Cooking Through Grief: A Free Workbook for the Days You Miss Someone

By Alisha M. Smith, Pastry Chef and Founder of Roots & Returns

Some days, missing someone shows up in the kitchen first.

It might be a smell. A recipe card in handwriting you would know anywhere. A pot you never use because it was theirs. Grief has a way of finding us in the places where love used to cook.

During one hard winter, I made my grandmother's sweet potato pie. I lit a candle and played her favorite hymn. I cried into the crust. It tasted like home, even though she was not there. That pie gave my grief somewhere to go.

That is why I created Cooking Through Grief: Reclaiming Love on the Journey.

What Is Inside

Cooking Through Grief is a free workbook for anyone who has lost someone and keeps finding them in the kitchen. Inside, you will find:

• A short self-check to see where you are with food since your loss

• Prompts for remembering the family recipes that hold your people

• Simple ways to make your kitchen a calmer, more personal space

• A mindful cooking exercise and a guided culinary meditation

• Reflection pages for the memories that come up while you cook

You can move through it in one afternoon or keep it on the counter for months. There is no right pace.

Why the Kitchen

In many African American communities, mine included, the kitchen has always been a place of resilience, creativity, and memory. It is where recipes were passed down without measurements, where stories got told over a hot stove, and where love was something you could taste.

When you cook a loved one's recipe, you bring them back into the room for a little while. Your hands remember what they taught you.

A Small Place to Start

If you are not ready for a whole workbook, try this tonight. Choose one dish someone you miss used to make. Cook it slowly. Notice what you smell, what you remember, and what you feel. Then write down one sentence about them.

That is enough.

Get the Workbook

Cooking Through Grief is free. Download it here.

If you cook from it, I would love to hear what you made and who you made it for.

With love from my kitchen,

Alisha