Women Who Came Before Us, Women We Are Becoming
By Dr. Altreisha Foster-Bentho, Founder & President, Cake Therapy Foundation
Owner: Sugarspoon Desserts
Author: Cake Therapy: How Baking Changed My Life
Host: The Cake Therapy Podcast
www.altreishafoster.com
A Cake Therapy Reflection for Women’s History Month & International Women’s Day
March always feels different in the Cake Therapy kitchen.
It’s Women’s History Month a time when we pause to honor the women who came before us, the women standing beside us, and the girls who are still becoming. And nestled within this month is International Women’s Day, a global reminder that women’s strength, creativity, labor, and leadership deserve recognition not just today, but every day.
In the Cake Therapy kitchen, we celebrate women’s history not with grand speeches or perfect timelines, but with aprons, mixing bowls, and honest conversations. Because for many women, especially women of color, immigrant women, and women from underserved communities history lives in the body. It lives in recipes passed down without measurements. In hands that learned to make do with less. In quiet sacrifices that never made it into textbooks.
The Kitchen as a Place of Women’s History
Long before kitchens were sites of entrepreneurship, content creation, or culinary acclaim, they were places of survival. Women fed families through scarcity. They stretched ingredients. They cooked through grief. They baked joy into ordinary days.
For many of us, the first woman who taught us something important didn’t do it in a classroom. She did it at a stove, a counter, or a table. She showed us patience while waiting for dough to rise. She taught us intuition how to know when something is ready without a timer. She modeled resilience by continuing to show up, even when she was tired.
At Cake Therapy, we honor that lineage. We recognize the kitchen as a living archive of women’s wisdom.
Women, Healing, and Making Space for Ourselves
International Women’s Day often asks us to think about progress how far we’ve come, and how far we still need to go. In the Cake Therapy kitchen, progress looks like something very specific: women and girls giving themselves permission to take up space.
For many of the girls we serve, especially those from underserved communities, the world has already taught them to shrink. To be quiet. To be “strong” without support. To care for others before caring for themselves.
In our sessions, baking becomes a counter-message.
Here, you are allowed to be messy.
Here, you are allowed to try and fail.
Here, you are allowed to create something just because it brings you joy.
That matters.
Because healing for women is not only about rest it’s about reclaiming joy, voice, and choice.
From Women’s History to Girls’ Futures
Women’s History Month isn’t only about honoring the past. It’s about shaping the future.
When girls step into the Cake Therapy kitchen, they aren’t just learning how to bake. They are learning how to trust themselves. How to follow instructions and also know when to improvise. How to start something and finish it. How to be proud of what they’ve made.
These are life skills. Leadership skills. Confidence skills.
And when a girl from an underserved community begins to see herself as capable when she realizes she can create something beautiful with her own hands that moment becomes part of her personal history. A moment she carries forward.
Celebrating Women Every Day, Not Just in March
Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day give us language and visibility, but the truth is: the work of honoring women happens in the everyday.
It happens when we slow down enough to listen to our bodies.
When we share our stories without minimizing them.
When we create spaces where girls don’t have to earn rest or joy they’re simply entitled to it.
At Cake Therapy, we believe that healing is a form of legacy. That every woman who chooses herself, even in small ways, is rewriting history. And every girl who learns to see herself as worthy is shaping a future that looks different than the past.
This month, we celebrate the women who survived, the women who resisted, the women who nurtured, and the women who dreamed. We celebrate the women we are and the women our girls are becoming.
And we’ll keep doing it the Cake Therapy way: one recipe, one conversation, one healing moment at a time.
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