The Ugly Backstory: What is Vibrant Orange?

This blog is something I’ve had in the back of my mind for a long time now. I kept getting waves of inspiration that would then fizzle out. It was like throwing paint at a canvas once every few weeks and slowly seeing a picture take form. I chose the name “Vibrant Orange” because it was the first thing that came to mind when I tried to envision the exact opposite of depression, pain, and heartache. Vibrant orange, like sweet citrus and sunshine.

I’ve decided that remaining anonymous will make it easier to talk about this stuff. Maybe that will change one day, but for now, you guys can call me Iah. It stands for “I am Health.”

An Important Factor

I chose that pen name for a reason. This blog won’t be about sickness. I’m a big believer in the law of attraction. If you’ve been ill most of your life or suffer from a chronic disorder, you know how easy it is for your health problems to become a big part of your identity, and that goes against everything I’m trying to do here. I refuse to think of myself as a sick person. I’m a healthy person who has some sick challenges on her plate.

However, sometimes, hard truths must be told. I’m writing this post so you guys can have some backstory and an idea of what’s driving this mission for health, but beyond this, I don’t want to focus too much about any of the negatives of my health challenges. Instead, I’ll be talking about the practices, products, or ideas that can help people feel better no matter what mental or physical health challenges they’re facing.

My Story: The Early Days

Note: Keep in mind that I’m skimming over some parts and telling things out of order to some degree.

Are we ready? Here’s as quick a summary as possible:

• I’ve been dealing with autoimmune problems since I was a toddler. Outbreaks of hives and rashes on every inch of my body was a common thing.
• At age 10, I suffered a major blow to my head and jaw during a car accident, which fractured my skull and left me with TMJ and some neck problems.
• A couple years later, I went into a severe depression and was diagnosed with a chemical imbalance. I was put on pharmaceutical medications at age 12 and remained on them until I turned 18. These medications had horrible side effects and painful withdrawals when I chose to free myself from them.
• I developed painful cystic acne and experienced psoriasis outbreaks on every inch of my body.
• I tried to run from the pain by abusing hard drugs and alcohol, which left my health in an even worse state.
• Around my mid-twenties I started having debilitating problems with my menstrual cycle. I was later diagnosed with ovarian cysts and likely endometriosis, although I never had the surgery to get it officially diagnosed.
• When I was 23, I developed a major gum infection that spread into my blood and nearly killed me. I had a high fever for a week straight and was on hardcore antibiotics for a long time. This experience led to my passion for oral hygiene.
• On top of everything, my unhealthy lifestyle, depression and low self-esteem led me into many unhealthy relationships, and I experienced abuse that left me scarred.

That’s the short version. All of that took place during my teens and twenties. By the time I reached my late twenties, my health issues were bad enough that I couldn’t commit to working a normal job and began looking into ways to work from home. I’m now in my mid-thirties and quite frankly, amazed to still be alive.

The Big Changes

Eventually, my desire to feel better and not die led to making some big changes in my life. I found out that I was gluten intolerant, which made a lot of my previous suffering make sense. Gluten had been poisoning my body since I was on solid foods. Thank god I found out when I did. After giving it up, many of my skin, mood, and immunity issues improved. I experienced what it was like to think with a functional brain for the first time in my life.

There were changes in my behavior too. I stopped abusing alcohol or any hard drugs. I stopped having casual sex or accepting abuse in relationships.

My Obsessive Path to Healing

Despite a great improvement after going gluten free, some of my health problems continued. What I didn’t realize at the time is that life is about balance, and things like stress levels, satisfaction, and self-respect matter just as much as food allergens or vitamins. There were many things in my life that were making me sick throughout my twenties, especially a long-term toxic relationship that carved away at my self-esteem and kept me in a state of fear and stress for years. During that time, I became desperate and obsessed with curing my physical condition.

I ended up exploring many things, including:

• Vegetarian/vegan diets
• Allergy diets (beyond just gluten free)
• Specific Carbohydrate Diet
• All sorts of gut-healing and healthy bacteria protocols
• Parasite cleansing/liver flushing/all sorts of other controversial alternative health procedures
• EFT and other forms of emotional work
• Meditation/prayer
• Spending time outside/connecting to the moon, sun, and stars
• A huge variety of vitamin and mineral supplements
• Castor oil packs
• Herbs and essential oils
• Spells and crystal healing
• Iodine therapy
• Oil pulling
• Dry skin brushing and other skin detox treatments

All this intense focus on health and trying so many different things combined with a building frustration that nothing was working led to the development of an eating disorder, orthorexia. I could make many, many blog posts about my battle, but I’ll save those for another day. Just know it was a struggle for years.

I’m going to do everything I can to present real facts on this blog. If something is purely anecdotal, I’ll say so. I believe that false/bias information on the internet is a huge contributor to orthorexia. It was in my case, anyway. Through doing “research” on health blogs, I ended up convinced that 99% of all food was toxic. This is something I’ll be discussing more on future blogs. In my opinion, it’s a big problem.

My Actual Path to Healing

I went into recovery from orthorexia in 2013, which I’ll look back on as one of the biggest turning points in my life. I now eat a gluten-free diet that’s based mostly on nutrient-dense whole foods but avoids strict limitations beyond what’s required for my safety. It’s all about balance. My body still doesn’t react well to certain things, and sometimes, my autoimmune system seems to break down for indeterminable reasons.

Lately, I’ve been dealing with depression again. On top of my chronic pain conditions, there’s also been some major disappointments in my personal and professional life over the past couple of years that have left me feeling lost and questioning my purpose.

That’s why I started this blog. I hope I can look back on this moment as a turning point. I hope expressing myself and my story here will change something. I hope I can frame things in a way that manifests a good vibration and brings true healing back to me. Because that’s what I want to provide to others: true healing. I can’t give specific health or medical advice, but I can tell you what’s worked or not worked for me. I also hope to give you guys fun ideas for pampering and caring for yourselves, because self-care is a huge part of recovery.

Where I’m at Now

While I’d love to experience a fulfilling relationship one day, I’m currently happy to be single, celibate, and focused on improving my life. I’m convinced that a lot of the things I’m doing are helping, but I still have a long way to go, and I accept I may never achieve my ideal state of health. I’ll instead hope for progress and many positive steps forward along the way. I hope you guys will join me on that journey.

Love and happy healing,

Iah

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