Elena

Elena’s five words are Kind, funny, outgoing, loyal and clever. She is a grandmother with two grown children, raised by her father in a house full of males: Im tough. I can defend myself. My dad also taught me kindness and compassion. She finished culinary school in her early forties, a single mother with only a high school diploma, and has made her working life in food. Why she keeps working through daily pain: Food makes people happy and that makes me happy. Not to mention that rent comes due every month.

Her childhood is told in a few sentences, and should be read slowly. When her mother left, a stepmother arrived, and years of severe mental and physical abuse followed for her and her brothers. As the only girl, she became their caretaker, sneaking them food when they were not fed and taking the punishment, and at times they searched discarded food for something to eat. She calls it, simply, survival mode. Her father worked constantly and did not know. What she made of it is her own sentence: I raised my children with love, peace and kindness. I wasn't going to do to them what was done to me.

Food in her life is both wound and vocation. Her father was a great cook. He always fed us healthy food; her grandmother taught her the family’s old-country dishes. She loves scrambled eggs with chiles and a little queso fresco, and bakes for every holiday season. Her food is All over the place, and when she feels well, her daughter and granddaughter choose a restaurant none of them knows and walk in without reading the menu. At the time of the diary her pain had left her really not hungry, and she was drinking protein shakes while she waited for treatment.

Her lifeline holds hard losses. Her father, the strongest man I ever knew, died. Her mother returned when Elena was in her forties, and Elena learned why she had left: an abusive childhood of her own, and addiction. She lived with Elena, who tried to get her into treatment, and Elena was the one who found her after an overdose. In the months that followed, she was angry at God and, she writes, did not want to go on living. A phone call from a faithful brother turned the anger into grief: A switch flipped that day. Later she nursed her youngest brother through withdrawal in her home, holding the bowl and wiping his face. He has been sober for some years now, and he is her 2 a.m. person. Kleinman (1988) warns against reducing suffering to a diagnosis; Elena’s own frame is faith, and this portrait keeps it: God loves me and meets me right where Ive left Him.

Her community vision comes from years of feeding people: In my community theres alot of poverty. And: A cheeseburger is $.99 a salad is $10. She wants a community garden with every herb, because people would be more likely to consume food that they had a hand in growing. Her stress response has two steps: I freak out and then I pray.

In the pandemic her work fell away, and for a time she went wherever the work was. Her Day 5 goal is to give up 5 cups of coffee every morning and eat breakfast again, with her daughter encouraging her. She did not write a letter to her future self. The silence should not be over-read. Her vision board, though, is an island where The pace is slow the people are kind.