My Story

Welcome to the opening chapter of Sunward Nutrition. I’m so ready to share this journey with you! Though I’ve had a dream of having my own holistic nutrition coaching company for a while and have been working on bits and pieces of it over the last few years, the launch of my website and publication of my first blog makes it feel official and that gets me SO excited. 

I’ve made many excuses for staying comfortable and avoiding going all in on building my own business - ‘I’m not ready,’ ‘I don’t know enough,’ ‘I’m scared,’ ‘What if I fail?’ etc. Stepping out and doing something that feels so big and challenging just didn’t feel safe. But I’ve realized ‘safe’ isn’t going to help me become the person I want to be whether it’s a nutritionist, wife, mom, friend or sister. Sometimes we have to make bold choices that stretch us and may put us at risk of failure or feedback we don’t want to hear. But it can also be those choices that grow our character and help us become the person God has called us to be. 

I believe God has written my story with its twists and turns and brought me to the field of holistic nutrition and wellness for a specific reason. I don’t know exactly what that will look like, but I do know my heart is to help others improve their health and feel their best so that they can live well the one life they’ve been given. 

A few key experiences in my life have cultivated my interest in holistic health and shaped my goals as a nutritionist. It all started with the seeds my mom planted as she began my family’s health journey when my siblings and I were very young. Motivated by some serious eczema my sister had as a child, my mom started with swapping laundry detergent and hygiene products for cleaner options, which sometimes meant making her own. Over time, our white bread turned to whole wheat, then organic multigrain. She stopped buying things like Hamburger Helper and soda. She would make more and more foods from scratch and organic labels grew common in our household. She would research online and soak up all the information she could from health professionals who were growing in popularity in the natural health world at the time. She was so invested in the health of our family that what she was learning would overflow into her conversations and how she raised us. It was a gradual process of changing our diet as she learned what was best for our bodies and what was harmful.

As I began to understand the changes our family was making and why, my interest in food and how it affects our health really took root and I started to want to make better choices for my health on my own. But as I entered my teens, my focus on ‘health’ became more of a disguise for what was really a struggle with body image. I was fearful of gaining weight and determined to have a ‘flat’ stomach, so I would refuse to eat certain foods I considered unhealthy and severely restricted the amount of food that I would eat throughout the day. At the time, I didn’t realize the detriment I was causing to my health or how it might affect me in the long run. Thankfully, this was a relatively short phase. Through the encouragement of family and friends, I knew something needed to change. My body needed nourishment and I wanted to enjoy food again without stressing about it. So, though my mindset around food took longer to adjust (I am still a work in progress), I began to eat more of what I enjoyed and then by God’s grace, over time I was able to shift my focus to how my food choices nourished my body’s needs rather than how they might affect my weight or appearance. 

Around a similar time frame, my brother started having some significant health issues and had become pretty sick. As his sister, I watched on the sidelines as everything unfolded, sometimes having the opportunity to be at the hospital with him and other times staying with friends or at home while our parents were with him for testing and treatment. One thing I distinctly remember noticing as a gap in the care he received was nutrition education - Were there foods, ingredients, nutrients that would further exacerbate his illness? Were there foods/nutrients, lifestyle factors that could support his body’s ability to fight off his illness? Were there things he could do to combat the negative effects of his treatment through nutrition & lifestyle? What would strengthen his immune system? I wish my brother had been given the opportunity and information to better understand how he could support his body’s natural ability to fight off disease in conjunction with the conventional treatment that felt so necessary in the dire circumstances he found himself in.

Woven together, these life experiences motivated me to seek out an education in Holistic Nutrition Therapy so that I could understand more about how the body functions and how food can affect that function both negatively and positively. I wanted to dig into the science myself to learn how God designed the body and gave us all the tools to take care of it. I wanted to learn how to come alongside others, those struggling with their health and those who simply want to be proactive about their health so that they can be active and present in the lives of their loved ones for years and years to come. So in 2021, I completed my certification in Nutrition Therapy through the Nutrition Therapy Institute in Colorado and have since been navigating where to start with Sunward Nutrition while I work a separate full time job. 

But the time is here to simply START as my husband so gently reminds me just to take the next step. So here we are! My hope is to build a brand that makes resilient health feel accessible and achievable to anyone. I’d love to cultivate a community of people that support one another in simply taking the next step that makes sense for them and that will benefit them and their families in the long haul.  

My desire is to continue to grow in my own understanding of the human body, what common or not-so-common health challenges we face, why they exist and how food, specific nutrients and lifestyle factors can help us restore the vibrant health we are created to have so that we can live our one life well and to the absolute fullest. 

Thank you for being here and joining in on this adventure with me! I’d love to hear your unique story and connect with you on socials. Follow me on Instagram @sunwardnutritionco and join my email list here (go to the bottom right of page) to receive exclusive content, special offers, and a deeper look into holistic health practices that can support your unique journey. Let’s do this together!