Weird Is Good

The world is starving for what mothers know.

Happy Mother’s Day.

I have spent the last few weeks hooked on Love on the Spectrum.

A lot of people I know, told me they avoided the show because they assumed it would be exploitative. Honestly, they have it backwards. The thing that makes the show so powerful is its restraint. Especially for reality television. It treats people like people.

And, I love the mothers. Connor’s mother especially.

She sits across from her grown son and helps him make sense of heartbreak, confusion, hope. When his date pulled her hand away on a walk and he was sure he had done something wrong, his mother told him it was probably just hot outside. She told him to talk to her about it. She once said that if someone had told her when Connor was three years old that one day he would be sitting across from her talking about a girl, she would have called them a liar. And there he is. Talking about a girl.

That is what got me thinking about mothers in the first place. What interests me most about mothers is their ability to see what is actually in front of them and love it without trying to make it fit.

I think that is what people are responding to in the show too.

People on the spectrum often struggle to mask who they are. Their feelings sit much closer to the surface. Joy. Disappointment. Awkwardness. Hope. Nothing is particularly hidden.

And people who have spent their lives outside what society calls normal understand struggle differently. Which means they understand joy differently too. Even trying becomes courageous.

There is a moment with Connor where he meets a woman named Georgie on a date. Bird watcher. Lovely. Midway through the date he excuses himself to use the bathroom, and the camera catches him walking away talking quietly to himself.

She is something else… where have you been all my life?

He didn’t mean to say it out loud. He couldn’t help it. That is what the show keeps revealing. Joy that has nowhere to hide.

Eventually Connor and Georgie broke up. Connor wanted something Georgie wasn’t ready for. They stayed friends. The breakup mostly happened off camera. His mother later said it felt too personal to turn into content. I loved that.

Because the show understands something important. Love is not always the ending. Sometimes love is the trying.

When my kids were young, our family mantra was simple: weird is good.

By middle school I had to explain what I meant. Everyone wants to be the same at that age. Resist it, I told them. Hold onto the thing that makes you different. One day people will seek you out for it.

My kids thank me for that now.

My mother taught me the same thing. Not through slogans. Through example.

She started a business because my brother had disabilities. She wasn’t going to wait for the world to figure out what he needed. She built it herself. At a time when women were not really expected to build companies, in an industry she knew nothing about. She couldn’t accept being anything less.

Maybe that courage came at a cost. My parents divorced because of it. But I am grateful she lived as herself.

And honestly, I know this kind of love exists because I experience it every day at Vertical Harvest.

I think about Johnny. Johnny works for me. He tells me exactly what he thinks. The few times payroll has been late during this brutal stretch, he has called it out directly in our group chat. Unacceptable. And he is right. It is.

We laugh at each other. We laugh at ourselves. Nobody is above reproach. Working with Johnny is one of the great privileges of my life. It is love. It is a spectrum.

Then there is Logan. Twenty-six years old. Las Vegas. Lives with his mom and twin sister. Before the show he had never dated a real woman. Instead, he had an imaginary girlfriend named Tifah. A full relationship. A whole inner world.

Then he met Hailey. A real woman who loved trains as much as he did. So he broke up with Tifah. On television.

He wore this incredible bright blue suit on one of their dates. Completely earnest. Completely himself. At one point he said falling in love felt like chomping on candy. It did not work out. Hailey wanted to be friends. I tried my best to impress that girl, Logan said afterward. Well, here I am now. I still need to look for love.

That broke me a bit. Because having an imaginary girlfriend is exactly the kind of thing the world teaches people to hide. Logan didn’t hide her. He named her. He was brave enough to leave her for something real. And brave enough to keep looking when the real didn’t love him back. And somehow that honesty felt more emotionally sophisticated than most people I know.

If you have been reading these essays, you know this has been an exceptionally difficult stretch for me and for Vertical Harvest. I stopped writing for a while. Some right-wing media picked up our story and flattened it into something ideological. A story about waste. About politics. But the story I know is about people.

I regretted putting myself out there. I wondered if I had exposed my staff, many of whom have disabilities, to too much scrutiny. Too much cruelty. The world feels mean right now. Flattened. Performative. Everyone screaming at each other across algorithms.

And then I spent a day watching Love on the Spectrum and remembered something important. The people whose insides sit closest to the surface are not the problem. They are often the medicine.

Our North Star at Vertical Harvest has always been this: no great mind thinks alike. What comes from that is not just innovation. It is magic. And people need magic right now. Normal is killing us.

The pressure to flatten everyone into the same shape is everywhere. Easier to categorize. Easier to market. Easier to dismiss. But the people I work with every day remind me there is another way to live.

One where we actually see each other. One where people are allowed to be complicated. One where dignity is not tied to polish. One where nobody has to disappear to belong.

This is my life’s work.

The markets are brutal right now. I have questioned myself more times than I can count these past few months. I have risked a great deal. But I would still do it again.

Because this is real. Nothing is hidden here. We see each other.

We should not have to fight this hard to build something real. But we do. I believe the model we built matters. Not just because of the food. Because of the people. Because weird is good.

That is what mothers know.

That no one should have to disappear to be loved.

The world is starving for that kind of seeing.

And maybe that is why I keep returning to foods that should not work, but somehow do.

Baked eggs with labneh and za’atar. Greens under, eggs cracked over, a spoonful of labneh whisked with minced garlic, baked in a water bath, dusted with za’atar and chili paste at the end. Eggs on yogurt sounds strange the first time you hear it. Then you eat it and realize people have been making versions of this dish for generations because it is deeply comforting. Rich and bright and alive all at once.

Weird is good.

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Baked Eggs with Labneh and Za’atar

Serves 2.

You will need

• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

• A small handful of Red Veined Sorrel or any hearty green, about 8 leaves

• 4 eggs, any size

• ¼ cup labneh, or Greek yogurt

• 2 cloves garlic minced

• Kosher salt

• Za’atar

• Chili crunch

• Pita or good toast for the table

Make it

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Set a kettle of water to boil.

Brush two small ramekins with olive oil. Lay your greens in the bottom of each. Crack two eggs over the top.

Whisk the labneh with the micned garlic and a pinch of salt. Spoon a dollop over the egg whites in each ramekin, leaving the yolks uncovered so you can still see them. Add a few grains of salt to each yolk.

Set the ramekins in a baking dish with sides. Pour the boiling water into the dish (not into the ramekins) until it reaches halfway up the sides. Slide the whole thing into the oven.

Bake about 14 to 15 minutes for dippable yolks. They look underdone right before they are done. Trust it.

Dust the tops with za’atar and drip chili crunch on top. Serve immediately, with pita to scoop.