You Kept Your Promise

On vows, indictments, and what survives the rubble.

January 31, 2026

Funny, great, wonderful morning where I woke up and thought, “Oh, I feel heavy. Okay, well, Eeyore ho hum, I will go through the endless practices I do all day long.” And that is so strange, because yesterday was so buoyant and light, and now I feel like I am going to cry with this heavy chest.

Then Rach pops up and “can’t wait to tell me,” a 5 a.m. whisper, about the Free Food local coverage and the women in here gathering to watch. Not sure why they didn’t wake me up, but almost better that they didn’t. All of the women gathering around the TV at 11 p.m. the night before. A joy washing over. Royal asking Rachel who everyone was. “Oh, that is Michael Lesser, he’s our chef friend. And that is Bob—we call him Mayor Bob. And that is Matt, he’s the dad of Free Food.” And Royal repeating, “I’m so proud of you,” and Miriam quietly crying. And the way the word dignity was woven throughout. “Oh, those are my tears,” I thought. Rachel telling them over a million meals since 2004, and that being very impressive to Royal. And Diamond wanting her parents to take the clothes they were donating and give them to Free Food. Rach saying, yes, you can.

I can remember the night in Italy—how many years ago was it now? The tomatoes so bursting there, every person having a little garden, just built into the culture. And hearing about this prison that had a farm-to-table restaurant, and that landing as something, because that is my inspiration. Farm to table, nothing extra, let the ingredients speak for themselves. That is my whole philosophy with people and institutions. Make people healthy and let them shine. Then everyone is beautiful. That is why I called the book Slow Sex. It was based on that idea. People thought I meant sloooooow, but no. I meant tiempo gusto—that there is a right timing for all things, fast or slow, and that as a culture we are addicted to speed and busyness.

Anyway, I was there in Italy, and this is funny—I’d redone my Buddhist vows, took them again for an online retreat. It was like a new marriage ceremony. I had really taken on the part about wherever and however I would be of most service. In the background were the whispers of this investigation, this looming anxiety. I had the originals, the prison projects, and then it was called Love to Table, not yet Free Food, but I liked “Free Food, Free Life” as an expression. Because I’d re-upped my vows, I was going to re-up my intention with the two projects, and Italy was such wonderful inspiration. They really get some things that we don’t in the States—food and prison are two of those things. Basic goodness. The soil.

I was driving my friends crazy because I had the whole vision for prisons to monasteries. The vision was coming faster than I could text, and I sounded kookoo. It was too big, too much, what I was seeing. “We are just going to turn every prison into a monastery.” “Great idea!” they’d say. “How’s the weather in Italy?” Oh, how I bristled. But it was flooding in so fast, all the ideas, that I had to keep texting regardless. The earth, the food, the program of contemplation, the special things we would need to touch for it to take root, the programming that lies in women and in people of color who are so disproportionately represented. I wrote and wrote until the monastery was fully erected in my mind.

Then a text. Bad news about the investigation restarting. The preparation for what happens next—shaking, vomiting, staying near a bathroom. I had a routine, but something said, just go to the bed. I did my prayers, the third step prayer: “I offer my life to Thee, to do with me and build with me as Thou wilt.” And I thought, I don’t really mean that. I say it every night, but if this is what you are up to, God, I am not down with it. But I said it anyway.

I got into bed and started the foxhole prayers. It wasn’t just trembling like usual, it was quaking, like I was on a ship and the ground was breaking open. Then it came—this flood unlike anything I had ever known or imagined. A flood of golden butter light, so thick you could have slathered it on toast. It poured and poured. I would try to continue my desperate prayers and a voice would guide me: “Shhh. Relax.” It kept saying relax, and I kept tensing and trying to relax. Without knowing it, I did Tummo through most of it, like Lamaze, getting ready to deliver a baby. Only it was this light flooding, and it did feel like giving birth, filling every crack, washing everything out.

It went on like this for seven or eight hours, until there were only tiny glimmers of thought. Then, as if there was a sentience waiting for all of that to finish—something I never could have heard before—it said, good, now we can get down to business. It showed me image after image, and that line about wherever I am of greatest use, which I had said in what now looked like foolish vows. I tried to clench, to contract, but I couldn’t. All that damned butter light had turned me into it. I had to lie there with the images while the mind scurried, until it had no energy left and gave in.

Someone on my team happened to call a prison to see if they’d take the program, just to check it off their bucket list. Friends told me it would take two years to get into any prison, not to get hopeful. But it was COVID, and they needed us badly, and they said, “Okay, great, can we start tomorrow?” It was still a dream, and I had to make it real, fast. I had to write a book in three weeks. We did it. The largest women’s prison in the United States. The high-security ward. And those women demonstrated what could be done.

Until the indictment came, and the prison couldn’t work with me until I was cleared, and it all came crumbling down.

Or did it?

Here I am in the rubble. Free Food is a centerpiece story in the New York Times. Over 4000 women have participated in Women Over Dinner at this point. And I am in here with the women, implementing the vision that was born that day in Italy.

Last night, as I was meditating in my bunk, the light flooding in as it does—the same butter light—I said to her, to whoever spoke to me that night in Italy, to my higher self or the light itself, “You kept your promise. Thank you. I will keep mine. You knew that.”

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