In January 2019, I drove home from work and couldn't remember a single minute of the drive. I was 25 years old, and my body had been falling apart for weeks.
This is the story of how I lost the ability to eat almost everything, how I slowly found my way back to food, and how a simple homemade granola, made from what was in my kitchen, became Grown Goodies.
When food started to hurt
The stomach pain started suddenly in early January of 2019. It didn't matter what I ate; everything hurt. Processed sugar and caffeine were the worst. When I did manage to get food past my stomach, it went right through me, and I was taking immodium several times a day just to get through work. Socializing was out of the question.
I was already small, and I lost more than 20 pounds in two months. My brain stopped working properly. I was losing chunks of time. Realizing I couldn't remember my own drive home was terrifying.
I saw doctors again and again. Specialists prodded me and I had ultrasounds, stool tests, bloodwork, and other diagnostics run on me. After many visits, eventually I was diagnosed with gastritis, sent to a nutritionist, and prescribed a medication to reduce my stomach acid. The nutritionist read through my food journals and told me I had already tried everything she would have recommended, short of a full elimination diet.
Gastritis just means the lining of the stomach is inflamed. It describes what was happening in my body, but not why, and finding the "why" turned out to be the hardest part. That was a whole other side quest I later went on to find out what was happening to cause this sudden intense pain. (Which will have to be in a separate blog!!)
"You look like a model"
One doctor asked me why I was so worried. "You look like a model," she said. "Most women would love to look like you right now." Friends said similar things. I know they meant well, but it was heartbreaking. The weight they were complimenting was my body starving.
My regular doctor told me I needed to reduce my stress. The trouble was that not being able to eat was the biggest source of stress in my life.
The grey couch
Before the medication started working, there was a day I was laid out on my grey couch in the cold and seriously wondered whether I was going to make it. I kept losing weight, and nothing was helping.
So I asked myself a question: if I survive this, what would I do differently?
The answer came clearly. I would be grateful. Grateful for every moment, no matter how hard, and grateful for whatever I was learning, even when it hurt.
I wasn't asking to live. I was choosing how I would live if I did.
I felt peaceful with that choice. I fell asleep on that couch thinking about everything I was grateful for, still wondering whether I would wake up.
Starting over with a handful of foods
The medication took a couple of weeks to kick in. When it did, I could finally tolerate boiled rice and a little shredded boiled chicken, seasoned with salt and cumin. Black pepper set off my symptoms badly, as did most other spices, and anything red was the worst.
That medication, a proton pump inhibitor (PPI), helped enormously. For the first time in weeks, I could eat a few foods without pain. But after reading about the potential side effects of long-term use, I decided I didn't want to stay on it. I wanted my body to learn to handle food on its own again. I took it for about 45 days, then chose to taper off.
This is my personal experience, not medical advice. Every body and every diagnosis is different, so please talk with your doctor before starting, stopping, or changing any medication.
Caffeine was out completely, so my morning coffee became chicory and dandelion root "coffee." (It does not taste great, unfortunately.) I read that well-cooked, bland vegetables can be easier on an irritated stomach than raw ones, but early on, even those caused instant, severe pain.
Eventually I added organic peanut butter with no added sugar. Desperate to put weight back on, I ate more than a cup of it every day with a few apples, just to get enough calories. For about a year, my diet was boiled chicken, rice, peanut butter, and apples. Later I added sauerkraut, and a friend suggested a multivitamin, since my diet was anything but well-rounded.
I reintroduced new foods slowly, and it often hurt. Progress felt glacial.
Through all of it, I kept working, and my job involved a lot of travel. My strange diet turned out to be easier to manage than I expected. At group dinners, I would quietly ask the server for boiled chicken and rice with just salt and cumin. Even at fancy restaurants, my meal often cost less than $10.
Only a couple of people ever knew how bad it really was. I wasn't trying to hide it, but whenever I brought it up, I got the same kinds of comments I'd heard at the doctor's office. So I handled it as best I could on my own. The last thing I wanted was for anyone to think I was seeking attention, or drawing attention to how thin I had become.
Small luxuries
Slowly, my world of food grew. Cheese came back, then bread. I craved pizza, but red sauce hurt terribly, so I started ordering cheese pizza with no sauce and dipping it in plain yogurt.
Then I started craving lemon and dill. Since plain yogurt was working, I began making my own tzatziki, without cucumber, which I'm allergic to. I'd dip bread in it or eat it with chickpeas. At the time, that was the height of luxury.
About a year in, I could finally eat steamed vegetables. Wilted salads came next. Little by little, I could eat more and more, and nearly all of it was simple, whole food.
Before I got sick, I had no idea what it meant to have food options. I ate whatever was in front of me and never thought twice about it. Losing almost every food changed that for good. Today I'm one of the most passionate people you'll ever meet when it comes to ingredient choices and listening to our bodies. Even my coffee habit changed: I went from up to eight cups a day to a single cup maybe once every week or two.
People often tell me they admire my self-control. I'm not sure I have any. My body made the decision for me, and when the wrong food means pain, choosing well becomes the easy part.
A granola I could actually eat
As my diet expanded, I started making my own snacks at home. I craved granola, but I couldn't eat anything from the store. So I made my own from what was in my kitchen and ate it with berries and milk.
Over time, I kept refining it, batch after batch, until it became a staple in our home. Every ingredient was something I chose on purpose and could actually eat.
Back to square one
Then, right around the time I met my husband, I was in a car accident. Along with many other injuries, it disrupted my nervous system, and a lot of my stomach symptoms came back. Almost no food felt safe again.
It was wild to feel like I was starting over. But this time I had the tools to handle it, and I had someone by my side to help me navigate it. As I recovered, I went back to making my own snacks, including the granola.
One day my husband tried a batch. He was a huge fan. So was everyone else who tasted it.
From our kitchen to yours
In the summer of 2026, I got a spot at a small market in downtown Coeur d'Alene run by Earth Fairy Holistics. It was free for vendors, which made it the perfect chance to find out whether strangers liked the granola as much as our friends and family did.
We brought 62 bags and sold 50 of them in four hours. Almost everyone who tried a sample bought a bag. Only one person said it wasn't quite sweet enough for them.
After that market, I quickly found a commercial kitchen to work in, and Grown Goodies was born. Today we bake every batch by hand in small batches in North Idaho, and we can now sell our All Day Granola to local stores.
The grey couch is a long way behind me now, but the choice I made there is still with me. I'm grateful for every batch, every market, and every person who opens a bag.
A note about our granola
Our granola grew out of my healing, but I want to be clear: it isn't a treatment for anything, and it isn't right for every body. When my gastritis was at its worst, I could only eat soft, mushy foods that took almost no work to digest, and granola probably wouldn't have worked for me then. Nothing in this story is medical advice. If you're dealing with digestive symptoms, please work with a doctor you trust, and keep pushing for answers if you need to.
Here's what it is: simple, whole ingredients, chosen carefully and baked by hand. It's the kind of food I spent years learning to appreciate, and I hope it brings a little of that gratitude to your table.
Want to taste where it all started? Our All Day Granola comes in Cinnamon Coconut Granola, Sea Salt Coconut Granola, Cacao Coconut Granola, and Spice Chai Coconut Granola. Shop All Day Granola
Want to know more about what goes into every bag? Read our ingredient stories on oats, coconut, cacao, Ceylon cinnamon, grassfed collagen, and psyllium husk.
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