Bev’s Bites was born as a total copycat moment. One of my greatest joys is wandering around a farmer’s market on a Saturday morning. My hometown (small town Alabama – the everyone knows everyone type) has the best weekly market in the world (I know, I’m biased). It’s not the biggest one you’ve ever seen, doesn’t have the most awe-inducing facility, or even bring about enormous amounts of allure and appeal. What it does have is heart, family owned charm, soul-soothing live music by the most precious old couple, and most importantly, my second cousin Beverly’s baked goods stand. Can you guess what it’s called? Since I was in high school, I’ve fantasized about having my own market stand with the same catchy name, paying homage to my family but also the market that first inspired my love for people, baking, community, and the feeling of belonging in a small town.

My upbringing was full of its own quirks and shocks, some harder to deal with than others. By the time I got to college (war eagle!), I was excited to branch out from the expectations that were set for me by my parents when I lived at home, but right as I was beginning to hit my stride, COVID hit. Good times! And shortly after the initial surge, I found out about 2 very large and life-changing pieces of information. I’ll elaborate on those later, but for now, here’s a spoiler: family dynamics got turned upside down with some hard truths my brother revealed to me about my parents, and doctors told that same older brother that he needed a liver transplant from a live donor – guess who was the most likely match? Yours truly! After that, I said goodbye to any and all dreams of a normal college experience, normal relationship with my family, normal sense of self. And at the time, I didn’t even realize that those things were out of the question. Years later, I successfully graduated from school and left with a stomach incision, healing wounds from my family, and a new potential relationship that blossomed into the great love of my life. I took 6 months off (full of travel and exploration) before moving to Nashville, where I started my first nursing job, was forced to face the inner turmoil that’d been brewing for years, and officially began re-learning who Bev is. Lots of stress baking was involved and I finally bit the bullet and started counseling for the first time, but ultimately I left 2024 feeling challenged, refreshed, and determined to continue in my efforts to reinvent myself and LOVE the girl inside me who’s been yearning for that my whole life. She deserves it. I deserve it.

In short, Bev’s Bites is a bit of a refuge for me. My love for baking has always been about the relational aspect – what a gift it is to brighten someone’s day with a treat that is fine tuned for their tastes. The hours of laboring and patience baking requires not only lets my brain escape, it lets people know I love and care about them. Bev’s Bites, my hopeful one day bakery of my own, is a dream that I use to escape my daily life when stress gets too high, it’s a fantasy to wonder about how it’ll translate into the next phases of my life. It’s something to hold on to when I need to feel like one day I will make an impact on people, that I’ll make people feel known and loved.

It’s also a blog now because I thought others might find some sense of community in reading about my adventures through all of this. Plus I love to yap so this is a nice outlet for me to feel like I’m talking someone’s ear off without one of you having to actually bear that burden.