My journey to making meaning in and of my life has been one of transformation and redefinition. It has also been riddled – like for most people – with failure, difficulties, stress, and feeling unwell.

But I have discovered not just through certifications and degrees but through digging deep to learn about myself that it is in the willingness to transform and grow where we become well. I didn’t know all of this when I started my coursework to be a certified Holistic Health Coach through the Institute of Integrative Nutrition. And soon learned that wellness – wholeness – is more than what you put on a plate. It is all the things that support your life that don’t have to do with food. Being able to work effectively, relate intently, connect spiritually, and love deeply are all components of well-rounded wellness.

In my life, previous to receiving my certification, I was struggling with my wellness. I was anemic, hypoglycemic, had osteoarthritis, fatigue, aching joints, an irritated gut, and a seeming inability to get pregnant. I wanted to find more sustainable ways to be healthy. So when many painful fertility treatments failed and because I was feeling quite unwell, at the age of 40 I decided to dig deeper to find the root cause of what was going on. I saw a Functional Medicine Practitioner who tested me for and diagnosed me with severe Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity. This diagnosis was, in fact, a bright spot because it answered a lot of what was going wrong with my health. But it also propelled me to change my diet and a lifestyle and mindset that weren’t serving me.

You see, with infertility – like any diagnosis that feels heavy – it can be tough to pay attention to your self – who you are and what you want. The voices of well-meaning people everywhere seem to crowd you, leaving you feeling overwhelmed and directionless. For me, these feelings left me depressed and sad and often confused about what my next step should be. I wasn’t comfortable feeling this way. And I wanted to change. I wanted to experience life differently, and live it more fully.

Over the course of three years, feeling a need to lighten the weights that were holding me down, I went on a full purge of the noise all around me. I started with the food I was eating, which was leaving me feeling bloated, achy, and stuffed, and embraced living Paleo – which was more about creating a balance between eating, moving, sleeping, and relating well than just eating no grains, dairy or sugar. The dietary changes healed every one of my ailments and left me feeling stronger, more alert, and happier.

I continued my purge with the thoughts that were swirling in my head, leaving me feeling not good enough and unprepared to be a mother, then moved on to people in my life that were pulling me away from the path I wanted to be on. I aimed to move out what wasn’t serving me and added in what helped me grow. On a recommendation I picked up Gabby Bernstein’s book May Cause Miracles and started a 40-day meditation. That book helped me love myself more and slowed me down enough to appreciate everything around me. I also replaced my aggressive gym workouts temporarily with yoga. Yoga helped me listen intently to the messages I was getting from my body which felt like it needed softening, stretching, and opening up. I paid attention to what I was feeling – that there was more to gain with less.

This minimalist mindset I started to develop before I even named it – of deliberately adding in only the thoughts, things, and people, that informed my life positively completely transformed me. It changed how I lived my life and did my work.

And I know it was the reason I eventually got pregnant. Yes, I did get pregnant! Three years after we stopped fertility treatments and decided to look into adoption, after completely changing the way I ate and moved my body, and how I processed thoughts in my head, after hearing doctors tell me getting pregnant on my own just wasn’t going to happen, it did. And while it ended in miscarriage, it still provided a beautiful lesson. It led me to minimalism, to think more clearly and act more intentionally. It opened me up to experience more, and soon after welcome our beautiful daughter that we adopted.

While motherhood presents itself with its own set of challenges, my growing understanding and use of minimalism is my go-to tool to help me heal, solve, and complete anything difficult that crosses my path.

I believe when we are clear on who we are and want to be and consciously choose the contents of our life we can build it on more solid ground. When we are deliberate to let into our head, heart, home, and body what nourishes we gain physical energy, and mental clarity to make positive lifestyle choices, and create a life we truly love.