Why It Was Never Mental Illness
How I Discovered the Truth Behind My Leaky Body and Built the BodhiBerry Peace Tree Method
From Leaky Body to BodhiBerry Peace Tree
The truth I found after 59 years of searching
Today is my birthday and in the Buddhist tradition birthdays are for giving.
So today I am giving you the truth that took me 59 years to find.
This post is also part of my new Let’s Talk Initiative, launching today in honour of Patrick, who passed away too soon in 2018 at the age of 51.
His birthday was just a few weeks before he died.
In ten days it will be seven years since he left. I quit drinking on November 21, 2017 at the age of 51, barely a month before Patrick’s passing.
If I had not stopped then I do not believe I would still be here. I had already removed sugar and all the fun foods as I worked to reverse my fatty liver after 30 years of almost daily drinking to numb sexual traumas and abuse.
My roots would never have been strong enough to carry me through the cytokine storm my body later endured.
When toxins are man-made they weaken us from the inside and cause the body to leak.
Now I only eat the way I fed my son Noah during his first 1000 days when his microbiome was being built.
I tracked my sons stools, mood, food and sleep daily for the first 5 years and I took a picture of him in the same spot on the 19th of every month for 5 years too ;) Yes, I am a goose, she says with a wink and a smile.
Those early days are when magic happens.
We cannot build a strong child or a strong adult body without clean air and clean inputs. If it cannot receive its fuel from the sun do not eat it if you want to heal what ails you.
Where My Story Began
I still have all my original body parts except the tonsils they removed at six months. That alone should have been the first clue that something was wrong in my tiny immune system.
But nobody asked why a baby needed surgery so early.
Nobody asked why I stayed sick.
Nobody asked why my gut was failing before I could speak.
I grew up on mouldy military bases.
I worked and trained in mouldy gyms.
I was a holistic personal trainer who never relied on medications yet my body was falling apart from the inside out.
I was told I was “healthy” while I lived with a leaky gut, a leaky brain, leaky muscles and leaky nerves.
Test After Test After Test
I had every test you can imagine. Many of them twice. Everything but an MRI but the doctor said that if nothing turned up with the other tests he didn’t see the point and I said that is exactly why we should.
5 colonoscopies in eight years including an emergency one.
I learned this year that colonoscopies don’t generally check small intestine and why my SIBO was missed.
3 endoscopies.
Enough blood work to fill a binder.
Every result came back “normal.”
Normal meant nothing.
Normal meant missed.
Normal meant nobody looked for toxic mould.
When My Body Was Telling the Truth
I first talked about leaky gut in the 80s. People laughed.
I was anorexic yet my belly looked five months pregnant from SIBO, no one knew how to diagnose.
When SIBO is untreated it spreads inflammation through the entire system.
Still no one asked why.
It was blamed on stress, hormones, aging, mental health and “just how life is.”
But my body was not lying.
My body was screaming.
I couldn’t take it anymore. In September 2022, I asked my doctor for assistance with M.A.I.D., just as my mom had one year prior.
My brain was so inflamed I was surviving on minutes of sleep a night. The doctor said I didn’t qualify under the mental health criteria that year.
This is why my message is so urgent. What I had wasn’t a mental illness.
Today, all of my lifelong symptoms are gone. The dark cloud has lifted, even though I’ve always lived with a heart full of love and childlike wonder—just like my birthday twin, Mickey Mouse.
Now I understand why I felt so bad. My home was under a massive renovation. I was sleeping in open rooms full of dust, and mould loves dust. It was hiding inside the walls, released into the air as everything was torn apart and repainted.
I was breathing in the perfect cytokine storm.
3 COVID infections and two near death experiences
I survived COVID 3 times including two near death experiences.
Something in me knew a missing piece was still out there.
I found it when a fire chief taught me about mould.
Everything clicked.
Every symptom.
Every decade of suffering.
Every crash in my nervous system.
The body keeps the score and mine had been keeping receipts since the womb.
One Last Symptom Held On
Even after the mould discovery I still was not sleeping.
I had lived with lifelong insomnia.
Then the final piece appeared.
My neck was inflamed so I placed my red light belt on my pillow.
That night I slept seven hours.
Then eight.
With no melatonin and no medications.
My fungal arthritis pain lifted.
My colon cancer type symptoms faded.
I put down my cane one year ago today.
The BodhiBerry Peace Tree Method Begins
This is part one of The BodhiBerry Peace Tree Method.
A healing path built on nature, energy and the intelligence of the body.
A method that goes to the root cause instead of silencing symptoms.
You are not struggling with mental illness in a vacuum.
You are struggling with a body overwhelmed by toxins and ignored by a system not trained to see what sits right in front of it.
This is where we begin the conversation the medical system never started.
Here you can ask the questions your doctor cannot answer.
Here you can learn why your body reacts the way it does.
Here you can start listening to the truth your body has been whispering for years.
Welcome to your own BodhiBerry Peace Tree.
Your roots are ready.
Watch here:
Sending Loving Kindness from Canada’s Capital❤️
Dee
What is the one “mystery symptom” you’ve been carrying alone because the system couldn’t explain it?
Dee, Let’s Talk! 🇨🇦🙏—where I explain why it’s not mental illness or menapause but a body screaming for help.



Has a doctor ever told you your symptoms were mental when you knew in your soul they were physical? How did that moment change you?
Dee, Let's Talk! You are not alone.