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Functionally Whole, Lancaster, OH (2026)

08/17/2026

My Lyme journey part 3:

This part was the hardest emotionally.

While it was a relief to actually get an answer, it was also terrifying and depressing. There’s also a different kind of energy when you’re searching for answers and you keep going and keep pushing to find them. Even when you’re scared and exhausted and in pain, you continue to push forward because that’s all there is to do. But once I found out what it was, I was angry, afraid … and then I crashed. I think my mind and body couldn’t handle trying to be strong anymore.

There is sooooo much information out there on Lyme, and so much of the “official” information stands in stark contrast to actual patient experience (for some, not for all - which makes it all the more confusing.) The actual experiences of people with Lyme range anywhere from “I took some doxy and was fine, but sometimes my joints still hurt and I always have brain fog” to people having seizures, heart complications, neurological complications, and being bedridden.

And to add to that, my soul dog Doodle died the next morning after I got my diagnosis. This added grief onto my already delicate balance of keeping my s**t together, and it tipped the scale.

That next month or so was a deep, dark pit for me. I haven’t felt depression like that since my miscarriages. It felt like it came from somewhere outside of me - like someone had crept up behind me and thrown a sopping wet heavy blanket over my soul, and I couldn’t find a way out. I also started having anxiety and panic attacks that were unlike any that I’d ever had before - and I am no stranger to anxiety.

The longer I was on the doxycycline, the worse my mental health became. This isn’t a common side effect, but it is a recorded one. A theory behind it is that as the antibiotic disrupts the gut microbiome, it influences brain chemistry and the ability to regulate your emotions. These symptoms are also connected to the Lyme infection itself.

I did finish out the month that I was prescribed, and there were some improvements in my joint pain and swelling. I decided I would do some herbal protocols to help with the lasting effects that I still had, which included severe nerve pain in my lower back, all the mental health issues, extreme fatigue.

So far I’ve been on herbals for about 8 weeks, and I have seen more improvements. I’m learning how to manage my dosages, because too high causes herx reactions, which is a sharp worsening of symptoms as the treatment kills off bacteria faster than your body can clear it. It is well documented in certain infections, especially those associated with spirochete bacteria. (I do find it interesting that I never herxed with doxy, only once I started on the herbals. But that’s a topic for another day.)

Just within the last few weeks, I’ve started to get more energy again and my depression has lifted. I cannot even begin to describe how incredible that feels after feeling so lost in the darkness. A very common sentiment in the Lyme community is that it makes you feel like a shell or a shadow of your former self, and I can’t think of a more accurate description.

That’s not to say that all my symptoms are gone - they aren’t. There are still things that I’m figuring out and I think that there will be for a long time - maybe forever. But I just keep focusing on the fact that I do feel so much better than I did last fall, and that I’m getting my spark, mental clarity, and motivation back.

I hope it continues. But if it doesn’t, I’ll fight my way back again. 💚

Pictures:
1 - me on a recent hike! 🥳
2 - some of my herbal bibles
3 - me out on a date night with my husband!
4 - a screenshot of an interview with Rob Thomas talking about his wife’s 14 year long battle with Lyme (read full article here: https://www.etonline.com/exclusive-rob-thomas-on-marisols-14-year-lyme-disease-battle-its-like-a-weird-alien-inhabited-my )

08/09/2026

One of the best things to come from chronic illness is intimately learning the language my body, mind, and spirit speaks.

It’s not just the obvious things like tuning in to energy levels, pain levels, or how tired I am. It’s also about noticing how clear my mind is, how hard or easy it is to make decisions, reading energetic shifts in myself and in a room, and learning the difference between a real yes and a hard no based on intuition - not on a “should”.

It’s learning to hear and understand what kind of rest my mind and body needs. How she wants and needs to be fueled. How she needs to spend time in nature. How she needs to have a creative outlet that doesn’t require technology. How she needs me to speak to her as I would my dearest, closest friend.

Because she is.

08/04/2026

I have a lot to say about my recent Lyme experience, and I haven’t been able to say it here on Instagram because of the 2000 character limit on posts. I haven’t been sharing more on Facebook if you follow me there, but I’ve also decided to start using Substack!

Years ago I had a blog where I talked about my journey navigating autoimmune disease, infertility, and loss. I chose the name Graceful Resilience because I felt that it encapsulated my goal: to face the ups and downs of life and chronic illness with grace and wisdom, and to never give up hope.

So I’m going back to my roots over on Substack. I hope you’ll join me there!

08/04/2026

My Lyme journey part 2:

Over the next few months, there wasn’t a point in time where SOMETHING didn’t hurt. My shoulders were the longest lasting and most intense. I couldn’t lift my arms without pain so I walked around like a T-Rex. It sounds funny, but you don’t realize how much of your day to day movement requires range of motion of your arms until you can’t do it anymore. Even sleeping became a problem because I couldn’t lay on my side due to the shoulder pain, but also laying flat hurt because my arms hung down slightly. Aside from movement causing pain, at night they would also get a deep throbbing, burning, stabbing pain which kept me awake.

This same pain would migrate to my wrists, and sometimes my elbows although not with the same intensity. My knees and ankles came next, and with my ankle swelling off and on for no apparent reason.

I felt like a crazy person when I tried to explain my symptoms to people because they seemed to be all over the place, although I could see patterns in them. I just didn’t really understand what the patterns meant.

Migrating pain is a hallmark symptom of Lyme (and Psoriatic Arthritis, which is what I began to suspect I had based on my doctor’s belief that it was an autoimmune connective tissue disease). But this means that the pain can shift from place to place - sometimes lasting for days, and sometimes for hours. So it seemed like one day something would hurt, and the next day it would be something else. It’s very unpredictable.

My follow up appointments with my doctor resulted in nothing other than lab work that came back “normal”, although my thyroid numbers had continued to climb. I’d later find out that Lyme also drives autoimmune disease, and can either trigger it or make existing conditions worsen.

After finding out that this was a new possible autoimmune issue, I had decided to go back to the elimination phase of AIP (autoimmune protocol) and cut out all the possible foods that trigger the immune system. I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew that I needed to do everything possible to lower the inflammation that was wreaking havoc inside my body. I also started having matcha everyday instead of coffee, which is anti-inflammatory. I worked on my nervous system. I was doing ALL the things I could, and while I did see improvements I was still having random flares of things and knew that something still wasn’t right.

I did eventually insist on a referral to a rheumatologist because I am not okay with a “wait and see” approach when it comes to my health. I KNEW that something was wrong - and whether it was an autoimmune disease or something else, I needed to figure it out so I could determine the best way to approach it and prevent long-lasting damage that could prevent me from doing the things that I love.

No matter what health challenge you are facing, knowing how to advocate for yourself is incredibly important. You know your body better than anyone else, even the doctors that we’ve been trained since birth to give all our power over to. This is especially true if you’ve put in the effort to understand how your body works, how it communicates with you, and how it responds to food, movement, sleep, self care, nervous system work, etc. I do value the knowledge that doctors and different practitioners bring, but at the end of the day I take responsibility for my own health and well-being because I know my body best.

Before my rheumatology appointment, I wrote out all my symptoms. As I read over it, I thought, “This doctor is going to think I’m insane!” But I was so desperate for answers. So I took this list and the pictures I’d taken over time of rashes, swellings, etc and presented them to her.

Rather than dismiss me, she actually listened, read, took notes on everything, and even thanked me for being so thorough and having pictures! She said that she wasn’t sure what it was, but that SOMETHING was definitely going on. She asked if I’d been tested for Lyme, and when I said no she wanted to test first to rule it out, as well as some tests for viruses to rule out viral arthritis.

(To be continued in part 3)

Pictures:
1 - my swollen ankle, which happened randomly
2 - Swollen toe (2nd toe on right foot) which also happened randomly
3 - Swollen jaw (my right side near my ear) which happened again in April (and it flared up as I was leading a short backpacking trip so I couldn’t eat half of the snacks that I brought!)
4 - my list of symptoms that I took to the rheumatologist

08/03/2026

From my journal on 5/3/26:

“I am scared. I always try to keep a positive attitude and brave demeanor like I have things under control, but I constantly feel like I’m on the verge of cracking.

I know I’ve faced autoimmunity before, but this feels different … and the uncertainty, unknowns, and unpredictably are terrifying.”

And three weeks later, I found out I had Lyme disease.

This journey began on September 3, 2025. I had just had the BEST month of my life health-wise before this - I had done the Via Ferrata in WV, was hiking bigger miles training for a thru hike in October, doing sprints and strength training. I felt amazing, and even started to wonder if it was actually possible to “cure” autoimmune disease. (Spoiler alert: it’s not.)

I woke up that morning and just felt off. I started having a histamine reaction, which for me are usually unpleasant but pretty short lived. But not this one. This one lasted for hours. My Garmin was also freaking out - my HRV had tanked overnight and my stress levels were through the roof.

Over the next week or so, I felt like I had a bug. I ran a low-grade fever off and on, had some aches and pains, and felt pretty awful. Then suddenly my lower back started hurting, so I wondered if I had done something to it. The nerve pain was so intense and shooting down my legs, and I could barely stand up. I went to the chiropractor, which helped some but the pain still continued.

Next came TMJ symptoms. My jaw locked up, and it was so painful to try to move my mouth to eat or talk. I have an underbite, and it actually shifted my jaw forward so much that I couldn’t close my jaw all the way, so I couldn’t chew. I also couldn’t open my mouth more than about half an inch. I ate soup and smoothies for about 5 days.

Then came a rash. But not the bullseye rash they always warn people about - this was all over my body. I had multiple spots on my back, sides, chest, arms, and legs.

My shoulders also started to hurt and become frozen. My second toe was swelling and hurting. I was still running a low fever off and on, and it was about this point my husband wanted me to go to urgent care to get checked out (although I insisted I was fine, hah). So I went.

The doctor had never seen anything like this rash before. She wasn’t really sure what was happening but suspected that it was a systemic autoimmune reaction and told me to make an appointment with my primary care doctor as soon as I could - and by “as soon as I could”, she meant that I needed to be seen within the next few days.

My doctor also thought it was an autoimmune thing, so she ran all kinds of tests for that - most of which came back fine, although my ANA and some inflammation markers were high, and my thyroid numbers were higher than they’ve been for a long time. So we had no answers really at this point, and I just had to try to manage all the weird symptoms and wait to see what would happen until my next follow up appointment in 3 months.

(To be continued in another post)

Pictures:
1 - Me in August, feeling my best vs me in September, feeling absolutely terrible - and it showed. It seemed like I aged years in just a few weeks.
2 and 3 - my Garmin data freaking out with HRV dropping and stress levels skyrocketing (the orange. In a state of calm, it is blue.)
4 - one of the rashes on my arm. This was the smallest of all the ones I had. Most of them were fist sized or larger. They didn’t itch and they weren’t scaly.

07/26/2026

I have so many amazing, wonderful people in my life and it’s never been as obvious to me as it’s been in the last few months.

Back in 2021, I started seeing a therapist because I was really struggling mentally with some things. She told me I was too isolated, that I needed to get out and do something to interact with people more. I had started working from home doing transcription after the lockdowns had lifted, and I rarely interacted with real, live people. So I went and volunteered at our local farmers market, and they liked me so much they hired me! 😃

Our market community is special. For the first time in my life, I experienced what a community is supposed to be like. I then worked that into my personal life as well and began to build my own tribe of incredibly gifted and caring people. I also joined another amazing organization- Girls Who Hike Ohio.

The last several months have been pretty bleak with health struggles, and when we lost Doodle it became even darker. And that’s when my people really showed up.

Kind words and hugs, encouragement and support sent through messages, a lovely card from my market family, a hand painted watercolor card, Doodle bookmarks, and a commissioned pencil drawing of my best boy by .

I look at these and I’m overwhelmed with love and gratitude for each and every one. They have all been the rays of light that I so desperately needed, and I can never say thank you enough. ❤️

07/16/2026

There’s something that everyone needs to understand when it comes to Lyme Disease, and it’s this: Although there are some common symptoms and patterns (especially with the acute stage of the infection) Lyme can affect everyone differently.

This is one of the reasons that it can be so hard to get an accurate diagnosis within the window of time where the standard antibiotic treatment is most effective, which is within the first month after being bitten.

Because it can have such wide-ranging potential symptoms, it’s often referred to as The Great Imitator. Almost all of these symptoms overlap with other diseases that doctors are more familiar with. There are no real solid statistics, but it’s estimated that people with Lyme are initially misdiagnosed anywhere from 30-70% of the time, and it happens most commonly if they are late-stage by the time they seek answers.

🤔 Why are the symptoms so diverse? There are a few reasons.

The first is pretty well established. Lyme is a spirochete bacteria and behaves differently than other bacteria. Shaped like a corkscrew, it has the capability to leave the bloodstream and burrow into tissues, joints, and organs. So where it decides to settle determines the type of symptoms that manifest. It can also change forms into a persister cell form, which evades treatment and the immune system.

Another reason is that Lyme doesn’t always travel alone. Often there are other co-infections that are also wreaking havoc, so you not only have Lyme symptoms but also things like bartonella, Babesia, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, anaplasmosis, ehrlichiosis, Alpha Gal, and more. This makes the illness more complex.

Other factors are based on the person. Other health conditions, gut health, how strong your immune system is, how well your body clears toxins, how much stress your body is under all play a role in how you will react to infection.

To make things more complex, everyone’s reactions to treatment is also different. There are some people who can take the standard CDC round of antibiotics and feel okay afterwards. There some who the antibiotics don’t help at all. And there are many who fall somewhere in between.

As I’ve read and researched over the past few months, I’ve been amazed at how different Lyme patients’ experiences are, and yet still have so many similarities. Before I start to tell my story in detail, I just wanted to share this so everyone understands that what I’m going to share is my own experience.

But I also believe that patient experiences are one of the most valuable learning tools out there. This is how I learned to manage my autoimmune disease back before “impaired intestinal permeability” was recognized by the medical world, while everyone laughed at functional medicine’s focus on “leaky gut” and called it pseudoscience.

Proper medical care is important. But in a world where doctors don’t know how to help us, we have to learn to advocate for ourselves. We have to learn to trust ourselves and our own experiences. We have to learn to take back our own power.

07/12/2026

I’ve always been adamant about speaking out about our experiences, especially the hard ones. Miscarriages. Infertility. Autoimmune disease. Learning to navigate a healthcare system that fails at preventative care. Everyone has heard me talk about these things for years.

But recently, I’ve gotten quiet… and I think it’s time to change that. But I want to explain my silence.

There are some good explanations, like that I’ve been dedicated to researching and learning to manage Lyme disease, and that I’ve been dedicating my focus and energy to taking care of myself. But there are also some not-so-good explanations.

Like that I didn’t trust my own experience enough to speak about it publicly, because most of the information out there on Lyme disease says my experience is “wrong” or that what I’ve been experiencing doesn’t happen.

Or because I was afraid of facing the truth of what I have been experiencing and how it has changed my life, and how it will continue to affect my life in the future.

Or because I am angry that I ended up with this damn disease in the first place.

It’s been about 11 months that I’ve been dealing with this now - almost a year. And only 2 of those months have I actually had a diagnosis. I feel like I am far enough into this now that I have to start to speak about it. I trust my body and I trust myself more than any doctor.

I have felt incredibly isolated and like no one understands what I’ve been going through - but that is because of my silence. I can’t expect anyone to understand if I don’t talk about it.

And I know that if I am feeling this way, that there are so many others out there who feel the same - and that means that it’s time to stand up.

Tick-borne diseases are on the rise, and it’s only going to get worse until we have a better understanding of them. And the only way we can have a better understanding is to actually listen to the patients who live with it every single day.

So I’m going to start sharing my experience, from the beginning to where I am currently. Not the polished Health Coach version, but the real, raw truth.

I hope it will help someone. 💜

(Pic with Jim, who has become my emotional support cat!)

06/27/2026

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but I’m ready to share what’s been happening in my life over the last few months.

I did finally find answers to the issues I’ve been having since September: I have Lyme disease.

The next day after finding out, my soul dog Doodle passed away, absolutely devastating me.

So I’ve spent the last month or so buried in grief and research to figure out what to do and how to move forward.

There’s so much differing information out there on Lyme and even though I HATE taking antibiotics, I decided to do the 30 days that was recommended. I did NOT have a good response to them so I’m switching to a botanical medicine protocol.

It’s very interesting to me how much overlap there is in caring for yourself with autoimmune disease and caring for yourself with Lyme. It all always comes back to the same things - gut health, nervous system regulation, and anti-inflammatory everything. Since I’ve done all these things for years and really doubled down on them when I became sick, that has worked in my favor to help mitigate the Lyme symptoms.

The intense pain I had in the beginning passed (before I even began the antibiotics) and what I’m dealing with now is mostly the extreme fatigue, brain fog, anxiety, and depression, and if I get lax on taking care of myself (especially getting enough sleep) then some of the pain comes back.

They say Lyme is the Great Imitator and mimics other diseases - especially autoimmune disease. And since I already have one autoimmune disease, that’s why we assumed that it was autoimmune-related. But I’d urge anyone who is having weird symptoms, especially if migratory joint pain is involved, to get tested for Lyme - even if you don’t remember a tick bite and never had a rash. (My rash was nothing like the bullseye rash that they tell you to watch for at the site of a bite.)

Earlier this year, I’d planned to launch an autoimmune coaching program. Needless to say, that’s been put on hold until I figure this out and get it under control.

Eventually I’ll be able to use this experience and what I’ve learned to help more people as they navigate their own chronic illness. 💜

05/10/2026

In the first few years of learning to manage my autoimmune disease, the Phoenix Helix podcast was my lifeline. Eileen’s wisdom, grace, and resilience was a beacon of light in an otherwise dark and scary world that I was trying to figure out how to navigate.

A few years ago, she retired the podcast to focus on a childhood dream of hers: to write a novel. I was so sad to lose her voice in the podcasting world, but at the same time excited for her and the book she would produce.

I was lucky enough to be a part of her book launch team, and I absolutely adored Celestial River! If you’re looking for a fun, whimsical book that also has dramatic twists and turns, you should definitely check it out!

Here’s my review:
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I absolutely loved Celestial River! The way the story unfolded really draws you in to the life of the characters and the little town of Celestial River. A true sense of community and deep friendships are important here, and as those things become threatened the reader is taken on the journey to save them. With lots of twists and turns, this book is a page turner that sometimes had me cheering and other times groaning at the choices of the characters. As I neared the end, I wasn’t sure what the outcome would be but I loved it. I definitely recommend reading this debut novel, especially if you’re a lover of the Blue Ridge Mountains - I wish Celestial River was a real place that I could go!

You can get your copy on Amazon!

Functionally Whole

08/17/2026

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08/03/2026

07/26/2026

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