Mould illness, sick building syndrome and leaky body syndrome through the eyes of a once-scared Silent Observer, plus how to begin healing your liver and microbiome frugally.
Content note: this piece mentions trauma and suicide.
Are you a Silent Observer who has been scared all your life? Worrying about everything, cleaning when stressed and showing up for everyone else while quietly drowning inside? I see you. That was me from five to 58.
This photo was taken about 33 years ago at Algonquin College near the gym at Lees Campus.
Feet up. A Pepsi in hand. A permasmile hiding how scared I was every single day. I was a survivor of repeated sexual trauma, a parentified child and a young woman moving from one abusive relationship to the next.
My body never left survival mode. Cola became one of my hardest addictions to leave.
“Before it was an addiction, it was a little soul trying to self-soothe.”
Dee Anne Berry
Yesterday was World Mental Health Day. For me, this conversation reaches back much further.
When you were never mothered
If nobody mothered you in the ways you needed, who taught you how to feel safe?
Many of us never learned to sit still. We became the peacekeepers and the stress cleaners. We scrubbed counters because we could not scrub the fear.
That brings me to this week’s question:
how do two people living in the same mouldy home end up with such different health outcomes?
Same home, different bodies
The home I cleaned for someone I loved had visible mould and serious water damage. There was often water on the basement floor and mould on the carpets and around open ceilings. It was also the space where I meditated and did yoga.
Both of us were unwell, but in different ways. I was quietly dying inside with digestive distress, insomnia, anxiety and depression. My partner had chronic ear infections, a constantly runny nose, terrible gas, heavy snoring and exhaustion that swallowed whole weekends.
Why the difference? I can only share what I have learned and lived. Genetics matter. HLA-DR, MTHFR genes matter.
So does your total load: stress, being an athlete and pushing our bodies to the max in mouldy gyms and outdoor air here in Canada’s Capital, poor sleep, processed food, alcohol, cans and cola, unresolved trauma and the air you breathe all stack up.
Stress cleaning also meant I was stirring up and breathing in far more of what was hiding in that home. Sick is a relative term.
When the brain and body are inflamed, the soul stays in survival mode. Chronic stress fuels chronic inflammation and chronic inflammation fuels chronic conditions.
The collapse
After seven years of searching with normal test after normal test, I collapsed in September 2024. My labs had been normal just one week earlier. Two weeks later I could not walk, write, talk well and my throat and lungs felt like they were closing. I was choking in my sleep. Environmental exposure was the missing piece in my story.
Where mould hides: the worst places and jobs
In this week’s video I walk through the worst locations and professions for exposure, including damp basements, older buildings with past water damage, schools, offices, airplanes and healthcare settings.
Check your own spaces first. Are they filled with dust and clutter?
Look behind furniture, under sinks and around windows. Notice how you feel when you leave a space compared with when you enter it.
Healing frugally: the DBM-5 Biological Map to a PeacefulU™
De-stress
Detox
De-bloat
Declutter
Deep Peaceful Sleep
You do not need an expensive protocol to begin. Start gently:
Open windows when you can.
Drink clean filtered water.
Feed your gut with affordable fibre such as beans, lentils, oats, cabbage and seasonal vegetables.
Swap pop and cola for filtered water, herbal tea or mineral water with lemon. You would not water a tree with pop or give a baby a can of cola, and your grown body deserves the same care.
Protect your sleep. Darkness, a regular bedtime and fewer screens cost nothing.
Walk outdoors. Mother Nature is your medicine cabinet.
Notice your stools and the colour of your pee. They are the receipts of what your body is processing.
Heal your sacred leaky temple
If this resonates, the 40-Day Leaky Body Microbiome Series is your gentle daily guide to healing your own sacred leaky temple and energy.
Come back to it when you need a reminder that healing happens in small steps.
The full 24-minute video premieres today at 11:11 am:
👉 Watch on YouTube
Let it begin a conversation.
There may be a child who does not know how to tell you they are hurting.
There may be an adult whose smile has hidden decades of suffering.
Subscribe for more reflections, guides and self-guided lifestyle education through PeacefulU™ and DBM-5™.
Free educational videos are available on Soul Peace TV.
Your body whispers.
Then it talks.
Then it screams.
May we learn to listen sooner.
Today marks 3,246 days (463 Sundays) of addiction peace since November 21, 2017.
This Thanksgiving weekend my deepest gratitude is for finally being rooted in deep biological peace.
If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide, call or text 9-8-8 anytime in Canada. You are not alone.
This article shares personal experience and general education. It is not medical advice. Please work with a qualified health provider.
May you find safety, answers and support and the moment you can finally say: “I am no longer scared.”
Feet up. A little less bracing. Rest in peace now, while living.
P.S. Those enormous running shoes weren’t mine! They belonged to a volleyball player — size 13 or 14, compared with my size 5. We were having a laugh at work. 👟😂
“Leaky body syndrome” is my descriptive term, not a formal medical diagnosis. This article and video share lived experience and wellness education.
With Soul Peace,
Dee Anne Berry
Momma Lovey Peace
Creator of PeacefulU™ and DBM-5™