If you’re anything like us — raised in a traditional Colombian family where food was always a symbol of togetherness, comfort, love, and abundance, where being a little chubby meant you were living well, and where your grandparents either passed away from or are currently living with conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure, thyroid issues, or cardiovascular disease — then you are one of us.

And yes, I know it can be hard to accept that this is the reality of your family. I truly understand, because just like you, I’ve lived through these situations very closely. For a period of time, I lived with my maternal grandmother, a woman for whom food in abundance was her love language. Food was the only way she really knew how to communicate affection because expressing herself verbally was very difficult for her. She could never fully understand my way of eating, my portion sizes, or the times I chose to eat. Still, we made it work and lived together for six beautiful years. During that time, I witnessed very closely how her body struggled with everything all at once: morbid obesity, uncontrolled diabetes that slowly damaged her nervous system, her skin, her eyesight, and her feet; hormones completely out of balance that constantly interrupted her sleep and prevented true rest; symptoms of severe chronic inflammation that traditional medicine could barely explain; gastrointestinal issues, severe incontinence, and a progressive loss of mobility in her legs that left her in constant discomfort and pain. And yet today, at 92 years old, with proper professional care, balanced nutrition, and movement, she is doing better than ever.

I also witnessed very closely the final years of my paternal grandmother’s life. In the middle of the night, she would wake up to drink a little glass of milk because she felt thirsty, never imagining that the glucose spikes were what left her confused and unable to speak the next morning. She was a self-taught physical therapist, a loving woman from the countryside who deeply understood the healing power of nature. She knew medicinal herbs, bones, and muscles like the back of her hand. What she never knew was that the very thing that probably kept her alive until 94 years old was the constant movement her work required. She was an incredible woman who simply never had access to the right information to nourish herself better during old age.

And now, the reason why we are here writing this blog today: our mother. After five long weeks in the hospital at 63 years old, she experienced her first severe uncontrolled diabetic episode, which caused a very serious kidney infection that eventually entered her bloodstream and became sepsis. All of this was combined with unmanaged stress (because yes, she belongs to the generation that believes going to therapy means you’re “crazy”), lack of restorative sleep, an ultra-processed diet, obesity, and a sedentary lifestyle. This is the third time in my life that I’ve witnessed something like this happen within my family — and I never want to experience it again, nor would I ever want it to happen to you. Thankfully, today she is doing much better and slowly adapting to her new — and necessary — lifestyle. Three women from different generations, all connected by one common denominator: lack of proper information about nutrition because of cultural conditioning, chronic inflammation caused by products they genuinely believed were healthy, almost no conversations around women’s health topics like menstruation, menopause, or birth control, and above all, sedentary lifestyles disguised as “rest.” Creating this wellness community for both women and men, built around accessible and accurate information, is deeply important to us. We want men to understand these topics too — to recognize symptoms from the root cause, to learn how to nourish their hormones, and to care for their bodies with love and awareness.
I truly believe that genetics do not define us, and that our fork is far more powerful than our family history. I invite you to take a look at these numbers and begin making small daily changes (with simple tips we’ll be sharing here) so you don’t have to repeat your family’s story.

• Your genes account for about 25% of your health. The other 75% is rewritten daily through your food and lifestyle choices.

• The International Diabetes Federation reported in 2025 that 1 in 9 adults is living with diabetes. Which means the chances are pretty high that someone in your family is affected too.

• According to the World Health Organization, 1 in 3 deaths worldwide is related to cardiovascular disease, often linked to chronic inflammation, insulin resistance, high blood pressure, smoking, stress, sedentary lifestyles, poor sleep quality, obesity, and ultra-processed foods. Please pay attention to this, because we truly do not want you becoming part of those statistics.

• Just 100 years ago, the leading causes of death were infectious and viral diseases like tuberculosis and pneumonia — illnesses for which there were no cures or vaccines at the time.

So please, as a first simple tip: go for a walk (especially after your biggest meal if you can), dance, or do any activity that requires movement. It doesn’t matter if you work a 9-to-5 job like I do — make the time to do it for yourself.

There’s a kind of burnout that many mothers carry quietly. Not the kind you fix with one good night of sleep. Not the kind people easily notice from the outside.

I mean the emotional exhaustion that comes from constantly carrying the mental load of a family while slowly losing pieces of yourself in the process. The schedules. The meals. The laundry. The appointments. The emotional support. The endless thinking ahead for everyone else. And for many moms, especially military spouses, the load becomes even heavier during the seasons where we’re holding everything together mostly alone. Somewhere along the way, survival mode becomes normal.

And then one day, you try to reconnect with yourself again. For me, that looked like starting a wellness platform. Starting something meaningful and that is brain stimulating in a different way. Learning how to record and edit videos. Researching health, hormones, nutrition, and wellness. Using my brain creatively again after years of pouring almost every ounce of energy into motherhood and home life. What started as something healing and exciting quickly became emotionally complicated. Because instead of feeling fully supported, I started hearing things that made me feel smaller. That my primary job was housekeeping. That my mind was in the project “24/7.” That I was sacrificing my family. That I probably wouldn’t even be successful. That when we went out as a family, I was too busy noticing ideas or inspiration for my project instead of being fully focused on everyone else. And honestly… those words hurt deeply. Not because I love my family any less. But because most mothers are already giving everything they have.

What people sometimes don’t understand is that burnout changes you. When a woman spends years constantly caring for others without enough rest, support, adult interaction, creativity, or mental stimulation, eventually something inside her starts feeling empty. Not because she’s ungrateful. Not because she’s selfish. Because she’s human. And sometimes the smallest thing that reconnects a woman back to herself — a project, a goal, a passion, movement, creativity, learning something new — becomes the very thing helping her survive emotionally. That’s the part I wish more people understood. Wanting something for yourself does not mean you love your family less. Being inspired again does not mean you are neglecting your children. And trying to build something meaningful outside of motherhood does not erase the value of everything you already do inside the home.

In many ways, moms are expected to carry invisible labor endlessly while also making it all look effortless. And when they finally try to grow beyond survival mode, they’re often met with guilt instead of support. I know marriage, parenting, stress, military life, and exhaustion are complicated. I’m not sharing this to complain. I’m sharing this because I know there are so many women quietly sitting in this exact same feeling right now. Feeling burned out. Feeling unseen. Feeling emotionally exhausted. Trying to reconnect with themselves while still deeply loving their families.

So if that’s you too… I hope you hear this clearly: You are allowed to be more than the role you serve for everyone else. You are allowed to grow. You are allowed to create. You are allowed to dream. And you do not have to shrink yourself to prove your love for your family. Moms matter too.

It’s been almost two decades since the beginning of my personal journey, and today I can honestly say that through intuitive eating (because back then I knew nothing about functional medicine or holistic nutrition), avoiding extremes, and living a balanced lifestyle, my body was able to overcome HPV.

It was 2007. I was 19 years old and considered myself to be in “good health” — and by that I mean nothing seriously wrong. I just had a few little things I thought were normal, especially because all my friends seemed to deal with the same issues too: gastritis, constipation, allergies, dizziness, irregular periods, birth control use, and so much more. Then one day, during a routine Pap smear (which I did every year), the results revealed that something wasn’t right. After several tests, I was diagnosed with HPV (Human Papillomavirus), and according to the very alarming gynecologist, I was on the verge of developing cervical cancer. I was completely shocked. His final words stayed with me for years: there was no cure for the virus, no accessible testing in Colombia to determine how aggressive the strain inside my body was, and the only thing I could do was “take care of myself” and hope my body eliminated it on its own. I cried so much that day. I couldn’t understand why this was happening to me. I was in a stable, exclusive relationship, and suddenly I was dealing with an STD. I was so young. There was no ChatGPT back then, no easy way to get answers to all the questions racing through my mind. At the time, I lived with my grandmother, who loved me deeply, but wellness and healthy living were never really modeled around me.
So from that moment on, I made the decision to educate myself and take control of my health. The first thing I did was keep it all to myself because it felt embarrassing and deeply personal. Then I started searching for the magical solution that would finally give my immune system what it had been desperately asking for. Following my doctor’s recommendation, I increased my intake of red foods and began an ovo-lacto vegetarian phase. After years of eating that way, the result was basically keeping the virus stable. I had checkups every four months, but there was no real improvement. Meanwhile, I constantly felt tired, cold, dizzy, and the most noticeable symptom of all: I completely lost my period. Everything seemed to be getting worse. Back to the doctor I went, and this time they found a cyst on my left ovary. The solution? Birth control pills. Honestly, some of the worst months of my life. Irritability, mood swings, emotional sensitivity… it was a lot. Since the pills made me feel terrible, I went back to monthly birth control injections — my “trusted” contraceptive method at the time (I truly believed they were amazing). Because I looked relatively healthy on the outside, no doctor ever suggested checking my hormones or gut health.
Looking back, that would’ve probably been one of the best recommendations anyone could have given me.
Seven years had already passed since my original diagnosis, and I was still stuck in the same place: the virus remained in my body, abnormal Pap smears, colposcopies, ultrasounds, irregular cycles, constipation, and weight loss. I truly believe my healing journey started when I began incorporating small lifestyle changes I randomly learned from a Chinese medicine YouTube channel.

A doctor there talked about circadian rhythms, the body’s internal clock, how each organ works on its own schedule, and how we should nourish our bodies accordingly. Later, I discovered immunological medicine, bioenergetics, functional medicine, and the process of unlearning everything I once considered “healthy” or “fit.”

I returned to eating a full diet that included animal proteins again — but this time consciously and intuitively, without extremes, and prioritizing real foods that came from the earth. I stopped using hormonal birth control, added movement into my life, and focused on enjoying the life I had. My body thanked me in so many ways. One of them was finally clearing the virus I had lived with for 13 long years.

One of the biggest lessons I learned throughout this process was patience — learning how to listen to my body, how to measure and understand it through the right lab work, how to nourish it with real foods, how to give it proper rest, recovery, and sunlight, and how to make the best out of every situation with the best attitude possible, without feeling ashamed of anything.

So if you have daughters, sisters, friends, or loved ones, I hope you remind them to stay consistent with their yearly checkups, including Pap smears and gynecological exams for early detection of any abnormalities, because in cases like this, prevention truly is everything.

We’re here to support one another and build a real community, so if you have any questions or have gone through something similar, we’d truly love to hear your story too.