Maharajji, My Mother, and the Healing Nature of Feeding Everybody

Harm reduction and service as an act of the highest self

Happy weekend, beloved subscribers - I want to preface this post by saying it has absolutely nothing to do with the wellness industry or nutrition - and everything to do with my own life, harm reduction, activism, and some teachings from Maharajji - I know this is not the usual content, and I want to give you an out now if this is not an article you want to read.

My mother and father came to the United States in the 90’s following the bloody collapse of the Soviet Union. My birthday, as Leo as they come, is on July 29th - and my pregnant mother, born in Baku, Azerbaijan, had her hand on her pregnant belly when one of the bloodiest massacres of the region in the 20th century was perpetrated at Khojaly - an excerpt from “Disgrace of Humanity” by Ruslan Rahimov:

“A total of 613 vulnerable people, including 106 women, 63 children and 70 elderly people were killed in Khojaly, previously inhabited with 7,000 people.

Some 487 people, including 76 children, were critically injured, while 150 of 1,275 Azerbaijanis that the Armenians captured during the massacre still remain missing.

Eight families were completely removed out of the world, 130 children became orphan and some 25 children lost both of their parents in the massacre.”

That was February 26, 1993. My pregnant mama’s birthday. She ran.

When my parents arrived in America, it was into the loving arms of an Armenian church in Southfield, Michigan - Detroit has long been a mecca for refugees seeking asylum, shelter, and community, and the church took them in. My mother, a highly educated woman in the prime of her life, started nannying other people’s children, and my father, a decorated military man and a highly skilled boxer, filled a mop bucket and drove a bus. Their first apartment complex, Northgate, borne the stacks of film photographs I’d look at as a child, seeing my parents when they used to have joy - as the trauma and pain of life set in, this was the only glimpse I’d ever had into who my parents used to be. My mother, whose hair has been short the whole time I’ve been conscious, with thick black locks blowing in the wind on Belle Isle, my father, his eyes bright, in his favorite Polo shirts, smiling. These are strangers to me. The next apartment complex, Cambridge Square, was just up the road - and it’s where we lived for most of my childhood. This was a formative place for me, where I learned to be scared, and where I’d sit, looking at those film photos, wondering if those two happy, smiling people - the only people I knew who looked like me - would every come back. My childhood in this apartment was one of extreme fear - what war, displacement, and loss does to a person will make them do worse on the child in their home. I’ll leave that there.

This was also the place where my mother, this brilliant, beautiful, shining woman, still seemed to love me. Somewhere in my very young, childlike innocence - maybe she still saw the hope she had lost outside of our walls. My mama and I would walk in the snow, and the memories of just where our sidewalk curved are vivid as ever. She would walk up to a pine tree, branch hanging low, covered in snow, and tell me to shake it, gently, as though it were a hand - to take any opportunity to lighten the load. I continued to shake snow off of branches I could reach for the rest of my life.

My father did not see that same hope in me. I don’t know what he saw, but I’ve spent my entire existence wondering what was so ugly about it, as I can’t explain why else it would cause him to hate me and us as much as it seemed like he did. I spent a lot of time in that apartment hiding - behind the couch, in the closet, under the bed. I feel my insides crumple when I hear a man yell, and any slamming sounds - doors, items falling - make me duck down, even now. My parents brought a few things with them from Baku - the one that took up the most space in our apartment was war.

In true immigrant fashion, our number one job was pretending that everything was okay to the outside world, so we did. The term ‘hood rich’ comes to mind when I think about all of the money spent on flashy clothes and not sports teams, or field trips, or instruments, or fucking anything other than making it look like we were not struggling. My mother would threaten me with significant physical violence if I did not make eye contact with and smile at every single person we walked by at the store, and I had learned the hard way that she was not bluffing. She taught me to read at 2, and I was speaking complete sentences in English she could barely understand by my first month of kindergarten. I have holes in my brain that protect me from most of my childhood. But I have jewels, too, shining, beautiful kaleidoscopes of happy days and flower blossoms - and the one that stands out the most is my mother’s coveted dinner party.

My mom had a lot of love to give, and like me, she had absolutely no idea how to give it to people, so she put it into her food. In our next apartment, in the light of the door to our astro turf balcony, was the walnut veneer dining table where I learned that the only thing folks like us can do is get people ‘round a table and give them a reason to stay. I don’t believe a single Michelin reservation in the history of restaurants has had the exclusivity or demand as did one at that table. My mother would rise before the sun and train me to be the extra hands she needed to pull of a feast fit for royalty in our fairly moldy apartment - and what happened next was the stuff of absolute mysticism.

Pomegranates, fronds of dill, saffron, figs, quince, the things I see a lot of annoying mother fuckers fumble in their small plates restaurants were a mainstay in our house - but, of course, only when other people were there. The smells that came out of our tiny kitchen, four electric coil burners, small kitchen table used as a counter top were hypnotic. My mother and I were in the fucking weeds all day long and somehow, someway, when guests arrived, she was calm, cool and collected. I’d take family heirloom fur coats that still smelled like home off of the friends that became our family, make myself scarce in the kitchen and listen to the exclamations as people took their first bites - this was my El Bulli, my Trotter’s, my only string to the place I knew I was from and could never go. And through it all, my mother never sat down. I have not had a conversation with my mother in a long time, because doing so is too painful for me to bear - and I realized recently that when I picture her, I don’t see anything other than the photos I studied as a child. I no longer hear the sound of her voice. But when I cook dinner for people I love, and I watch them feasting in my kitchen, I feel my hips back up against the kitchen counter and I feel so close to her, there, standing proud and exhausted, with no desire to eat. Never has food been a skill or a job for me - it’s a momentary diversion from war.

When you grow up the way I did, you have two options - you become angry, violent and harmful, or you spend the rest of your life breaking the cycle. I’m ashamed to say I have done more of the former, and only through doing some very hard work have I accessed the latter. I was alone in an apartment with two people who hated me, and I had to believe that I could change their mind - which means forgiving people for wrongdoings is engrained into my very core. I’ll spare you the textbook symptoms of this in my teens and early 20s, as luckily, no amount of drugs, alcohol or self sabotage was enough to take me out of the running to finally find a way to live a little bit better. I am down, but I am not out.

The obsession I have had my whole life with forgiveness came to a head when I got sober off drugs and found Ram Dass, Alan Watts, Maharajji, and ultimately, my zen teacher, Sokuzan at Sokukoji Zen Buddhist Monastery in Michigan. I felt like I had spent my entire life as a lightning rod, and that surely, there must be some reason that all of this shit had happened to me. Through many years of studying yin and yang theory, and finally believing that there is, in fact, a balance - I found one. I wrote in my journal, many years ago -

“I have experienced the depths of sorrow so that I could have room for the triumphs of joy.”

While this internal metamorphosis was happening, I was living in Detroit, and constantly finding myself shattering internally at the plight of human beings on the street. My friends and I would pick up pregnant mothers from bus stops, we’d shovel snow for old neighbors, make pots and pots of chili and hand out hot food at parks, and this sort of continued to grow from me infinitely as I entered a harm reduction space. I learned how to administer Narcan, I spent time in shelters at intake, I crowdfunded for families, bought graduation robes, Christmas gifts, blankets, heating pads, and I realized, quickly, that if you want to believe that the world that beat the shit out of you can be better, then you have to do something to make it better. The drop in the bucket mentality does not apply because that would mean that your pain was just a drop, too, and if you have ever felt pain in your life, you know that is simply not the case.

This story told by Ram Dass about his early relationship with Maharajji had the most to do with my desire to feed people on the street. I encourage you to read the whole story here but here is the excerpt that means the most to me:

“Then Maharajji drew close, nose-to-nose, looked very coolly at me, and said, 'Love everyone and tell the truth. At that moment I saw before me a coffin in which lay the person I thought I was…

…now, I am freed by being in love with people. When I am searching for the ways to stay in love, I hear Maharajji saying, 'Feed people, serve people, love everybody, tell the truth.' So I serve more…and I find myself more in love. What is wonderful is that the love lies not outside as a reward, like a gold star for being a good helper, but within the act itself. For when you offer yourself in service, it opens your own heart so that you may once again taste the sweetness of your own heart’s innate compassion.”

The child inside of me who hid, terrified, far enough away to not get hurt but close enough to stop the hurting if it got too bad, is just as scared now as she ever was. But I think my superpower is those photos of my parents. I know, with unwavering certainty, that the smiling, joyful light being I saw in those photos exists in both of my parents, and I know that the callouses of grief, loss, shame, and pain have made them unrecognizable. But when I’m doing harm reduction on the street, or when I am forgiving somebody who kicked me while I was down - I know their stack of photos is cherished by somebody, too. I believe, because I have to believe, that if you treat somebody with love, you will access that version of them. For the longest time, I didn’t know that - but now I know that I, like so many others, are not a vicious dog - just a scared one, backed into a corner, taught to bite. I don’t ask for forgiveness from anybody, but I have it to give, along with love, infinitely. I am rich with grace. I have been so deeply flawed in showing the love I have to give to the people around me, but it’s led me to setting tables fit for kings and I’ve been blessed enough to find a way to do that for a living. Every plate I make is a comfort to us, me and that scared little girl, and an opportunity to show love, safely.

Since moving to Phoenix, I’ve been truly shattered by the suffering all around me on the streets. There are people dying on the street from heat, from lack of water; you can smell fentanyl around downtown encampments and I regularly hand food or water to folks with open, abscessed wounds. I feel incredible guilt for wearing gloves, because I know a handshake, flesh to flesh, would mean the world to so many forgotten sons and daughters here on the street. I struggle to understand the cosmic fairness rumored to be true, the meaning in all of this, the constant, unrelenting war waging all over this planet, the generational trauma, the drugs, the violence. I am not smart or strong enough to understand any of it. But I know my fucking way around a sandwich. And so that is what I give.

I want every single person who reads this today to think about how they can feed somebody that is hungry. When I lived in Traverse City, and later in the Upper Peninsula, I would post on Craiglist - post title, “free food,” post subject, “I will make dinner for you if you’re hungry. No questions asked. I can leave it on your porch, or come in and give you company.”

I got replies. I made the dinner. I have met God, over, and over, and over again.

Here in Phoenix, no Craigslist is necessary - somebody is suffering to the brink of existence within five feet in every direction. I’ve been able to crowdsource funds and supplies, and I can load them into my 1988 F-250, drive downtown, and cry on the way home. While I’m there, I ask everybody their name, I fist bump, I laugh as we all complain about the heat, and I feel explosive humanity as stacks of photos look me in the eyes and say thank you. I always respond, every time, with - “thank you, honey.” If my immune system was stronger, I would embrace each person and hold their head in my hands, like the mother we both so desperately need.

No matter where I’ve lived, I’ve found that the people loudest on social media about “community,” “fuck cop city,” “ACAB,” etc., have fed the least amount of hungry people. I talk to myself a lot, because I’ve spent a lot of my life alone in a pickup truck, and I always say, “nobody’s coming” when I leave a harm redux mission. But that doesn’t have to be true. I come. I know others who do. I think I should edit that, maybe, to “nobody’s coming for us except for us” and try as hard as I can every day to convince one more person that the life of a stranger is worth saving. There is no us or them, there’s just us, a collective, starving, spiritually bankrupt, bloodied child who needs the embrace of its species. This isn’t me shitting on you for not buying Narcan and walking into a 130 degree tent in downtown Phoenix. This is me telling you that there are infinite ways to help somebody, and the only wrong choice is just not to. I want to offer some options, from everything I have learned along my path. If you ever need any help organizing, funding, or learning about how to help somebody, I can either help you myself or connect you to an organization in your area. The logistics will be at the end of this post, but I want to leave you with another bit of wisdom from RD, and one I have been truly changed by -

“Treat everybody that you meet like they’re God dressed in drag.”

Thanks for reading, and if nobody told you this today - you are so loved, so cherished, and so incredibly important to this earth. If anybody ever told you otherwise, it’s because somebody convinced them that they weren’t, either. Let that shit go. You are ever capable, ever worthy and so, so incredible. You have the power to change the world that you live in and all you need is the love already contained inside of you. I love you, and if you’ve read this far, we were bound to know each other one way or the other. I am here, for you, however I can be - because I know that when you’re ready, you’ll do the same for someone else.

Craigslist | Best of rural, suburban, or generally smaller towns

Consider posting an offer for free dinner or food for somebody. In the body, mention that you just want to help somebody who is struggling, and offer to make something easy - a few sandwiches, a pot of chili, whatever. Make sure you feel safe going to wherever the dropoff is, and if you do get the okay to interact with the person, do so with love. Offer a hug, ask if they need somebody to talk to. Accepting help is so incredibly difficult, there is inherent vulnerability there. Keep in touch. I have met people over chili and ended up buying textbooks for their children down the line. It’s beautiful.

Volunteer | Every single homeless shelter in America is underfunded, understaffed, and at capacity. Do not bother filling out an online form. Go to your local shelter, in person, and tell them that you want to volunteer. They will take you. If you are unsure about face to face interactions and still want to help, opt for a kitchen prep shift. It’s very easy, and will ease you into the space.

Street Work | Harm redux doesn’t have to be extreme. You can quite literally buy a few boxes of granola bars, a case of water, bananas (very popular in hot places as the potassium can ease dehydration), gatorade, baby wipes, socks in a cold place ,blankets in a cold place, personal hygiene items. If you live in a city, people who need this stuff will not be hard to find. Roll your window down, say “hey y’all! Anybody need some snacks or supplies?” You will get a yes, and maybe make a friend.

Partner with a local harm reduction org | If you want to get rained on Narcan, crisis management, deescalation, etc., consider partnering with a local org. If you live in a city, one exists, and if you live in a rural area, your county most likely has some kind of third party harm reduction group you can speak with or ask for resources.

I hope you all have an incredible weekend full of joy. A new how-to-eat-good-for-$100 will be up on Monday.

I love you.

In Health,

Anna