Listen here:

My chronic illness journey began in 1999. I felt extremely let down by conventional medicine. This is my story of how I ended up where I am today.

In this episode I share:

• What to expect in this podcast in episodes to come
• My long and bumpy healing journey
• When things finally changed
• How I discovered emotional and energetic healing

Additional Resources:

COURSE: Healing Rampage

This 12-minute meditation infused with bioenergetic frequencies helps to transform your mindset and upgrade your healing.

COUNSELING: BetterHelp

Making professional counseling accessible, affordable, convenient – so anyone who struggles with life’s challenges can get help, anytime, anywhere. Visit BetterHelp for 10% off your first month of private online counseling.

PRODUCT: ClearStem

Every single item in this line helps fight blemishes and slows the signs of aging. Each item is also free of ALL possible pore-cloggers and contains ZERO hormone disruptors. Your skin is precious, and so is your time – we want to contribute positively to both. Enter code EMPATH at checkout for $10 off of product orders. For 15% off of their Ditch Your Acne course, visit and use code EMPATH.

Episode Transcript:

What to expect in this podcast in episodes to come

Hello everyone. Welcome. This is the first episode of Healing Uncensored. I’m so excited to be here and I just wanted to start this first episode off talking to you guys about my healing journey, what inspired this podcast, Healing Uncensored, and what you guys could look forward to in the future. So I was sick of the vanilla, sick of the boring websites, and blogs, and black and white in the ceiling. And I really love and am passionate about bridging the gap between different types of healing, whether that’s energetic, or emotional, or conventional, mainstream versus functional, holistic, naturopathic medicine. But I really dig the energy and I love uncovering the roots of illness. Really digging into the deeper layers, peeling back those layers of the onion and starting to tell our whole story and seeing each of us as this whole human that is fricking complex. And I want to talk about the things that you don’t hear in your doctor’s office that, maybe are misleading, or confusing on the internet, or blogs that you read and really just have an authentic conversation with all of you. And I want you to feel like we are sitting here chatting, hanging out with your best friends when you listen to this podcast.

So we’re going to talk about my experience with coffee enemas that I do every week. We are going to talk about some of the past experiences in our lives and how those are impacting our health today. We’re going to talk about it all. And if you guys ever have a topic that you would love to hear on this podcast, please don’t hesitate to drop me a line and let me know. What do you want to talk about? What are the things that you feel like are being left out of this healing, chronic illness conversation? And let’s talk about them here. This is your space to really unravel and unfold the roots of illness, and different ways to heal.

My long and bumpy healing journey

So again, today I just want to tell you a little bit about what inspired my brand and my business, Autoimmune Tribe. And how I personally got here, how my healing story has inspired me to then create this, my life purpose and life path, and mission, to spread this healing light and energy and help others step into their own greatest healers. Because I really found in my healing path, that I was my own greatest healer. And no one knows your body better than you. If you take one thing from this podcast today, remember that no one knows your body better than you. So always be tuning in, be listening, and be checking that gut reaction, and intuitive voice inside of you when you decide to make decisions about your health as well.

So let’s dive into where this all began. And it began in 1999 so, maybe just think back, what were you guys doing in 1999? I was in seventh grade and this is really where my healing story began. It was the year that my parents got divorced and that came pretty unexpected to us. It was one of those family room conversations where we thought, I thought that we were going to get scolded for not putting our clothes away, or picking up our rooms. And it turned into the divorce conversation.

So I was the oldest of four children and the divorce ended up being a little tumultuous, right? I think as most divorces are, and maybe you’ve experienced in your own family life. So there was anger, there was resentment, kind of all around, between mom, and dad, and kids. And it was honestly, it was confusing to emotionally kind of compartmentalize what was going on, and there was a lot of anger. And so I felt like the liaison, messenger, communicator between my parents being the oldest child. And I felt like I had to protect my younger siblings, and really care for them, look out for them, protect their fragile emotions, and be emotionally available for everyone except for myself. So soon after this happened, I developed this debilitating stomach pain. And it was this pain that would just come on, at the snap of your fingers. And then I would start to curl over in this deep, deep pain.

And it ended up that I was diagnosed with stomach migraines. And often, children manifest migraines in their stomach instead of their head, and they’re usually stress-related. So it all kind of made sense, even though I didn’t really acknowledge it, and I didn’t have quite the self-awareness to acknowledge it, back in seventh and eighth grade. But looking back now I can see, I can reflect and know, I was a stressed as fuck kid. Right? And I also tried to be perfect at everything. So in high school I developed this horrible back pain that was in combination with the stomach migraines. They didn’t always come on at the same time, but this back pain was really, it was constant. I would come home from high school and I would just fall on the floor and I would cry, and I begged my mom to rub my back. And I just found, searched for any way to wash away this horrible pain I was experiencing, but it just never let up.

So I ended up seeing within those couple of years of high school, 17 doctors, by the time I was 17 which finally did lead to a diagnosis of fibromyalgia. And that was when I was handed a never ending pot of narcotics. And when one of those narcotics stopped working, my doctor prescribed me the next one, and then the next one, and the next one. Until I was a senior in high school and I had to take in so many Vicodins because I was in so much pain, that at the homecoming parade I passed out, puked, accidentally overdosed on taking too many Vicodins that my body could handle. Fortunately, my mom and doctor were just down the street and I was, I was fine. I ended up okay. So the next doctor that I saw was a rheumatologist and he prescribed me for the fibromyalgia, Lyrica, and Cymbalta, which are two very popular drugs for fibromyalgia.

But for me, I lost my appetite. I felt like I was in a cloud, and I still hurt. Didn’t actually take the pain away. So when I got to college, and I had a little more independence, I said, screw this. And I was, I was really angry. So I stopped taking all my medications and I decided to try this little thing called yoga. And yoga felt good. It didn’t take away the pain, but it put my mind into a different place. And that place felt more peaceful. And that’s what I was craving. I was craving simplicity and a pain free life. So I became a little addicted to yoga. Then I thought yoga could heal me. And it did help heal my mind, and heal, and shift my mindset, but the panic attacks were still coming; and then the pigment of my skin began to change; and I developed melasma; and in combination with vitiligo, which is autoimmune.

So through this newfound awareness of yoga, I thought, well maybe I can become a vegetarian. So I did. I became a vegetarian. Fast-forward five years later, I was in Chicago. I had maybe lost a little weight by becoming a vegetarian. But I had eczema that made my skin so raw, I would bleed, and my hands would be bloody covered in blood and I would try to cover them up with band-aids as I was dating, and in my early twenties, and then I go to my graduate school classes, and it was miserable. It was embarrassing. And then my skin, my face broke out in cystic acne. So I had this bit of vitiligo; the melasma with the hyper- and hypo-pigmentation; and then these Rob patches from eczema; and then on top of that, the cystic acne; and I just, it was miserable. I hardly wanted to go out in public because I was so self-conscious of it and it hurt.

And then every time I would eat, my stomach would blow up like a balloon and I would get extremely painfully bloated. So something wasn’t right. Right? And unfortunately, sometimes it takes us too long to really come to terms with that and acknowledge that. But eventually, I did and I decided to go to a holistic practitioner in Chicago. And through that and some testing, I was diagnosed with celiac disease, gluten allergy, and autoimmune disease. I didn’t realize it was an autoimmune disease when I was told I had celiac. I just thought I couldn’t eat gluten and I really didn’t know anything about autoimmune disease. So I resisted. I rebelled. I would get drunk and I would order Domino’s pizza and then I would eat it until my stomach hurt, and I would think, okay, I’ve had too much. And I really didn’t want to come to terms with never eating gluten again, but eventually, it hurt too much and I stopped eating gluten.

But, that proved to not be the one solution. Because as many of you have probably found, or will come to find when our health begins to decline, there’s often more than one thing that has become this cascade. So I decided to do a full elimination diet and through that I did discover many additional food sensitivities. And with such a limited number of foods I could eat, I decided to finally re-introduce meat after about six years of being vegetarian. And I started to eat very clean, and healthy, according to whatever the internet told me. And I thought that I was doing everything right. I really did. I thought, I’m eating healthy, I’m exercising, I’m doing yoga, I even fricking meditate. So like what else? What else? Universe? And I became this victim, and I thought, why is this all happening to me? Why is this all happening to me in my life?

When things finally changed

And I was in a very emotionally unstable, pretty depressing place about my overall health and just life. And then on Sunday, June 28th, 2015, I had been volunteering at a yoga event. And my boyfriend and I were walking back to the car, and I got into the car and I looked at my phone, after not looking at my phone for several hours. And I saw 13 missed calls from my family members. And I mean like every one of my family members, even my stepmom called me, and she doesn’t call me. So I decided to call my dad back, and the phone rang, and my dad picked up. Right away and he said, “Sarah, Jordan is dead.” Jordan was my brother. He was two years younger than me and I broke down. I crumbled. Jordan had committed suicide. And it felt insurmountable. It felt indescribable.

How I discovered emotional and energetic healing

We pulled over on the side of the road, and I began to slam my hand against the window, and it was the gay pride parade in the middle of downtown Chicago. We tried to drive through that traffic, and I just was sobbing, crying, pounding on the window in disbelief that this would actually happen to our family. That my brother would whatever, do this. So the days, and the weeks to come, completely cracked me open. And I was stilled with this deep, deep grief. But for the first time I let emotions in, instead of trying to be fine, I felt more authentically me than I had ever felt before. And through that deep grief and loss, I stumbled upon energy medicine. And through that I found the emotional side of healing that I had been so resistant to. And so I learned, and I studied, and I got certified in many different things. And I practiced healing my heart, and through healing my heart, and allowing my brother to serve as my spirit guide, I have found my deepest healing yet. And it has opened up an entire universe of potential impossibility for healing in my life.

And it is in this space that true transformation really occurred for me. Now since then, I’ve experienced my fair share of stumbling blocks, and challenges, and just plain old crap, like we all do. But it no longer defines me. It no longer is who I am, at the core. It also no longer gets swept under the rug. And instead, I let it surface, and I heal as I go. I acknowledge the crap and I let it be there. I let myself be an imperfect human being, that is worthy of love, acceptance, in her imperfection.

So in this podcast, I want to talk, and break down some of the ways that emotional and energetic healing can be a beautiful compliment, and just as powerful, as the food you eat, and the supplements you buy. And whatever the name is of the diet that you are on. Because this journey has shown me that I am my own greatest healer. And that we have to advocate for ourselves. That’s why this is called Healing Uncensored. Because no person is going to show up in our lives and wave a magic wand and cure us. We don’t need fixing.

But this work also doesn’t have to be grueling. It doesn’t have to suck. Sometimes it does, but it doesn’t all have to be hard. We’re allowed to also let ease come into our lives. And this process can also be joyful and it can also be filled with love. So the first step is for all of us today, to commit to releasing this victim-hood and start to show up big for ourselves because we are so worth that.

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!