What I Forgot While Feeding Everyone Else

I🌾 What I Forgot While Feeding Everyone Else

The quiet work of healing begins with your hands and your heart.

I used to live by a quiet equation:
If everyone around me was okay, then I must be okay, too.

For years, I believed that. Through college. Through early marriage. Through four babies and two full-time careers. Through every late-night email, every PTA meeting, every birthday cupcake balanced in the front seat of the car. I was the helper — the one with the extra snacks, the backup plan, the to-do list scribbled on a sticky note, halfway out the door before the sun came up.

And I loved it.
Truly, I did.

Helping people wasn’t just something I did — it was who I was. Whether I was teaching a classroom full of bright-eyed kids, supporting families, managing a center, or simply making sure my own family was well-fed and well-loved, I found fulfillment in giving. In showing up. In being the one others could count on.

But somewhere in that beautiful, nonstop giving… I stopped asking myself what I needed. Or what I even liked.

I knew how to support everyone else — my students, my coworkers, my neighbors, my husband, my kids. But I forgot how to support me.

I had passion, yes. Purpose, too. But I was pouring from a cup that had long since run dry. I didn’t even realize I was burned out until I was standing in the ashes.

People-pleasing was my autopilot. I said yes to everything. I equated my value with my usefulness — with how available I was, how dependable, how needed. And for a long time, that filled me up.

Until it didn’t.

The shift didn’t come with a breakdown or a dramatic epiphany.
It was small. Quiet. A still moment in the kitchen, one morning before the house had woken up.

I was making bread — the kind that takes hours of patience, the kind that asks you to stay close, to knead and fold and wait. And somewhere in the rhythm of it, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time.

I felt like myself.

That was the moment that began something new.

Baking became a kind of lifeline. Not just a creative outlet, but a way back to me. I wasn’t producing or performing — I was creating. Nourishing. Breathing. I started listening again — not to podcasts, not to the pull of everyone else’s needs — but to my own heartbeat.

I remembered that I love working with my hands.
I remembered how I feel when dough takes shape beneath my fingers, or when herbs perfume the air, or when a golden crust sings of something just right.

Little by little, baking filled the space that burnout had hollowed out.

I wasn’t building a business — not at first. I was rebuilding me.
And for the first time in a long time, that felt like enough.

It took time to unlearn people-pleasing. To believe that saying no didn’t make me selfish. That rest wasn’t laziness. That feeding my own soul wasn’t indulgent — it was necessary. I started protecting my time. Prioritizing what made me feel whole. I gave myself permission to do something simply because it brought me joy.

Sweet & Savory Cottage Bakery didn’t begin with a business plan.
It began with a quiet return.

A return to joy.
A return to presence.
A return to the girl who used to dream with flour on her hands and hope in her heart.

If you’re in a season where you’ve forgotten what lights you up — I see you.
If you’ve been everything to everyone but have no idea what you need — I’ve been there.

Start small.
A walk at sunrise.
A few minutes of silence with your coffee.
A batch of homemade dough.

Your joy isn’t gone.
It’s just waiting to be remembered.

And when you’re ready… come bake with me.
We’ll rise again — together.

With love,
Dawn

🥖 Want to bake together?

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