My story

I have always felt most at home outdoors and it seemed like a degree in Environmental Science would naturally lead me to outdoors work. As I learned about all of the man-made environmental problems in the world, I began to think that since humans had made all those problems that the world would be better off without us. Much of the environmental recovery work I came across seemed to involve erasing humans from the landscape to allow it to recover "naturally". It felt like my species was a blot on the planet.

I anxiously worked to reduce my environmental impact, including adopting a plant-based diet. My health suffered terribly but I couldn't reconcile my idea of this diet as 'healthy' with the way it made me feel.

After graduating as the 2010 financial crisis hit, I found out that the dream job I'd been promised was no longer available. But I managed to land good work in a London consultancy, working on environmental management systems for energy companies. I loved the systems thinking but felt deeply unhappy in the city and wasn't satisfied with the way I was contributing to society.

I wanted to escape the city, believing that immersing myself in nature would save me from my tormented mind. In 2014 I took 6 months away from work to travel in Canada, including a coast to coast bike ride. In 2016 I got married and together we moved from London to a re-foresting, de-populating region of northern Spain. We bought a ruin up a mountain track and set to work making a home and starting a family.

But I found the truth in the saying: wherever you go, there you are.

By this time the list of symptoms that made my daily life miserable had grown so long that I could no longer live a normal life. Pain, exhaustion, insomnia, numbness and eventually a blind spot in my left eye that finally led to my diagnosis of NMO (neuromyelitis optica).

My doctor described this illness as 'similar to multiple scerosis but advancing more quickly and lacking periods of remission' and warned me that without immunosuppressant medication I would be blind and wheelchair bound within 5 years. There was no talk of getting better.

I couldn't accept that my only hope was to slow progression with medication. I found a few stories online of people who had recovered at least partially. I was drawn to holistic thinking that involved diet and lifestyle intervention.

First I set myself a goal of not getting any worse. This goal seemed impossible at the time, and my doctor discouraged me from working towards it. I found out about the Autoimmune Protocol (AIP) and changed my diet before I even got started on intravenous rituximab, which I took for two years.

Once I stopped deteriorating, I set about seeing how much better I could get. And little by little over five years with the help of nutritional therapists, a psychotherapist, osteopaths, and a naturopath, I found myself firmly on the road to recovery.

Back when I had studied environmental science thinking that I could save the world, I wanted to fix broken ecosystems. I saw humans as the problem and the environment as the victim. And so I also abused my own body in order to try and save the world. When I got sick I had to refocus on myself and learn to love and accept myself. I started to think of humans as a natural part of the ecosystem - even a beneficial part of it. And ironically the things that make humans sick are the things that make the world sick too. If we heal ourselves we heal the planet and vice versa. We are not separate from the rest of nature.

I have always felt that modern humans are like zoo animals. I felt captive inside my school, my office, even my home. But actually, unlike zoo animals we are not held captive by physical cages, but by cages in our own minds. I left London and my corporate job to come to the mountains in Spain and be free. But I didn't find myself free. I found myself isolated and sick inside the cages I had constructed in my own mind. Freedom didn't come in the way I expected.

Having found my freedom, I am on a mission to understand how the body works in health, how it goes wrong in autoimmunity, what innate systems and processes the body has to recover and what these mechanisms require in order to function.