Hey, y'all. I'm Jeanette Brown. It's nice to meet you.

Culinary therapy saved my life more than once. 

Food is love and cooking heals. 

Connected to why all the people I have met in kitchens have been hurting people in need of healing. Many of them immigrants. Helping me understand immigration as trauma. Which it is. 

Spurring me to obtain training as a hotline counselor at the Rape Crisis Anti-Violence Support Center at Columbia University.

Propelling me to pursue a graduate degree in Caribbean and Latin American studies from New York University .  

Propelling me to obtain a certificate in culinary arts from the Institute of Culinary Education (formerly Peter Kump's).

Propelling me to obtain a certificate in trauma studies from the Trauma Research Foundation.

Trauma recovery happens in kitchens. 

Connected to why traumatized people are drawn to kitchens. 

Connected to Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential.

Connected to Anthony Bourdain’s death. Connected to why Anthony Bourdain’s death messed me up for a bit. Despite my never meeting Anthony Bourdain. 

Bourdain left kitchens for fame. And died. I paid attention. 

I will remain in kitchens. 

Because kitchens is where we heal. 

Please check out the links below for other places I write about healing, including through memoir writing, self-compassion, grief, gratitude, and brain food. Together with culinary therapy, these are the things that give me life. Also the things that saved my life. I highly recommend them all. 

I also write about them all on my website, Don't Sum Me Up, as well as on my Instagram and Facebook feeds. Would love to connect you with any and all of the places.

xoxo, J