Let me tell you a story... Years ago I started writing a book, I titled "Ramblings of a Teenage Girl" but like the title suggests "ramblings", so here's the condensed version. 

I grew up running around like any kid, strong, healthy, but something changed my senior year of high school. I felt bloated, was running my hardest but couldn't run as fast, and there were other cues that something was wrong. And I knew, but I didn't want there to be something wrong, so I just kept doing all "the things" you do as a high school senior until April, when my eyes turned YELLOW! Some pretty crazy things happen liver failure, a miracle recovery, a month stay at CHOP until my blood work normalized, a celiac diagnosis, and a lot of questions. Why did this happen? Could I have prevented it? I was taking an over-the-counter painkiller for my braces at the time... did that have something to do with my liver failing?

     One thing was for sure, now there were even more hurtles to staying healthy. My doctors were/are amazing and I'm still friends with them to this day.  I left the hospital on prednisone and an immune suppressant drug regiment and was being slowly (over the course of 3 years) weaned off them. I met my husband in 2003, and just about a year later, in April of 2004 I noticed that one of the lymph nodes in my neck was swollen but chalked it up to draining wisdom teeth and had the teeth removed. The lump didn't go away but I didn't notice because in May, I (at almost 21) broke the neck of my femur (hip) playing volleyball. No one could tell from the scans that there was a break though, and only when they opened me up to decompress my hip, did they see the break that had already begun to heal.  Three stainless steel pins later, and it was time to learn to walk again. My left leg had atrophied after my two months being unable to walk, and I had been diagnosed with AVN (avascular necroses, bone death) in my hip. Hop skip and a jump and by October, I knew something was seriously wrong, though I didn't want to admit it. My fiancé thousands of miles away fighting in Iraq and me sitting in the Oncologists office, after seeing a sport medicine doc for weakness in my right arm and having had a x-ray that showed a mass the size of a softball in my right should. A biopsy and few scans later confirmed it...

     THE "C" word. Just what every bride to be wants to hear months before a wedding. I distinctly remember being in one of the conference rooms at the Cancer Institute Of New Jersey, just hugging my knees numb to it all as the conversation flew between my parents and the docs. Thoughts of, "How can I be sick again?" and,  "Will he still want me?", weighing heavy even as I prepared for this 'bout with stage 4 B-cell like Lymphoma. And it strikes me as odd... once again what I have hasn't' been seen before. Fast forward,  the Marines demobilized my soon to be husband so he could come home and support me while I was fighting cancer (a miracle) and lots Chemo and more drugs then the could give a child (because I was able to understand) or an adult (because at 21 I could be treated as a child). In April 2005 I was declared to be in remission. And in June of 2005 I married the love of my life sporting a buzz cut that GI Jane would be proud of. 

     It wasn't until a year or so later when I was moved to the L.I.T.E. program that I began to understand "the side effects" of all the drugs that I had been given. And in 2005 there was little know about alternative treatments. And certainly at 21 I didn't even go looking. NOW being handed a 3 inch thick binder with all the possible side effects of each and every drug given me was OVERWELMING, I cried. Numbness, Ghost pain where foreign  objects had been placed in my body, Chemo brain (seriously, crazy, saying the opposite of what you want to say, and fuzzy thinking)... and the list went on... including the one I, at 22 was most concerned with, Infertility. I had been told that if I had been a man I would most certainly be sterile.

     So, we started really taking care of ourselves, going to the gym at least once a day, vitamins, healthy eating, and started researching alternative cancer treatments. Should we ever have to hear that accursed "C" word again. We learned about vitamin B-17 and started taking apricot seeds as a preventative. There were a few more hiccups, medically speaking for me, and scares but after seven years of marriage, we were pregnant with our first son.  Fast forward to 2022, God is so gracious, I who would have been sterile, have FIVE BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN, four boys and one girl. There are so many details left out, but this is how and why I found and still find myself researching natural health. I want my children to grow up knowing that God gave us natural tools to help our bodies heal without major side effects . For most of life's scrapes and bruises and for wellness in mind and body, I have found Pure Essential Oils to be key for our family's overall health. I choose doTerra for their mission to change the world one drop of oil at a time, their co-impact sourcing, their community and commitment to teaching people how to live healthy and so much more.