I'm a learner, I love a class or a book that can teach me something. So when shit went South with the bakery, and after I had run through every season of Gilmore Girls with no improvement in my mood, it seemed like it was time to get serious, so off to YouTube I went. I headed there to consult with TED. You can spend A LOT of time on YouTube when you have nothing else to do and you're having an emotional breakdown but pretending you're fine. Watching TED talks is productive I told myself. Research. Educational. Work almost. Me? Avoiding things? Never.

I watched the classic motivational folks, Tony, Dan, Malcolm. Elizabeth Gilbert was great, but I was already a fan and expected nothing less from her. Pause. Rewatch Eat. Pray. Love. - ok, back to TED. The rabbit hole finally led me to Brene Brown. And she spoke to all the feelings that I was having. Most significantly, shame. Shame at having failed. That was the overwhelming emotion weighing on me every moment that I was awake. How could I have let something that was going so well, fail, what could I have done differently? How could I have let all of my employees and family down like that? It was crushing me.

It wasn't going to be solved on the sofa. I had to break this spiral that was spiralling out of control. I would walk, walk it off. I usually listened to music, but I downloaded Brene's books on Audiobook instead. The Gifts of Imperfection, Rising Strong and Daring Greatly. She didn't know how much I was counting on her to right the ship. I leashed up Caramel and we walked, every day, 8km. Up the hill, around Citadel Hill, across to the commons, down past the hospitals, back down to the waterfront, and then home. All the while, being guided by her calm, non-judgemental Texan voice, speaking directly to me.

I inhaled these words like it was the medicine I needed. And it was. The lessons she told through stories helped me work through all the guilt and shame that I was feeling and allow myself to see a way forward. More than one person I met on my walks gave me concerned glances when I passed them full-on crying. But it was cathartic and exactly what I needed. I was going to get up and dust myself off and jump back in (to the arena - I have this quote by my bathroom mirror). But something else happened. As she was telling a story, she said that she was "down in her kitchen, head in the fridge, foraging for carbs" - I stopped and said to Caramel. Fuck. That's the name of the cookbook I'm going to write. It's perfect. Don't pretend you don't talk to your dog.

So as well as giving me the tools to move forward, Brene Brown also named my cookbook. If someday she runs across this post, I just wanted to say thank you, for everything.