Nourishment for the moments when life asks more of you.
My story
The Basic Plate was created in late 2018 - years before I would bring it to life. I didn’t know exactly what it would become, only that I wanted to support people who were struggling to nourish themselves during seasons that felt heavy and unbearable.
Earlier that year, I lost a close friend to suicide. It became a clear before and after in my life.
In the weeks that followed, I could barely remember to eat. And when I did, it was whatever was easiest - ice cream, frozen food, anything to get something in. Within months, I had lost 25 pounds and developed a painful rash on my face that would flare after eating, my body wasn’t digesting food the way it once did.
I went from doctor to doctor, each prescribing antibiotics, each telling me it would pass. It didn’t. I felt myself slipping deeper into grief and isolation, avoiding people, unsure of what was happening in my body or how to stop it. I was grieving - but I didn’t yet understand what that meant, physically or spiritually.
At some point, I began to question whether the way I was eating was adding to what I was experiencing.
It was a yoga teacher who sat with me in that space - someone who had also experienced loss - and gently suggested that food might be playing a role. That moment shifted something. It made me feel seen during one of the hardest times in life, I had hope and something new to try - other than pills.
I began to change the way I ate. Slowly, intentionally, I learned what supported my body and what didn’t. I paid attention. I adjusted. And over time, my body responded. The rash eased, my system started to regulate, and I slowly started to feel like myself again.
That experience changed the way I see food and the connection it has to our grief.
Not as something perfect or rigid - but as something deeply supportive. Something that can either add to the overwhelm, or help carry you through it.
The Basic Plate was born from that understanding.
For the people who don’t have the time, energy, or capacity to figure it out on their own. For the ones in the middle of grief, transition, or simply trying to get through the day.
This is nourishment for both the body and the moment you’re in.
2018
2025
Support, When It Matters Most
During that time, I began to isolate - something that often happens in grief. I was living in Los Angeles, far from family, doing my best to cope while slowly coming apart.
For two years, I kept going. I focused on cooking healthy meals, spent most of my time alone, and relied on yoga as my only escape. Then COVID hit, and everything closed. I was left completely alone in a small apartment in a city that had shut down.
Looking back, I don’t know how I made it through.
What I do know is this: we are not meant to move through hard seasons alone.
Nourishment carried me - not just through grief, but through every chapter that followed. What I ate shaped how I coped, but it was the presence of care that made it feel possible.
This is what The Basic Plate is built on.
Not just food - but support.
