In my world, vegetables were pulled from warm mounds of soil at the bottom of the garden and hastily rinsed under the garden hose, and a feast of fruit grew on the trees that lined the driveway - bananas, oranges, mangoes, guavas, passion fruit. Pasture-raised meat from animals grazing in wide open fields on neighboring farms, or fish caught in the farm dam, blessed our plates and stocked our enormous deep freezer. No packaged snacks came my way. Anything missing in our pantry was filled on monthly trips to ‘town’ - an enormous undertaking that took an entire day, bookended by dusty, long, hot car rides.

My mum was generations ahead of her time. In an age of microwave meals and fast foods, she didn’t believe in preservatives, plastics, synthetics, or premade anything - everything was made in her kitchen, with ingredients from our garden, or with single ingredients from ‘town’. She was the best cook in our tiny town and a master meal planner. It was not always easy, and I did not appreciate it at the time, but now that I am grown and raising children of my own in a first-world country, I can truly appreciate the hard work and love she put into raising our family.

Like most practitioners in the wellness industry, my journey has been shaped by a health crisis. After a smooth pregnancy, my first child was born hale and hearty. It didn’t take long for his health to begin to decline, marking the start of a 16-year journey that I can now look back on with deep gratitude. What once felt overwhelming became a profound privilege—a life-saving gift to our little family and the very beginning of my path as a Nutrition Therapist.

My perfect newborn plummeted from the 97th percentile to the 9th percentile in just a month. His baby-soft newborn skin was covered in eczema from his head to his toes, not even enough clear skin to do skin prick testing on when the mutterings about food allergies drifted in. He cried all day and all night, his little being in so much pain and discomfort. As first-time parents, my husband and I were beside ourselves with worry. Our days were filled with doctor’s visits, and a terrifying peanut allergy was confirmed. Information bombarded us - he needed to be on Benadryl permanently, steroids on his skin, formula fed, wrapped in wet cloths day and night, and avoid peanuts at all costs. It was a lot, and still, he was getting worse.

Nursing him, soon I was avoiding all nuts, dairy, eggs, soy, gluten, sesame, seafood, and our son was officially on the atopic march - eczema, food allergies (anaphylactic to all 9 top allergens), and finally asthma. What was I doing wrong? I was eating all the right things, doing everything the doctors suggested, and yet my child was testing as allergic to everything he ate. Food allergies are a lonely business; they affect everyone in a household. No matter how many doctors we saw, I felt heard by very few. New to America, trying to make friends and fit into a new culture, and having lost my mother a few years earlier, I felt very alone. I was enveloped in a world I could not see a way out of. My son’s health is not the definition of who he is; surely, this could not be his destiny? This could not be the life I had dreamed of for my child; it was not a fair one, and he had done nothing to deserve it. The slow, cruel social isolation of exclusions from birthday parties, ‘special’ food in coolers carted to gatherings and restaurants, and the slow dwindling of invitations from friends. That loneliness stoked my rebellion and determination. I absolutely refused to accept that there was nothing to be done but put a Band-Aid on it. I decided that as long as I was putting my heart into learning everything I could about the root cause of his challenges, then he would slowly be moving towards health. That was how I would keep my hope alive.

There is no more determined a student than a mother with a sick child! I started reading everything I could, and the condition ‘leaky gut’ rang true, although it wasn't recognized at the time. We had to overcome topical steroid withdrawal - a mammoth undertaking. I slowly changed our lifestyle and diet one day at a time and carefully watched him for improvements and adjustments. It was a radical and expensive time in our household - and an even more lonely one, I am sure my husband can attest to that! Everyone went gluten-free, we switched to fully organic and pasture-raised, all our skin care and housecleaning supplies were flung out and replaced with clean products - there were those 4 years when our house smelled like a chip shop because I would only clean with vinegar or potato vodka, and we used homemade tallow balm on our skin. I read about the GAPs diet and gut healing, and we did an incredibly hard and healing 4 years on it, sprinkled with dives into histamine intolerance and genetics. Chinese medicine, acupressure, chiropractic care, aromatherapy - you name it, we dove into it. There were many failures, but some successes. And slowly, healing started to trickle towards my son.

We discovered genetic non-celiac gluten sensitivity and predispositions to diabetes and autoimmune diseases. I wholeheartedly believe that changing our family’s nutrition and lifestyle has improved the trajectory of our health. I have been in the trenches for 16 years now; I know what it is like to face the hopelessness, isolation, fear, and loneliness that surround a health condition. I know how to look for the root causes of illness, and support the body with the science of whole-food nutrition and lifestyle changes, and to support healing because of it. The body really is made to heal; it is truly incredible. I am profoundly grateful to my Mum for giving me an incredible foundation for my career.

My son - the bravest person I know. He has trundle along from one appointment to the next, poked and prodded with more needles than I can count, has eaten healing homemade soup outside the school cafeteria with me every day for years because it was too dangerous for him to be inside it, and who been through some very unusual and beautiful healing modalities all in the name of healing, all without a word of complaint. He is awesome. My inspiration. My why. Thanks to a whole army of caring and smart practitioners, truckloads of amazing food to support his body, a lot of mistakes and good learning along the way (for both his immune system and for my premenopausal brain!) he is now a giant empathetic and healthy young man, eating almost everything freely. And I can breathe a little easier.

It’s a journey, and I am in it for the long run. I am passionate about helping you achieve your health goals, and I won’t give up on you either.