About Me
Hello, my lovely readers!
I am so glad you decided to look further into my story and why I am so passionate about healthy, simple, and natural living.
I have always been interested in and adored the pioneer lifestyle of the 1800s. Something about striving to forge your living through good ‘ole fashioned hard work.
I loved the dresses, the gardens, the visual of plowing the field…
I love the Love Comes Softly Series. If I could recreate that romantic pioneer life, I would! And I am trying! I am working on increasing my skill set to bring together modern life and the romanticism of pioneering.
Like a lot of homesteaders, my story really begins with my health.
I had never really been a healthy kid.
I was a partaker of the Standard American Diet. I don’t remember being under 100 or even 200 pounds. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t lose weight. I put all of my self-worth in that one bucket, and I was struggling.
I tried diet after diet, exercise after exercise and I could never get the weight off. I would lose 10-20 pounds and then stall. And then it would come right back on.
Then I would gain more weight. I wrapped my self-worth so tightly around my weight. I thought I would never be attractive enough, or find a husband, or have a family.
Through living and growing older, I knew there had to be more.
There had to be more to life than being so sad and depressed that I wasn’t good enough. I decided that even if I never found a husband or had a family, I was going to make a change so that I could do more, become more, love more, and believe in myself more.
I needed to make a change for myself.
So, when I was 23, I decided to have gastric bypass surgery. And boy, am I so glad I had that surgery!
I finally felt alive!
Getting all that weight off truly made a massive difference in my life!
About a month after surgery, I got appendicitis and pancreatitis. At first my doctors and I thought that it was caused by the surgery just by the pure fact that things had been shifted around in there. Because I had pancreatitis a couple times before, it just made sense that my pancreas was throwing a fit.
After battling with complications of appendicitis for four months (including a 9-day hospital stay, and two abdominal drains) I was finally able to get my appendix out. They sent a biopsy of my appendix to the pathology lab to see if anything was abnormal.
Well, turns out I had appendix cancer.
This news distraught me for about 3 days before the oncologist told me that I already had the cure.
Surgery.
So, I was then left with this life altering mindshift. I was done working as an undervalued Cardiovascular ICU nurse. I was going to be a travel nurse so that I could get what I was worth.
Turns out, traveling for work is hard when you find your person! I met my husband a couple of weeks after surgery, and he weathered the storm with me. I traveled, we got married, and I traveled some more.
During my last assignment in Oregon, I had a lot of time to
myself. I immersed myself in homesteading, sourdough, canning, and food
preservation. I fell in love with homesteading more and more every single day.
But I was still having some issues. I was extremely burntout of nursing. There was just too much. Too much death, and not enough good.
Too much work, and not enough taking care of myself and moving my family
forward in a healthier way.
My body had issues that became more pronounced by the gastric bypass. I was more sensitive
to foods that I was already sensitive to. Especially milk and dairy. Through
research, following, and learning from other homesteaders, I found raw milk
and more healthy, whole foods.
I also started gardening, canning, grinding my own grains, scratch cooking, and
natural skin and body care along with many other things.
This gets us to today. I am trying to overcome the processed commercial foods that I am
surrounded by and trying to heal my body through whole foods.
I am just beginning this journey, like many of you out there.
So, join me on this journey!
