Ok

now that the boring stuff is out of the way

let me REALLY introduce myself :D

I know what you’re thinking.

How do I contain this much awesome in my tiny 5’3” self without exploding? 

What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

And what the heck does this have to do with you?

Excellent question!

(You get right to the point, I think we’re gonna be friends :D)

This has everything to do with you, because when I was a kid, we thought my sister was going to die.

We had an old grapefruit tree in the backyard that we loved to climb because it was short and gnarly and easy to grip. We spent hours in that tree. But our beloved tree had a dark secret… black rot was creeping through its soul.

One day, my sister was showing off and swinging upside down from her knees on one of the outer branches. In that moment, she looked suuuper cool and even my tween self was impressed.

But then there was a deafening CRACK

And in slow motion, her eyes wide with terror, my sister fell to the ground… and landed directly on the back of her head. 

Our dog was the first one to get to her and helpfully licked every square inch of her face. My mom and I weren’t far behind, and together we managed to peel her up off the ground and check her over. Besides being pretty shaken, she seemed to be all right.

But soon after that we noticed a difference in her…

She wasn’t eating, she was sleeping more and more, and she was getting painfully thin. It got so bad that she didn’t have the energy to even get out of bed most of the time. She was 13 years old. 

And it just went downhill from there.

She started involuntarily vomiting her breakfast every morning, spending hours in the bathroom, refusing to eat yet constantly complaining of hunger, and suffering from inexplicable rashes, skin eruptions, joint pain, insomnia, vertigo, migraines, bloating, gas…

The list goes on but I’m sure you get the idea.

It was glaringly apparent that something was dreadfully wrong…

*Insert furious screaming*

One night at 3:00AM (when we were supposed to be asleep), my sister and I were sitting on her bed in the dark, talking about what was going on the way only kids can. With tears in her voice, my sister asked me to divide up her toys among our two other sisters should the worst happen.

I dutifully promised, but deep inside my soul a steel determination was taking hold. I’m an old fashioned gal, and the way I was raised, the eldest is responsible for looking after the younger siblings. I vowed then and there, in the pitch black void of our childhood bedroom, that I would. not. stop. until I had found a way to help my sister.

Fast forward to 2018. I’m in health coaching school and I’m listening to a guest speaker give a virtual talk about her personal experience with a debilitating chronic disease…

And she starts pointing names and naming fingers… 

and telling us exactly what her symptoms were… 

and how none of the doctors she went to had any idea what was going with her… 

and how one of them even had her Baker Acted because he thought it was all in her head…

And I skidded into the living room and physically pulled my sister out of her seat. “You HAVE to come listen to this!!!!”

And we sat there, my sister and I, arms wrapped around each other, tears streaming down both our faces, as we FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY got the answer we’d been looking for for so long…

CELIAC DISEASE

And I knew then and there how I was going to help people.

If we had struggled for so long trying to find out what was wrong (and then struggled some more trying to make sense of the diagnosis and how to live gluten free), then other people probably needed help too.

That’s where you come in. (See, I told you you were part of this. :)

If you’re reading this, that means...

a) you’re an incredibly dedicated person (I mean, who reads bloggers’ about pages anymore?) and b) you related to something in that story.

Either you were the person suffering from inexplicable symptoms and conditions that held you hostage to your health…

Or you were the friend/parent/sibling helplessly watching their suffering and literally tearing your hair out because you didn’t know what to do.

Either way, you’re in the right place. 

It doesn’t matter where you are in your journey…

It’s ok, friend! There’s a little something for everyone :)