Desert Healing
On paper, life looked beautiful. I was running a thriving non-toxic lifestyle store featuring some of the most iconic wellness and home brands, getting featured in magazines, and wrapping up an incredible design-build project. My days were full—balancing design meetings, sourcing materials, managing installations, and overseeing the final details of a home coming to life—all with my two little daughters often in tow. From the outside, it looked like everything I’d worked for was unfolding. Family. Business. Momentum.
But inside, I was unraveling.
Every day felt like a battle. I was losing weight so fast my clothes stopped fitting. My joints ached like I was decades older than I was. Fatigue settled into my bones. Insomnia kept me awake until I hallucinated. Anxiety and depression wrapped around me like a second skin.
And still, I kept pushing through.
I told myself this was what success looked like—that exhaustion and pain were just the price of building something meaningful. I ignored my body’s alarms until I couldn’t anymore. One year postpartum, I could no longer function. My body was in a full-on collapse. I felt electric—constantly buzzing with anxiety, panic, and dread. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t think, and no one could tell me why.
I was told it was hormones. Postpartum. Burnout. All the usual answers—none of them enough.
So I did something radical. Something that surprised even me.
I checked myself into a month-long wellness retreat in Sedona, Arizona.
Not for a reset. For survival.
Sedona was where everything changed.
Not because I got a diagnosis or a quick fix—but because I stopped waiting for someone else to save me.
The sweat lodges—the heat, the earth, the silence—reminded me my body was still mine.
The Wim Hof breathwork and plunges into cold taught me how to breathe again, how to find control in the middle of chaos.
Dr. Joe Dispenza’s work helped my nervous system believe it could heal.
For the first time, I wasn’t just surviving symptoms—I was learning how to come home to my body. I learned what power actually felt like. Not control. Agency.
I vividly remember sitting in one of the group gatherings, exhausted but open, telling the circle that I had a strong feeling I was meant to work with women. I didn’t know what it would look like yet—only that the pull was real.
Sedona planted the first seed of what would later become Outlaw Woman.
When I returned home, the clarity deepened. I found a functional doctor who finally listened. She ran the tests, gave me answers, and guided the path ahead.
A month later, I had names for what had been breaking me down:
Lyme disease.
Severe mold exposure.
And then came the final blow—the discovery of hidden mold in our home. Behind the walls. In the ducts. In the air we were breathing.
We had to gut the house. Rooms stripped to the studs. And still, more mold appeared.
What came next was harder—and more beautiful—than I could have imagined.
Learning to rebuild a home, a body, and a life from the inside out.
I’ll share more of that part of the story soon—the healing rhythms, the mold recovery, and what it really looked like to create safety again, room by room and cell by cell.
I’m not a doctor, and nothing here is medical advice. I share my journey in hopes that someone walking through something similar might feel less alone. Take what resonates, leave the rest, and always seek the care that’s right for you.
