How Making the Donuts Can Help Heal Trauma

When the girls were little, a friend of mine would joke that she had to get to bed early so she could wake up and “make the donuts.” For her, that meant rising before dawn, waking the kids, getting them dressed, fed, and out the door before the 7:40 a.m. school bell rang.

The original phrase comes from a Dunkin’ Donuts commercial from the 1980s. In it, a sleepy, bleary-eyed Fred the Baker trudges out of bed repeating, “Time to make the donuts,” as he heads off to prepare fresh donuts before the rest of the world wakes up.

Now, years later, my husband says it too. “Time to make the donuts,” he’ll murmur as we lie in bed, neither of us wanting to move from our warm, comfortable spots.

At first, the phrase irritated me. It’s just a saying, meant with a wink, a way of acknowledging the unglamorous, repetitive tasks that come with adulting and parenting. A mix of humor, fatigue, and resignation. But even knowing that, it still rubbed me the wrong way.

Eventually, I realized why.

Looking back over the landscape of my childhood, donuts were rarely made for me. Life was chaotic and unpredictable until I moved in with my grandmother. She didn’t make actual donuts, but she made scrambled egg tacos, and she was there every morning. Her routine was consistent, warm, and grounding. It anchored me.

During summer visits to my Aunt Vicki’s house, I experienced that feeling again. Life was calm there. Peaceful. She made the donuts too.

It turns out that routine, something I once dismissed as boring or dull, has become a cornerstone of my healing. If you’ve grown up in trauma, steady and predictable can feel foreign. But stability, even in the smallest daily rituals, provides a kind of scaffolding for life. It makes space for creativity, growth, and rest. It creates safety.

So maybe that’s why the phrase bothered me at first. It felt like a luxury I didn’t grow up with. Making the donuts seemed like something other people’s parents did. The ones with organized lives and dependable mornings.

I’ve worked hard to give that kind of stability to my own children. It’s one of the things I’m most proud of. I complain about the grind like anyone else, but underneath it all, I know it’s not just good for them, it’s good for me, too.

Somehow, the daily repetition of getting up and making the donuts has helped stitch my broken parts back together.

My in-laws are masters of making the donuts. They even start the night before. When we visit, the coffee pot is set the night before to brew at just the right time the following morning. I can count on its familiar hum before I’ve even opened my eyes. And when we arrive, exhausted and disheveled with kids and luggage at 1 a.m., there are always homemade chocolate chip cookies waiting on the kitchen table.

These rhythms, these thoughtful preparations, they matter. They’re more than chores. They’re love in motion. They’re how we build the foundation from which we grow.

So the next time I hear my husband say, “Time to make the donuts,” I won’t roll my eyes. I’ll smile. Because now I know what he really means: I love you. I love our life. I love our kids. I love us enough to get up and do the ordinary things - over and over again.

And that kind of love? It’s anything but ordinary.

So here’s to the routines. The early alarms, the scrambled egg tacos, the coffee that’s ready before sunrise.

What’s often mistaken as boring is actually love in motion. It’s care disguised as repetition.

Maybe healing doesn’t always come in big breakthroughs, but in the quiet moments when someone shows up - even if it’s me showing up for me - again and again. Making the donuts.

Until next time, enjoy your donuts. :)

Danielle