Moroccan-Spiced Vegetable Couscous Salad with Yogurt-Marinated Chicken Skewers

I was raised to believe that getting dressed was a form of good manners. What nobody explained was that one day, it might also become a form of survival.

By the time I was five, my mother had already taught me that even a visit to the pediatrician required your Sunday best. You arrived with your hair brushed, your clothes pressed, and clean underwear, because God forbid you should have a medical emergency and the attending physician discover your panties had seen better days.

My mother believed you showed up for people. A doctor had spent years studying to take care of you, and the least you could do was acknowledge that effort by looking as though you'd made one yourself. It was never about impressing anyone. It was about respect, for the person you were visiting and for yourself.

Every so often, someone watches one of my cooking videos and feels compelled to ask why I'm standing at the stove wearing heels. Apparently, there is an appropriate uniform for sautéing onions, and I've been violating the dress code.

I suppose I could explain that I don't own sweatpants or tennis shoes, although that would probably raise an entirely different set of concerns. I've been wearing heels in my kitchen long before anyone thought to point a camera at me. Neither explanation would answer the question they're really asking.

Why bother?

Because some mornings, getting dressed is the bravest thing I do.

I've spoken before about depression. It doesn't always announce itself with tears or an inability to get out of bed. Sometimes it arrives disguised as indifference. You stop caring what you wear, what you accomplish, or whether you recognize the woman looking back at you.

There were years when I sat in the carpool line wearing pajamas, without a stitch of makeup, hoping nobody would recognize me. Those were difficult years, and I wouldn't trade what they taught me, although I certainly wouldn't volunteer to repeat them.

So when I put on a dress, fix my hair, and choose a pair of shoes that would make an orthopedic surgeon reconsider his career, I am doing something considerably more important than getting ready to film dinner. I'm reminding myself that I still have a say in how this day is going to go.

I believe there is something powerful about looking in the mirror and seeing a woman who has made an effort on her own behalf. Not because she owes the world an attractive appearance, but because she has decided she is worth the trouble.

Sometimes we have to behave as though we believe in ourselves before the feeling catches up.

Of course, none of this means I think a woman in sweatpants has surrendered to life. For heaven's sake, I spent enough years looking like I'd been kidnapped from my own bedroom to know better. Your clothes tell me very little about your character. They certainly don't tell me what you survived before breakfast.

If you want to wear sneakers, wear them. If you want to wear heels to boil pasta, I'll save you a place beside me. If your greatest accomplishment today was getting out of bed, I hope somebody tells you how much that matters.

You don't need my wardrobe, my house, my recipes, or my opinions. You can burn dinner, disagree with me about wallpaper, and think my shoes are ridiculous. We may still have the most wonderful time together. There is no entrance examination for my friendship, and I have no interest in administering one.

Five years ago, I was working at a job I didn't love, spending my days helping other people pursue their ambitions while wondering what had happened to my own. Eventually, I took a chance on the one person whose dreams I had become exceptionally good at postponing.

Mine.

I had no guarantee that anyone would be interested in what I cooked, wore, wrote, or thought. I simply knew I didn't want to spend the rest of my life wondering what might have happened if I'd tried.

Now, every time someone tells me a story made her cry, a recipe brought her family together, or something I wrote arrived on a day when she desperately needed to hear it, I think about the woman who finally decided to take that chance.

I wish I could introduce her to all of you. She would never believe what you've given her.

Recently, I was in Charleston, dining alone, so I went early and found a seat at the bar before the evening crowd arrived. Two women came in for what was supposed to be a quick after-work drink, the kind of girls' night that begins with "just one" and ends whenever the conversation finally allows it. They recognized me almost immediately, and somewhere along the way, their plans for an early evening went right out the window.

There was that funny little moment when someone knows your face and you don't yet know hers. Within five minutes, it was gone. I felt as though I'd been included in their girls' night out invitation from the very beginning.

I arrived alone and left feeling as though I'd spent the evening with old friends. There's something about being in the company of other women that restores a part of you that you didn't even realize was running on empty. You don't need a girls' night every week, or even every month. Every so often, though, you need an evening that reminds you of who you are when you're not busy being everything to everyone else. The laughter stays with you, and somehow, whatever was waiting for you tomorrow doesn't seem quite so heavy.

I went to Charleston expecting to have dinner alone. I left reminded that sometimes the women who lift us up the most are the ones we haven't even met yet.

Somewhere along the way, the people watching my videos became people whose names I recognize, whose children I've heard about, whose losses I've grieved, and whose good news has made me smile at my phone like a fool. There are also people who have never commented once. They read, watch, and go about their lives. I may never know their names, but I am grateful they're here.

I often say we're friends who haven't met yet. Charleston reminded me how little distance there can be between those two things.

Of course, opening your life to strangers means some of them will arrive without particularly good intentions. There are people who follow me simply to criticize, and entire conversations devoted to mocking women they've never met, dissecting their appearance, questioning their motives, and finding something objectionable about the way they live.

I'm not nearly as oblivious as some people might hope. I wear my heart on my sleeve, which is terribly inconvenient when strangers keep mistaking it for a dartboard.

I've been told to develop thicker skin. Perhaps I should, but I rather like the skin I have, even if it could use a little more collagen.

The truth is that criticism hurts more when you've offered something personal. A cooking video may last sixty seconds, but the woman in it has lived an entire life before pressing record. When I share my writing, I am handing someone a piece of that life and trusting them to treat it with a little care.

I have no desire to spend the years ahead trying to persuade people determined to misunderstand me. I've always believed everyone deserves a place at the table, although I've learned that offering someone a chair doesn't obligate me to sit beside them while they insult the hostess.

I wish we remembered that the woman whose clothes we're criticizing might have spent the morning fighting to feel like herself. That the woman in pajamas might be carrying something we know nothing about. That the person we dismiss in a comment section is somebody's mother, daughter, sister, or friend.

We have become remarkably comfortable saying things to strangers that we would be ashamed to say across a dinner table.

Yet for every unkind comment, there are so many more people who remind me why I keep showing up.

The woman who tells me she looks forward to my stories. The man who makes one of my recipes for his family. The daughter who sends something I've written to her mother. The friend who shares a post because she knows someone else needs those words.

You may think you're doing something small when you leave a thoughtful comment. Sometimes you are giving someone the encouragement to keep doing the very thing that makes her feel alive.

I could spend all day telling you where I bought my shoes, and believe me, I'm happy to. I've never understood keeping a good shopping find to yourself. If I discover a fabulous pair of heels, I see no reason we shouldn't both be limping home in them.

If I could ask you to do one thing, though, it wouldn't be to buy what I'm wearing or cook what I'm making. It would be to read what I write.

Read it because somewhere in those words, you may recognize a feeling you've never quite known how to explain. You may discover that a woman whose life looks nothing like yours has wrestled with some of the very same things. There are days when hearing another person say, "I know what that feels like," can make the world seem a little less lonely.

If something I write makes you think of someone you love, send it to her. Send it to your mother, your daughter, your sister, your oldest friend, or the woman who has been pretending she's fine for longer than anyone realizes.

Words have a remarkable way of reaching people we cannot.

I started sharing pieces of my life because I hoped someone might find something worthwhile in them. I never anticipated how much of my own life would be changed by the people who received them.

You have encouraged me, defended me, laughed with me, and trusted me with stories I know were not easy to tell. You've reminded me that there is still an enormous amount of goodness in a world that sometimes seems determined to advertise the opposite.

I wish I could meet every one of you. I wish I could sit across from you long enough to learn what makes you laugh, what keeps you awake, what you're proud of, and what you're still hoping might happen. Most of all, I wish I could tell you in person what your kindness has meant to me.

Until then, I'll keep cooking, writing, getting dressed, and occasionally making questionable footwear decisions in the kitchen.

I thought I was building a life doing what I loved. I never imagined that so many people I hadn't met would become part of what I loved about it.