My Journey to Functional Nutrition

My journey into Functional Nutrition started long before I knew there was a name for it.

Some of my favorite childhood memories are of summers in peach orchards and afternoons in the kitchen with my mom. We made peach jam, baked sourdough bread, and filled the house with the smell of simmering fruit. She had a way of weaving nourishing ingredients into everyday recipes. Chocolate chip cookies became chocolate chip oatmeal carrot cookies. Looking back, I can see she was teaching me something much bigger than cooking.

When I was fourteen, I visited a small family herb farm. I wandered through gardens filled with medicinal plants, stepped into an apothecary lined with jars of herbs and tinctures, and shared a meal made almost entirely from ingredients grown on the farm. It was unlike anything I'd experienced before, and I couldn't stop asking questions.

That curiosity never left me.

Food was never just food. It was how we cared for people.

Over the next twenty years, I worked as a chef, pastry chef, bakery owner, and culinary educator. I spent thousands of hours learning not just how to cook, but how ingredients work together, how fermentation transforms food, and how to help people feel confident in their kitchens.

As my own food sensitivities and other health challenges began to emerge, I learned to cook in a way that supported my own body. I intentionally sought out kitchens that specialized in accommodating food sensitivities, allowing my personal experience and professional training to grow side by side. Long before I became a Functional Nutrition Counselor, I was already searching for ways to make nourishing food both practical and enjoyable.

For more than 20 years, I learned that healthy food doesn't have to be complicated or boring.

How do we make nourishment realistic and sustainable in everyday life?

Our bodies are constantly working toward balance.

Whether I was teaching meal prep, helping someone navigate food sensitivities, or showing a family how to cook supportive meals together, I found myself asking the same question.

The more I learned, the more I realized nourishment involved much more than what was on the plate. I spent years supporting growing families as a postpartum doula, helping mothers recover, nourish themselves, support breastfeeding, and establish rhythms that helped both mother and baby thrive.

Those years deepened something I'd already begun to understand.

I was looking for someone who was willing to keep asking questions.

While I was building my career, I was quietly navigating my own health challenges. Fatigue, headaches, dizziness, allergies, and chronic constipation gradually became part of everyday life. The more I learned about food and health, the more I realized I still didn't understand why my body was struggling or what it needed to heal.

Looking back, I can see that my curiosity had always been leading me here. I'd always been fascinated by how food nourishes us, why some people seem to thrive while others struggle, and what allows the body to heal. But my own health challenges made those questions deeply personal. I wasn't just learning because I was interested anymore. I was learning because I needed answers.

Healing isn't usually about finding one perfect answer.

While I was supporting growing families as a postpartum doula, those questions continued to grow. I found myself reading books like The Continuum Concept and The Body Keeps the Score, learning about the nervous system, stress, attachment, and recovery. As I helped mothers replenish after pregnancy and birth, I found myself applying those same ideas to my own healing.

My notebooks slowly filled with recipes, research, observations, herbs to learn about, and questions. The more I learned, the more I realized that nothing in the body happens in isolation.

Nothing in the body happens in isolation.

When I formally began studying Functional Nutrition, it didn't feel like I was starting over. It felt like finding a framework that brought together everything I had been learning for years. My background as a chef, my own health journey, my work supporting families, and my lifelong curiosity finally had a place to come together.

Today I bring together my background as a chef, my training as a Certified Functional Nutrition Counselor, and my own experience navigating chronic symptoms to help women connect the dots behind their symptoms and understand what their bodies are trying to communicate.