Winds of Change | A Christmas Reflection from Life in Bianca’s Kitchen

Sometimes the most beautiful things I’ve created have come from the quietest places within myself. This short video is a reflection on imperfection, truth, and change — a pause between the seasons, and maybe, a beginning too.

🎧 [Listen while you read]

If you’d like, you can listen to the music that accompanied this reflection here:

Winds of Change — A Christmas Reflection

This time of year has always carried a tenderness for me.

Christmas arrives with light and warmth, but it also brings memory — and memory has a way of opening doors we didn’t plan to walk through. I feel it most when the season slows, when the house grows quiet, when familiar scents and small traditions return without asking permission.

Some of the images shared here were meant to become a full video — but like memory itself, they arrived in fragments instead. Quiet scenes. Partial moments. Stillness rather than motion. And somehow, that feels fitting.

I miss my mother.
I miss my grandmother.

And I miss the way winter once unfolded inside their homes.

Winter break meant flour-dusted countertops and hands moving from habit rather than instruction. It meant pizzelle irons warming on the stove, the soft anise scent filling the kitchen, biscotti lined up neatly on trays, waiting for their second bake. There was no rush — only repetition, laughter, and the quiet comfort of being exactly where I belonged.

Those moments shaped my understanding of home long before I ever had the words for it.

This year looks different.

Many of my Christmas things never made it onto the moving truck last summer when we made our move across the country. The familiar rituals, the full table, the sense of permanence — they aren’t part of my present reality. And yet, the memories remain. Not as something lost, but as something carried.

That’s what I’m learning now:
home isn’t always a place you can point to.
Sometimes it’s a rhythm.
Sometimes it’s a recipe.
Sometimes it’s a season you hold close while you wait for the next one to arrive.

What you see here is not a finished film, but a gathering of moments — a quiet mantel, a lit window, hands at work, warmth finding its way in. Change doesn’t erase what mattered. It simply asks us to carry it differently.

Winds of change move quietly. They don’t announce themselves. They clear space, even when we’re not ready — even when we’re still grieving what once was. And still, they bring possibility with them.

This season, I’m not trying to recreate the past. I’m honoring it. I’m allowing memory to warm me without anchoring me there. I’m making room — gently, intentionally — for what comes next.

For new traditions that haven’t taken shape yet.
For a sense of home that is still becoming.
For peace that doesn’t depend on perfection.

If you’re finding this season tender too — if you’re holding memory and hope at the same time — know that you’re not alone.

Some endings are quiet.
Some beginnings arrive softly.
And sometimes, simply staying present through the in-between is enough.

Don’t rush the in-between. Pause between seasons — that’s where endings quietly become beginnings

May your days unfold like recipes — with patience, joy, and a little sweetness,

— Bianca