Where it Began
I was twenty years old, sitting at a friend's grandmother's table after lunch, when everything changed, though I had absolutely no idea at the time.
I'd spent the better part of a year chasing answers through a battery of medical tests. The results: pre-ulcer condition, hiatal hernia, and acid reflux. These I already knew. What I wanted to know was why.
I asked her if she had any antacid.
She didn't. But she asked, "Have you ever tried papaya?"
I had not.
She gave me the rest of a half-empty bottle of papaya tablets. I took two. Within minutes, I felt better.
It was a small thing. She probably forgot about it before I even left her driveway. But something filed itself away in me that afternoon ~ quietly, without fanfare ~ that would take decades to fully understand.
A few years later, I was sitting in my allergist's office waiting for one of my six weekly shots. I had, according to my allergist, the worst grass allergy he had seen in his long career. In addition to the shots: daily antihistamines (back before they were non-drowsy, so I was perpetually foggy) and a steroid nose spray.
As I sat there, I thought about those papaya tablets. Then I thought: This simply cannot be the only way to fix this.
That thought, almost offhand, turned out to be one of the most important ones I've ever had.
A few months later, I took a part-time job at a local natural foods store. A little extra money. A chance to learn more about how food affected the way I felt. Nothing more than that.
As the only floor staff for the first few hours each morning, customer questions came to me. What's your best multi-vitamin? Which B vitamin? Which one of these would you choose?
I had no idea and I hate not being able to answer a question!
So on my breaks, I sat with Earl Mendell's Vitamin Bible and studied every product we carried, category by category, until I could. I landed on our store's private label line, provided by a company called Vitamer Labs, because their formulas were solid, their dosages were spot on, and their raw materials were top notch.
One morning, a man came in and saw me stocking their products on the shelf.
"I see you're stocking an order of their private label," he said.
"I am! I love this company."
"What do you love about them?"
I rattled off every reason I'd landed on their products. He listened. Then he handed me his business card. He worked for Vitamer Labs, was in town interviewing for a sales representative in this area, and asked if I'd be interested in the position.
I looked down at the card and then back up at him.
"What's a sales rep?"
And that, Forrest Gump style, is how I found myself standing at the doorway of an industry I would go on to fall madly in love with and stay in for decades.
That young woman had no idea what she innately understood, without yet having the words for it: that what we eat has a direct influence on how we feel. That chronic conditions respond better to lifestyle change than to management alone. And that sometimes, a young woman's greatest gift isn't how much she knows ~ it's how willing she is to share what she's learning with others.
She was a seeker at a turning point. She just didn't know it yet.
What I know now, after thirty years of working with people trying to change their lives, is this:
Most of us come to health and healing looking for the right answer ~ the supplement, the diet, the protocol that will finally fix it. We try to overhaul everything at once and when it falls apart, we blame ourselves. We treat healing like a destination, a moment when we'll finally have it right.
There is no arrival point. Health is an ongoing practice, not a finish line.
It doesn't have to be all or nothing. You don't have to blow up your current life and rebuild it from scratch, doing everything perfectly, because that never works. Small, consistent steps in a direction that makes sense for your life matter more than any sweeping gesture or new fad.
The part we don’t discuss often enough: healing is as much about our inner world as it is about the external one. The two are not separate. They never were.
That's what these Guide Notes are for. Not to tell you what to do. To walk alongside you as you figure out what's true for you ~ one honest, doable step at a time.
The grandmother with the papaya tablets was my first guide. I didn't know to thank her then.
Consider this my way of paying it forward.
Coming next The Leak Series: Margaret and My Nervous System