“I feel so homesteady right now,” I told my sisters as I made cinnamon rolls from scratch for the first time. It was giving homestead vibes, practicing artisan cultivation and mindful creation. How grounding, to feel that sense of steadiness in being home and embracing embodiment.
As those words left my mouth, it occurred to me that homesteady meant way more than just homestead vibes. It meant restoration.
I’m Sarah, founder of Homesteady Delicatessen. The journey to this homesteady mile-marker was no small endeavor. After a 10-year struggle with bulimia, it is needless to say that my relationship with food was severely damaged and my relationship with myself even more so. I had desperately been seeking reparations for the remainder of my late 20s, after a brush with death through the loss of my mother served as an effective reminder of how brief our time on this earth really is.
A walking advertisement of pure disembodiment, I was starved of both physical and emotional nutrients. Largely unfamiliar with sensations like full, satisfied, and enough, devouring more food in a day than I used to in a month, I felt emptier than ever. Upon entering the recovery phase, I soon realized that satisfaction cannot be quantified by any perfect intake of calories or macronutrients.
My attempts at perfect dietary consumption birthed a clear and concise conclusion- eating should feel good, and it cannot unless you first believe that you are good. Innately and entirely.
Place
Home in the walls around us, in the town we’re in, in the season of life. There is nowhere else to be, no place to rush off to next. The clock stops, the chaos quiets, and all that remains is the warm embrace of safety and serenity drifting through the atmosphere. The walls that are up so your walls can come down- where your guard can rest while your wonder awakens.
Person
Home in your body, just set in your skin with a stillness in your soul. Steady heartbeats and sure movements baked into the careful cultivation of something new and delightful. Homesteady is making meaning through the comfort in one’s own body, when fingertips trickle with curiosity. You are safe, you are loved, you are home.
Power
Home in the sureness of your potential. The subtle and vast recognition that you have nothing to prove, and everything to gain. It’s not too late, we promise. A steady knowledge of who you are, what you desire, and that you’ll get there. Grounded in these beliefs, an unwavering dedication to self-investment. We create beautiful things. We cultivate magic. We make meaning.
To this day, I am in awe of what our bodies are capable of. Scaling mountains and traveling to the moon seem like much more grandiose endeavors than recovering from an eating disorder, but anyone who has fought that battle knows otherwise. You may not realize the delicacy of your relationship with food until you’re forced to reconcile with it. Why do we eat? To live, perhaps, but also… we may indeed live to eat.
I had to find this simple pleasure again. Like a child, I was learning to eat, to taste, to feel. Mostly, to heal. The demands of perfection were weighty and suffocating, which inevitably led to the breaking point. Throwing all the rules out the window, I fully committed to just enjoying the process- which meant getting my hands messy.
Elbows deep and covered in flour, I felt my wounds kneading along with the dough. I was healing and that was a much tastier treat than any batch of cinnamon rolls. Admittedly, these moments were never strictly full of awe and joy, as the 4-year cocaine binge that followed my eating disorder recovery rendered my senes dull from the dopamine overload. Some days it all felt meaningless, where delight, peace, and happiness were strictly fables. Purpose and satisfaction were undoubtedly statistical impossibilities.
It was in these moments when I always heard that rumbling whisper, “you are far more capable than you know.” As it turns out, I was. Through a stream of serendipitous seeming improbabilities, I found these truths to be self-evident:
That less is indeed more.
That life is indeed good.
And that peace is indeed both possible and probable- it just takes a little patience and a whole lot of practice.
We’ve all got a hunger inside us- for more than just calories. Perhaps we’re famished for actual dietary nutritional consumption, but maybe more so for connection. Though maybe still this hunger dawns deeper than that- maybe this is a craving that will never truly be satisfied, because the satisfaction, joy, and meaning are in the journey of the pursuit, rather than the arrival at the destination.
It’s a long road home… but it’s worth it, I promise.
Our Values
Above all else, we value curiosity. This is the driving force for change, resilience, determination, and sustainability. You are far more capable than you know, and there is no measure of value for the infinite benefits of exploring one’s potential.
“What if it all works out?”
“Where can I go from here?”
“What’s the best that could happen?”
The Mission
Our mission is to challenge the status quos surrounding satisfaction, consumption, enoughness, and creation. We aim to change the thinking surrounding what we eat, to shift the focus from perfect to happy. Satisfaction and perfection are not inescapably conditional. We know that satisfaction is attainable and it all begins in the still, small moment when one embraces the reality that nothing gold can stay- there’s beauty in the liminal spaces we’re in today. Finitude, after all, is what makes life sweet.
Homesteady Delicatessen 