I have a few other things to celebrate, too.

I’m close to finishing my certification in The Practitioner Blueprint, which is an advanced blood chemistry course. It has radically improved my approach to my own health and the way I work with clients.

My reason for joining the course was selfish. My own health had plateaued and when I hired a functional medicine doctor to help me, her advice brought my body to an even worse place.

Fortunately for my fiercely independent “I’ll do it myself,” attitude, this course existed.

It’s unlike any program I’ve been in as a Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner.

When I watched the first module of the practitioner blueprint, I started crying. It wasn’t just that she was speaking the language of my body, she was actually showing me how to help myself.

When I told the functional med doctor I was in this course and what it covered, her response was, “you will likely learn more than I know.” It was actually an uncomfortable conversation and ended with her referring me out… aka not “wanting” to work with me any more.

At first I was emotional - like - I just went to the first functional practitioner i had been to in years… and similar to others i had seen along the way… she doesn’t know what to do with me?

It triggered an abandonment wound while simultaneously activating a bat shit crazy drive to prove I can figure this out. That I’m not broken. That I will show the world that healing is possible even when the odds are stacked against you.

From black mold, to trauma, to vaccine injury, to a complex genetic picture that makes healing my body more challenging than most...

I would find a way. And I would do it softer than I have ever done it before. Without rigidity, refusing to eat ice cream with my kids, or obsessing all the time.

I’d be lying if I said it has been easy or that I’ve been perfect in my attempts.

To research, study, troubleshoot, and heal at 38 with three small children and a business that’s been surviving on a kickboard since my last pregnancy has been.. hard. I’ve crumpled on the floor in tears too many times to count… only to find they watered my heart and urged me to keep going.

As I’ve begun to slowly implement the gentle strategies that this course teaches, with b vitamins, gallbladder support, minerals, and beyond…

I’ve already noticed subtle improvements in just a few weeks.

It’s not as fast as I want it to be. At all.

Like i wanna feel hawt healed and ready to rock.

But instead I am celebrating that my head is finally above water and i am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

My bloating is going down, I think my weight is finally starting to shift based on how my pants fit (in the no scale club and love it here), and my dysautonomia picture is starting to improve.

I feel like I’m coming up for gulps of air and that’s why i’m excited to share the good parts of last month.

Happy Things in June:

1. I got free pancakes with my family at Snooze. FYI if you sign up for their app you get a free flight of pancakes and they have gluten-free. The kids were so excited and it made my heart really happy.

2. I started working out with my best friend who lives in New Jersey. We are doing the Peloton total strength with Andy (iykyk) and I’m feeling stronger already despite not making it to every workout.

3. I started posting regularly on social media again. For some reason, my posts are really taking off on Facebook and one got 1.7 million views (it has nothing to do with my business but a win is a win).

4. We went to our special camp spot with our best friends. I’ve written about my friend Lillie before, and I just feel like my mom used angel magic to put her a block away. I’m really grateful we get to raise babies together.

   

5. We kicked off our monthly summer garden club in June. Truly another magical thing I get to be part of. The quirkiest, kindest people love to grow things and I’m here for it! One person hosts each month, gives us a tour of their garden, and we potluck snacks.

   

6. Hung out by the creek for Father’s Day. Life has been a little lifey lately, especially for my husband who is working his ass off. He comes home every night, eats dinner, helps put the kids down, then fires up his laptop to keep working until 1 AM. So we decided to spend a full day in the mountains. He biked around with the kiddos, we had a picnic, splashed, and then came home and he tried to teach the girls to ride bikes. It was a great dad day.

   

7. My sister and niece came to visit. She’s never been here in the summer before and I just loved taking her to my favorite spots. I will always wish life had kept us closer together geographically, but it makes these visits even more special.

8. I hit my first $1,000 estimated yearly income on Substack. I think the last time I felt this excited about something was 2018 Beautycounter. It has been really fun to serve my community and I am just hoping I can keep being a resource for people while also doing something I love.

9. I joined the Manifestation Challenge inside her app. I live for some good energy work and can feel my spidey senses coming back online.

10. My garden is growing and I have the sweetest little helpers who get excited about seemingly mundane things like the shade of strawberries changing, pink petals, and ladybugs.

    

What I bought in June

I really grapple with sharing what I’m buying because, quite frankly, I’m a little ashamed. But I always love when people spill the tea on what they purchased so I figured I’d do it, too. I’m a girl’s girl after all.

• I had four goals for June and one of them was to perfect my skincare routine. So I went to the Olive Tree People quiz to see if maybe I was missing something that could help me glow up a little. I ended up getting the Corrective Face Serum. It’s a potent antioxidant serum that helps overall glow for maturing skin. So far, I’m def feeling glowy. I also bought the pearl primer serum.

• Speaker - We had an old Bose portable speaker for about 10 years and it broke 3 years ago. For father’s day, I got my husband a new one that he’s only been subtly hinting he wanted for … 3 years. It was on super sale when I bought it but back up in price now. Flag it for later if you need one!

• Clothes - My body is in a weird place for the first time in a long time. It felt like overnight, i gained belly and hip fat that will not budge after taking antibiotics recommended by my (former) functional med doc. While I am not going to purchase a bigger wardrobe entirely, I did need a few things. I ended up getting three affordable items on amazon during prime day (boo, hiss) including this green and navy set that I’m low key obsessed with, these overalls (below) in blue and black, and some athletic shorts.

  

• Swedish Bitters - I had previously been using cholenest at the recommendation of my funcitonal med doctor, but in the program I’m in, the teacher recommends swedish bitters. They are SO STRONG. I can literally feel my gallbladder contracting after I take them. I got these at Whole Foods but will never do it again since they are on sale at iherb for $14 (linked)

Thank you so much for being here with me and reading the words I share each week. My goal is to deliver you high quality posts about health and spirituality that act as balm for your weary heart + body.

If you aren’t in a place to become a paid subscriber, your likes, comments, and shares can all help my work grow and reach more people!

Love you all!

Whitney

A gorgeous woman in a gorgeous kitchen with soft, expensive light, marble countertops, a little glass of something golden in her hand and walking you through all the “health foods” and products she will no longer allow into or on her body.

She holds each one up like she's delivering the closing argument in a murder trial.

The protein bar.

The chickpea pasta.

The prebiotic soda everyone and their mother is drinking right now (myself included).

The egg white wraps.

A children’s vitamin gummy, for the love of God.

Each one gets a flash of the ingredient label, a word circled in red, and a verdict…

This one has a gum (GASP!). This one has an added fiber (THE HORROR!). This one has a “natural flavor” (made in a lab!!!!!, she informs us, from hundreds of chemicals!!!!!!).

And this one contains citric acid, which she tells us, with total confidence, is “cultured from black mold.”

WHERE. DO. I. BEGIN.

You guys know me. I’m a holistic practitioner and I could spend the next three paragraphs walking you through why most of those red-circled ingredients are not the boogeymen she’s making them out to be.

But I’m not going to.

I was reading that post and I thought to myself ..”you could hand this woman a mother truckin’ apple and she would find something to be wrong with it.”

I don’t think this post was actually about food.

This woman lives by dogmatic rules around food and her body and confidently declares that others should, too.

HOW DID WE GET HERE?!?!

I want to talk about how we got here, because, I was THERE.

I came up in this industry of disordered eating culture wrapped up in a holistic health bow starting with my autoimmune diagnosis in late 2014.

I have a whole embarrassing back catalogue of my own rigid, more frightening years that I will spare you from (at least for now….)

But it was centered on removing foods and making myself feel guilty if I ever “messed up” by eating (god forbid) something cooked in seed oils.

It was fully centered on severe, long-term restriction around food to heal autoimmunity and similarly dogmatic rules that made me fear ingredients.

And the entire time, I was calling it health.

I never once thought it could be what it was — a disordered way of eating masked in wellness.

Otherwise known as Orthorexia.

An obsession with eating “purely,” “correctly,” “cleanly” that gets so big it starts to erode the life around you.

And what’s confusing to people is that it doesn’t look like the eating disorders we were taught to be scared of.

It looks responsible. It looks aspirational. It looks like the healthiest girl in the room ..which is EXACTLY why nobody intervenes.

However, I’ve sat across from women like the one who posted the ingredient takedown I shared…

Women who can’t eat at their best friend’s house anymore because she doesn’t know what oil was used. The one who packs a cooler everywhere she goes because there is nothing “safe” on a single menu.

The one who felt fear … like truly …the actual, physical, heart-pounding kind… being handed a slice of cake at her own daughter’s birthday, and then went to the bathroom and cried.

This is not health.

Even if the lack of symptoms make it feel that way.

And if the stakes are high (which they oftentimes are in cases of severe autoimmune symptoms… see my hair picture above) women convince themselves the payoff is worth it.

Underneath all of it is the same ancient story we just keep re-gifting to women …that your body isn’t good enough.

That somewhere out there is a perfect, pure, optimized, finally-safe way to eat, and if you could only be vigilant enough, disciplined enough, say no to enough things, you would finally arrive at the perfect body.

BUT what I really need to stress here is that — it’s never done.

Women with this form of disordered eating pattern will always find another symptom to obsess over and the list does not have a bottom.

Because the control was never about food.

It was about you not feeling good enough emotionally, aesthetically, and, yes, of course, symptomatically.

The best choice in this season of 2026 wellness culture is to loosen. your, grip.

To release the need to be perfect.

To stop chasing a body that literally just can’t exist in any more.

Of course the way you eat is important to your overall well-being.

Of course women with autoimmunity need a season of health that will require leaning into research, targeted supplements, and a nutrient dense diet….

But the key is learning how to find balance without extremes.

And if your life is centered on restriction and obsession with certain ingredients to the point that you miss out on a birthday party because you’d get a little “bloated” or “achy”…

or you refuse to relieve yourself from the pressure of cooking every night by opting for an occasional frozen pizza or gluten-free chicken nugget …

Then I think the bravest, most radical wellness move you can make right now is to hold your health a little softer.

Loosen the grip.

Let “healthy” go back to meaning a body you nourish well instead of a body you are constantly seeking to optimize.

Let it mean the chickpea pasta on a tired Tuesday because it’s easy.

I’m not asking you to stop caring about your food… like.. obviously, I care so much about mine, it’s my whole entire life’s work.

I’m asking you to start noticing the difference between care and fear.

Because they’re dressed in exact same outfit but only one of them has been walking off with your joy.

So the next time one of those posts find you—— I hope you can filter it through the lens of doing health softer.

And then I hope you go make yourself something to eat.

Always rooting for ya,

Whitney

That’s how most good things in my life have started, honestly.

A few months earlier, an acquaintance had asked if I wanted to join her network marketing team and I’d said absolutely not, I am not a Mary Kay girl, hard pass. She just laughed and dropped it. Didn’t bring it up again. I was the one who texted her a few weeks later asking if we could grab coffee.

We sat down and I said, okay, I’ve been thinking about this. And her eyes lit up — I could see the celebration happening behind them.

But even as I was talking myself into it, I was already talking myself back out of it. Should I really be doing this? Will people think I’m one of those people? What will my husband think?

I left that coffee undecided and went back to my life in the dark office and my blinking cursor — and I just thought, you know what, why the hell not. I pulled out my credit card and spent $50 to become a clean beauty consultant.

What happened next is the part that’s most important.

I started binging the CEO’s trainings online and I got completely hooked. She had built this company specifically for people like me — people who had lost someone to cancer, people with chronic illness, people who were trying to get pregnant and couldn’t figure out why their body was fighting them.

She believed that what we put on our bodies mattered as much as what we put in them and she was on a mission to prove it. And if there is one thing about me, it is that I am completely, entirely, 100% mission driven. If I don’t feel emotionally tied to something, I cannot talk about it.

But if I’m excited? I could sell wood to a tree.

So I started talking on Instagram about the mission — just the mission, not the business, not the income opportunity, just why this company existed and why I cared — and people started asking questions and to my shock and surprise — buying! I made my first commission. Fifty dollars.

I held that check in my hands in the dim overhead light of our fixer-upper kitchen and thought, I just made my own money doing something that felt easy and fun. More please.

About a month later I came home from my honeymoon, walked into an all company meeting, and listened to the new CEO say that they were going to be laying off most of us and we’d be required to stay for the six remaining months if we wanted our stocks to vest.

I went back to my desk genuinely wondering if I’d had a stroke or something. But I hadn’t. The universe was just, very. very. very. very loud and it was time for me to keep following the breadcrumbs it was laying out for me.

I went all in that summer on my education and my network marketing business. . Invested everything into Beautycounter and into nutrition school simultaneously, and ended up graduating with my nutrition certification the week after i stopped getting my Chipotle HQ paycheck.

Thanks to my network marketing business, I had a bridge. I had something to stand on while I built everything else from the ground up.

That $50 turned into $500. Then $2,500. I built a team, learned how to coach women, learned how to show up for people in a way that actually meant something, and eventually had months where my paycheck was sometimes $6,000.

Not by harassing anyone.

Not by convincing people to buy things they didn’t need or want.

Just by genuinely caring about the mission and the products and the women I got to work alongside.

It felt like a dream job. And within the first year, I even got invited to an exclusive leadership conference. I remember thinking, “wow — this is the first time in my life that anyone has believed in me.”

Unfortunately, the story of my former job ended up repeating itself in this scenario, too. A new CEO took over once the company went public and he drove it into the ground.

Eventually, the company shut down and poof — 40% of my monthly income evaporated overnight.

I want to pause here because I think this is where people get it wrong about network marketing — the assumption is that women who do it are desperate or gullible or just don’t know any better.

That it’s something you warn your friends away from.

That the whole thing is a scam dressed up in a pink bow.

But here’s what I experienced: a flexible income I built myself. A community of women who showed up for each other. Skills…. like how to sell, how to lead, how to coach, how to have conversations that actually help people. And a sense of ownership over my own financial life that I had never felt sitting in that dark office.

And for the record, pyramid schemes are illegal. (although, I’d argue the US government is one but that’s a newsletter for another day)

Actual pyramid schemes — the ones with no real product, where the only money being made is from recruiting more people in — are a federal crime.

What I was part of was a compensation structure where I earned 25-35% commission on products I personally sold, and a small percentage of sales made by the women on my team — not taken from their earnings, not from their personal purchases, just a percentage of what they sold, the exact same way any sales manager in any corporate structure gets compensated for their team’s performance.

The difference being that in my corporate job, my salary was capped at $50k while the CEO made an unlimited amount of money based on the work of the people below him.

I’m not saying network marketing is perfect.

There are bad companies and predatory structures and people who will absolutely make you feel like garbage about your sales numbers.

You have to be discerning. But the blanket dismissal — the eye roll, the warning, the “oh honey” — that’s not discernment. That’s just the way we’ve been taught to respond when women try to build something outside of the systems that were never designed to support them in the first place.

The economy right now is genuinely insane. Organic free range eggs cost $9. Rent is inaccessible. Salaries haven’t kept up with anything. And women — especially mothers, especially women who stepped back or scaled down or made themselves smaller to hold their families together — are absorbing that in ways that don’t get talked about enough.

Network marketing has historically grown during economic downturns. Not despite the hardship but because of it — because when traditional employment becomes unstable or just flatly insufficient, people look for something they can build on their own terms, with their own hours, around their own kids’ school schedules.

I’m actually looking again right now at a company called Monat. It’s another clean beauty company, no join fee, which honestly removes a barrier I’ve seen stop a lot of women before they even start — and I’m paying attention. Because I know what it felt like to hold that first $50 check. And I know what it felt like when it was gone.

If you’ve ever been embarrassed or judgy about a friend who sells something on Instagram, or talked yourself out of trying something because you didn’t want to be that girl — I just want you to consider where that feeling actually comes from.

Because I don’t think it’s really about the products.

I think it’s about your conditioning, and I challenge you to move past your preconceived notions of network marketing so you can actually start supporting your friends who are trying to build something meaningful.

Xo,

An ex-network marketing girlie

Have you ever tried network marketing or have complicated feelings about it? I genuinely want to hear! Drop it in the comments.

It’s not that my life is like — bad — it’s just that it has felt overwhelming.

A lot of the tools and coping skills I used to use religiously went to the wayside.

Instead of waking up and meditating or listening to my recorded hypnosis, I would wake up panicked.

What did I need to do for my kids? Were lunches packed? Bottles made? are my girls getting enough milk? Am I feeding my son enough vegetables? How much time do I have to pump between clients today? Are my ads profitable? Am I too overweight for people to trust me as a nutritionist? What if my grandma dies? Why is it so hot outside? Will there be enough water for my kids to grow old?

My brain became wired for panic because every day felt like something was on fire.

I remember sobbing to my husband one night. “I can’t do this it’s like someone always needs me at the same time.”

“Have you heard of a triage nurse?” he asked…. “they know they can’t help everyone so they have to help the one that needs the most help first.”

Um… excuse me?

I knew that he meant well, but the weight of being a mother in the 21st century had its claws in me.

I had to be everything to everyone at every moment.

And even though I am obviously helping the kid who needs me the “most” in each situation, I still know there’s one waiting after that, and after that.

It was like a symphony of people needing me. It never ended. A whack-a-mole of problems to be solved.

And if it wasn’t my children, it was my clients.

I have this knack for onboarding very complex cases. And most of my clients are brilliantly wonderful, considerate, beautiful humans…

But there were a few at that time who refused to respect my boundaries. One who would message me places I specifically requested they not message me.

On weekends — at night — flooding my inbox, my instagram messages… who held the cost of my program over my head as an excuse to trample my boundaries.

Asking if I had “taken on too many clients” because I wasn’t responding to their 15 consecutive messages with a 3 paragraph essay.

Meanwhile, I had babies clinging to my legs while I was trying to cook dinner. My son was yelling “look at me, look at me!”

I couldn’t be everything to everyone… but it didn’t feel optional, you know? I had to keep going.

I’ll never forget my husband and I’s first vacation after the girls were born. They were almost a year old and we were flying to Maine for his best friend’s wedding. Before the plane even took off, my husband turned to me and said, “I kind of miss the kids already.”

Rage gripped my heart while grief swelled in my belly. I wanted to throw something at him. How could there be an ocean between our experiences of parenthood?

I’d grown each one of them inside of me. Been torn apart, sewn back together. Gave them every last ounce of me.

And he got to miss them. And I didn’t. And that felt really unfair.

We had the best weekend. We laughed, ate lobster and fresh muscles, drank cocktails, spent time by the water, had sex without fearing someone would interrupt. It was such a relief to be alone.

On the flight back, somewhere over the Midwest, my chest started tightening. I was looking out the window at the clouds when suddenly I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t stop crying. My husband asked if I was okay and I couldn’t even answer him.

I’d just had this weekend of feeling like myself, not just Mom — and now I was flying back into a life where I was drowning.

I didn’t know if I could survive it.

I love my kids, deeply. But I was too overwhelmed to like them. I was on autopilot, white-knuckling my way through every single day and the thought of stepping back into that world threatened to collapse the delicate structure that was holding me up.

Every day had turned into an ache I barely had time to bear witness to.

I’d look at my babies perfect faces, their reaching hands, and feel nothing but the weight of how much they needed from me. And then I’d feel shame in that.

I loved them. I did.

But I was drowning and no one was throwing me a life raft.

For anyone who cares — I’m doing a lot better now.

With older age comes less dependence on me.

My girls will be 3 next month, and my son is newly 5, and I am so grateful to be out of the stage where I couldn’t take a step without someone calling my name or clinging to me.

But at the same time, there’s grief in it. I feel this tug on my heart when I see how big they’ve become and realize how much i missed out on when they were tiny because I was drowning.

I envy the women who have one infant at a time and had the opportunity to savor the baby snuggles, to be smitten, to cherish the little moments they’ll never get back.

I also realize how much the chaos of those early years has left a lasting impact on my nervous system and rewired my brain and body. I am actively working on untangling that - day by day.

Subscribe now

If you are in the early season of motherhood (especially if you’re a mother with twins or chronic illness) I hope you know you are seen — and that you are enough.

Xo,

Whitney

And I definitely didn’t want that person’s handwriting to be my mother’s.

After she died, I fell apart. I unraveled. I dissolved into a version of non self. It’s like I look back on it now and I’m floating above, watching myself starve all day and eat all night, binge drink, smoke pot, sleep until 11 AM and start it again the next day.

I dropped out of college.

Fell in love with a boy who wouldn’t love me back but kept me around.

And the funny thing is, I needed him.

Not in the sense that he was filling some void (although, he probably was), but in the sense that he did something very specific that made me leave.

He told me he wanted to join Americorps.

At the time, I had never considered leaving Chicago. I didn’t see a way out as a clinically depressed college drop out just trying to survive.

But as soon as he mentioned it, I decided to apply.

Not because I really wanted to, but because I thought maybe that would make him love me.

I ended up stumbling toward my own life while I was trying to follow his.

When I got my acceptance letter, it definitely didn’t make him love me.

But it did help me find the love I was searching for all my life.

And it wasn’t even a romantic love.

When I joined americorps, I was sent to Denver and put on a team of 10 people who came from all over the nation. And they came to know me at the rawest time of my life when I hated myself more than most people could know is possible.

I lived with them, I worked with them, I partied with them, crossed the country with them.

And they saw me at my worst. And they saw me at my best. And somehow, they still loved me.

And not conditionally.

It was the kind of love most people expect to receive from their family, but I never felt like I did.

Their love fueled me towards becoming who I am today, but it did not heal me.

Because I still kept searching for something to fill the void of loneliness that my mother hard carved into my being and died before there was time to repair.

I did go back to college (thank god) and found myself in jobs where I was underpaid, under valued, and stressed.

It was a pattern. I felt myself magnetized towards situations that reinforced the belief that I wasn’t good enough. That i was broken. That I was unlovable.

And finally my body just gave up.

I started losing my hair in patches, felt myself physically shutting down by 1 PM. It was as if my cells had finally gotten the memo from my brain that I was worthless and decided to follow suit.

And no matter how many doctors I went to, no one could tell me what to do about it.

I was offered topical solutions like steroid injections or “wait until it gets worse so we can medicate you.”

And that’s when I knew I had to fight for myself because no one else was going to.

Having and healing chronic illness is a spiritual experience. It cracks open parts of you that you didn’t know existed.

It’s a grief that’s inherently different than the grief of losing someone. Because your vessel, your body bag, the thing you exist inside every single day has betrayed you.

So there’s literally nowhere else to go, and nothing else to do. There’s no escaping it.

You have to sit down into the chair of your own life and examine what got you there. It’s uncomfortable. it’s sticky. It’s fucking brutal.

But after doing this work for 7 years, I see the women who come out on the other side and they are more deeply rooted in who they are. They’ve cut through the bullshit and the beliefs and the scarcity mindset that led them there.

And they get up. And they care for themselves. And in caring for themselves, they are caring for every human being they come into contact with each day.

Because the love you give when you are broken is so much different than the love you give when you are whole.

My mom sent me a postcard from Niagara Falls in 2007. It said “Wish you were here.”

Two years later, she was gone.

I got her handwriting tattooed on my ribs because I wanted to carry her with me.

Wish you were here.

To see this body that works again. To witness this life I built from the rubble. To watch the softness I give myself. To see the generational curses I broke for both of us.

That’s what this space is.

It’s a multifaceted bubble of grief and healing.

A love letter to her, to me, to you.

A postcard from the other side. A hand held out, beckoning you to keep going.

Before I do that, I want to just point out that the world is a mess right now and I am struggling to show up for my family, my community, and myself.

If that’s how you feel, too, you aren’t alone.

I keep trying to remember that caring for myself is resistance in these times.

My bare minimums to stay afloat: drink enough water, take my supplements, eat well, and go on short walks.

Some days all of those happen, some days one.

Usually the walking gets cut off first.

Then the minerals.

Then the other supplements.

Then the water intake.

And my pee was problematically dark this morning— in case you’re wondering where I’m at.

I’m trying to figure out how to find balance if this is our new normal.

I cannot spend every day dog paddling through grief, being slammed with tidal waves of ache every time I open up social media.

I have to pay my bills.

I have to tend to and nurture my babies.

I have to be patient with the people I love.

I have to feed my family and get groceries and respond to client emails and get to school pickup on time.

And I have to do all of it without collapsing.

Even though that feels extremely out of touch.

How could you not collapse at a time like this?

I gave my girls a bath this morning and thought, “what if they come for us next?”

As minds do, it imagined the worst.

All of us hiding in the closet

Men with guns.

In my head I thought, “I hope if they come for us, they do it quickly and all at once.”

I’ve been wondering where I will hide my neighbors.

I’ve been replaying the video of the Door Dash woman hiding in the families basement as the Native American woman’s baby slept.

How they led her to slaughter by releasing her to the agents outside her door, crying “this is everything I’m against but I have a baby.”

Never again really is right now. Right in front of us. Actively being filmed on camera.

And I feel so helpless.

And I feel so hopeless.

But I have to carry on.

So I gave my girls a bath.

And I guess now I'm going to tell you about my skincare routine. </3

This was my face in october.

It was feeling so dry, raw, and flakey.

I had seriously neglected myself after a year of hardship — one that began with throwing out my back for a month.

Saying it like that sounds flat compared to what actually happened. A locked up body so painful I had to crawl to get places. My husband dressing me while I sobbed into his shoulder. The visceral heartache of watching my children cry for me while I couldn’t hold them.

It ended with a full blown mold remediation that put us into deeper debt.

I was shriveled up — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

But I really wanted to take care of myself. I wanted something in my life that felt like true self-care. And honestly? I wanted to feel good in my body again. I had gained around 13 lbs, my skin was flaking off, and I was a shadow of the woman I used to know and love.

I asked myself — what’s something that feels special and nourishing but easy to do? Something that makes you feel like you’re actually taking care of you?

I thought back to the years when I used nice skincare, which I hadn’t purchased in a long time. I really hadn’t been caring for myself beyond making sure I was eating foods that weren’t inflaming me.

So October was the month I decided to splurge just a tiny bit. Get myself some products that felt luxurious, would help bring life back to my skin, and give me something that felt like it was just for me.

Here’s where we’re at now:

This skincare ritual has given me something special for myself and I’m loving the way my skin feels and glows.

I’m currently using two different brands that I really like.

Counter — this is the rebranded Beautycounter (it’s no longer network marketing, which is tragic because I would love to be part of another MLM with a strong mission and ethics — pitch me, girls!). These are environmentally conscious products with very high standards for ingredient safety. I trust them with my life.

The two I’m using:

Retinatural Advanced Super Serum — basically a natural retinol without the risks of actual retinol creams (higher skin cancer rates) and it doesn’t dry out my skin the way other OTC retinols have. I tried some other brands that made my skin so sensitive. This one doesn’t.

Supreme Cream — a pillowy cloud on your skin that is deeply hydrating. I love how luxurious it feels.

Oliveda — I have mixed feelings on this brand. It’s a network marketing company based out of the UK, so they have higher standards for ingredients than most stuff in the US. They call it “bioactive” skincare, meaning the ingredients are living and active — derived from olive trees and designed to penetrate the skin rather than just sit on top of it.

My mixed feelings with Oliveda stem from how the sheer volume of available products are confusing to navigate, and the packaging leaves something to be desired (though it’s all glass and recyclable, which is nice).

That being said, the products work very, very, very well once you know what works for you.

I’m currently using the F25 Neroli Face Oil after my retinatural and before the supreme cream. It absorbs beautifully without feeling greasy and my skin totally drinks it up.

I’m considering ordering some of their new makeup to try, too, but trying to keep it simple and use what I have for now.

That’s it. Nothing fancy. Just a few minutes morning and night that feel like mine.

I linked the products below if you want to check them out.

Thank you so much for being here.

Xo,

Whitney

I’ve often been mesmerized by magic.

And not just Harry Potter and my ever-growing list of romantasy novels.

Subscribe now

I mean the kind of magic I believe courses through every person’s veins.. that innate intuition that tells us what to do and where to go that we’re often taught to dismiss.

As I’ve been healing from mold and focusing intentionally on regulating my nervous system, I’ve been flooded with memories from my past that I didn’t previously have access to. (Fascinating. More to come so make sure you subscribe to hear about it.)

Subscribe now

The most recent one that surfaced was a spring day in Chicago. I had just dropped out of college due to substance abuse and visited a used bookstore with a few high school friends. I walked in and was immediately surrounded by the soft smell of old pages and floor-to-ceiling shelves of tattered covers.

There were two stories of narrow aisles that would cause anyone with claustrophobia to have a panic attack. It felt as if the owner tried to cram as many words as possible into every crevice..

Without really looking for it that day, I found myself pulled toward the religion and spirituality section. Topics that have fascinated me since I was a child.

And then I felt the urge to do something you may find a little dramatic….

I closed my eyes in the middle of a public book store lol.

I ran my fingers along the spines letting something guide me.

My hand stopped on a Raam Daas text (be here now) and I opened it to a random page that included this quote:

“Everything in your life is there as a vehicle for your transformation.”

And I remember it was exactly what I needed in that moment.

It was relief for my heart. And maybe finding it was a little bit of magic, too.

Some people would call that coincidence. Perhaps some would call it god/spirit/the universe. I don’t feel the need to argue with any of it — I just know that whatever I felt was bigger than me.

That pull is why I ended up in my first women’s circle — an earth-based, spirituality-focused weekly gathering that completely changed my life. One of the earliest lessons we explored was the idea of ritual as medicine.

Not ritual as something rigid or mystical or performative, but more like ritual as rhythm and a repeated act that anchors us.

A practice that helps us return to ourselves.

So when the “13 wishes” ritual started appearing everywhere on Instagram for me (literally reel after reel after reel)… I was like, “maybe it’s intuition, or maybe it’s the algorithm, but I’m drawn to this and want to explore it.”

And I thought you, dear reader, might love it, too.

But before I share it.. I wanted to explore where it came from, both to avoid cultural appropriation and to give credit where it’s due!

What I found is that this 13 wishes ritual I was reading about is actually known as The Rauhnächte and is described as “time between the years.”

It takes place during the winter stretch that spans the nights between Christmas and Epiphany.

Epiphany, celebrated on January 6, comes from a Greek word meaning “manifestation” or “revealing.” In Christian tradition, it marks the moment the Magi arrived to see the infant Jesus — symbolizing insight, awakening, and recognition. But culturally, Epiphany also became a kind of closing threshold: the end of the Christmas season and a return to ordinary life.

From what I’m understanding, this period was rich with ritual and folklore.

In Italy, Epiphany is associated with La Befana, a gift-giving figure who delivers treats to children

In Ireland, it’s known as Women’s Christmas, a day when women traditionally rested after weeks of holiday labor (can we please bring this back?!?!?!).

In other regions, people chalked symbols on doorways for protection, sang carols to bless homes, or even took cold winter swims as a form of cleansing.

What ties all of these traditions together is the same idea: this is a liminal time — a pause between what has been and what is coming.

In Rauhnächte folklore, the veil between the ordinary and spiritual worlds was believed to be thinner, dreams were thought to carry messages, and the slower pace of winter invited reflection rather than action.

Each of the twelve nights was symbolically linked to one of the twelve months ahead.

What I’m understanding is that the viral 13 wishes ritual grew out of this seasonal framework.

Each night, a wish is offered up to your angels, ancestors, guides, god.. and whatever wish you wrote that is left on the thirteenth night is meant for you to bring to fruition.

Below I’m describing the exact way I am implementing this ritual (I’m starting on christmas night but you can start at any point!), so you can do it alongside me if you feel pulled to this as well.

The 13 Wishes Ritual

What you’ll need:

• 13 small slips of paper (or one page you can tear into pieces)

• A pen

• A small bowl, jar, or envelope

• A candle and fire-safe dish or a bowl of water

• Five minutes daily you can do this

Step 1: Reflect and write your wishes

Write one wish per piece of paper.

Let some be practical and some be tender hopes. Typically, being more specific and clear allows you to bring things forward with more ease.

I ended up being a bit vague with my wishes on the formal wish paper, but wrote a journal of each one with things that would make the wish feel tangible in my life...

For instance, underneath “spend money without guilt” I wrote “feel confident covering groceries for someone at the grocery store checkout each month who is elderly, disabled, or has small children.”

Under “get paid to be myself” I put grow my substack paid subscription revenue to 1k/month.

Step 2: Fold them up and place them somewhere
Fold each wish so you can’t see it, and place all thirteen into your bowl or jar somewhere special in your house. Under the christmas tree, on your altar, etc.

Step 3: Choose your twelve nights
Traditionally, the ritual is practiced during the nights between Christmas and Epiphany. But many people start it on the winter solstice (dec 21 — so this will have passed by the time I publish this post) or on Dec 30th.

If you start on December 25, great.
If you start on December 30 because you’re tired and traveling, also great.

Just pick 12 consecutive nights!

Step 4: Release one wish each night
Each night, pull one folded wish from the bowl — without even looking at it — and release it using one of the following methods:

• Fire: Burn the paper safely and slowly, watching it turn to ash.

• Water: Place it in a bowl of warm water and let the ink dissolve.

• Earth: (my personal favorite) Bury it in soil or under a plant.

The method matters less than the action.

When I’m done, I will close with a simple phrase:
“I release this wish to the earth and my ancestors” But you could release it to god, guides, angels, the universe, etc.

Step 5: Keep the thirteenth wish
After twelve nights of burying, burning, dissolving your wish, you’ll have one left.

You don’t release this one because it’s for you to bring to fruition this year while you trust that the others will be held and moved forward by those you asked to keep it.

I’m planning to put it somewhere visible or in my wallet so I regularly see it and remember it.

I hope this is something fun you can do by yourself or with a loved one as we move into a year that will (fingers crossed) hopefully bring all of us a renewed sense of hope.

Are you planning to do this or do you have a favorite ritual this time of year? Let me know in the comments —

—or share one thing you’re hoping to tend to this year!

With so much love and gratitude to you for being here,

Whitney

Before we dive in….

I’m giving away a free 1:1 nutrition session. This includes a 90-minute health history review, a functional symptom assessment, a tailored diet + supplement protocol for your 2025 goals, plus a month of email access for questions (valued at $597).

Here’s how to easily enter:

1. Download the Substack app
   (It’s the easiest, coziest way to read my newsletter— and where our little community is growing.

2. Every action you take inside the app = entries to win this free nutrition session:
   ❤️ Like any post of mine — 1 entry
   💬 Comment on a post — 5 entries
   🌟 Upgrade to paid ($5/month for exclusive articles) — 20 entries

Subscribe now

Tv Series: Have you heard of the Diplomat with Kerri Russel on Netflix? If you like political drama, “who dunnit” energy, and cliffhangers that leave you wanting more, then you’re gonna wanna binge seasons 1-3 of the Diplomat.

Work Friends: I listened to this specific episode that interviews Gregg Renfrew, who founded Beautycounter. She shares the story of how she lost everything she built and then rescued her dream when the odds were against her.

This skincare splurge is helping hydrate my skin so much. The product uses a natural form of retinol alongside peptide therapy to nourish skin without irritation. After just 20 days and 2 products, I saw noticeable softening in my fine lines.

Here is a cart with the exact products I used — so you don’t even have to search for them on the website!

While I typically try to buy organic when it comes to things we have in our home, I’ve had to be a bit lenient this time due to finances (I share how much our multiple tens of thousands remediation cost here in case you’re nosey like I am).

Costco Pillows (they are great)

100% Cotton Duvet Cover - for our bed in chocolate brown

Cafe at the Edge of the Woods - this is a cute book we borrowed from the library and then bought as a gift

Sauna Blanket - I am in the middle of gently detoxing mold, lead, and BPA, so I bought a sauna blanket from this brand (not the red light one omg i wish!).

I started reading Romantasy novels immediately after the 2024 election. I was having a major identity crisis because I love and deeply believe in the healing power of holistic healthcare, but I would die before I voted for a Trump ticket. The two groups I most identify with (holistic health space, liberal dems) were talking shit about each other, and I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere in the online space.

So what did I do? I got offline and read 24 Romantasy novels.

I’m currently reading From Blood and Ash. Have you read it?

When You Don’t Recognize Your Own Body

A Version of You That Doesn’t Exist Any More

When Everything Feels Impossible

Stuffed Acorn Squash Recipe

What We Ate This Week (copy my meal plan and grocery list)

Instant Pot Beef Stew

How do you keep going when you want to give up?

I’ve been asking myself this question a lot lately.

What do you do when hope feels out of reach?

Feelings of grief are not foreign to me.

I still vividly remember sitting in our living room, afternoon light filtering through the windows like it was any other day, when I found out my mom’s cancer was back.

I remember the nonchalant tone in my doctor’s voice when she casually told me I had an autoimmune thyroid condition — as if my body wasn’t failing to do its only fucking job.

I remember the drop in my stomach when I saw the mold remediation quote that would help my body but break our bank account.

From losing my mom at 21, to being diagnosed with autoimmunity at 26, to living in toxic mold two separate times in my 30’s… grief and rebuilding have threaded themselves through every decade of my life.

Lately, I’ve been circling back to these memories, trying to understand how I grew from the version of me who couldn’t see the way out into the one who actually made it.

Subscribe now

I know what it’s like to wake up and wonder how you’re supposed to keep going.
To feel like you’re hanging on by a thread.
To forget who you were before things fell apart.

In each of these situations, I had:

Spiraling thoughts.
Untrue beliefs that nothing could get better.
Immense feelings of being out of control.

My grief around my mom got easier to carry.

I reversed my autoimmune symptoms of agonizing fatigue, weight gain, and aggressive hair loss after just 4 months.

I identified, remediated, and detoxed mold so I could get pregnant.

All of these things felt impossible when I was in them.

I didn’t feel strong. I didn’t feel brave. I just kept going because I had to.

If you’re in a place in your life, your health, or the world where you’re feeling hopeless too, I want you to know that you aren’t stuck.

When you are deep in your grief and think nothing will ever get better, shifts happen from an accumulation of tiny moments that feel insignificant.

Some days that will just be getting out of bed.
Other days it will be making the appointment.
Other days it will be writing the newsletter like I am today.

Hope does not need to be a grand gesture. In fact, you might be uncomfortable with how microscopic it is.

It’s built through knowing a different life is possible and refusing to marinate in the one you don’t want.

One day, I promise, you’ll look back and be grateful to the version of you who kept going.

If you relate to this post in any way, please put a heart on it or let me know how it found you in the comments. These seemingly meaningless interactions will help others find my work.

Subscribe now

Xo,

Whitney

This one’s for anyone trying to find tenderness inside a changing body.

I’m committed to using Substack to model the process—not just the product. Not the “I’m instantly better, it was so easy, buy my program!!!” version of healing. The real one. The messy middle that I am still actively wrapped in.

❤️ If it lands, tap the heart or leave a note so I know I’m not alone in this.

The Now

I am fat.
My body is not where I want it to be.
She shifts and grows and moves, and I’m not sure I recognize her anymore.

What happened? I wonder, as my tummy folds over my jeans and my leggings puff out over the faint line of my C-section scar.
I don’t want to be here right now.
I don’t want to be in this body today.
I just want to feel better.

But then it’s time—
to drop off the kids,
see clients,
pick them up,
make dinner,
rake the leaves,
find winter clothes,
pack for vacation.
Is it 10 p.m. already?

Where is the softness and slowness of life?
I ache for it—for a breath, a long, deep breath where I can tend to my body, my heart, my mind.
A slowness I’m not sure exists in the throes of early motherhood.
A slowness I desperately need if I’m going to heal in ways that last forever.

Can healing last forever?
I wonder that sometimes.

I teeter between “yes, tend, honor, care” and “fuck it, we’re all going to die” more often than I’d like to admit.

What I want

It’s early morning.
The sun is just peeking over the trees.
A mug of coffee warms my hands as steam curls above the rim.
I sit in the coziest corner of the couch, socks soft, blanket tucked over my lap.
I open a new journal and write: June 1st, 2026.

I write what I want from this life and what I will do with my day.
I call in my ancestors—the medicine women before me—and listen for what they have to say.

I breathe. I feel.
I hear the pitter-patter of small feet coming toward me.
We hug and cuddle until hunger wins.

Breakfast smells like oats cooked in bone broth and sprinkled with desiccated liver, a drizzle of honey on top.
The kids make silly jokes, giggling across the table. Their laughter is proof that the world is still good.

Later, we scramble eggs in butter and sit together as sunlight pours into the kitchen.
No one complains.
Everyone eats.
Dad kisses my forehead and thanks me for the morning.

We move through our routine unrushed.
I drop my son at school, we do our secret handshake, and I head home to get dressed.

My soft denim jeans slide with ease, no panic.
A tank top, belt, earrings.
Simple.
I feel like myself.

I stop by the coffee shop to work.
I open my Substack dashboard: $10K months.
It feels light, easy, deserved.
Women are healing—truly healing.

My course is helping them reclaim their energy, their confidence, their bodies.
They’re fitting into jeans like me, but more than that—they’re fitting into their lives again.

I meet a friend for lunch.
We don’t talk about money or stress.
We talk about beauty, our kids, the projects that light us up.
No complaining. Just growth and gratitude.

Later, yoga.
I trust my body again.
She bends, she stretches, she flows.
No pain.
I wear the crop top without thinking about it.
Just me, feeling grounded, grateful, and luminous.

We end the day together—grilling chicken wings in the early summer evening, eating salad and veggies, laughing around the table.
Everyone loves vegetables. Everyone’s happy.

The truth

Maybe I’m not there yet.
I’m somewhere between resentment and reverence.
But I can see her—the version of me who breathes deeper, moves slower, and loves this body as if she’s never betrayed her.

And maybe the only way to get there
is to keep showing up in the body I’m in now—
It’s not always easy, but it’s always worth it.

Wish You Were Here is a love note to everyone coming home to themselves after years of chronic illness. Part musings and part tactical wellness tips, you get access to my brain and my heart. Paid subscribers keep this possible, so please consider upgrading your subscription for just $5/month.

Subscribe now

And if you can’t become a paid subscriber, liking, commenting, or sharing my work is the next best thing you can do to support.

Thanks for being here.

Xo,

Whit

There was a point in my journey where I couldn’t even tolerate trauma therapy modalities like EMDR..

They were too triggering.

I would leave my therapists office sinking into a sea of painful memories, frantically searching for a life vest no one was tossing me.

By the time I got home, I’d crash out on my bed for days. Skipping class and work, distracting myself with Gilmore Girls reruns until I dreamt about Lorelai bringing me coffee.

Subscribe now

So instead of forcing healing through EMDR, I started slowly (and unknowingly) building resilience.

In 2017, I joined my first women’s circle where I learned about play as medicine.

She asked us to think back to our childhood and what made us happy then.

Not just the kind of woo happy you read about on Instagram —
but that unfiltered, bubbling joy that made us feel alive before we learned to dim it.
The kind that lived in our bodies, not our heads.
The kind that made time disappear.

For me, it was performing — literally, I would put on a play for anyone and everyone, sing to my carefully lined up stuffed animals as I belted “Part of Your World” into a hair brush microphone.

I’d write songs and journal entries I promised myself would one day become a manuscript.

And when my parents gave me a SONY boombox for Christmas,
I’d sit cross-legged on the carpet,
press record,
and spoke stories I swore would make me famous..
I just loved the acts of creating and performing.

So after she asked that question and encouraged us to harness it as adults, I did what any sensible 27-year-old would do… I signed up for community theater.

And it wasn’t just any community theater. It was (jazz hands) The Vagina Monologues.

It ended up being one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done — even though I totally messed up my cue and awkwardly said my lines (I was a little rusty).

Standing on stage, surrounded by women, telling the stories of our collective experiences with body, sexuality, identity, trauma, and joy…. the stage was thick with belonging.

It felt like exactly what i wanted to be doing with my time.

I loved it.

It brought me home to myself in a way I’m not sure I can describe, but I’ll try—

Like running up the stairs to tell your mom something exciting happened at school.
Like exhaling after two decades of holding your breath.
Like a snake finally shedding an old, crusted layer of skin.

And when I came home, the world had to watch out — because I was fucking in the flow, baby.

I felt like I had purpose for the first time in as long as I could remember.

I had this delusional sense of confidence and an unwavering belief that anything was possible. I’d stay up late journaling, dreaming, creating — absolutely certain the universe was conspiring in my favor.

I started following threads of intuition that presented themselves to me. Every nudge felt like breadcrumbs leading me somewhere magical.

When I got the urge to start a recipe blog and Instagram account documenting my healing from hashimoto’s and alopecia, I did it — even though everyone said the industry was oversaturated (lol, it was 2017).

But that wasn’t the point.

I wanted to build a space where people could see themselves, where healing didn’t feel so solitary.

So I did it.

And then suddenly I had my first 1,000 followers — then 2,000, 3,000, 4,000.

That made me delusional, too. If that was possible, what else was?

I started reaching out to companies asking them for free stuff (LOVES FREE STUFF), and they said YES! Cue childlike giddiness.

I decided to go to school to become a nutritionist.

I became a Beautycounter consultant and got my first $50 paycheck working for myself. It wasn’t about the money — it was proof I could create something on my own.

Then, I got laid off from my corporate job the same week I graduated from nutrition school.

So I started my business — and got my first client immediately. I’ll never forget mix of excitement and nerves I felt during her onboarding call when she said, “You are about to blow up, and I want to get in before your prices increase.”

After just one month of working together, she referred me to all her friends.
Word of mouth — the absolute best validation.

Every “yes” built a little more trust in myself — and that momentum kept carrying me forward.

But then, the pandemic hit.

I lost one of the most important people in my life to cancer and couldn’t be there while they died.

I became a mom. We moved houses. And my health started to nosedive.

Building my business suddenly felt like trudging through mud.

So I thought I needed to pivot. I wanted to bring back the intuitive work that once healed me. I became a certified life coach, hypnotist, and brain-rewiring practitioner.

But my confidence was wavering. My weight was skyrocketing. I was breaking out in hives. I had a miscarriage.

So I did, again, what any sensible sad person would do — I decided to train under a psychic medium.

Then, when my twins were born — I just kind of flatlined.

I was pouring everything into my family..
trying to sustain a business in under twenty hours a week,
breastfeeding two babies,
getting dinner on the table,
packing lunches,
refilling bottles,
keeping up with the constant rotation of outgrown clothes —
doing all of it.

I ignored my depletion — and the pull to weave life coaching and energy healing into my nutrition practice — and instead followed the business voices that told me to build authority.

Keep it straight.
Keep it narrow.
Wake up every day, curl your hair, put on makeup, it’s the only way to be taken seriously..
Sell, sell, sell.
(shouting into the abyss…) BOSS BABE.

I invested thousands in ads and marketing programs, trying to resurrect that “badass” version of myself who once believed anything was possible.

But before I knew it, I was sitting in a metaphorical room surrounded by a pile of trash — overwhelmed, confused, broke, tugging at my perfectly curled hair, completely.
shutting.
down.

I had no idea who I was anymore, what I wanted, or where I was going.

My body was reacting, too — begging me to listen again, to honor that intuition so it could have another sigh of relief.

And then Substack happened.

I don’t even know how to explain it — every typed paragraph feels like a stitch in the fabric of putting myself back together again.

It’s like I wake up every morning excited to share about life — about ideas, stories, and concepts I once thought I’d outgrown.

It feels like remembering myself.

I’m realizing Wish You Were Here is a love note to that version of me —
the little girl singing into her brush,
the 27-year-old lit up on stage,
the woman still brave enough to believe she can begin again.

Subscribe now

This has been a free version of Wish You Were Here.

For less than the cost of a latte/ a month, paid subscribers learn:

• 🧬 What’s moving the needle right now — from mold detox to supplements that finally make a difference

• 🌿 How I’m supporting my thyroid, nervous system, and hormones without losing my mind (with step by step tutorials)

• 💭 The emotional and energetic shifts I’m making to feel safe, regulated, and rooted again

• 💡 The behind-the-scenes truth of building a sustainable life and business while healing

This is the writing I don’t post publicly. The sacred stuff. The messy middle. The “holy sh*t this helped” moments.

It’s science-meets-soul-meets-sanity.
It’s for the woman who wants to feel seen and supported in her own process.

If that’s you…join us.

You don’t have to heal alone.

xx,
Whitney

I’ve been thinking a lot about money and I have ultimately come to the conclusion that I don’t have the best relationship with it.

I tend to spend a lot of money in seasons of stress as a coping mechanism. I reach outward for quick dopamine hits instead of going inward to see what’s making me so uncomfortable.

I’ve also realized that I have an anxious attachment to money. When it’s gone, I want it so badly. When it’s here, I push it away.

Money has always seemed like something I don’t feel particularly worthy of.

I grew up in one of the wealthiest suburbs of Chicago. I’m talking like… private jet and BMW on your 16th birthday wealth.

And my mom never let us have that kind of … flaunt? Like, my dad made good money. But both of my parents came from a small town in Indiana. My dad’s family owned a farm and in my mom’s words, she grew up “dirt poor.”

So when it came to everyone having fancy things, my mom would declare that those people were not smart with money or they weren’t really rich because they spent everything.

She clung to money like a hat on a windy day.

Our family, she said, was smart with money. We didn’t get fancy cars, extravagant clothes, or fly first class.

And in my tweenage mind, that somehow translated to not worthy of having money spent on you.

I’m sure there are a million ways to untangle this through inner child work and brain rewiring. And I will absolutely get there (and share exactly what I do — of course!).

For now, I’m in a season of noticing.

Watching for patterns. Exploring my history with money.

Decoding my thoughts around spending.

If you have any resources you love on money mindset, please share in the comments!

For now, keep reading to see the detox coffee I’m lowkey obsessed with, the amazon leggings I have worn every day, and the Target sheets that are budget friendly (+ which sheets to skip if you want to avoid inhaling microplastics while you sleep).

Let’s dive in!

Subscribe now

For just $5/month, paid subscribers get:

– One healing recipe a week — simple, nourishing, nervous system-friendly
– A peek into my monthly purchases — what I bought for my health, my home, and my healing (and what wasn’t worth it)
– Supplement protocols + client case studies — the exact products, doses, and timelines I use in real life
– My own lab results, mold recovery updates, and detox plan — what’s working, what’s not, and what I’m testing next
– Spiritual + nervous system support tools — how I’m regulating through grief, stress, and the emotional weight of healing.

Let’s dive in!

🛍 October Purchases I Actually Loved

Read more

Or perhaps it’s that I don’t know how who I am fits into where I’m going.

In a world that feels increasingly artificial — with AI writing, automated DM responses, and an eerie disconnect from humanness, it feels hard to keep up as a a person who thrives on being real.

I’m not sure why I’m feeling so lost, so I’m going to write here. Part free journaling and part intuitive download (I’m literally writing this with my eyes closed, letting the words come through me instead of from me) — to see if I can sense what my medicine is right now.

I may or may not publish it, and the point isn’t doing it for likes. It’s doing it to release something inside of me that is aching to surface.

Subscribe now

Who am I when I just stop curating and allow words to spill out from my weary soul?

Who am I when I stop performing and release what needs to be healed?

Most women never do. We perform our entire lives and then wonder why we can’t hear our own voices any more.

Here’s what happened when I listened to that voice today:

I feel lonely. Truly.
I feel as if I went from having purpose and vision to being immersed in motherhood and family.
And that doesn’t even feel like a bad thing, you know? In a sense, it’s right on so many levels. Like coming home to myself.

If we lived in a world that allowed women and mothers to just exist like this, I’d be totally content. (Probably?)

But we don’t live in a world that allows for that kind of freedom, so there are many days I sink into this sense of inadequacy I never wanted to visit again.

It whispers to me that I’m not enough, catcalling unpleasant myths that my brain selects as truths.

“You suck.”

“You’re irrelevant.”

“ Nobody cares what you have to say.”

“ Why are you even trying?”

Sometimes I think about my own mother — how she poured everything she had into her children and felt deeply disappointed when I didn’t turn out the way she wanted me to — some of the last words she spoke to me were,

“I’m sorry I was always trying to shove a square peg into a round hole.”

And I think about that more often than I care to admit.

Like, what if I had been loved unconditionally for who I was?

Would my mind still taunt me as it does right now?

Would my body have rebelled into self-destruction?

Would my nervous system flinch every time I try to just be myself?

It’s because of this that I can’t allow my full purpose and life to be channeled into my kids, because they are their own versions of themselves.

I am here to facilitate their becoming, not dissolve myself into them.

So, while I’m acting as a guide for their lives, I still find myself struggling to figure out my own.

At least in the career sense.

Spiritually, I know who I am. Professionally, I’m fumbling.

Like — do I even care about nutrition anymore?

Yes, in the sense that I fucking love the way we can ally with food as medicine — the way releasing layers of inflammation can skyrocket our energy and intuition.

On the other hand, it just seems so… overdone. Like I’m living in a wellness echo chamber that’s making me want to gouge my eyes out.

I feel called to ask myself, am I repeating the wound of square peg/round hole?

It’s like I’ve outgrown a winter coat that used to fit perfectly. it’s still hanging there and I want so badly for it to fit, but when I put it on, it feels tight in all the wrong places.

I’m in the in-between, where you can’t see what’s ahead but you know that eventually it will arrive.

Just like the seeds I planted this summer, waiting anxiously for them to bloom. The soil seemed empty until it wasn’t.

After a little bit of quiet, water, and sunshine, the most beautiful zinnias began to bloom.

So here’s to blooming and becoming, and slipping into a winter coat that feels like home.

Xo,

Whitney

Did any of this resonate with you? Let me know in the comments section, and consider becoming a paid subscriber for more musings on motherhood, chronic illness, recipes, and healing on a mind, body, and soul level.

Subscribe now

“Wouldn’t it be terrible if your SECOND pregnancy was twins?”

“Oh my god, can you imagine being outnumbered?”

“Twins would literally be my nightmare.”

-Things my husband and I used to say on daily walks when we saw big families

Part 1: How we found out

I found out I was pregnant the week of my birthday in August 2022. It was a pregnancy after very early miscarriage in the spring and I was anxious about the viability of the pregnancy. I actually took 10 (yes, 10) pregnancy tests in the span of a week because I could hardly believe it. Here are the first six.

Around five weeks I had been experiencing some cramping and spotting, so I went in for an early ultrasound. The ultrasound tech saw a tiny little heartbeat and congratulated me. Your baby looks healthy, she said! I was so relieved.

At 8 weeks we went in to establish care with our Midwives.

They welcomed us in but mentioned they didn’t have an ultrasound technician on staff that day and had scheduled me for an appointment at an out of office clinic on Monday (5 days later).

As soon as she said that, I felt anxiety start building up in my chest threatening to unleash an endless amount of tears.

The midwife could tell I was upset, hugged me, and said, “Oh no! I was afraid of this.. here, I used to do these all the time let’s just grab the machine and make sure we can find a heartbeat.”

Relieved, I sat down on the table for my second ultrasound, scooched my pants down low, and she placed the warm gel and wand on my lower abdomen.

“Yes!” she exclaimed, “There’s a heartbeat!” Then she said, “Now, I know it’s really hard to trust a pregnancy after loss, but this baby looks good. I don’t think you need to go in for the appointment next week and remember to trust your body.”

We left their office relieved and excited to birth at their birthing center. I loved that she was reminding me to trust my body.

While I preferred a low touch pregnancy with my last baby, I saw that she hadn’t canceled that ultrasound, so I decided to keep it.

That means my third ultrasound was at nine weeks of pregnancy.

I went through the schpeel -- pants down, shirt up, warm gel, wand. As she moved it over my belly, a sweet relief washed over me as she said, “there’s your baby!”

She described the measurements she was taking, showed the heartbeat, and the placenta. Next, she said she was just going to measure my cervix and.. “oh,” she said, “well, it looks like there’s another heartbeat. You’re having twins, mama.”

“Shut the fuck up.” I said.

“I know this is a lot to take in,” she said awkardly.

Note: What comes next is deeply personal. I’m going to share my unfiltered reaction, the grief and panic that led me to consider termination, and how my husband and I wrestled with that choice together. Because of how raw this part of the story is, I’m placing it behind the paywall.

If you’ve ever been blindsided by life in a way that left you spiraling between “how will I survive this?” and “maybe this is exactly what’s meant to be,” you’ll probably find pieces of yourself in what I share.

Read more

There once was a time
when I felt confident.

I had the perfect pair of skinny jeans
that my body would glide into
like a knife
cutting through butter.

The mirror looked back
at my pre-kids body
and catcalled me saying,
“Baby, you’re a catch.”

But as the years went by
and my belly was stretched out
like Laffy Taffy,
making way for the souls
that would change every fiber of my being—

cut open,
sewn back together,
saggy,
foreign—

the mirror would only holler,
“What happened?”

And I’m learning your late 30s
leave no room for a bounce back.

You only get slivers of time
between doctors’ appointments,
school pickup,
grocery shopping,
diapers,
dinner—

where you sink into the couch
long enough to remember
there’s a version of you
who exists
outside of motherhood.

So now when the hot girls
on the internet
are telling me
my skinny jeans
aren’t trendy—

I thought,
“but I’m still cool, right?”

So I clutched at wide-leg pants
like a drowning woman
reaching for driftwood.

They taunted me
as I pulled them on,
as if I had any self-esteem left
to crush.

But yesterday,
I put these jeans on—

and I heard my husband say,
“your ass looks great in those.”

And I realized:
fuck the mirror.

My ass looks great today.

If I’m being real (I always am), these are the only jeans in my closet that don’t trigger a mini breakdown when I put them on. They’re high-rise, stretchy, booty-hugging, and basically feel like wide-leg skinny jeans (yes, that’s a thing). And they cost less than $70.

I’m wearing a size 8 in the midnight color and I’m currently flexing between a size 8/10 (see how they fit below)!

Add to cart here.

You’d think that level of commitment would be “worth the outcome,” but every time I looked in the mirror, my cheeks would get hot and my heart felt like it had nose-dived into the depths of my stomach.

I recall the cascade of criticism in the dimly lit guest room as I stared in the antique, full-length mirror. “How could I possibly look like this? Will anyone ever love me?”

Read more

Yesterday, I started getting rid of all our things because our home has black mold, and we can’t bring them back after the remediation process — I spent hours packing up bags of donations, trash, and a small pile of stuff we may try to clean.

I got rid of the chair I held and nursed my babies in for hours. The one that my sister sat in when she urgently flew across the country when I couldn’t function after my cesarean.

I can see her so vividly, holding my girls while I lay in bed, unable to walk without nerve pain. That chair became a lifeboat as she cooed and smiled at my babies when I couldn’t find the strength to do it myself.

We also got rid of the chairs my husband and I fretted over for weeks during the pandemic.

He wanted sleek lines that took up less space. I wanted something big, bulky, and comfortable. In the end, he swayed me.

We waited seven long months for them to arrive, and when the boxes finally showed up, it felt like Christmas morning. I still remember sliding my hands over the velvet, the fabric cool and smooth, the maple arms warm beneath my palms.

They weren’t just chairs anymore — they became part of the backdrop of our lives, holding us through late-night talks, holiday mornings, and the quiet ordinariness of family life.

Then, as I started sorting through clothing, I picked up these tiny black Vans.

My son wore nothing but Vans for the first three years of his life, and as I held the shoes, hovering over the donation pile, I felt a grip on my heart like someone was wringing out a wash cloth.

I am not ready to part with the shoes that held his tiny feet as he stumbled and wobbled and learned how to climb. They are still caked in dust from the last hike they carried him on.

Why does it hurt so much to let go?

I would love to think of myself as someone who knows that possessions are meaningless, but as I write this, I’m beginning to understand that these aren’t just things, they’re spark plugs for memories .

And there is something so tragically jarring about getting rid of the things you’ve collected while living a life you love.

I know what’s most important is our family’s health. We will still have a roof over our heads. We are financially stable enough to do a major mold remediation.

But what if it could have been different? What if my body wasn’t as sensitive to mold?

What if I could part with these things when I was ready, and not when the fabric of fate pushed me to?

Maybe the crying will come later — or maybe it won’t.

For now, I’m just trying to find solace in the memories because I know those can’t be replaced.

Xo,

Whitney

PS: Finally cried while writing this — thank you for holding space for my sorrow by reading my writing.

(the fact the below bodies — or any body for that matter — were frowned upon, is baffling)

I still remember cutting out images of skinny models and taping them to the inside of my cupboards, letting them discourage me from eating every time I went to get a snack.

(Yes, that would be categorized as an eating disorder now).

So when Hashimoto’s or hypothyroidism starts to hit and your metabolism slows (more on why that happens below), shame can sneak in.

You were programmed to believe that a bigger body = a bad thing.

I like to remind people that your weight is going to fluctuate your whole. damn. life.

And that is not a failure — or anything you should feel bad about — it’s part of being a human with a body.

Wanting to lose weight isn’t wrong. Wanting to feel at home in your body isn’t wrong. What is harmful is when your path to get there is paved with shame and self criticism.

For us thyroid girlies, the weight can come on faster and harder. But when you have the right tools — and the mindset to flow with your body instead of fight it — the process gets so much easier.

I’ll share exactly why the weight piles on, and how to support your body from a trauma informed lens (no fat shaming or obsession!) below.

Read more