Mid-Life Mayhem; A guide to functioning in your 40's & beyond
This podcast features us having candid conversations about how to navigate all things mid life, including:
- Relationships
- Mental Health - anxiety, stress, depression, grief, fears, trauma (including generational trauma), estrangement, aging, parental aging and more
- Nervous system care & daily practices
- Sex
- Perimenopause & Cycle syncing
Mid-Life Mayhem; A guide to functioning in your 40's & beyond
From Mold And Migraines To Marriage: A Year Of Healing, Home Makeovers, And Hard Truths
The year I vanished didn’t disappear me—it rebuilt me. What started as “I’ll tough it out” turned into a full-body audit: why my knee kept swelling, why my cycles stole weeks of my life, and why I was sick four times after moving into a new house. The answers weren’t motivational quotes; they were mechanical facts. A misaligned patella had ground down cartilage for years. My iron tanked under constant blood loss. Our HVAC and guest bath hid mold that kept my immune system stuck. Once I stopped normalizing pain, I could change the structure around it.
We tell the whole story, from repainting a bachelor pad into a supportive, organized home to scheduling a hysterectomy that finally promises relief. I share the MRI that made everything click, the small win of beef organ capsules when iron wouldn’t budge, and the jaw work that gave me my first relaxed shoulders in memory. There’s romance in here too—the almost-proposal over insurance, my candlelit “Will you marry me on Sunday?” and his kitchen re-proposal with a diamond once the chaos settled. It’s messy and funny and deeply human, the way midlife tends to be when you stop apologizing for needing care.
If you’re navigating chronic pain, hormone storms, home health, or the myth that “it’s all in your head,” this conversation offers practical hope: peptides and HRT as tools, mobility training to unwind compensation, mold remediation that actually matters, and the courage to seek surgery when it restores quality of life. I’m also bringing two co-hosts aboard—my husband, who beat 20-year migraines with peptides, and my best friend—so we can keep unpacking healing, relationships, and the science behind feeling good. Subscribe, share this with someone who’s been told to “just keep an eye on it,” and leave a review with the one change your body is asking for right now.
You can reach us here:
Katie:
Website:
KatieKovaleski.com
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/coach_katiek/
Linkedin:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiekovaleski/
Wavier & Release of Liability and Disclaimer: The information provided by the therapist(s) is not intended, nor is implied to be a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice. The listener is advised to always seek the advice of their health care practitioner or other qualified health care provider with questions regarding medical conditions, or the mental health and welfare of the listener. I (listener) accept that Kathryn Kovaleski is not liable for any injury, or damages, to person or property, resulting from listening to this podcast.
Welcome back to my life mayhem. I'm so excited to be here chatting with you guys today. It has been almost a year since I've released my last podcast episode. And as you know, as with everything I do, podcasting is no different. I'm very outside of the box. So I come, I go, I leave a bunch of episodes, I show up a year later with a whole new life. And I'm so excited to fill everyone in. So buckle up, pour your favorite beverage, and welcome to my midlife. So I'm really excited to get back into the podcast because I feel like I am finally at a point where we are done with the sort of renovation of life in a lot of ways. Meanwhile, I have two surgeries coming up this year. So take that for what you will. But the last two years were really a journey about transformation for me and figuring out, well, figuring it all out, really. So much has happened. I think the themes from this year were really learning how to embrace the chaos, the growth, and the magic that midlife brings because there's so much amazing um love and life and and light and all the cheesy signage things you would see at TJ Maxx. But it's true. Like I had a lot of love and light and growth this year, and I want to really dive into it. So let's rewind to about a year ago. Um, a year ago marked about 15 months of me trying to figure out what the fuck was going on with my body and specifically my hormones. And I last November um marked a year, so it's been two years since I first started experimenting with peptides. Um, I first began that journey in November of 2023. So it's been about two years. And so if we reverse back to about a year ago, I was getting ready, unbeknownst to me, to move in with my boyfriend at the time. Um, spoiler alert, like we stayed together. So I moved in with him in December of 2024, and that really began kind of a whole adventure of a year, really. Um, I moved in with him in December, and he was living in very much a like 100% bachelor pad. Um, as most men I think do, right? Men who um are used to kind of going with the flow, like their surroundings sort of reflect that. Not in a bad way at all. This house is amazing. Um, it has such great space and such such a great layout, like the best layout, really. Um has a huge lot. It's almost like a double lot, um, has a beautiful pool. Like there's so many amazing features of it, but it definitely aesthetically screamed Bachelor Pad. And so I am because I work at home, um, but also because I'm a Libra and just because I'm me, I really need a space to be aesthetically pleasing and to make sense. Like I am not a hoarder, I'm the opposite of a hoarder. I don't like anything in my environment that doesn't really need to be there and doesn't really serve a purpose. Um, I just I work at home and so I'm home a lot, and my job requires a lot of focus and energy, and my environment needs to be clean, organized, and aesthetically pleasing. Um, not everyone is that way. Like I'm not like preaching here at all. Like, but for me specifically, I really need that. But in parentheses, studies also showed that this helps with mental health. So when I moved in, I took a quick look around and thought, okay, uh, let's go. So I had already sort of internally mapped out what I thought would be like best usage for all of the rooms in the house. Um, and so I was excited to get started. I'm a very visual person, so I can close my eyes or even with them open, I can see visually the layout of things, and I can imagine in detail what I would want shifted and exactly how it would look, which is a really cool sort of brain feature that I wasn't aware that everyone didn't have. Not everyone's a visual processor, but I am. So when it's go time, chances are I've already mapped out in detail exactly what a space can look like, and that's what I did with this. And so we spent, we had it done incredibly fast, y'all. We painted every square inch of this house ourselves, and I think it's about a 2300 square foot house, and we painted every single inch of it, and that was a labor of love, but it was also really soothing and relaxing for me. Um, I really enjoy creative projects, I enjoy the immediate gratification of spending you know four or five hours painting a room and having the whole thing transformed. I love that. My work and my life is so internal-based that we can't automatically see the results of the work we're doing. Um, we do over the course of months and months, but I love a quick external validation gratification moment. I love it. And painting does that, so does decorating. And so the challenge here was that we're not planning and staying in this house forever. Sorry, house as I'm talking to it right now. I'm sitting in it. Love it. I don't know that it's our forever home. We might keep it forever, but um, living in it forever is not really on our bingo card. So we wanted to renovate as much as we could and out of like a very small budget. And I was up for the challenge, and it was such a fun, creative challenge to like pull out all the furniture that he had, see how we could repurpose it, hit up friends and family who were moving or who had extra furniture and storage or in their attics. Shout out to my sister-in-law for hooking me up with so many amazing things, and um, that's both of my sister-in-laws. So um, I have sister-in-laws now, two sister-in-laws who really hooked up the house. And um, one of them was also moving and she gave us a bunch of great furniture, and another one just had stuff she'd been hanging on to. So we really repurposed a ton of stuff and did like a full DIY reno. You can check out my Instagram page um and my highlight bubble to see like what we did because it was so much fun and it was so gratifying, and the house looks so good. So we spent probably towards three months, maybe I would say. No, we really started in January. So we spent two and a half months doing this and we completed it. Um, and when I set my mind to something, like I go, go, go until it's done. We painted the whole house, repurposed a bunch of stuff, decorated it. He built me a dressing room in one of the bedrooms. Since it's just he and I and our dog, it's a four-bedroom house. We have a lot of freedom and what we want to do with the spaces. And so I always wanted a dressing room, an entire bedroom that was like a live living closet with the vanity and like a chandelier, and he did all of these things for me, and it's so beautiful. Um, and then we renovated the or we did the guest bedroom, our bedroom, um, the second bathroom, and then the office has become a little bit of a catch all. Um, and that's our last project that I'm digging into this week, actually. So we spent a couple months like really getting to know each other as live-in um partners while doing a renovation. And I swear if you can get through that, like you can get through anything. And so that was really the beginning of our first um live-in year together. And as it's winding down, it's such a fun reflection point to like look back on because it was a really great experience, honestly. And it was the first time in my life that I've ever moved into a house that wasn't already done. Um, and that we had the the bandwidth and the freedom to jump into our creative side. So that was a really great experience. Concurrently, last December, about a year ago, I was gearing up for a pickleball tournament. If you know me, you knew that the past couple years I've gone deep into the pickleball world and have really loved doing pickleball as my primary form of exercise and socialization. It's so much fun, especially given that again, I work from home, so I'm alone a lot and I'm at home by myself a lot. And pickleball was a great way to get outside, get exercise, and be with friends. Um, but last December I had my first knee swelling incident, which was um during a long weekend when we were supposed to play like a two-day tournament. But the week prior to the tournament, we were practicing, and I felt kind of like a click, like a a slip is the best way I can kind of describe it in my right knee. And it kind of hurt after that to walk on. Um, it wasn't bad, but it something was off. I felt like something was like kind of caught, like my knee had caught on something. And so I kept an eye on it and started playing the first day in the tournament, and I was just kept saying, I don't want to do this, like something's wrong, I don't want to do this. And I didn't listen to that fully. I kept playing. Everyone was encouraging me to keep playing. They I think they thought that we weren't playing well. Let me just also preface it that way. And I think they thought um, my knee was sore, but I just was not having a good time because we were losing. And so I like listened to my my personal audience and kept going. Um and I woke up the next morning and my knee was really swollen. Um, and I had one more day of play left. Um, kept playing on it, and it was, I mean, three times the size of my other knee. Um, I couldn't walk on it, it was incredibly swollen and stiff. It was the first time I'd ever had that experience before. Um, and I've had knee questions, I'm gonna call them, not even issues, off and on my whole life. Um, I remember the first time I went to a doctor about my knee, I was probably like seven years old, and I was diagnosed with Alsgood Schlaughter's disease. Try to say that three times fast. Um, and basically what that meant to me as a child was like I had on my right knee kind of a bump below the kneecap, where basically you're you're growing too fast. Um, and for some kids it can be really painful. I don't I don't remember it being that way. I think I'm more um was caught off guard by the bump itself. Um, but we went to the doctor and they basically just said something that I should have paid more attention to, but I was, you know, seven or eight, that I've been heard from a lot of doctors across the totality of my life, which was just keep an eye on it. If it doesn't really hurt, if you're not in a lot of pain, just keep an eye on it. Um, that phrase right there, my friends, given that we all have different tolerances for pain, it has not served me. And that sentence right there has been sort of a theme mantra title of this chapter of my book of the last year. If you're not in a lot of pain, just keep an eye on it. Okay. So file that one away because it comes back. So that was like my first going to the doctor incidents, and then later on in high school, same thing. I played basketball and volleyball in high school, was having some kind of pain or issue with that same knee. Went back to the doctor, they gave me a sleeve, and same thing. If just keep an eye on it, ice it. If you're not in a lot of pain, don't worry about it. Keep an eye on it. Okay, cool. Fast forward 10 more years. I'm in my mid-20s, same thing. Over the course of my life, I've probably spent at least five solid years working out with personal trainers, three different trainers, about five years total that I spent with them. So I have a pretty good understanding of my body, um, of my strength, of my muscle memory. Like, I I know how to strength train, I know how to work out. I prefer having a trainer because, well, I discovered this year why I prefer having a trainer. And I'll get into that too. But regardless, I spent a lot of time working on and with my body with different people from various um professional backgrounds. So, mid-20s, I'm working out with a trainer, I'm like, something's wrong with this leg again. I go to, and let me just also tell you when these things would come up, um, because I'm a therapist and work so much with the subconscious, I always wondered if the injury, the quote injury was popping up or something was happening because I was lazy, because I didn't want to actually work out. I really thought that for a long time, guys. It was like always something, usually with my knee, something would come up, and it's like right when I'm on the edge of like a big transformation, there's an injury or something. And I always question like, am I lazy? Like, is this about trauma and being afraid of stepping into my best and healthiest body? Like, I have explored this from every angle you can possibly think of for many, many decades. And you know, fast forward, I'm not, I'm not lazy. I'm not. I actually actually enjoy working out when I'm doing it, but something always it was always something, right? And when so it when we describe somebody or ourselves, it's like it's always something with them. We have to consider the psychosomatic components, we have to consider the subconscious programming, we have to consider how powerful we are at creating our lives and our realities. And I really, really thought like you just have not hacked the psychosomatic piece of this. Like, there's something blocking you from wanting to live your best and healthiest life, and there's a component of laziness there. I really, really thought that. And I that's something painful to think about in hindsight because it's not true. Um, but I really questioned that. I did not understand why something was always coming up, and I would go to the doctor and they would just say, keep an eye on it, right? Obviously, it's not that big of an issue then. Spoiler alert, it was. Um, so I'm in my mid-20s working out with a trainer, something feels off with my knee right when I'm like really getting into it and making a lot of progress, and so it holds my progress, right? Conclusion is like you're self-sabotaging in some way. That was my conclusion. Um, and it was the same thing. I got MRIs done. I was told at this point that my patella was out of alignment. Um, the doctor, to the best of his ability, kind of diagnosed it as being congenital. He asked a lot of questions about any accidents I'd ever been in as a child, anything that was like um destructive to my body that might account for the patella being um pretty significantly misaligned. And I said, no, I had no recollection of anything that might have accounted for that. Um so fast forward, he gives me a knee sleeve, tells me to ice it, um, continue strength training to strengthen the muscles around it to keep my patella in alignment. Um, I say okay, and then I have like a love sort of hate relationship with working out after that. Um, because again, it was always something. And so I would be really consistent with it for a while and then not at all, and on and on. The thing that really helped me feel good in my body um that that did feel painful was yoga. So when I got into yoga in 2015, um I don't it it was one of the best kind of healthiest uh versions of myself that I had physically. Um, but I also just felt really good. I loved the way that I felt in my body when I was consistently doing yoga three or four times a week. But regardless, fast forward again to a year ago, it's December. My knee is insanely swollen. Um, and I'm icing it, I'm elevating it. I'm in pretty consistent contact with my primary care osteopath about it. Um, and he's kind of the same thing. Like, let's see what happens. So I ice it, stay off of it for three or four days, the swelling goes down, and I continue on my way. Fast forward to late spring, same thing happens again. I'm playing pickleball, we're in a league, so we're playing really long hours. It starts to get really hot outside in Florida too. So if you can say like May, June, July, late afternoon, 4 p.m., it is brutal outside, and we're playing for like three plus hours at a time. Like sweating so much that um my skin has like salt on it. You can literally brush the salt off of my body. There's it's it's so, so hot. Um, I'm stretching a ton, I'm foam rolling all the time, I'm icing, I'm elevating. And like as we're going into our finals, same thing happens. My knee starts to swell again. I feel like a little click-tug thing, and I'm like, so I'm icing it, I'm elevating it, I'm trying to take breaks as we're between practice and not practicing too hard before our tournaments and things like that. And we played our last game um on a Wednesday, and that following Saturday, um, my boyfriend and I flew out to Whistler and then went on to Alaska and met my family there for a trip. So I was really cognizant of like we were going to be doing a lot of walk walking and hiking and things like that. And I was scared. Um, my knee didn't feel right. I could I felt protective of it. Um, and so I went into that trip with a swollen knee. Um, I could still walk on it. I iced it a ton, I elevated, I rested, but I really started to understand the impact having that injury had on the rest of my body and how tired I would get and how protective I felt. And I just started to become acutely aware of like, okay, like this is a thing. Got it. So simultaneously, y'all, like the journey of understanding my hormonal cycle and my like debilitating periods was still ongoing. And I'm gonna get into that in a minute. But regardless, so I'm limbing around in Whistler. By the time we get to Alaska, it's a lot better. I can walk, I feel okay. Um, and then we get back from the trip, and we came back from that trip with the flu. Um, I caught a fever in the middle of our red eye about 13 hours into like a 17-hour travel day. Brutal. Let me tell you, the worst place ever to spike a fever and the flu is while you're in the air on a red eye. Um, I was ig exhausted, like delirious exhausted. We came back both super sick, um, stayed in bed for like three days, um, and then started to recover. I took about 10 days to like fully recover and feel like quote, normal. And then maybe like five days after recovery, um, my period started, and five days into that, I started getting ocular migraines. What a picnic. And I just was taken aback and I thought, well, this is an interesting twist. Is this something that's gonna happen to me every month now? Because I know that migraines can be um part of having really bad cycles. And I by the fifth day, I was having vision issues because of it too. I couldn't see very well, especially up close. Um, so at first I thought I needed glasses, and maybe this was like my midlife eyesight going, and then like the pain, I was like, I think this is something else. So I had like a little meltdown, and by meltdown I mean like I cried for five minutes, called my best friend, and was like, I think something is wrong. Like something is wrong. And I was like, and I can't, I can't continue to have my cycles be this hard. Um, and I really just kind of was like, this is unsustainable for me. Like this is 10 days out of every 24 that I I am wrecked. Like I this something has to change. Like I cannot do this. I'm having such a hard time. And so simultaneously called my doctor and was like, I need to come in. Like, I'm hitting a wall, like I'm hitting my breaking point. Um, and it was really the the migraines that put me over the edge. And I started thinking, you know, the migraines are worse because I've been sick, and I I realized that the ocular migraines in hindsight were from a sinus infection. So I didn't fully recover from the flu. I felt like I did, and then somehow ended up with a sinus infection, like a week and a half later, which apparently isn't super abnormal. But I started thinking something that I had thought a long time ago when I moved into this house, which was I think there's mold here. I think there's mold present in this house. And um, I went ahead that day and called a mold inspector and set up an appointment and then told my boyfriend, um, I called a mold inspector, I think there's mold here. I was like, since I've moved in here, I've been sick four times. That's four times as many times as I've been sick since 2020. Like after 2020, when I got COVID really bad, I like prioritized immune system health like to the max and have continued to stay on that protocol and that wavelength. And I have gotten sick like maybe one time since then. I'm gonna bounce back really quick. And for whatever reason, since I had moved in with him that December, fast forward to July, I had gotten sick four times. And I was like, something, something's going on in this house. So I scheduled that, scheduled an appointment with my doctor, um, went to my doctor on a Friday, really laid out my cards and was like, I like, here's what's been happening to me, here are all my symptoms, like, here's my family history with um everyone on my mom's side having a hysterectomy and having like basically six to eight years of horrendous pain and nonstop bleeding to the point where some of them needed blood transfusions. And um I thought that I was getting ahead of this, that I could avoid it. I was like, but I I can't. I was like, I am so exhausted all of the time. My joints hurt, my muscles hurt, I'm exhausted, like I have no energy. And we had been really working for that past year on supplementing iron. My iron levels are really low. We were doing everything we could to get my iron up. Uh this point I was taking, you know, 75 milligrams of progesterone every single day of the month. I was taking testosterone and I still I still felt the way that I felt. Um, and we had a really it was a Friday night, and he got me in late because he's the best and had a really honest conversation about my future. Um he said, like, I think it's time, like, I think it's time for you to have a hysterectomy. And I was like, what? I really thought you guys that I like was going to escape that fate. I thought like it's gonna be different for me than it was for them, and not because I'm better than them in any way, but because I was aware of it and I was catching it young and I was seeing the right doctors and I was learning about hormones, like I really thought that I could avoid this. Um and he basically said no, and it's not worth the quality of life. Um, at this point, you know, I I had always left whether or not I was gonna have children up to fate. Like if someone had asked me, um, you know, were you born to be a mother? Do you always dream about having kids? I didn't. I dreamt about having like the love of my life. I dreamt about having my own kind of fairy tale romance that like was built on all of the things that I talk about with my clients and a healthy relationship. I just I dreamt about that, about having like the best love story of all time. And the kids, I always said it depends on who I end up with. If I want to have kids, it depends on who I end up with. I ended up with somebody who can't have children, and I knew right when I started dating him and we had that conversation. Um, and I already had an idea that he was gonna be my person. Like I remember thinking, well, that is there it is. The you know, the universe chose for me. I always just knew that it really would depend on who I ended up with. So when I was talking to my doctor that night, he said, Look, like you have been suffering, you've been in chronic pain, like you don't need to live this way. Um, you guys are not having kids. He's like, There's no point in waiting. Like, if you keep waiting at some point, I was likely to have developed uterine cancer if I didn't already have it. Um, he said, So we need to put this like in order now. So um got set up with a new gynecologist, um, ordered an MRI, um, got an ultrasound, got a biopsy, did all of the things like very quickly. Um, and it was very, it was an emotional roller coaster because let me back up a little bit. Um, Wednesday I had had my last day of ocular migraines and was about to lose it, and made the appointment with him, wanted to see him Friday. He told me that it was time um to pursue the hysterectomy. That Friday night, I went to meet Jeremiah at Mellon Mushroom after my appointment, and I was like very emotional because it was shocking to me. And like it, although so needed, it still feels like whoa, that's a big deal. Um, and at dinner that night, he said to me, you know, how I believe in signs. He's like, today at work we got an email about insurance updates, and there's a program on our insurance that you know fully covers surgeries. And the first surgery on the list was a hysterectomy. And I just looked at him and I was thinking, like, he's not really, he's not saying what I think he's saying. And I said, Well, it's too bad that you can't just take my uterus and then you know you could get it operated on. And he was like, Well, and I just looked at him and I'm like, Are you are you proposing right now at 9 30 p.m. in Mel and Mushroom with like mascara like smeared on my face from crying? Um, and he was like, I I always, he's like, I I'm gonna propose anyway. He's like, I already know that I want to marry you, and I said, No, I said, not like this. I was like, I don't want our future to be tied to this in any way. Like, I don't want that. Um, I've always had to pay for my own insurance because I'm, you know, a 1099. I am an independent contractor, and um insurance. If you know, you know. If you work for yourself uh and you're not married, you know the insurance game and how much it sucks, how deeply horrible it is. And I had a really cheap monthly insurance plan, but basically zero benefits. I only held it for like catastrophic insurance, basically. So ER emergency, my deductible was still really high. And instead, I used the additional money like that I would put towards healthcare or insurance to pay a membership fee for my osteopath because he's concierge based and he's incredible. And that was one of the best decisions I'd ever made. But and surgeries are expensive, right? Um, and so I was already thinking, God, like none of the doctors I even go to would want to go to or even in network. Like, I need better insurance, like to go through this year and not bankrupt myself. Um, and I and I knew also knew that that wouldn't happen because I have a really supportive family and a really supportive parent who I know that if I needed anything when it came to my health would be there to help and support me. But still, like I wanted to be able to go into it and be able to have insurance that would pay for the majority of it. Um, and so I told him no, turned down the proposal, um, the semi-proposal, the idea he calls it. Um, and just started to get my mind wrapped around like, okay, like I'm gonna be having surgery soon. Okay, what does this mean emotionally, physically, all the things, recovery? So that was on a Friday. That following Monday, we had a mold inspection, and um I just remember the mold inspector walking up after and saying, like, yeah, guys, like you definitely have mold in this house. Um, our AC, our HVAC was mold ridden. Like you could see it. It was awful. And then I always suspected that our guest bathroom had mold in it as well from a previous water leak. Sure enough, yes, the whole vanity, mold ridden, um, and high enough counts that it's it's really not good to be breathing it in, and definitely accounted for how I felt, like me getting sick over and over. Um, and at that point, I remember sitting in a chair in the living room thinking, like, okay, so my body is already exhausted. I just got off of a multi-week flu, a sinus infection. I now have to get a hysterectomy. I need my immune system and my body like to get out of inflammation as much as possible, to get healthy, to have surgery and to go through a good recovery. And now I also have like mold exposure going on here. And it wasn't black mold, but it had enough of the other types of spores that it was like, you don't be breathing this in. This is not good for you. Um, and I also had my second meltdown. Um, and I was just so upset. I felt like I had let myself down because I suspected that there had been mold in the house when I moved in. I had brought it up, but I didn't push the issue. Um, and I should have in hindsight. And I felt scared about what it would do to my body if I continued to breathe it in before it was remediated. And so I just jumped into action. I packed up my stuff and my dog, and I went back to my house, which thank God hadn't sold yet. Um, and I spent six weeks living there until the mold was fully remediated and everything was put back together. And Jeremiah would kind of come back and forth and um like oversee the remediation and then the renovation of the bathroom, which he did himself. Um, and that was also a shock. So within like a week, I find out I need a hysterectomy. There is mold in the house, and I have to leave. And I think. I cried every day that first week, and it was just this sort of hodgepodge, this emotional melting pot of all of these things. Um, and also relief of being like, I'm like, I get it now. I'm finally putting the pieces together of what has been driving a lot of what I've been feeling. Like, I had brought up and talked to doctors since 2011 about the difficulty of my cycles, and I got so many of the same responses, which were we can't figure out what's going on, just keep an eye on it. There's nothing we can do, basically. My first ultrasound was in 2011. Um, and it came back with like, well, you have thickened uterine lining. And at that point, you guys, I was on a 21-day cycle where I was bleeding 10 out of 21 days, and they had no answers for me. And they said, Well, you can get on birth control or just keep going. Well, I got back on birth control and I was bleeding through birth control and still no help, no answers. And what I didn't realize at the time, and that they didn't help me with at all, was like, if you're losing that much blood every three weeks, like this is gonna have a cumulative effect on you. No one even bothered to check my iron levels because of that. And so I look back and think, like, wow, like I wasn't ever lazy, I was exhausted, like I was depleted, I was losing too much blood all of the time, and no one did anything to help me. Um, and then later on, I went back in 2018, it was the same spiel, like there's nothing we can do. I'm like, okay. So I spent that first week back at my house um after we got the news about the mold and the hysterectomy, just like grieving and crying and being like, okay, like we have a plan moving forward, like this is gonna be okay. And then about a week and a half after that, two weeks after that, um we were getting ready to go on a family trip to Jamaica with my boyfriend's family, his parents, or his dad and his dad's girlfriend rather. Um, and I just got this really strong overwhelming feeling that I shouldn't go. I was like, I don't think this is the right thing for me. I am exhausted right now. And while travel might seem exciting to people, when you have no idea if you're gonna be like suffering significant blood loss for an extended period of time, it isn't fun, it's tiring, it's stressful. Um, you don't really feel good. And so I was keeping an eye on my cycle timing, and my cycle was late, and I thought, like, great, like I I'm in no way, shape, or form gonna be able to go to Jamaica and enjoy myself. And so I said, I I can't go. Like, I know deep down what's best for me is not to do this trip. And they were all supportive. I know they were disappointed, but they were really supportive. And that was on a Wednesday. Um, and then that Saturday, that following Saturday, four days later, I was walking. I finally I got on these beef organs, these beef organ capsules that my osteopath suggested, because I'm also on iron supplements and like rewind a little bit. I got my blood work redone in August, and my iron was still super low, even though I had been supplementing it like consistently supplementing it in high doses for a year. It was still low. That's how much blood I was losing. And I was so disappointed, and I also saw other numbers reflecting that like my hormones were still tanking, regardless of the supplementing I had been doing, because the progesterone was being metabolized too quickly by my liver to actually make it to my uterus. And I felt so disheartened and so disappointed, but also it reflected, wow, like I've been working at this really hard, and like I'm barely keeping my head above water. And it explains why, even after working that hard for a year, I still felt so bad. But it was really disheartening to see that. And he said, You know what? I've had success with other clients taking beef organs. And I said to him, Okay, and he said, I have a client and she takes it every day, or she takes beef organs every day. And I I told him, I asked him, How does she prepare it? And he's like, What? And I said, Is it like a plateful? And he started laughing, and he was like, No, she doesn't eat them, like they're in capsules. And I thought I was prepared, you guys, to eat a plateful of beef organs every day if it was gonna help me feel better. Like that's that's where I was at. Don't eat eating raw, like, what do I need to do? So I started these beef organ capsules and they helped me feel so much better fairly quickly. You get a giant hit of like B vitamins and it actually boosts your energy in real time. And I remember like the first couple of days taking those, like, I was like, oh my god, I actually feel like sort of normal. And it was like my second or third day of feeling sort of normal. I'm like, let's go like for a walk. Let's go to downtown Stanford and walk around. Like, I feel so good, the weather's nice. So we're walking around downtown Stanford for a couple hours. I'm so happy, and I hear a click, and I'm like, and my knee catches, and I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. And so I was like, okay, he's getting ready in two days to leave for the Jamaica trip. And I'm like, well, this was a huge sign. I was like, my intuition was spot on per usual. A few days ago, I knew the right decision was not to go, and now that my knee just clicked, it's gonna start swelling. I knew it. The next day I woke up, my knee was three times the size of my other knee, and it hurt. It was actually really painful this time. And so he left for Jamaica and I said, I'm gonna be fine here. Like, I'm gonna ice elevate. This is actually like a good time. I'm just gonna focus on work. So that's what I did. Three days went by, four days went by. On the fourth day, I started to get concerned because the swelling had not gone down at all, and I still couldn't walk. And I thought, oh shit. Like, and I, you know, we were in contact while he was in Jamaica and I kept saying, I think something's really wrong. Like, I think this is different, this feels different, something's wrong. Um, so that was he left on a Monday. By that Thursday or Friday, I started to get concerned. On that Saturday, I was supposed to go to an Italian cooking class with um some friends of mine. Um, and it was like four couples I was going with, and I was like, you know, on my own, flying solo because my man was gone, and um, they were so sweet and supportive. But two of them have gone through um knee surgery before and have had torn meniscuses and ACLs and things, and we went to their house before the cooking class, and I hobbled in, and she and her husband like took a look at me and the way I was walking and were like, You need to get an MRI. And I was like, please don't tell me this. I was like, I just I think it'll be fine. I want to wait until I'm done with the hysterectomy. And they said, No, you need an MRI, like now. And so I texted my doctor that night again this Saturday night. He responds because he's amazing. And I said, Can you schedule me an MRI? Can you write an order for an MRI? I'm gonna try to get in on Monday. And he said, Yep. He wrote it right there. I went online, booked an imaging appointment at an imaging center here for that Monday. Um, and then I got really scared and I thought, how what am I gonna have to have knee surgery? It had never occurred to me that that was on the menu at all. And I have had one surgery my whole life, it was elective, I had a breast reduction. Like I I just I was spun out a little bit, but I was in a really supportive environment. And I just thought, like, I like how am I gonna also afford all of this? Like, what am I gonna do? Like, my insurance sucks. Like, and I said jokingly, you know, he suggested getting married when the first surgery is on the table, and I said no, but like vertu. And we went to the Italian cooking class with that in mind and had an amazing time. And um, two of the husbands, you know, kind of pulled me aside and were like, you know, do you love him? Like, is this your person? And I was like, Yeah, like I already know that. And they were like, then do it. They're like, This is what being in your 40s is like, this is midlife love. Like, you would marry him anyway. You're not marrying him because you need surgery. Um, the timing might be like wrapped a little bit around that, but you're marrying him because you want to spend the rest of your life with him. And I was like, fuck it, okay. And they were like, let's do it. And so we looked up the insurance contingencies like with his job on the spot. And I was like, well, you know, it's like September 10th right now. Um, if we get married within the next week, the insurance will kick in by the first of the next month. And so we on the fly that night planned a wedding, you guys, for the following weekend. I was picking him up. This was on a Saturday. I was picking him up from the airport on a Tuesday, and then we planned for the wedding that following weekend if he said yes. And so everybody rallied around me in a way that I have never experienced before. They helped me plan, they basically planned it themselves. Um, like a 20-person wedding with our some close friends and our family members that were in town at the time. Um, we gave them kind of a heads up of what was happening and said, but like we don't know. He has to say yes first and be on board. He has no idea that any of this is happening. And I picked him up from I got my MRI, I got a pelvic MRI and a knee MRI at the same time on a Monday. Got my results back on Tuesday, right before I went to pick him up from the airport. And my doctor got on and said, Let's talk about your knee. And I just, my heart dropped, and I just said, like, on a scale of one to ten, like, how fucked am I? And he's like, You're pretty fucked. Um, like my patella, having a misaligned patella is not good for you. And I really wish someone had told me over the course of my life, like, we need to get this realigned because if it doesn't get realigned, all it's gonna be doing is grinding away at your cartilage until it's bone-on-bone, um, until you have like severe arthritis in your knee because it's just eaten away all of the cartilage, which is what happened in my knee. So I had a partially torn meniscus, which was like nothing. My patella was out of alignment, I knew that, but it had also started flipping up and it had basically eaten all the cartilage in my knee. Fucked. And I was like, okay, cool. Um, okay, like I don't know what to do with that right now. I'm gonna go pick up my boyfriend at the airport and then I'm gonna propose to him. And so I was like nervous, um, because you just don't know, right? You like I felt like I was in middle school asking a boy to dance with me for the first time or something, and so I wanted it to be super simple and sweet, and so I planned on um bringing him home from the airport to my house, proposing, and then we would go to dinner. So I get him, and he's about an hour late because of a rainstorm, and he um we get in the car and he's like, I'm starving, I haven't eaten in like since this morning. Can we go get food? And I'm like, Yeah, like we can just go by the house first, and you can drop your stuff off. He's like, Can we just go get food now? Um, we can even go pick it up and bring it back, but I'm so hungry, and I was like, Okay. So we go to this cute little Italian restaurant in College Park and we sit at the bar and have a glass of wine and order food to take back to my house, and he's telling me all about his Jamaica vacation, and I had already told him about my knee and stuff in the car, and I'm nervous. I'll all I want to do is like get home. So I'm listening to him, but I'm also like, okay, like when we get there, how I was I wanted to like light candles. I'm like, how am I supposed to do any of this? So we get back to the house and he goes like to change or put go to the bathroom or something, and so I was like fiddling with the TV, trying to put music on. I'm like, let's listen to music instead of putting something on TV. And I had all these candles on the counter. And so we kind of start eating. He like pours wine and gets up plates, and I'm like, I gotta do this now. Like, you got you have to just do it. And he said, like, right as we start, he's like, You you mentioned you wanted to have a date night tonight. He's like, Did I just hijack that? Um, and I said, No, no, we're still gonna do it. And he said, Okay. And so I started lighting all these candles, and he helped me, and then just thought we were like doing some kind of romantic dinner situation. And then I said, I have this for you. And I had a card, and on the front of it, it said, Love is the answer. And on the inside it said, um, uh, I said no the first time just due to the timing, but you've always been my yes. Will you marry me on Sunday? And he just stopped dead and looked up and was like, Sunday? And then he looked down and was like, but wait, let me answer. And he was like, Yes. Um, and right, and I had put Pandora on some random station on Mute for Music, and right when he said yes, the Elena Smorset song, um, Head Over Feet came on, and it was like such a classic, perfect moment, and we like slow danced and cried and it was so sweet. Um, and then he said, All right, tell me, fill me in. What's going on on Sunday? And that's and that is why I want to spend the rest of my life with him. Um, he is just down for whatever adventure is on the table, and it made it so easy. And so we started firing off text right after and told everybody that it was a yes, and they really came through and planned everything. And we had this beautiful um celebration that following Sunday, like a lunch at a private room in in Winter Park, and it was magical. It was so sweet and easy. It was so easy, and that's been the theme of that relationship for me is that this it's been so easy. And um we got our wedding license the next day, that Wednesday. Um, he's always teased me about waiting too long to get gas. Um, and that morning I woke up and he was coming from his house. He'd gone home first, I guess. He's coming from his house, and I'm meeting him at the courthouse. And I at 7:45 a.m. in the middle of rush hour, if you're from Orlando, on the corner of Lake Montanaloma, I'm the first person with the stoplight. I'm putting on lip gloss and my car dies. I run out of gas. And then in like a 45-minute-long comedic scene, like a cop ends up finding me. My car, when it locks up, can't even be put into neutral, it cannot be pushed. I'm blocking the entire lane. Um, the cop can't go get gas in a gas can for me because he can't leave me alone. No other cop can get to him because there's too much traffic. It was a long, I have Jeremiah turnaround to come back. And my brother ended up coming with a gas can, and it was this whole long scene. Um, and the cops were like, You're gonna make it, go get your wedding license, girl. And I'm like, I missed my appointment. Um, and Jeremiah's just standing there with this like knowing smile, and he's like, I made it to the gas station after he put a little bit of gas in my car, and he just looked at me and said, I don't even have to say anything. He's like, I know that like you're never gonna forget this. And then we rushed to the courthouse, and luckily it was super easy. We went right in and got the certificate, but even that was like a cute kind of movie moment um where I learned to never wait until the last minute to get gas again. But anyway, so our Sunday celebration was beautiful. Um, we didn't have time to get rings or do anything like that, so we like ordered some off Amazon and have been wearing those around. And um it's just been a whirlwind, right? So in the span of a few weeks, you know, realize I need a hysterectomy. We have mold in our house, I have to move out. We my knee gives out and I need knee surgery, we get engaged, we get married, and then I came back to the house, move back to the house. Um, and things really started to like shift in and trend in a positive direction. And ultimately, all of this is really positive. Like there had been mechanical issues going on with my body, with my knee, with my uterus, and then most recently with my jaw, my whole life. And I had always sought out help and I had been told the same thing like just keep an eye on it unless you're in a lot of pain, like there's nothing we can do. And that's just not true. And it turns out I have a very high tolerance for pain. Um last week it was finally reflected back to me, like you you have chronic pain, and I said, No, I don't. Yes, you do. Um, and I just had never associated some of the discomfort I'd had with chronic pain, but I've had chronic pain. Um, my jaw is also out of alignment um since I was a child. I fell off of a bed as a baby. Um, and some of that might be attributed to that when my tissue was soft and my bones were soft, something I hit pretty hard and um I could have hit or hurt my jaw and my and my knee. Um, I haven't had any other accidents or anything like that to move things out of alignment, but on my right side, my right knee is out of alignment, and so is my the right side of my jaw. Because the right side of my jaw is out of alignment, I've always had chronic neck and shoulder pain. Um, so that I have worked over time to try to mediate that. As a therapist, I always look for the psychosomatic issues of it. I thought that was where I carried my emotional um stress, um, intention, and also like old trauma. Um, I thought it was really in my neck and my shoulders. And as it turns out, um having an out-of-alignment jaw has really um created issues in like my thoracic spine and in my neck and shoulders. Um that was never treated. And so I spent, you know, the last decade foam rolling every day, stretching every day. At one point for five years, three times a week, I went to um uh a network spinal chiropractic office and I got manual adjustments, and then I did network spinal, which is like a more gentle way of stimulating the nervous system so your spine realigns itself. And that helped me maintain um a better quality of life, but my neck and shoulder tension never went away, and I still dealt with it every day. Um, and no one ever told me that that's probably where it came from until now. And so this year has been really about looking at the mechanics of my body and really looking at things that need to be adjusted and the compensations that happen when they're not. Um, so I have a hysterectomy coming up February 2nd. Um, I'm working with a um like functional mobility trainer right now. Um, and we are determined to get my thoracic spine kind of un unlocked and my osteopaths working on my jaw. And the jaw work that's been done for the first time in my life allowed my neck and my shoulders to feel relaxed. Um, it never occurred to me that people have a relaxed back or neck and shoulders. I thought everybody had a really tight, tense, permanently tight, and tense upper back and neck and shoulders. And I felt relaxation there for the first time recently and uh realized um how much pain I had been in. Um and I think that's a lesson for all of us, right? We become habituated to things and then we compensate for it. Our body learns how to normalize pain pain signals and override them, and it's not sometimes until we get a little bit of relief that we realized how much pain we've been in. Um and turns out, guys, like I haven't been lazy. I'm not a lazy person. I don't hate working out, but I had a bum, I'm not gonna call it a bum knee. I have a special right knee, it's my trainer calls it, um, a very special uterus and a special jaw. And those mechanical things were never fully worked with or rectified. Um, and as a result, I developed a high tolerance for pain and discomfort, and I was in it pretty much all the time. So, like, quote normal levels of exercise and strength training and things like that would actually really deplete me. And I would suffer from like levels of soreness that um would keep me down for multiple days. And this became especially true when I hit my late 30s and early 40s, and my hormones started shifting too. My body was so chronically inflamed from only living in two parts of my cycle by basically function only in luteal and only in menstruation. So my body never has time to recover from like the pain and inflammation and things like that. Um, and as a result, anything else I would do on top of that would put me into a place of like extreme discomfort and pain for multiple days. Um, and so this has really been, you know, two years ago I remember in January, I got this kind of intuitive sense of like this year is really gonna be about learning your body and showing up for your body. And I thought a lot of that would be trauma-based from different things I've gone through in my life that were stored in my body or that were done to my body. And um, that was a piece of it, but I had done most of that work already. This two-year journey has really been about um finding doctors and people I can trust, overriding subconscious beliefs of things like the people who are supposed to care for and protect me and help me won't. That was a really like deeply held belief that I had that I had to rewire subconsciously. Um, and then going into action, continuing to speak up, um, continuing to acknowledge that I might have a high tolerance for pain, but but that's led into a tolerance for suffering. And I if something is wrong, I need to push that until it gets rectified and to not be afraid of doctors and surgery and different modalities of healing and growth. Um, and that's allowed me to really explore like a giant, beautiful, brilliant pathway of healing, ranging from HRT and hormones to peptide injections to surgeries to uh Reiki and energy work and cranial cranial sacral stuff and mobility training. Like the last two years I've earned a master's degree in um, I would say a full spectrum, a 360 approach to healing and growth for the body. Um, and therefore the mind and vice versa. But my mind had been worked on a lot, and so had my body in a lot of somatic ways and a lot of somatic healing, energy healing, issues in the tissue, all that stuff. I spent many, many, many years um really overloading on all that stuff, and the mechanical pieces still need to be worked with. So my journey this year, excuse my alarm. My journey this year is about um really doing the mechanical stuff, moving the mechanical pieces into place, and then coming to a place of peace in my body and enjoyment and energy. So I'm excited for what this year is is bringing and what's to come. Um, and simultaneously, um my husband re-proposed to me just yesterday, um, caught me off guard in the kitchen because we have been wearing our Amazon rings for quite a while. And um he surprised me with a gorgeous, gorgeous giant diamond. Um, and I finally actually feel like I'm a fiance now. Technically I'm a wife, but I feel like a fiance, and I wanted that experience. I waited 40 years to meet my person, and I'm so glad that I did because midlife love, y'all, hits in a whole different way. Midlife love is magic. And I also now, as I go through these mechanical um changes and this metamorphosis this year with my different surgeries, um, which I'm actually looking forward to. Like I get to put the chronic pain and suffering behind me, emotionally, physically, all the things. Um, and and while I'm recovering, I get to plan a wedding um at a beautiful little island spot we found in Fort Myers for February of 2027. So um super excited to take you on this journey with me. I'm gonna be consistent this year, whatever that looks like for me in podcasting, um, because I'm also going to be ringing on two co-hosts. So my husband's gonna be jumping on to co-host with me, and I'm super excited for you to get to know him. We're gonna talk about relationship stuff, we're gonna talk about healing and peptides because he's used those to help get rid of his 20-year chronic migraines. What? It's his journey in that has been incredible too. So he's gonna tell his story. And then my bestie Derek, who was my OG, my original podcast host, is gonna be coming back. And he's gonna be talking all about where he's been for the last two years and the journey he's been on. Um, so I'll be co hosting with both of them, and once a month, all three of us will be on. So I'm looking forward to sharing more of my journey, and I hope today's episode resonated. And if you liked it, go ahead and like, follow. Um, and I will see you next time.
