The Two People Who Changed My Healing Forever

Last week I wrote about my mom. The woman who held me together through decades of chronic illness, who drove me to every appointment, who never stopped believing I could heal. This week I need to talk about two other people. The two who cracked me open in ways I never expected. My daughter Emma, and my dad.

This one is harder to write. So bear with me.

Emma

Almost 9 years ago, I became a mother. And I need to be honest with you. I thought I was prepared. I had spent years studying nutrition, healing my body, learning about health from every angle. I thought I had done the work.

I had no idea.

Because becoming Emma's mother didn't just change my life. It changed my HEALING. In ways I could never have anticipated. When you hold your baby for the first time, something cracks open. And what came flooding through for me wasn't just love (although the love was overwhelming). It was every pattern I had ever inherited. Every wound I had been carrying without knowing it. Every piece of generational trauma that had been passed down through my family, silently, for decades.

I looked at this tiny human and I thought: it stops here. Whatever was handed to me, whatever I absorbed as a child, whatever patterns shaped the way I moved through the world, she does NOT have to carry that. I will break this cycle.

And in order to break it, I had to LOOK at it. Really look at it. For the first time.

That is when my deepest healing began. Not with food. Not with supplements. Not with a protocol. With motherhood. With the fierce, terrifying, beautiful realization that I could not heal my daughter's world without first healing my own.

I became a solo mom when Emma was a baby. And that season, while incredibly hard, forced me to dig even deeper. I had to become the strongest, most grounded, most healed version of myself because she was counting on me. She still is.

I changed my parenting. I did things differently than what I experienced growing up. Not because my parents did it wrong. They did the best they could with what they had. But because I had access to tools and awareness that they didn't. And I chose to use them.

Emma and I have an extraordinary bond. She is my greatest achievement and my greatest motivation. She is healthy, happy, loved fiercely, and raised holistically because of everything I lived through and everything I chose to change. She will never know the full weight of what I carried to give her this life. But one day, when she's older, I hope she'll understand.

My Dad

When Emma was almost 10 months old, my dad died suddenly of cancer. Small cell ureteral cancer. It was fast. It was devastating. And it cracked me open in a way that nothing else ever had.

My dad and I had a complicated relationship. We were SO similar, him and me. Both passionate. Both deeply emotional and sensitive underneath it all. But where I'm feisty and fiery, he was more grounded. We still clashed because two passionate people in the same room will do that (lol). But we clashed because we CARED so much. About everything. About each other.

Our relationship was a rollercoaster. There were hard seasons. His temper was difficult to navigate as a kid. And I know I wasn't easy either, which comes with the territory of living with a chronic illness at a young age. I can also be a LOT (I know this about myself now!).

But here's what I also know about my dad. He was an introvert (like me!) with more friends than anyone I've ever met. He had so many cool hobbies. He was a brilliant engineer and businessman. He was sweet. Kind. Caring. Deep. He wanted the absolute best for me, always.

He came to every single one of my soccer games and cheered louder than anyone in the stands. He took us out for boat rides and tubing on the lake. He taught me how to waterski and how to fish. He helped me develop my downhill skiing. He showed me a love of reading and how to build a fire. He was my biggest cheerleader in everything I did.

That man loved his kids. Even when we made it really hard for him (lol).

And here's the part that makes me cry every time I think about it. In the last two years of his life, my dad got sober. He addressed his own childhood trauma. He saw a social worker and truly began to heal DECADES of pain he had been bottling up while trying to parent three kids. He did the work. He actually did the work. At a stage in life when most people would just keep going the way they've always gone, he chose to look inward and heal.

He was healing. And then he was gone.

I never got to tell him two things I wish I could say to him right now. I'm sorry. And thank you. Thank you for everything. Because parenting is the hardest AND the most rewarding thing I have ever done. I love it. Even on the hard days. Even on the days that bring me to my knees. And I only have one! He had three. And he showed up for us (in his own way), even through his own pain.

Losing him while Emma was still a baby, while my entire world was already shifting, while I was navigating becoming a solo mom, it cracked something open in me that I didn't know was sealed shut. Grief I didn't know I was carrying. Pain I didn't know I had inherited. Patterns that had been running in the background of my life since childhood.

And that grief, as awful and consuming as it was, led me to the deepest healing work of my life. Spiritual work. Inner child work. Generational trauma work. The kind of healing that doesn't show up on a blood test but changes everything about how you move through the world.

Why I'm Telling You This

Because most of us are carrying something. Childhood wounds. Generational patterns. Grief we haven't fully processed. Trauma we've normalized because we didn't know there was another way.

And here's what I've learned through almost a decade of this deep work: when you heal those layers, you don't just heal yourself. You heal the generations before you and the generations after you. I truly believe that.

My dad did his healing work in his final years. I'm doing mine now. And Emma? She gets to start from a completely different place because of what both of us chose to face.

That is the power of this work. It ripples forward AND backward.

If you're reading this and something is stirring in you, listen to it. That stirring is your body telling you there's something underneath the surface that wants to be seen. That wants to be healed. Not because something is wrong with you. Because you're ready to heal.

I cover the emotional and trauma layers of healing in my course, Becoming Yourself Again.

It's not just food and supplements. It's the WHOLE picture. Mind, body, and spirit. Including the stuff most practitioners never touch.

Founding member spots are $197 USD. Launching July 24. This price won't last!

Not ready for the course? Start with my free guide: What Nobody Has Told You About Your Chronic Illness.

Emma changed my healing. My dad's death deepened it. And the woman I am today, the mother, the practitioner, the human, she exists because of both of them.

Dad, if you're listening, I'm sorry. And thank you. For all of it.

Emma, you are my everything. Always.

I am living proof that healing is possible. Even through grief. Even through the hardest seasons. Even when you think you can't carry one more thing.

You can. And you will.

xo, Alexis

Registered Holistic Nutritionist | The Nutritionist Mama | thenutritionistmama.com