where my story started...

There comes a point in life when your body stops whispering that something isn't right and starts getting loud. You can ignore it for a while, but eventually, It will start screaming. Mine did.

For years, I lived in a chaos I pretended was normal. A relationship where I carried more than any one person should and a lifestyle built on suppressing everything I didn’t want to feel.

I drank too much, smoked a full pack of cigarettes everyday, and was pushing through exhaustion in a toxic job like it was a personality trait. I ignored the tightness in my chest, the knots in my stomach, the subtle dread I felt every morning when I opened my eyes.

I treated my body like an inconvenience — something to silence, override, manage.

Until the day it refused to be ignored.

It started small: bloating, fatigue, weird stomach pain. Then eventually my gut just… stopped working. I couldn’t digest food, my hair began falling out, my skin aged almost overnight.I gained weight in a way that felt impossible and I could feel my life force draining from me. This was not who I was!

I went from doctor to doctor, explaining symptoms that didn’t make sense to anyone. Blood tests. Scans. Guesswork. SIBO. Antibiotics. More antibiotics.“Maybe you’re stressed.”“Maybe it’s nothing.” "I don't know, maybe it’s in your head.”

That was one of the loneliest periods of my life. A time when I truly wondered if I was losing my mind — or if my body was trying to save me from a life I no longer belonged to.

The world treated me like I was overreacting, but my body knew differently.

Deep down, I did too...

You have to save yourself.

So I did.

Not gracefully, perfectly or with some heroic, empowered glow.

I did it through sheer survival instinct.

I researched obsessively.I learned everything I could about my gut, my immune system, my nervous system. I experimented, pivoted, tried again, failed again, tried again. Piece by piece, I rebuilt the foundation of my physical body.

It took two years of fighting for someone to listen. Two years of pain, isolation, frustration, and emotional unraveling while spending thousands of dollars on people who shrugged at my suffering.

And then one day at work, I finally got my answer: The integrative doctor I had finally paid out of pocket to see, called me in between visits.

Celiac disease.

You would think I felt relieved.I didn’t.

I felt rage.

Rage that I’d been dismissed when i suggested a year and a half before that day that I had that exact diagnosis. Rage that I’d been told no. Rage that I had been living in a body that was screaming for help while the world told me it was no big deal.

But I also felt relief and I cried because not only did someone finally listen, but I had been right all along. I wasn't CRAZY.

Looking back, I could see the truth. AND my body wasn’t betraying me, it was telling a truth that I didn't want to deal with.

It knew I was living in places that weren’t good for me. It knew I was surrounded by stress I had normalized. It knew I was abandoning myself. It knew I was shrinking to keep the peace. It knew something was deeply misaligned long before I admitted it.

Physical collapse was not the punishment. It was my intervention.

Healing my health became the first act of reclaiming my life.

As my body began to rebuild, so did everything else.

My strength. My intuition. My voice. My emotional clarity. My sense of worth.

My capacity to say, “This isn’t okay for me anymore.”

I share this part of my story because I know how many people are living in a body that is begging for their attention.I know what it’s like to be dismissed, ignored, and to feel alone in symptoms that don’t make sense. To feel like your body is breaking for no reason. To feel scared, lost, and like you’re fighting for your life inside a system that could care less..

I want you to know this:

You are not crazy. You are not dramatic. You are not imagining it. Your body is wise. Your body is speaking truth. Your body will not abandon you, even when it feels like everyone else is.

Healing, for me, wasn’t a linear journey. It was messy and emotional. It was confusing, exhausting, painful, and sometimes humiliating.

But it was also the beginning of my awakening... the first step toward becoming the woman I am today.

If you’re in it right now…if your body is breaking down, or shutting down, or screaming for help…please know this:

You can rebuild. You can come back. You can rise from the very place you’re hurting.

My body saved my life by falling apart. Maybe yours is trying to do the same.

And you don’t have to navigate that alone anymore.