btheglitch

mindful meditation corner:

If you would indulge with me, I have a practice for you.

Set a timer for 1 minute and focus on the space between your thoughts. It doesn't matter how many thoughts come or if you only find one second between your thoughts during this minute-long practice.

Just try.

I’ll be waiting when you come back.

Okay, now how do you feel?

If you feel called feel free to share your reflection in the comments.

That sweet spot between evolving and becoming, you got to move like you know.

The identity shift is the moment you have that out-of-body realization that you are exactly who you used to dream of becoming. You behave at your highest potential, speak and think in it, and then your physical catch up.

Desserts on the dopamine menu are those classics guaranteed to leave you feeling sweet. Now, yes, we can all agree it does depend on who made the banana pudding if we get a bowl. And I love some flaky crust with my peach cobbler, I’m from the South now, so with some Butter Pecan ice cream on top, as long as that cobber warmed up, I might get myself a bowl to take home too.

I’m a Leo rising, going back to the conversation we had over that finger-licking fried chicken, my outer appearance reflects my inner self-care regimen. That rising sign placement will tell you about the mask you wear and how you interact with your external world. Our rising sign represents the way we present ourselves to the world: our physical appearance, demeanor, and style. My work is filled with creative expression, and my physical appearance needs to reflect that at all times, I’ve learned through my time in liminal spaces.

In those moments of uncertainty, in the dark unknown, your intuition is your guidance, but it’s up to you to follow it. That little voice telling you it’s time to get your nails done is your rising sign catching up to your moon and sun sign expansion. After the savory flavors of a plate of soul food, the greatest satisfaction is dessert. Most of us are eyeing the dessert before we discover the menu past what we can smell through the door.

The same goes for our healing experience, save room for the things on your menu that add sweetness to your life. Pick one appearance self-care routine you will maintain to the end of Q4, and budget for it every month.

It’s for you time to disconnect and recharge.

As organized as these thoughts are now, they are not the whole truth. Grief is messy. I have hard days when I don’t want to get out of bed and where the thought of moving in the direction of rebirth feels like too much of a task.

btheglitch

Food for thought in a to-go plate.

Journal Prompt: Write a letter to yourself from your future self that overcame the grief you are facing now. Be detailed about how you feel now that you have overcome the pain you are currently experiencing.

Dear Jacquie,

Girl, I must say it feels good to finally walk in my true purpose. The fear of being seen, the constant changing and evolving, not knowing who you are anymore. That disappointment grew within every pivot when things didn’t go to plan. Through all of that grief and pain, we did it; we became exactly who we were meant to be. Life flows with ease now. Things still happen, but I’m not thrown off my tracks because of it now. I know how to move in grace for myself and others. I’m so proud of you!

You know, something like that, but with your twist to it.

Reminders

I am renewed today.

Today is defined by my choices, perceptions, and boundaries.

I create boundaries for myself, not for others.

I respect my no.

I honor my yes.

A couple of playlists burnt on a blank CD for the cousins.

Special shoutout to

btheglitch

for bringing this series idea to me and allowing us to curate it together divinely. This piece is inspired by the evolutionary growth spiritually and emotionally since this

BlackStack

community was cultivated. Like Sunday Service, we all know about Sunday Dinner with Soul Food on our plates feeding our soul.

The series’ idea is to feed the souls of the community and get the minds racing to help pick up the pen. What better way than to introduce this series on the day of our Writers’ Circle with the focus on transmuting grief through creative outlets, which is a dopamine menu item itself? Divine alignment.

Today feels like God sprinkled a little good day in the mix. See y’all at the Writers’ Circle.

Soul Food Prep