Baking helped me through bereavement
Elisabeth Mahoney tells how baking helped her through family bereavements and how she’s helping others discover its therapeutic, healing powers
As a child, Elisabeth Mahoney’s way of coping with her father’s death was to follow her mother into the family’s tiny kitchen to bake... Aged ten, she donned an apron and began cooking and baking with her Mum Betty (then 56) to fill their time and channel their grief. Food always played an important role growing up in a busy household, where Elisabeth was the ‘surprise’ sixth child, arriving long after her siblings, when her mum Betty was 46. “As a nurse, Mum worked nights and when she came back in the mornings she’d always bake. I woke up to the smell of freshly-baked soda bread every day. She was an incredible baker and a traditional cook. “We had an allotment, so everything was fresh and made from scratch. We were so lucky,” recalls Elisabeth, who made her own first loaf of Irish soda bread aged eight. But it was only after Elisabeth’s father Roger’s death from lung cancer at 63, when she and her mum were left together in the family’s south London home vacated by the grownup children, that baking became a serious hobby. Whole weekends were suddenly spent shopping for ingredients and trying out exotic new recipes. “It was a big adventure every Saturday. We did it for years,” she says. Little did Elisabeth realise then that her hobby would prove to be such a saviour for her during times of great sadness. Or that she’d leave her day job as a journalist and lecturer to create her own One Mile Bakery business delivering homemade artisan bread, soup and jam to customers within a mile radius. The idea for the new business followed a dark time for Elisabeth after suffering a devastating eight miscarriages over five years and seeing her mum suffer a stroke. “I had some very dark days. I felt rootless and lost. As the youngest, I felt I had nobody above me and nobody below me,” she says. Deciding she needed to change her life, Elisabeth began to think about baking bread for a living after a vegetable box arrived one day and she began chatting to the delivery man. It was something she could do from home and it would remind her of her mum, who managed to live another three good, happy years in a nursing home. Much to the delight of Betty, the business opened in 2012. The following year Elisabeth was in the middle of making 38 loaves, when she received the news that her beloved mother Betty had died. “I just sat there and cried and cried,” says Elisabeth.
“Losing my mum broke my heart even though she was 91 and had had a brilliant life. It’s the hardest thing I’ve had to deal with.” For six weeks she was unable to go into the kitchen but then one day, she got up at 4.30am and made a seeded spelt loaf she’d made the last time her mum had been to stay. For two years, she carried on doing so and accepts it “got me through so much.” Cooking became such a comfort, just as it had all those years ago as a little girl when her dad had died. “Especially cooking things I would have liked to have made for Mum, or would have cooked with her,” adds Elisabeth. Since then she’s taught more than 2,000 people to bake in classes she runs and has seen the way it has helped others suffering from bereavement to post traumatic stress. “It’s always the same. People come into the kitchen with worries and concerns and somehow the kneading takes everyone’s minds off what they’ve left behind. Then the magic of what happens in the bread-making process takes them out of their day-today. They leave with huge grins on their faces. It’s a bit like therapy.” Elisabeth’s husband Andrew (52) has now joined her in running her bakery business from their home in Pembrokeshire. And together they’re mentoring others to set up One Mile Bakeries across the UK and internationally. “I am really passionate about this and it means a lot to me. I want it to be something that changes other people’s lives because it changed mine. “It’s not about money. It’s about comfort, satisfaction, feeling at home and at peace with myself.” It’s also inspired by her mum, whose recipes she still uses (and tweaks). So what would Betty think today? “She’d be proud but she’d have laughed at my version of her lemon drizzle cake with edible flowers on top!”
For more details about Elisabeth’s courses and bakery, visit www.onemilebakery.com
‘The magic of what happens in the bread-making process takes people out of their day-to-day. They leave with huge grins’