I think this will be good for Erica. She needs something to anchor her right now. This past year has her more listless than usual, which I did not think possible. She doesn’t feel like she’s good enough at anything. Right now it’s her job. She doesn’t even like it, so I don’t know why she cares. And sometimes it’s her hobbies, which is hard when she depends on them to distract her from her job.

The root of her listlessness is much deeper than her job or her addiction to crafting videos, though. I’ve been watching over Erica since birth. I watched over her mother before that and her grandfather before that. I watch over all members of my family who are born with the gift. It happens once a generation. If all goes well, I do not appear.

Erica is not the first to be born with the gift and unable to channel it. She is the first whose parent has the gift and has been unable to teach her. By some stroke of luck, the gift was passed down for hundreds of years through a line of natural cooks who channeled it through food. Erica does not have a natural talent for the culinary arts. Because she did not excel naturally, as her mother expected, she was not taught and refused to learn. I know what she’s going through. I struggled too, as neither of my parents were afflicted.

She needs to find some channel for her power, but she needs to be on solid footing first. Whatever the gift is, however it ended up in my family, it is strongly linked to emotions. For years, I have watched her suppress her emotions for fear of letting out her power in a way she cannot control. She should not have to live like that. I think this will help her. She enjoys her crafting and she enjoys helping people. She needs more enjoyment in her life.

She also needs to learn how to cook. Even if she does not use cooking to channel her gift, she needs to take care of herself. I’m sure there are others out there who believe they possess no natural talent for cooking because it just seems so daunting. I don’t think feeding yourself should feel that way. If someone had come to me deep in the woods of medieval Scandinavia and told me I would one day have a cooking blog to help my however-many-times great granddaughter, I’d have said they were the witch. But no one can predict where life will take them.

-Ella

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