Losing My Mom: Cancer, Grief, And Scrapping My Way Through
This was originally published as a newsletter to the PlantYou community. The response was so overwhelming I decided to post it publicly on my blog.
Today’s blog post is going to be a bit different than usual. It felt disingenuous to open my laptop and draft a regular recipe blog without acknowledging the mother sized loss in my life, especially with those closest to me in the PlantYou community.
I want to provide a trigger warning here as I will be discussing cancer, grief, and loss.
If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve probably seen that my incredible mom passed away on March 2nd. Her name was Debbie Bodrug, and she was brilliant, tenacious, and truly my best friend in this entire world, inspiring every piece of work I do with PlantYou. I will miss her every second of every day for the rest of my life.
It’s hard to capture the essence of a person and how much they meant to you in a blog post like this but let me tell you a little bit about my mom. Born in Toronto in the fifties, my mom was a force from the start. As an unruly teenager, she turned her energy toward horseback riding, and met my dad at a dude range when she was just 19. They both eventually moved to Innisfil, Ontario, where they purchased a fixer upper hobby farm and had five horses of their own, as well as chickens, Great Danes, barn cats, and whatever other animals would find their way into my mom’s lap. A decade after they wed, my sister and I arrived on the scene. My mom stayed home with us through our formative years, where our days were spent walking for miles around the surrounding farm fields as a family, playing in creeks, and watching for owls, deer and foxes from afar.
To know my mom was to love her. Like a moth to a flame, no matter where we were, grocery stores, gas stations, chemo treatments, or traveling, she would attract instant friends. She was always up for an adventure, and would have strangers in stitches with her hilarious and sometimes crude sense of humour.
Next to animals and her family, my mom adored travelling and trekking on foot just about anywhere. My dad and her spent their retired winters living on a sailboat at marinas across Southern Florida, where I’d come and visit each year and curl up in the v-birth for the week. We were like two peas in a pod, and travelled to France, Vegas, Portugal, Vancouver, Belize and more together. We didn’t know it then, but things before the cancer were just about perfect.
Man do I miss her, but as I reflect back on her beautiful life, I’m inspired to live more like my mom…
F*CKing Cancer.
I want to start by saying that if you have been touched by cancer in any way, I am so incredibly sorry. It is an insidious, thankless, senseless disease.
My amazing mom was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive stage 4 cancer about two years ago. Upon diagnosis, she was given a 9-month prognosis that completely shattered our lives.
In some ways, the weeks following the diagnosis were more challenging to grapple with than her loss, as it felt like our biggest possible nightmare had been suddenly dropped on our doorstep. We had already lived through my dad’s colon cancer diagnosis almost two decades earlier, but this was, in truth, much worse.
Slowly but surely, we got used to the sting of the diagnosis and channeled our energy into packing as much living as we could into the days between blood work, chemo appointments, and the unfair side effects that come with a cancer diagnosis.
I live 20 minutes from my parents’ home, so I was heavily involved in all of her appointments and medical care. I can’t overstate how grateful I am for this community and for having a job that allows me to spend so much intimate time with her.
The walk of terminal cancer is both horrific (seriously… F*CK CANCER) and, in some moments… beautiful? When you or your loved one’s time is seemingly limited, you say all the things you may have never said, live every day with more intention, and take all the risks.
My mom’s fight was awe-inducing, and she was fortunate to tolerate her treatment relatively well that we could pretend everything was normal sometimes. During her time with cancer, she was able to see Jesse and I get married, meet her first grandchild with the birth of my niece Mackenzie, and I even got to take her on a bucket list 10-day trip across Portugal. These are memories I hold close to me every day.
Working While Your Life Is In Shambles
My mom was diagnosed a week after I had signed my second book deal for Scrappy Cooking. I really didn’t know how I was going to write this book, and I remember, at a point of drama and desperation, googling “cookbook ghostwriters,” thinking maybe that would be the solution to this mess (obviously, I didn’t go through with this).
Ultimately, my mom told me to pull my big girl pants up and get to work. I can see her now reminding me that Taylor Swift isn’t canceling her Eras Tour despite her mom having breast cancer. My mom was equal parts resilient and a realist.
Thankfully, I did have support. In the midst of the diagnosis, my sister made a bold move to leave her job as a veterinary technician and started helping me recipe test for Scrappy, as well as scraped me off the floor when I needed it most.
I ended up hiring her full-time, and it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made for PlantYou. We spent the better part of 2023 deep in the world of Scrappy, and I can honestly say the book is our best work yet. My amazing team (Pam, Angee, Cat, Shahad, Verena) also wrapped their arms around me and kept this train on the tracks.
Social Media
I made a decision early on not to share about my mom’s cancer journey on social media for a variety of reasons. I really wanted my page to remain a source of joy for people, and I was scared if I let them into my personal life, it would shatter this escape I had created (which makes this post especially ironic).
There was something cathartic about coming online and acting like everything was normal. I also didn’t want to broadcast details about my mom’s diagnosis and field questions (and unwelcome health advice) while we were riding the waves of hope and despair. As a by-product, I do think I became a bit withdrawn, sharing less and less of my personal things online.
This taught me a very potent lesson: we truly never know what someone is going through behind the scenes, whether it be the impatient mom in the grocery store checkout lane or someone with the seemingly perfect life online. Kindness costs nothing in these moments.
Big Messy Grief and Scrappy Things
Despite a two year “heads up”, my mom’s passing still takes my breath away.
​
The timing was a mess (I think it always would be). The week of my mom’s passing, I had a massive press tour planned in both LA and NY for Scrappy, where I was supposed to be taped on some of the biggest podcasts in the world in preparation for the launch on April 2nd (this all seems mostly insignificant now).
I had gone to the hospital with my mom, expecting her to receive treatment, and things just unraveled in mere hours. Thankfully, my sister, dad, and I were all with my mom when she passed away. We were able to say goodbye and tell my mom just how much she meant to us. I am endlessly grateful and honored to have been there, as painful as it was.
The best way I can describe the feeling since is that I am a ship lost at sea without an anchor. Call it love or codependency. My mom and I could not have been closer. I would call her at least 5 times a day, asking her advice on anything from what I should have for dinner that night to her thoughts on my next business venture. As weird as this sounds, I feel in some ways I knew her so well at the end that I can actually hear what advice she would give me now.
The Daily Reality
In terms of grief: In moments I feel completely fine, and the next I am in shambles. I have Scrappy launching in two weeks, and because of the the way things shook out, I am going to have to rely almost exclusively on my platform for the launch (a true scrappy book launch, some might say). This is in some sense a welcome distraction from my reality, but also a lot of pressure.
I taped 4 remote podcasts yesterday and cried during one when the host asked me about the book dedication. It’s messy, imperfect, and really freaking weird to be promoting a book in the midst of intense grief.
I am grateful to have an amazing support system (my husband is a ROCK), a tight-knit family, and beyond incredible publisher/agent and team helping me out.
I wish I had advice on grief and loss, but as I’m in the thick of it, all I can think of is one foot in front of the other, or as Dory says, “keep swimming”. I will share a few things people have said that have brought me comfort and help along the way in case you are touched by a similar situation.
“At some point in life, everyone loses their mom. You were lucky to have a great one.”
This is so true! I find myself reflecting on my life and relationship with my mom with gratitude more than despair because I was so lucky to create so many amazing memories with my mom and to be so close.
​“We never know what is going to happen in life, so live each day to its fullest.”
My mom’s oncologist shared this piece of advice with us when my mom was really struggling with her diagnosis. He said NONE of us know when our time is up – I could walk out on the road today and get hit by a bus (I hope not, but you get the point).
Cancer just gives you a greater picture of when the end could happen (and seriously, there’s a lot of hope in some of the new treatments like immunotherapy coming down the pipeline). So, with this in mind, try to live each day in the present the best you can.
This is probably the most honest post I’ve ever written. I ask for patience and understanding as I expose my heart online and also intensely promote my new book over the next couple of weeks.
Thank you again for your endless support over the last two years, as it provided me with more time with my mom than I ever could have imagined. I’m looking forward to sharing some more recipes and good stuff with you soon. Until then, please give your families and friends the biggest hug, and try to live each day like Deb did… To the fullest!
Carleigh <3
