While Season & Shadow may have taken awhile to bloom from idea to practice, the fruits of the labor are now being fully realized. “Season & Shadow makes concrete the passion that lives in my heart, and sets my soul on fire when I can look at clients and see them maybe dancing or humming or, or just sitting quietly doing the work with smiles on their faces, or when they look like they have a reason to get up in the morning,” Mary says. That reason to get up in the morning now, for Veronica, looks like a job where she finally is able to marry her passions with mission. “It feels like I’m a part of something bigger and that I am finding myself through this process — different parts of myself that I’ve never even known about myself or that I’ve never even paid attention to.” “I feel like I’m sharing with the world now.” For Merryman House, the new work is adding a bit of spice to their days now. Mary can see it opening up the staff and clients in new ways. “The work that we do can tend to be so dark and so heavy when you’re just looking at the issue of violence and domestic violence and sexual assault, and you can really see just the level of harm that humans can bring to one another,” she says. “What we know about working with trauma is that trauma happens in the context of relationships and so it has to be healed in the context of relationship. One of the things I love about this program is that it allows trauma survivors to heal in the context of relationship — with the community, with their supervisor, with the team at Merryman House, with Sara Bradley, with themselves that they can get up in the morning, that they do have a purpose, that they do have skills and gifts to offer the greater world around them.” Giving her clients and her work a new focus is, quite possibly, the spice that Merryman House has needed. “It just allows us to all kind of take a step back and look at the good,” she says. “Not that we’re ever gonna minimize the bad but we don’t have to focus on it in the same way. “To me that’s just refreshing.” A SEASON IN FULL BLOOM One of the aspects of this program that makes it both unique and special is the celebrity face behind it. Sara Bradley is not only the culinary mind behind Paducah’s Freight House, she’s a bona fide food celebrity, having competed in and won Food Network competition shows like Chopped and Chopped: Legends, Tournament of Champions, and Top Chef: World All-Stars. Sara jumped into the project early to lend her culinary expertise and creativity, helping survivors design the perfect spice blends that would complement chefs, kitchens, and dishes across the nation. But for Mary, the partnership amounts to more than a celebrity endorsement or name on the bag. “She’s a high-caliber chef that’s lending her creativity, of course lending her name, but I think Sara also symbolizes that here’s a woman who has broken glass ceilings, who has taken risks, who gets in there and does the work every day to run her business,” she says. “I think just having somebody like Sara involved shows clients that they’re worth somebody like Sara’s time and her attention.” “She’s available to us, to them, as a true partner, and I think that that really makes a difference,” she says. “She’s got both feet in, and when you have both feet into something, like Season & Shadow, it also means by nature you have both feet in the mission.” THE PERFECT BLEND