Your Symptoms Are Not Random: This Is Your Wake-Up Call
It is 2 a.m. I have slept just over two hours, if we are counting, and my firstborn is crying again. Exhausted but pulled by love, I stumble to her crib, nurse her, change her, and tiptoe back to bed hoping for a few more hours before the cycle starts over.
As draining as those nights were, what stands out to me now is how familiar that moment has become for so many of the women I have cared for. Some are mothers, some are not. But nearly all of them have lived through stress or trauma that changed their health in ways they did not expect and could not ignore.
Stress changes you at a cellular level
Trauma and chronic stress change us, and not just emotionally. Trauma does not have to look dramatic to be damaging. It can be childhood adversity, relational wounds, loss, miscarriage, infertility, or the slow burn of years spent pouring out without ever replenishing. If you look back through your own story, there is often a moment, or a whole season, when things began to shift.
For many women, childbearing becomes that pivot point. Pregnancy is a profound miracle, and yet very few practitioners talk about what comes after. The weeks turn into months and the months turn into years, and life never quite returns to what it was. Underneath it all sit your hormones. Progesterone, estrogen, testosterone, cortisol, and thyroid, all of which your doctor may call "normal" while you deal with exhaustion, hair loss, brain fog, and stubborn weight gain. You feel dismissed. You start to doubt your own body.
Your symptoms are signals
I see it every day. Fatigue that sleep does not fix. Anxiety that feels constant. Low mood, digestive issues, weight gain that makes no sense, loss of libido, headaches, joint pain, brain fog. These symptoms rarely show up alone. They are signals, and they matter.
The timeline is often the clue. When symptoms follow a season of stress, trauma, or major change, that is not a coincidence. That is your body asking for attention. Ignore it long enough and there is eventually a breaking point.
Two different questions
Traditional medicine is built around efficiency and symptom control. Signs or symptoms lead to labs, labs lead to a diagnosis, and a diagnosis leads to a medication. That approach can be life-saving and it absolutely has its place, but it is not designed to ask why the symptoms appeared in the first place. The goal is stabilization, not restoration.
Functional medicine asks a different question. Symptoms are still the starting point, but we treat them as clues rather than problems to suppress. We look at your history and your story. We assess lifestyle, stress, trauma, nutrition, sleep, and environmental exposures. We use labs to identify patterns and imbalances, not just to hand out a label. Then we work backward to address the cause.
Why this became personal for me
This is not theory for me. In nursing school I gained weight, lived on sugar and energy drinks, and barely exercised. Newly married and placed on birth control, I felt off, and when my prescription changed, everything unraveled. I had a seizure with no warning and no explanation. Just stress, I was told, and I was placed on medications that left me numb.
So I changed how I ate, removed foods that inflamed me, and supported my gut, and slowly I improved. Then I swung too far. I became obsessive, trained excessively, controlled every bite, and at 5 foot 6 I was a size 0. I looked fit and felt depleted. My cycle disappeared and I was diagnosed with PCOS and infertility. The night before starting fertility treatment, I heard God so clearly it might as well have been a megaphone: "If you'll wait on me, I'll do it." I canceled the appointment, addressed the inflammation, stress, over-exercise, and nutrient depletion, and within a few months conceived naturally.
After my second pregnancy, life intensified fast. I went back to work early, sleep was scarce, stress was relentless, and despite everything I knew, my body could not keep up. I felt wired, anxious, exhausted, and foggy all at once. I had crashed. That season reshaped how I practice.
If you recognize yourself here, hear this clearly. Your symptoms are not random. Your body is not broken beyond repair. And your story is not over. What has been dismissed or chalked up to stress and aging deserves a real answer. This is the moment to pay attention. This is your wake-up call.
This post is drawn from the introduction of my new book, Where Faith Meets Medicine. It walks through all seven pillars, with a Selah reflection at the end of every chapter so you can pause, take it in, and bring it honestly before God.
