My Story:

I was in kindergarten when the school nurse found a tick inside my ear. We were living in Connecticut, the place this disease was named for; and none of us knew yet what that small, dark speck would mean for the rest of my life.

Lyme runs in my family like a second bloodline. My father had it too, I remember him as the toughest man I've ever known—the kind of man who broke his nose playing hockey and finished the game anyway. But I also remember watching that same man doubled over in agony from Lyme joint pain, brought to his knees by something no hit on the ice ever could.

For years, it went quiet in me, the blessing of modern antibiotics when used in early infection is not lost on me. But the long haul symptoms can fester and grow, silently, until last year it came back all at once. The neck stiffness returned first. Then three months of insomnia. A red rash spreading across my face. Eyes bloodshot. A fatigue so heavy I could barely lift my own arms. And then — Bell's palsy. Half my face, still.

That was the moment I decided something had to change. Not just another prescription, not just another specialist. I needed to meet my body where it actually lived — in the tissue, in the fascia, in the parts of me that had been quietly bracing since I was four years old. I started meditating. I started treating my own fascia, day after day, with my own hands. And slowly, I found my way back.

This class is what I wish someone had handed me decades ago. It's not a promise that your story will look exactly like mine — everyone's Lyme journey is its own. But it is proof that the body can be worked with, not just against. That healing isn't only found in the next test result — sometimes it's found in your own two hands.