My therapist gave me two assignments this week. The first: start finding your why, why you do what you do, what’s underneath all of it. The second: go somewhere beautiful to do it. She picked the place, the second floor of the Chicago Athletic Association.
Why is this so hard to answer
I’m someone who always has words. Ask me about my work and I’ll talk for twenty minutes. Ask me about food systems, community, hospitality, what’s broken in an industry and how to fix it. I have opinions. I have a lot of opinions.
But the why? The real one? That made me go quiet.
I think it’s because I already know the answer — and knowing it makes it real. And real things can be chased. Real things can fail. It’s much safer to keep it fuzzy, unnamed, sent to the universe but never fully claimed.
What I do know
There are three things I’ve always come back to, no matter the job title or the season of life.
I LOOOOVE connecting people. Not networking, actual human connection. Putting the right two people in the same room and watching something happen that wouldn’t have existed otherwise. I’ve built entire careers around this instinct without ever naming it out loud. I LOV food not just eating it, but everything around it. The industry, the culture, the way a dish carries an entire history inside of it. Food is never just food to me. It’s infrastructure. It’s identity. It’s how communities survive and how they celebrate. And I LOVE hospitality. The real kind where someone walks into a room and immediately feels like they were expected, like this space was built with them in mind. I think about that feeling constantly. I try to recreate it in everything I do. These three things? I’ve known them for years. They’re not the scary part.
The door I haven’t opened yet
The scary part is what those three things are pointing toward. There’s an idea I keep circling; something I’ve already put out into the universe, quietly, without fully saying it out loud. Because naming it means owning it. And owning it means there’s no more hiding behind “someday.” I’m in a transition right now, career and identity, mostly. I divide my time between Puerto Rico and Chicago, and both places know a version of me. But Anissa is asking me to find the version that exists regardless of which island or city I’m standing in. The one that doesn’t change with the zip code.
I’m standing in front of a door I haven’t opened yet. I can feel the handle. I know what’s on the other side. I’m just working up to turning it
And somehow, being in this room helps. Like Anissa knew the assignment needed a setting that matched its weight. You don’t excavate your deepest why just anywhere. You go somewhere that takes you seriously first.
Why any of this matters
Your why isn’t a mission statement. It’s not a LinkedIn headline or an elevator pitch. Simon Sinek talks about this; the idea that people don’t connect with what you do, they connect with why you do it. But when you apply that to your own life, it gets a lot more complicated. It’s the thing that explains your pattern, why you keep making the same choices across completely different contexts, why certain rooms feel right and others drain you before you even sit down. When you’re in real transition, the kind that touches career and identity at the same time, your why is the only fixed point. Jobs change. Seasons change. But the reason you chose this path and not another, that stays. The problem is most of us never stop long enough to name it. We stay busy. We move. And then one day a therapist sends us to a beautiful building with a homework assignment and we finally have to sit with it.
If you’re somewhere similar, if you know something about yourself but aren’t ready to say it yet, I want you to know that’s a valid place to be. You’re not behind. The door will still be there when you’re ready.
I’ll let you know when I open mine.
Gracias por leerme,
Génesis 🍒