The Most Important Ingredient

Believe me when I tell you that I had no idea what I was doing when I decided to start my pie company. I look back now and wonder… what was it? Idealism or hubris? What made me think I could turn making a couple of pies out of my home kitchen into an actual food business? I wasn’t a chef. I wasn’t even an experienced pie maker. I was a recently-divorced-single-mom-working-as-a-poverty-lawyer.

But I was someone who loved making things. I still am. The truth is that it took time to see the pattern, to understand that I’ve always been someone who creates.

When I was young, I dreamed of becoming a famous actress (Spoiler alert: That did not happen.) As a teenager, I took ballet classes and acted in plays. In college, I majored in theatre until a chauvinistic professor made my experience so untenable that I decided to change my major and study political science.

While in law school, I danced with a Mexican folkloric ballet company, took guitar lessons, and sang back up in a band or two. I wrote snippets of stories without understanding that being a writer means having a writing practice, not just a talent for storytelling.

In my forties, I took a break from lawyering when my children were young. I stayed home and volunteered at their schools, took them to the bus stop in the morning, met them at the end of the day. While they were at school and when they slept, I wrote short stories and launched a literary magazine. I still remember their gorgeous, ruddy faces, the way they ran home, all arms and legs and enthusiasm, and their heavy book bags sliding off their backs as they ran up the steps to our home.

Ultimately, I decided that art was the vehicle for me, that effecting social change was possible via poetry and performance. But I didn’t always appreciate what this meant: making art requires commitment and discipline. It is a manifestation of something intangible, an expression of the impulse to create, be it a painting or a project, a story or a storefront.

And so, from the perch of middle age, post-divorce, when life was a little slash and a little burn, I gained—or maybe earned—some clarity. I began to see that I’d been a creative person my entire life. I was always making things.

I’ve learned that you have to see the pattern to take a risk, because that’s when you know who you are—which is an important ingredient for starting a small business. Maybe even the most important one…