Ever since I was a young girl I have been fascinated with food. I spent the first eight years of my life in Istanbul, and my memories of the city all have to do with the smells, sounds, sights, and tastes of food. From the time I was a toddler I practically lived in the kitchen, where my mother, grandmother, and aunts could keep an eye on me. From my seat, I would watch the elaborate and ancient dance of women preparing food to feed their family.

When I was young, I was blessed to experience food in an intimate way. Because I was taught that food comes from the source of life, I came to understand the life-giving qualities of it. I intuitively understood that food’s nourishing capacity far exceeded basic physical survival. Food had the power to bring a family together, to connect me to the earth and our planet’s cycles, to nurture all my senses.

As a child, I adored the seasons and loved the cyclical wheel of nature that brought each fruit and vegetable back each year. My favorite fruit was a type of small, green plum that grows in early summer. Each spring I began to look forward to these deliciously crisp and sour plums with just a hint of sweetness. But I had to be patient and wait until May when I could buy them in little bags from the street vendor, where I’d pick them up on my way home from school.  For me, that delightfully sour plum will always be the taste of childhood, the anticipation of the end of school and the long days of summertime ahead.

A few months after we moved to Wisconsin,  a little girl in my third-grade class surprised me by inviting me to her birthday party. I was a shy child, still learning English, and this was the first time I had been invited to someone’s house. You can’t imagine my excitement. Since leaving all of my friends in Istanbul, this was the first hopeful sign that I would ever make friends again.

At the party, we ate normal kid foods like hot dogs, potato chips, and, of course, birthday cake. I had already been introduced to these foods, so they were familiar, but then the girl’s mother served us green jell-o. I had never seen anything like it. The bright green globular mass wiggled on my plate most unnaturally. Was I supposed to eat this? I watched the other little girls dig in with their spoons, so I tentatively did the same. I took one mouthful, and had to do everything to keep from spitting it out. I was immediately sick to my stomach.

Sometimes it takes going to a new place to realize the value of the old one. In Istanbul, we had marketed daily, going to outdoor markets for local produce. We bought bread hot from the baker, goat and sheep feta cheeses that were cut from large vats, and fresh fish and meat for our daily meals. Food permeated every aspect of life. Even walking through the city streets was an occasion to smell the rich scents of steamed corn, grilled fish, and roasted chestnuts on the vendors’ carts.

In Wisconsin, we had traded the outdoor markets for the supermarket; green plums for green jell-o. I may have left Istanbul when I was young, but I carried with me the strong memory of the wholeness and richness of food, and it’s guided my life ever since.

This article originally appeared in Elle magazine, July 2006.

Transitions are in-between times; they are periods of waiting. Most of us find it so uncomfortable to wait that we are usually ready to jump right into the next thing. Old job to new job. Old relationship to new relationship. My work consists of supporting and guiding people through this “trepidatious terrain,” as I like to call it. Whether a personal or professional change, I always urge people to take a pause. This pause can have tremendous power in your life because it gives you time for awareness and reflection. Where have you been and where are you going? What do you need to take with you, and what do you need to leave behind?

Transitions are subtle, and change rarely happens overnight. Instead, transitional moments are composed of layers that unravel as quietly and steadily as night merges into dawn. Instead of fearing or avoiding life’s powerful transitions, we can adopt an attitude of trust and surrender to a larger sense of time. We are not in control, but we can create the most supportive, fertile ground to nourish our ongoing change and growth.

When seeds are planted in rich fertile soil, they first make roots that steadily reach down into the earth. Roots must grow first because they provide the strength to hold up the plant as well as to absorb the nutrients to eventually grow the stem, sprouts, and green leaves.

How can we apply this profound wisdom to our own lives? Spring is approaching within us. How fertile is our soil? Which seeds have been sown? Where are our roots growing? Are we paying attention to our own inner rhythms and nourishing our growth so that we can burst forth in the new spring green?

When a seed is first planted, the root growth isn’t visible to the eye. The root is growing in the deep darkness of the soil. How do we know? Because eventually, once the root has taken hold, a green sprout will break through the soil.

Seeds offer us a metaphor for our own lives. Take advantage of this seasonal transition to till the soil of your life. Make it free of weeds and rocks. Fertilize it with extra nutrients and the compost of what no longer serves you. Nourish and water well, and support the tender growths until they are strong and steady. Have patience. In its own time, the spring sunshine will surely melt the winter snow and provide the necessary conditions for the new seedlings to grow into their full potential.

Each September, we’d pick hundreds of raspberries. Of course, the children would eat more of the sweetly tart fruit than they accumulated in the little pails that hung by strings around their necks. Coming home with our bags of juicy red fruit, I would enter the kitchen as though personally heralding in the new harvest season, ready to make jam out of our bounty.

This year, like other years, I performed my ritual of raspberry jamming. I love the feeling of preparing food for the season when local produce is less available. For many of our mothers, aunts, and grandmothers, this was a natural cycle. As simple as it may seem, making jam aligns me to the deeper rhythms of our ancestors, who didn’t prepare for immediate consumption but for the long winter that lay ahead. I have a deeper appreciation for the sweet-tartness of raspberry jam in January than I do in September. One spoonful and it’s enough to bring summer back in all its glory.

I also know how much time, energy, and love goes into each small jar. I just sent one precious jar from the newest batch to my daughter at college. She told me that she’s eating it in small spoonfuls straight out of the jar, just a little bit every few days. This way, she said, she’s making it last, savoring the fruit of the season.

The last few winters in New England have been more severe than usual, and many of the mulberry tree’s branches are now bare. This spring, it showed signs of dying. Meanwhile, this has been an exceptionally good season for all the roses in my garden. Yet among the dozen or more varieties, the rambling rose has been truly exceptional. For years the rose has quietly climbed the mulberry and this spring it took over the bare branches with hundreds of pearl pink flowers cascading 30 feet above the garden. We enjoyed this incredible display of beauty for more than a month. Family, friends, neighbors, students, clients, bees, insects and birds all gathered to receive this nourishment.

Besides creating space for the rambling rose to grow to its fullness in the sun, the dying mulberry tree has expanded the perimeters of the garden. Its branches used to shade parts of the garden so that it was impossible to grow many light-loving plants. Now the additional sunlight has given me the opportunity to plant dwarf plum trees as well as many other perennials that could not grow there before.

Although this is just another summer in the many seasons of my garden, it feels very significant that the oldest member, the most firmly rooted, is showing signs of letting go.

The bare branches of the mulberry tree now provide the perfect structure for the new growth to come into the light. Although I feel a certain sadness about its passing, as many of you have heard me say, in order to receive nourishment, we need to make space, and making space requires letting go of what is no longer necessary.