MY STORY

Transforming my lifestyle and becoming so passionate about functional medicine and
holistic wellness didn’t come overnight. But rather, from many long, sleepless, painful, tear-soaked nights while navigating 7+ years of my own chronic illness/es.

What all began with a sinus infection turned into a horrible bacteria infection in my colon, leading to my gut health being severely compromised, and me developing significant food sensitives. My entire body became inflamed, my face broke out with unbearable cystic acne, my energy began to deplete, and my hormones were completely out of wack.

Over the next several years of finding natural ways to bring my body back into homeostasis, I began to notice the onset of new symptoms I had never experienced before. I randomly would feel heaviness in my legs — as though cinderblocks were around my ankles or a weighted blanket was across my lap. Tingling, burning, and numbness began to follow suit, in addition to more cognitive impairments that made working hardly attainable at all. My body grew weak to the point of having to use grips on pens and utensils, and a walker to walk any further distance than the mailbox.

I went through a slew of testing… like, a lot. 3 MRI’s, an EMG, EEG, muscular biopsy, neuro-psych testing, a handful of urinalyses, a whopping 54 blood draws testing nearly 300 different things, and a month of intensive pain rehab later… every result came back relatively “unremarkable”, and I was left with no reason or relief to know what was going on.

I was told at 26 that using a walker and fighting to stay on disability from work was now my "new normal" and that I should start to make the adjustment…

I was broken down, but refused to allow this to sink in. With the specialty of my functional
medicine doctor, we were able to uncover one major piece of the puzzle to my chronic illness and history of ongoing symptoms... It was through her I was able to find out I have chronic Lyme disease and other tickborne co-infections, as well as had mycotoxin (toxic mold) exposure.​

This gave me a further deep-dive into the world of non-toxic living and exploring holistic wellness habits that would optimize ultimate healing.

I wanted to expand my understanding of this even more, and pivoted my career to help others in similar circumstances. I became a Certified Health & Wellness Coach specializing in Lifestyle Medicine in the fall of 2022 and have been working with people navigating chronic illness and lifestyle medicine since!

But through my experience I've come to know this: living with chronic illness is traumatic at best.

So although Simply Rooted may be just a silly 'lil blog sharing tangible, lifestyle habits to decrease your chronic symptoms, my heart really is to offer hope to the ones navigating the tough and rugged road of healing.

And for you to know — you never have to walk it alone. 🤍