Ever since I was a little girl, I always enjoyed baking with my Grandma. She taught me how to make apple pie, iced biscuits and our family-recipe sponge with buttercream. I always felt at peace when she was teaching me and I cherished our time together learning. I carried that into my adulthood and I tend to use baking as therapy – if I feel like the world around me is chaos, it is a way for me to gain control.

The ideal of “perfection” is continually pushed in front of us in our day to day lives: the perfect job, the perfect body, the perfect partner, the perfect parent. It is easy to compare ourselves and to not feel good enough. But what is enough?

Enough is relative – not specific. What is enough for one person is not the same for someone else. I was thinking about how baking methodology can be used every day. Let’s think about baking – cookies might need 120g of butter but in cupcakes that may be too much. We are all different and we all feel and experience life differently. Some recipes are simple, others are more complex. Some might take minutes, some a number of days. There is so much to consider.

In fact, when you eat baked goods, you don’t know what ingredients, method and time has been used. You don’t know what’s gone on in the kitchen. The finished bakes might look perfect, piled strategically on a plate with a garnish and a light dusting of icing sugar to really finish it off for that Instagram-worthy excellence. But what you don’t see is the spilled flour, the burnt corners cut off, the dirty tins and bowls, the discarded failed first attempt, or the blisters from the oven scald.

We are all struggling to get through life and what method might work for one person, does not always work for another. Cookies may require an egg, but shortbread does not. It is about finding out what is right for each person. Depression can take an almighty hold on our lens of the world – warping our views into believing we are not enough. The most basic achievement that we should fulfill is just survival. You do not have to be a polished version of yourself to simply exist. Survival is enough.

So when you see that perfect shot, consider the question – is it perfect for you?

We do not know what ‘behind the scenes’ looks like and sometimes, I think, the unpolished version looks better in my opinion. You can see all the love, effort, and struggles that a person has gone through for their end product. It is not always about the looks – to me, it’s about the taste, as long as it tastes sweet to you, that’s all that matters.

Sometimes it’s hard to find the motivation. That’s ok too – those ingredients will still be there. When you feel ready to bake, there will be cake again. In the moment when you feel overwhelmed with the world around you and the weight of its expectations, the easiest solution is to take a moment to be mindful and ground yourself. Consider what is achievable in that moment – just a single step. If that is purely sleeping, or getting dressed, or making a meal – that is perfectly acceptable and that is enough.

The moral here is, to let each person figure out the recipe for life that works for them, do not judge or compare, and let them (and yourselves) eat cake.

Written by Katie Ingram

Blogger @Poemstellium

Instagram: @katieingramauthor