A Proper Introduction
Or, How I Found my Voice...
My favorite Gaston Bachelard quote is, “What is the source of our first suffering? It lies in the fact that we hesitated to speak… it was born in the moments when we accumulated silent things within us.”
After only a brief Substack tenure, I believe I’m ready to introduce myself to the community.
The precise moments that I realized I could speak publicly, that I could be the visual presence of my new confection company, that I could get a degreed education in Baking & Pastry, that I could write poetry, lyric essay and an e-book on my craft, I no longer remember. I do, however, remember the impact each of those steps had in helping me find my voice.
As a relative newcomer, I appreciate the talent and voices of so many Substack writers. I’m Linda Naylor, co-author of Pacific Northwest Experiences, which I write with my partner, Paul Caloca. Poet, Toastmaster, lifelong food lover, late-life pastry chef and culinary school grad, former investment and residential Realtor, non-fiction devotee. Loving partner, privileged friend, mother.
As an introvert, these new public facing aspects of me have evolved from internalized shock to now deeply fulfilling.
A bit of history. I grew up in the 1950s in a ‘place time forgot’ called Terrace Park in Ohio. A place that had its history in the John Robinson Circus, later part of Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey, and in the railroad as it pushed eastward from the boundaries of a young Cincinnati.
Terrace Park had fairs on the Village Green. Cannons, and an honor roll of those who served. A swim club. Memorial Day and Labor Day parades. A place where only luscious landscaping delineated one yard from another. Where light devoured the dense canopy. Where heavy snow held the memory of childhood impressions. A verdant place where we could walk at night and always feel safe. A place where kids could leave in the morning and be gone all day because the community was its own safety net. A place where we walked or rode bikes to school. At the time, I assumed this was how everyone lived. Today I reflect on that community as a very special place.
In 1998, I started formal meditation practice. At the behest of a dear Jewish friend, I tested the waters of a non-dogmatic spiritual community in a city neighborhood of Cincinnati. That experience set the life transformation wheels in motion. I had been part of numerous mainstream Protestant churches that engendered little or no spark in my spiritual life. At New Thought Unity, the light came on. Loving. Diverse. A beautiful distillation of humanity.
Several months after joining and at the recommendation of one the ministers, I attended the 25th anniversary international conference of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. IONS was founded by Apollo 14 astronaut Dr Edgar Mitchell, after having experienced a profound transformation of interconnectedness on his three-day return trip from the Moon. The Institute researches human consciousness, the ways of knowing and extended human capacities through rigorous science. New Thought Unity teaches what IONS researches. I stepped into an environment of brilliant clinicians, therapists, spiritual teachers and researchers a world away from anything I’d ever known. The eleven-hour drive home from the conference engendered what I now know to be called a unity experience – a deeply connective, loving and highly disorienting spiritual event. It changed the way I saw the world, my place in it and my relationships. Little could I have imagined what would unfold. There’d be no turning back.
While I continued working in Cincinnati, my French business coach was in California. We shared remarkable spiritual alignment. She shepherded me into many unknown parts of myself as my business grew.
At the same time, I had become a student of Adyashanti who taught in the Bay Area. Adya’s own spiritual training in the Buddhist tradition evolved into a set of simple teachings that he called the most direct path to self-realization. I attended five-day silent retreats at Asilomar on the Monterey peninsula. I had a dedicated meditation practice.
The pull of the West Coast was ever-present as I became more deeply acquainted with the food culture of Oregon, though it would take many years of traveling back and forth before I would turn my business over to other agents and move to Portland in 2014 to attend the Oregon Culinary Institute. By myself. With no community. At age 62.
After graduation, I worked for nearly five years as a pastry chef in a local trattoria, creating desserts and restaurant confections until my role was terminated in 2020. Paul and I met in 2018, he, having concluded a long-term career in technology in Silicon Valley. The first poem I had ever written for a man was entitled Yellow Tie Guy. We both swooned, and the bond was immediate.
Later in 2020, we founded a small confection company called Essential Confection. We produce a small slate of artisan confection products that have their foundation in the extraordinary ingredients of the Pacific Northwest. I cultivate single flavor development, a luxurious texture, and vivid aromatics. They’re the hallmarks of our products. One of our flagships is Essential Douglas Fir Shortbread™. Another is Essential Panettone™ in both Artisan Milanese and Northwest varieties. They’re beautiful half-kilo cousins to their extraordinary 1-kilo Italian elders. They take 60 hours to produce and use only sourdough starter as leavening. It’s a high-wire act.
Like other writers, I feel compelled to write, though I had little modeling or early life guidance to pursue a path I felt well-suited to. I love discovering what others know, how others live, how people have come to shine brilliantly in the world.
I’ve long known that my path has a different arc than my friends, though I value those relationships deeply. I often say that I can see the peak of the Bell Curve from here. It still feels like I’m climbing… and bumping into things. Making mistakes. Like misjudging the new hospitality industry I now work in, as one I could transform relationally from its transactional roots.
My love for the beauty, majesty and unique history of the Pacific Northwest grows daily as does my love for my partner, Paul. I had no idea that men as expressive, as supportive, as loving as he, existed. I can breathe and thrive here. And I’m continually reminded that the only limits to all forms of growth are egoic. Noticing is all it takes for the limit to dissolve. Today, I can smile, noticing.
I like stretching very high to reach others’ words. I like sifting through words sent in scattershot that I might learn how to further distill and convey meaning using words that matter. And I embrace the quality of liminality as I acknowledge that my feet will always be straddling two worlds.
Thank you for reading Pacific Northwest Experiences. Paul’s and my adventures into the uniqueness of this place are a joy to chronicle. We’re honored to be your hosts in food, in travel and in life experience.
I love meeting you, learning from you and reading your work.
I’m Linda Naylor. I am a writer.
Nice voiceover!
It is an honor and privilege to be Linda’s partner. I feel blessed. 🙏