Stiff Peaks

“You get to experience ‘feeling’ in a way some people never will and how amazing is that?..” my friend Harper says. My tears seem to roll a little bit softer down my face. 

I have always known I was a “superfeeler” but understanding the level of emotional depth that comes with that super power is something I have never really explored. The idea that I live beneath a surface that some people never reach is just as inspiring as it is terrifying. Inspiring in the sense that I have this ability to connect, feel and experience life, terrifying that everything feels this big. 

At this particular moment, I am crying over 2025. This year has been so different than I had imagined. I never expected to abandon some of the projects I was most excited about or for my husband to lose his job, for my biggest fears to be tested, and to live in a world that is on fire, in a country that sees empathy as a sign of weakness. One where the funding just becomes more and more limited for the work that I do, the tolerance feels lower, people just seem more angry. This is not where I thought I would be. 

In the midst of this grief, I get an email for meringue cookies. I had asked my grandmother to send me her recipe, as my therapist, Dena, suggested I explore baking meringue. Although it may sound unusual for a therapist to prescribe baking for homework, when you founded a small business (Bake it Till You Make it) based on the principle of combining mental health and baking, recipes are more often exchanged in therapy than one may imagine. 

I open the email and scan the ingredients list to see what I will need to buy on my way home from seeing Harper. As I realize I have everything in my pantry already, I see a phrase that jumps out at me: stiff peaks. 

If you are like me and you have never made meringue, the goal is to create a mixture with “stiff peaks.” This means to whip the eggs enough where the mixture holds a firm and defined shape on its own. I think of the own “peaks” in my life. The ones that have allowed me to stand firm in my belief in myself, like the opportunities I have had to share my mental health story on stages as big as the entire main floor of the White House and as small as my kitchen apartment. I have even found stiff peaks in my valleys. Finding my purpose through my pain and daily battles with OCD, depression and an eating disorder. Or volunteering on some of the worst days of my life in order to get myself out of bed. It feels good to know that I have created peaks out of my valleys too. 

And just as I stand in this valley. I know I will arrive in a place of defined values, knowing I can return to yet another stiff peak.