Sharing Cake at Cocoa Cinnamon

This story is part of the Heart-Strong Sharing Cake Series. The series is inspired by a Haitian saying shared by Lynne Twist in The Soul of Money. Eat a piece of cake alone and you’ll feel empty. Share it with someone and you’ll feel full and fulfilled. I heard that and couldn’t stop thinking about it. So, I decided to start doing it.

I’ve started introducing myself to people I don’t know in cafes, coffee shops, bars, and breweries. I invite them to share a snack and a conversation with me.

This is the first of those stories.

---

I was visiting friends in Hillsborough, North Carolina and went to one of my favorite spots in Durham to do some work. Cocoa Cinnamon. Three friends were sitting together at a table right behind me. They seemed like cool people. I had the idea for Sharing Cake but hadn’t approached anyone yet. It seemed like a great opportunity to kick off the series. And it turned out to be.

Meet Sam, Tariq, and Hannah.

Sam and Tariq are married. They’d recently moved to Durham from New York. Sam is in musical theater. She also works with a non-profit in New York that provides access to the arts for kids who don’t have it. Tariq works for a bio-data company in Durham. As he said, “He fixes the computers.”

Hannah had flown in from Bentonville, Arkansas for her birthday. She and Sam have been friends since their years together in New York. Hannah leads product design and development for women’s apparel at Sam’s Club.

Sam was the first to share a story. She told me about how Tariq had recently gone through an emergency kidney transplant. He was twenty-nine. That’s why they’d moved to Durham. It’s where he could get the care he needed.

I told them about my mom. She has stage four kidney failure and is on the transplant list. It’s been a tough journey for her. I mentioned that knowing I’d met Tariq and hearing his story was going to bring her some hope.

Tariq jumped in and shared how he got his kidney.

In August of 2024, his nephrologist told him he’d need a transplant. They did a biopsy. There was too much scar tissue to know why his kidneys had failed. Nobody could say for sure what went wrong.

Sam had posted online that Tariq needed a kidney. One of Tariq’s childhood friends, Ryan, saw the post. He’s a former Marine and a cop in Newark, New Jersey. Friends since kindergarten.

“I’ll get tested,” Ryan said.

Tariq thanked him but figured it wouldn’t match.

Tariq got a catheter put in. He did the training for dialysis. Before he’d started dialysis itself, Ryan called with some news. “I’m a match!”

1 in 100,000 chance!

Ryan was discharged from the hospital the day after the surgery. Tariq stayed longer. Tariq called the whole thing “just one weird season.” Six months from diagnosis to a new, healthy kidney. A kidney that came from a friend he’d known since they were five.

The conversation then shifted to Hannah’s work next. She told me she’d grown up in what she called Walmart land. Her family had worked for the company. Growing up, she was sure she’d never do that. She went to college in Fayetteville, then moved to New York after graduation and spent years in high-end fashion. When the chance to join Walmart headquarters came up six years ago, she was hesitant. It was a big change, and certainly not as glamorous as working in high-end fashion in NYC.

Then she told me about a trip she took to Louisiana that changed her perspective.

A few years ago, Hannah went on a shadow shop in the middle of Louisiana. She followed a single mother with five little girls through a store.

The mother told Hannah she had about $25 a month to spend on clothes for her daughters. She pointed to a dress on the rack. Under five dollars. She told Hannah the dress needed an overhaul. Better colors. Better prints. Better quality. If Hannah could pull that off at the same price, she’d buy multiples. And even better, she could make her daughters feel as cute as the girls next to them in $50 dresses.

A year later, the redesign hit the store. It was still under $5. Hannah followed back up with the mother.

“Y’all did it,” the mother told her.

Hannah said that moment was one of the biggest perspective shifts of her career. She’d come from the high end. She’d been skeptical about Walmart. The Louisiana mother showed her what the work could actually be. Now she calls it the most fulfilling thing she’s done. She gets to take high-end skill and put it in the hands of moms who couldn’t otherwise afford it. Moms who get to send their daughters to school feeling proud.

In many ways the story reminds me of my favorite Dolly Parton song, Coat of Many Colors.

I went to Cocoa Cinnamon to work. I left with three new friends.

Sam and Tariq shared their story without knowing my mom was on a transplant list. Not knowing that sharing that part of them would help give another person hope.

Hannah shared a moment that changed her perspective, not knowing I’d written about the same kind of shift with my father in a piece called Same Facts, Different Meaning.¹

And then there were the people who weren’t at the table. Ryan gave Tariq a kidney, and in many ways a new life. A Louisiana mother asked Hannah for a better dress, and her daughters go to school feeling a deeper sense of pride.

We shared a cinnamon roll at Cocoa Cinnamon, but the stories were the real treat. I walked out both full and fulfilled, just like the saying said I would.

---

You don’t need a series to do this. You just need a snack and someone to share it with. I invite you to give it a try and experience for yourself that the saying is true.

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org.

1.