Getting MYSQL Error: "Error Code: 2006 - MySQL server has gone away"

Here you can read more about this error and various ways to avoid/solve it

From the docs:

The most common reason for the MySQL server has gone away error is that the server timed out and closed the connection

Investigation shows many solutions correctly talking about setting the max_allowed_packet and wait_timeout for mysql in my.cnf; small addendum that the default install of mysql on mac osx doesn't appear to include this file. You may first need to create it at /etc/my.cnf (this is only an issue if you're using the default install of mysql instead of a mamp stack or similar)

contents of /etc/my.cnf that corrected this issue for me below:

[mysqld]
max_allowed_packet= 64M
wait_timeout= 6000