How can life’s toughest times lead you to God? Hallmark Channel baker extraordinaire Emily Hutchinson shares her story about how an unexpected tragedy led her back to one of her first loves and into a true relationship with God.
Listen to “#183 – The Unexpected Path to Healing with Emily Hutchinson” on Spreaker.
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Transcription:
Julie Lyles Carr: I’m Julie Lyles Carr. You’re listening to the allmomdoes podcast part of the Christian parenting podcast network. Today on the allmomdoes podcast I’m your host, Julie Lyles Carr. I have my new friend, Emily Hutchinson. Some of you are already very familiar with her for some of you, you are in for a first time meeting her treat, but for all of us, it’s going to be a conversation with all kinds of good food, lots of heart felt experiences, things learned. Emily. I’m so glad you’re here today. Thanks so much for joining.
Emily Hutchinson: I am so excited to chat with you. I’ve been looking forward to this all week.
Julie Lyles Carr: This is our time to have a little cup of coffee together, and to just engage in all the things. So tell us what part of the country you’re in kids, dogs, cats, bunny, rabbits, all the things that inhabit your house.
Emily Hutchinson: I am in Arlington Washington. So it’s north of Seattle, and it’s a little country town. My parents graduated from the same school I graduated from my grandpa, graduated from there. Um, and my daughter, her English teacher was the same English teacher that taught my sister. So it’s just a really small, like wonderful community.
And I have three kids. And, um, Mikey is 12, nick is almost 16 and Reese is almost 20. My daughter, Reese is almost 20.
Julie Lyles Carr: Oh, isn’t it shocking when they get to be adult size? Because I have kids in those ages and stages, my youngest one’s about the ma, but not number five on down. Those are the ages and stages they’re in. And I still, Emily, there’ll be these moments where everybody’s in the kitchen, just chatting and doing their thing and I look up and I’m still looking for little kids. I’m like, who are all these tall people in my, does it blow you away?
Emily Hutchinson: Handle it? Cause I’m like, just stay little. And then the pride when they grow up and like actually become incredible, humans is so cool, but you still want them to just like, stay your babies forever. So it’s very difficult.
Julie Lyles Carr: Yeah, it is. It’s a really interesting season to see them launching and doing all the things. And yet when you’ve had little kids around the house for a long time, it’s really strange. So do you moms out there who have all the toddlers biting at your ankles? We get it. We know those days are tough and we’re not trying to hurry anything up and we’re not trying to do that proverbial, oh, you know, they’re only little. However, maybe for some of you, this is a great beacon of hope. They do get bigger.
Emily Hutchinson: Truly. If I could go back for just one moment in the life and like, look at my daughter when she was five. I mean, I would take that crazy stage just to like, be back in that moment for a day.
Julie Lyles Carr: Right. Just to get to, I love how you distinguish the for a day
24 hours is good. One of my dear friends, one of my business partners with a project that I’m working on, she has two little bitty ones and it’s so fun to get to have them around. But then I look at all of it again and I’m like, wow, it hadn’t been all that long since I had a little bitty ones. But you do kind of forget.
I mean, you do sort of roll past just how hands-on and all the things. So, yeah. Oh, yeah. So you have had lots of interest in your life and what a lot of our listeners are going to know you for our, all the amazing things that you’ve gotten to do with your cooking. So the different shows you’ve been on at hallmark talent, all kinds of things that you’ve gotten to do some amazing stuff based on baking and cooking.
Did you know, as a kid, that that was the direction that you were going to head? Was that the thing that you always thought, oh, this’ll be, this’ll be my life.
Emily Hutchinson: You know, I it’s really funny that you say that because it all started for me when I was little, when I was a little girl. Um, if you want me to jump right into the story, Dive right in. Absolutely. So, um, I, you know, learned to bake with like box mixes and stuff like that when I was really little with my mom. And then when I was about five, still super little, right. I was like five. I started going over to my grandma’s house. She lived right down the road, my grandma loopy. Um, and she was known for her pies and she was such an incredible baker, and I was so intrigued by, um, how she could put all these ingredients together and it could make something so delicious. And so she taught me all that I know. She taught me, um, you know, we started with the basics, how to crack eggs, how to measure your flour correctly, because that’s a really big deal is your measurements when you’re baking.
And so, um, I just started to love it so much. And I was over there baking with her all the time. And I started, you know, growing up a little bit in my head family would be like, what’s Emily bringing for Thanksgiving, cause I was an incredible baker. I was making breads and pies and cookies and all sorts of stuff.
And so, um, When my grandma was 12 (when I was 12), she passed away from cancer. And that was just so incredibly devastating for me because she was my baking buddy. And so, you know, this love I had for baking, I kinda like pushed it aside a little bit and I still baked, but, um, The, the joy that I felt before and baking for my grandma and, and with my grandma, and it just kind of felt a little different. But I knew I still had that love in my heart for it. So, you know, I got older and I grew into adulthood and I had two kids. I had my son, Nick and my daughter, Reese. I should’ve said it backwards. Cause Reese is older, with a relationship that didn’t work. And then I met my now husband, Mike, and we fell in love, decided to have child of our own.
So Jenny was born. She was just perfect. She was born on Halloween actually, and 2007. And so I’m telling you all this, so you can kind of understand like about me and what makes me me. So, uh, Jenny, when morning that Reece I like every morning we would go in we’d scoop her up and let’s go wake up Jenny.
And one morning she was not breathing. And, um, I just, I mean, I take myself back there and I, it like, just like yesterday, I remember just scooping her up and I started screaming for Mike and I’m like, I call 9 1 1 and I ran into the kitchen and I started doing CPR, which when you have a child, they teach you how to do CPR and infants.
So, um, Yeah, I was going through those emotions and Mike was on the phone and then we had, we were trading off and, um, I turned and out of my peripherals I could see Nick and Reece standing there. You know, I think Reese was five and Nick was two and I was yelling at them to go back to their back in your room and they, of course, didn’t go back in their rooms, but I remember just pleading with God.
Don’t take my daughter. Just, I will do anything you want me to do. I will live my life forever for you if you just don’t let her die. And I am after that moment, I remember breathing my air into her and I was doing the compressions and I heard a breath come out of her. And I looked at Mike with like hope and I was like, oh my gosh.
And he just shook his head at me. And the reason why I should have said is because I was pushing my own air out of her. Um, and that’s when despair kind of started to sink in. And I just like this isn’t happening. There’s no way this is real. And they took her away. They couldn’t get her, um, to start breathing again.
And then, you know, we had her funeral and I just was kind of like an out-of-body experience watching, you know, this little white casket and I was watching myself just like laying on it. And it was just like, I just lived on the forefront of my brain. It’s just so crazy how trauma it just stays there, stays.
Julie Lyles Carr: Yeah, very much on the immediate screen.
Emily Hutchinson: So after that I wanted my baby back so bad I had convinced Mike, you know, like let’s get pregnant right away and we weren’t going to have any more kids. It was like, we had three and we weren’t going to have any more. And so we ended up getting pregnant right away with Mikey and biggest blessing.
And I mean, like if you met him today, you would be like, oh, that kid has something special. He has just so like the Lord put a light inside of him. And so we had Mikey and yeah, happiness was happening in great stuff was happening, but I was just missing some giant piece of my heart and my soul and I, how can I live without Jenny?
Like not none of this stuff is making anything better. It isn’t healing me. If you can picture just like this giant hole in the ground, like an excavator dug this giant hole and Mike and I are down in the bottom. It’s like, no, one’s helping us out. We can’t get out. You know? And, and, um, that’s when, um, we started to struggle really bad.
Um, my husband started drinking a lot, like about a fifth of alcohol a day and I started drinking and I would run into people I know. And they were like, oh, you are so strong. And I’m like, yeah, If you only knew I am literally drinking so I don’t have to feel my own pain.
Julie Lyles Carr: Emily, don’t you think in situations because we, if we’re not the person in pain and we know someone’s been through something that’s extremely traumatic and painful, it’s almost like we take comfort by going they’re doing great. They’re really strong. It’s it’s we don’t know how to give people margin to really be in the muck of situations like this. And then if you’re the person who’s been through it, and you’re getting all of this praise in a sense for being so strong, you know, and for gutting it out, then you feel like you have to keep up that pretense as well.
And yet we all know there is, there is a toll to pay in the grief process. There are things you don’t get to skip. I mean, you may put them off for a period of time, but they’re going to emerge. So how do you think we can leave room for people to grieve well, and to help them climb out, cause you were saying you and Mike were in this pit of despair.
How do you, what have you, what do you notice now that could have been helpful? And of course I know there’s something that a friend did for you that was eternally helpful, but what would have been helpful in that moment is you guys began to try to figure out what to do?
Emily Hutchinson: You know, I honestly don’t know the answer to that.
I think just by, you know, checking in on your friend’s going through something hard and just being there and listening and encouraging them and trying to walk alongside them and help them carry a little bit of that burden. I think that’s what I try to do when someone’s going through something. It’s just really listening and checking in because I don’t think there’s like a magical, like, you know, this is going to help someone, at least I haven’t found, I don’t think that something magical would have helped me.
I think that, um, when you were saying, you know, your friend did something special for you, that is the magic right here. Um, friends of ours noticed how bad we’re struggling and they invited us to church. And I would have called myself a Christian before I became a Jesus follower because I went to Sunday school,
I went to church on the holidays with my family. My grandparents were Catholic. My husband was an alter boy when he was little. So if you want to ask us, we want to say we’re Christians, but you know, being a Christian and a Jesus follower are very different in the way you handle your situations in your grief, and your troubles are totally different because when you’re not a Jesus follower you don’t have a foundation of faith to stand on. And so friends of ours invited us to church, like I said, and, um, we had said no a few times. And then one time we said yes, and we went and it was like the pastor speaking directly to us and it, it was like, something just changed that day and I could feel like a sense of hope. I could feel a sense of okay things, things are going to be okay. And we started getting involved in the church and helping, giving back to the community and kind of finding a purpose bigger than ourselves. And you know, when they say, you know, when you help someone selflessly, it does so much more for you than it ever does for them.
And so that’s what it did. It started like the healing process. And so we just kept getting involved and I was like, Hey, I’m going to get back into the kitchen. I feel I’m good. I’m going to get back into the kitchen. I’m going to dust off, you know, those, uh, measuring cups see what I can do. And so that was like, my triumph happened in the kitchen.
I, you know, with the Lord’s help, of course, and I started baking and making videos online that were going viral. And I started building a platform and gaining traction, and I was like this, like, people want to learn from me. This is amazing, you know, and I had been saved it and I was kind of feeling like, okay, all this stuff is great and building a platform is wonderful, but. This can’t be it. Like, there’s gotta be something more. And so I decided to, uh, start my blog and share my story and write it all down. And I like wrote it all down and I saved it for a little while because I was like, I’m terrified. I ran it by Mike and the kids and it basically let everything out there.
So it was like, people are gonna know we were heavy drinkers and that we struggled really bad. And. He was like, honey. Yeah. I think that’s what we need to do to show like how the Lord helped us. Like, that’s what we gotta do. So, um, my sister is actually my sister, Allie, she’s a news anchor and she’s just incredibly talented and, um, we bounce everything off of each other because we are both like, you know, in the public eye, we both, you know, run things by each other. And this was years ago. Um, I was reading her the blog before I posted it and she’s a Christian too. And so I was like, okay. I, you know, she was like, So it’s beautiful and it’s amazing, but are you sure you want to go full Jesus because people are going to like, know your story and not everybody’s going to be okay with it.
Like there have been other people, but if you just share your story and you don’t talk about Jesus, you just lightly touch on it, then it will basically appeal to a wider audience. And I was like, I can’t, I got to share, I got to go full Jesus. I got to share. How He saved us, how we got baptized together.
Like I have to share it all. So, and she was like, I support you. I agree with you. And I mean, I can’t even tell you what the Lord has done to bless me after just sharing that story and sharing everything that he’s done, because my story wouldn’t mean anything if, if I didn’t talk about, you know, our creator and build towards the kingdom of heaven.
So it’s just been a really incredible, hard to explain journey of loss and of being saved and creating a brand and, and I just continue to share my story and my faith. And I think that’s, what’s so incredible is I didn’t go to pastry school and I didn’t go to Bible college to be able to like preach to people, but God has given me a platform to be able to share.
And I always come back to, I heard on the radio that God doesn’t call on the qualified he qualifies called. And so when I was going through just like self doubt, like I’m not qualified to do this. I’m like, okay. Yes. I am like, God has put me here for this exact reason. And so I spent a complete miracle.
Julie Lyles Carr: You know, I think it’s really important that you distinguish you know, here’s the training that I didn’t have, and yet here is how God is using me because within, you know, within the publishing world, the media world, the speaking world, a lot of times we do have people and it’s not wrong to be strategic and to get the training that you need to pursue those kinds of things, but I think sometimes for those of us who have a heart for ministry, or we want to make a difference in people’s lives, we try to, in some ways out strategize God. We think that if we get a certain level of this training or this level of influence, or this many followers that he’s going to, that’s how we’re going to help him, let us do the thing that we want to do.
And yet we hear stories of this. I mean, who would have thought that the grief cycle and that the pause that happened from the point at which your grandmother passed when you were 12 to losing your daughter, Jenny, that in that, then all of a sudden there would be this resurgence of this desire to go back into the kitchen, and who would have ever thought that baking would have given you a platform to talk about grief process?
I mean, that’s a really fascinating way that God puts things together in ways that we can’t strategize or develop onto a marketing chart. Now they’re going to be those moms who are listening to hear someone talk about the experience of SIDS is just so terrifying to them. How do you navigate and, and what have you learned about SIDS about these things that, you know, it doesn’t happen often, but when it does, because it’s so out of the blue, how terrifying it is, what are some things that you’ve learned about that community, and are there advances being made to help prevent more SIDS deaths?
Emily Hutchinson: You know, when we first lost our daughter, we went, they have some incredible counseling programs for people. We went to some counseling, um, things, but for me, man, I just blew it all off and retreated from everything.
And the only thing that helped me was going to church. I do donate to the Seattle Children’s Hospital SIDS Foundation, because they are doing research to try to figure out why babies are dying because there’s no rhyme or reason. There’s no, like you can’t pinpoint it. That’s why it’s called sudden infant death syndrome.
There’s no correlation to, could it have been this ate or could it have been, you know, and they did an autopsy and they found nothing, no reason, no choking, no nothing. And I remember one of the first responders that were there, he was saying that if she was going to die from SIDS, it’s quite possible she could have died in my arms. We don’t understand why these babies are dying. And so I think that the fact that Seattle Children’s Hospital is trying to further research it’s, it’s such an important thing to me because we don’t know a lot. And so, uh, to be able to find out anything would be a relief to you. Just not having any answers is, is really hard to live with that.
Julie Lyles Carr: Right, right. To live in that valley. And that, you know, your story is interesting in that sometimes Emily, we hear of people who’ve been very involved in their churches and they undergo something that they never could have seen coming, and it will drive them away from God.
Your story is fascinating to me because as you said, you have this base of being familiar with Christian ritual, with taking advantage of the holidays, that kinds of thing. But it hadn’t been your foundation and this experience pulled you into relationship with Christ. How do you handle that when you hear people say, oh, I went through something traumatic and I went the opposite direction?
I mean, how, why do we see that happen when someone in your situation ended up having this very different experience of walking more fully into relations?
Emily Hutchinson: Right? That’s so interesting you say that, Julie, because I think about that quite often, because there I was in such a dark desperate, terrible place that I never want to go back there.
I never want to go back to being without God, because the strength that I’ve gotten from, from God and from reading his promises in the Bible, all of that is so encouraging to me that I’m going to get to be with Jenny one day. And if I ever turned away from God, I don’t think that I could get through any of the hard stuff.
I mean, there’s going to be hard stuff that happens to us no matter what, and it’s terrible and it’s awful, but Satan’s going to try to get you away from God as much as he can. I mean, there, there are even times where I’m like, oh, am I oversharing my story? Are people going to get bored of hearing this?
Because Satan is like, Trying to trying to stop the stuff. Right. Um, and so I’m like, no, I have to keep sharing. I have to keep encouraging people because there is nothing that I can’t get through with God.
Julie Lyles Carr: No, I mean, he’s there and you can get through it. How did you handle, you mentioned that your two older children were witness to all of this.
That’s a trauma cycle for kids. How did you navigate their needs in the midst of your own grief process and healing to try to determine how it had impacted them, and yet, you know, you said your son was only two, so he was really little, so that’s a really fragile lane, right? If there were things he wasn’t perceiving about what was going on, you don’t necessarily want to fill in all the blanks as a mom, and yet you want to make sure that there’s context for what they saw and for helping them walk through it.
How did you handle that? And did it change once you came back into fuller relationship with God?
Emily Hutchinson: Well, what I grew up in a family that didn’t really talk about hard stuff, kind of swept it under the rug. And so I felt like talking through it with my kids as much. Checking on them, explaining things to them, taking them through the whole process of, you know, when we started going to church and how like things started to get better, because I know that they felt that their mom wasn’t normal when I was going through what I was going through, even though I was hiding it very, very well.
They knew that mommy was not doing good, you know? And so, I just think that I really have taken them with me through it all. And, um, you know, we, we talk about her life and how she blessed us all. And although we would love to have her on earth with us, I mean, How, how can you live without one of your kids?
Um, we wouldn’t have Mikey and then that’s another crossfire that I’ve noticed is that Mikey has kind of been like, well, why wouldn’t I have been able to, you know, be alive anyway, and why did Jenny have to die? So that’s something that we have had to do, kind of try to change, you know, how we kind of explained to Mikey, you know, what his purpose is because he wasn’t born just because his big sister passed away.
He was born because God wanted him here. And so I think that’s been like a tricky thing as well, to try to figure out how to explain that to your son. So we have just really leaned on Lord, prayed a lot and done it all with them. And so they can see what God is.
Julie Lyles Carr: Right. What did it take for you? Courage wise in such a miasma of fear?
What did it take to mother Mikey well, and to not be absolutely terrified that he might experience the same fate, because that to me would seem to be an echo that would just resound over and over and over?
Emily Hutchinson: Oh man. A you are so right. I terrified. Terrified. I mean, I, I was so scared that he was going to die.
I was, I’m still terrified that something could happen to any of my kids. Right. I mean, you’re not promised tomorrow, but I try not to live in fear. I try to live in trusting that the Lord’s got my kids. For protection over them all the time. And so, um, I really, you know, when we’re talking about in the beginning, we were talking about moments when you know, our kids are little and I even when I’m starting to get a little like frustrated, okay, these moments mattered, like all these moments matter with my kids. And so I think that the Lord has given me the gift to really just be in the moment and be present with each of them in all the stages, no matter how hard they are. I know what loss is like. I know what it’s like to lose one. So I just really value every second I have with them and I’ve tried not to traumatize them, you know, through, um, you know, we go see Jenny at the cemetery and stuff, and it’s more like how she blessed our lives. It’s not so much, you know, about that we don’t have her. So I think I just try to put a positive light on what we lost.
Julie Lyles Carr: Right. You know, and, and of course, it’s Jesus, who also told us, you know, you can’t get all consumed about what happened yesterday and you can’t project into tomorrow. Um, this is obviously not the king James version I’m quoting here, but you know, that that today is what we have and to live it well. And I think particularly for a lot of us, as we are beginning to emerge from the pandemic from a year that a lot of us didn’t expect all that kind of thing, hopefully that is one of the lessons that we’re going to carry forward is understanding that we may have all of our plans and our cute, you know, planners and schedules and all the things, but that really the moment we’ve been given right now, this moment that we are here in this place is the moment that has been bequeathed to us and that we should live it well, and not assume that we’ve got this, that and the other out ahead of us and not to ruminate too much on the past, but to learn from it. So I know it’s kind of an interesting leap and yet you explaining this process of having loved being in the kitchen as a kid, going through these very traumatic events and yet rediscovering, both your faith and then also baking in the middle of that has led to an avenue for you to be able to speak to people about both your faith and baking and being in the kitchen. How have you found the process to be, have you found that people are more engaged in their kitchens these days?
Do you find that people are longing to reconnect with those kinds of skillsets? Because. You know, sometimes Emily, we hear people are like, I don’t have time to do this out of the other. We’re not doing family dinners. I just, you know, I’m, everything’s shaken, baked, just, you know, there’s no time, but obviously from the work that you’ve been doing, as well as your first cookbook was received, and now you’ve got the second one coming out here pretty shortly, people seem to be longing for these kinds of skill sets in the kitchen. Or how have you been able to navigate all of that?
Emily Hutchinson: What’s so crazy is that during COVID it kind of helped everyone in, you know, their kitchens and baking it right now to do new things that they haven’t done before. So I’ve found, especially over the last, you know, year and a half that so many people are being brought into the kitchen with their families.
And I stress that so much. I always talk about baking memories because I’m like a neat freak. So all those flour messes, I don’t want see but you have to let it happen. You have to like, if my grandma wouldn’t have let those messes happen where I am. So it’s one of those things where you, you kind of have to like shift your brain to be like, okay, it’s just a mess right now.
Like we can clean it up. So I found that a lot of people are starting to do that. It’s starting to let go a little bit, starting to get into doing stuff with their kids and like actually letting them start decorating. And that might sound like a crazy mess, but I have some tips on like my Instagram channel I’ve had to like, not make the frosting explode out all over the place.
We don’t really want to mess, right? So let’s just try to have the fun without making such a big mess. So I try to offer some tips and tricks to be able to make things easier for moms because I’m a mom of three. And so I get it.
Julie Lyles Carr: I love that phrase, baking memories. That’s so fun. And what I think you’ve really tapped into that’s beautiful is, you know, as I’m launching, my older kids are launching and it’s happening really fast, we’ve just had the third of three weddings in 14 months. Just, you know, boom, boom, boom. I’ve got one leaving to go do a special work project here in the next couple of months. I’ve got one up in Chicago. It’s wild to me because when I think about the skillset that my kids have carried into their adult lives, Emily, so much of that has to do with being in the kitchen, knowing how to feed themselves, knowing how to clean up messes.
I mean, we forget even as simple and activity as that is, and as irritating as it is to find powdered sugar on top of your cabinets, somehow eight feet in the air, that it is one of the skillsets that our kids will carry with them. I mean, and, and I don’t know that it really gets its due in the way that it should.
Do you find that to be true?
Emily Hutchinson: A hundred percent. I mean, my daughter will come back and tell me, like, thank you so much for teaching me everything. Cause I I’ll pull them in. I’ll be like, I need help with dinner. And I mean, even Mikey, I’m like, Mike, you get down here, you don’t get off your video games, just so I can have him in here getting his hands dirty and it might take an extra, you know, 20 minutes and I might have to explain stuff over and over to where it can be a little annoying, but it’s so important. It’s such a, such a beautiful thing when you can teach your kids these life skills and they learn from doing right.
Julie Lyles Carr: Right. Absolutely. Well, I love it. I want to encourage listeners to go bake memories with their own families. Emily, thank you so much for being my guest today.
Emily Hutchinson: Thank you so much, Julie. It was such an honor.
Julie Lyles Carr: You’ll find more from this episode on the show notes, be sure and check them out at allmomdoes.com. And wanted to ask you a big favor, be sure and go to wherever you are listening to this podcast and give us a five-star rating and review. It really helps us get the word out about the podcast.
Can’t wait to see you next time on the allmomdoes podcast.
