Back to the Table
Soft starts and slow harvests. Reflecting on work, care, and coming home to what feeds us.
It’s been about two and a half years since I last wrote here. The last time I gathered us, I was writing about surviving winter, about hunkering down and making it through.
And I did. For much longer than I thought I needed to.
Katherine May, in Wintering, writes:
“Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximizing scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs.”
I didn’t recognize the winter or how long it would hold me until I was deep in it.
I write to you now not as a self-employed coach navigating the wellness-influencer world that I low-key despise. Instead I am a more-than-full-time sales coach inside a Fortune 500 company. In real time, I’m learning the fragility of what it means to lead people with care in a system that often forgets to rest.
Every day, I stand at the threshold between care and capitalism. I’m actively trying to figure out how to nourish myself, my team, and my purpose without losing my humanity. Without losing the dignity I worked so hard to obtain.
I’ll be honest: I don’t have answers. But I believe that noticing — really noticing — is a form of resistance. Naming what feels hard and what still feels good can be its own kind of sustenance.
I’ve missed creating work that connects, and the conversations that grow out of these reflections.
So here I am.
It’s a different season now. I am opening a chapter that blows the dust off the writing desk while giving myself permission to move slow. To write with intention and heart. Maybe even a little wit.
We aren’t here to grind or prove anything, or to make myself the product. I’m here in the same spirit as that first post back in the spring of 2021. When all I needed was a space of my own. A place to help others with what I knew, on my own terms.
Back then I was unemployed and craving purpose, I published The Three Pillars of Salad Dressing and somehow that content made its way into conversations at my co-op, where someone stopped me to say, “That really helped me.” (Read it here.)
Today, if anything, I’m over-employed!
However, the craving remains: I long for a space to share what I’m learning and building, in case it helps someone else. This little corner is the virtual café in capitalism I need. I’m writing and creating the space I wish existed. Something real, reflective and grounded.
We’re starting soft. Soft like the autumn breeze that reminds us to let go, to tuck in with arms full of apples, hearts full of summer memories and pockets full of the stones we mean to keep. The light turns golden and asks us to slow down, to notice what’s ripened from all this year’s effort.
This fall, I want us to lean into the beauty of the in-between. Here, I ask how we nourish ourselves, our teams, and our families when survival mode becomes the default.
How do we bring back zest — that spark of flavor, laughter, and breath — when we’re running on empty?
Expect missives on:
Leading with heart under pressure
Seasonal musings that honor cycles of work and rest
Recipe roundups that inspire joy in the kitchen
Honest letters about learning to live with meaning inside modern work
I love life. I love to eat. I love the strange, sacred mess of being human.
If you’re craving connection, conversation, or a reminder that you’re not alone in the trying.
Please, pull up a chair.
And welcome back to Tasty Salty Real.
— Kamea
What’s Feeding Me
These are the things feeding me lately. What’s shaping how I lead, rest, and find flavor in this messy, beautiful world.
🍂 Brené Brown on the Drama Triangle
This episode of 10% Happier has been shaping how I think about leadership this week. Brené unpacks the drama triangle — victim, rescuer, persecutor — and how it plays out at work. It’s helping me see the emotional side of sales conversations with new compassion and imagine more productive, human dialogue with my team.
🍂 Samin Nosrat’s Good Things
Samin’s joyful new book and her generous Substack post invited me back into the kitchen. I keep thinking about her photos of Fava the dog as a ghost and these sesame date cookies I’ve promised to make myself once I pass my research methods course. Watching her cook reminds me that feeding ourselves can be playful.
🍂 Helicopter Tiddies to Enya
This TikTok stopped me in my scroll. A woman in a bonnet and muumuu, moving freely to Enya. The absence of the male gaze, no self-consciousness, just joy shaking through her body. It made me laugh and, strangely, it healed something in me.
Welcome back 💝