Founder's Story: From Pain To Purpose

I was spread across my desk in the school changing room, weak and disoriented. Minutes earlier, I'd fainted. A classmate walked me the ten minutes to my mother's restaurant as sharp pains radiated through my lower back and abdomen.

That was my introduction to womanhood.

For the next decade, extreme pain, nausea, and bloating became my monthly reality. I'd lose days to symptoms so severe I could barely move, yet everyone treated it as normal. Just part of being a woman.

The painkillers didn't work. Worse, I discovered I was allergic to them.

Every period brought swollen eyes along with the pain. I assumed it was just another symptom to endure until a coworker found me curled up in the conference room, crying for relief, and insisted I see a doctor.

At 17, I finally got answers. It was an aspirin and ibuprofen allergy, and a dysmenorrhea diagnosis. A name for my suffering, but still no real solution.

Dysmenorrhea. A medical term for extreme period pain, but no one explained that periods shouldn't hurt THIS bad at all.

Over the next few years, I accepted this as my reality and kept it moving. "Managing" my periods meant emergency room trips for IV drips and prescription painkillers since most over-the-counter options contained the very medications I was allergic to.

One final pain sent me to the ER and this time, a grapefruit-sized fibroid was compounding my already unbearable periods I'd already endured for over a decade.


That's when I stopped accepting "this is just how it is" and started searching for a different answer.

I left that appointment with pages on fibroid care — surgical options, medications, and lifestyle changes. As someone who'd always leaned toward holistic approaches, I chose the latter.

I overhauled my diet, started loosely tracking my cycle, and ate only fruits and vegetables the week before my period. The pain lessened, but the nausea and headaches remained. The routine wasn't sustainable — one missed week and I'd suffer all over again.

When I returned to my OB/GYN seeking real solutions, she prescribed birth control. I tried it for one month and knew immediately it wasn't the answer.

"What about continuing the natural methods?" I asked.

Her response: "Juicing won't help with painful periods."

I walked out knowing I'd have to find my own way forward.

In that moment I left determined to take control of my own health.

I enrolled in plant-based nutrition and hormone health programs, studying how the menstrual cycle actually works and how food could support it. I learned to work with my cycle, not against it, and to see it as an indicator of overall health, not a punishment to endure.

The stabbing back pain? Gone. Days lost to suffering? No more.

That transformation is why Course 784 exists. For women tired of being dismissed, ready for a holistic path to healthier cycles.