My husband and I met in college and got married in 2006. Some of my most vivid memories of the years that followed were the digestive distress that I went through. There were many days I couldn’t go an hour without needing to be close to a bathroom. My stomach would tie up in knots and I’d need to rush to relieve myself (TMI?). I remember this most clearly on a vacation with my husband to go hiking in the Smokey Mountains. I would calculate how long I thought I could hike based on my need to go to the bathroom. There was one instance where I needed an emergent bathroom miles away from the port-o-potty at the beginning of the trail. It was miserable and frustrating. Another time, we arrived at a trail and I spent far longer in the trailhead port-o-potty than any person wants to spend in the dank stench of that plastic cube. Upon emerging, I knew I couldn’t even attempt a hike that day.
My 20’s were ridden with random health issues, many of which, in hindsight, were tied to stress and an incredibly unhealthy gut due to a childhood of fast food and antibiotics. As I faced issue after issue, irritable bowel syndrome, recurrent miscarriages, dermatitis, intense health anxiety, postpartum depression, recurrent chalazions, and other unexplained issues, I ended up turning to functional medicine for answers. I never felt right about going on months of antibiotics or birth control, and multiple blood tests and other tests (MRI’s even) never showed anything wrong, even though I felt awful in my body and it was clear something was definitely not right. With the help of a functional medicine doctor, I changed my diet to eliminate gluten and dairy, and went through a detox and many of my digestive symptoms subsided.
After my first miscarriage, I felt at a complete loss, I felt God impress on me, “I am more powerful than science.” Strange thing to say, but little did I know how important this statement would be for me even decades to come. I knew it was the voice of the Lord, telling me to rest on all the physical striving for a baby and to trust that HE created my body. Eventually, we brought our broken hearts to our house church and they laid hands on us and prayed for a healed womb and a baby. I got pregnant the next month.
I’m definitely not saying that all things work out this smoothly, or that prayer always gives us what we want in the way we want. But this was God’s first message to me to be invited into the healing of my body. It was the first time I began to see my spirit and my body as one… realizing that God was the creator of each of my cells and that I wasn’t only a spirit compartmentalized from my body or vise-versa.
In January 2020 my second son, Isaac, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia at the age of 7.5. He had a massive lymph node that swelled in his neck as the first telltale sign. I have never known stress and exhaustion like I did during those first months. I was bone tired and incredibly fearful both about the treatment that lay ahead and the cancer in my little boy’s body. It felt like it was a lose-lose situation. We laid hands on my son with the elders at our church, and with the same friends who prayed that we would be parents. We anointed him with oil and believed God for his heart for healing. I learned a lot about God’s heart for healing during this season, and I talk about this more on my blog. But as we are whole people, I deeply believe that God wants to engage with us for our healing. It is a picture of his kingdom come, and there were moments of deep awareness of being held by God.
My son was in prep for a PET-scan when I called our functional medicine doctor, choking back sobs as I explained to the scheduler that I needed help with my boy who had cancer. I knew immediately that I could not watch him get chemo without doing everything I possibly could to support his body and keep him strong. Leukemia comes on quick, and the treatment is harsh and long. We had 2.5 years ahead of us of chemo, which felt unbearable.
We worked with our functional medicine doctor at every stage of my son’s treatment, dialing in diet and supplements to support his liver with all of the chemotherapy he received. In so many ways, I viewed everything we did through the lens of his healing. The food we ate was incredibly nutritious. I felt that each and every time he got out into the sun it was for his healing. Covid happened not long after diagnosis, and the slow of the summer of 2020… the summer of covid and cancer, was actually a time of incredibly fond memories with my family, spending hours outside and eating home-cooked meals, despite the chemo ravaging my son’s body.
I am thankful to our oncologist for entertaining my millions of questions and looking into multiple supplements to be sure it wouldn’t counteract any of his life-saving medication.
I researched as much as I could, and I was often told by my son’s doctors, “we’ve never been asked this before…”. I became really good at asking “why” and wanting to understand the workings of what was going on in his body. Unfortunately, I was really discouraged by the lack of understanding that my son’s doctors seemed to have when it came to how these treatments would be affecting the rest of his body. They understood how to use the chemotherapy and kill the cancer, but treating him as a whole person was a different story. I have seen this time and time again in the medical system and is a huge motivator for my work today. We are whole people, and must be treated as such. Even more than that, there is typically root causes to the illnesses we face. I have many thoughts as to why this could have happened to my son, and I’ll never know for sure. I only know a handful of things that I would have done differently, if I had known before what I know now.
My son’s treatment ended in March 2022, and since then, we have been focused on his healing. Drainage, detox, gut healing, immune system balancing. And for me, nervous system regulation, gut healing, mineral balancing, thyroid health, hormone health (basically, stress touches everything…). I had a lot of healing to do myself after an incredibly stressful season of cancer and covid. It impacted my body physically in ways I’m still uncovering, but now I understand how stress touches our hormones, thyroid, adrenals, nervous system… everything. I’ve also learned how proper nutrition and lifestyle can make tremendous strides in allowing the body to heal.
Two more dear friends (both in their 40’s) had cancer diagnoses in the year following my son’s own diagnosis. Through these experiences, I saw the incredible importance of detox and of supporting the body in times of stress (and knowing how to mitigate stress.) I saw the importance of proper digestion and healthy gut function. I learned how each of the parts of the body work together and the cascading effect that trauma and toxins can have on one’s hormonal, digestive, and immune systems.
My eyes were opened to the bigger picture.
I decided, if it were up to me, I wanted to be one to help turn people’s stories around. I didn’t want to see one more person diagnosed with a cancer that could have been prevented by nontoxic swaps and detox (which is over 80% of cancers caused by environmental factors). I wanted to help the kiddos like my son, who need massive gut healing after multiple rounds of chemotherapy and surgeries and stress. I wanted to support the moms who have been living in stress for years, who finally took a moment to breathe and realized they forgot about themselves and their own bodies.
I dove into the books and educational courses, and now that is exactly what I am doing as an Integrative Health Practitioner and board certified Holistic Health Coach.
My pain became my passion, and I’m so thankful that it did. Please feel free to contact me with any questions you have about me or my journey.
(updated 6/2022)
