Short Stories on Choice
Plus, A Comforting Recipe
An image from the Olive & Vine Guesthouse in McMinnville, Oregon. © Maggie Battista 2024
One of the biggest lessons that I’m learning in this lifetime is around choice.
I get to choose.
You get to choose, too.
And you’re making choices even when you’re not making choices.
Since these messages have surfaced over the last few weeks, I hear a call to share some transparent stories and a relationship exercise to help you choose a new perspective and self-heal. The exercise is key to reframing every relationship in your life as a path for self-growth and I’m hosting a free workshop to support you through it.
Naturally, these stories are presented from my perspective. I will reflect what I remember and you may accept it as true or false. Either way, it’s the meaning I choose to make.
It felt important to say that.
Near the end of my twenty year relationship, at a time when I was deepening my bond to my soul’s voice, I began reconnecting to old friends.
There were two girlfriends in particular whom I had known since my early twenties, when we were first growing into our desires, when we were becoming fully formed women before the compromises that arrive with long term relationships.
I want to say that due to the busyness of life, we had fallen out of touch. But in reality, I had unconsciously chosen to not be in contact with them.
I take full responsibility for my lack of communication. I allowed myself to be influenced by various aspects of my life, including my husband at the time, who had expressed that he didn’t believe these two friends liked him very much. Consequently, he requested that I not share parts of our relationship with them.
I figured he was just a little insecure and I thought that I chose to disregard his concerns. But today, the wiser version of me realizes that, back then, I chose to allow another’s desires to cloud my own.
Now I have a lot of compassion for who we were back then. And, my girlfriends had never expressed any disdain for him. But regardless, over time, I chose to distance myself from them even if I made that choice unconsciously.
A few months before the topic of divorce surfaced, I decided to reconnect with these two girlfriends. At the time, I didn’t know exactly why I reached out to them.
One day, I simply felt a rush of energy move through me and I texted each of them, asking for phone calls. Our reconnection was long overdue.
We never really spoke about my relationship in great depth. We simply caught up on all the aspects of our lives. And I very quickly remembered how much we loved and treasured each other.
When the topic of divorce rose between my ex-husband and me, I remember falling into the deep emotional landscape of my body and missing parts of that conversation. I think I was too busy trying to find a way to buoy myself to my soul’s voice as a storm raged around me.
But there were some messages between us that stuck, including when he mentioned my reconnection to my two girlfriends.
He believed that by reconnecting with these two women, I was sending him a message. He believed I was rebuilding my most vital relationships in preparation to exit ours.
Now, back then, I did not do this consciously. I simply followed a rush of energy in my body toward a desire.
But today, I recognize that rush of energy.
It’s the same feeling that rises when my ancestors express their presence.
It’s the same feeling that rises when I hear the voice of a friend’s departed brother.
It’s the same feeling that rises when my soul has a vital message or desire to convey.
And today, I know that I did make a choice back then. By reconnecting with my friends, maybe I was sending a message to my ex-husband but that’s not the point.
The point is, my sweet soul was sending a message to me. It was making a choice.
It was saying, I choose me.
A few weeks ago, as I was making the drive from Oregon wine country back to Portland International Airport (PDX), I got to watch the sun rise.
I love and lament those early morning drives to PDX.
I love listening to my favorite music, much of it inspired by the vast and wide open spaces out there, while watching the sky gather up hues of pink, purple, orange, and gold, like gifts from some east coast god.
I lament leaving because I love how alive I feel out there and that aliveness fuels my work and opens my capacity to receive even more rushes of energy, even more messages from soul, even more magic.
When I landed back in Boston, after nearly a month on the west coast, I immediately felt a heaviness in my body.
I told my driver, “I don’t think I’m going to be in Massachusetts for too long. I think I’m going to book another trip somewhere.”
This wise 84-year-old man sweetly said, “Give it a week, dear. Don’t make any big plans for at least a week.”
But as I began to unpack my clothes and settle in amidst all my favorite things, my favorite things felt like anchors, objects tying me to a port when I want to get back out on the open sea.
The next day, I went to a restorative yoga class and spent the hour crying salty tears.
My soul’s voice sent message after message, softly, quietly, to signal that my new desire was right for me. The tears were my way to metabolize the grief around this new choice, waiting on the horizon, waiting for me to move toward it.
And so, I’ve consciously made a choice to redesign my life in such a way that I may be in other places as often as possible.
And in making that choice, I’m choosing to let go of this one idea of home, energetically at least, so that I may allow even more magic to rush through me elsewhere.
I feel proud to consciously make this life choice, without the pressure of some force outside of me, in full awareness with my soul.
I’m not moving. But I’m not not moving.
When I was super young, my family moved three times.
We lived on the east coast and then in the south and then in the midwest. It was a youth filled with too many hellos and goodbyes.
In each new locale, ever committed to maintaining her connection to the god she believed in, my mother would visit all the local churches, hoping to find a religious community that felt like home.
And when she was consistently met with the same kind of religious dogmas that rarely aligned with her soul, she chose to be our priest and preacher and pastor and speaker-of-a-sermon, all-in-one.
Each and every Sunday, she’d gather her daughters into one of the bedrooms. With three bibles before us, she’d read a psalm aloud—or make one of us read it—and explore its message with us.
She’d end each session with the three of us reciting the Lord’s prayer. And then we’d go on with our day, eager to get outside to play or watch some television.
When institutions disappointed her, as they often do, my mother made a choice to infuse our lives with some kind of sacred ritual to help us remember the divine.
She chose to connect with the divine to help us see the divinity within us.
She created a ritual that perhaps informed the choices I eventually made to listen to my sweet soul, to create rituals around listening to my soul’s voice.
I’m dating with a lot less hesitation these days and it’s lovely to feel whole and ready to invest my time in getting to know someone or lots of someones.
Each time I take a step toward someone, either on a first date or a tenth date, I find myself balancing just how much of myself I choose to share with them.
And when I do decide to move toward someone, to open myself up to more friendship or possibility or depth, I hear my soul’s voice a lot.
I hear it say, With each step you take toward them, it’s less about them and more about you.
I hear it say, The texture of a relationship will reveal itself in how you feel about yourself around them.
I hear it say, More vital than them, how is this relationship allowing you to deepen your relationship with yourself?
And above all, I hear it say, Choose you, now and always.
This is one of my favorite recipes in my second cookbook, A New Way to Food. I think that’s because it’s a recipe that stemmed from a complex and compassionate conversation. I spent a couple hours stuffing dumpling wrappers and talking through challenges in a relationship with someone and then, we ate dumplings.
I’ve simplified the recipe since its publication, making it a lot faster. Plus, they’re shaped like rosebuds and, according to my soul’s voice, the rose is the symbol for compassion.
Potato Zucchini Dumplings
Ingredients:
2 white potatoes, cleaned and diced into 1-inch cubes
1 medium zucchini, shredded
3/4 teaspoon sea salt
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour, plus more as needed
2 tablespoons soy sauce, plus more for dipping
1 bunch chives
30-40 dumpling wrappers
Olive oil
1/2 cup broth or water
Directions:
Add the potatoes and enough water to cover to a medium pot. Bring to a boil and simmer until cooked through, about 10 minutes. Drain, return to pot off the heat to dry out slightly. Mash with a fork and cool.
Toss the zucchini with 1/2 teaspoon salt. In a strainer, pile the shredded zucchini and let drain 15 minutes. Squeeze excess liquid from the zucchini.
Place potatoes, zucchini, flour, soy sauce, and remaining salt in medium bowl. Stir until well mixed and no flour streaks. If the mixture feels wet, stir in an extra teaspoon or two of flour. Stir in chives.
Set a few tablespoons of water in a small bowl and place parchment paper on a baking sheet. Fill the center of each wrapper with 1 teaspoon of filling mixture. Using your finger, brush water on the wrapper around the dough. Fold the wrapper over the dough and seal with pressure. Take one half moon end of the dumpling and fold it up and over the other end to form a rosebud shape. Add a drop of water to press the ends together. Repeat until all the filling and wrappers are used. Place dumplings on baking sheet and cover with damp cloth or freeze until ready to use.
Add a little oil to a frying pan with a tight fitting lid over medium-high heat. Swirl the oil around the pan and place dumplings upright in pan, leaving a little room between them. Fry until the bottoms are golden brown. Add broth to the pan carefully, as it will bubble. Cover the dumplings and let them cook about 5 minutes until cooked through. Transfer to a serving platter and serve with soy sauce.
