Second Calling
When Stacey O’Gorman decided to leave her successful baking business, she was at the top of her game professionally. Her business Meringue Girls (which she started as a 22-year-old) made eye-catching delectable sweet treats from her popular store in London’s Hackney. Premium department stores such as Harrods, Selfridges, and Fortnum & Mason stocked Meringue Girls’ creations and the business was taking orders from big-name fashion brands such as Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Stella McCartney, and Jimmy Choo. O’Gorman was meeting celebrity chefs like Jamie Oliver and Rick Stein, and she’d already ticked off one of her lifelong ambitions — to write a cookbook.
“It was so magical,” she says of the time. “It was my dream come true. And it was really fun for the first few years.”
But the dizzying heights and bright lights of success gradually dimmed as her role moved away from physically using her hands and baking until the wee hours of the morning, to managing sales and staff. And the unhappier she became, the more her discontentment manifested itself in her body and overall well-being.
“The final few years, year five and six [of the business], my health started to deteriorate. I was sick all the time. My hormonal health was debilitating,” she says. “I was exhausted. I was anxious. I was burnt out. I had
