Surfeit Stories and Soup

2024

Soup is an essential food in deep winter in Vermont. It keeps us grounded, warm, and hopeful, just like the cache of stories we carry inside of us. I make a big batch of soup every week, but lately I’ve noticed that my soups are all starting to taste and look alike, familiar and boring. I don’t follow recipes well, so mostly I just pressure cook a bunch of root vegetables and puree them, adding bits of meat, beans, spices, and fridge leftovers. It’s always tasty, but I have a sense that my soup routine is no longer serving me.

I have also noticed that the same thing can happen with the stories we tell ourselves—we repeat our well-worn lines over and over again to excess. We have our reliable rendition of what happened, and then we tell it that way, ad nauseam over the ages, creating drama-driven ruts that provide comfort, veracity, and a saccharine sense of safety. Even if our story is Trauma with a capital T, it’s still just soup without a recipe, without a direction, and because we know it by heart, it’s in danger of becoming a stale default that no longer nourishes.

I was in a Zoom writing group last week and we had twenty minutes to free write before we would share our piece with the small group. The emotionally rutted neural pathway in my brain immediately started writing about a catastrophic accident my father suffered in 1977—yup, it happened forty-seven years ago—and yet I was still defaulting to it for the familiar painful comfort, and the guaranteed ‘wow’ factor. My lazy, rutted brain!

(Cliff Notes: my forty-two-year-old father dove into our family pool and broke his neck, he narrowly survived as a C-3 quadriplegic (capacity: he could blink his eyes) and was cared for at home for seventeen years by my mother and six children aged 13-20.)

I’ve been processing this sad story and the resulting trauma for many years. I’ve journaled about it endlessly, and yet it always seems to intrude into these free write sessions. The timer started, I began the free-write, but then I just stopped: I bonked. When it was my turn to share, I told this group of complete strangers that I was sick and tired of revisiting this story, that it was a sloppy default blocking my writing, and that it was not serving me any longer. I basically had a mini meltdown on Zoom with a roomful of virtual writers. And you know what? Every single writer began to speak about the burden and excess of such stories—we all have them.

This was an AHA! moment for me. I had already been studying about the neuroplasticity of our brain with regard to managing my Meniere’s condition, and how we can retrain our thinking to create fresh pathways of positive, healing thoughts. I know this actually works, and in this moment, I knew that I could do the same by writing fresh narratives about my life experiences—spicing them with the new knowledge and perspective that I’ve provisioned as I have matured over many decades.

‘Therefore, dark past, I'm about to do it. I'm about to forgive you. For everything.’ —Mary Oliver

My eighty-eight-year-old mother is a beautiful human being and a world-class soup maker. Mom lives independently in a lovely neighborhood; she makes a delicious batch of soup every week for the Respite House and for her grateful neighbors. Her soups are diverse and unique and while she never uses a recipe, she never falls into complacency or boredom. Soup has a very specific purpose for her, and very real consequences—because no one likes bad soup! She is laser focused on keeping her brain sharp and refreshed, she refuses to get stuck in a story-rut. Our family trauma is ultimately her story: she is the one who bore the brunt of it and the consequences. Mom is a survivor, and she has trained herself to look for the narrative that nourishes her heart and keeps her moving forward in a healthy and peaceful way.

‘There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you.’ —Maya Angelou

Old versions of stories and family history do not define us. We get to write our own stories, no one else should be doing that for us. There are a million versions of every untold story, and we get to decide our own truths. My refreshed stories are building positive, new neural pathways for me (and my nineteen-year-old brain) allowing me to move forward with grace. If I add a pinch of maturity, a dollop of perspective, and a dash of compassion, I’m able to create something that makes me hungry for more of what stories do so beautifully: inspire us, sustain us, and offer meaning where it sometimes feels like there is none. Stories help us to process our grief, our disappointments, our hopes and dreams. Paired with a streaming bowl of delicious soup, there is no finer combination. My hope is that my refreshed neural pathways will be more curious than catastrophic for me, and that I can invite in more wonder and possibility as the loving, conscious, and evolved person I have worked hard to become.

To that end, I discovered a new soup recipe that I actually followed to the letter. And guess what? It is absolutely fantastic. It’s a completely different technique (new neural pathway) to making soup that I have ever followed, and my brain is so happy—it feels like fresh pavement. I am delighted with its flavor, beauty, ease of creating, and most of all with its versatility and freshness.

Cheesy Chicken and Broccoli Soup by America’s Test Kitchen

3 -Tablespoons unsalted butter

1-onion, rough chop

1¼ -teaspoons table salt

1-teaspoon pepper

2-Tablespoons all-purpose flour

3-cups chicken broth

2 (6- to 8-ounce) boneless, skinless chicken breasts, trimmed and halved lengthwise

1-pound broccoli florets, cut into ½-inch pieces

1-cup heavy cream

8-ounces sharp cheddar cheese, shredded (2 cups)

4-ounces American cheese, chopped (1 cup)

Method: Melt butter in large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion, salt, and pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 4 minutes. Add flour and cook, stirring to coat onion, about 1 minute. Gradually whisk in broth. Add chicken and broccoli and bring to simmer. Cover; reduce heat to medium-low; and simmer until chicken registers 160 degrees, about 10 minutes.

Transfer chicken to plate and shred into bite-size pieces using 2 forks. Stir cream into soup and return to simmer over medium heat. Whisk in cheddar and American cheese until melted, about 2 minutes. Stir in chicken. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve.

The first evening that our Tahoe Vegan Kids arrived for Christmas I served this soup, modified for vegan tastes, and I think it was even better than the original. We added a little tumeric, substituted the butter for olive oil, the chicken stock and cream for vegetable stock & coconut milk, added big handfuls of fresh spinach to the broccoli, and sprinkled some vegan cheese on top. Do you see? We CAN change the recipe AND the story to suit our tastes. This was a fresh new soup story for our family of diners and one we will repeat with gusto. I say, ‘Bon Appetit, Creators’ let’s share some new stories over a big bowl soon.