Our Story
In my early 30’s I experienced a rapid descent of health, all starting with my gut. I took to the internet and researched my laundry list of symptoms until my eyes hurt, reading forums, threads, and medical papers. I became grain-free, sugar-free, started exercising 6 days a week. I did the FODMAP diet. The Paleo diet. The Whole30. The GAPS diet. You name it. I tried it.
Then, in the summer of 2014, a couple of months after my husband Matt and I married, he was diagnosed with stage 4 kidney cancer at the age of 37. Knees failed. Worlds crumbled.
After Matt’s diagnosis, new symptoms started spiraling out of control. I unwillingly gained 30 pounds in three months, developed carpal tunnel, and brain fog. My digestive issues worsened. My energy level was non-existent. There was no relief from being unwell.
After Matt’s nephrectomy, juicing, sprouting, raw veganism, and hours upon hours of research, we felt we had a soft handle on cancer (despite my carousel of dis-ease). Then in September, I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism. It took a year of thyroid medication before I started to feel remotely close to normal. Meanwhile, my husband’s cancer was spreading despite rigorous adherence to his treatment protocol from both his western and holistic team of doctors.
Amidst all of that, I was diagnosed with SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth), developed de quervain’s tenosynovitis, and fibromyalgia. After trying all the fixes – antibiotics, tenosynovitis surgery, steroids, acupuncture, physical therapy, detoxing, textbook adherence to the GAPS diet – all of it – I finally felt better, but not great. Why not great? I was doing everything right. In fact, I had been doing everything right from the beginning. I made great strides in ridding our home of toxins, regular detoxing, maintaining the cleanest of diets, and exercising daily… but i wasn’t 100%.
Slowly but surely a subconscious inner awareness became lucid to me, the factors in my life I always struggled with – my long-standing relationship with stress, detachment from my true self, and attachment to negativity. I spent decades in a miserable emotional and psychological state. I was always a worrier, always an overachiever, always feeling alienated from my peers. My entire existence had in fact been filled with stress, avoidance, and illusion. Therapy and exercise helped, but what if it wasn’t enough? What if the reason i wasn’t getting completely better AND the reason I was unwell in the first place was all of this self-inflicted, unrelenting stress, illusion, and detachment from my true self?
All in a rush of clarity, I decided to let it – EVERYTHING – go, rediscover myself, and balance all that was off-kilter.
Matt passed two, arduous years after his diagnosis. We fought our sicknesses and despite his death, we both won. We lived and loved more deeply than either of us could have imagined. We were driven by hope and determination that life is a blessing, that our spirits are invincible, and love truly does conquer all. Today, I have never felt healthier and more at peace. I have lived through relentless sicknesses, trauma, death, and now grief. The gift of it is all is having irrefutable knowledge that even in the darkest of times – love, light, and hope will always give life.
