The Lyme Warrior with Lauren Lovejoy

In this episode Freddie invites Lauren Lovejoy, the owner of Lyme Warrior. Lyme Warrior is a nonprofit organization that supports people affected by Lyme and forming a strong and passionate community. Through her journey with Lyme, she has gone from selling shirts to creating a community that provides Lyme patients with security and a place to belong to. 

This episode will focus on Lauren’s healing process and how Lyme Warrior has grown into what it is today. She talks about the importance of building a community, giving back, different modalities of healing with Lyme, and going back to nature. 

Episode Highlights

1:43 Lauren talks about her Lyme disease journey and how she established Lyme Warrior

10:05 Freddie shares his point of view on dealing with illnesses alone and forming a community

11:37 How Lyme Warrior provides a community for those suffering from Lyme

16:13 Lauren talks about how Lyme Warrior gives support to caregivers of Lyme disease patients

18:32 Freddie shares how he has incorporated technology in his healing process, with AmpCoil having the most impact on him. But he emphasizes that it’s not all about the tech, it’s also about the community.

21:57 How the pandemic has affected Lyme Warrior

24:00 Lauren urges everybody to give at least 1%, which can have a great impact on the cause

25:53 Freddie looks back to his experience with cancer and shares his reflections in comparison to Lyme

27:11 Lauren talks about how the healing process of Lyme is sometimes a lonely path

29:26 Freddie and Lauren talk about Lyme disease, dating, and having proper emotional support

37:50 Lauren reflects on the impact of technology on dealing with Lyme, elevating your quality of life, and going back to nature.

46:15 She talks about the financial side of running a non-profit organization and learning the ropes of leadership and growth

48:24 She talks about her vision for Lyme Warrior for the upcoming year

51:36 Freddie talks about his friend Tyler and how people are creating platforms that bring about great change for people affected with chronic illnesses like Lyme

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Freddie Kimmel and Lauren Lovejoy (00:00.506)
I love that we can all go through things that I think all of us have literally had our lives floored by some component of this disease where we didn't think that we could continue to go on. And so many people that if you can continue to persist and move forward that you find that you didn't get your life back, but you actually got a better life than the one that you thought you had before.

Welcome to the Beautifully Broken Podcast. I'm your host, Freddie Kimmel, and on the show we explore the survivor's journey, practitioners making a difference, and the therapeutic treatments and transformational technology that allow the body to heal itself. Witness the inspiration we gain by navigating the human experience with grace, humility, and a healthy dose of mistakes. Because part of being human is being beautifully broken.

Freddie Kimmel and Lauren Lovejoy (00:58.616)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the beautifully broken podcast. have a very special guest today, Lauren Lovejoy. Lauren, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. Lauren. So for people that are just tuning in for the first time, we talk about Lyme, we talk about mold, we will talk about metastatic cancer and healing the body and all the different modalities that can assist one into wellness.

You have a very special platform called Lyme Warrior. You're an advocacy for health in the field of people struggling with the long-term symptoms of Lyme. I would love to hear what drove you to start such a platform and be such a mission for goodness in the world. Yeah, absolutely. So my story is very similar to a lot of other Lyme patients that just one day I got sick and I saw doctor after doctor and couldn't get an answer for what was going wrong.

I saw 60 doctors over two years and had no idea what was going on. I had two negative Lyme tests, so it couldn't possibly be Lyme. But after many years of digging, I finally did get to a diagnosis of Lyme disease from a Lyme literate doctor and had been moved into the space of accepting being a Lyme patient. I went on antibiotic protocols that were not solutions for me.

So I of course then had to start looking at other answers and I, you know, joined the Lyme community and found so much healing and support and solutions to help me with my journey that it really became a mission to me to give back for the future people who are going to be facing this and shorten their journey and really try to make everybody's path a little less hard. my God. Interesting. Right away. You said 60 doctors in two years for me, that brings up like a price tag. Do you have any idea what you spent?

chasing your wellness and struggling under chronic Lyme? I have never added it up because that would just be a very depressing number, but I'm sure it was in the 10 to 20,000 with insurance. know, later as you move to chronic Lyme, none of it's covered by. So the first few years I mainly operated in a Western medicine space with a really great insurance policy, but even with those costs.

Freddie Kimmel and Lauren Lovejoy (03:16.046)
you know, tilt table tests, EKGs, all that stuff doesn't always get covered. So probably in the 20 to $30,000 seeking a diagnosis, which didn't come from Western medicine. Yeah. What do think the big limitations are as far as someone going in and just getting a test from an ELSA test and getting a round of antibiotics and just getting better? And why do people struggle in such a terrible way with Lyme disease? Kind of a multi-pronged issue. When I went in,

I had a lot of neurological and atypical Lyme disease symptoms. So I was very much dismissed as a young woman who had anxiety and symptoms like that. So it wasn't taken as seriously as I felt it should have been. all of the tests that I was given for Lyme disease came back negative. So, you know, they immediately crossed that off the list and it was not considered because doctors weren't educated. And it was very ironic because the doctor hands me a sheet of paper and it says,

Your Lyme disease is 70 % likely to not be positive or, you know, to be wrong. And they're like, okay, well, it's still negative. You still don't have it. And I'm like, what does this paper say? And they're like, no, no, don't worry about it. You know, and so that's, uh, think a huge breaking point in our medical system that it's dismissed. The testing is faulty and things like that leads to a lot of misdiagnosis. Yeah. The time is a factor with Lyme. Now, did you remember

receiving a bite from a tech. that happen? I remembered it years after I was diagnosed, which is really not helpful because your doctor says, have you ever been bitten by a tech? And I go, no, I don't really recall. And, you know, after two years of pondering where I could have possibly gotten sick, I did remember being covered in some nymph ticks while out on a hike. But it was so not important back then that it didn't even register until years of suffering later.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I grew up in upstate New York. You know, we played in barns and cornfields and you know, we lived outdoors. Who knows how many times. I think that's probably most people in our geographic location. And now obviously there's different areas of the world that are experiencing what it really is kind of a global pandemic. feel like it's understated as far as how many people are really struggling with this. Are you aware of the figures of how many people are diagnosed a year with Lyme?

Freddie Kimmel and Lauren Lovejoy (05:35.249)
Yep. think we're setting up the current estimate is 300,000 diagnosed annually. And of course, I still think that is significantly, you know, undervalued. I still think there's so many misdiagnosed cases that are currently out there. I think we're looking at a doubled or even tripled number. Yeah, that is what I hear as well. What were the things that really improved your health? What changed your story for you? The story is very long and up and down, but basically after antibiotics failing me, I went

to ozone next. I tried ozone and loved it, but the doctor was incompetent and it led me to herbals, which I did not believe in and did not think that could possibly address the magnitude of my problem. And they are hands down the thing that is getting me my health back to this day is plant-based medicine and never thought I would say that in my entire life. But herbals are always to me the most simple starting point to truly like change the base level problems.

And how many things do you think you tried that weren't solutions that had worked for other people? You know, I didn't dabble too far. I really looked at Western medicine and I was offered a lot of pharmaceutical solutions, but everything internal in me told me that that was not a solution. I had always been more adverse to pharmaceuticals. They'd never sat with me well. So very adverse to most things in the pharma world to the point that I refused trying them.

but everything alternative that I had never expected to be solutions have all been helpful in some capacity. They may not have been like game changers, but I find that the alternative healing really offered me tons of different choices. Energy healing, Rife, PMF, all of those modalities have truly been, know, instrumental in the healing process. That's incredible. Now, if we can pivot just a little bit and talk about Lime Warrior, your platform.

How did this brainchild come to be? What was its inception point? Its inception was really, I was stuck at home. You I was homebound for probably about four years and about halfway through I said, well, you know, I'm going to make some t-shirts and sell them on the internet and I'll give the proceeds to research. So I took a loan, bought 50 t-shirts, put them on the internet and sold them. And from there, it really kind of took off without me, whether I wanted to go with it or not. And just, you know, the community started gathering and saying, this is really great.

Freddie Kimmel and Lauren Lovejoy (07:55.877)
this and it just really took me to where this is where I want to go. This is offering hope and solutions for people and even if it's just hope right now, that was so instrumental. And then of course, as we continue to build and have resources, we've moved into being able to give patients financial assistance when they're struggling and bigger donations to research to advance testing and treatment methods. And it's really spiraled into something much bigger than I ever expected.

Incredible. You must have some amazing stories of families that you've been able to connect with and assist through some of the financial grants. Do you have anybody that sticks out in your mind? There is one gal that just is always probably my most relatable story, but she suffers from Lyme and mold illness. And like many mold patients, she had to give up her home. She lives in a camper off of, you know, extremely minimal financial support from the government.

She has lost her career, her life, her family. She is really an outsider. But she continues to be this just glowing advocate for her state. And she faces so much, and she's in such an impoverished area. But she still shows up and goes to her state hearings and still so strongly advocates when she has so many barriers against her and that desire to give back to a community that really hasn't done a lot for her.

to be able to financially support her and enable her to get some treatment when she has been such a pillar has been really amazing that I feel, you you're helping people be better people. And when they're already such amazing people to continue to help that climb, that's where like that community and that progress really comes together for me that they're doing amazing things and I'm doing amazing things by, you know, getting the treatment.

It just all makes this like happy glowing ball of community that it was so special to me. You know, you said it a couple times, said the word community and you mentioned this woman living off the grid as many people with mold and long-term chronic Lyme have to do because their bodies become so overly sensitive to the environment. I remember starting to

Freddie Kimmel and Lauren Lovejoy (10:07.129)
You know, you go down the rabbit hole of discovering, you know, quote unquote, what's wrong with me and pretty much everybody with lime, I feel like they find they've got some type of mold toxicity as well, which goes along with the equation of problematic modern day building materials, period. In my opinion, I think it's so easy. People don't realize how easy it is. It's like one storm. It's one leaky refrigerator. It's one bad connection on your washer and dryer that is going to.

soak that drywall and that is food for these spores. And all of a sudden you're living in this biotoxin home and the very typical, it's like you could write it again and again and again, that it just, the body becomes so overly reactive to everything that this person has to like separate. And the idea of being alone, it's almost like, and I'm sure you've experienced this as well, like being alone on your couch, missing out on holidays, family events, not being able to travel.

The separation amplifies the illness in my experience. And I just, any group that is creating community for us to better connect, better understanding, advocacy for testing, it's just, it's what this movement needs. I mean, beyond like some miracle, quote unquote, cure or better testing, I think those would be great. But to do this in community and not do it alone, I think is such a profound message.

What are some of the ways in which Lime Warrior creates community? Definitely. So I say community so often because it's the community that gave me my options and gave me my life. People, when they get better, they tell other people how they got better and they continue to share this gift of knowledge and thinking outside the box. it's, you know, this community has brought upon all the change. It's not government induced. It's not systemic.

system induced, it's people that are creating this change. So continuing to have a hub that these people can exchange this information, what's working for them, what's not working for them, and to be actionable together has been just the change that we want to see and the change that's happening. And one of the big things we continue to work on is partnering with other nonprofits. It's really great that we're offering patient care. It's really great that we're taking care of research, but there's also these other ones that are working on.

Freddie Kimmel and Lauren Lovejoy (12:26.157)
educating practitioners so that they don't miss it when it's a negative test and things like that. And we just want to keep, you know, we're not a community of our nonprofit. We're a community of Lyme patients, which extends to so many other modalities of healing devices, of nonprofits, of government entities. And the more we can continue to bring these people together, I think the more this community again will invoke change through individuals and change one mind at a time. And that's what we're really focused on is.

slow inclusion into the community and change through the human experience. Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful. I'm excited. I'm fired up. This was like the morning coffee times two that I needed. Yes. You know, I think about again, you know, it kind of triggers the mission and what the goal is of inclusion. And then to do that, we obviously need to support it with green energy. We need money to flow to some of these platforms. So

What's been your experience as far as like grant writing or getting money from the government, private donors, where have you found success there to support the platform? Well, this kind of comes back to my favorite word community. We have never received external grant funding from any government entity private. I think we had one very small grant back in the beginning, but we are almost like 90 % advocate funded, you know, donor funded in our support, which

I didn't think was possible, but we continue to just find a way to make small donations, have big actions and continue to just grassroots style build it. And it's been pretty amazing. And we have a couple of handful of fundraisers that are our big flagships through, not necessarily the Lyme patients, but people who are compassionate to the Lyme journey. And they've been amazing at every year. We just have a couple of staples that help us continue to reach patients financially and support them. That's incredible.

You know, again, when that funding comes in, do you have a process in which you decide where it goes? Do you guys have a map for the year as far as, okay, we've got a list of people waiting for assistance or is that kind of determined by the person giving the funding? We basically save up to a number and when they, have that number, we'll open applications and take submissions and give to the top 20 who show the most need that we can.

Freddie Kimmel and Lauren Lovejoy (14:48.497)
accommodate, you know, we'd like to give to people who have financially available solutions. While we wish we could send everybody to Germany and Mexico for, you know, amazing treatment, that's not the best use of everybody's individual dollar. So we really try to spread it as much as we can to people who are doing, you know, affordable treatments and functional treatments. And those are usually the ones that get funded. And every time we get enough money to do it, we give it away because that's the best thing is to put money in the hands of our community.

because as soon as they have it, they're gonna take action and they're gonna get better and they're gonna start working on other people. So that's just the biggest driver right now of our plan is, know, take care of our community. Yeah, you know, another thing that comes up for me with the community, we talk a lot about the people that are diagnosed with Lyme, but then I think sometimes the forgotten can be the family members, the girlfriends, the patient care advocates that are there really.

I mean, that role, knowing so many parents who are holding space for their kids to get out of bed after four years, hoping they'll go to college, long-term, you know, 20, 30 year marriages. At the end of the day, that can be on the rocks because it's such a difficult situation. What have you found as far as the Lime Warrior program platform supplying support for those individuals, the caretakers?

So when you come to the Lyme Warrior site, you'll see you can choose I'm a patient or I'm a caregiver. And what we offer is more specific resources for caregivers. If you're a spouse or a boyfriend or girlfriend, if you're a parent, we have broken out sections that kind of give more specific advice for what to expect. Of course, with a child to expect, you know, attitude changes and adjustments that are a little atypical. want parents to understand that those are normal. And, you know, we offer some

suggestions of school systems that are better. We have blog posts on resources for them and similar with spouses and things like that. We have some things that more explain the changes that people go through. We're trying to keep it from being a surprise. And I'm just very lucky that I met my fiancee while I was sick and he was such an amazing support to me and he's really helped me. You know, I can look at it through the Lyme Patient

Freddie Kimmel and Lauren Lovejoy (17:08.483)
all day, but he's like, no, some of these things were really surprising and I was not ready for your irrational thoughts and I was not ready for your temper tantrums when things don't go right. to pretend like those things don't exist doesn't help anybody to acknowledge that things are going to be irrational and it's not going to be easy. I think really helps the caregiver's journey, the patient's journey to meet it with understanding that this is, know, quote unquote normal. And so we try to provide blogs.

things to address a better expectation of what this journey is going to look like. That's beautiful. It's such a need. You know, everybody's in this together. I always think about how many people are affected. It's not the number diagnosed. It is the families. It's the financial burden on the government, which is huge. Hours of lost work. mean, I'm sure we could go on and on and I'm sure you actually put, probably know some of those figures.

try not to work too much on figures because I find them truly overwhelming, but I try to just look at the people and understand, you know, so we have a group of moms and I say, what is the hardest part for you? Where was the biggest battle? And we work on that. And then, you know, once we feel that we've provided resources, we then go, okay, what's next? You know, and we're trying to really work more one-on-one because the problem is overwhelming, but at least there are solutions that we can tackle.

Yeah. Let's pivot to solutions for a minute. And I think, you know, just to give people a level of awareness. And I talk about this sometimes a lot, sometimes not so much, but one technology that was magical for me in my journey was the amp coil system, which is combines pulse electromagnetic field and bio resonance and software and all these cool things. I like you. I had tried so many things. I mean, the list is silly, you know, every single thing is included on there and

For me, I listened to the founders do a podcast on the technology and I actually, I bought it, you know, at the time it was, you know, $11,000 is biggest thing I've ever bought. And there was something I listened to them talk about it I was like, yep, that's it. You know, that's it. My journey with tolerating or like, couldn't do the herbs. would get like six months in and like my gut was just torn up or.

Freddie Kimmel and Lauren Lovejoy (19:25.477)
The fatigue was so great. was like on the couch for two days when I was doing the Cowden protocol. It was just silly. And finally something like turn the lights on. And when I found myself in this community, I was like, the tech's awesome. Like it works, but the community, like, you know, this is a company that has a monthly community call to support everybody, whether you own the tech or you just want to hear somebody give their win about how they got out of bed, how they went back to work.

And that's what really moved me to have a technology that was not about the tech. was about the people. was about the not doing it alone. And, you know, kind of moving back to this, what's really the focus? It's supporting the whole. It's like the person, it's the condition, it's the syndrome. How can you support that person financially? And like,

All the time when I'm, you know, kind of over the last two years researching and experimenting and running through all these different things you can do with this technology. I've always saw like a partnership between lime wire and amp coil. And that's how we met just to let everybody at home know we're like fleshing that out, how it works. And we had the opportunity to help you out with your most recent event. Albeit we had some craziness happen with a hurricane. had to reschedule, correct?

I was about to say the whole event was a little bit of craziness from start to finish, but you know, we made it through and with your support and Ampoil support, we were at $10,000, which will help 20 patients this holiday. So hurricane or no hurricane, second pandemic or not, we, you know, we really did some amazing things for the community. Yeah, it's incredible. I'm so excited about it. It's a great reminder of when the world seems like it's falling down or crashing. mean,

maybe there's a couple people around the globe experience that right now. And at the end of the day, I always go back to the mindset of the people struggling with Lyme. I'm like, they're still at home, everybody's still on the couch, we're still trying to be able to digest lettuce or pull the energy to like...

Freddie Kimmel and Lauren Lovejoy (21:36.687)
You know, watch a couple of Netflix series together. And it's funny. I'm like, well, a lot of the stuff during this pandemic, it's sort of the norm for somebody struggling with long-term chronic Lyme, like the pace, a shutdown. you can't go around other people because your immune system's compromised. I mean, do you, do you ever have those similar thoughts? I get asked so often, like, how has the pandemic changed Lyme warrior? How has it changed? I was like, well, we are literally doing the same thing.

our patients are still struggling. They might be struggling a little bit more that they might have lost their job because of the shutdown, but we're all in the same boat. And, you know, I've operated Lime Warrior from my couch when I was really sick and my computer as I get better, you know, it didn't change for me and our mission didn't change and our passion didn't change. So I find it very comforting that while everything can be going crazy, I can be very centered in.

My project didn't change and my intentions didn't change and the people who make it amazing didn't change. It's comforting that the world can be crazy, but it can also be centered at the same time. can also be centered at the same time. know I, yeah, I mean, it's just resonant. What's going on with me for like, there's so many people that are having to experience what so many of us have gone through over the like past 10, 20 years, however long this epidemic has been going.

And I personally feel like there's going to be more empathy, more support for the community on the other side of whatever 2021 brings with 2022. And I am really feeling the awareness around how important our health and vitality is and to have tools to do that at home. You know, I think that's one thing that personally I've noticed having red lights.

you know, oxygen bag, pulse electromagnetic field generators, like the ability to structure my own water. It's like, yes, now is the time. I don't want to call myself a prepper, but here we are. And I've got a lot. Yeah, I got to help. I'm a health prepper. So I've got a lot of these tools like ready to go in my home. Let me ask you this. If you could wave a magic wand and just if we could, maybe we're going to connect or manifest with a perfect person to support.

Freddie Kimmel and Lauren Lovejoy (23:55.275)
Lime warrior on this podcast. What would be the ask? What would really help out the organization? well, that's a giant question. Wasn't prepared for that one. That's all right. You're asking me a tough question because there isn't one person. I want everybody. I want everybody to give 1%. And if everybody gave 1%, it would allot to this just Herculean change of the world. you know, one person isn't a game changer. I am not a game changer. I am a

hub, but it's just, am, you know, a meeting of the minds of so many amazing things. And it's so important for, like I said, nonprofits, government entities, healing devices, like Ampoil, all this stuff to come together because it isn't one person. So sorry to throw your question on its head, but I don't want one. want the ball. That's the answer you're supposed to give. I love it. And how would someone do that? How would they support LimeWare? Where would you send people? Yeah. I mean, I

Would love for people to just jump on the website at limewarrior.us and just, you know, take a look and find the thing that you feel more passionately about. If it's our kids program, getting solutions for treatment, just find one thing and kind of stick with us when you want to contribute, contribute. That's great. If you want to come out and support any of our events, we are constantly doing new things and we're constantly trying to find a way to include everyone. You know, we don't stick with one plan. We're constantly moving and shifting. So, you know, just stay in touch with us.

grow with us and be part of the team because everybody has something to contribute and it might not be today. It might not be tomorrow, but it could be the day after that. We just want to bring everybody into that hub. Yeah. I'm going to call my mom out. Mom, I need you to donate to limeware.us. I know mom will do it. She'll give something. And then I'm going to call my dad out too. So those are two that I will send your way for sure.

I appreciate it. my goodness. Of course. So again, not to take it back to me, but I'm going do it. So my parents were like, amazing supporting me through cancer. I actually, I made a testicular cancer documentary on release this month, a doc. It's like a mini eight minute awareness video. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I'm really proud of it. And detection is key. You know, all those things, however, and I've mentioned this before, once you've went through something like that, that's so heavy.

Freddie Kimmel and Lauren Lovejoy (26:16.995)
The Lyme and the mold, which were sort of an afterthought, which were way more debilitating, to be honest, as scary that is to say out loud. You know, there was so much empathy for me going through cancer and an understanding where some of the things that were happening to my body with Lyme were so embarrassing and weird and like the fatigue and me being a young guy and the crippling joint pain. There weren't things I shared with people. It was embarrassed. Do you know what mean? I really...

It like, is that, if that sounds crazy, like the cancer was like, everybody, you know, rushes to your side. Whereas the lime it's like, you're sort of suffering in silence and you don't necessarily know what's wrong with you. And I think it can feel like your family is not there in support. Well, really it's, I think it's just a lack of understanding and it's just such a different ball game. What's been your experience with that?

Definitely very similar. I use the cancer movement as a big guider of a lot of things because I think again, if we as Lyme patients, mold patients, mast cell patients, know, whatever the conglomerate you get that day, I think if it was met with more compassion, it would really just change the journey so much because, you know, it's fantastic when your family and friends support you, but that's not a normal narrative for a lot of patients because it's unseen and hard to explain. And like you said, embarrassing.

You can't talk about it as easily and there is no just automatic level of understanding. I have to explain myself and then I'm whiny or a hypochondriac or I, you know, as a woman, you fall in that category of very easily, you know, and you fall into these very typical problems that are not typical and it becomes dismissed. You get into patient gaslighting. It's a pretty terrible slope and you know, people can talk about it for days.

the true way that it erodes at who you are and who you feel like because you then start questioning yourself. Am I making this up? Is it in my head? And you can't dismiss it, but you also can't embrace it. So even dating, I found myself just pretending to be a healthy person. And I hear that a lot from other people that I put my best face forward and I would put on my makeup and then I would dip into bathrooms, hop into my car to hide that I was having

Freddie Kimmel and Lauren Lovejoy (28:38.747)
tremors or that my legs wouldn't hold me up anymore. Or I was having an anxiety attack when I had no history of anxiety and I had never had problems with anxiety. And I felt like I was trying to be myself, but hiding all the things that were going on with me. And unfortunately it became crippling that I had to move home and become truly isolated. I really liked to think of the entire process as kind of a metamorphosis.

You just stop caring what people think. And you stop wanting to put on the charade the whole time and you just accept who you are. And it leads you to a place of like finding your passion and just kind of boldly moving forward, whether or not people are with you and great if they are. And if they're not, oh, well, yeah. Yeah, totally. The whole, that's a podcast. We always joked here. Normally when the world's a little more sane, we have a barn, a healing barn here.

And we have about, you know, we have a sauna, we have some red lights, we got the foot bath, we got about five amp coils. So we're in central Connecticut. This is the place to come. You know, Monday, Wednesday, Friday all day, the barns packed. So it's awesome. It's awesome. And we always will joke about a lime dating site. Like, like it needs to happen. It needs to happen just for people to swap stories. Well, I'm.

I'm totally going to argue with you. I think the greatest thing a Lyme patient can do is date somebody who doesn't have Lyme. Yes, of course. you need somebody who is the muscle to get up and to handle things when you're down. Not saying it doesn't work, but... No, I know, I know. The ability to continue our story through people we love is such an amazing thing. Like if you interview my fiance about me, I sound like I am the greatest thing that's ever been invented. These people who are telling the stories of what we face is...

amazing. So I love the spouses who are not sick. They really bring something special to the community. think that makes a lot more sense. It could have been a bad idea we came up with. I mean, we like our own. So I'm sure it has definitely worked for some people. But yeah, I mean, half the stuff, you know, I think about scenarios was like, I'm not going on a date this week. I'm like, my gut is tore up. I'm doing a parasite cleanse. What if I have to go to bathroom? really got to have a deeper understanding of and liver flushes.

Freddie Kimmel and Lauren Lovejoy (30:59.012)
I did about a hundred liver flushes in the first year of dating my significant other while we lived together and we got close. We got real close. Yep. And again, it's nice when somebody's involved in the conversation. It's like, am I going to do the coffee out of my first or are you going to do the coffee? definitely the dating I find gets a lot shorter. It doesn't take you a long time to figure out if they're going to be your ride or die with you or not. Yeah, it is. It's true. It's true. It's the ride or die. And it does get very intimate, very real, very fast.

Yeah, which has its pluses and minuses, but totally, totally, Lauren, I wonder, do you have kind of a vision for 2021? Do you have any goals that you want to achieve? Yes. So many going to go back to my word, but my biggest focus is bringing together the nonprofits. There are so many amazing people that are working so hard, but they are, you know, I realized I spent a ton of my time working and not

showing what I was doing so people didn't really understand what I was doing. And I see so many other nonprofits that are a handful of people that are just working their tails off very quietly under the radar. And I want to work on bringing all those people together and showing our community how hard these people are working and not just on certain areas because, know, great, you're doing patient care, but what about this and what about this? And I'm like, no, there are people working on it. And they're like, I had no idea. So my big thing is to bring all these

communities back together. And Lyme Warrior to me never was an individual. It was more of a hub. And so for 2021, I really want to bring that hub to be more inclusive. That's incredible. We work with a great not-for-profit through AmpCoil. We work with Wellness for Humanity Foundation, which essentially families with three or more positive Lyme diagnoses will gift an AmpCoil for three to four months. And they're supported by

Jessa Hurst, who is a really good friend. She holds their hand through the process and it's a really great way to interject, you know, energy, community, and it's a wonderful organization, but I know it's people that are just giving and giving and giving and they do, they are the unsung heroes. And I, and I do agree with you. There needs to be a bridge between all these organizations.

Freddie Kimmel and Lauren Lovejoy (33:15.35)
Do you have anybody else that you off the top of your head? I'm sure you do that are your favorites that you've kind of partnered with or love what they're doing that you want to mention. There's so many. Yeah, we just, really working to bridge so many places. So, you know, of course we want to support ILADS hands on education of doctors. We really like LEAF as the education prevention for children. Limelight we've been working.

closely with to do some smile boxes, but of course, financial aid for children, like you said, those families with two or more, you know, we've seen up to six or seven children in a family with Lyme. That's a overwhelming problem for a family. One is an overwhelming problem, you know, going to multiple. So we just trying to span those different levels. There's so many, I could write you a list of about 15 that are just the immediate come to mind.

Of course, we really do want to move into those secondary programs that aren't necessarily Lyme-focused, but chronic illness-focused because there's a lot of patients that don't realize that their underlying conditions are Lyme and mold. They say, have fibromyalgia and I live with it and that kind of breaks my heart. You have options, you have things you can try. So again, just expanding past the name, past, it's not one issue. It's lots of issues and that makes it complicated, but not unsolvable.

Yeah. It's interesting when you're saying the chronic illness, long-term disease, fibromyalgia, and we're seeing a lot of this in the news right now. You know, I'm talking to a lot of people in 2020 that are experiencing these long-term symptoms from C-19, the quote unquote long haulers. I've been on the phone with about five or six people who it's so eerie the similarities to long-term chronic Lyme. I don't know if you've spoken to anyone in that realm, but

It was a little triggering, you know, very the chronic fatigue can't get off the couch, metabolic dysfunction, digestive upset, memory loss. It's really this, again, it's sort of a syndrome, less of a, you know, I can't put a pin on the one thing that it is, but it is eerie in that way. I think progressive research as to why these similar symptoms happen, because, you know, you know, the triggers of all these can be very different of mold,

Freddie Kimmel and Lauren Lovejoy (35:33.592)
heavy metal exposure, parasites, you know, they can trigger a lot of things, but if we can kind of get to the root cause of understanding why these autonomic conditions react the way they do, I think the research, while it may say Lyme, it may say gastric diseases, it may say a lot of things, these constant researches are gonna really help our understanding of these triggers. And I think it's invaluable to anybody who has any kind of syndrome and condition, the consistent education of the autonomic systems that we don't understand.

I agree. I was thinking about this a lot the other day. was trying to reverse engineer what works. And then I try to say why, you know, it's, think across the board, hear people benefit from coffee enemas, infrared saunas, pulse electromagnetic fields, clean water, clean food and better sleep. And if I have to, you know, pull back again, I have to ask myself, I was like, was I really living?

in the resonance or vibration of the natural world. Do I have time in nature? Am I drinking clean water? Am I eating whole foods that are packed with nutrition? Am I doing enough rest, digest and play? I mean, there was a no to everything. so my lifestyle, and I usually can point this out in other human beings, it's not in resonance with nature for the most part. That's a big part of this world that we've designed. You know, I just spent two weeks in Phoenix, Arizona.

And you know, if you know anything about Phoenix, it's actually Mesa. So it's newer. It's a newer build. And the weather is awesome. The dry weather, if you've ever been a mold person, you're like, my God, like your sinuses are just open. Primarily, I've been on the East Coast, Upper East Coast, Northwest Corridor. But everything is wired for Alexa and everywhere you look, there's the next generation of Wi-Fi towers.

The water's all poured it in. just had this awareness of how artificial this town in the desert is and how many, how many things that it needs from modern tech to support people living there. It was just this aha moment where I was like, my God. I was like, this is going to be an issue down the road. think. love that you segue into this because, so I struggled at 25 years old as every single

Freddie Kimmel and Lauren Lovejoy (37:56.068)
25 year old I think does is what do I care about? What am I going to do for the rest of my life? Where's my passion? And of course Lyme disease very quickly forced a passion upon me. then after that, I kind of went down the same road that you did that I was like, how did I make it this long without crashing? What did I do to my body in this interim? You know, I chose a lot of really detrimental things to my health that just were part of what you did and part of how you lived. And so,

on stepping back and having to reformat my entire ability to live and then not fitting with society anymore, not being able to go to a restaurant and eat traditional foods, not being able to be in a house that's under a cell phone tower. Like you just, your whole world, you start realizing that you don't fit there. And that's really upsetting. But

It brought me my new passion on top of Lyme disease became regenerative agriculture and it's agriculture that's trying to mimic nature in the way we produce things. think of like feedlots and all these things that are leading to climate change in detrimental areas. It's the opposite of that. It's sequestering carbon through animal functions. It's rebuilding ecosystems, bringing the bees back, the birds, the biodiversity, all these things. And the difference of going outside and standing on ground

that is closer to nature as opposed to a desert that has been stripped of life. know, grounding all these things, you understand why they work. And you understand that we still are humans. No matter how much we want to be tech bots and make progress in advance, you can't get too far away from the reality that we are still human beings. And I think that's why chronic illness is so present as we continue to try to force ourselves away from natural environments and nutrition and healthy water.

You can only go so far before it really starts showing you that the answer is usually nature. It's usually nature prescription nature. My friend Quinn is a piece that he's a pantry as he's awesome paintings. got to send you a postcard. It says prescription nature. It's like this pill bottle that's pouring out like waterfalls and birds and trees. It's really, really stunning. And it's so true. It's so true as we keep, keep launching more people into space here and talking about other planets. I was like,

Freddie Kimmel and Lauren Lovejoy (40:12.258)
wait a minute, what about this one? This is really stunning where we're at. Let's take care of this one a little bit better. That's where I very passionately come to. We're on one that's been really great to us and we have not been so good to it. So it's really a big passion of mine to put some love back into the earth that we walk on. We take it for granted and we took our bodies for granted. And if we keep doing that.

We know what happens and we can do that. Yeah. You know, Lyme is, is great teacher. Chronic illness is a great teacher. Cancer is a great teacher. Yes. And I agree with you. I love the stuff that Zach Bush puts out on regenerative agriculture and just the awareness around what's happening with the planet right now. And in some of these, if you follow some of these great thought leaders online, they're looking at like some of these

the pandemic and these could very well, there's a possibility that this is a biological cost of the way we've been living and the ecosystems that we've changed. If the underlying factor is vitamin D deficiency in what, 90 % of the cases, you're missing the sun. Like that's not a wildly complicated problem. you know, we can go down the road of like, know, chem trails and trying to dim the sun and you know, we can go down those roads, but they're very scary.

just come back to again, just healing yourself, healing your body, healing nature. And that sounds like such simple hippie stuff, but I think anybody who's been down a railroad of suffering all kind of comes back to it with different words, but same concept. Mm hmm. Yes, I would agree. 2000%. You know, another thing that was we're talking about the regenerative agriculture and giving back to the planet. One thing that's shifted for me is

And again, this was just a level of awareness was getting sick is you see how much of a consumer that you're programmed to be through our education systems. it's all about you're a good student if you're buying, if you're consuming, if you're getting under, you know, a mortgage, if you're in credit card debt, if you have a new lease on a car and reprioritizing spending around health has really shifted that for me.

Freddie Kimmel and Lauren Lovejoy (42:25.354)
And again, that can also be a rabbit hole. can be about you and all the things you need to get better for you. But if we look, again, if we pull out and do bird's eye view as a consumer, how can I be responsible with my purchases that do give back to the environment that complete that energetic chain? Yeah. And I think a lot of the healing modalities that we look at

You know, do have a lot of focus in energy, even if it isn't a primary, of course, Cowden is energized with different healing frequencies and things like that. the underlying energy exchange and, you know, thoughtfulness of consumption. And most of it comes because you just ran out of money and you kind of got to be conservative with your choices. But I think that really brings about more thoughtful choices and thoughtful exchange of energy, because when you only have so much to give, you're much more conservative than.

thoughtful with your process. So, you know, we really would love to cater to those freshly diagnosed and, you know, hit everybody. But we truly are working on those people that only have so much left to give and they're thoughtful with their process. And that's really, you know, the hub that we reside in right now is this thought leaders, those people who are really putting 110 % towards change, either internally or externally. And those people are the ones making things change.

I actually, just interviewed a gentleman yesterday, Jonathan De Potter, who is, they run retreats around the world called Behold Retreats. And they do plant medicine ceremonies with a pre and post coaching program. That's awesome. Yeah. Awesome. You know, sometimes you hear about something you're like, everybody should do this. And he was kind of like, you know, no, this is really for leaders. We want to have this top down effect and really shift the awareness around these people who

do have major, major wealth flowing through their areas of influence. That's who we want to change and let this trickle down effect. And he was telling me that it's just been amazing. You know, they'll have, you know, even one person retreats, you know, some of these people, these major, major corporations have huge shifts in their awareness and how they can help. And I was just like, that's brilliant. I never would have thought of that. I'm like, that's who we want to change.

Freddie Kimmel and Lauren Lovejoy (44:45.302)
Yeah, but that's, know, that goes back to the community that we pull out the leaders who act to help the others. And you need all those tears. People can burn out, people get tired, people run out, but we need multiple tiers of people with the drop in the bucket, create the waves. know, I am not the first drop in the bucket. I am like, you know, the hundredth from all those people that advocated at the start of this 30 years ago. And it's so important because you cannot take.

I would not have been receptive two years ago to being a leader because I was not in a space to be a leader. I was not in the health to be a leader. And, know, it takes growth and it takes being in the right place at the right time. I think accepting the right place in the right time is another lesson that we all forcefully learn the hard way. But it really, again, teaches us about being open to the right situation and not forcing things that aren't meant to be there. Yeah. I couldn't agree more.

One piece that keeps coming up for me around this community is of course, we talk about the finances, you know, the money that it costs to see your way through chronic Lyme. I always think about if I had had some better understanding of money and financial coaching at the top, I could have gotten through this a little bit better. Is that something you've ever thought about or ever worked with on your own? I had really no idea how.

money worked or I knew that, you know, I had to save it. knew how I had to like try to keep my credit card low, but for the most part, just some bad money decisions young. know, I was raised in a more financially conservative house that didn't come to me. But what did come to me is I didn't understand leadership and growth, which sounds funny, but you know, I started Lime Warrior just on a whim and on a passion. And I over the last year had sought a lot of coaching.

and instruction. You know, I had all the passion and the momentum, but I still, I had never run a nonprofit. I had never volunteered for a nonprofit. And here I am, I'm going to run one real quick. And just accepting that we don't know everything. We may not know how to best financially spend our money. We may not know how to run a business or a nonprofit or do all these things. And I feel like the most detrimental thing of our education system is that we go and we get a textbook education and we move on.

Freddie Kimmel and Lauren Lovejoy (47:04.398)
But all of that learning didn't really serve me in the real world. I have a master's of science in business and it didn't help me with my nonprofit. What did help me was getting coaching from people who understood and listening to people who knew the way and whether it's in a professional capacity or in friends and mentors and things like just accepting you may not know what's right. I swore up and down that Western medicine was going to figure out what was wrong with me and they did not.

And the only thing that allowed me to break that path was just listening to others and accepting others influence and wisdom. And you know, that can trickle down to every level of your life if you let it. Yeah. The coaching pieces was really big for me as far as like my journey through health and wellness as I became passionate, I became passionate about sharing information and you know, that's changed so much over the years. And there is something in this health piece.

Or in your case, you know, learning more about running a nonprofit that the value of a coach of somebody who's walked the path before you. my goodness. And I feel like everybody who's been through Lyme could be like this amazing, amazing coach. You know, we often become smarter than our practitioners that we pay so much to see. And we also have that added boost of the empathy towards others because we know what they're going through.

And you bring that up. The second tier of my vision for 2021 is, well, yes, right now we give funding to patient care because at the core of it, I believe that the individual is the one who knows what path. Like if you want to spend it on energy, healing, pharmaceuticals, you are going to know best, which is the best alignment for your body. We're also working with health coaches to start offering a more structured coaching system along with that financial support so that it's not here's a check, good luck, go figure it out.

All right, here's a check. Here is someone who's going to help you with some major decisions. We're working with health coaches and therapists to try to start building a more robust support system. That's a little more in depth on one-on-one care. There is a good order of operations out there for, think, I believe in my experience, most people struggling with long-term chronic illness that I don't know why people find it last. It's like the basic. Why is this always last? It's last. It's last. I'm like,

Freddie Kimmel and Lauren Lovejoy (49:25.188)
You know, God love my last functional medicine doctor, you know, he's a lime literate doctor. I'm going to put that in quotations because he took a course and learned some things. And then, you know, he has an action list. He's going to test you for this, this, and this. You're going to take this, this, and this. But you know, the method of me walking or the action of me walking out of the office was always, it was six or $700 in supplements.

And, you know, I never got any better from that. Not even a little bit. It was just like, it's almost like now we're in this place where you can know enough to be dangerous and the basics, the basics are so important. And I think that's really where a coach can come in and knock it out of the park for a much lower price point and probably set you up for success down the road. Yeah. And that's, kind of want to like normalize support in the system because

You dive into the deep end of the line pool and you splash and you hope you don't drown. But if we can normalize moving that coaching system from the very last year to more of the frontier, again, I think it's going to really shorten people's journeys and experiences because I had the same thing that you did. I've been to a couple functional medicine doctors and it didn't work for me and it didn't help me and it cost me a ton of money. But I do think these doctors are invaluable for giving our conditions names that we can go back to the community and learn from.

I think that's their place in their role. I was about to say, which I had a dollar for every time I've said community in the last hour, but you know, the community is the ones who can bring about that action and that change and normalize coaching and normalize the fact that therapy is probably needed through this journey. Even if you talk to someone once and they just tell you you're not crazy and all the irrational thoughts that you have are.

Normal for the situation you're going through I think just acknowledgement of those things rather than beating your head against the wall that you're gonna be who you want to be it all just really needs to be normalized because Then the journey might not be so painful and so long for so many Yeah, and I know people are making those platforms and those organizations, know Another person I want to connect you with is my friend Tyler Lewis who has a group called the rogue map and they support

Freddie Kimmel and Lauren Lovejoy (51:46.496)
families with children of autism and there's but there's always overlap with with mold and lime in that group. But it's really amazing what you know, she got like 10 or 12 doctors and practitioners and all the resources and people that have tech or things that work for that population to give them like a discount only to that group and the group makes nothing on it. It's all to support the family. So people are making these platforms that are really

dynamic and wonderful. And I agree that people should be, we should be talking and learning from each other as far as these support systems go. Well, those people are working so hard and then nobody knows about it. So that's why I'm like, we just got to get some light on these people and show these people that resources are there. Yeah. Incredible. Lauren, I want to keep this digestible for everybody and keep an awareness around time. I have a couple last questions for you. And then if there's anything else you want to add at the end.

beautifully broken podcast, putting the broken pieces back together in a beautiful way and becoming stronger. What does beautifully broken mean to you? I love that we can all go through things that I think all of us have literally had our lives floored by some component of this disease where we didn't think that we could continue to go on. And so many people that if you can continue to persist and move forward that you find that you didn't get your life back.

but you actually got a better life than the one that you thought you had before. So to me, that's the recreation and the more pure self that comes from this experience. It's not something you'd wish on anyone, but the outcome is really amazing. That's stunning. And 2020, I would love to hear in this year, what is the one thing you're most grateful for?

I am so grateful for a global understanding that we don't understand a disease and that the more we try to grasp it, sometimes we continue to further not understand. So I think that this has all been very transitional and awakening to people in the component of what does health mean and can we re-examine that as a globe that situations are not working. We've always known our healthcare system was falling short and we now have

Freddie Kimmel and Lauren Lovejoy (54:06.24)
an ability to personalize it, change it, and hopefully make some very large changes to our system. That is beautiful. I applaud you for doing the work that you're doing, and I thank you for being a guest on the Beautifully Broken podcast. And I can't wait to see all the ways that we can collaborate in the next year. I think it's going to be really amazing. I am in the moment inspired to help

Lyme warrior. So in the name of beautifully broken podcasts, I'm going to make a $500 donation to your community. Wow. That's amazing. Thank you, Freddy. Yeah. wish I could get on with, every person one-on-one and you know, share the story of being on the other side. mean, that's sort of what I do with the podcast. I think about the times that

It's more scary to me now, I don't know if this resonates, to look back at where I was. At the time I was like, I'm programmed to get through stuff. So I do have that genetic DNA, but it's more scary for me to look back now and look at how compromised I was and be like,

What if somebody like tried to take my wallet while I was trying to go home from the grocery store or like, what if I were to get in a car accident, you know, in the middle of being so inflamed. I think about that stuff and just realize how lucky I am to be on the other side. So I just want to, again, anybody who hears this from, from your community, you're going to get on the other side. I promise just keep investing in your community. And if you feel like you can't get up, you know,

support somebody around you, it'll come back around and we'll do it together. Absolutely. I was about to say the community healing itself and helping each other out. That's how we get through this. Yes, it's how we get through. So we'll do this again. I think it's the start of something great. It's the start of a beautiful friendship. If that's the quote of that movie, I'll be in touch and I can't wait for this episode to get out. And again, just thank you from the bottom of my heart for doing what you're doing so selflessly. Thank you for doing what you're doing. It's amazing.

Freddie Kimmel and Lauren Lovejoy (56:12.932)
Thank you. Namaste.

Freddie Kimmel and Lauren Lovejoy (56:20.332)
Ladies and gentlemen, you made it to the end of the podcast and here we are at season two. I think this is the beginning of something really beautiful. So one way to support the podcast is to head over to freddysetgo.com and check out Freddy's Faves, where I've linked every five star product and healing modality you hear about on the show. Most offer significant discounts by clicking the link or using the discount code. Please know they don't cost you anything extra and at the same time,

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