March 16, 2026
Hi Friend,
I’m finally starting to feel better from my oral surgery. I was in unimaginable agony the first week and in extreme pain the second week, but on day 16 I got the stitches removed and the pain is finally manageable. The problem is, for whatever reason, I don’t seem to tolerate any class of pain medicine, and the dentist says I’m healing unusually slowly.
There’s an old Yiddish proverb: “You should have all your teeth but one, and in that one, have a toothache!” My tooth is gone and I STILL have a toothache!!! 🤣
But the real gift in all of this is that it was another huge win for my anxiety. For YEARS I avoided the dentist and the anesthesiologist like jury duty and the middle seat on an airplane. But the dentist allowed me to film the surgery, and watching it afterwards made me realize that I have nothing to be afraid of anymore.
I CAN DO REALLY HARD THINGS.
And let’s face it, there aren’t too many things in life harder than going through a cancer journey. 😐
So what does this have to do with onions?
Well, if you’ve ever watched any of my cooking demos you might remember me saying, “Everything starts with an onion.” In fact, I’ve interviewed chefs who say onions are one of the foundations of French cooking. Personally, I think they’re the foundation of ALL cooking.
I LOVE onions.
But I hate peeling and chopping them.
(Which is why I prefer to buy them pre-chopped — which, FYI, is often cheaper.)
But when I DO have to peel and chop them, I ALWAYS cry. None of the tricks — chilling them first, onion goggles, cutting them under running water — have ever worked for me. I still cry.
And lately, that’s been happening metaphorically in my life too.
As I finally begin to peel the “onion of my life,” I’m noticing that sometimes I feel quite sad. I’ve struggled with anxiety — at times disabling anxiety — for my entire life. And now that I’ve made real progress tackling it, I’m discovering that underneath it all there’s a layer of sadness I never fully dealt with before.
It’s almost as if the anxiety was protecting me from having to feel uncomfortable feelings like sadness.
(If you’ve seen the fabulous movie Inside Out 2, you might understand exactly what I mean.)
I’ve been in weekly trauma therapy for a year now and have made great strides. And I’m learning something important:
The problem with NOT peeling the onion isn’t that you avoid the tears.
It’s that you stay on the surface, never reaching what’s real beneath the layers.
And when that happens, your recipe — and your life — never becomes as rich or as meaningful as it could be.
So here’s to being willing to peel… and feel.
From the Puppy Files
A pessimist says things can’t get worse. An optimist says: of course they can.” But I’m an eternal optimist.
After all, who else with Stage Three Lung Cancer adopts TWO young dogs? 🤣
Shiloh and Trixie are my constant companions and the BEST 24-hour private-duty nurses when you’re healing.
