Opening Notes
This is the first diary in the Cuisine & Home Collection. At the time, I wasn’t setting out to create a pillar or a philosophy. I was just trying to understand why I felt untethered. What I didn’t realize was that the doorway back to clarity and intention was already around me—hidden in kitchens, tables, and rituals I had overlooked.
My Grandmother’s Kitchen
She never sat me down to teach me anything. Not directly.
But when I picture her now, I see her hands moving with quiet certainty. The way she hummed while chopping vegetables. How she set the table even for soup leftovers, insisting it mattered.
Back then, I rolled my eyes. But she wasn’t fussing about table manners. She was teaching presence.
The Monk in Switzerland
Years later, I sat across from a monk who said to me:
“Most people eat like they’re refueling machines. Food is communion.”
I laughed it off. Too mystical. But weeks later, back in New York, I caught myself eating breakfast standing up, scrolling through emails, treating my body like an inbox. His words came back. And suddenly, they weren’t mystical at all. They were a mirror.
Josh’s Red Pen
When I began shaping Hustle Detox with Josh, I admitted:
“I know I have something different to say about well-being, but I don’t know what it is yet.”
He kept circling paragraphs in my drafts: “What are you not saying here?”
Until I finally said it: I’d been living efficiently but not intentionally. Optimizing everything except the experience of being alive.
Small Experiments
So I tried the smallest shifts:
- Actually tasting my coffee.
- Leaving my phone in another room while I ate.
- Chopping vegetables slowly enough to hear the rhythm of the knife.
It seemed trivial. But what started in my kitchen rippled outward—into how I worked, how I listened, how I showed up with people I loved.
What I Didn’t Know Then
I thought these notes were about surviving tour life, or tinkering with wellness routines. But really, they were pointing to something I had lost: the link between daily rituals and intentional living.
My grandmother’s kitchen. A monk’s reminder. Josh’s edits. All circling back to the same truth: food and home aren’t fuel and shelter. They are portals back to presence. They’re where clarity begins, where we remember how to live—not just efficiently, but intentionally.
This diary wasn’t meant to launch a collection. But it did. And that’s why it lives here, as the first thread of Cuisine & Home.
— Traciana
P.S. My most intimate reflections begin in Letters from Traciana—weekly notes I send on Sundays to help you reset, reconnect, and rise into your next chapter. [Join here] to receive them first.
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