This is my story.
Well, 10 years of my story. This story is about my health and I am excited (read: also nervous) to share it with you. My health story will release in 4 parts over the next 4 Mondays. It’s a long story, which is why I had to split it over 4 parts. Please stick with it, because I believe that you be encouraged through the many parts. So stay tuned for more.
My health story has always been such a hard thing for me to write. I kept my health struggles to myself and some very close friends and family for years. Nobody knew that I had been into the trenches of sickness and fought hard to get my body back to health. When I started Just Enjoy Food I didn’t mention a thing about being sick or fighting for my health. I thought is was a weakness, especially for a doctor. Aren’t I supposed to be the picture of health? Plus, when I started Just Enjoy Food I was in the thick of healing and I seriously didn’t have the words to share my story.
I’m going to do my best in sharing with you my health story. To start out, I was sick for 10 years. A whole decade. There are so many details within that 10 years so I can’t share all of them with you. I do want to share more details than I even have before because the details of my story are an important part of the mission of my brand and the health coaching that I do. It allows you to know me better. It also give you something that you can relate to and connect with.
I read recently that vulnerability is the new strength. And you have to be vulnerable to actually create a connection with people.
Here’s to brave vulnerability and a big prayer that my story is able to help you in whatever way it’s meant to.
Ok. let’s start. I’m not even sure where to start. Let’s go back about 10 years to when I was 18. I am a firm believer that we get sick or symptoms start during the perfect storm. It’s not always one event, but a series of events and stressors on our bodies that create more toxicity or stir up stored toxins that have been there for years. They may not have been causing symptoms at the time. I was set up for digestive problems because I was a C-section birth. It was the only way my mom could deliver me due to a total uterus reconstruction. When you are birthed via C-section you don’t get your mom’s healthy gut bacteria so your gut is weaker off of the start. There are lots of ways to rebuild a gut now in an infant post C-section, but in the 80’s it was not on anybody’s radar.
My perfect storm happened in the summer of 2004 when I was 18 years old. A lot happened that summer. I graduated from high school, moved to a new house, got accepted to college and was preparing to move 14 hours away from home to go to college. I went on a mission trip to Mexico and got my 18 year old vaccinations (toxic overload). That was all within a couple of months of each other. At the time I didn’t see it, but now I look at it and see the perfect storm. While I was in Mexico I got a parasite which is something I learned years later. This was the start.
My symptoms started when I got home from Mexico. I had this feeling in my gut that I’ve never felt before. I felt full and puffy and inflamed. I now know that feeling as bloated. I had this deep bloating feeling on a daily basis when I returned home. It’s the kind of bloating that makes your back hurt and makes you feel like your pants are so incredibly tight and don’t fit anymore, although they really do. I had no idea that this was bloating or that it wasn’t normal. I thought that if I gave it some time and drank a lot of water it would get better.
At this time I had something going for me. About a year before I got sick I started to fall in love with nutrition. I loved the idea that we could use food as medicine and that the way we fed and nourished our bodies was important to our overall health. My knowledge of nutrition was small and definitely not enough to take me through this journey. It did spark this belief within me that our bodies were created to heal. I know God created our bodies to heal and we just have to find the interference or stress and we can open up that healing ability.
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