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Low-fat cookbook author Dawn Hall, 39, knows a thing or two about grief. Dawn married her high-school sweetheart, Tracy, in 1984, and together they built a ranch house just outside Toledo, Ohio, where they lived contentedly with their two daughters, Whitney, now 14, and Ashley, 13. Then life as she knew it suffered a seismic shift: Tracy was diagnosed with aggressive brain cancer in November 1994, just one day after his 32nd birthday.
"Surgeons removed one pound of malignant tumor, but weren't able to get it all," Dawn explains. "Tracy was completely paralyzed on his left side. Radiation didn't shrink his remaining tumor; it only left him bald, weak, and tired. Our oncologist told Tracy, 'There's nothing more we can do.'"
But the Halls weren't prepared to call it quits. They had their faith in Christ—and their desire to explore every medical option available. Unfortunately, their medical insurance wouldn't cover the experimental treatments they decided to pursue to save Tracy's life. That's when God, Dawn insists, prompted her to turn her passion—creating the quick-and-easy, low-fat recipes her family and friends had enjoyed for years—into a solution: She'd self-publish a cookbook to cover their mounting medical costs.
Dawn's first cookbook, Down Home Cookin' Without the Down Home Fat, sold like wildfire with the help of church friends, family, and local bookstores, allowing Dawn to pay the thousands of dollars needed for Tracy's experimental treatments. Soon his tumor shrank, and he was back on his feet, able to return to work part-time as a tool and die maker. As the popularity of her first cookbook grew, Dawn published two more—Busy People's Low-Fat Cookbook and 2nd Serving of Busy People's Low-Fat Cookbook—through her new company, Cozy Homestead Publishing; a fourth, Busy People's Diabetic Cookbook, is soon to be released.
"These cookbooks are a gift from God," says Dawn, who's increasingly in demand as an inspirational speaker. The host of a new 30-minute cooking show, Cooking for Busy People, airing this month on Cornerstone TeleVision Network, Dawn tithes the profits of her cookbook sales to support a Toledo-based inner-city ministry, and makes her books available at cost as fundraising tools for other families facing financial hardship due to medical crises.
Sadly, Tracy Hall lost his valiant battle for life last May, leaving Dawn to raise their teenage daughters alone. In this exclusive interview, Dawn talks about how her devotion to Jesus Christ strengthened her throughout her husband's illness and death, and helps her triumph over tragedy.
You lost Tracy less than a year ago. How are you holding up emotionally?
It's been tough. Sometimes I've felt overwhelmed by grief. When that happens, I try to maintain my composure until I can go somewhere by myself and bawl for as long as it takes. I'll cry, then I'll be okay. Then I'll weep again, then be okay.
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