"My honeymoon, it was a nightmare, I actually still could use a 100% re-do from that blessed event. My new husband was so exhausted the whole vacation that he could hardly get out of bed. I was a bit sad and confused as to what was going on here and what kind of guy I married. He didnt even have the energy to go out dancing at night, and do barely anything else you expect on a honeymoon for that matter. He was just too tired. I knew that he had ditched his thyroid medication because he was getting heart palpations from it and he had a doctor that kept forgetting to call it into the pharmacy. But, I was 27 and I didnt know a thing about thyroid issues. After all, I didnt take any prescriptions at all. Growing up in a Chiropractic family, both my grandfather and my dad were Chiropractors. Even from a young age, the body being able to heal itself and using food and supplements as a way to do so was always on my radar. Fast forward to marriage, and my husband was SO tired. The story ended a couple of years later when we had my first born son and myself and my mother in law convinced my husband to go get a blood test to find an INSANELY HIGH TSH of 110. That TSH was the highest the doctor had EVER seen and he was surprised he wasnt in a coma. Although I dont recommend standardized TSH testing to actually take a look at your thyroid, NO ONE needs a TSH that high. Thats problematic. TSH should be within the range of .5 - 5. To say that my husband struggled with barely any energy was an understatment. Looking back, I found Jonathans low energy levels frusterating since I had excessively more, until I didnt. I had my son, my middle daughter and my youngest daughter, 20 months and then 24 months apart. By the time my first born was 4 I had two more kids. Exhaustion doesnt even describe how horrible I felt. I was irritable and angry on the regular, plus, after a long bought of unemployment for both my husband and I, he found a job that cause him to travel up to 80 days a year. And, we didnt live anywhere near family and I didnt have a cent to pay a sitter. Looking back, postpartum depression had set in, I was struggling with low energy, anger, rage, irritability and during a time when kids are so young and impressionable I felt so tired. All. the. Time. Drowning might have been a better way to describe how I felt. Growing up in a naturally minded family, I was still convinced that there had to be a better way than to put myself up with pharmaceuticals. Learning about food was my first go to because I had little childrens mouths to feed anyway, why not start there? I also barely had a cent to my name, so somehow we scraped up the money to send me to get my Functional Nutritional Therapy Practicioner Certification when my youngest was not even quite a year old. I cant believe that was almost 10 years ago. Its so crazy. My education turned out to be very valuable and I began taking clients, however, I quickly found out that the wellness space seemed very crowded with fad diets, and people generally were not interested in following diet advice. I actually found it more valuable to help my clients reduce their environmental stress first by ditching toxic cleaning supplies, makeup and personal care products for plant based ones void of many of the junky chemicals found in products on the shelves of Walmart and Walgreens. People were starting to see a real difference filling their toolbox to fight off pathogens with their kids with filling their tool boxes with essential oils and herbal tinctures. So for several years, my focus became educating to help people make this switch easily, painlessly and see results. But, I was still SO tired! Over the years, so much of my life just felt hard, even though Ive experienced TONS of blessings. My marriage, so hard. Trouble focusing, freaking hard. Low energy, a lot of the time. Even shortness of breath. The inability to workout as hard as I wanted to. The inability to play with my kids like I should be able to. Regular irritability. Snapping easy, not feeling able I was not able to NOT yell at my kids. JUST BECAUSE I WAS SO TIRED And, it didnt help that I realized, I basically sucked at emotionally regulating Stressful and tired. And, then, to top it all off with a cherry on top, in October of 2019, I found myself looking at my 10 year old son in a hospital bed in the ICU getting diagnosed with Addisons disease which is an adrenal fatigue autoimmune condition. I felt like my WHOLE life had been characterized as TIRED and now my sweet, young son showed it and I struggled with a whole lot of mom guilt over it. Thats YOUNG to have that diagnosis. Really, really young. And, now my son was worse off than me. Addisons disease shouldnt be taken lightly. It can be quite life threatening. When the doctor told me his diagnosis, I WEPT. I was so TIRED and now I had evidence that my son was TIRED too. Hed always been super emotional, seemed to have trouble concentrating, and even seemed to be too tired to wake himself in the mornings, but we never could quite put our finger on what was wrong. And, this actually was NOT the first time Id been looking at him in an ICU bed. The first time was 5, they never diagnosed him with anything then. The doctors on staff told me it was probably just a fluke, a virus, but Im convinced he was tired then. Tired has been the story of my life and Ive never been able to put my finger on it. Its impacted all of us. My husband, my kids, myself. I never really had the energy to feel like I could laugh all that much. Then, Covid happenedtired. Stressed from one of my businesses tired. Friendships ending the world on lock down. Arguments happening everywhere. Local politicians, I had voted for, acting like lunatics on facebook. Tired. Can you relate? Tired, stress, anxious, weight gain, my period decreasing to only 1 day a month, plus being barely there, irritable, low energy, heart palpations, shortness of breath, Id even cry at the drop of a hat and terrifyingly aging faster than I thought possible (hello gray hair and wrinkles)! I finally realized that I had been so focused on finding answers to heal my son, that Id completely neglected loving and caring for myself. After all, wed spent $1000s on nutritionalists, holistic doctors, products and supplements only to hardly see any changes in his numbers. And, most of the time, I couldnt even take time to feed myself. I wanted answers. And not just for my son this time. I actually didnt want to kill me, trying to heal him. Years ago, when my son had first been in the hospital, I had consulted with a colleague that had been trained in mineral balance. At the time, it seemed like a very difficult protocol to follow with my five year old and I had been so low on energy, I couldnt figure out how to make it work. So we found some easier routes of care. Now that I really felt like trash, I noticed another colleague who had taken a training from the same colleague I had consulted with years ago and signed up for a consult. I had my first hair tissue mineral analysis done, a report and she put me on a protocol. The protocol was helpful and it helped me get on the right track. The consult with her, put a spark back in me to learn more about this mineral stuff and what it had to do with getting sustainable energy to the cells for healing and detox to actually happen. Forget hiring someone, I HAD to know how it worked. So I enrolled in the program of the original colleague I had consulted with nearly 6 years prior. I was fascinated with how minerals work in the body and how a hair tissue mineral analysis told me SO MUCH about how my body handles stress and how minerals are required to be balanced. And, how you can just throw a multi vitamin or random minerals on the fire pit to start a fire. (I used to do that when I got really tired, whoops.) I loved the course and started taking clients to balance their minerals, I studied my kids hair tissue mineral analysis and mine. I started binging on podcasts and reading books on minerals. And, I still had questions of pieces that I thought were missing. (Im really good at putting pieces together.) And, so I enrolled in another course to be a Root Cause Protocol Practicioner. And, my eyes were opened to many of the questions I had been asking. I started myself on a NEW protocol, as well as my son. The results have literally been miraculous. A mineral balancing protocol along with new eyes to see how stress impacting the body changed everything for me. I was always curious about how physical health, mental health, spirutal health, and enviornmental stress worked together and I had a light bulb moment that the answer was stress. Stress in any capacity is what causes our energy leaks, energy leaks cause low energy, poor health outcomes and symptoms, mental health disterbances, and more. The more we struggle with with regulating our emoitons, stuffing them and not feeling them we add to our nervous system being out of wack and BURNING MORE MIENRALS. The more we use toxic products in our homes, on our body and in our makeup, the more our body has to keep up with the stress demand. After 12 months on the new protocol my son is playing basketball like a champ, and he has turned in to the kindest, witty, loving child in the whole world. After I started on the new protocol, Ive had clear thoughts, more energy, even better orgnaization skills, better sleep, my heart feels normal, more focus, and my teeth have even gotten denser. I feel happier. I can problem solve better when life feels difficult and I can focus on the things that matter most. I have more energy to do things like plan my day, and even make dinner. I can love myself. Its the little things. You have to keep making deposits in the bank to have enough energy to truly live in all areas of our lives. If we arent able to make deposits because we are too depleted, we cant sleep, or we just dont feel good then we miss out on so many things in life that are meant to be so good. We miss out on laughter, we miss out on fun and we even miss out on being able to conquer mountains. When our buckets dry up because there are too many energy leaks, there is no telling if we will gain wait, age quickly or just feel like trash."