Carrie Saum

Soothing warmth from the inside out to help ease your aches and pains, help you rest, and stop coughing.

Gather anything orange, brown, olive green, harvest yellow, and dead. Dead leaves, dead flowers, dead hopes and dreams, and arrange them artistically on your front doorstep.

For the first time in my life, I was lost after leaving Evangelical Christianity. I watched the shores of everything safe and familiar wash away.

20 years later, it is still an experience that I am actively deconstructing. Why? Because I joined a cult. And maybe have too. If so, here’s how to get out.

Next, juice your blood oranges. Or skip this and buy the juice from the spendy little corner market that sells $8 fair trade chocolate made from cocoa beans harvested purely through meditative thoughts generated by unionized zen monkeys in Thailand. They also sell blood orange juice. You’ll find it next to the $15 cashew milk.

This is becoming an expensive habit, but nothing really says “I love you” like homemade cookies, so I’m going with it.

I know it feels like you're falling apart. It's the kind that happens when I have overcommitted and then something goes wrong and everything else spirals.

In an age where we are isolated but still technologically connected, this is important. It’s okay to be alone. It’s okay to be unoccupied.

Oh, you say you’re making this for your neighbor who just had a baby and a traumatic birth experience and you want to be an Exceptional Neighbor and bring her post-partum love and healing in a warm, bubbling cake dish? Fantastic. Just make sure to eat half of the cobbler straight out of the pan first, and then transfer it to another pan and pretend it’s meant to look like a pan of berry mush.

Can we talk about self-care for a hot minute?

I kind of hate it.