Can you remember who you were before the world told you who you should be?

This. This question has had my brain churning for months now. I’ve had this rolling around in the back of my head for what must be millennia. Something this basic shouldn’t be so hard- we should just know, right? We’re SUPPOSED to know what makes us tick, what brings us true, deep, everlasting joy. 

And then we’re supposed to do it.

Or maybe it needs to be hard. Maybe when we get lost, it takes the act of SEEKING to instill the courage and confidence to find ourselves. Because that’s what it is- an ACTION. A doing of a thing, or many things, or a letting go of things. And doing them again. And refining the process, and getting closer to our true self.

“The hardest challenge is to be yourself in a world where everyone is trying to make you be somebody else.” -e.e. cummings

What is that thing that keeps pulling and tugging at the back of your brain? That thing you’ve fought because it wasn’t practical, you can’t see how you could pay the bills, didn’t want to lose the thing you love by turning it into a JOB. Ouch. That’s mine.

Baking. It’s just… what I do.

But it’s more than the alchemy of turning flour and water and salt and yeast into life-sustaining bread. 

There’s something about baking that feeds the soul, too. It takes time, and it takes Process. You can’t rush it, even if you can cheat it a little. It forces you to  s l o w  d o w n  and be present in the moment, to pay attention to what is right in front of you, right NOW.

In that process, I’ve found healing. And the magical thing is, when I opened myself up to it completely, it just… worked.

Alchemy at work. 

Last July I left my job. I was depressed, and a complete and utter mess. The year before, I’d gone into business with a friend, and because I was so out of touch with myself and what I needed to feel WHOLE, I cost us money and the relationship.

The worst part was, I couldn’t even SEE it. I’d spent so much of my life stiff-upper-lipping it, that I totally missed the boat on being in touch with myself. I had myself so convinced that I was, “Fine. Everything’s fine,” that I never realized when I started to skid out.

Backtrack about three years or so before that, and there were some definite triggers I should have seen. I started a new job with lots of responsibility and crazy hours. And we bought a house. And we had two small children, and some big shifts in our relationship. To juggle it all, I went back on meds to manage my ADD. And because I was stretched so thin, and was so exhausted from taking shitty care of myself, I wound up on an anti-depressant/ anti-anxiety med. (I just missed the part about the FDA requiring a black box warning about suicide risk for patients taking the drug. Oops.)

Fast forward to a year and a half ago when I went into business with my friend:

I thought I was just burned out after working restaurants since, well, forever. And I needed a change. And she needed help, and a lot of the help she needed was the kind of thing I’d been doing as a manager. Perfect, right? 

Nope. 

It should have been. We were ready to be a dynamic duo- sister beams, ready to take on the world and change people’s lives!

Only, when you can’t get your own shit together, it’s awfully hard to help others.

It was a recipe for frustration on all sides, and within a year I was suicidal (back to those fun side effects from the meds I was on) and could not cope.

So now we’re back up to last summer. I was depressed. We were close to broke because I’d used most of my retirement and savings to make ends meet while we grew the business. I had NO IDEA what to do next. I only knew I didn’t want to go back to managing restaurants because, as much as I love the business and the people, the hours are rough and I'd missed out on enough life already.

My husband was gracious and supportive and kind, even though I'd done absolutely nothing to deserve it. He knew how low I’d gotten and knew I needed time and space to pick myself back up, so he gave it to me. My summer was just about self-care and functioning. He picked up the slack again as he has so many times over the last decade and a half when I’ve had one health crisis or another, and he was there to point me back in the right direction when I started to falter.

Solo road trippin' somewhere between Tahoe and Seattle.

After a couple months of willing myself out of bed, solo road/camping trip, soaking up sunshine like a dried out kitchen sponge soaks up a spill, and focusing on the basics of getting my physical self back up to speed as I suffered through med withdrawals, the mental stuff started to shift, too. 

I began applying for jobs because I needed something. I needed the income, I needed to keep myself busy, I needed to feel like I could be productive again. I applied for jobs I was overqualified for because I needed something I knew even I couldn’t fail at. 

Nobody called me back.

Then I stumbled across a Craigslist ad for a pastry cook- culinary degree and several years experience preferred. I definitely didn’t have the degree, and while I had many years of restaurant experience, absolutely none of it was baking in a professional kitchen. There was no way I was getting this job, but somehow my husband convinced me to apply anyway.

No call.

So I kept applying to other places, just so I could have a paycheck coming in again.

Still no call, from anyone.

I remember bursting into tears one day, yet again- sobbing because I still couldn’t see a way up. I was never going to find a job, I was a failure as a mother and partner and HUMAN, and getting dressed every day was just plain HARD. Add in what seemed like never-ending physical withdrawal symptoms from my meds (like Brain Zaps! FUN!) and constant fatigue from 3 decades of way too much caffeine and way too little sleep, I was a hot mess.

I’d literally put myself in this spot because of years of trying to control everything about myself, and clearly, that plan failed.

So I gave up. More specifically, I gave IT up. Just handed it over to the Universe and said, “Here, you take it. I’m just too damned tired.”

I don’t know if it was exactly the next day (it may have been two days- my sense of time here is… fuzzy at best) but I got a call to interview for the baking job.

I, who could barely manage to comb my hair most days and for whom leaving the house had become a serious exercise in willpower, managed to pull it together enough to get through the entire hiring process.

The actual job interview itself felt more like a chat with an old friend than the third degree about my lack of experience.

I remember the chef asking me why I wanted to be a baker. My response came easily, with a smile and sigh of release- 

“This is what I do. I feed people. I bake.”

Can you remember who you were before the world told you who you should be?

There it is, that THING I’ve been looking for. That “who” that I used to be.

And as soon as I stopped trying to control everything, there was room for the Universe to step in and say, “Here. You’ve been missing this, and you’ll need it.”

Something that basic shouldn’t be so hard, should it?