From CAMH patient to Master Chef

By Sean O’Malley, Senior Media Relations Specialist

The first time Jennifer Crawford was paid to pursue a passion for food was as a teenager in their hometown Kingston, Nova Scotia, making minimum wage to ice donuts at Tim Horton’s.

The second time was last year, when Jennifer won the $100,000 top prize on CTV’s MASTERCHEF CANADA.

In between, Jennifer, 38, who identifies as non-binary, spent most of those years dealing with complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a condition characterized by repeated traumas over an extended period of time, combined with a sense of helplessness that the trauma will never end.

“I felt like I had been in a state of fight or flight my whole life,” says Jennifer about life before seeking help. “I didn’t remember ever not feeling that way.  I didn’t remember ever feeling carefree.”

Fiercely independent and a self-described introvert who never wanted to seek help from anyone, Jennifer instead turned to alcohol.  

“Alcohol was the only thing that helped slow down my heart rate and get out of the chaotic place that was my brain.  But it became clear to me that I was probably going to die unless I stopped.”

Meanwhile, Jennifer tried increasingly intense athletic endeavors.  Rugby.  Amateur boxing. Power-lifting competitions.

“I would sign up for feats of strength to prove I was OK.”

It was after winning one of those competitions that a profound feeling of emptiness washed over Jennifer.

“I had no feelings of accomplishment anymore. When it became clear to me that all that over-achieving wasn’t making the pain go away I just threw in the towel and slid right into drinking fulltime.  I thought ‘I gave it my best shot. Almost 37 years.  That’s a pretty good run I guess.’  I just thought I was broken – a defective human being – and it was all my fault.  Overcome by a feeling of shame, that was when I smashed into rock bottom.”

But then something strange and wonderful happened to Jennifer, though it did not seem wonderful at the time.

 “I was seized by a feral desperation to survive.  I don’t know when exactly it happened, but there was a little voice inside of me that said ‘But I like living.’  With that came what would become the greatest gift of all: hope.”

Their journey of recovery began then and there.  The first step – quitting alcohol.

After successfully staying off alcohol for six months, Jennifer was referred to an intensive outpatient treatment program at CAMH, involving individual and group therapy for three to four hours a day, four days a week for nine weeks.  It was one of the most intense and mentally exhausting experiences of their adult life.

“All I did during that time was come to CAMH and then go home and sleep.  I read an article at the time about championship chess players eating 6,000 calories a day because their brains were working so hard to perform these incredible feats.  That’s what it felt like at CAMH – like I was this weird kind of emotional athlete. Being strong has a different meaning to me now.”

But they knew right away that this is where they needed to be to get their life back.

“It was just the immediate relief being surrounded by people who you know get it without having to say a word.  We all needed help and we all wanted to get better and being around each other was like getting in the same boat together – It wasn’t as hard to row.”

Jennifer used another marine analogy to explain why it was important to them to reach out to CAMH to tell their recovery story publicly for the first time.

“When someone would share their story of recovery, in some corner of my heart I thought that if they can do it, maybe I have it in me too. Every story that someone shares feels like a buoy to help someone get back to shore.  If sharing my stuff can help anyone else make it I want to do that.  Because other people sharing with me is the reason that I made it.”

Part of making it for Jennifer was rediscovering a passion for cooking that they felt they had been robbed of by their mental illness.

“One of the hallmarks of PTSD is that it knocks down any ability to create.  Any imagination you have is only used to predict every horrific thing that might happen to you.  There is no room in your brain for nice thoughts and I lost my ability to create anything in the kitchen.  Once I started getting better, that slowly came back.”

Did it ever.  Only a few weeks after completing treatment at CAMH, Jennifer was selected to take part in the taping of that year’s season of MASTERCHEF CANADA, where amateurs compete for a $100,000 grand prize.  To their astonishment, Jennifer won, and in doing so saw life change in a few fundamental ways.

Flash-forward a year later to the present, and Jennifer is no longer working a nine to five job as a policy analyst in Toronto.  Jennifer used the money from the contest to purchase a dream home near their childhood home in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley.

“I was worried I would just blow it all on Uber Eats,” says Jennifer with a laugh.

Part two of that dream is for Jennifer and their sweetheart Logan to turn that home – complete with a barn and a few acres of land – into what they describe as a “food creativity wonderland of their dreams” including rotating tasting menus , so Jennifer can commit fulltime to that passion for food.

“The feeling of possibility in the kitchen is the most intense high I get right now.  I never thought I would be able to do something I love like this every day.”