This is part of Travel Firsts, a series featuring trips that required a leap of faith or marked a major life milestone.
My twenties were full of transformative trips, each one helping me to find a greater sense of comfort in my own skin. But when you’re recovering from an eating disorder, there are two relationships that require life-long nurturing: the one with your mind, and the one with your body.
I’d struggled with an eating disorder for most of my life—through high school, college, and into post-graduate young adulthood. But in 2016, after leaving my friends and my job in New York to spend three months in Denver at the Eating Recovery Center, I’d had enough. I was sick of rigid routines and—contra the strictures of a disordered mind—ready to relinquish all control. I decided to pack my bags, bid farewell to familiarity, and move, ironically, to one of the world’s great gastronomic destinations: Italy. There was little rhyme or reason as to why I chose the country, beyond the blissful memories I had from the summer I studied abroad in Florence. Instinctively, it felt like the perfect place to start a new relationship with myself—and with food.
Settled in my new home, my recovery milestones were reflected in new ways. Progress was no longer measured by the numbers on the scale, but instead by the confidence I felt. Finally, I was comfortable enough to peel back my cardigan to feel the sun beat on my shoulders without worrying about what my arms looked like. I expanded my list of safe foods (things my brain deemed acceptable to consume) with such grandiosity that soon, it no longer existed. I’d sit in Piazza della Signoria, savoring prosciutto and truffle cream sandwiches from All’Antico Vinaio, and started each day with a cornetto—and a macchiato with whole milk. I was surrounded by incredible beauty in a place that reveres food as much as art, and soon, I forgot all about the feelings that told me I wasn’t enough.
I spent three years living in Italy (and two more shuttling back-and-forth to New York). During that five-year stretch, I learned how to accept my body, but I had never figured out how to actually nourish it. I finally returned to New York full-time last-year—and as I turned 30, there was still one place I’d yet to explore: the kitchen. To me, cooking was the most foreign concept of them all.
Eating disorder notwithstanding, I’ve always struggled with the mere act of making food; while my mother, sister, and husband, Nikola (who I met and married in Florence), often brag about being the family’s resident chefs, I’ve always been known for my inability to produce the simplest dishes—even a fried egg. So last summer, when I stumbled on an Instagram post from the Italian chef Gabriele Corcos (whom I recognized from the Cooking Channel show Extra Virgin, which he co-hosted with his wife, the actor Debi Mazar) advertising exclusive cooking classes in Florence, it felt like a sign. I was back in Florence to help Nikola pack up for his long-awaited move to join me in the States. The course was perfectly timed, falling the week that my family would be there, seeing the two of us during our last few weeks in Italy.