Still Becoming

Where It All Began
There was flour on them again.

Not just a light dusting, but settled into every edge and groove. The kind that comes from days spent at the counter. Quiet work. Repetition. Hands moving without needing to think.

I picked them up to brush them clean, but as they began to shine in my hands, I paused.

And I remembered.

Six and a half years.

It didn’t begin here, in a steady rhythm. It began in fragments.

Minutes.
Then hours.
Then getting through a single day.

Thirty days felt like a lifetime.
Sixty days felt impossible.
Ninety days felt like something other people reached, not me.

But somehow, one day at a time, those small stretches of time began to gather. To stack. To hold.

Much like the early days of learning sourdough, when nothing quite makes sense yet, and you are simply trying to stay with it long enough to see what might become of it.

What Cannot Be Rushed
There is a moment in sourdough that cannot be forced.

You can measure.
You can mix.
You can follow every step exactly as written.

But the transformation, the thing that gives the bread its life, happens in its own time.

Fermentation is quiet work. Invisible work. Work that asks you to trust what you cannot yet see.

Sobriety asked the same of me.

There was no rushing the healing. No skipping ahead to the part where everything felt resolved or peaceful. No way to bypass the discomfort of sitting with myself, fully present, without numbing or distraction.

It was slow.

Sometimes painfully so.

But over time, something began to shift beneath the surface.

Strength where there had been fragility.
Clarity where there had been confusion.
A steadiness I did not recognize at first as my own.

Layer by Layer
Bread teaches you to work in layers.

You fold the dough, gently, repeatedly, strengthening it over time. Not by force, but by consistency. By returning to it again and again, giving it what it needs in that moment.

Sobriety has been the same.

Layer by layer, I have moved through healing. Through grief. Through forgiveness. Through learning to offer myself grace when I least believed I deserved it.

There were parts of me that needed to be uncovered. Others that needed to be let go entirely.

It was not clean work.
It was not linear work.
But it was honest work.

And slowly, something stronger began to take shape.

What the Chips Hold
These chips sit quietly on my counter.

They are small. Unassuming. Easy to overlook if you didn’t know what they represent.

But I know.

They hold every early morning when getting out of bed felt like a victory. Every night when choosing not to drink felt like the hardest decision I had ever made.

They hold the days no one saw.
The moments no one applauded.
The quiet choices that changed everything.

Much like a loaf of bread, they do not tell their full story from the outside.

But inside, there is depth. Structure. Life that has been built over time.

The Life I Am Building Now
Today, those chips sit beside flour and water and salt.

Beside dough that is stretching and resting and becoming something more than what it started as.

I leave them there on purpose.

Because they remind me that the same patience I practice in bread is the same patience that rebuilt me.

That transformation does not come from force, but from faithfulness. From showing up. From staying.

One day at a time.
One loaf at a time.
One quiet decision at a time.

Six and a half years later, I am not the same woman I was.

And just like the dough on my counter, I am still becoming.

Warmly,
Kathy
Art of The Crumb