By Sarah Hall<\/p>\n
Photography by Alice G. Patterson<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Since she was a kid, Bryony Grealish knew she had a greater purpose in this life.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrowing up, I always had that feeling that there was more for me to do,\u201d Bryony said. \u201cI feel like that’s kind of crazy, being a 6-year-old kid and going, \u2018You know, there’s something out there for me that I’m supposed to do.\u2019 But through my life, it kind of has called to me, and it’s gotten louder and louder and louder over the years. It’s almost like I can sit outside and hear it on the wind, just calling to me to come find it, and I didn’t know what it was.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s just in the last year that Bryony\u2019s calling has become clear. Inspired by her love of cooking as well as her own disability \u2014 Bryony was born withectrodactyly ectodermal dysplasia, which causes missing or irregular fingers and toes \u2014 the former social worker and mom of two boys is determined to help people with physical and developmental disabilities learn to cook, as well as launch their own businesses. It\u2019s been something of a struggle to get to this point and in many ways Bryony\u2019s journey is just beginning, but she said every step she\u2019s taken has guided her to this point.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery experience in my life has led me to this exact moment,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel like it\u2019s all woven together.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The long and winding road<\/strong><\/p>\n Bryony\u2019s story begins with a dinnertime phone call on a cold winter day in Syracuse to the home of Mary Jane Von Braunsburg and Charles Grealish from a friend who worked at St. Joseph\u2019s Hospital.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was her habit\u2014she always called at dinner,\u201d Bryony recalled. \u201cShe just called up and said, \u2018Oh my god, there’s this little baby here [up for adoption]. She looks like a Grealish.\u2019 \u2026 My mom was like, \u2018Whatever, whatever, whatever. I’m cooking dinner. I’ll get a hold of you later.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Mary Jane brought up the phone call over dinner, as the story goes, and Charles said, \u201cLet\u2019s get her.\u201d The next day, Baby Bryony had a new home, joining eight adopted siblings in the Grealish household. Bryony wasn\u2019t the only one with special needs \u2014 her oldest sister, Amy, has Turner syndrome, where one of the X chromosomes is missing or partially missing, causing a variety of medical and developmental issues. In addition, her father spent most of his adult life in a wheelchair after a car accident.<\/p>\n Bryony\u2019s parents both completed degrees in psychology during her youth.<\/p>\n \u201cThey really would strive to care for other people and fight for human rights,\u201d she said. \u201cThat was much of where their heart and passion were, was standing up for other people.\u201d<\/p>\n She said that helped to push her toward a career in social work: she spent 11 years working with children and families on Syracuse\u2019s West Side, first with ACR Health and then in partnership with the Syracuse City School District. And though she knew the work she was doing was important, she knew early on it wasn\u2019t where she was meant to be.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a lot,\u201d Bryony said. \u201cI stuck it out for 11 years, but over the years, it got more and more obvious to me that it wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing.\u201d<\/p>\n So why did she stay for more than a decade?<\/p>\n \u201cI had my first son,\u201d she said. \u201cYou stay because of the stability. You need that constant income. You’re supposed to be doing something. You’re supposed to work a regular job.\u201d<\/p>\n But two years ago, Bryony had an idea that gave her the impetus to put in her two weeks\u2019 notice: she had always loved cooking. She had even considered writing a cookbook for people with disabilities. What if she started a catering company making tasting boards \u2014 cheese boards and charcuterie boards \u2014 using locally sourced ingredients? She could use the company as a platform to prove that people with disabilities could also be entrepreneurs. Suddenly that call she\u2019d always heard on the wind didn\u2019t seem so distant, the way it had the last 11 years.<\/p>\n \u201cI tested it out at a school function and everything seemed to go really well,\u201d Bryony said. \u201cPeople were really interested.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kitchen and community<\/strong><\/p>\n One of the parents at the school function pointed Bryony toward the WISE Women\u2019s Business Center, and she reached out the organization the next day. She connected with a coach and started putting things into motion.<\/p>\n But soon, the voice in the wind began to whisper again: this still wasn\u2019t quite right.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was hitting my passion for food and hitting my passion for bringing joy,\u201d Bryony said. \u201cYet it wasn’t it.\u201d<\/p>\n She realized that while the catering business filled a void for her, it didn\u2019t do much in the way of helping other people, not the way she\u2019d hoped. That was what she really wanted to accomplish.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople with disabilities go into a job that’s not set up for them,\u201d Bryony said. \u201cIt’s set up for typical people and the way typical people function … At the beginning of this journey, I wanted to inspire people with disabilities to get out of a job that didn’t support their needs and create a life, a career that fit their passions and their skills and what they need to get it done every day to do a work that inspires them that they feel part of.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s where the idea for the Fingerless Kitchen came from. Bryony realized she wanted to start a cooking show where she would not only teach people with disabilities how to cook, but also employ people with disabilities at every stage and raise awareness about living with disabilities.<\/p>\n Bryony said she realized that it all begins with the establishment of a community.<\/p>\n \u201cThere’s community in the kitchen, right?\u201d she said. \u201cWe know that from even just any typical family or any culture.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s where she got the idea to start a cooking show.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen they watch TV, everybody has somebody that they admire that represents them,\u201d she said. \u201cBecause people have to have others to look up to.\u201d<\/p>\n But there are no disabled chefs, she said, which does a huge disservice to the disabled community.<\/p>\n \u201cThere’s nobody in that community, and you look all over social media, in the news, on any of these popular food sites, nobody is doing it. It’s a complete void for people,\u201d she said. \u201cIf there’s nobody to represent you in a huge area of your life, then I decided I’d do it. I really want to make it a community builder, where you can see people with different disabilities and how they do it in the kitchen and show that cooking doesn’t have to be hard, because I do it with only two fingers.\u201d<\/p>\n Bryony said she finally feels like she\u2019s found that meaning she\u2019s been seeking for so long.<\/p>\n \u201cI’ve been working with people for a long time, and I really now found that this is my purpose,\u201d she said. \u201cI know it’s a cooking show to start out with, but the purpose is greater than that.\u201d<\/p>\n Bryony has started the show with a series of chef challenges, in which she challenges local chefs to tape up their hands so that they have to cook the same way she does. In the first video, Chef Billy-Brendan Ginty of Your Table is Ready can only use his pinkies to chop on onion, while Bryony slices a tomato.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople like chef challenges,\u201d Bryony said. \u201cI think it’s a fun way to start getting a message out to people and showing them who I am, what I do and then start to incorporate working with some people in the kitchen with disabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Getting WISE<\/strong><\/p>\n Before she made that first video, though, Bryony had a crisis of confidence,<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s hard sometimes to get out of my own way,\u201d she said. \u201cYour brain is your own worst enemy.\u201d<\/p>\n She was in what she called a \u201cmucky period\u201d when she went to the WISE Symposium this past April. Among the speakers was Rick Tamlyn, author of \u201cPlay Your Bigger Game,\u201d which, according to Tamlyn\u2019s website, \u201cinspires executives, leaders and individuals to get out of their comfort zones and create intentional positive change.\u201d Bryony had heard Tamlyn speak at an earlier WISE event and was moved by his presentation. This time, through WISE, she was able to attend a two-day workshop with Tamlyn that helped her break through her \u201cmucky period.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt was two days of very in-depth, looking at yourself, looking at where you’ve been, looking at what your passions are, looking at what makes you stuck,\u201d Bryony said. \u201cAnd at the end of it, I realized what my compelling purpose was \u2014 that’s what Rick calls it, your compelling purpose \u2014 and that was to create this TV show, to start actually reaching out to people.\u201d<\/p>\n Bryony said that moment in April was the moment she realized what she was supposed to be doing. It was both exciting and overwhelming.<\/p>\n \u201cI was like okay, my whole life is been going, \u2018Find it, find it. It’s coming, it’s coming.\u2019 Then I found it and went, \u2018Oh my gosh!\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cI felt like I had this bigger purpose. I felt like I needed to make some kind of change for people in the world. And then, oh God, here it is. Now I have to step up.\u201d<\/p>\n That was the moment, she said, when everything came together.<\/p>\n \u201cIn those two days, looking at myself so deeply and why I’m doing what I’m doing in this world and figuring it out \u2014 it feels like a betrayal of myself to not do it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n While it\u2019s been a struggle, even since April, Bryony said she\u2019s persevered, in part because of the people she calls \u201cher lifesavers\u201d \u2014 her WISE coach, Joanne, and her husband, Eli, and their two boys.<\/p>\n \u201cMy husband, of course, has been the center, driving force of keeping me going,\u201d she said. \u201cHe’s my family \u2014 all of them, my three guys.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Right where she needs to be<\/strong><\/p>\n While the videos are meant to get her name out into the community, they\u2019re just the first step on Bryony\u2019s journey. She\u2019d ultimately like to get into public speaking \u2014 she hopes to someday speak at the New York Wine and Food Festival about food and adaptability in the kitchen \u2014 and she wants to someday write a cookbook and possibly a memoir. She\u2019d also like to develop a line of adaptive kitchen and cooking utensils.<\/p>\n Though the journey has been a bumpy one, Bryony says she wouldn\u2019t change a thing.<\/p>\n \u201cI found a quote, and I don\u2019t know who said, it but it said, \u2018Sometimes when things are falling apart, they may actually be falling into place,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cSo when life just seems like everything is going wrong, it may be going wrong just to get you in the right spot\u2026 I am exactly where I need to be.\u201d<\/p>\n Follow Bryony Grealish\u2019s blog at TheFingerlessKitchen.com or on Instagram @BryonyGrealish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Sarah Hall Photography by Alice G. Patterson Since she was a kid, Bryony Grealish knew she had a greater purpose in this life. \u201cGrowing up, I always had that feeling that there was more for me to do,\u201d Bryony said. \u201cI feel like that’s kind of crazy, being a 6-year-old kid and going,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2157,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[710,708,709,711],"class_list":["post-2156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cover-story","tag-bryony-grealish","tag-cover-story","tag-december","tag-fingerless-kitchen"],"gutentor_comment":1,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.syracusewomanmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Bryony-Grealish-by-Alice-G-Patterson-5.jpg?fit=5200%2C3470&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2168,"url":"https:\/\/www.syracusewomanmag.com\/?p=2168","url_meta":{"origin":2156,"position":0},"title":"LETTER FROM THE EDITOR: What do the holidays mean to you?","author":"Sarah Hall","date":"December 1, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"LETTER FROM THE EDITOR What do the holidays mean to you? 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