The Myth of the Lone Cook
You’ve probably heard it before. “There can’t be two cooks in the kitchen.” It’s a saying that sounds wise at first glance, but underneath—especially for women, Black women, and system-impacted leaders—it’s a dog whistle dressed as wisdom. It’s not about cooking. It’s about control. About shrinking. About naming you as a threat, not a collaborator. But what if the kitchen itself was never built with your vision in mind? What if the heat you feel isn’t from passion but from burnout, chaos, or unacknowledged grief?
In our conversation for the She Don’t Work Like That No More™ podcast, Azekah cracked this open with bold honesty: “Find ten cooks and go build your own kitchen.” And not the kind built from burnout and hypervigilance but from clarity, community, and courage. This is a blog post for the Chaos Drivers the ones who were forged in crisis and are learning how to live beyond it.
Let’s be even clearer: the problem isn’t how many cooks are in the kitchen. The problem is the refusal to make room and the refusal to define roles with mutual respect and shared vision. Collaboration doesn’t mean crowding. It means coordination. And if your leadership can’t handle multiple gifts in one space? That’s not too many cooks. That’s too little capacity.
When Chaos Is a Skill Set, Not a Season
For many of us, chaos isn’t a problem to solve. It’s a way of life we’ve mastered spinning gold from disaster, finding momentum in urgency, solving fires before they even ignite. The world calls it leadership. But what it often is…is survival.
In the Wounded vs. Whole Leadership™ series, we named this as the Chaos Driver pattern. It’s what happens when our brilliance is bound to adrenaline. When we confuse productivity with purpose. When we start believing that being needed is the same thing as being whole.
Azekah put it plainly: “I did my time. I acknowledged that I was marginalized. I ejected from the system.” But leaving chaos doesn’t mean it leaves you. It lingers. In how we overcommit. In how we doubt. In how we keep recreating the very pace that almost broke us.
And sometimes? That chaos shows up in our own leadership. Because it’s what we know. Because we’ve spent so long being led by chaos that we inherited its logic. We learned to mirror it. We began believing that urgency was intimacy, that disarray was creativity, and that uncertainty was simply part of visionary work.
But when we internalize the tempo of chaos leadership—always bracing, always spinning we forget that we were never meant to live in crisis mode forever. We forget that a calling can be calm. That a mission can be methodical. That clarity can coexist with creativity.
It’s not that you’re broken. It’s that your brilliance was never meant to burn.
And here’s the deeper truth: You don’t have to wait for a breakdown to choose a different rhythm. The interlude doesn’t have to be forced. You can create it. You can decide that the proof of your leadership is not how many fires you put out, but how consistently you return to center.
You can choose a different tempo. And if somebody’s tapping their watch because you’re not sprinting? Tell them this ain’t a relay. It’s a restoration.
Interlude, Not Interruption — The Power of Unbinding
In the conversation, we named this moment as an interlude not a failure, not a derailment, but a pause. A sacred inhale. A space between chapters where the nervous system catches up with the vision.
For those exiting high-intensity work (like Azekah’s transition from electrical work to hair care), this isn’t just a career shift. It’s a nervous system reckoning. Azekah shared how she’s been learning to:
- Separate her worth from her work.
- Detach from projection and emotional labor.
- Embrace reflection without spiraling into shame.
She’s creating a life and a business that doesn’t require chaos to prove she’s capable. She’s building her own table without needing to shatter someone else’s.
That is the unbinding.
And it’s not just a personal shift it’s a leadership one. It means resisting the pressure to rush, to do, to prove. It means building rhythms that make room for pause, for people, and for process. It’s the moment where we say: I’m not running anymore. I’m building.
Glow-Up Meets Grit — The Chaotic Resolve of Healing
“You won the glow up,” I told her during our call and it wasn’t about aesthetics. It was about the internal reflection it takes to face your own avoidance, your own patterns, your own conflict-avoidant edges and still say: I’m going to have the conversation anyway.
It’s one thing to lead others. It’s another to lead yourself through fear, through legacy trauma, through attachment triggers and imposter syndrome. Azekah said it best: “Having difficult conversations is a skill.” And for those of us wired for peacekeeping, that skill feels like weightlifting at first.
This is the chaotic resolve not the frantic, reactive kind. But the grounded, “I’ve done my work” kind. The resolve that says: I’ve been through the fire, and I choose to lead with clarity now.
Azekah shared how understanding her avoidant attachment style helped her stop projecting, start communicating clearly, and detach from the chaos of others. It’s a process and one that requires a deep sense of self-trust.
Self-trust is the grit. It’s the muscle we build every time we choose clarity over confusion. Boundaries over burnout. Rest over rumination. Grit isn’t about grinding. It’s about grounding. It’s not eggs, it’s grits slow, steady, stick-to-your-ribs kind of nourishment. Because sometimes life be serving you the messiest plate, and you gotta be the one who knows when it’s time for seasoning… and when it’s time to start a new recipe.
Grit is that voice inside you that whispers, You already know. And when paired with self-trust? That’s a breakfast worth leading from.
Because you can glow up all day, but without self-trust, you’ll outsource your leadership to every loud voice in the room. Without self-trust, you’ll build something beautiful and still doubt whether it’s enough. Self-trust is what lets you sit at your own table and say: This seat is mine, and at my table there is ALWAYS room for others.
You Can Leave the Fire and Still Know How to Cook
Now here’s the shift. We’re not just talking about being in chaos we’re also talking about being led by it. The kind of leadership that thrives on urgency, disarray, unclear roles, and last-minute pivots. The kind of boss, board, or founder who runs hot and makes everyone else sweat with them.
Many of us have spent years learning to regulate the chaos around us. But regulation is not just about calming others. It’s about knowing when to exit. Knowing when your own nervous system is not a battleground. Measuring your own temperature and asking: Does this space honor the calling I carry?
You don’t owe loyalty to disarray. You don’t have to stay in systems that reward reactivity. And you don’t have to lead like the ones who broke you.
When you’ve been led by chaos, you internalize the pace. You confuse unpredictability with passion. You start believing that safety means stagnancy and that’s the lie. True leadership is not about keeping everyone on edge. It’s about being the edge that grounds.
Azekah reminds us: you can build the kitchen without burning down the house. You can create your own table without recreating survival.
And if you find yourself building with others again whether it’s ten cooks or two do it with vision, not volatility. That’s how we reclaim leadership.
And let’s be real for a second: if your inner voice sounds like a smoke alarm more than a sous chef, it might be time to check what’s cooking. Leadership doesn’t need to feel like a grease fire to be effective. You can simmer. You can sauté. You can serve up structure with a side of soul. You can be the kind of leader who doesn’t confuse chaos for creativity, who knows the difference between heat and harm.
If they told you you were too much too loud, too bossy, too ambitious maybe they just couldn’t handle your seasoning. That’s not your problem. You’re not trying to blend in. You’re here to flavor the whole damn kitchen.
Resources
- Listen to Azekah’s full episode: YouTube & Spotify
- Take the Leadership Pattern Assessment
- Read: Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey, The Art of Self-Awareness by Patrick King, What Happened to You? by Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Bruce Perry, and Saying Yes to You (Wholeness Workbook for Chaos Drivers)
- Download: Momentum with Mindfulness (Chaos Driver workbook)
“You can leave the fire. You can still know how to cook. And you don’t need chaos to prove you can lead.”
Let this post be your reminder: leadership doesn’t have to hurt. It doesn’t have to drain. You can lead from wholeness. You can move slow and still be powerful. You can stop managing fires and start tending gardens.
So if you find yourself falling back into the spin, come back here. Come back to your breath. Come back to your body. Come back to the truth:
You are not your chaos. You are not your role. You are allowed to build something that doesn’t burn you out. You are still worthy.
Always.
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