15/08/2025
My story...
I remember the heat first.
❤️🔥 Dripping with sweat, body trembling with exhaustion, I could barely lift my head from the hospital pillow. The night before, I’d slipped into a deep, dreamless sleep that felt like surrender — like I was brushing hands with death itself.
And then came the voice.
💚Soft, steady, and impossibly kind, an Afro-Caribbean phlebotomist leaned over me, gently searching for my veins. “Cara Marie… Cara Marie…” he murmured, before asking a simple question that cut through the fog:
“What have you been doing?”
In that moment, something inside me cracked open. I looked down at my pale, fragile body and saw the truth of my life — too much pushing, too much stress, too little joy. For years I’d been living with chronic gut issues and relentless anxiety, long before “gut health” was a thing.
❤️🩹I’d been diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease, hospitalised for weeks, and warned they might remove part of my colon. And still… the doctors insisted food wasn’t a factor. But my body told a different story. That day in the hospital was the turning point. A fierce self-compassion took root in me, along with a knowing that everything had to change.
I was living in London at the time — a countryside soul stuck in the wrong city. Every day, I endured long, stressful commutes, crammed into packed trains, feeling my anxiety rise and my gut tighten. My environment was draining me, my nervous system was frayed, and my health was collapsing under the weight of it all.
💚 After leaving the hospital, a strange but powerful thing happened. My intuition sharpened. I could look at a piece of fruit and know if it would heal me or harm me. I began listening — really listening — to my gut’s wisdom.
No diets.
No rules.
💚Just quiet, instinctive choices that my body guided me toward. I’d later learn about gut microbes, the “inner garden” that shapes our health, but back then I was already tending to it — lying belly-down on the earth, grounding myself, letting the land and my own inner knowing lead the way.
Sharing the next part of my story soon...
