Here is a little bit about me and my family. I am happily married to my best friend, my husband! We have been married for 12 years and have 4 awesome kids. My family is my reason for doing what I do!
I grew up in a small town, my home was surrounded by woods and fields and little did I know it, but I basically ate paleo. My dad was a rather devoted hunter and gardener. My mom often said that my dad would hunt anything that ran on 4 legs. Many a day we would dine on rabbit, squirrel, deer and the occasional quail or pheasant. My dad would often plant a rather large garden and our summer was spent assisting in minimal gardening chores, mainly pulling some weeds at times and picking corn, or green beans. Mom would spend countless hours in the hot kitchen canning our harvest for that year. I loved having fresh tomato juice or homemade grape juice from the grapes that my father grew. Mushrooms from the woods would often fill our plate in season, and the fresh taste of corn on cob was with us all year as my mom had perfected the art of putting up corn to preserve the sweet taste.
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| Me and my best friend! |
I went off to college and spent 7 years studying for my masters in speech pathology, with an emphasis on behavioral psychology and interest in sign language. College years were good, but my eating habits were nothing to write home about. I gained the freshman
I received a book some years later about health and natural cures. I couldn't believe what I was reading about the preservatives and chemicals that food companies put into our food supply. Hundreds of chemicals, well no wonder we are seeing such an influx of illness! I couldn't stop and I began snatching up every book that I could read, and searching the intranet for what I could do to help me be healthy. I started slowly eliminating bad foods and our toxic bleach and cleaning supplies, but I was still stick, albeit feeling a bit better. Upper respiratory infections, asthma, mood swings, fatigue, weight gain, bloating, and the list goes on. This was just not normal and certainly not how I wanted to live my life. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired.
Our second child was born and 2 months before his arrival, I came down with a chronic cold, with non stop coughing. I couldn't stop coughing, I was working long hours and taking care of our daughter on sleepless nights. I couldn't shake that cold. My OB begged me to take sleeping pills so that I could rest, and after much hesitation I gave in to extreme fatigue! While at work I had my final cough a cough that would change my life I suppose! Sound dramatic? I was almost 9 months pregnant, when I coughed so violently that I heard a loud popping noise, ( I was at work). That loud popping noise were my ribs, my intercostal muscles in my ribs had torn in two from the unceasing, relentless, merciless coughing that I had endured for 2 months. I was in immense pain, I couldn't catch my breath, I couldn't stand, and I had to drive home in rush hour traffic. Not really sure how I made it home, but by the grace of God I did. I spent the next 4 days on the couch in a sitting position with pillows all around me, trying to hold my breath every time I felt the next cough come on. I held on tight whenever I coughed because a shooting pain that felt like a hot knife tearing through my body would overcome me. 4 days later I went into labor and had my son. The labor pains over rode the torn rib muscles for sure! My son, was a sickly, chunky baby. Chronic diarrhea, eczema, dark circles under the eyes, very colicky baby who would cry 7 hours straight, (didn't want to be put down). He later began showing signs of absence seizures (which are frequent usual 20 second episodes of unawareness) he wouldn't snap out of it even with a pain stimulus. Very scary. We did have the EEG done which was about a 30 minute snap shot of his brain activity until he woke up and started ripping off the probes from his head. Unfortunately, we didn't get any seizure activity recorded, but I did provide videos to the neurologist of my son doing these staring episodes. The solution was to put him on a anti-seziure drug, but being only 12 months old, I wasn't sure I wanted to go that route, especially with no confirmed EEG. But, I knew that something was going on with my little guy, as going from activity to stopping with no response in a 12 month old was not normal. Luckily, our family doctor was a very understanding man, and allowed me to hold off on the meds, and try diet change to see if that would in fact alter the state we were currently fighting. I researched and researched and found a natural nutritionist, who owned a health food store. She talked to me extensively about food allergies and told me that she suspected an allergy to milk and possibly gluten. Bye went the gluten, bye went the milk, (after much kicking and screaming from me) and poof, my son's symptoms also went poof over a matter of months. It was hard to give up milk, as we were following the WAPF diet consuming raw milk etc. At the same time I noticed my daughters symptoms were also going away, symptoms I didn't realize or maybe just pushed aside because I was told that it was normal. She always had constipation, she always had a swollen distended belly.....well duh.....she was intolerant to wheat. Go figure.
It has been a journey, one of trying to reintroduce milk and gluten, to going back off of them, to limiting them to only a few meals a week....but non worked so well as total elimination!
I attended the world's fist online gluten summit, hosted by Dr. Tom O'Brian. Nine days of online courses from the leading world's experts on gluten. Boy was that life changing for me. I then realized that basically once one has an intolerance to gluten, well you basically always do and as for that matter, most people (the majority) can not digest gluten, leading to a whole host of health problems. I learned how gluten and casin can cause a whole host of GI issues as well as brain issues (cognitive, depression, seizures, chronic headaches etc). I knew that there was no choice, I had to get my whole family off gluten and move away from the WAPF diet to more of a paleo diet. This has been a struggle and no I am not perfect at it, but I hope that by blogging that someone may stumble over this blog and it will help them in one way or another!
We live in the country and homestead. Many think we are crazy for spending all this energy raising our own food, pasture raised pig, lamb, chicken and turkey but knowing what I know about the food we are now served and how toxic it is when you open that box or can of goodness and how that can lead to illness, we really can't look back! Knowing that we all feel better and rarely do get sick since we have been doing these changes, I can't look back! My family, my health are so important.
But for me here are the reasons why I do what I do! Why I homeschool, why I eat a crazy way!
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| Grandma enjoying some literature with my four little angels! |
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