I Survived Breast Cancer — Then I Had to Survive My Fear of Food

For a moment, everything was quiet. I floated above myself — weightless, painless, nowhere — in a haven only an overload of carbs can bring. Then the smell of bacon ripped me back into flesh I no longer trusted. I blinked, dazed, like I’d been pulled too soon from a dream that had just begun to feel good.

My hands shook and I lifted my gaze to take stock of the damage. Thin white and yellow sheets of paper, translucent from grease, lay crumpled up in the passenger seat of my car. Ribbons of lettuce slumped like fallen soldiers across my big belly, and bits of melted cheese hung defeated around the corners of my slick lips — the remnants of a cheeseburger.

What had I done?

Just then, my baby kicked. At least one of us was at peace with it.

Three weeks before, on May 11, 2023, I’d woken from a haze of anesthesia, scalpels, and pain. I’d undergone a mastectomy of my left breast after being diagnosed with stage 1 triple-negative breast cancer. I was 21 weeks pregnant, and this absolutely wasn’t supposed to be happening to me. How could it? I was only 36, breast cancer didn’t run in my family, and I had a two-year-old at home. What did I do to bring this on myself?  I couldn’t shake the question. How could I prevent it from coming back?

I’ve spent the better part of a decade working in the food industry. First culinary school. Then a brief stint working in the kitchen at the now-shuttered, James Beard Award-winning restaurant Animal in Los Angeles. Next, a general manager role at a celebrated restaurant in Atlanta. Finally, editor of Southern Kitchen, a digital destination for Southern food culture.

My life’s joy had always been folded into a delicious plate and a stiff drink — until cancer leveled me and turned these things I loved into my enemy. People tried to convince me otherwise, but I was certain that my food choices were responsible for my diagnosis — and that ultimately, preventing myself from getting sick again was solely in my hands as well. My previous diagnosis of obsessive compulsive disorder made my mental recovery from cancer even more challenging because I wanted to find a sense of control in a senseless thing. If I ate perfectly, I told myself, I could stay alive. Suddenly, my kitchen —  which had been a place of refuge for me — became a house of horrors where everything could bring about a recurrence. So I only ate what felt safe, which was almost nothing at all.

I spent hours poring over cookbooks that promised me recipes that would feed my soul while starving cancer cells. No meat, lots of fish, glugs of olive oil, gallons of green tea, whole spoonfuls of sauerkraut eaten first thing in the morning on an empty stomach.

But sometimes, despite my efforts, the little girl growing inside of me demanded chicken fingers, or milkshakes, or a cheeseburger loaded with bacon and as many sauces as I could fit on there. I would be like a woman possessed, driving as if my body were no longer my own to get whatever would satisfy her. But after the itch was scratched, I always ended up in the same place: ashamed, alone, and afraid that what I had eaten would kill me.

By the time I delivered my daughter, I’d only gained a fraction of the weight I was supposed to. My obstetrician didn’t say anything. Neither did my husband or my mom, who had flown into town from Los Angeles to help as I settled into being a mother of two. No one asked if I was eating, and truthfully, I didn’t look sick. I hadn’t required chemo, and my specific cancer meant I only needed one of my breasts removed. I had all my hair, and my skin was flush and glowy from postpartum hormones. My right breast was constantly engorged with milk. Besides, I was eating. Mostly superfoods, though — each one forced down like an amulet, as if kale could ward off death.

But inside? I was emaciating.

My body had survived, but I hadn’t yet returned to it. I held myself at a distance from it, all brain, no belly or left breast. I nursed my newborn in the cushy cream rocking chair in her sunlit room with one hand while the other scrolled incessantly through wellness influencers promising to show me how to biohack my body. I brewed green tea until my burps tasted bitter. I ate only what I could justify. And when I did want more — more food, more softness, more joy — I punished myself for it.

Was that Martini worth your children growing up without a mother? How will you ever explain to your own mother that she has to bury you because you wouldn’t stop eating pizza? The voice screamed at me and sent me compulsively searching the internet for proof that it was OK. And then, I realized that it wasn’t. 

I spoke to my therapists and worked through Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP). I began to accept the uncertainty about my future health, but I still was just eating to stay alive. I had a trip to Europe planned for the following year, and I let the dream of it fuel me.

It was late May 2024 when I landed at Heathrow, and the ground was slick with spring rain. I dropped my bags at my best friend’s flat and we hailed a cab to St Pancras International to head to Paris. We had three days. No strollers, no doctor appointments, no baby monitor hissing white noise. Just me, my hunger, and my best friend in the world, Dani.

I’d come to spend two weeks in Europe for a wedding in Scotland, but flew in early to London to see her. She’s lived there for two years, and I missed her like a limb. From London, we took the train to Paris, where I had already made a private vow: I would say yes to everything.

Yes to fat, briny oysters slathered with knobs of Champagne-colored salted French butter. Yes to bottles of wine with lunch at cafés so charming it felt cliché — and then felt too good to care. Yes to glistening pâté en croûte, tiny brown paper bags of canelés, and tightly bundled croissants that shattered all over my shirt like edible confetti.

I bought a wedge of cheese that made my fingers smell like feet and tasted like heaven. I tore off hunks of baguette to eat with it, buttery flakes scattering across my lap like gold dust. I let myself linger. I let myself feel. On the train ride back to London, I stared out the window and for the first time allowed myself to think, What if cancer isn’t the end of my story? What if the worst is truly behind me?

Off a cobblestoned street in Soho, I had roast chicken with morels and vin jaune sauce at Noble Rot and nearly licked the plate. A few days later, my husband joined me and we flew to Scotland. In Edinburgh, he and I managed to snag a last-minute reservation at Heron, and I said yes to the wine pairing too.

I cried when a particular red touched my lips. It came with a dish of sika venison with Roscoff onion, shiitake, and pepper dulse. The flavors were so deep, so wild and precise and alive, it broke something open in me. I didn’t cry because I was suddenly cured of my trauma or mental health struggles, but because I remembered what it felt like to want something and allow myself to have it. I remembered who I was before cancer: the chef, the woman, the girl who loved to eat and drink. The one who trusted food and felt safe in her body. The one who didn’t feel the need to punish herself for not preventing something she could never have seen coming.

Since then, I’ve been rebuilding, quietly and imperfectly. I’m relearning how to eat — not to prevent death, but to choose life. Most days, I cook dinner and eat it too. I make my own plate instead of picking from my daughters’ leftovers. I still feel fear more than I want to admit here, but I try to practice what I am learning in therapy. I try to fight back. 

When the guilt bubbles up — the old stories about control, about earning pleasure, about saving myself with tonics or fermented foods — I remind myself that I’m still here. And I don’t want to just live. I want to enjoy. 

So I eat the sandwich. I drink the wine. I kiss my girls with bacon breath. I write recipes with a lot of butter in them and don’t apologize to myself for it. I am learning to trust in joy. Because now I know that even if the worst were to happen again, I wouldn’t go down starving.