Ten Years from the Trail Head

There’s a photo attached to this post. In it, a 22-year-old girl is hugging her mom goodbye under the stone archway at Amicalola Falls, Georgia. (This is the unofficial marker of the beginning of the Appalachian Trail, a 2, 189 mile trek from Georgia to Maine.)

The date is April 1, 2016. Exactly ten years ago today.

Though smiling, I knew my mom was crying. I wasn't afraid she’d stop me, but we both knew a silent truth: the girl walking into those woods was not the same one who would eventually walk out.

What you can't see in that picture is the actual weight of what I was carrying. My pack weighed 35 pounds, a number I proudly thought meant I had done my research and was fully prepared. A few days later at Neels Gap, an experienced hiker did a "shakedown" of my gear, and I dropped 10 pounds of dead weight on the spot. It turns out, no matter how prepared you think you are, true healing always requires shedding heavy layers right from the start.

But the heaviest weight I carried wasn't my gear. It was my medical reality.

At that moment, my body was running on 800 mg of ibuprofen a day and a drug called Xeljanz, a heavy, pill-form targeted immunosuppressant for my Rheumatoid Arthritis. Walking under that archway was a radical, desperate leap to leave the endless cycle of specialists and symptom management behind and hope for the best. I was stepping onto a 2,189-mile footpath to figure out what I was made of.

Fast forward ten years to this morning.

The trees are budding, the morning air is shifting, and the undeniable energy of spring is everywhere. And out of nowhere, I was hit with a lightning strike of clarity.

For a long time, I’ve wanted to carve out a corner in the incredibly loud, saturated wellness space. I wanted to build something highly accessible, affordable, and actionable for people who are desperately searching for another way to navigate their autoimmune journey. This morning, I realized exactly how to weave it all together, and exactly what it needs to be called: Paced Healing.

If there is one thing the trail taught me, it’s that you cannot sprint your way to Maine. The conventional medical system is built on panic and quick fixes, suppressing the symptom as fast as possible so you can keep running on a depleted battery. But true healing requires the exact opposite. It requires slowing down. It is the steady, intentional of putting one foot in front of the other, listening to your body, and honoring the season you are in.

This space is the culmination of my lived experiences, a single resource that cross-references my Master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling, the raw grit of the trail, the life-saving impact of a profound nutritional reset, my devotion to regenerative farming and ancestral wisdom, and the deeply transformative work of birthing and mothering my children.

Let me be real: building this is chaotic. I am currently chasing after three feral yet beautiful young children. My creativity doesn't come in neat, scheduled blocks; it hits in wild, unpredictable bursts. Finding the time to sit down at this keyboard is a massive challenge. But the need to share the "white blazes" (the marks on the trees on the Appalachian Trail that tell you you're on the right path) is an itch that simply has to be scratched.

Through this blog, I’m going to pull back the curtain on my day-to-day life. I want to show you how I maintain my symptom-free health and protect the well-being of our home. I also think story telling is a powerful tool, I hope to share with you how I have gotten to this point and the core memories that have made me who I am.

Because here is what I know in my bones: I was always supposed to be a mother to these children. When a mothers soil is depleted and we are outsourcing our power to broken systems, the whole house feels the drought. But when a mother is deeply nourished, grounded in her sovereignty, and trusting her own intuition, the entire family thrives.

Ten years ago today, I walked into the woods to take charge of my life. Today, I am opening the doors to this space to help others to do the same.

Welcome to the trail. Let's get walking, at your pace!