Does anyone remember the old pressure cookers?
I mean the real ones. The heavy, stovetop ones. The ones that hissed and rattled and made you a little nervous every single time you walked past the kitchen.
Here’s how they worked: you threw everything in — meat, vegetables, water, whatever you were making — sealed the lid tight, and turned on the heat. The steam had nowhere to go. The pressure built and built. And that pressure? It was actually the magic. It cooked things faster, deeper, better than anything else could.
Pure genius, right?
Until the day you turned the heat up too high. Or forgot it on the stove. Or tried to open it before it was ready.
There are real stories of real injuries. Because a pressure cooker that crosses the line from just right to too much doesn’t quietly fail. It explodes.
Now tell me that’s not the most accurate description of our lives you’ve ever heard.
We add things to the pot. We have to — that’s just life. A parent’s declining health. A health scare of our own. The weight of running a company through change. A child making a big life decision and needing you to be steady for them. And then one morning you wake up and the most beautiful, joyful, wonderful things get added to the pot too — a son graduating after 13 extra years of school, becoming a vascular surgeon. A grandson turning two. An engagement.
Good things. Enormous, celebrate-from-the-rooftops things.
Still weight.
And here’s what nobody talks about: the pressure cooker doesn’t distinguish between the hard stuff and the beautiful stuff. It just measures the heat. It just measures the load. And if you’re not watching it, if you don’t take it off the burner, if one more thing — even a beautiful thing — turns the heat just slightly too high…
You know what happens.
Right now, I’ll be honest with you: my pressure cooker is done.
My mom’s health and aging — and the profound, heartbreaking, sacred work of helping her sort through 300 years of history that her family carried out of Vienna at the beginning of the Holocaust. My own MRIs and health conversations I’m navigating. Running a company while rewriting its next chapter. A daughter working through a major career crossroads who deserves all of me when she calls.
And then the beautiful, full-heart, cry-in-the-parking-lot moments: watching my oldest son walk out of Mayo Clinic as a vascular surgeon. Thirteen years. The little boy I raised, now the person who will save lives with his hands. My grandson turning two — that specific age where they run toward you like you are the entire world. And my youngest son’s engagement, which means I get to watch him step into the next chapter of his life with someone he loves.
I am full. Completely, overwhelmingly, gratefully full.
And I also know I have to take the pot off the stove.
So here’s the question I want to ask you — and I mean this genuinely, not rhetorically:
What level is your pressure cooker at?
Are you simmering steadily, and it’s working? Are you starting to hear that hiss and rattle that tells you things are getting close? Or are you already at the point where one more thing — even a good thing — might tip you over?
Because the miracle of the old pressure cooker wasn’t that it never got too hot. It was that it had a gauge. It had a release valve. It had a way of telling you, hey — pay attention.
You have one too. It’s called your body. Your patience. Your sleep. Your ability to be present in a conversation without half your brain somewhere else.
Check the gauge.
Take something off the burner if you need to.
And for the love of all things good — don’t wait for the explosion to decide it was too much.
I’ll meet you in the kitchen.
What’s in your pressure cooker right now? Leave a comment — I read every single one.
