Paula Deen’s hopes of enjoying a blissful marriage vanished when Jimmy Deen started drinking. In “It Ain’t All About the Cookin’,” she revealed that alcohol use was something she and her husband often fought about. However, a strained marriage became the least of Paula’s concerns when her father began having heart problems. He underwent heart valve replacement surgery, which caused him to suffer a deadly blood clot. Paula was just 19 when he died.
She sought solace in cooking with her grandmother while she was grieving. “I said, Grandmamma, I’ve got to learn how to make your chicken and dumplings, just in case this is a bad dream and my daddy comes back,” she recalled to NPR. Just one year after her father’s passing, she celebrated the birth of her son Jamie in 1967. Three years later, Paula’s second son, Bobby, was born.
Yet another terrible loss befell Paula shortly after Bobby’s birth when her mother died from bone cancer. The mother of two was just 23 years old, and she became the guardian of her 16-year-old brother. In this period of tragedy, Paula increasingly experienced anxiety and panic attacks. To help ease her symptoms, she had started carrying around a paper bag to breathe into. She also found a little comfort in the kitchen again. “I cooked everything my granny taught me and then some. Fried chicken, collard greens, country fried steak — my family ate good,” she wrote.
