You guys. I miss my parents. I know it doesn’t make sense. I’m the one that cut them out of my life. But I really miss them. I miss being able to share things I cook with them or talk about my nieces with them. I’ve been really sad about it. I know that cutting them out is the right thing to do. My life is so much better without them in it. These feelings aren’t rational. But they are still there. My therapist says that grief is the combination of anger and sadness. I have been feeling the anger for years. At times I have even felt sadness, frustration and resentment at the way I was raised. The trauma of my childhood has left a lasting impact on my life physically and mentally. But for the most part, while I have been process this grief, the only emotion I felt about my parents was anger. And for a while, I was nervous that all that anger was going to lead to lifelong resentment and start to effect the way I see the world and process different events. But in my last therapy session, I realized that I was feeling sad. Just not about my parents. Most of the sadness I felt was directed towards my younger self. I still feel so badly for her. She was such a well meaning girl who was born into a level of dysfunction that most people could not survive in. I wish with all my heart that I could go back in time and protect her. I wish I could tell her that life gets better. That she grows up, and becomes a person that is capable of setting boundaries and caring for herself in a way that allows her to grow. That she accomplishes her goal of survival. And she doesn’t just survive. She becomes a person proud of her strength, independence and resilience. I feel such sorrow when I think about her. She did everything she could do to keep herself alive and get out of that house as soon as she could. I think back at the decisions she made and even though some of them set me up for huge student loan payments, she was always working towards the goal of survival, escape and independence. And I’m so proud of her for never letting her situation overcome her. And anyways, I am so relieved that I have been feeling sad this whole time. And that in order to process my grief in a healthy way, I didn’t have to feel sad about not having my parents in my life. And once I realized that I didn’t HAVE to feel sadness about letting go of this relationship, I started to miss it. So weird. But that’s how it works. Okay, on to my rhubarb. So my house has rhubarb growing in the back yard. Notice I didn’t say, “I am growing rhubarb.” I am not. It was just there. And I’m just doing my best not to kill it! So I harvested some of it and had enough to make a rhubarb cake and a rhubarb crumble. The rhubarb cake is a Midwest recipe. I say Midwest because only people in the Midwest cook this way. I learned how to make this 15 years ago and it’s so simple I still remember it today. Ingredients:

• Yellow Cake Mix
• 1 cup sugar
• some cinnamon (Maybe a couple tablespoons?)
• 1 small container of heavy whipping cream
• 1 or 2 cups of rhubarb, chopped

Make the cake mix according to the directions on the box, but don’t bake it yet. After you put the batter in the pan, sprinkle the chopped rhubarb on top of the batter. Then sprinkle the sugar and cinnamon on top of the rhubarb. Then drizzle the whole container of heavy whipping cream on top of the sugar and cinnamon. THEN, bake it according to the directions on the box.