🌿 From Sterile Rooms to Sacred Roots: A Journey of Self-Healing
The first time I realized how close I’d come to not being here, I was waking up from heart surgery. My surgeon leaned over and said, “You were very ill. You’re very lucky to be here.”
The pericardium — the outer casing of my heart — had become so inflamed it was six centimeters thick in places. I’d had fluid drained from around my heart before, but the inflammation never went away. My body was failing piece by piece, and no one could explain why.
By then, I’d endured months of steroids that kept going up and up and up. The side effects were brutal — over 70 pounds of water weight, a widespread steroid-induced rash, and exhaustion so deep that walking 10 steps left me gasping and weak. My throat would randomly close up. My kidneys began to worsen. I passed out more than once; paramedics had to be called. I developed cyclic vomiting out of nowhere.
On top of the steroids, I was taking strong diuretics to try to control the swelling, potassium to make up for the mineral loss, nausea medication, and prescriptions for my heart palpitations. It was a lot — a constant rotation of pills to manage side effects from the other pills, while the real problem remained untouched.
I was so sick.
A Long Road of Dismissal
This wasn’t sudden. It was the result of years — decades — of being treated like a list of disconnected complaints instead of a whole human being.
It began when I was 20, after the birth of my second son. Fibromyalgia symptoms crept in — insomnia, depression, fatigue, full-body muscle soreness, digestive issues. Back then, fibro was still labeled as psychosomatic. If you had the tender points, the assumption was that it was all in your head. My “treatment” was antidepressants.
Having “fibromyalgia” in your chart in those days was like being branded a hypochondriac. Every appointment became a cycle of gaslighting and minimizing.
As the years went on, my reproductive health began to crumble. I endured multiple IUDs and endless rounds of birth control — none of which truly helped — as my symptoms worsened. When I finally begged my Army OB to remove my uterus, I was met with condescension:
“Oh, sweetie, you’re only 28. I won’t take away your womanhood so young.”
After jumping through all their hoops, they forced me into a uterine ablation — which began six months of agony. When Jon left the Army and I finally saw a civilian doctor, he diagnosed me with adenomyosis at my first appointment and scheduled my hysterectomy without hesitation. It was the first time in years I felt heard.
The Spiral
In the years that followed, symptoms multiplied — but were never connected. I started losing weight without trying. Sometimes 30 pounds in a month. In total, I lost 110 pounds, but instead of investigating, doctors told me it was “a good thing” because I’d been overweight.
I developed heat and cold intolerance. Raynaud’s phenomenon. My medication list grew: Gabapentin, then Lyrica for seven years — which warped my personality so badly I did and said things I would never normally do.
And always, the same pattern: treat the complaint in front of you, ignore the bigger picture. Bounce between specialists, each one saying, “I don’t need to see you,” and send me back to square one.
It wasn’t until my autoimmune disease came for my heart — and two years after that — that anyone finally connected the dots.
Turning to the Green
By the time of my heart crisis, medicine had gone on “ignore.” The focus was on steroids, prescriptions, and symptom suppression, not actual recovery. My days were ruled by pill bottles — one drug to dull the pain, another to calm the nausea that drug caused, another to replace the minerals the last one stripped away. It felt like an endless carousel I couldn’t get off, my body spinning faster but going nowhere.
I was exhausted — physically, mentally, spiritually. Every appointment felt like a transaction, not a conversation. My questions went unanswered. My symptoms were siloed, split into neat categories for separate specialists, but no one was looking at the whole me. The parts of my life that made me me — my spirit, my magick, my connection to the natural world — weren’t even part of the conversation.
So I turned to plants and witchcraft in the middle of my darkest days. This wasn’t a wellness trend for me — it was survival. I was not only in the deepest valley of my health but also of my soul. I was defeated, beaten, and bruised by life in that moment. Finding the green path centered me, grounded me, gave me firm earth to stand on.
Nature healed me. Tending to my plants tended to my soul. Working with them connected me to my spirit and my ancestors. It anchored me in a time when I was lost at sea.
I lit incense and let the smoke curl around me like a protective veil, shifting the heaviness in my spirit. I brewed teas that wrapped me in warmth from the inside out, each sip a quiet act of rebellion against the cold detachment of the medical system. I burned rosemary for clarity, chamomile for peace, and peppermint for strength. Sometimes I even smoked my herbs, feeling the way each breath grounded me back into my body — a body I was learning to love again despite its scars.
The herbs and the magick didn’t ask me to prove I was in pain. They didn’t label me, dismiss me, or send me home to “wait and see.” They met me exactly where I was — in the mess, in the uncertainty, in the exhaustion. They worked gently and persistently, weaving through every part of me, not just the parts medicine had a name for.
Plants and witchcraft didn’t treat me like a list of unrelated problems. They didn’t gaslight me or measure my worth by test results. They supported me as a whole person — body, mind, and spirit — and in doing so, they gave me something the system never could: a sense of power over my own healing.
Why I Work in This Space
I still protect my organs with medications — I will never deny that conventional medicine plays a vital role in keeping me alive. But I also know what it’s like when the prescriptions stop short, when the appointments end without answers, and you’re left holding the weight of your own care with no clear path forward.
I do not wish to replace medicine. My work is about bridging the gap — creating a space where you can actually do more for yourself when medicine falls short. Where your spirit, your story, and your whole being are part of the healing process, not left out of it.
Green Magick Apothecary was born in that gap. Here, I craft remedies with intention, not guesswork. I hold space for your story. I honor the plants and the magick that carried me through when the system had no answers for me.
If you’re stuck in that same cycle of “treat this one thing and ignore the rest,” I want you to know — you’re not alone, and you’re not without options. Healing can be connected. It can be personal. And it can be powerful.
Still on the Journey
My struggles aren’t over. Even now, as I type this, I’m wearing a Holter monitor. I’m still seeking second opinions, still navigating the hoops and delays before I’m “allowed” to be concerned about my own health. The fight for answers continues, but it’s different this time—because I am different this time.
Herbs are no longer a fresh discovery; they are the cornerstone of my being. They are where I turn when everything else feels too much or hopeless. Using them to heal my body and spirit—and taking that knowledge and sharing it—has given me a purpose that has transformed everything.
The same is true for my spiritual path. My ancestors and my connection to nature guide and influence my every move. I have a voice now, and I’m no longer afraid to use it. This leg of my journey may bring new challenges, but it will also bring new strength, because I walk it with deep roots, unshakable resilience, and a clear sense of who I am.