✦ Journal Entry – Grief in the Kitchen
A simple act of roasting vegetables turned into a grief trigger I never saw coming. What followed wasn’t just sadness, but waves of shame, anger, and collapse. This is the story of the moment I realised healing doesn’t always begin in a therapist’s office — sometimes, it starts with a burnt pumpkin.
Cucurbita moschata, Kürbis, citrouille, calabaza, zapallo — or simply, the humble pumpkin.
Karina used to make an effortless dish with it. Fresh pasta, roast pumpkin, sundried tomatoes, roast capsicum, and a light Roma tomato sauce. Simple. Warm. Comforting. It was my favourite meal, and my relationship with pumpkin was rock solid.
Until the day it broke me.
Three months after Karina passed away, I decided to throw a pizza party. Something to bring people together, get me back into hosting, and honour the kind of gathering Karina loved. She’d never forgive me if I didn’t use fresh ingredients or homemade dough. So that morning, I did it right. I made the dough, prepped the toppings, and even heard her voice in my head giving gentle instructions.
Everything was going well.
Until I pulled the pumpkin out of the oven.
What I expected was golden, soft, glistening pieces, just like Karina used to make. What I got were withered, partly burnt chunks of vegetable. And something in me cracked.
A wave of sadness hit first. Deep and hot. It ached.
Then came the anger. Anger at myself. Not just because I couldn’t cook pumpkin properly, but because I couldn’t save my wife. The shame followed, fast and brutal. What would my friends think if they saw me like this? I couldn’t even cook a simple vegetable, let alone handle life.
I shut down.
I hid under the covers for three days.
Since then, I’ve learned a few things about grief. It doesn’t follow stages. It doesn’t care about timing. And it loves to amplify chaos. I now think of emotions like traffic lights — they’re signals, not threats. They can overwhelm you when they glitch, but they can’t actually hurt you.
When everything blinks orange, I do what I’d do at a broken intersection: slow down, stop, scan, proceed carefully.
Sometimes I still emotionally shut down. But I always restart.
Usually thanks to my two border collies.
Grief doesn’t resolve neatly. It lingers. But I’m walking the rest of this road with a little more softness, a little more awareness. And with each step, I keep reminding myself:
Even broken pumpkin is still food. Even a broken heart can keep going. And even collapsed moments can still cook up connection.
Sometimes, that’s enough to keep going.
The Way Home Project 