ABOUT AMBER'S HOLISTIC HEALTH AND HERBS

My Story

“Good night, get the sleep I won’t get.” That was how I signed off AOL Instant Messenger every night when I was in college to my to be husband, and that was how it continued for years. My drive, energy, and being able to get by on 4 hours of sleep and Totino’s pizzas was a badge of honor for me. 

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Fast forward twelve years, 3 moves, and 2 kids later and I had finally burnt the candle at both ends. I was always getting sick, I was struggling with postpartum depression, I was depleted and had little energy or motivation. I felt betrayed by my body, and I felt so sick of being sick. I knew there had to be another way.

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This was in the beginning of the mommy blogger days and one day while I was spiraling down the rabbit hole from one blogger to another, looking for answers, I stumbled across a mom who coached you through a 100 Day Real Food Challenge. I read her cookbook 100 Days of Real Food, which lead me to read more books: The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and more. 

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I discovered my body wasn’t betraying me, it was crying for help. I was eating, but I wasn’t nourishing my body, and finally after years of stress, lack of sleep, and lack of nutrition my body was bankrupt. My immune system was shot and that was the reason I was getting sick all the time. My body was not receiving enough vitamins and minerals and that was the reason I was so depleted and depressed.

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I was determined and committed to feel better and have the energy and mental health to be a better mom and partner. I signed up for the 100 Days Real Food challenge and changed my family’s diet to a largely paleo diet, I started taking B vitamin supplements, and began to fast one day per week for health and spiritual reasons. I also began prioritizing sleep more and getting more of it. 

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The changes were amazing. Within days of starting B vitamin supplementation my depression began to lift like a fog. (I would go on to learn that my family has a long history of being B vitamin deficient and why.) With the changes to my diet, I felt my energy returning and I was finally starting to lose the pesky baby weight I gained in my last pregnancy. 

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I will never forget the feeling of joy and gratitude sometime after making these changes as I walked up to my daughter’s elementary school on a beautiful spring day to volunteer. My head was clear, I felt well, and felt like those dark days were behind me. 

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We lived like this for a couple of years and life was good. Then on a whim (as I am prone to) we decided to move to our dream property. Without having our house even listed for sale we put in an offer to buy a house on 5 acres that I knew could be my dream hobby farm. And this set-in motions months of stress and work as we readied our house for sale and moved. In this process many of the good habits I had put into place years before began to slide.

At this point in my life, I valued convenience more than anything. It took a while, but it caught up with me again. Several months after moving in I found myself again in the depths of depression. I knew I had to make changes in my diet, in my sleep and in my supplements, and even with those changes I needed medication to get me through the worst of it while I made the changes. After three months I was able to get off the medication and maintain my healthy ways of eating and sleeping. 

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I felt like I had really figured something out through this all. My body is not my enemy, my body is forever team Amber, but I need to take care of her. My body wants to be well and wants to heal. I was so thankful for coming through my health challenges. I realized my superpower is to see the body as it wants to be despite how it looks right now. I always knew I could find answers and be better.

In the middle of the pandemic, I found out the local company I was working for was closing and I decided to return to my pre-kid career as a Clinical Laboratory Scientist. In a hospital we are the ones performing the lab testing. I was excited to be back in the lab helping on the front lines of one of the scariest medical times in our history.

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I had been away from the field for over seven years while I took some time to be a stay-at-home mom, and in that time, things seem to have changed. More patients were on more medications and still getting sicker and were of course depressed. Patients would jump from one specialist for one problem to next week another specialist for another problem and so on and no one was ever asking what was causing the problems they were just medicating the symptoms. I went into the medical field to be part of a healing system and almost no one was being healed.

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That's when I decided that it was time to change careers and follow my passion. Our bodies are wonderfully complex and able to heal if given the proper nutrients and support and I believe I am here to help you find your path to this healing.