One of the main reasons I paused recording was authenticity. When I show up in a space like this, I want to be able to say that I am actually living what I talk about. I want to be able to stand behind my words, my habits, and the way I take care of myself. There were seasons when that simply wasn’t true for me, and during those times, recording felt impossible.

Over the past few years, I’ve been relearning myself — my body, my patterns, and my habits — while also building other meaningful projects. I opened my publishing house, 5 Two Press, and started Project Seed Money, which helps female authors connect to grant opportunities. While those projects grew, my own health quietly moved to the background.

Starting in late May and early June of 2025, I began experiencing extreme nausea. It became constant — waking up with it, going to bed with it — and it made eating incredibly difficult. Smells, textures, and even the idea of food made the nausea worse. Meals became smaller and less frequent. Breakfast might be a piece of bread. Lunch, if it happened at all, came much later in the day.

At first, I attributed everything to stress. That time of year is always demanding for me with publishing deadlines and working at a women’s summer camp. But when the stress passed and the nausea remained, it became clear something deeper was happening.

Over several months, I lost weight I didn’t have to lose. I noticed muscle decline, brain fog, and a lack of energy that affected every part of my life. I stopped exercising because without enough calories, movement left me feeling weak instead of strong. My body was depleted.

Through journaling and reflection, I realized the nausea wasn’t random. It was connected to patterns formed much earlier in my life. Growing up in poverty, food wasn’t always available. Sometimes we lived in a tent, a car, or a motel. Regular meals were not guaranteed. I learned to suppress hunger because feeling hungry without food available was painful.

School meals were my main source of food, but sensory challenges made cafeterias overwhelming. Eventually, I stopped eating during the day altogether and relied on one meal — dinner. Even now, dinner is the meal I feel most comfortable preparing and eating. Breakfast and lunch have always been harder.

What I came to understand is that my body learned to survive without hunger cues. Instead of signaling hunger, my body relied on adrenaline. When calories were too low, adrenaline surged, creating nausea. I wasn’t feeling hunger — I was feeling depletion.

To address this, I needed to face the emotional roots of disordered eating. Even though it wasn’t about control or vanity, the impact was still there. I had to acknowledge it and work toward healing it.

That’s when the idea came to revisit my book, Journey Back to Health. Originally written in 2017 about autoimmune disease, the book now feels like a guide I can return to. This time, I’m working through it as a living process — one chapter per week — applying it to my current healing journey.

This series isn’t medical advice. It’s my experience, shared honestly. Each week, I’ll reflect on a chapter and track my progress using the workbook. You can join me completely for free by listening to earlier episodes where I read the book and downloading the workbook online.