Full fat whole milk ricotta toast

sweet potatoes and hot honey.

It’s terrifying to be wrong.
“Wrong.” The word even sounds dramatic—like it should come with thunderclaps and a full string section.
And yet, we’re wrong all the time.
Sometimes by accident.
Sometimes with flair.

I think about this a lot—how our words shimmer in our heads, perfectly polished, but then come out weird. Jagged. Mistranslated.
And suddenly someone’s blinking at you like, “Wait… did you just say that?”
And you’re like, “Yes. No. Kind of? Not like that—what did you hear?”

There’s a quiet power in that question.
Not correcting. Just clarifying.
Not demanding to be understood—just being brave enough to ask if you actually were.

You see it in meetings. The stealth genius who pauses at the end and says,
“Let me repeat that back to you to make sure I action on this correctly.”
And everyone exhales. She was spicy. She was clarifying the brief.
Because that little moment? That’s what builds trust. Precision. Clarity with glitter.

Friends are better at this.
I can circle a point for twenty minutes while watching a sunset and know they’re not judging me. We’ll get there eventually.
We laugh, revise, reframe, mispronounce things, start over. Mumble (I mumble when I get excited).
There’s no pressure to perform. Just shared curiosity. The luxury of not being rushed.
The safety of knowing: this is someone who listens even when I’m messy and yapping.

But it’s harder with the people who should get you.
Parents. Partners. People who’ve seen you cry during soft moments in movies.
Because the stakes feel higher.
Like you’ve failed if they don’t understand.
When really—it just means you’re both always growing.
Still decoding. Learning each other’s language in real time.

That’s where kintsugi comes in.

I’ve always loved the Japanese art of kintsugi: repairing broken pottery with gold.
Not just fixing—forging. Making the cracks not only visible, but irresistible. Iridescent.
A little shimmer where the fracture once was.
A quiet, glittering flex.

It’s the opposite of shame.
It says: I broke. I healed. And now I gleam in all the right places.
Which… same. Heard.

I like thinking of miscommunication this way.
Like little hairline fractures in our connections.
Tiny splinters where intention and interpretation didn’t quite line up.
You could pretend it didn’t happen.
Or—you could pour in something golden.
Ask: “Hey… what did you hear when I said that?”
And let them answer.
Let them be a little wrong about you. Let yourself be a little surprised.

Because if you're lucky, what they heard might be even more interesting than what you meant.
And the version of you they saw? Might just be someone you’re still becoming.

---

A gentle suggestion:

Sometime soon, watch the sunset with someone you trust to misunderstand you in a beautiful way.
Bring a plush blanket.
A speaker.
Something soft to sit on, and something messy to eat with your hands.

Maybe:
– Thick-cut sourdough, toasted to golden-brown
– A cloud of full-fat ricotta
– Roasted sweet potatoes, skin on (nutrients guys), salted and sweet
– Drizzle of hot honey (or not hot if you’re feeling delicate)
– Optional crunch: Maldon sea salt flakes

Or skip the toast and go full sea and sun:
– One perfect fatty tuna handroll
– Crisp nori
– Snappy ginger
- Coconut aminos
– Something cold and bubbly to sip between bites

Eat slowly.
Say something imperfect and weird about that thing you heard or saw or had to pretend you liked.
Let it glimmer.
Let them ask what you meant. Let them laugh with you when you realize it might not matter.

And if you’re lucky, they’ll stay until the sky turns gold, too.