My husband and I came into parenting with hopeful expectations. We couldn’t wait to grow our family. To share our love of the outdoors, adventuring, and building things together with our children. We were optimistic that our child-raising years would be full of only the best things.

We did not anticipate that hard things would grow alongside beautiful things—that mental and behavioral health challenges would take root in the early years of our children’s lives and silently develop until our home was bursting at the seams with the kind of chaos that requires professional help.

But there I was, nine years into motherhood, gripping the phone while the behavioral therapist was on the other end. He had come to play an essential role in our lives, helping us navigate the complexities of health challenges that we were facing with each one of our children.

“There is a therapeutic inpatient program that I think could help your daughter.” 

My hands started shaking when he spoke these words. My sweet girl, barely seven years old at the time, had just been evaluated for intrusive thought obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). My daughter had the highest results that our therapist had ever seen in a young child.

He was confirming what I already knew to be true, as I had been on the receiving end of countless obsessive confessions for months. My kindhearted daughter had a relentless voice in her head, speaking thoughts of condemnation, fear, and distress every moment of the day. Filled with anxiety and growing weary, there was no reprieve for her from the unwanted thoughts and the need to confess them to me. We were caught in a cycle that had stolen the carefree childhood I longed to give her.

I felt a wave of fatigue sweep over me as I hung up the phone that day. This unseen battle had a name; the test held the proof. We added OCD to the list of unexplained struggles our daughter was facing. 

This conversation with our therapist confirmed more than a diagnosis, it also kicked my maternal instinct into high gear. I felt a rising fervency within me: if my child was going to have to fight these unrelenting thoughts and compulsive behavior, then I was going to fight with everything in me to preserve the childhood she deserved. 

Going to an inpatient facility was not an option. I needed to find answers that could help her heal at home, surrounded by the people who loved her most.

I wish I could say that this was the only “fire” we were working to put out that year, but the truth is, the whole house—and everyone in it—was on FIRE, metaphorically speaking. We had experienced an undercurrent of other mental health struggles in our children that stemmed back to when they were toddlers. Rage, aggression, agitation, anxiety, depression, restrictive eating, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms increased with every passing year.                                                   

I did not know it at the time, but my daughter’s intense onset of OCD was like a spotlight, illuminating the way forward to my children’s eventual—and more complete–diagnosis: pediatric acute-onset neuropsychiatric syndrome/pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal infections (PANS/PANDAS).

With my daughter’s OCD diagnosis in hand, I began researching this combination of mental health symptoms, as well as mold illness, which I had suspected was playing a contributing role. Although the research was just emerging at the time, and there were limited resources, every article I read about PANS/PANDAS sounded like an exact description of my children.

My husband and I  began to make changes to the way we approached our children’s health, as well as changes in the way we were parenting, seeking ways to connect with them and bring a feeling of safety and security to our home during a time of uncertainty. We strove to equip our children with healthy coping skills and tools for when they were struggling most, and we found—through a great deal of trial and error—health professionals who could support and guide our family on our journey.

Today, nearly four years since that phone call with our behavioral therapist—and after utilizing labs, functional treatment, behavioral therapy, homeopathy, and nutritional changes—our family is well along the path to healing. We have our sweet daughter back, unburdened by OCD. We have our son's laughter back, unclouded by depression. Through the struggles that they have overcome, we have learned so much about how the brain, body, and immune system work together, and how we are our children’s best hope for healing. 

As parents navigating the world of autoimmune disease, we are weary: there is so much to learn, and so few reliable resources on these topics. Our world is riddled with pathogens and toxins that are working against the health of our children. 

My hope is that this space can become a source of wisdom and resources to help you on your family’s journey: easy-to-digest and informed articles, diagrams, and more to help parents, grandparents, friends, families, and teachers.

We know that, together, there is hope for Redeeming Childhood, both for our children and for our world.