Welcome to Gathered With Grace! I’m so glad you are here. This is a new blog and here is how it started:

Five years ago my dear friend Suzanne approached me with an idea. Now I think of it as more of a quest. She wanted to create a blog together. Her blog idea was about cooking our way through a Whole Food Plant Based cookbook and sharing our thoughts and experience for each recipe. While I was delighted to have a friend with a similar interest in learning to cook WFPB recipes, and to find new recipes that were easy and tasted great, I also kind of shrugged it off, I wasn’t sure about the blogging aspect. I’d written a blog before, but I wasn’t sure how this topic would be received; and did I have the time a new blog would take? Her idea would give us a project to work on together and I loved that part! I procrastinated in saying yes.

Today I regret that decision. A few months later Suzanne began her cancer journey. After an almost 2 year fight, a fight for as much time as she could get with us here on Earth, she died on August 3rd, 2021. We never got to that cooking blog. A lot happened in those years after her cancer diagnosis; cancer treatments, her need for rest, covid, waiting for vaccines so we could be together again safely, and then we were out of time. While I don’t spend my days sitting in that feeling of regret; I do experience reminders.

Now, years later, still processing my grief, I think of her often; and sometimes I think about that project. While reflecting a new seed of an idea began germinating.

Creating the space for a blog to honor the amazing woman and incredible friend that Suzanne was; idea 1) by cooking my way through that cookbook - except I don’t remember which one it was! That idea morphed into a blog 2)not focusing on one cookbook, but rather recipes from many cookbooks, recipes I think Suzanne would have enjoyed, and that I would have loved to cook with her. Finally those ideas became Gathered With Grace - 3) a blog to honor all of our loved ones - yours and mine - through recipes. Honoring and celebrating our loved ones who no longer walk the Earth with us. This opportunity gives us each a new way to process our grief; new or old grief, because let’s be honest, it never completely goes away, it just gets easier to live with. Join me in sharing stories and recipes; reminders of our loved ones and celebrate each of them and our relationship with them.

If you have a story of a loved one, and a recipe that comes to mind when you think of them, you can send it to me at boldmovesstudio@gmail.com and I will share your story/recipe/photo here on this blog. You can include pictures of the recipe in their hand if you are lucky enough to have that. Or a picture of your loved one; perhaps with you. I think our collective stories will help us each continue processing our grief and honoring our loved ones through the sharing of our memories of them and the food they cooked, or the food we ate together, food they loved, food we’d like to cook for them today. I look forward to reading and sharing your stories and recipes!