Listen Here:

In this episode, we discuss:

• Courtney’s journey with Crohn’s disease
• Being your own advocate as a patient
• The importance of mindset in healing
• Courtney’s favorite affirmations!
• Saying NO to your practitioner
• Disordered eating vs food as joy and nourishment
• Incorporating holistic medicine with conventional
• Chocolate & Tarot & Intuition!!!

Additional Resources:

COURSE: The Healing Activation Portal

This one-of-a-kind experience will help you reprogram your mind. It includes 30 days of energy healing that incorporates guided meditation, vibrational medicine, and deep soul work. The portal will guide you to shed your past programming, surrender to the healing process, overcome energetic plateaus, and open up a new doorway to what’s possible for you.

PRODUCT: Joovv

Red Light Therapy has far-reaching benefits like reducing pain and inflammation, sleep support, skin rejuvenation, and grounding. All you have to do is sit or stand near a device for 10-15 minutes a day to charge your cells. Use code EMPOWEREDEMPATH for a free gift!

BOOK: 21 Days of Healing

21 Days of Healing was created out of my own desire to go beyond food and heal on a deeper emotional and spiritual level. I curated the most loved content based on hundreds of live students experience in the course, and created this self guided workbook to help you navigate chronic illness, release emotional inflammation, and find the medicine woman within.

Episode Transcript:

‘’My chronic illness has been breaking me down, and making me sick, and putting me through all of this crap that I’ve been through, and that I still go through sometimes. It has unraveled what I am not, and it’s bringing me to who I’m supposed to be. I truly 1,000% believe that it’s showing me who I am at my core, and just taking away everything else that I don’t need.’’

Sarah Small: Welcome to the Healing Uncensored podcast. My name is Sarah Small. I’m a health and mindset coach for women with autoimmune disease, just like you. I absolutely love helping you tap into your self-healing power, uncover the energetic side of healing, and release limiting beliefs around your body and your life. Think of this podcast as everything you wouldn’t hear at your doctor’s office. It’s a place for empowered souls to move beyond food and heal themselves on a soul level. I hope you enjoy today’s episode. Now let’s begin.

Welcome to the show. Today’s episode is an interview with Courtney Maiorino. She is a certified health coach and co-founder of The Thrive Effect, a health coaching practice that empowers people who live with chronic illnesses, to be healthy in mind, body, and spirit. On today’s show, you’re going to hear Courtney and I talk about the importance of mindset. We’re going to talk about Crohn’s disease. We’re going to talk about chocolate, tarot cards, and some of the things that piss us the eff off. I can’t wait for you guys to hear this. Let’s dive in. Hi, Courtney. Welcome to the show.

Courtney Maiorino: Hi, Sarah. I’m so excited to be here.

Sarah Small: I’m so excited to have you. This is our first time actually chatting with each other, so I’m really excited to also learn more about you during our conversation. I just wanted to get started and go way back, and have you just tell us, what was your childhood like? You have a twin, right?

Courtney Maiorino: I do.

Sarah Small: What does little Courtney look like?

Courtney’s journey with Crohn’s disease

Courtney Maiorino: Oh, man! My childhood was great. My parents are fantastic people. I have a twin; Christina, she’s amazing. It was great. It was your typical quintessential quote-unquote normal childhood. I was quote-unquote healthy. I had no health issues. I and my sister, both, we were premature at birth. Born 12 weeks early, so we had a lot of complications very, very early on. Then, there was obviously a large chunk of time where we didn’t have any perceived issues. We were learning the same and reading well, and all those things developing the way that a kid should.

Then, unfortunately, I don’t think that people who are born that early with that traumatic coming into the world that we had, can go unscathed. So I started having health issues in 2009. Christina had some earlier than that, but nothing super major, like mono and asthma, like not random, but quote-unquote random things. The stuff didn’t start to hit the fan until about 2009.

Sarah Small: Where did you grow up?

Courtney Maiorino: We grew up in Windham, Maine. For those of you that know Maine, It’s a little world. It’s, I would say, about 25 minutes outside of Portland. Not super rural, so not like no electricity, none of that, kind of near Lake area. So that was great.

Sarah Small: Awesome. Bring us then to 2009. What was the diagnosis? How did life change at that point?

Courtney Maiorino: Honestly, I wasn’t even diagnosed until 2012. I started having symptoms then, it was like weird digestive things that I couldn’t pinpoint. We thought it was many things. I thought that it was stress because I was new in college. I thought it was drinking because I was experimenting with alcohol, and I wasn’t a huge drinker in high school. I thought it was eating dining hall food because God knows that they make it for the masses, and it’s not super great for you.

Sarah Small: What the hell! Isn’t that?

Courtney Maiorino: Exactly. They make it bland, it doesn’t taste like anything, all that good stuff. So we contributed it, we blew it off for a long time, just because I was healthy. I thought I had nothing to worry about. I thought it was nothing and it would go away. I had symptoms for a long time. We blew it off for a while, and then I came back from the first college that I was studying at, to be closer to home because I wasn’t feeling that great and I wanted to save money. So came home. We figured out that this isn’t going away. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not letting up. So we did testing, we did celiac testing, allergy testing, other testing, and the last straw finally, in 2012, was a colonoscopy. It came back that I had, according to doctors, moderate to severe Crohn’s disease, and I was diagnosed in January 2012.

Sarah Small: I can totally resonate with being in my late teens, early 20s, I put on that freshman 10, freshman 15, and drinking a lot, and eating the cat food. That’s first time away from home, and you’re trying to figure out how to eat. My mom used to cook dinner for me every single night. I think we just tolerate this feeling of being fine, and you find all these excuses or hypotheses for why you’re not feeling good. You did move closer to home, but was there any point where you’re like, ‘This is not okay, I’m sick of being fine and I want to feel good’?

Courtney Maiorino: I don’t even think that good was on my radar at that point. I think when I got to the point where I was honestly in the bathroom 20 minutes after everything that I ate, I knew that obviously, I’m not okay. Good wasn’t on my radar, I just wanted to figure out what the heck it was, because this isn’t normal.

Sarah Small: Tell our listeners who don’t fully understand Crohn’s, what is life like with Crohn’s?

Courtney Maiorino: For people that are having an active disease, it can be very, very debilitating. When I tell people that I have Crohn’s, or when I have told people in the past, they’re like, ‘’Oh, I’m sorry.’’ I’m like, ‘’First of all, I don’t want your sorry, but I appreciate it. Second of all, what people maybe don’t know is, there’s a huge spectrum of how the disease can play out, and there are so many factors that go into how people’s lives are with diseases like this.’’

For me, when I first got diagnosed, it was bad. I was on a steroid for a long time. It caused me to not even recognize myself. I’ve posted a transformation photo on my Instagram a couple of times, and that wasn’t even the worst of my weight gain/body image issues. The steroids that people are on, the medications that people are on, can really cause a lot of side effects, weight gain being one of them. That’s what I dealt with for a long time. It’s also a lot of pain, abdominal pain, other pain, the disease manifests many ways. Joint pain is a common side effect. People have pain pretty much everywhere. It just depends on the person honestly, and how it manifests. But yeah, there’s a spectrum of how people live with it, and how intense the disease actually is.

Sarah Small: What does life look like today? What are some of your favorite tools in your healing toolbox?

Being your own advocate as a patient

Courtney Maiorino: Life today is actually really good. Obviously, I do maintain check-ins with my GI and make sure that labs are good, and if they’re not good, figure out ways to bring them down. But for the most part, my treatment plan is holistic. I’ve overhauled my diet so much, many times, until I found what worked. That’s great. The food really helped me not only finally nourish my body in a way that worked for me, but made me love food again, because with Crohn’s and with inflammatory bowel disease, as an umbrella also, food is a very, very, very, very hard subject for a lot of people.

Disordered eating is very common, but not talked about. I know I went through periods of that, where it was too painful to eat. So I didn’t. I wasn’t anorexic, because it wasn’t a consistent thing for me, but I definitely had disordered tendencies around food because at times, it was too painful to eat, and that’s pretty common. Now, with the eating style that I have and things that I’ve implemented, food is like a source of joy again, which is great, because it was when I was younger. It’s also more importantly, a source of fuel and I see it that way more so than joy, which is super important too in terms of keeping this disease at bay and controlled.

But what I really love way, way, way more than just food, even though that’s super important and it’s a super and crucial foundational thing that people with these diseases need to use, I love energy healing and mindset work and all things like quote-unquote woo-woo crazy. I’ve found that food has definitely helped me, and the more logical ways of approaching healing in terms of nutrition and things have definitely helped me, and I’m grateful for them. But I’m super passionate, intense, attracted to mindset work, energy healing. I’m Reiki certified. All of those things, because I feel like we’re doing patients a disservice, but not giving them that information as much as the food nutritional information.

The importance of mindset in healing

Sarah Small: Yeah, definitely. Well, first of all, we’re on the same page as far as being obsessed with the mindset and the healing. I think this is on Instagram, they say, ‘’It’s not woo-woo, if it works.’’

Courtney Maiorino: I like that.

Sarah Small: So many tools that you have utilized, I’ve utilized as well, and have seen just huge massive shifts and transformations in my physical body, even though they’re not like physical treatments or ailments. More specifically, mindset, do you have favorite affirmations? How do you practice your Reiki? Tell us more about some of these tools.

Courtney Maiorino: Something that I still struggle with today, I like to be really transparent with Instagram, with social media, with any chats that I have with people on podcasts or in real life. Even though my life is 1,000 million times more healed than it was when I first got diagnosed, I still struggle every single day on certain things. So me feeling like I’m good enough, is something that I still am working on. I feel like if you ask people who have autoimmune disease, but also Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis in particular, that’s a weird connection that we all have. We all have that similar overarching cloud of not feeling good enough. I feel like that’s somewhat of a connection that brings people together who have these diseases. So, one of my favorite affirmations – well, two of them are, I am enough and I am worthy, because we’re bombarded all day long with things telling us that we’re not. So doing that, and making that sink in, is super important in terms of not only healing and living well with illness, but just life in general.

Sarah Small: Yeah, they’re so simple, but they’re so powerful. As far as your affirmation practice, are you someone who writes them down, wants to do whole pages of affirmations? Do you do lipstick on your mirror? How do you practice your affirmations?

Courtney’s favorite affirmations!

Courtney Maiorino: When I’m in a public place, I write them down. I bring a book with me everywhere I go. One of my coaches and mentors suggested, what’s called a wisdom journal. So I bring it with me everywhere I go. It’s like me being in public, but also, if I hear something that’s interesting, I’ll jot down my response to it. If I am having a really tough time and I need to refocus my energy, I’ll write an affirmation. I just always have a piece of paper with me, so I can do with it what I need to at that point in time. But consistently, I love to do them on my way to and from work.

I know I’m always by myself, I know that no one’s really around, people can’t really tell what I’m doing. So if you see me on the streets of Portland talking a little, that’s what I’m doing. But it’s a time every single day that I have to myself, that I know that I have. So I definitely recite them on the way to and from work every single day. I also want to try to record them somehow. I don’t know if I can do that on my phone, but I want to try that, and actually put them in my ears, because I can say them all day long, but I feel like hearing my own voice say them is a totally different ballgame than me hearing me speak them. So I’m trying to figure out.

Sarah Small: I’ve done that on my iPhone and just used the little phone or voice recorder on the iPhone. I’ve done them especially for money affirmations, actually. I just read this list of money affirmations and I forgot that I had done it, honestly, because I think someone told me to do it, and I was like, ‘’What the hell! I’ll give it a try.’’ Then, I found the recording not that long ago, and I played it back, and I heard myself say the affirmations. I didn’t even recognize my voice.

At first I was like, ‘’Who was on my phone saying these things to me?’’ But then I listened to it and it brought me to tears. It was so, so powerful to hear my own voice saying these things, as if they were true, like, I am good enough, I am worthy, I am lovable, I’m not responsible for anyone except for myself. You just inspired me to go back and do that again, too. I forgot about it. It’s just like so powerful to hear your own voice saying those affirmations, not just in real time, but yeah, playing back to you as well.

Courtney Maiorino: Whenever you need them, you know you have access to it, which is great.

Sarah Small: Some days, you’re not like, ‘’Oh, I’m really inspired to create new affirmations,’’ and you just want to hear the power of your voice that you know you’ve already created them, the work is already done, you just have to sit and be present and listen.

Courtney Maiorino: Yeah, exactly.

Sarah Small: Tell me about The Thrive Effect. This is your brand and business with your sister, Christina. Tell us more.

Courtney Maiorino: I was certified as a holistic health coach. I went through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition Program. I started in 2014, and I graduated in 2015. I initially did it for myself. I was like, ‘’Oh, this is awesome, and I really want to learn more. So I’ll just do it for myself,’’ because I was in the midst of Crohn’s stuff that I didn’t really know how to deal with. So signed up, did the program. It was amazing. Obviously, the goal for a lot of people going through the program is to cultivate a business or a brand or some way of helping people with nutrition and wellness things, either part-time or full-time.

So that was my goal when I graduated. I tried on my own. I’m sure you know that if it’s not the right thing, it doesn’t usually work out. So tried on my own many, many times between 2015 and about a year ago. It didn’t work out. I wasn’t inspired, I had no idea what I was doing, I was just like a total newbie, and the universe knew that it just wasn’t supposed to be. So my sister got sick quote-unquote with biotoxin illness, mold exposure. She had been dealing with symptoms for a long time, I think it was two years or something before she was diagnosed. I’m not sure of her timeline exactly, it blends together. Once you get in the patient lists of things, even if you’re just dealing with one thing, stuff just blends together.

So I think she was two years or a year and a half prior to her full diagnosis of that by a DO. Once she got diagnosed, and she saw firsthand what she’d been seeing me go through for so long, she was planning to be a physician assistant, which is a very great career for a lot of people. But once she saw firsthand what I was going through, and the struggles that I had, she didn’t want to do it anymore. She was like, ‘’All right, you have this certification, I’ll go back and get my master’s.’’ That’s what she’s doing right now. She’s in a master’s program at the University of Western states for Human Nutrition and Functional Medicine. So she is going to be my counterpart to this.

The Thrive Effect was born about a year ago. We’re a slow start, but we’re definitely in it for the long haul and hope to change the face of patient care. We truly believe in a Mind, Body, Soul approach to chronic illness treatment. It’s not just labs or surgeries or medications or procedures. It’s not just nutrition and balancing your hormones and all of that scientific logical stuff. It’s also how you talk to yourself and how you think, and what you say to yourself on a daily basis, and how you identify in the world, and what do you do for fun, and are you doing something that you like to do. So we really believe in our hearts that it’s not just one piece of the puzzle that heals people and helps them live well with their chronic illness.

So The Thrive Effect is based on that Mind, Body, soul approach that it all matters, and to be truly fully healthy, we got to find the sweet spot in all of them and work towards the holistic approach to helping patients feel better in all areas.

Sarah Small: I love that you said the word ‘fun’ and that this can be joyful, it doesn’t have to be really dreary. Yeah, there’s days that – you said, you still have days where you’re struggling and you experience sometimes. Me too, we’re not perfect, and this is chronic illness, and there’s going to be days that we flare, we have the digestive symptoms or whatever. But I truly believe that there can still be joy infused into this process. Sometimes it does take working with a coach to be able to find that joy, if you’re really feeling like it’s hiding and you don’t know where to find it. Finding the tools that easily will start to integrate into your life, and the things that you do love to do and maybe even then bringing back into your life some of the things that you lost, that you loved to do in the past.

So what would you want people to know about illness? If you met some random stuff stranger on the street, what do you think you would say to them about illness?

Courtney Maiorino: That it’s not a death sentence. That it’s not something that has to ruin your life. It’s not ruining your life. Honestly, I was typing up questions to somebody last night who asked me for some advice, tips or whatever. She’s working on a project. She asked me, what advice I would give. I said, ‘’In my personal experience, and not every chronic illness patient feels like this, most of them probably don’t, most of them think I’m nuts, but my chronic illness has been breaking me down, and making me sick, and putting me through all this crap that I’ve been through, and that I still go through sometimes. It has unraveled what I am not, and it’s bringing me to who I’m supposed to be. I truly 1,000% believe that it’s showing me who I am at my core, and just taking away everything else that I don’t need.’’

Sarah Small: Ah, I love that. It’s like you clear the clutter and the bullshit out of your life, and you make way for your soul’s purpose. Now, you and your sister are both coming together to align for that. Started in the womb, now we’re here.

Courtney Maiorino: Seriously. It’s so funny because as a twin, anybody out there who has a twin sibling or friends that are twins, you understand what I’m saying when I say that, if you’re a twin and you have similar circles of friends or similar interests, it’s easy to get lost in each other and not know who you are as a person individually. That has happened to both of us at many times in our lives up to this point. But in this whole process of working to help people, we’ve learned that she is more exercised and food related. That is where her heart lies. Well, I need to eat well. I need to learn how to cook or cook better. I need to move my body every single day in various ways, in order to be my best self. That is not exactly where my passion lies. So by coming together and working together, we’re definitely going to give clients and people who come in contact with us, a more holistic approach than if we worked alone.

Sarah Small: I think that that is just that you are the light. What I mean by that is that you’re showing people that there can be wisdom and growth and transformation in diagnosis, or not diagnosis, not everyone has a clear diagnosis, you talked about taking three years for you to get the Crohn’s diagnosis. So I just think that hopefully everyone listening finds that as inspiration to know that there is not only light at the end of the tunnel, that’s corny to say, but this illness has something to teach you, and that it can potentially yet just catapult you on your path and your life’s journey and purpose, and start to make you clear that clutter and bullshit, and become really aligned in your life.

So switching gears from the positive of the light for just a second, what this is you off that people have either said to you about chronic illness, autoimmune disease, Crohn’s disease in general, or about holistic alternative healing maybe mindset? Have you ever had experiences like that, where you’re like, ‘’Dude, it pisses me off that people think that, or I have said that,’’ or you’ve had experience like a practitioner or something?

Saying NO to your practitioner

Courtney Maiorino: I’ve had plenty of experiences with practitioners, this exact type of scenario. I don’t get angry often, especially for people that know me in real life know I try to be very calm and very put together in my interactions with other people, even if I disagree. But when I first found out that I had to do Remicade – so I have been on this holistic journey for a decent amount of time, at least in my head. Well, on my early days, early year of starting to be holistic, I found out that I had to do Remicade. For listeners that don’t know what Remicade is, it’s an infusion medication similar to a chemotherapy infusion.

I went to my doctor’s office for three hours every eight weeks and got injected with meds. That was supposed to help me make me better, keep the disease at bay, or whatever it was. At that point in time when I got that piece of information, I was angry, and I hadn’t adopted being more like learning student kind of perspective, loving that I have right now of my illness. I told my doctor and the infusion nurse that, ‘’You will not see me here long term. I know this is a long term thing for most people, but I will not be here for the rest of my life, because my days are numbered, it’s not going to happen.’’

I went to my first infusion, and my sister came with me because I was so scared. Prior to being a Crohn’s patient, I didn’t take Tylenol, I didn’t take a leave, I was quote-unquote healthy, I had nothing wrong, I didn’t take meds, it just wasn’t something that I did. So to go from that perspective, and to feel in my own head that I’m having chemo, which is basically what it is, it didn’t sit well with me and it was very scary. So Chris came with me for my first infusion. I sat there and I told my nurse, ‘’I’m holistic, I want to be on no meds. This is the path personally that I want to take with this.’’

She was like, ‘’What you eat doesn’t matter.’’ She told me that I’ll be on meds for the rest of my life. She told me that, ‘’None of this works, we’re going to see you every week for the rest of your life.’’ Obviously, I’m not going to sit there and argue with you. So every time that I’ve gotten that answer, which has been many times, I just nod my head and smile, and I keep doing what I’m doing because honestly, unfortunately, there is such a gap right now between well-meaning physicians, nurses, practitioners, western medicine people, that means well, that want to help their patients, but they just don’t know what they don’t know.

Sarah Small: Yeah, they only know what they’re taught in school.

Incorporating holistic medicine with conventional

Courtney Maiorino: Exactly. They’re coming from their own scope of practice, they’re doing the best that they can, but when practitioners come up against a patient like me, who has a voice, who isn’t afraid to use it, who tells them what I’m doing, they come back with that answer, that’s not enough for me, I’m not taking that. So I decided personally to offer Remicade two and a half years after my first dose, and I wrote both my GI and my infusion nurse, a very long letter.

I was like, ‘’Look, I know what the risks are, I know the risk that I’m taking with my own body, I know what can potentially happen, and I laid out everything that I do on a daily basis to keep myself in check; meditation, eat well, all these things.’’ So they know what I’m doing. If they don’t feel like that’s valid, and that that works, then that’s fine, but it works for me.

Sarah Small: Two things – I like this question because I think that we are allowed to be angry and we’re allowed to be pissed off. I think many of us are like, ‘’Think positive, stay positive.’’ I’m like, ‘’Yes, I’m all about freaking mindset and doing the positive affirmations, but I also believe that you’re allowed to be pissed off sometimes. It’s just a matter of whether you hold that for weeks and months to come and years to come.’’

Courtney Maiorino: Or you use it to push you forward. I get pissed off every single time someone tells me that, but I’m not going to hold on to any of them because they don’t know, and it’s only going be all of us to make this actually known, and to help people with this stuff.

Sarah Small: First of all, yes. Amen to that. Number two, I think what you were saying was really beautiful, painting this picture of what it looks like to be your own health advocate as a patient. I think we forget and maybe, some people listening have forgotten that they hire the doctor, they are the CEO of your health. I love that you just gave a really practical tip, which was writing a letter to your physician, but do you have any other tips as far as becoming and maintaining yourself as an advocate in your health?

Courtney Maiorino: I think that one of the top tips that I can give right now that or that someone gave to me is like, don’t be afraid to speak up. I know it’s hard. I know we’re not used to going against quote-unquote who’s telling us what to do, especially in a doctor’s office setting. But like you just said, and like I’ve seen with all these amazing women on Instagram and social media, who are being advocates for themselves in light of chronic illness, they’re working for us. I know that it doesn’t seem like that, I know the dynamic is weird, I know we feel intimidated and scared and sad, and so many other emotions that we deal with because of this illness stuff, but you ultimately have the last say.

The other thing that I want to say is, if you feel a nudge to do something, especially related to your illness, your body, your medication regimen, whatever it is, follow it. I’ve made scary, scary, scary fucking decisions in terms of medication many times. Some of them haven’t worked out, but most of them have. It depends on whether you believe that stuff happens for a reason, or whatever it is that you believe, but I believe that stuff happens for a reason. The times that it didn’t work out, I learned my lesson. But the times that it did work out, it also reinforced the notion that I know what I’m doing. If I need help from them, I will ask, but ultimately, we have a choice and how we live with this stuff we do. I think that reinforcing that in all of our heads is super, super important.

Sarah Small: Ah, beautiful. I love it. So you wrote that the strong belief in oneself and our ability to help ourselves heal is essential to thriving with a chronic illness or autoimmune disease. What you were just saying is, to me, I would wrap that up into you listening to your gut instinct and your intuition. Talk a little bit about listening and trusting that intuition, because I think we get those little downloads and feelings, and we get fearful. We’re like, ‘’Oh, no, no, I’m not good enough.’’ Or, people with Hashimoto, who might have a throat chakra block and they’re afraid to speak up to themselves, or afraid to voice their truth. So how does intuition play into some of this as well?

Courtney Maiorino: Honestly, this is another area that I’m working on. I am really trying as of lately to get quiet and to listen to myself. It’s not always in terms of Crohn’s or medications or anything as intense as that. Sometimes it’s what kind of movement do I want to do today, or what I want to share with the world on Instagram today. It can be as quote-unquote shallow, which is not a good word, but for lack of a better one, as that, or it can be as intense as, I don’t really feel like taking Remicade anymore, so what am I going to do about it? So, I think that in either extreme situation, you just need to trust yourself. It’s not as easy as that at all. But I think that the more that we nudge ourselves to do that, the easier it gets.

So, if you do something scary, follow your intuition and it doesn’t work out, but the more that you do it, and the more times it works out, you’re going to get a positive feedback loop in your brain that’s like, ‘’Alright, I can do this.’’ So I think it’s just being consistent with listening and then acting. I’m no expert. Definitely, this is something I’m still working on, especially in terms of the impact that I want to make with this. So I’m definitely not an expert, definitely still learning, but I feel like the more that we put ourselves out there and follow the nudges that we get, the easier it’s going to be to be more consistent and to also hear more clearly.

Chocolate & Tarot & Intuition

Sarah Small: Love it. Tell me about your obsession with the Hu chocolate?

Courtney Maiorino: Oh, Hu kitchen is my favorite. I’ve been on a really weird roller coaster with food throughout my time as an autoimmune disease patient. I ate meat for a while, I ate dairy for a while, then I didn’t, then I went gluten-free, and then I went no-sugar because I was so scared that sugar was going to put me into a flare, and then I thought that I had to be 100% perfect in this plant-based, gluten-free, refined sugar-free lifestyle that I live, in order to be off medication. What was that doing? It was causing me more stress.

I now find ways to eat things that make me happy on a soul level, in ways that work for me. So I don’t go out and eat regular candy or chocolate because it honestly makes me feel like crap. But I will buy chocolate on a semi-normal basis that I can tolerate. Hu kitchen is one of them. They’re a company out of New York City.  They’re vegan, paleo, all kinds of other awesome, cool ways of eating right now. All the cool labels, they’re fantastic. It’s one of those brands that I’ve really found, that I can tolerate. So because of that, I do eat it on a semi-often basis.

Just because food definitely is a way of nourishment, and that’s my first and foremost priority in terms of how I use food in my life, but I also don’t want to be miserable or feel like I’m going to prison in terms of what I eat. So Hu kitchen is definitely on my list. One other thing that I have to shout out here on this podcast, it’s not national yet, but I’m praying that it will be. It’s a plant-based ice cream out of Portland, Maine. So if you’re ever in Portland, you need to find Sticky Sweet Maine. So they have amazing ice cream. So, Hu kitchen and Sticky Sweet are things that I eat on a semi-normal basis to feed my soul. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, as long as my body tolerates it.

Sarah Small: Yeah, you found something that your body tolerates, and it is not worth the stress of restricting every food and only eating five foods, you can count on one, and then all the stress that then your body takes on from that restriction. You have also obsession with tarot cards, tell me more.

Courtney Maiorino: I don’t know. Again, I think that the theme of this is that I’m no expert. I’m trying to be really authentic and really honest about where I come from in terms of my life and how I live and how I help people because I don’t want to be a guru, I’m not. I’m in this space, in the trenches, just like all of you who are listening, who have illness. I’ve just found some ways that work, that could be beneficial. So I love tarot cards just for fun. I have the wild unknown deck. It’s my favorite deck so far. I actually pull every day. But I pull when I need inspiration or insight, it just helps me and I know that it’s, we will, but it works. It’s just one of those things that I’ve been drawn to, and I’m trying really hard, especially in the last year or so, to not hide those types of things.

I got certified in Reiki in college, and I haven’t really used it, and it’s something that I usually talk about. I think that I don’t talk about these things because they’re not mainstream. But if I can give you guys any tips, it’s like, please hold on to the parts of yourself that are unique and things that you love to do, regardless of if people accept them or not, because closing yourself off and restricting yourself in those ways too can only make you not feel great. Do you know what I mean? Hiding parts of yourself like that, just because you don’t think that people will accept them or not, it’s not going to help you in the long run in terms of living well with your disease. So, open up, share your truth, share what you love, and those who resonate will find you.

Sarah Small: That’s a beautiful place to end. I love that so much, some messages to drive home. Courtney, tell everyone how they can find you.

Courtney Maiorino: You can find The Thrive effect on Facebook and Instagram at The Thrive Effect. You can find me on Instagram and Facebook, Courtney Maiorino. You can also find my sister, Christina Maiorino on both Instagram and Facebook as well. Please, reach out if you want friends, if you want shoulders to lean on, cry on than to coach with, whatever. We really want to cultivate a community around what we’re trying to do and how we’re trying to help people. So any and all ways, we can help you, please reach out.

Sarah Small: Amazing. I will link to those in the show notes, so it’s super easy for people to click and find you and The Thrive Effect super easy on all the social media. Thank you so much Courtney for being here today. It was a pleasure having you on the show.

Courtney Maiorino: Thank you, Sarah. It was so awesome. I love what you’re doing on this podcast, and I’m so excited to share some stuff with your listeners.

Sarah Small: Thank you so much for joining me for today’s episode. If you loved this episode and want to support the creation of future episodes, please leave a 5-star review below. I’d also love to hear from you on social media. Screenshot this episode, and tag me on Instagram or Facebook at theuncensoredempath. Thanks again for listening. See you next time.

You can find Courtney here:

www.thrive-effect.com

https://www.facebook.com/thethriveeffect

https://www.instagram.com/thethriveeffect/

Connect with Sarah:

Instagram | Facebook Community | Pinterest | YouTube

Work with Sarah:

Online courses | 1:1 coaching | Send show requests to sarah@theuncensoredempath.com!

This post contains affiliate links. We may receive a small commission for purchases made through these links. Thank you for your support!