Recipes for Attachment: What Sourdough Taught Me About Emotional Healing

From Tamagotchis to Starters: A Quiet Cultural Shift

One of the greatest throwbacks from our childhoods has quietly found its way into 30-something kitchens—and it’s not a Tamagotchi. It’s sourdough.

A Gigapet in its prime

My sister and so many women I know have embraced this wild, hands-on, slow-paced ritual. Sourdough is this generation's GigaPet: a living thing that survives—or thrives—based on how consistently it’s cared for.

Back in the early 2000s, Gigapets were pixelated companions: frogs, cats, aliens. They blinked at you from a tiny LCD screen, waiting for food, water, play, and rest. And if you neglected them? Well... let’s just say we held many digital funerals.

Now, we’ve traded screens for starters. And something deeper is rising along with our loaves: a quiet rebellion against neglect, chaos, and over-functioning. We’re baking slow care into our lives. Feeding something just to see it come alive.

And somewhere between flour and fermentation, I realized—Our attachment styles are sourdough starters too.

Attachment 101: What It Is and Why It Matters

Just like a starter, your attachment style was shaped by how your emotional needs were responded to. Were you tended to? Fed emotionally? Held in your vulnerability? Or were you ignored, punished, or asked to shrink yourself to feel safe?

These patterns didn’t start in adulthood—they were baked into us early. And understanding your attachment style is the first step toward healing it.

Most fall into four main categories:

Style	Traits	Formed From
Secure	Trust, emotional balance, comfort with intimacy	Consistent emotional responsiveness in early caregivers
Anxious	Craves closeness, fears rejection, over-functioning	Inconsistent or unpredictable caregiving
Avoidant	Values independence, discomfort with vulnerability	Emotionally distant or neglectful caregivers
Disorganized	Push-pull behaviors, fear of closeness, emotional chaos	Trauma, neglect, or caregivers who were both comfort and threat

These styles aren’t personality flaws. They’re adaptive responses—survival strategies shaped before we had words for what we needed.

The Sourdough Starter: A Mirror for Attachment

Every sourdough baker knows the starter takes care. It’s sensitive to neglect. Reacts to its environment. Flourishes with steady attention. It won’t rise overnight—but given consistency, warmth, and nourishment, it transforms.

That’s your attachment system. Whether you learned to overwork for connection, freeze in fear, or fear your own needs—your nervous system can re-learn safety. Just like a discarded starter, it can be revived.

Breaking the Cycle: What Baking and Therapy Taught Me

My own journey through anxious attachment—mixed with codependency—left me burned by narcissistic partners, love bombing, betrayal. I thought love was something to earn.

But therapy gave me new recipes. IFS helped me meet my wounded parts with compassion instead of shame. And every time I chose slowness, gentleness, and presence—especially with myself—I interrupted the pattern.

Ready to meet your wounded parts with compassion? I created a free guide to walk you through identifying, engaging, and leading your parts using the IFS model. Think of it as your personal field guide to healing.

We can rewrite our emotional instructions. We can learn the difference between survival and connection. We can rise. Gently. And on our own terms.

Want to Begin?

• Take the Attachment Style Quiz at The Attachment Project

• Journal your emotional “starter”—what ingredients shaped it? What does it need now?

• Start healing your wounded parts with my free IFS Lead Your Team guide

• Subscribe to Letters for the Journey to get weekly healing prompts, reflections, and tools

Because healing doesn’t just change you—it changes what you pass down.

💜 Hannah