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Most people know me as an integrative dietitian who works with complex cases — Lyme, histamine, gut issues, hormones, inflammation. What many people don’t know is that my practice didn’t come from being sick first.

I built my practice long before I got sick.

I started my business in 2013, full of energy, purpose, and a pace that only someone in their twenties — fueled by adrenaline and Adderall — can operate at. I said yes to everything. I worked around the clock. I helped everyone. I ran my business at a dead sprint.

No breaks.
No slowing down.
No sense of limits.
Just go, go, go.

And for a while, it worked… until it didn’t.

In 2018, everything caught up with me.

That year I was diagnosed with melanoma — a moment that forced me to slow down in a way I never had before. And around the same time, I made the decision to slowly come off Adderall, after years of relying on it to keep up with the pace I had created for myself.

Getting off wasn’t quick.
It wasn’t graceful.
It was a year-long process that shook loose everything I had been holding together.

And as I tapered, my body erupted.

Anaphylaxis.
Reactivity out of nowhere.
My mast cells in full revolt.
Histamine intolerance that felt like it came out of thin air.
Inflammation I couldn’t understand.
Symptoms that didn’t make sense and didn’t follow a pattern.

It was like my body had been whispering for years — and when I finally slowed down enough to hear it, the whispers became a scream.

That period of my life changed everything:

🜂 It changed how I practiced.
🜂 It changed how I treated clients.
🜂 It changed how I understood chronic illness, the nervous system, and the body’s breaking point.
🜂 It changed what “healing” meant to me.

I wasn’t navigating symptoms because I wanted to learn more — I was navigating them because I didn’t have a choice.

My health issues weren’t my origin story — they were my wake-up call.

They forced me to practice differently.
To listen differently.
To build a more compassionate, sustainable approach to healing.
To stop glorifying burnout — in myself and in others.
And they pushed me toward the deeper root-cause work I do now.

I think so many people assume practitioners get into integrative or functional medicine because they were sick first. That wasn’t me.

I was already here.
Already practicing.
Already helping people.

But when my own health shifted, my entire understanding of the body — and what it means to heal — shifted with it.

And that’s part of why I’m writing on Substack: I want to tell the real story, the nuanced story, the not-always-beautiful story. The one where healing doesn’t come at the beginning or the end, but right in the middle of life — when everything feels like it’s falling apart and being rebuilt at the same time.

If you’re somewhere in the “middle” too… I see you.
There’s more to come.