Fresh out of surgery, I was antsy for the anesthesia to subside so I could go to school. I intentionally scheduled my biopsy for 6 a.m. so I’d be able to participate in my middle-school’s annual “Mini-Course Day.” It was Friday, May 22, 1992. In lieu of regular classes, there were fun ones like Family Feud and learning to tie-dye – I was psyched.

The doctor had reassured me with probabilities: 75% chance the lump I found on the right side of my neck was nothing and 99.9% I would be at school on time. This was all a big inconvenience, particularly on Mini-Course Day for “nothing”. But at 13, aside from debating a CCD teacher who said my Jewish father wouldn’t be allowed into heaven and couldn’t explain how heaven would be heaven to me without my Dad, I wasn’t one to question authority.

“I have good and bad news,” the surgeon said lab coat flapping into the recovery room. I wanted the bad news first. “It’s cancer. But if you are going to get cancer, this is the type to get. It’s called Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. The cure rate is 80%”. I had two simultaneous thoughts: I’m going to die and I’m going to beat this. I was completely in the moment yet detached, emotionless. Then my Dad cried for the first time in my life. I realized he couldn’t protect me; and if he couldn’t, no one could. Life’s punched me in the gut. Twice. I cried.

Being lucky with an unlucky disease still sucked. The next nine months ran like a training schedule: 12 chemo rounds, 20 radiation sessions, doctors and exams on the off-days, and a trusty “barf bucket” for recovery. The support from my tremendous family, friends, nurses and doctors, and a shopping spree courtesy of the Make-A-Wish foundation was the consolation prize. While I doubted life, I became convinced of the angelical in people.

At the end of January 1993, I completed the treatment protocol. Five years later, after anxiety inducing bi-annual check-ups, I was considered “cured”. Aside from fishing for lumps in my neck every morning, I put the whole ordeal out of my mind. Things had shifted for sure and I let other teenage angst issues distract me.

College came and I studied hard, got remarkable grades, met some of my best friends and traveled. I was on the fast track to normal. And yet, was infused with emptiness. I understood life could be snatched away but didn’t live accordingly, no matter how many self-help books and Hallmark card quotations I read.

I concluded that my depression was a trifecta of: 1. Not being skinny, 2. A family history of depression, and 3. Being overweight (which I wasn’t). I sought out psychologists and anti-depressants. I also began to binge-eat which I thought of as a separate issue than my depression. But the reality is that obscene amounts of sugar will get you high (albeit legally) and served to distract me from dealing with the unutterable feelings that occur from trauma.

I spent an unhealthy portion of seven years feeling hung-over from food benders, plotting with friends on how our diets would start tomorrow and fantasizing about how perfect everything would be when I reached a size four. Victory! Innocuously, food devolved from being the solution to my sadness to the problem.

Being an emotional eater was, in many ways, more painful than cancer. I was gridlocked into helplessness and feeling horrible about myself. It dominated my thoughts and constructed a reality of mediocrity that made me believe I had to settle in life; settle for this habit, its destruction and it as a diversion from finding what would feed all of me: mind, body and spirit. It deepened the wound I was authentically hurting from: the feeling that life was unkind, unsafe and painful.

I was too engrossed in my personal created hell of Weight Watchers weigh-ins, Overeaters Anonymous meetings, fad diets and books to ever take one minute to breathe and just be with myself. Yes, breathe. That is what my final therapist taught me more than anything. To breathe…consciously.

By breathing, I had to get out of my head and into my body, the one that had befriended me. I had to sit with my feelings, a skill I had lost in order to survive when I was in hell. I needed to come to conclusions about my life that were inconvenient. I had to talk about what I didn’t want to discuss: the anger of losing my childhood innocence before I was ready, death and existential questions, how the other shoe can drop whenever and how to be content knowing life’s explosive nature.

Breathe. In. Out. In. Out. Lots of tears, journal writing and searching in between. Breathing allowed me to distance my whole self from my emotions. Therapy forced me to be aware of and welcome my feelings, which then allowed me to work through and release them. I started using food to heal versus hurt me. I deepened my yoga practice and focused on where life/ the Universe/God had given me safety and security.

I made small and then bigger decisions to test if life could be more joyful than I had acknowledged. And after 12 years of living in fear, the past three have been from trusting that a wholesome goodness exists yet acknowledging life’s changing nature and my role in maintaining equanimity amongst this organized chaos.

Food is now my fuel for clear thinking and the foundation of my physical balance. The energy drained from binge-eating is now invested in a loving relationship with myself, my boyfriend, family and friends. I left a second-rate life (for me) in the corporate world to start my own health counseling practice, where I support women with their nutrition and health goals. And I connect to my spirit daily.

Most importantly, I’ve dropped the grudge I have with the Universe. And not because I got the guy, lost 25 pounds and have the best job in the world. I did that myself. It’s because I accept that the Universe has an order and while I don’t completely understand it, I can make constructive sense of it all. Nothing is black, white or even shades of gray. Life colors us for better and worse. For as strong as I feel for surviving cancer, I feel equally vulnerable. I needed to acknowledge and feel my pain so I could understand my strength.

I can live with this analysis because it resonates with my intellect and emotions. And even more importantly, it makes me feel safe in life’s paradoxical nature because I’ve discovered how family, friends, whole foods, yoga and breathing can be used as divine resources to feel strongly connected amidst life’s tides.