Some rituals remind me of connection. As when I make my mother’s pumpkin bread recipe. In recent days this comfort ritual has been doing significant work inside of me.
As part of me focuses on measuring ingredients, another part of me roams to other times and kitchens, other recipes, other occasions. I can still almost see my father sitting at their kitchen table, waiting for a sample from the first batch of bread out of the oven. The first to sample, my father would also be the first to suggest who we could take a loaf of bread to. He liked to share, to give, to pay attention to tangible and practical things that might make a difference in someone’s day.
Sometimes my mother and I speak of this – of how my father tended to people, of how we still imagine him sitting at the kitchen table even years after his death – but sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we simply let the awareness be, and we speak of other topics. It’s often a time when we talk through things we may only just be finding words to express.
Baking is, for me, that kind of space. It evokes home and relationships. It creates opportunities for conversations to roam without judgement. It’s an occasion for nurture. It grounds me in the ways I need to be grounded.
This feels especially important to me these days. Over the last year especially, I’ve had trouble listening to the news. I listen every day, though. I listen as ideals I thought bound a nation together now falter. Public spaces become even more aggressive. People considered “other” have even more to fear.
I watch these developments and respond in ways that I can, ways that often feel much too small. When days come to an end, I have the sense of feeling more tired on a regular basis, less balanced, more in need of time to retreat and hide in “safer” kinds of spaces.
Do you?
If you do, you’re not alone.
These are times when I turn to rituals that function as acts of hope. When I feel tired, or discouraged, or unsteady, I turn to those activities that comfort and assure me the world can be better than it often is.
I remember one winter day going to a doctor’s office for the chronic aches and pains that I have. Hurting and discouraged, I walked into the waiting room and stopped, stunned. Every table surface held plates of homemade breads, cookies, and candies. At the sight, a flood of endorphins hit my bloodstream, leaving me feeling really, really good. My body sank into a waiting room chair, relaxing as I hadn’t all day. I hadn’t even seen the doctor yet, but I already felt – really felt – better, cared for. It hit me all over again how much power we have to create situations that act like that on human lives.
Of course, it felt like hope.
I’ve tried to work with this insight. Pumpkin bread has gone with me to office breakrooms when I almost couldn’t stand to set foot in the hallways leading there. Workplaces can become that stressful and conflicted. And on those days, I’ve relished pausing over bread and coffee with colleagues to remember that we’re more than the roles in which the institution has cast us. I think I’ve not been the only person leaving those breakrooms feeling better than before, more ready to face again the systems that take their toll on life.
It’s why I’m making time these days to bake. I’m pausing, regrouping, and reorienting by a ritual that’s given me glimpses of what’s possible between human beings.
In that spirit, I offer a pumpkin bread recipe below. It’s my mother’s – spicy and extra sweet with raisins, too. See what you think. See if it might join with one of your own comfort rituals or suggest a new ritual of some kind. Most importantly, however you do it, see if you can’t give yourself some regular time to step back and reconnect with your own deepest ties that have taught you what’s possible.
The Recipe: Pumpkin Bread
Ingredients:
1 c. raisins
½ c. water
2 eggs
1 c. canned pumpkin
1 ¼ c. sugar
¾ t. cinnamon
¾ t. ground cloves
½ t. salt
1/3 c. oil
1 ¾ c. flour
1 ½ t. baking powder
½ t. baking soda
Directions:
Soak raisins in ½ c. water for 5 minutes (don’t drain).
In a bowl, beath eggs, stir in pumpkin, sugar, ground cloves, cinnamon, and salt. Add oil. Mix well.
Stir together flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Add to pumpkin mixture with half of raisin mixture. Stir. Add other half of raisin mixture. Stir.
Fill mini loaf pans ½ full. Bake at 350 degrees until top springs back when pressed with finger.
This essay originally appeared as “On Pumpkin Bread and Comfort Rituals: A Reflection and a Recipe” in The Polk Street Review 2026.
