09/22/2026
Tomorrow, September 23, was supposed to be the day I married my best friend.
Instead, I am once again battling a crippling illness I thought I had left behind 12 years ago.
It has been 7 devastating, gruelling months of absolute hell. My skin and nerve illness, known as Burning Skin Syndrome, has quite literally torched my life into ashes this year.
Days that used to be filled with floral orders and garden glory have been replaced by mornings and nights of agony and despair. The symptoms are brutal and have rendered me basically disabled.
It has been an enormous blow to my entire psyche. I have spent most of this year confined to my home, oftentimes spending hours in the bathtub just trying to calm relentless full-body nerve pain and skin breakdown. About 1/3 of my hair has fallen out. I’m watching my muscle mass disappear. So many pieces of myself that took years to rebuild feel like they are slipping away again.
Having to cancel our wedding was probably the most painful pill to swallow.
After 12 years of rebuilding myself, my health, my career and my life—and finally getting to a place where I was ready to marry the love of my life—I am once again watching this horrible illness take so much of it away from me.
One of the cruelest parts of this illness is simply how long it can last. Pain is one thing. Pain without a clear end date is another. How does one stay strong when recovery is measured in months and years instead of days and weeks? How do you keep going when you wake up every morning still inside the thing you are desperately trying to survive?
Having to climb back out of such a bleak hole is daunting. But this time around, at least I am more prepared. I understand this monster of an illness better. I have people who love me and are helping me through it. And most importantly, I have something I didn’t have the first time:
Proof that I can survive it.
I don’t know what the next year will bring for West End Tiny Farm. I don’t know exactly what my life will look like when I come out the other side of this.
But I know that I have beaten this once.
And I can do it again.
