…Into my early thirties, with a toddler and kindergartener, on top of the emotional strain, I began to develop devastating physical symptoms. I was still sleeping as often as I could, waking with physical weakness and no energy. I had developed massive headaches, insomnia, joint pain, my fingers and back ached every day, frequent yeast infections and other womanly parts issues, painful sex and heartburn, constant sore throat, sensitive teeth, crippling stomach pain and so much more. I thought for sure I was in an unstoppable downward spiral. At times I’d check in with a doctor. They would run all the basic tests and take blood, to no avail. There was nothing wrong with me.
Expect there was something wrong.
I was deteriorating. Internally my body was shutting down. Mentally I was on an emotional roller coaster. I felt happiness in my every day environment. This place we lived brought me real, tangible joy. I absolutely cherished where we lived. I loved my loud, happy, messy toddler boy who ran wild and naked through our drive way mud puddles. I loved the way he made sure to wear a Superman cape every time he went outside so if the wind blew him away he would be able to fly. I adored my brilliant, fun, sweet big girl. I loved her tattered princess dresses that she wore everyday. I loved hearing her tell me about her day and the excitement on her face when she saw her little brother after a long day at school. I loved the messes she would make in the kitchen as her love of baking cupcakes developed. They were my dream. I adored every second. I loved raising goats and watching my kids chase chickens and count eggs. I loved all the baby animals we were surrounded with. All the dirt and sweat that went into my huge garden made feel grounded and productive. I picked cherries and fixed fence. I had felt at home on our little farm. For the first time in my life I felt like I was becoming the person I had been searching for.
These contradicting emotions, the tidal movement between happiness and despair, that I seemingly had no control over never allowed my spirit to rest. Like the constant movement of the ocean my brain was in constant conflicted movement. I wanted so desperately to be happy, real happy. To radiate happy. To teach and feel happy. This happiness was shadowed by the desperate sadness I carried all the time. I know I should have been happy. I knew that. I knew how blessed we were. I felt like the luckiest mama and wife and psuedo farmer in all the world. I had everything, literally everything I had ever dreamed of and yet something wasn’t fitting right.
I would pick fights with my husband and snap at my babies and sleep the weekend afternoons away.
“You just don’t know how to be happy.”
“Just go take a pill.”
“Get over it.”
“What’s the problem today?”
These cut-downs reflected in frustration haunted me. I pleaded with an empty room where I hid from myself to be normal.
It would be several more years before I would acknowledge what was happening to me. The sadness and physical pain was connected. The emptiness I carried and the internal pain would not control me forever. It would be years before I halted everything, put my health first and got down to the root cause of all of it.
We lived in Choteau for a few wonderful years before relocating back to Helena by way of a short layover in Missoula! We crashed for a few months at my childhood home with my dad — 2 kids, 2 dogs, 1 barn cat and 1 husband. Those months were stressful and I was eager to get out my dad’s hair and to be settled again. Addi started her 2nd grade year at the elementary school in my old neighborhood and in just a couple months after she began we were pulling her from school and crawling into another Uhaul.
For a person with chronic anxiety unknowns are devastating. I call my self a free spirit anxious person! I can roll with most things, but the big unknowns, the things that keep us up at night, send my whole being into panic. This time was especially difficult for me. Not knowing where we would live or where Dylan would work with two small kids to consider was epically tragic. Not to mentioned we just up and left a community that was home to me. My little log farm home and property was my dream come true and saying goodbye to all of that happiness was devastating. It was a heavy, heavy burden that nearly collapsed me.
Once we bought our home in Helena we were able to finally unpack and begin the process of replanting roots. I had made the decision to homeschool the kids. I had wanted to for a long time and now with all the unsettledness with the move it was a good time to give it a shot. Addi was a second grader and Landon a preschooler. Dylan worked long hours at an urgent care/ family practice clinic, getting home after bedtime. Days were long and very isolating.
I was still managing my struggles the best I could.
We had moved to Helena in early November. Those darks, ugly, cold months can be the hardest for a person with depression. Winter has always been especially hard on me. The pressure of the move, of being in a new town with little adult connections, homeschooling both kids and spending most of my time alone in our house, I was destined to boil over and I did.
It was January, only a couple of months being in Helena. I was sitting with my dear, dear friend Brittnie on my couch. Brittnie and I had become very close while living in Choteau. She was like a sister to me. Our men were sipping whiskey in the man room and our kiddos running a muck in the basement. All naive to the breakdown I was having. Through tears, I had spilled it all to her. I was physically defeated and she was the one God placed on my couch at the right time to hear me, to see me and to give me advise. After countless doctors just wanting me to take the pills and learn to deal with it, being married to a medical professional who was at times ended up very frustrated with my moods and my unmotivated sense of laziness, and after hundreds of prescription pills; nothing they said or did affected me the way this one conversation did. I unloaded on Brittnie every symptom, every weakness, every ache and pain. I told her I needed to be hospitalized, because I couldn’t feel this way anymore. In her way, in her beautiful, calm, thoughtful, educated way she simply stated, “Have you every thought that maybe you have food allergies?”
You know that little emoji of the brain exploding? That’s how I felt in that moment. I had had an epiphany. Brittnie had given me a gift. She had given me hope. Hope that I could be well. Hope that I could heal. She had given me something tangible to consider. I had never ever considered a food allergy. Could a food allergy really be causing this heavy sadness and pain? Could it by that simple? How in these fifteen years had no one else asked me that?
That was the moment my life pivoted. From that moment on I began my journey to wellness. From that moment everything would be different.
I entered the next chapter of my life. I spiraled into medical research mode. I researched everything about gut health, food allergies, gluten ect. I learned how I digest food. I journaled what I ate and how it made me feel. I learned about the blood-brain barrier. I learned about all the toxins in my home that I was willingly using everyday. It didn’t take long to learn the critical association between the gut and our emotional health. As soon as I took the necessary steps to heal the inflammation in my gut and rid my home of all the toxins everything else – EVERYTHING ELSE – normalized.
To be continued.
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