My Mold Journey Part 2

Trigger warning: mention of eating disorder, childhood bullying, sexual assault

Our laneway was half a kilometer long, winding up to the yellow brick, heritage, old farmhouse, surrounded by the most grandiose willow trees. This was the place I would call home until my college years. The place I spent 15 years with my loving parents in an upstairs apartment, with my sassy. adorable grandma on the main floor, and my misunderstood half-brother sporadically living with us part-time. This house was where my father was raised, with his 3 sisters, and his widowed mom. For me, this move was hard, for many reasons, and where I started experiencing my intuition (but not listening) and unknowingly, the toxic overflow. Let me dive in.

I was an active, happy, “old soul”, 7-year-old girl. I had known only one dwelling, in the small town of Paris Ontario, surrounded by friends and a loving community. It was time for us to move to the country and for me to start a new school. I wasn’t happy about it at all. I was leaving behind the busy, active life I had loved to go out to the boring country. We weren’t moving far, just 10 minutes outside of town, but it seemed like a foreign world to me. The house was old, the rug multi-coloured, the bathroom painted a pea green, the wallpaper needing updating, and the main floor apartment musty and dark. It was situated back from the dirt road and surrounded by fields that were crop rotated between corn and wheat. Not a soul in sight, well, not the human kind. On most winter days, you would see deer frolicking in the backyard. In the summer the yard and countryside were alive with a loud returning turkey, frogs and crickets singing, birds chirping, and a wide variety of wildlife doing their calls of nature. It was truly bittersweet.

We moved into the upstairs apartment, a cute 2 bedroom, where my dad’s bedroom as a young boy once was. My mom was always gifted at painting and wallpapering, which she must have got from her dad, Stanley. He was a professional house painter that sadly passed away from lead poisoning when she was just a little girl. My grandma. my dad’s mom, hadn’t yet moved into the house when my mom volunteered to wallpaper the main floor. This is the beginning.

As the wallpaper came down, the mold was exposed. It was everywhere, on every wall, about halfway up. We’re talking the year 1984, so as you can imagine, it was just wiped clean, with bleach (BIG NO) and tada, all gone! In the meantime, my dad had discovered that most of the indoor window frames had been painted while shut and were sealed closed. They couldn’t be opened. He got those taken care of, thank goodness! It was awful and unnecessary as the house had been closed up from airflow for years. The people that lived there prior were unaware of the damage they had caused. My mom finished wallpapering and life went on. Grandma moved in and we all settled into our new routine together.

I didn’t mind my new school at first, it was a really old stone building, I had made some new friends, but I often found myself tired. I was gaining weight too. Was it that I wasn’t outside playing until the streetlights came on? Now in the country, I was up early, on the bus, and home later with a 40-minute bus ride each way. I wasn’t close to as active living in the country compared to in town, but my parents did their best when it came to me seeing friends on the weekend and I was always galavanting with my mom or dad. I had the best of both worlds with one on one time because my parents worked different schedules. It was common to find me in the kitchen with mom baking or in the garage with dad, tunes cranked working on a car.

Two years in the country home I had gained quite a bit of weight (20 lbs on a 4′ 10″ frame) and often complained of sore knees. It was often enough that I started hating participating in gym class and my mom would write notes for me to sit out due to my knees but not so bad that the doctor was concerned. At this time, I was also being bullied, a lot. I was starting to struggle with my inner happiness but I did my best to smile. Looking back I can see myself as that goofy comedian, always entertaining and making my family smile, but I was hurting inside. Not only was there physical discomfort happening, but there were some really stressful occurrences in the family that frankly a young girl shouldn’t have had to witness or experience. The trauma started without me really knowing or understanding what trauma is.

It was grade 6, the teasing from kids was out of control, my mom always said she was going to call the principal and did on occasion. I, doing what I could, would bring movie posters into school to please the kids, I guess to try and win them over. The ride to school and home on the bus was horrible. I dreaded it and came home daily crying. The kids now had a song about me that to this day still plays in my head….”gummy Jen, bouncing here and there and everywhere” to the Adventures of the Gummi Bears theme song. I was ashamed of my weight and would do anything to be accepted. I had a couple of friends, but truly never felt like I fit in. Another couple of pounds and I was sent to the dietician at the local hospital. “Tell Jenny that she needs to ride her bike and reward her with half a chocolate bar, not a full one”. It was so embarrassing. I just wanted to be happy but my weight was the center of so many conversations. Most were meant to be harmless, but they were far from and from everyone.

I was tired. I was sad. I was lonely. I was desperate to feel accepted. I started throwing up. It didn’t last long, it made my stomach and throat hurt so bad but I just wanted to feel normal. I did end up with cycles of not eating for years after that. When I review the way I ate and how I felt throughout my younger years I realize now that I had major gut dysbiosis. I was constipated a lot. I never burped. Ever! I felt bloated often and it was a common occurrence to hear liquid jiggle in my stomach. My diet was mainly made up of starchy, beige foods and sweets. I hated most meat and only ate vegetables if they were from a can or covered in cheese sauce. I also drank a lot of pop and juice. This was the norm back then. Most of my friends ate like I did.

As an infant, I was fed soy formula at 6 weeks because I was reacting to every other kind of breastmilk substitute. My mom’s GP had put her on the birth control pill because it was advised that my parents have no more children. I was a high-risk pregnancy and as much as the pill reduced the chances of my mom and dad conceiving again, it also stopped my mom’s breastmilk production, which her doctor said would not happen. My mom spent 3 months in the hospital with me, after she went into labor at 5 months. Things were different then with health care and she was fortunate to be at McMaster hospital, a highly ranked children’s hospital in Ontario Canada, until 2 weeks before her due date. However, I, being the classic stubborn Jeni, refused to leave the womb and my mom ended up being induced almost 3 weeks after the original due date. How cute. A story that was often repeated at family functions. I was a miracle baby in many senses.

You see, my entry into this glorious world was bumpy, from a health standpoint, and it never really smoothed out, yet I wasn’t aware of the severity. No one was. I wasn’t a sick kid. I wasn’t in and out of hospitals but things were off. The weight gain, the constipation, the sore joints, the fatigue, the brain fog, the depression, and so on. These may sound common in today’s world, because they are, but they’re not normal.

During middle school, I had a year of ringworm, which my doctor claimed to be an allergic reaction to the laundry detergent. I know, I know, it wasn’t the detergent. My mom changed the detergent and when the ringworm didn’t go away, I used a prescription cream that I’m guessing was antifungal, and slowly but surely the raised pink rings around my midsection went away. When I started high school I ended up losing some weight, but I also came down with hand foot, and mouth disease. Bizarre, rare, and not a typical infection for an adolescent, it hit me HARD. I’ll never forget laying in the bathtub and having my skin start to pop. These little water blisters look-a-like’s bubbled up quickly on my skin and started to leak when I submerged into the water. They were everywhere! My mom and grandma thought maybe it was chickenpox. Then the fever hit 104.5°F and I started hallucinating. It all happened so quickly. I was down and out for almost 3 weeks and the scabs lasted months. I still have a couple of small scars.

I also caught all the “normal” illnesses back then. Common cold, flu, anything floating around I caught (do they actually float around?). It was also common for me to fever. In fact, you could go through all my medical records and note that I often felt fevered with “tingly, touchy skin”, was tired, and suffered from seasonal depression.

High school brought drama, boys, coffee, and cigarettes. With that came extreme weight loss and my driver’s license. Freedom! I was never at home, always at school, work, or off socializing. “Too independent” is what my mom called it. It was Grade 10 and started hanging out with an older crowd. One weekend I joined that group at a house party with an even older attendance and was met with a night that changed my life forever. I was offered a drive back to a friend’s house where I was spending the night, and I was raped. He was 5 years older than me. The high school drama that unfolded from that horrific event was beyond distressing. I lost focus on my studies as a once ‘A student’. I was in shock, ashamed, confused, and felt like I was living outside of my body.

Mid-grade 11, a year after the assault, I crammed back at my studies, got engaged to a “bad boy” and made my way to college. These years were hard and I realize that a lot of my choices stemmed from trauma response. Between the recent events and my childhood, I was always living in a place of uncertainty and insecurity. I was raised in a house that bounced from calm and loving, to loud and dramatic in some pretty awful ways. I also felt the need to compete for my mom’s love at times as my half-brother strolled in and out of my life, all of my life. As a kid, it was what I knew. In retrospect, that was a lot to endure. It was hard on all of us and I wish I could say my brother was a loving, protective older brother, but he was quite the opposite and brought a lot of tension and worry my way. I also realize that he has his truth and trauma in all of this.

It was ingrained in me to take care of and fix people. To make things better, keep things calm, to be the jester. I was the people pleaser fixer. My fiance was abusive but I was in love. Off to college I went and gained the freshman fifty, not fifteen. I paid for his moldy apartment and slowly started moving in, slowly gaining more weight, slowly losing the last strand of self-worth. I commuted 2 hrs a day for school, studying marketing and business full time while working 35 hrs a week as an assistant manager, all to make sure my fiance had a roof over his head while helping him work towards his grade 12 diploma (he was 2 years older than me). This may sound crazy, but I was young, in love, and just needed to feel wanted and accepted. I was in fight or flight every day and had been since I was a little girl. You’re unknowingly attracted to the state and environment you’re used to being in. For me, it was protection mode because I didn’t know how to truly be safe and live outside of that sympathetic state, I was stuck there.

The apartment bathroom was full of mold. It was everywhere, the wall, the tile, the trim. AND as mentioned I had gained a lot of weight again (almost 60 pounds). I was super inflamed and regularly constipated. I went 13 days without a bowel movement! It was then that I was diagnosed with trichotillomania. My hair was already thinning without reason, or so I thought, and I wasn’t helping the matter by pulling at it, all the time. It was my anxiety calmer, my security blanket. I would run my fingertips over and over, piece by piece, until I found a hair that was thicker or coarse and I would pull it out. Watching TV, driving, you name it I would pull and it got worse over the next couple of years.

Thankfully, I didn’t marry him. We moved to another apartment together and it didn’t work out. I got the strength to ask him to leave. The emotional and verbal abuse had progressed to physical and I knew I needed to get him out of my life. I let him take everything I owned and worked hard for because I needed him gone. Material things mean nothing, especially when you don’t have your health. I was broken, at rock bottom, and needed to take care of myself. And I did, He stalked me for 6 months after, the police had to be called a couple of times, but I got through it and that’s what matters! I would love to say that my life turned around after that, but the reality is that relationship ending was the beginning of a chain of bad choices, including letting the “good guy” get away. I had such a trauma bond that his calm, kind, loving, responsible behavior was boring. How sad is that? Very! But, another needed life lesson, and I wouldn’t have the best guy now.

I lived in that apartment for 6 years. It also had mold. Old water radiator heating in every room, which can be an amazing source of heat, but in this case, the system was hard to control. It wasn’t separated per unit so I would come home to a tropical rain forest and have to open all my windows, the condensation would be thick, the apartment damp with almost a mist in the air. Mold would grow on the windowsills. You could see paint bubbling in the bathroom that didn’t have an exhaust fan. There was a roof leak that had the bedroom ceiling water stained and the paint peeling. And since I’ve been nothing but honest and an open book, I think the only reason my body handled it was because I never stopped. I was in a constant state of just do, it was survival.

I had 2 to 3 jobs always. Drank coffee. Smoked cigarettes. Constantly out galavanting. I didn’t stop. I didn’t ALLOW myself to stop. I worked hard and played hard. I never took the time to look within. Everything was swept under the rug, it didn’t matter, I sucked it up and moved on. I thought this was me protecting myself, being strong, being my best version. Oh boy was I wrong. Taking care of myself then and now couldn’t possibly be more opposite.

I was a superintendent at that building and many tenants suffered in that building. In fact, the apartment directly below me had a middle-aged woman move in, who immediately started suffering from fatigue, joint pain, and in particular a really sore arm. Her doctor diagnosed her with muscle atrophy and said she had a hole where her muscle was deteriorating in her tricep muscle! He told her to check for mold. Hellooo, this was 2001! She did, and the owner of the building cleaned it and painted over it. That’s it! Which tragically is common with landlords to this day and horribly dangerous. The poor woman continued to feel worse and finally moved out. I, unfortunately, didn’t think much of it. I really never looked back at the situation until mold almost took my life. And the old gentleman that moved in after her, well he was in his 90’s and quick as a whip but within 6 months had many signs of dementia with delirium. He was put in a nursing home shortly after. If only I could turn back the clock.

For me, it didn’t stop there. I know for a fact that after that apartment I lived in 2 more places with mold. I thank God I fell in love with fitness, became a personal trainer, and loved the outdoors. I spent most of my 20’s and early 30’s working out, hiking, and camping whenever I wasn’t working. I had quit smoking, was at a healthy weight, but I never did sweat. I got dewy on my back and my under breast area would get damp, but I could never sweat like my friends or fellow gym-goers. You know, those people that have sweat dripping off of them, like a sprinkler, always carrying hand towels drenched from wiping their body, not from wiping the gym equipment ( a pet peeve of mine! Clean the equipment! Please!). Not sweating much didn’t seem significant to me. In fact, I had been taught during my personal training certification program that people’s level of sweat varies and that it’s not reflective of their physical capabilities. In other words, not to worry if someone doesn’t sweat, even if they’ve had a strenuous workout. Sometimes we just don’t know until we know. Now I sauna and am one of those sweaty people who can work up a good sweat with little effort. Thank you for my opened detox pathways!

After some failed relationships, a lot of unlearned life lessons, too much work, and not enough or really any self-love, my environment got the best of me. At some point in my travels, which were many, I was bit by a tick or possibly multiple at different times. I mean, I did play outside in the country basically my entire life with no hesitance in picking up dirt and tiny creatures, walking through fields and marsh. I’ve seen many campgrounds and lakeshores throughout Ontario, as well as a bit of traveling abroad. I could’ve contracted Lyme at so many points in my life. In 2010 I was scratched, deeply, right across my palm by a friend’s cat. Did that introduce the Bartonella to my body? And then all the mold, and not to forget the e.coli contaminated well water when I was 17. Who knows how long my family had been consuming that! My body had had enough.

That’s not where it ends though. I experienced a life-shattering relationship in 2011 and 2012. The losses that came with it crippled me, sending me into a downward spiral. Those two years encompassed enough loss and heartache to destroy the bravest, strongest heart. In brief, I found myself in an extremely abusive, narcissistic, sexually violating relationship. It was the major contributing factor to me selling my home, closing my fitness studio, taking a stress leave from my full-time job, which led to a lawsuit, and sadly losing a lot of my core support people to top it all off. I lost so much during those short years and it opened up the tragic gates to grief. That grief disguised itself as anger, resentment, and addiction.

I became friends with my now partner, John, almost immediately leaving that horrific relationship. We knew each other through mutual friends for a couple of years but only spoke briefly at social gatherings. One day he randomly reached out to ask me to meet for coffee and after a couple of weeks of chatting over text I agreed to meet for tea. Coffee is gross lol. I briefly explained my then current situation to him and expressed that I always have time for more friends but was absolutely NOT looking for a relationship. In my head, I was seriously considering being a single dog mom for the rest of my life after what I had just been through. John didn’t bat an eye. He became that very caring, non-judgemental friend that I so desperately needed.

I never would have imagined, but he’s been by my side since. The ride hasn’t been easy. In fact, it’s been incredibly difficult, trying, challenging, and heartbreaking yet we never gave up. Our path has brought a level of love and comfort that words simply can not give justice to. We have broken through the shackles of immense pain together. Pain that was caused by illness, by life happenings, by loss, and often pain created by one another. With that pain came vast passion and purpose and power. It’s how I got here today. It’s who I am. It’s who we are. And I couldn’t be more proud of us, of myself, or more grateful for where this journey has led me. To truth, self-compassion, kindness, root cause, determination, eyes wide open, and steering with my heart. All guiding me to whole health – emotionally, physically, soulfully, and the tools to step forward and be here for all of you.

You can read the second part of my mold journey in Part 1 The End Details First, How Toxic Mold Almost Ruined My Life where I dive into the years and events leading up to my final, and real, diagnosis of Mold Toxicity, Lyme Disease, Trauma survivor, Infertility and multiple co-infections.

With the utmost love, understanding, and compassion, your body wants you happy and healthy! Healing is possible. Jen 💛

This blog is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only. This is not medical advice nor a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Some names have been omitted to protect their privacy. All events mentioned are factual and the intellectual property of Jenipher Jasper and/or Jenipher Wellness. Follow me at My Mold Journey. Contact me at info@jenipherwellness.com. Book a session to work with me.