Thanks for joining me! My journey with myself began a long time ago, but I’m excited to start one with you. I’ve had so much love and support throughout this adventure, and it’s made it that much easier. Without everyone rooting for me I don’t know if I would have been able to get to the point of completely restored health that I am at today. Growth and change isn’t a painless experience, and that’s why having the right people behind you matters. My little family has been my motivation even on the hardest days, and I’m so proud to be the woman I am today, not only for myself, but for them too!

If you are out there and you are hoping to have vibrant health too, but your struggling right now, find a purpose for why you want change. Try to manifest where you’d like to be, and continue to remind yourself of the end goal as it gets hard. My intentions changed as I expanded my perspective and gained better health. This will most likely happen for you too, but having an honest end goal, no matter how unattainable it may feel right now, is a great first step. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t want to be tied to a handful of pills daily to determine my fate on this earth. I had a burning desire to be who I was meant to be. I wanted the freedom and independence of my body functioning properly on its own. I wanted energetic, vibrant, natural, and complete health. I’m incredibly proud to say that I have achieved that goal, and I’ve done it entirely on my own.

When I think of my future and I just want to cry tears of joy. I’m so overwhelmingly happy to be free! I have regained all faith in the human body. When I met my husband six and a half years ago he really opened up my perspective on many things. I say I did this all on my own, but he was the spark that lit the fire inside of me, and he has supported this journey from day one. He introduced me to the endless possibilities of this crazy thing called being open minded. You see, I did what I was told and never asked questions. Now, if you know me today then you’d know that’s not me at all. I’ve grown a lot over the years, especially the last four. I feel I have a duty to show my children how to be strong, and to go out and find the answers they are looking for even if no one else has them. They are the fuel that kept me going when things got hard.

The best way to explain healing from a chronic illness is that it is complex, and it’s hard. You can do all the things you think are right, and still be wrong. For example, I changed my way of eating about four years ago to the way I’m still eating today. I’m actually much more relaxed and can comfortably eat many more foods now. It wasn’t the diet change that was the magical cure I had hoped for, but it helped usher the way to knowing I had to do more.

I came from having an understanding of what I call the “sick care system.” I only knew how to go to the doctor and do what I was told, and in turn I remained sick. I had no idea about how to take care of my own body. I thought I did, but boy was I wrong. I was in a tricky spot when I began this healing journey because I had been on medication for a good six years at that point, and I landed myself in the hospital with debilitating side effects every time I even tried to lower my dose at that point. I was so sick. I had absolutely no idea how to manage any of my symptoms.

I felt like the conventional medical system failed me. I literally tried it all. I saw countless doctors and specialists, even the “best of the best.” I did all the tests, tried all the medications, and it always resulted in them throwing their hands in the air after months and saying there was nothing more they could do. The real problem is that I just didn’t fit their blanket 80% protocol models. In turn, I was always labeled that “special case.” I was so young going through all of this, and was definitely disregarded more times than heard by anyone.  I followed all of the rules only for my health to continue to decline further. I gave it a try, but it didn’t work for me. This is when I said to myself, well, what next? Many times I wanted to just accept the life I was living, but it just didn’t feel right. I knew I was capable of more. There had to be more out there, this couldn’t possibly be it.

Fortunately I accidentally stumbled upon the functional medicine world and immediately became intrigued. Conventional medicine, which most of us are used to, works to treat symptoms and diseases with drugs, radiation, and surgery. Functional medicine is a systems biology-based approach that is personalized and integrative with an understanding of prevention, management, and works to identify the root cause of disease. It generally entails diet and lifestyle changes with healing being the end goal.

When I decided I wanted to try to address the root cause of my health problems with functional medicine I still needed modern medicine to survive. Me and my husband had very little money then so I couldn’t afford all of the fees and supplements recommended by the functional practitioners. I had insurance which paid for some of my medication, office visits, and blood work for my conventional medicine doctor. So what did I do? I began educating myself. I paid the bare minimum, “forgot” to get blood work done, procrastinated office visits, and studied. I fell down so many rabbit holes. I promise, there was some method to my madness. I started implementing what I was learning, but continued to hit dead ends. It became discouraging until one semester in college a biology teacher had us watch a TedTalk called “Minding Your Mitochondria” by Dr. Terry Wahls. Even though I did not suffer the same autoimmune disease as her it was her story that inspired me. She was in a much worse place than me, but she healed. That’s when I knew I could too. I just really needed that confirmation that it was possible. She was a physician herself so she had access to a lot more research and resources than I did, but that was the hope that has kept me going after I burnt out early on.

The day after I watched Terry’s TedTalk I woke up and threw out all the food that wasn’t feeding our bodies right. This was only the start of our change of eating. It was hard in the beginning to stay disciplined so we’d order out more, we had a lot of gross dinners, but we did eventually learn how to cook good food. I continued to listen to the stories of others battling all kinds of chronic conditions at this point, so I began developing many theories and testing out different healing strategies on myself. Adjusting my diet, like I mentioned before, wasn’t my golden ticket out. I did not have the money to test for more root causes of my illnesses then, but I did have a lot of prior diagnosis’s that I was able to use that guided me. These consisted of things like multiple autoimmune conditions, mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), food allergies, asthma, mold illness, vertigo, IBS, multiple chemical sensitivity, electromagnetic hypersensitivity syndrome, mononucleosis, Epstein Barr, Guillain-barre’ syndrome, rhinitis, chronic sinusitis, recurrent strep, migraines, anorexia nervosa, traumatic brain injuries, gadolinium poisoning, and more. A lot of these are actually root causes of many diseases I had, but if I were to choose I would have done genetic testing, a Lyme test, and others as well. Because I had so many root causes I had no idea how to address them all. Things that helped one worsened or were recommended to be avoided for another. That became very overwhelming for awhile. I had three small children during this process, and just couldn’t be the mom I wanted to be if I was also dealing with side effects from my medication, illness, or healing. Everything I tried triggered flare ups and debilitating symptoms. For every two steps forward I took, I felt like the days and weeks of the flares took me back months. Every time I’d begin to feel good, I’d hold my breath because I knew it wouldn’t last. When I did all the right things, one wrong thing someone else did around me set me back weeks. It became very emotionally challenging.

I didn’t have a hard time being disciplined throughout the process, but that doesn’t mean the rest of it was easy. I was disappointed by the fact that I was making little to no progress after doing so much work. I was tired of the disheartening prognosis’s. Each time I checked in with my doctor to get a medication refill and blood work done I made little progress, but kept holding on to the progress nonetheless. I continued to educate myself. I asked all of the questions my little heart could fit into one office visit, and I continued to fire most because they had no answers nor intentions of finding them. I never stopped reading research and learning what I could because I wanted those answers. I’ll be honest, if I didn’t have the education behind the human body that I do today, I don’t believe I could have done what I have. After all, I don’t know anyone who has done what I have, and neither do any of the physicians and even specialists I’ve seen over the years. I’ve searched for years to try to find individuals on the internet who had done what I have in hopes I could just do what they did, and I still haven’t had any luck.

Writing all of this out has brought back so many memories. It’s bittersweet to have it be a thing of the past. I’m impressed by how far I’ve come. Over a decade of my life I’ve lived replaying so many questions in my head about why this happened to me. I always told my husband I felt like if I could ever overcome this then that would probably be the day I’d have some sort of revelation and know the answers to all of my questions. In retrospect, I actually discovered these answers when I began learning about genetic expression, and throughout the healing process. I do feel such a sense of freedom now that I hadn’t felt before. I feel so many things! This is not something you can just heal from overnight. The process was literally a giant experiment over years that I hoped would end well, but I could never say for sure if it would.

There were days when I could eat less than fifteen foods without experiencing chronic inflammation, throat swelling, anaphylaxis, serious asthma attacks, and pain. I skipped drinks with my husband and friends, chose to stay in instead of go out, stood outside or left events because of peoples laundry detergent or perfume making me severely ill, and even withdrew from places when I was having a really good time because the WiFi was making my heart spiral out of control, and yes it was worth it. I can happily say I can eat most things. I can go anywhere and do anything in moderation and experience very little discomfort, if any at all. This has only been a very recent thing now that my body is finally in a complete state of health. My body isn’t perfect. It’s an amazing machine that tells me what’s harmful in my environment, and I choose to listen. Every day I’m stronger than the last, but I’ll never be like an average American.

Many people may not understand what this achievement means, or how incredible this achievement actually is. Let me start by explaining that hashimotos is a life altering autoimmune disease. I had four autoimmune diseases, but this was the hardest for me to heal from. Emotionally I felt so defeated by this more than the others because I could not get off of my medication safely. If you know me, then you know how much I’m against the pharmaceutical industry. It’s the reason I became ill in the first place. More on that another time.

Throughout this process I’ve discovered that all autoimmune disease is related and can be healed for the most part using similar approaches. Some people are fortunate to catch unrest in their bodies early and address it quickly, while others, like myself, go over a decade trying to discover the underlying issue and heal. Discovering the issue is not incredibly hard, but resolving it is the real challenge.

Like I mentioned before, I was dealing with a lot of issues. Having a generalization and a good idea of what could be the cause of your symptoms can be an important way to guide you. Healing is pretty generalized all around. There are some practices that are unsafe for some whose conditions are more chronic, and things MUST be done in the proper order to ensure your not harming your body more than helping it. Opening detox pathways before starting to cleanse the body is crucial. Exercising gentle and natural ways to clean the body are a highly recommended strategy that I used so that I didn’t overburden and damage my kidneys for example during this process. Allowing my body patience, and loving it even at its worst, is something my heart needed to get me through everything.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, healing is hard. You must heal on a mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual level. Not all of us can just pause our lives while we heal our bodies. You must learn balance and how to make all of these adjustments while still living with stress, jobs, children, and responsibilities. Everything is always easier said than done. I never expect anyone to understand where I was, or how hard it was to get to where I am today. I hope that people can be kind and compassionate human beings, and to understand that no one can ever really understand the gravity of another persons life and experiences, unless they’ve walked in the same shoes. We are all living, breathing, learning beings every second of every day of our time here on earth. To stop growing and learning essentially means to stop living. I believe we have a moral duty to just be kind. Understand that you may not understand someone else, and that’s okay, but why not be the person that could have left a lasting impression on them during a hard time.

Now, I’ll be honest. The hardest part about starting a blog is putting myself out there to be criticized. I’m not a perfect human and I’ll be the first to admit that. I’ve been discredited, made fun of, and the depths of what I’ve gone through because of an illness I did not purposefully put on myself is honestly disturbing. That’s all part of the process though and you grow from that experience. You grow from both the negative and positive experiences, and you don’t fall victim to them. That’s the difference between who’s going to overcome hardships, and who’s going to stay stuck. I’m willing to put myself out there with all the honesty in my heart in hopes that it can change some else’s life too. I know there are so many out there struggling just like I was. I talk to you every day. I talk to you on your hardest and most defeating days. I see you and hear you and you can do this too! I do the best I can to share my knowledge because I hope that whoever is out there willing to learn can do better than I once knew how. I want others to learn from my trials and errors in hopes their recovery process can be faster than mine.

I’m intending to educate people through my personal experiences, and give in depth answers to the questions I’ve been receiving daily for years on a vast array of subjects. I want this to be a place for honest and credible information. Throughout my posts I’m hoping to introduce you to the different health struggles I’ve experienced, and share the solutions that helped ease or eliminate my symptoms. The things that worked for me may not work for you, but hey, maybe they will be the answer you’ve been searching for. It’s been hard for me to know where to begin because things I have extensive knowledge on, you could be hearing about for the first time. You can always reach out to me, and I will do the best I can to respond, but it may take time. I have excellent resources for functional practitioners, postpartum help, wellness centers, and more that I’m always glad to share.  I hope you enjoyed this. I really can’t say the frequency that I’ll be posting because it’s really just when I can find the time. The next blog however will be loaded with some great info on overall wellness. Keep an eye out for it!

 

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton