What a Chocolate Cake Can Teach You About Trusting Yourself During Divorce

The Chocolate Cake

Imagine someone you love comes home talking excitedly about the most incredible chocolate cake they've eaten that day.... They can’t stop talking about it. They describe every mouthful as though it’s the best cake they’ve ever tasted

Now I imagine that you’re good at baking. It’s something that you love to do, and it’s how you show your love for people. So you go about thinking about whether you can replicate this chocolate cake, you go to great lengths to set about recreating it.

And you do it, you make what you think is the most perfect chocolate cake. It sits there on the table looking spectacular. You’re proud of yourself, you’ve achieved something, and you can’t wait to see the delight in that person‘s face.

They take one bite.

"It's nice."

And that's it.

No excitement.
No appreciation.
No recognition…

How do you feel? Pretty disappointed I’m guessing?.

This is where the chocolate cake stops being about cake.

I use this analogy with clients because so many of us spend years trying to anticipate someone else's needs, hoping that if we just get it right we'll finally feel appreciated.

Sometimes we never do.

A lot of the time when people have experienced the type of situation that I have just described, they feel lost, they feel like they haven’t achieved anything, and this low sense of self-esteem can block them from making the right moves forward. So here’s what you do, you revisit the chocolate cake. You go back to those moments where all that thought, all that research, all that energy has been invested… and you remake the chocolate cake – this time for yourself.

You marvel at the look of the chocolate cake on the kitchen counter. You laugh when you got too much flour in the bowl and it all went up into your face, you really live the moments and claim it for yourself.

the achievement existed before the applause,

and that’s worth celebrating.

When we begin to recognise our own achievements instead of waiting for someone else to validate them, we also become much better at noticing the small moments that restore us. Those glimmers matter.

So perhaps the point was never whether someone else enjoyed your chocolate cake. Perhaps the point is that you discovered you're capable of making something extraordinary. And that's something nobody can take away from you.

A Gentle Invitation

If any part of this story resonated with you, and you're navigating the uncertainty of divorce, you don't have to do it alone.

I offer a free introductory conversation where we can explore where you are now and what your next step might look like.

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