In this episode, I sit down with food writer and podcaster Skylar Harrison (aka @nocryingincooking) for a conversation that lives right where I love to live: grief meets real life, and real life includes food, bodies, and all the weird rules we’ve been taught. Skylar shares what it was like losing her dad, Kenny, to throat and tongue cancer when she was 11—how her “goldfish moment” was actually her dad, and how sometimes your body understands death before your brain can even catch up. We talk about memory gaps, the “black hole” feeling after a parent dies, and the adult grief of realizing you don’t get to know who your parent would’ve been to you later. Then we get into the messy overlap of grief, eating disorders, and diet culture—especially through the ballet world, where thinness becomes the whole job description. Skylar breaks down how restriction can be a way to avoid pain, why scales can be so toxic, and why “fixing” a grieving person is usually about our own discomfort. We also talk intuitive eating (the book that changed her life), how diet culture teaches morality around food, and why feeding yourself—truly feeding yourself—can be the ultimate form of self-love when life is already hard enough. Plus: we nerd out on cooking joy, favorite food creators, and how pleasure is allowed, even in grief.