Cake Therapy
Cake Therapy is a heartwarming and uplifting podcast that celebrates the transformative power of baking therapy. Hosted by Dr. Altreisha Foster, the passionate baker, entrepreneur and advocate behind Cake Therapy, this podcast is a delightful blend of inspiring stories, expert insights and practical baking tips. Each episode takes listeners on a journey of self-discovery, emotional healing and connection through the therapeutic art of baking.
Cake Therapy
Baking Away the Stigma: Valerie Van Galder's Journey with the Depressed Cake Shop
What if baking could help break the stigma surrounding mental health? Join us for an eye-opening conversation with Valerie Van Galder, CEO of Depressed Cake Shop, as she shares her transformative journey from a high-powered marketing executive to a passionate mental health advocate. Hear Valerie's deeply personal story of leaving her corporate career to care for her father, who struggled with bipolar disorder, and how this experience ignited her mission to promote mental health awareness through innovative baking projects.
Discover how Valerie's pop-up baking shops and keynote speaking engagements at events like the Mental Health Marketing Festival have brought therapeutic baking to the forefront of mental health advocacy. Together, we discuss the challenges of caregiving, the importance of early mental health support, and the power of storytelling in creating cultural change. Valerie's insights into the therapeutic benefits of baking and the pressing need for accessible mental health care offer practical advice and inspiration for anyone looking to engage in mental health support initiatives.
Lastly, we take a closer look at the Depressed Cake Shop's creative journey, from its inception with gray cakes symbolizing untreated depression to its evolution incorporating colorful elements of hope. Valerie highlights the project's inclusive and collaborative spirit, encouraging participation from the community and spotlighting unique events like Angie Fitzpatrick's pop-ups in Portland and Karen Renis's collaborations in Austin. Join us for heartfelt stories, actionable insights, and a fresh perspective on using baking as a powerful tool for mental health advocacy.
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Welcome to the Cake Therapy Podcast, a slice of joy and healing with your host, Dr Altricia Foster.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone, welcome back to the Cake Therapy Podcast, your slice of joy and healing. And as promised, the Cake Therapy Podcast will bring you the slice of joy and healing that you need at the right time. Today's slice of joy and healing is Valerie Van Galder. Did I get that right? You did Good. She's the CEO of Dep Press Cake Shop and committed to changing the conversations around mental health through baking. She is committed to fundraising for mental health organizations is doing like-minded work. She's an award-winning marketing executive with over 25 years of marketing and brand building experience at Fox, searchlight, sony Screen Gems. She has run worldwide marketing for Sony's Columbia Pictures, leading the department to record-breaking results. In Galdor's consulting practice, she has been involved in global marketing, global marketing strategies and campaigns for clients including 20th Century Fox, sony Pictures, disney, nbc Universal, focus Features, lionsgate, amazon and Apple, and now baking and mental health advocacy. I hope I did not miss anything, valerie. Can I call you Valerie?
Speaker 3:That was great. Absolutely, you can call me Valerie, you can call me Val, whichever you like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, welcome to our podcast.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 2:I'm a fan of the work that you do in the field of mental health and I think our listeners are really in for a treat. And whenever I have mental health advocates on, our listenership really does go up. Because I'm saying, we spoke to Ella from Bake Wellbeing a couple of weeks ago and, man, our listeners were really excited about her conversation with us. So I know that our listeners are yearning for conversations such as this. You are all about baking the world a better place, and I love. I love your influence in that space, and the Cake Therapy Foundation is really in alignment with the work that you do. We are doing and baking women and girls into a much better place through teaching them how to bake. So thank you so much for joining us today. You're welcome. Yeah, so a quick mental health check-in that I usually do in this space is you know, how are you doing? How are you doing?
Speaker 3:I am doing well, thank you. I, as you said, I work in marketing many years ago and it's one of the reasons the depressed cake shop became a big pastime of mine. I left my job to take care of my father, who had had a psychotic break after my mother's death, so I do freelance marketing now, and part of that is to maintain my own mental health and to manage my stress levels, because too much stress is bad for me.
Speaker 3:So I'm doing some film, consulting, working with Depressed Cake Shop and walking my dog and playing tennis and enjoying nature and doing all the things that kind of keep my mental health in check. So yeah, today my mental health is good.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's great. You know, often I see people and I ask, like how they're doing, and I really, really want to be intentional about checking in how important it is, you know, do you think it is, that we are honest with ourselves and really acknowledge, in any given moment, the truth about, really acknowledge, in any given moment, the truth about you know how we're feeling, um, emotionally.
Speaker 3:I think it's really important because I think, um, one of the reasons I got involved and decided I wanted to become a mental health advocate was seeing how shame-filled my parents life was since the day they were married. My father clearly was struggling with mental health issues his whole life, but it was kept hidden from me, my family, my sisters, most of our, my mom's community, because she felt very ashamed of it, cause our dad was a very high functioning, successful, you know, great father, built a business, you know we had a lovely life, but he had this quiet underpinning issue his entire life. I guess you know I didn't know a lot about it until after they passed away that he probably had suffered from bipolar disorder, which could turn into psychotic depression, and so I think the fact that they could never talk to my sisters about that or my mother could never get any support in, you know, keeping my father's health, you know, stable to the best of her abilities, was one of the reasons I wanted to talk about it. I wanted to tell my story and my family story so that other people who might be suffering these things would actually go and get help and look for treatment sooner, because I think the sooner you get treatment for your mental health, the sooner you start to understand what some of your underlying health issues are, the better chance you have a full and productive life. And my dad's life went up and down like this because he never quite probably invested enough in his own mental health, because I think once it's stabilized he'd just go back to whatever his life and didn't ever get a holistic treatment that kept him healthy throughout his life, as we saw when my mother passed away. So it's a long way of saying.
Speaker 3:I think it's really important when you're feeling tired, when you're feeling stressed, when you notice your anxiety levels are rising, that you know you check in with yourself and perhaps go see a doctor. And I think the more people like us talk about that, the more people say, huh, maybe you know the bad dreams I'm having at night or the fact I can't get out of bed or that I'm very sleepless. Maybe that's an underlying mental health issue that I should go get checked out. And the same way you would go get an irregular heartbeat checked out or you have a strange mole on your arm. Like we've done a really good job at public as a culture and as a country publicizing, you know, heart attacks and skin cancer and um, and all those kinds of things that we talk about all the time, to make sure you go and you know, catch those things before they become more problematic. So I think mental health needs to to rise up to the that level of visibility.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. You mentioned here your mom, your dad, your sister. Tell me a little bit more about who valerie is. You know, um one I'm curious about growing up. You know what led you to pr and movie marketing and that kind of stuff, and then we kind of we dive into the mental health and baking aspect of it oh my gosh, that's a long story because I'm old.
Speaker 3:Uh, who am I? Okay, I am the firstborn child of my parents. She was from Chicago, he was from Oklahoma. They both were first generation immigrants who really grew up with nothing. My mother was an orphan by the time she was 18. She didn't think she'd ever marry. She thought she was actually going to be thinking about moving to New York and going to work in New York and she met my father and they got married and they had me and then six months later he wanted to move to California. So they moved away from Chicago to California when I was a baby and things were going pretty well and then I had I guess I was a baby but then they had another daughter, my sister Marcy, who's born a little less than two years later, and then my then my mother became pregnant again unexpectedly, her third child, my sister Jodi, and that pregnancy um was uh, unexpected. And also my sister was born quite premature and in the 60s, like there was no NICU. So that was a big um, it was a big. I think it was probably a big stress on my family.
Speaker 3:If I look back and see kind of what happened to my dad after that, I think, three children under the age of three, a new business. He had just moved to California. He was an entrepreneur, and so what I now know that I did not know until after they passed away is that he had a psychotic break when I was four and he was institutionalized and he received electroshock therapy, which is what they called it at the time, and no one ever told us this. And so I have, and so you really want to get into this. So I've really kind of excavated myself and my personality and some of my issues, having been discovered that data point about my family, and realized I've been really anxious and socially awkward and strange. Probably since about that time I think I was a pretty confident little baby and I think my dad leaving and it not being explained to me while I don't remember it on a conscious level, I think subconsciously I developed real anxiety and a lot of abandonment, like I was always worried people were going to leave and I was going to be alone and I didn't know why. No one ever explained. Well, you know it might have been because when you were four your dad went to a mental hospital and your mother was home alone with three children and no support system in California. So you know, I made it through childhood. I was quite shy and I had a lot of. I was really socially awkward but I was smart. And then I got to UCLA and I was socially awkward still, you know, never could quite fit in with everybody else and always felt like I was going to have a strange life. And I was okay with that.
Speaker 3:And then one day I met someone who worked in a PR firm. He was an intern. He's a friend of mine. So someone who worked in a PR firm, he was an intern, he's a friend of mine. So I'm trying to make this story short. And my mother and father kept telling me I had to go get an internship because I was an English major and I wasn't never get a job. They just like I was hardwired for anxiety. They were constantly telling me all the things that were going to go wrong with my life, which was not helpful. And, within a loving way, they love me. So anyway, I met this friend of mine one day and said what are you up to? And he said well, I'm an intern at this PR firm. I said, oh, that sounds fun. That's Hollywood. I like movies. Can I come with you?
Speaker 3:So I wandered into this PR firm public relations for those who don't know what PR is and I ended up in the music division because a woman who was an assistant there said oh, you seem like a nice smart girl, Do you want to be my intern? I said I do, why are you here? And I said I'm an intern. She's like you're not, you need to fill out forms, like. And I said you know, I really like it here and I'm going to graduate anyway and you don't have to pay me because I'm really enjoying being a volunteer. So I ended up that being my first job and it turned out. As shy as I was, I was really good at talking people into things on the phone, like I had a good way of persuading people to do what I wanted them to do, which is what PR is. It's getting people to write an article about your project. So I did that for many years and then, you know, then blah, blah, blah and I just had a good career and I was really enthusiastic and excited. So I ended up being very blessed in my career and achieving all the things you talked about at the top of this conversation.
Speaker 3:But when my dad had his third psychotic break that I knew about of his life, which is when my mother passed away about a year into that, I just couldn't do my job anymore. My husband lived in London, my sisters weren't here to support me and I was just really burned out. So I kind of had a little breakdown myself and I took some time off. And then at some point a few years later, I started baking. I'd always baked, but I always wanted to learn to decorate cakes. So I was in London visiting my husband and cake pops had just been invented and I thought I'm going to make cake pops. I couldn't figure out how to do it because I'm a bad cake decorator, and it turned out there was a school in England, a few tube stops away from my house, where you could take cake lessons, and I was bored. I didn't have a job, I didn't have any friends in London, and so I said I'm going to go take some cake lessons.
Speaker 3:Anyway, that's how we ended up at Depressed Cake Shop. So I became very, very, very obsessed with decorating cakes. I took tons. I've always managed my mental health. I now know through behavioral activation, which is arts and craft, and so that's what I did. I started taking cake lessons.
Speaker 3:I read about the depressed cake shop. It was supposed to be a one day pop up in England. I couldn't participate because I had to go back to LA because my dad was not feeling well, and but so many bakers were intrigued by this idea that a Facebook group grew around it and it started popping up. So, san Francisco, someone popped up and I met a woman in LA on this group. I said I don't know why, but I'm so drawn to the idea of baking cake and supporting the National Alliance for Mental Illness, which is an organization that had been tried to be very supportive to me when my dad was ill, but I didn't really have time to even take advantage of their services, which was peer support, and this is a wonderful organization. I said let's raise money for them, and so we did it. We did a one day pop up here and I just it changed my life, and so the original founder didn't want to continue on. We built the website. Social media kind of grew up. Instagram, you know, became more of a force, so it's just really me and my computer. But me and my computer we've had over 200 shops around the world. We've raised money over $400,000. We stopped counting at some point because COVID sort of slowed things down, but yeah, so hundreds of thousands of dollars have been raised. It's a project that it kind of ebbs and flows with my schedule, to be honest with you, because right now I'm working back in film, so you know the website's always there.
Speaker 3:I've done a lot of things like podcasts. My sister and I were the keynote speakers at the Mental Health Marketing Festival in Tennessee this year. So now, more than baking and popping up shops, I try things like this, like advocate for other people to bake and pop up shops because am I just filibustering too much, sorry, okay, is it? Okay? Cause I just could talk in a torrent. Okay, cause I realized, like you asked one question, I've been talking for 10 minutes. Okay, so I'm getting. This is my Ted talk.
Speaker 3:So the reason I love talking to people. Like you asked one question, I've been talking for 10 minutes, okay, so I'm getting. This is my ted talk. So, um, the reason I love talking to people like you is a you're also working in this space and you realize that therapeutic effects and nature of baking, which I think I want to spread the word far and wide because it's such an easy way to make yourself feel better baking a cake and giving it to someone is, it's got a magical quality in terms of how it makes me feel and how I know it makes others feel that I want other people to be able to veil themselves up because it's such a simple thing to do.
Speaker 3:But also I like talking about it because, just like me, all I did was pop up a shop with a friend, so it's like the barrier to entry I've kept very low. You know, we'd like you to have elements of gray, because that's kind of our color palette to represent that there's a gray cloud, that depression casts over your life, over a beautiful world. But I want people to feel really included in this. If you want to do this as a card table in front of your house, if you want to do it with your kids at their school one of the women who I met through the project it was her daughter's bat mitzvah project and I also don't take any money in. Even though we are a registered charity.
Speaker 3:The money goes directly into the communities where the pop-ups happen, because I know how hard it is to raise money for local charities. My sister runs a homeless um shelter in boise, so I'm well aware I have a relative who's raising money all day long. So it's a very special and hippie-ish project. I run it like the hippie am. It's really based a lot on trust. We trust that you're gonna you know represent us beautifully if we've loaned you our our name and our logo for your pop-up.
Speaker 3:We trust that you're going to work with a registered mental health charity and you know, work with them, and not only to support and work but to maybe raise some money for them. And that's that's what it is. It's very simple, it's sweet. We have a website that can walk you through anything. Anyone who's listening and is interested, and I answer all the emails. I'm always here if you have questions, and it changed my life. I think it's in my life. It's been an incredible project. I've met people all over the world personally because the project that have enhanced my life and I know they all have as well.
Speaker 3:It's created this beautiful community around it absolutely.
Speaker 2:Do you think, then, that it was your proximity to the mental health, like the trauma that you experienced with your father getting ill and even your your father's illness, you know in turn leading to you feeling low and gray, that led you into this space of advocacy? Because I read where you say you're not an activist, you're an advocate. Tell us more about that.
Speaker 3:I think you know it goes back to when you asked me to end up in PR. I think what I've learned through my career is that spreading stories can change the world. It's like if you tell a story you know and you tell a story with compassion, or a story that can actually help someone you know, you can impact culture. So that's what I do professionally, I think. Talking, I think someone like who you know if you don't know me well and if I wasn't so honest and you Googled me, you'd think, wow, she's had the perfect life. You know, she had all these big jobs and those pictures of her with nice, you know hairstyles and shots, and yeah, she was on this list and she was powerful and she was on that list and she won these awards and it all looks really good on paper and a lot of it is. But there was a lot of trauma, struggle and sadness in between all the happy stories, and so I want people to realize that, like so, many people feel, uh, you know less than, or they could you know, their life isn't adding up to everyone else's, and social media hasn't helped that, because we spend our lives only posting about our tribes and our happy days and our great Christmases with our families, and a lot of people are really lonely and they're struggling.
Speaker 3:So advocacy and activism kind of came naturally to me. I've been an activist my whole life. My parents really instilled that in us to look out for the people that didn't necessarily have as much as you do. But when I Was tasked with my sister with taking care of my father and getting him mental health assistance and getting him into the hospital and getting him therapy, it was really challenging and I was really taken and struck by the fact that I had to basically call the people at the movie studio trying to help me get a bed at the hospital, because someone who ran a movie studio's name was on the top of the building and I thought, wow, if someone like me can't get their dad into a hospital, what if they don't have my big mouth and they don't talk people into everything and they don't have extended health care?
Speaker 3:So I thought I just want to do my part to raise money and awareness for organizations that are working in the space so that I didn't want another daughter like me, because I really lost everything. I lost my career, you know it. Just like it had long lasting effects my dad's illness, because he was ill for so, and I was here on my own. My sisters were out of state with small children. So I thought some days there's gonna be a woman like me and she's gonna have a big job and she's gonna have a family and she's also going to be able to manage all those things, because mental health care is going to be available and accessible and hopefully affordable. So I just wanted to do my part in that space and I also wanted to meet other people who were going through what I was going through, because it was quite lonely and scary and it made me feel much less alone and I wanted other people to feel less alone. So I want to, you know, kind of continue that virtuous cycle of telling other people my story so that they don't feel so scared. And I think the other thing I sort of started to touch on is, you know, now in the world where social media is really harming our young people's mental health, I want to make sure that I do my part to help this next generation talk about their feelings and I think in the 10, 14, 15 years since my dad became ill in 2009, things have really changed.
Speaker 3:People talk about this openly changed. Like people talk about this openly, there is the I. You know my company. I had an executive coach and they asked um, they told me to ask for compassionate leave and my company wouldn't give me compassionate leave. And I recently wrote an article and someone who works at that company I used to work at texted me on LinkedIn and she said you know, I just want to tell you. I read that article and I just want you to also know that I'm on compassionate leave from my old company. I was just like I'm so happy that they now have compassionate leave because it's, you know, it's important to keep a good workforce working. You need to, you know, understand that sometimes people have pressures that they need to deal with at home.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and this resonates with me so much because I had to. I am the primary caregiver of my mom, who's like suffering stage three dementia. I read that and I had to walk away from a lot of it, like you know a lot of the things that I achieved. So I definitely this story does resonate with me because I'm telling you like I am really experiencing a daily heartbreak of watching my mom, like I'm grieving daily. So I have a lot of things that I'm baking through and it's really the baking that's actually keeping me together.
Speaker 2:So I can, I can that this does resonate with me, with you finding your baking, and it further solidifies for me because when I wrote my book Cake Therapy how Baking Changed my Life, it wasn't the story of my mom having dementia, because I didn't foresee, I did not foreshadow this happening. I was baking through traumas that happened to me in the past but didn't realize that I needed to. I would have had to gone back to these tools to actually beg through surviving the slow, slow heartbreak of watching dementia steal my mom away. So this definitely resonates with me. So thank you for sharing that and stepping into the light and recognizing that for you to be alive and standing that you needed to take care of yourself, and you found an outlet. So kudos to you, kudos back to you.
Speaker 3:Thank you I read that and I, you know, I'm just and I'm yeah, I'm sending you all the love because I think what people don't realize is and I have a friend who's I have friends whose mother's not well right now. I don't know how you feel, but I feel like it's harder for me to have someone I love suffering than myself because you're so worried, like you know. I don't think people who have not ever been a caregiver understand that, like you wake up in the middle of the night and you wonder if they're okay and you wonder what's going to happen in the morning, and because it's completely out of your control, yeah, we're like. Well, you know, if I, when I had a broken shoulder, I was like, oh, my shoulder hurts, okay, I'll take a pill, but it was just me, like I wasn't worried about myself, I was just like, but worrying about someone who you love, a parent, I think, so many people I don't know how old you are, but in my generation or caregivers, and you know and it comes as a terrible shock.
Speaker 3:I'm sure you felt when suddenly you're like the person who you know took care of you.
Speaker 2:Suddenly the tables are turned and our society needs to really support people, because there's going to be more of us oh, there, there, there's already so many more of us right, and I think it's it's the authors who are creating the space to really talk about it freely, because we know not, if we don't talk about it, what it's going to ultimately do to us. You know, and for me, this is my only parent, it's the only parent I've ever had, and as I was like climbing up this ladder of success, I'm thinking that this poor lady who gave up everything for me would now be reaping the fruits of my labor.
Speaker 3:But then she can't enjoy a moment of this because of depression and dementia, you know. So it's really heartbreaking for me, but I understand. I mean I'm just sending you all the love because until someone has been through this, you can I understand on a very cellular level what you're saying. Everything, that they give up, everything for us and that, just as you're kind of getting to that point where you're about to like spring into, you know that's the most productive part of your life. Yeah, yeah, you need to take care of them and it's a people. I'm sure they say this to you, but people used to say to me you're such a good daughter. I was like I don't, what choice do I have? Like they're my parents, like what am I going to do? Yeah, so yeah, it's a, it's a big issue. I'm really sorry. I send you a lot of love thank you so much.
Speaker 2:And and people don't realize, like, as they're taking care of these elderly parents, that they, too, need to take care of themselves. And that is truly one of the messages that the foundation and the work that you're doing is sending, like listen, find an outlet. If you don't believe that talk therapy is the answer, there are other art forms that will really get you to the place that you need to get to yes, exactly, and also try.
Speaker 3:You know, I think the thing about mental health is challenging is there's so many different modalities. There's talk therapy, there's CBT, there's EMDR, there's, you know, there is ECT, which is recommended for someone like my father, who was very ill and medication resistant, which seemed, you know, scary at the time.
Speaker 3:But when I met with the head of the hospital. They said well, this is a, you know, a treatment that works for someone like your dad, but it's you know, it's very confusing. And also, you know I'm sure you appreciate this statement I'm about to make when you're depressed, it's really hard to get help for yourself, because the depression tells you you're never going to get better. So people who have mental health issues really need advocates and advocacy. It's another reason to talk about it and to keep an eye on your family members, because they're not going to tell you they're depressed. Your brain tells you that my dad thought he was completely rational. He didn't realize that he was sick, and that's what made it even more challenging.
Speaker 2:And the thing about it is I don't realize when I'm the most stressed, until I'm actually in the kitchen and seeing how hard I'm baking, because I'm feeling the pressure that I need to release this and I'm putting it into the cakes. So it's really an interesting concept of an interesting response to trauma and burdens that you know it does work, yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, I haven't baked in a long time because I've been moving and so all my stuff is. And then the other day this um, this is a sweet story, actually, this store, there's a. There was a bakery in la called sweet lady jane. That was very legendary and been here for 100 years and everybody loved it. And then it just suddenly, new year's day it just closed.
Speaker 3:It was every and people were literally grieving like on, you know on media how much they missed this bakery and they had this famous three berry cake. So I Googled it because you know they kept the recipe quite carefully guarded.
Speaker 3:And I went on my Instagram page and I said, hey, a depressed cake shop. I was like if anyone lives near me and they want a cake, you know, if you make a donation to a depressed cake shop, I didn't care what size it was, I'll make you this cake because I think I know how. And it was, I'll make you this cake because I think I know how. And this woman instantly sent me $250. And I was like, wow, that was so generous. Thank you, yeah. So um, and only one person did, which is fine, because I didn't have a lot of time to bake the cake, but I hadn't baked in a long time and I had to do that cake and a birthday cake for friends, coincidentally.
Speaker 3:And I got in the kitchen and, to your point, I was like gosh, I really missed this. I didn't realize how much I love baking and decorating and thinking about what the cakes will look like and figuring out how to replicate the sweet lady Jane cake. But the sweetest part of the story is that the woman who bought the cake shared with me Um, oh gosh, she has her. No, she, actually she. She messaged me, so this is confidential, okay. She shared with me that she was celebrating her 30th year of sobriety with her family that night. So the cake just had so many layers of love in it like that.
Speaker 3:I was really gratified. She had supported our charity. I was so happy that I could create something for her to celebrate with her family, and so I have like mugs and some little goodies I used to make, like I said, depressed cake shop ebbs and flows. So I made her a little goodie bag and she came to my house and I gave her a hug and I thought, wow, this is just a very minuscule example of what I try and tell people, which is like two people's lives were impacted from the simple act of making a cake Mine, because I felt so grateful to be able to help her enhance her experience with a cake that was beautiful, that she was excited about, but also it was great for me just to spend the time making it and thinking about her, and so I recommend everybody make cakes for people. I think it's the way forward for all of us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like we often like such, there's such happy experiences that are associated with, like, making cakes. Right, we make cakes for parties and weddings. So you know, I'm curious to know the whole concept of the depressed cake shop. You know, I'm curious to know, like, the whole concept of the depressed cake shop, you know making great cakes. Where did that come from?
Speaker 3:It came from the original founder. She was a is a woman named Emma Thomas I haven't talked about. I've been Thomas and she goes by Miss cakehead. So in that period I was telling you about 10 years ago when I am 11 years ago now when I started baking, all the time I would read. I like to read and like research and, you know, meet people. So I was just interested in anything to do with cake and I read that this woman was doing this one day pop-up in London and she, because of her, she has a very different personality than I do. She's really like clever and well, I'm clever and creative, but she's more, a little bit more um, that's what I'm looking for.
Speaker 3:she works on a little more macabre space than I do, on a lot of her projects, so she came up with the idea, which I think was brilliant, that if the cakes were gray and they weren't pretty, it wouldn't be like any other bake sale. It would gain media attention because the cakes were telling the story of the gray life, of a depression. And she was right. And so people thought, well, gray is ugly. But actually I have a news clip, um, where the woman says you know that it's actually quite beautiful, the shades of gray, and I think it's also, if you want to kind of, you know, stretch the metaphor. It's like all of the all the moods of our lives make us who we are and you know it's like an inside out that movie. You know we have joy and we have sadness and it's just just, I think it's like a cake. The rest of it, I'm going to make a really bad ready for this metaphor analogy. So in the recipe of your life, if you're a cake, there's going to be days when you have sadness and joy and maybe anxiety. But if you can somehow, you know, change the raise, put more joy in your cake and less anxiety, then you know the recipe for your life will be better. And so I think she was really trying to use the gray cake as a metaphor for untreated depression and what the world feels like, because it really does feel gray. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:What we did after that first shot to kind of extend it is we said gray with a pop of color and then the pop of color could represent the hope. But, as I said, the other thing I do because I want to encourage as many people as possible to participate in the project. If you just want to make pink cake and you want to call yourself Depressed Cake Shop, go right ahead. I don't want to stop anyone because a lot of the times I've noticed people who are drawn to this particular project often are suffering with mental health issues themselves and, as you and I both know, I know for sure, when you're not feeling well with a mental health issue, you're tired. So the last thing I want to do is give someone who's excited about this project a whole bunch of hurdles to jump over that make it harder. So it's something that evolved over time to be a little bit less prescriptive from the original brief that Emma came up with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So let's talk about like collaborations across the. You know what does one have to do if they wanted to collaborate or set up a depressed bake shop.
Speaker 3:Okay, well, they want to collaborate with me. I'm tend to, we tend. I mean I'm happy to collaborate with anyone wants to collaborate. Like if a baker calls and said I want you to do a depressed cake shop and we live in LA, that would be fun. But in terms of just the thing about it is you can do it on your own anywhere you want. So if you wake up and you say I want to do a depressed cake shop, you go to our website.
Speaker 3:We have all kinds of forms to fill out Not forms Sorry, that's a lie. We have things to print out. If you want a letter to send to bakeries, we have downloadable logos and things. You want to use our logo. A lot of times people make their own logo. It's really like I want people to make it theirs. The only thing I ask that they do is they align with the National Mental Health Charity or even a local one that is registered as a charity, and that all the money they raise goes to that charity. And then the nice thing that also makes it better is if they pair up with the charity so the charity could actually be on site and they can bring literature or talk to people who are coming to the first shake, to the depressed cake shop, about the work that they're doing and there's a lot of examples of it on our website. You know we have a whole thing called past shops and you can see which charities are involved. The one that's the most active and they have their own instagram page because of it is a charity in portland oregon called baby blues connection.
Speaker 3:Okay, and she loves her name's angie fitzpatrick. She's on our board. He loves the press cake shop, so it is their major fundraiser and they do four pop-ups a year and they do they. It's very um. What's the word I'm looking for? Professional is the wrong word, but it feels very. She just she has a system that's really really um, effective and efficient. They do it at the same place every time. It's a space called opal 28. They've been amazing, amazing partners to us. The money goes to her charity, she's the executive director of the charity and she's like the gold standard In Austin, texas. Actually, interestingly and I've always thought this was a great idea that other people should do A woman named Karen Renis who worked at National Alliance for Mental Illness, nami Central Texas branch this NAMI Central Texas branch she would do during mental health month.
Speaker 3:She would ask all the bakeries in Austin to each create one depressed cake shop item so like maybe a great donut or great cupcake or great cookies and sell those for the month of May and then have literature inside the bake shop. So this is bricks and mortar about NAMI, so that they would raise money and then the money would all go to NAMI and they'd raise awareness. And one year there's a cake shop called Skull and Cake Bones and one of the founders has mental health issues and is very open about it. So they made their cake shop the depressed cake shop for the whole month and I actually went for a week and stayed at their house and we did all kinds of fun activities. We did like a therapeutic knitting night. There's an organization I really love called not alone notes which was started by two young women.
Speaker 3:Um, if you have ocd you can send and they'll send you a note of support, so we did an arts and crafts night and we made a whole bunch of note cards and send them to not alone notes and we did a little cupcake decorating thing one night. So it's kind of it's very open. I mean, what I love about it because I'm a creative person is it's kind of it benefits anyone who wants to create what they want out of it, as long as you, you know, stick to a few really simple guidelines. It's there for everyone. It's like I said, it's a very hippie project. It's like the more the merrier, please join us, please part of our merry band. And I met Ella because, you know, we found each other online and now we're friends in real life and she's on my board and I met her in London and I'll see her again when I go there this week. So it's a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful organization.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's wonderful people all over the world who have touched it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I, in our conversations here, I I realized, well, I've known it, you know, but for our listeners is for them to realize that there's not a one size fits all response to how you treat mental health and traumas. Right, what do you think the world is missing when it comes to embracing alternate forms of therapy in response to their mental health?
Speaker 3:A good question. I mean I can only speak for myself. I mean I think, oh my gosh, I just got to cramp my leg. I think kind of one of all. I'm not going to answer that question directly, I'll get to it. But I do want to say one thing that I think would be helpful. I think we need to get started with all of this in childhood. To say one thing that I think would be helpful I think we need to get started with all of this in childhood.
Speaker 3:I think a lot of my issues were because my parents did not have the tools to understand how to raise mentally healthy children, not through any fault of their own, you know. They've been born in the twenties and thirties. They came from nothing. They didn't have a lot of support here there was, you know, no one gave my mother prenatal mental health care, it's you know. They just didn't. And so I think what would really benefit our society is if we start thinking about the mental health of our children really early. So you know, early motherhood, you know that bond with the mother. When my mother had the three children I think that was I can, you know, see kind of some of the things that happened in our family as the years went on, in terms of she was so overwhelmed with the three of us that you know it was. I'm sure it was a very challenging life for her. And so I have a dog, this puppy and yeah, the puppy I got her during COVID. So she went straight from the people's house where she'd been born, you know cause they owned the mother and she slept with a little girl in the bed and the little girl came and handed her to me and I'd had three of the same. I can sorry, I can actually explain this based on my dog. So I've had three beagles in a row.
Speaker 3:The first beagle I got I was young with my boyfriend. I had a job. I put her in the kitchen with a bowl of food and I left and the dog lost her mind. She never was trained properly. She ran away all the time. She chewed through the furniture. She ate all my clothes. She was so badly behaved, she bit people. But I loved her and I kept her my whole life. She's a very flawed and mentally challenged dog. And the second dog I thought, okay, well, I kind of learned from the first dog. So the second dog I brought her to work every day because my boss let her. I took her to daycare so she was, you know, could be um more socialized with the dogs. I got a dog walker for when I was at work and she was a much better dog. She didn't run away as much as that dog did. She didn't like other dogs, but other than that she's a perfect dog. She was wonderful with children.
Speaker 3:Where the first dog had bit children, yeah, and I was like, okay, I've nailed this dog thing. And then I got my third dog and that dog was the first time I hadn't had a full time job. So I just stayed home and bonded with my puppy. And this puppy is like people stop me in the street they're like what is that dog? She is confident, she is calm, she's generous with her toys, where my second dog was very toy possessive. She's just an angel. And she's an angel because I trained her.
Speaker 3:Like you know, I put her, I trained, I crate trained her. Where I didn't crate train my first dog, I did crate train my second dog. So this one's so crate trained. So then I read a bunch of books, even though it was my third beagle, and one of the books said feed your dog in the crate. So I would bagel and one of the books said feed your dog in the crate. So I would do this thing where I'd say, hazel, your table's ready, and she'd go into her crate, she'd sit and she'd eat her dinner. So now if I say hazel, go in your crate, she just walks in there and takes a toy and goes to bed and she can stay there for hours and it really has made being a dog owner an absolute pleasure.
Speaker 3:But I've given a lot of thought to how that equates to a human and I thought, wow, I just had more resources in some ways to train my dog than I think anyone gives parents. They just send a baby home, they're like good luck, and they tell you about the bottles and the diapers and the food, but they don't say hold your baby close when she's crying or he's crying. Don't leave it in the bed and let it cry itself to sleep. That's not a good thing, you know. Don't, don't create fear. That, you know, eventually, I think, really metastasizes into some of these mental health issues that we see people walking around with. So I would love that we would help mothers and fathers, you know, kind of get on board with it early.
Speaker 3:But if you do have mental health issues, it isn't one size fits all. Therapy isn't for everybody. Some people need medication. So I think it's also destigmatizing and demystifying that whatever works for you For me it was.
Speaker 3:I tried medication because I got quite depressed at a point in my life.
Speaker 3:I tried medication a few different times and at some point I realized okay, I think I understand what my trauma is and I think if I take care of myself through exercise and having a dog and seeing my friends and minimizing my stress, that works for me now.
Speaker 3:Will it work forever? I don't know, but you know that's and I would never say someone else shouldn't take medication. I think you should do what's right for you, but you know, sometimes it takes a minute to figure it all out. So I think the other thing I would say, having been a patient and daughter of a patient, is have a little patience with yourself, because it does take time to work. It's not like a headache medicine where you take a aspirin. It goes away and I think sorry I'm talking way so much, but I think that's what's so challenging about it is your brain keeps telling you you're never gonna get better and that the pills aren't working, and so it requires sometimes an outside advocate to get you to take the pills until they finally kick in, cause there's no instant. There's no instant cure, unfortunately, for deep mental health issues. It's a journey.
Speaker 2:So you, you, you, you say that the depressed cake shop is there for everyone and you want everyone to join and to come along. What, what is what? What is actually in the pipeline for the Depressed Cake Shop right now, and what do you hope the future?
Speaker 3:Right now it's the websites there and it's kind of living as a little grassroots effort. I've been really busy with my life and my work and so it's like it ebbs and flows depending on my work and and so it's like it ebbs and flows depending on my schedule. So I mean, my hopes for it are, honestly, that someone would come and take it over and become more of an executive director and and make it a full time job so that we could raise a little bit of money to have a salary for someone. I haven't done any fundraising because I don't want to really do anything. I don't want the depressed, I don't want to be paid for my work and I don't want to really do anything. I don't want the depressed, I don't want to be paid for my work and I don't want to take in a lot of money that we then have to report back to the government. So I basically any money that comes in goes back out. But I don't know. I think you know people have come and gone over the years and I've had an assistant at some point. What do I want it to be? I mean, I think I want it to be kind of what it is, but I would love it to have more notoriety so more people will get involved, because I do think that they just.
Speaker 3:You know the effort of popping up a shop and getting that like that buzz Cause it really is a buzz. People didn't really recommend you do it at least once, cause it really is the most fun I've ever had. But at some point I burned out on it because you have to go organize the bakers and you know I had like an entire garage full of cake pit. I mean, I, whenever I do anything, I go hard. So I just personally got tired of I didn't want to be like a cake shop owner. So after my last really big one where I like rented a cake shop and that was in 2017, I haven't done a lot of pop-ups myself, but I encourage anyone to do one, cause, honestly, you know I got a little too excited. I did a whole bunch.
Speaker 3:At some point I lost a little bit of energy around it, but I think trying to do a cake shop in your or in your neighborhood, or maybe go to your, your child's school and just have them decorate cookies and talk to them about their feelings Like there's so many ways to use baking and there's also, since I started doing it, there's books like yours there's. So there's so many books in this space. You know about baking your mind off it and Jack has on just wrote one mind over batter, and so you know there's a whole literature like movement around why this is so good for you. So I think you know, get yourself some of the books by, you know by Dr Fisher's foster Sorry, I can't read by Dr.
Speaker 3:Foster's it looks like Fisher, his center name. By Dr Foster's sorry I can't read. Yeah, by Dr Foster's it looks like Fisher, it's not her name by Dr Foster's book. Uh, go out and read about you know how their cake therapy can save and help you and help others. And yeah, yeah, I just think people like us just have to keep talking about. I think your podcast is going to do a big service talking to people like me and Ellen, everyone else you have in the pipeline absolutely I'm.
Speaker 2:I'm hoping that the podcast will really help to authenticate that this is really a true art form that really can change people's lives.
Speaker 3:It's changed mine, I'm the poster child.
Speaker 2:There we go. I'm glad that you feel that way. So, before we go, I want you to speak to our listeners, especially the girls who are listening and who have been through trauma. They've been in and out of foster care, been in and out of the justice system, the criminal justice system and they're feeling hopeless. What is your message to them today?
Speaker 3:Oh my goodness, excellent question.
Speaker 3:My message to them today is that, while their childhood didn't necessarily hand them all the tools that it would be that are beneficial to launching yourself into life, finding people like you and your project and aligning yourself, there are people out there who care and who do want to work with children, who didn't have the same advantages that some other people had, you know, in their childhood.
Speaker 3:Um, oh my gosh, I don't want to be very articulate and there are organizations like yours and there's another one in England called the Luminary Bakery. There are places where people want to help. You know, you find your skills and so, if I think, just go into your heart because everybody's different and find something you love and see if there's a way you can align with someone like you or like me, because we're out in the world to help support that, that, that spark you have inside of yourself. And there's there's some really wonderful organizations. My friends are going to run an organization called a sense of home and they're in LA and I think they're also branching into New York and what they do for foster youth is, when they are aged out and they have their first apartment, they go and furnish it. It's like extreme home makeover for foster kids.
Speaker 3:So, there are people out there who really care. It's just you have to find access to them and maybe put a link to a sense of home on your website and let people know that in LA and New York that is something that's available for foster kids and they also they're very supportive of them throughout the journey.
Speaker 3:They don't just give them an apartment and say goodbye. So it's been. I think I'm really proud of my friends and I think that's a beautiful organization. So I think, you know, if they could open all over the country, that would be really helpful because they're very, very committed to the idea that we just that our system just throws these poor children out into the world with nothing and we need to keep continuing. You know, having gotten that far, they're strong and they're resilient and we need to support them as they enter adulthood. So there are organizations that do that and that's one that I know of that I highly recommend Thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for that. We are going to leave it there with the message of being strong, resilient, finding an alignment, and with the hope that you, in turn, will be able to sparkle from these messages that we've learned today. Thank you, valerie.
Speaker 3:Thank you, it was a pleasure this conversation.
Speaker 2:I really enjoyed it and you'll be back. We have other things to talk about, so I'm really, really excited about the future partnership of you know. Cake Therapy Podcast Cake Therapy Foundation and the Press. Cake Shop. So thank you so much for coming today.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and we should get some of my board members. We should just do a Zoom with Ella and Courtney and some of the other women and see what we can. Yeah, I'm sure we can conspire and do something great.
Speaker 2:Of course, yeah, let's get to it.
Speaker 3:Okay, well, it's so nice to meet you. Thank you so much for finding us. Yeah, thank you for joining me.
Speaker 2:So thank you, guys for joining the cake, yeah, for joining the cake therapy podcast, your slice of joy and healing.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning into the cake therapy podcast. Your support means the world to us. Let us know what you thought about today's episode in the comment section. Remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcast and if you found the conversation helpful, please share it with a friend. Also, follow Sugar Spoon Desserts on all social media platforms. We invite you to support Cake Therapy and the work we do with our foundation by clicking on the Buy Me a Coffee link in the description or by visiting the cake therapy website and making a donation. All your support will go towards the cake therapy foundation and the work we are doing to help women and girls. Thanks again for tuning in and we'll catch you on the next episode.