In 2020, I choose the word fruition to be my word of focus for the year. In 2019 my word was “joy” and that year was simply full of joyful moments. So why Fruition, it is a unique choice…. I’ll do my best to explain my why!

Coming into 2020, I was facing my role being eliminated and had to apply for a new role within the organization or choose to accept a severance package. As I keep praying about this scenario, I just felt God had something new on the horizon and the word fruition keep coming to my mind. I ultimately continued to pray on this word and asked for fruition to produce fruit in my life and in others. So I settled in on this word for the year not knowing how it would truly transform my own life in 2020. In late February, I accepted the role I choose to apply for at our organization. Shortly after I had a planned opportunity to get a way for the weekend with a few life long friends at the beach and honestly the timing of this break couldn’t have been more perfect. Who would have thought a trip planned nearly a year earlier would be so monumental but sometimes God gives us exactly what we need in moments of retreat.

During this trip many unplanned things occurred and yet each thing resulted in a blessing. For example, our hotel had a issue with the AC so they put us up in a resort they owned instead of the hotel. This was at no cost to us and we got free food for their breakfast buffet. They allowed us to stay as long as we wanted to enjoy the resort area while our room was being prepared at another spot since they didn’t have another night to give us at the resort since they were all booked and our original room still wasn’t fixed. This meant no paying for our room for another night. We decided to do a dolphin cruise since we were saving all this money on the trip. This was where God’s voice really spoke to me on what fruition would mean for me. I remember the tour guide making comments on how special our cruise had been because the dolphins don’t always give a show like the one we say that day. There was a very playful dolphin who keep swimming with us along with his mom and another sibling. I remember feeling such joy, grounding, and peace in this moment watching the dolphins. God told me to hold onto this moment because something really hard was coming my way and it would be better on the other side of this and to keep faith in the fruition to come. (If you’ve never experienced something like this I might sound crazy to you and if you have then you get it. Either way this is my truth that I share.) The trip continued to be grand and refreshing, I even got to leave on an earlier flight so I could get home to see my loves who I missed very much.

Fast forward a few weeks and the 1st Covid -19 case was seen at our area hospital in Indiana. Mid March I was around several others who tested positive for Covid, at the time we were following the rules of how to avoid spreading anything but we didn’t know what we know now. I also had several symptoms and at the time wasn’t eligible for testing since I wasn’t a direct caregiver. My symptoms were battling a fever for weeks on end, sore throat, coughing, shortness of breath, diaherra, heartburn, nausea, lowering O2, crazy blood pressures and irregular heart beats and my least favorite symptom the tremors. At my worst I couldn’t get on my feet to walk to the bathroom without falling. I wasn’t able to keep food in my body and got pretty dehydrated. I don’t remember a few weeks of life quarantined in our bedroom while trying to work from home at the same time. About a month into being sick, I was well enough to drive myself to downtown Indy to get the tested which at the time was the only place to go. Shockingly this test came back negative, my primary care provider still believed I had covid and she said I was one of the ones who just couldn’t get over it like others. She said there wasn’t anything they could do to help me, to just keep using my inhaler they prescribed me. I spent some time in the ER getting fluids and they said I just had GERD, dehydration, and probably anxiety. This visit gave me some leg room to ask for my doctor to consider that more than covid was going on so she gave me a referral to get an upper GI since I had lost 40lbs at this point. It took a while to get in due to the shutting down of healthcare during the early times of Covid. I had already began doing a autoimmune protocol for healing my gut based on a book recommendation from a friend. I knew there had to be something more I could be doing, so I took matters in my own hands as I waited.

Prior to my upper GI they asked me to reintroduce gluten so they could test for celiac disease. I tried to reintroduce pasta and got really sick from this. When I told the nurse she advised me to stop and just eat a few crackers a few days before my scope. During my scope he found lots of inflammation and he said while my test didn’t come back with celiac he thought I might have it based on what he saw. They wanted me to eat gluten for two weeks and do a blood test. Honestly after the way I had felt trying to eat it again - I just wasn’t willing to do this. I didn’t need them to confirm what I already knew - eating gluten affects my health now. I was slowly getting better with the diet changes but still wasn’t feeling my best for sure so I found a good functional medicine provider to begin working with back in August.

She was the first provider I had spoke to in months that made me feel heard and not crazy. She introduced me to several supplements to start while awaiting a plethora of lab tests to return. These items began to help me even further than what the dietary changes had done for me. When my results came back I learned so much about my own health. About 95% of the nutrients we need to survive were not in good standing for me. My body just wasn’t absorbing the nutrients I needed, I was eating very well and yet my gut and intestines were not healed to absorb it. I tested positive for candida overgrowth, SIBO (small institutes bacteria overgrowth), and showed signs of a leaky gut based on the food intolerances I had. I had antibodies that showed proof of my celiac disease despite not eating it for months - only touching it to prep food for my children. The mono I had back in high school had reactivated and my immune system was way out of whack and in hyper drive trying to remove something foreign from my body. Additional items going on like mycotoxins (toxic mold in my body) and basically without listing it all - we now had data to prove that I was indeed battling something. Fruition indeed was occurring in my life. Validation that I wasn’t just having anxiety and Gerd.

Throughout this journey I continued to have people reach out to me for help with their own auto immune and covid issues. When helping others in their evolution through fruition, I have felt the most like my true self, more than I have probably ever felt. I know God gave me this journey to help others not just myself. So, here I am being vulnerable telling a bit of my story from this year to explain why I’m launching this website. Will I turn this into a business? I don’t know. Right now I just want to offer a place for telling my own story and for others to tell their story with the goal of building community. Through community is where I believe real change happens for the good of all involved. And if it seems right to turn this into a business, I think I’ll do my best to make it a non for profit. That is what feels right in my soul right now. I will do my best to honor that.

So, I hope you will follow along with me during this evolution that is occurring through fruition and see me and others be “healed” in 2021! Because after fruition it only seems right to choose “healed” for my word in 2021! I hope to share recipes, mindfulness activities, stories of hope, stories of pain, stories of connection, and resources to connect with that might help you in your journey.

I’d love to connect with anyone who might benefit from the wisdom that God has empowered me with through my own evolution as we “Fruition through” ….