You turn the heat up too high, too fast, and everything burns. You keep it too low, and nothing ever changes. But if you let things cook just right, if you hang in there—sweating, stirring, tasting, adjusting—something starts to happen. Something transforms.
That’s how Jori learned to survive in kitchens…and eventually, how she learned to survive in recovery.
Jori G. has lived ten lives. Some were spent in kitchens, some in tents, some on festival grounds, some on strangers’ couches, and at least one in a van parked under a strange sky. She’s been a manager, a misfit, a bartender, a bus dweller, a heartbreaker, a headline, and a hell of a cook. If you met her today, you’d never guess half of it. And if you ask her about it, she’ll tell you everything with the kind of honesty that makes you lean in and the kind of humor that makes you stay.
But Jori wasn’t always this person. For a long time, she was just trying to disappear. And for a while, she did.
Originally from Iowa, Jori’s parents divorced when she was just a toddler—prompting her mom to move her and her sisters out to Wisconsin. Growing up, there was nothing in the world that Jori loved more than the outdoors. She probably spent more time outside than she did inside. “I loved playing in the dirt, hiding in the woods, finding new bike paths on the streets—going new places. I wanted to see everything around me.”
When Jori was still very young, something horrific happened. Her mom, who was constantly working to provide for their family, left her with a babysitter whose husband—someone Jori trusted and looked to for protection—became wildly inappropriate with her. He was grooming her for something even more heinous down the line. She locked this deep in her chest, certain that telling anyone would cause cataclysmic destruction. This fear and distrust calcified into anger and isolation. So, outside she went…in search of safety.
At the age of 13, the D.A.R.E. program came to her school and told her all about the terrible, life-threatening drugs she had to stay away from. So, naturally, she immediately went out and tried drugs for the first time. “My first thought was, well, ‘I need to know why I need to stay away from them’” Most addicts start off slow, maybe a sip of beer or a hit of a joint—Jori went right to meth. Luckily, she hated it.
By the next year, she was in a high school that was divided into two groups: the preppy rich kids who got good grades, dressed nicely, and did everything they were told, and the stoner kids who didn’t care about school. Obviously, Jori gravitated toward the stoners. She’s no dweeb. “It was kind of like a band of people nobody else wants to hang out with,” and Jori felt at home. An outcast amongst outcasts—their high school’s stoner hippie leper colony.
So, her pot-smoking career began. “I had hundreds of dollars saved from birthdays and Christmases, and just grandma’s cash,” plenty of runway to support her new habit. “I spent all of the money that I had on weed that summer…and ice cream.”
The weed helped Jori disconnect from the world. From the trauma. From herself. It became her new form of “going outside.”
When the daily smoking and nightly drinking caught up with her school attendance, she dropped out. Given the option to get her G.E.D. and still walk on stage for graduation with her friends, she did…reluctantly. Her rebellious spirit drifted her away from such formalities, but she knew how important it was to her family. So, she did it for them. She even let them throw a party for her. At the time, she wanted nothing more than to get out of there…but looking back, it meant the world to her. To this day, she still has the gifts they gave her that night—including a comforter that still brings her warmth.
After high school, Jori moved into an apartment with two friends and her high school sweetheart. They all got jobs working the overnight shift at a plastic factory—but their true full-time careers were getting high. They smoked and drank, and did hallucinogens constantly. Suddenly, those walks in nature were even more colorful than before.
At 19, Jori met a man that she describes as a “Gutter Punk.” He sold her mushrooms at a party one day, which ended up being bunk (not as magical as the label suggested). Before she knew it, she had quit her job and was living with him on the streets. That’s when she got pregnant. Twins. Their plan was to get into a van and travel the country. As their journey continued, she realized he was not the man she thought he was. He was wildly mentally unstable, and she became scared for her life. So, she called her mom, flew home, and had an abortion. “I wanted no connection to that man.”
Once back in Wisconsin, she started a new life…and met a new guy. This one she describes as a “Jail Street Punk.” She met him on the bus. It was love at first stop. Within a few months, they were engaged. He was a born-again Christian, so Jori was rebaptized to marry him. Although the wedding bells would never ring because shortly after, she found out he was cheating on her.
This is when Jori jumped headfirst into the Madison restaurant scene. She was a waitress, a bartender, and a sous chef—she was basically everything except for the plates. That is where she met and started dating another current Beit T’Shuvah resident, Ari L. (not a punk of any kind). They went out for a short time, but his addiction became too much for her, and they split. They always remained friends, though. When she looks back on that time, she recounts that it was the first moment she knew she had a problem. Ari would mention how much she was drinking and smoking—most likely seeing his struggles within hers. But more about him in a future spotlight.
Moving from restaurant to restaurant, Jori found herself dating a new man. He was an even heavier drinker than she was. Naturally, she had to catch up. A recipe for disaster. “Beer for breakfast. One meal a day.” When COVID hit, they broke up. Maybe the isolation sounded better than a life with him. Maybe she had finally had enough of the merry-go-round she was on. Either way, she got sober. The only problem was, she wasn’t working a program. She went to tele-health therapy, but once the stipend checks dried up, so did her mental health treatment. And thus, after two years of white knuckling sobriety, the bottle was back to her lips.
In her newly restarted active addiction, she got into a renovated bus with a man she met, with the sole intention of living off the land in a homestead in Alaska. The only issue: they had no money to get there. For a time, she lived in “Slab City,” an unincorporated area of land in California. “There’s no electricity, there’s no running water, and you’re basically homeless, not really living off the land, but you’re living free.” After a week, the prevalent drug use there was too much even for her, and she left.
Misadventure after misadventure landed her on the phone with an old friend—Ari. Ari was already a resident at this time and told her about BTS. He promised her that if she called, if she made it here, her life would be changed forever. So, she called, she came, and her life changed forever. Just. Like. That. “I came here begging for change and I got it…” her eyes welling up with tears for gratitude, “I fucking got it.”
Recently, she got an internship in the kitchen, and I could not possibly hope to describe her experience with it better than she does:
“I love working in the kitchen. Not only the fact that I grew up working in kitchens, but it’s always been the place that I feel most comfortable. I know how to make shit happen out of a kitchen and it makes me feel so good to put something in a pot or in a pan and then I can put it on someone’s plate and they thank me for it. It is a feeling I can never actually describe, but it’s something that I’ve always loved, and the fact that I have a chance to do it here just reiterates the fact that I should have been here this whole time. I should have come here earlier— six years ago. I should have been sober this whole time. It feels like it was so meant to be, and that everything has been pointing to me having a life here and continuing a sober life here in this community every day. Yeah, starting in the kitchen was just kind of like, ‘Oh, I think this is the beginning of a new life.”
But Jori fills much more than just our bellies, she also fills our hearts. With love. With warmth. With healing. Nourishing the souls of each and every one of us. Somehow, with a comforting smile and a dash of salt, she makes every dish feel like a home-cooked meal…and for many of us, it’s our first in longer than we can remember. When I tell you that the halls radiate with kindness when Jori walks through them, I am not joking around. She loves and is beloved. Truly and honestly. She dreams of bringing the level of camaraderie and recovery that only exists in this community to Alaska. Can anyone say BTS: Alaska? That’s a spinoff I’d watch!
Jori is proof that the most beautiful transformations happen over time, under pressure, and with just the right amount of fire. Any chef worth their salt will tell you that perfecting a dish is a matter of trial and error. For Jori, Beit T’Shuvah was the missing ingredient in the recipe of her recovery…and our melting pot is all the richer with her in it.