I wasn't looking for an autoimmune diagnosis. I was trying to help my mother with her rheumatoid arthritis, and that search is what led me to discover I had Hashimoto's. At first, the significance of it didn't even hit me.

Three years later, I'm digging deeper, and I'm angry. And as I dig, I'm finding that the story is much older than my labs.

Six years of blood work

I've been going back through six years of my blood work. There's the high TSH, and there's the chronic anemia I've had since 2020, which was put down to my heavy, painful periods. That explanation may have accounted for the anemia, and I'm still left asking: who was looking at the whole picture?

I've had to become my own advocate to get the testing, the attention and the care I need. And I keep thinking about how many women are walking around with pieces of a story that nobody has helped them put together.

The year the rug was pulled out

In 2020, something happened that pulled the rug out from under me. I'm not ready to share what it was. It sent me into a trauma loop and a deep depression that took me about five years to come through.

During that time, I took the ACE test, the Adverse Childhood Experiences questionnaire. I scored 8 out of 10, and I was diagnosed with complex PTSD.

It made me so sad to actually put a number to an experience. I'm sure I lived with depression from a very young age. My stepfather brutalized me physically and emotionally, again and again, and my mother yelled and screamed at all of us. I already knew my childhood wasn't all Cheerios. The EMDR sessions I did with my therapist gave me, for the first time, the chance to acknowledge how much toxicity, violence and neglect I had lived through.

And then my therapist told me something I didn't know what to do with. She said that if I didn't work on my trauma, I was on the edge of an autoimmune disorder.

Her words put me in shock. I had always felt "healthy," so finding out there was so much work to do on myself left me dumbfounded. I believed her, and I also believed I could prevent it, so I worked so hard to transform the wounds I was being challenged with.

A few years later, I found my Hashimoto's while I was helping my mother. I didn't pause to give those two things any thought. It's only connecting for me now, almost three years later.

What high-functioning looked like

When you picture someone who survived a childhood like mine, you may picture someone pulling away from all kinds of addiction. I looked nothing like that. I was high functioning. I was working toward goals constantly, and I never stopped. Workaholism is the most accepted addiction in the world, and I was very good at it.

I was a top salesperson in banking, across different verticals. I was traveling across the city, and across the country for day meetings and week-long meetings, while raising my daughter and managing the house. I made the decisions, the plans, the food and the activities. I bought the gifts, sent the cards and handled the in-laws. I paid all the bills and saved the money.

My burnout crash in 2013 was where so much began to fall apart. It was also what pulled me toward breathwork and nervous system work, and I followed that pull, one thread leading to another.

Caring for my mother

Since 2014, stepping away from my mother has been the best medicine for me. Then, in 2022, I saw her for the first time in a few years. She looked so frail, and her body was so deformed from her joints. So I started taking care of her again.

My siblings had been consistently around her, and none of them had stopped to question what was wrong with her. It took me one visit to understand that she needed more support.

I live 40 minutes to an hour and a half away from her, depending on traffic, and I drove her to her appointments. On one of those drives, she asked me why my siblings didn't like me.

I felt so much rage. I was forced to parent them. Visiting meant listening to her complain about them, and she would put me in the awkward position of disciplining them. That put a strain on our relationships, and I didn't know any better. I just wanted to help them be better for themselves. I don't think it's that they don't "like" me. I'm sure they feel resentful.

Giving her the best care I possibly could, after how poorly she was able to care for me, was an act of compassion, and it was so challenging, even as she kept betraying me in real time.

In 2025, I discovered that she and her husband had written in their will, in capital letters, that I was not part of it, and that I wasn't her power of attorney. I felt so betrayed when I read it. What hurt most was what it exposed: my wound. The wound of not being included, of always being cast aside, of never quite belonging.

When I realized I was being left out again, I stopped being the one to spearhead her health. Since then, my sisters have taken over, and I no longer get updates on her health from them. It's as if, once again, I don't exist unless I'm needed.

And I recognize my value. I'm not going to be the victim, and I'm not going to be the doormat. If I was able to set her up to have a better life by taking care of her, I can do it for myself. I am going to be the hero in my story.

What "autoimmune" actually means

Your immune system is there to help protect you from infections. With an autoimmune disease, that protection gets misdirected toward your own healthy tissues. Here are three you may recognize:

• Hashimoto's: the immune system targets the thyroid and can damage its ability to make hormones.

• Rheumatoid arthritis: it targets the lining of the joints, causing inflammation, and it can affect other parts of the body too.

• Lupus: it can target several areas, including the skin, the joints and the kidneys.

They show up in different places, and they share the same problem: an immune response directed at the very body it is supposed to protect. With Hashimoto's, the thyroid is being affected by an autoimmune process. The thyroid damage still needs care, and looking at the thyroid alone doesn't explain the whole disease.

Women carry a much bigger share of this. An often-cited estimate puts women at around 80% of the people with autoimmune disease, although the percentage varies across conditions and studies. That doesn't mean 80% of women have one.

The emotional lives inside our bodies

Dr. Gabor Maté asks us to consider something that often gets left out of the conversation: the emotional lives we're living inside these bodies. He describes how constantly putting others first, suppressing anger and losing touch with our own needs can become chronic sources of stress, and his work emphasizes that our emotions, nervous system, hormones and immune system can't be understood in isolation.

That perspective makes me look at my own life differently. It doesn't tell me why I developed Hashimoto's, and it does make me wonder how much of my own experience was missing from the conversation about my health.

The nervous system matters, and it doesn't work alone. I'm now giving metabolic health and nourishment a much bigger place in how I understand my body: what I eat, how I sleep, how I use and restore my energy, and what my days ask of me. I want all of that included in the conversation, right alongside my medical care.

I haven't met with my doctor to go over my latest labs yet. I still have questions, and I'm taking them with me. I feel more confident asking them now. I can stay curious, and I can recognize when an explanation leaves something unanswered.

The belief that is shifting

Revisiting all of this is tender. My little girl still hurts. She still cries inside for not having the support and the love, for the many times she needed a mom and all there was, was a void. An absence. A silence.

I want you to know that we are still peeling the layers of so many onions. What happened with my mother is just a snapshot of something that happened to me recently, again. The betrayal that cuts deep.

But this time, my grown woman can rescue my little girl. I can tend to her, feed her, hydrate her and move her body, so that I'm the one using my resources and she gets to rest. My little girl has gone up to bat so many times without being ready or prepared. As the strong grown woman I have become, with the tools I've developed, this is my opportunity to come and rescue me.

So here is the belief that is shifting for me: no one is coming to save you but you. You are exactly who your little girl has been waiting for.

If any part of this is your story too, you are not alone. If you've been told your labs are "normal" and you still don't feel like yourself, my free guide, My labs were "normal" but I wasn't, walks you through what I wish someone had shown me. Get the free guide

Wildly yours,

Akary