A long weaving road and here we are! The Path to holistic
Welcome to the intricate world of Holistic health & wellness~
Hello I am Vanessa Nordstrom. I am married with two kids and 2 awesome dogs. I am an athlete, runner, soccer player, hiker, adventurer, traveler and more. I have a B.S. in Environmental Policy. The Environment is extremely important to me (more on that later). I have a lengthy career in CPG food sales working for both large and small food companies from conventional to organic (more on that too). Not only did I sell the food, I grew deeply aware of the food web, the ecosystem, the regulations, the R&D, a deep understanding of the ingredients and their impact on us, the profound science around consumer habits and using that data to drive more food sales at grocery and so much more, the food impact on our overall health & wellness, as well as the environment. I created the Environmental Awareness committee at a Large CPG 500 company and helped developed their first corporate CSR (Corporate Sustainability Report) in 2008. I started diving into the Study of Permaculture in 2019 and never looked back, now I help run a half acre farm that generates food and gives back to the community. I coached youth athletics for 27 years, across 5 sports and incorporated the Holistic lens to ensure I was developing well rounded athletes. I ran a holistic homeless agency, not only helping people find housing, but sustain housing through building their holistic pillars of wellness. I was always told you need to focus in and keep it tight. If my passionate reach wasn't broad and I didn't explore all the opportunities I had along the way, my scope would be narrow and I probably wouldn't be doing holistic health and wellness coaching.
What shaped these passions?
I've always been into health & wellness because that's what my parents taught me. My Dad was a Vietnam veteran who came home from the war with PTSD and OCD ( more than that, I will touch on that later too). My parents lifted weights, took us hiking every week and spent lots of time in nature, ate healthy, took our vitamins and supplements and talked about the effects of the environment on us.
What really accelerated my vigor to dig deep and study the environment and the many harmful effects on it, was my Dad also came home from Vietnam with Agent Orange exposure, he had as a barrel handler. Unbeknownst to him, his toxicity levels were sky high, but because he lived a healthy life style, he kept it at bay for 24 years. Then in 1994, he discovered he had stage 4 lung and brain cancer. We ended up fighting to get it identified as one of the many health impacts from Agent Orange defoliants with the VA. He passed away 18 months later, on June 18, 1995. 5 days after my highschool graduation and on Father's Day.
The journey begins to expand my knowledge and live and breathe the holistic life style.
I decided that moment after my Dad died that I would go into Environmental Policy to change the laws. I did this because Agent Orange is chemical defoliant (DD 2-14) that was sprayed all over the Vietnam jungles to drop their leaves so the U.S. could readily find the enemy. The health impacts were known, but they used it anyways. So the definition of my Dad's death was directly linked to an Environmental toxin. As stated above, my path after graduation transformed me, but didn't lead to me creating Environmental policy. Instead, it led me to continue my constant knowledge journey and implement all my learnings into my own lifestyle. I researched everything because my "mantra" was to figure out what was a threat in my environment and what impacts it had on myself and my family. I dug into every industry from food, health and beauty, pharmaceuticals, herbicides/pesticides usage, fertilizers and the story kept unveiling itself of what their impacts are on our health & wellness. Mentally, Physically, Emotionally and Spiritually. I then began developing a large regimen of alternatives to avoid the found effects on our health & wellness. This continued to grow more and more each year. By the time we finally had kids, it really took off and continually evolved as we kept finding out more things that had effects on us. In 2010, our daughter was injured by her MMR vaccine and instantly developed Epilepsy and EBD (Emotional Behavior Disorder) with Anxiety. This sent us on an entirely new path of research and education learning to manage her epilepsy without meds and working to get to the bottom of getting rid of it. I am pleased to share after 10 years, it worked its way out of her system (When vaccines wear off) and she is doing amazing.
This is my journey in a nutshell. Tune in for more next time.
The path to living holistic can be long, but I am here to coach, advocate and navigate anyone looking for more help on their journey and hoping to knock out some barriers and traps earlier than I did. LOL!
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