How cooking helps me process loss and burnout
2004 – 2024
It’s 2025, and most people are on TikTok, or some other eyeball-grabbing places I don’t have the energy to discover.
For years, I’ve been wanting to do something I truly enjoy outside of work. I work a very demanding job in tech, and the grind is A LOT.
🐾 ❤️🩹
Late last year, my husband and I had to say goodbye to our 20-year-old dog, Jumi. 2024 was brutal. We spent most of our time taking care of our very confused baby, whose dementia took the best of him (and honestly, us too). We were sleep-deprived, easily irritable, and not eating well.
Right before Christmas, we made the difficult but necessary decision to let Jumi go. Since then, our world has been shattered, and despite my best efforts to put myself back together, I felt dead inside.
💻 🌀
I threw myself into work, hoping it would help me process grief. I worked crazy hours, even on weekends, to avoid being at home by myself at all costs. For 10+ hours a day, I could feel a sense of control. I later learned that many grievers become workaholics just to cope.
And of course, it didn’t work. If anything, it made matters worse. 🫥
Embracing my “shadow self”
🔎 🌒
It was then I discovered my “shadow self” that I had long suppressed. Someone — unlike my external-facing persona (extroverted, confident, assertive, resourceful, driven, the ENTJ ‘Commander‘ type according to MBTI), who has suddenly lost all energy to even speak.
I can’t remember a specific moment that prompted me to go into the kitchen. Up until this point, I never truly enjoyed cooking at all.
As a productivity junkie, the thought of spending hours and hours in front of the stove, endlessly cutting vegetables, slicing meat, tearing up to onions, staining their fingers with garlic, and enduring the heat and boredom, just to make something a restaurant can easily make 10x better, is nuts.
I would much rather spend my time doing stuff that generates $$ — like putting in those extra hours on that project to help me land a next promotion, taking that course to learn about how to invest in real estate, catching up on everything I need to know about how AI can optimize my work…the list goes on and on.
🍳 ⏲️
But somehow, it happened.
When my kitchen becomes a sanctuary
It started with making some chicken soup and pork ribs soup with corn one weekend, to warm ourselves up in the colder months (though one might argue it’s never really that cold in the Bay!). I experimented with different ways of cooking (InstantPot vs cast iron Dutch oven), and became fascinated with it.
🥘 🔪
Gradually, the cooking spilled over from weekends into weekdays, and before I knew it, my favorite part of the day becomes the evening hours after work — when I can stand in front of my chopping board to cut those veggies in different shapes and forms, marinate the meat, beat the eggs, fry them in my favorite wok, or layer them in the pricey dutch ovens I worried I would never use when they went on sale and I bought in a heartbeat (and my husband still bitches about having to clean them).
👩🏻🍳 ⏳
When I work in my kitchen, I lose track of time.
My video feeds become recipe after recipe. I know exactly what I have in my fridge and what’s in stock in my pantry, and I brainstorm with myself (and sometimes ChatGPT) on different ways to use them up. When my friends asked me if I ever ran out of ideas on what to make, I was surprised to learn I always know what I want to make because I always have specific cravings each day.
What food really means
A few months ago, I rewatched the movie Julie & Julia and was brought to tears so many times. I suddenly understood what food meant to me and why cooking and eating help me find peace.
👵 👩 🥟 🍜
As cliche as it sounds, food is love. Cooking and feeding the family is how my grandmas and my mom gave love, and having their food is how I received love. Now it becomes my outlet to give the love I used to give to Jumi, and pass it onto my family, friends, and to myself.
💌 ✍️
I hope this blog gives love, and may you find enjoyment in the process of making or eating good and mostly Taiwanese food.
Nobody likes food like Jumi did