Hi, I’m Jennifer, owner, and founder of Thrive & Shine Functional Wellness!

Whether you’re in pre-menopause, in the thick of it, or are suffering from other health concerns a traditional doctor hasn’t been able to solve, I am here to tell you that YOU ARE NOT ALONE! My mission and passion is to help you discover the root causes of your health concerns, and ultimately transform your life!

My Story (it’s long but it’s WHY I’m here):

As a child, my family moved frequently for my father’s work, and while it taught me to be resilient and super adaptable, it, unfortunately, resulted in anxiety, depression, chronic stomach issues, and eating disorders for many years.  

This pattern continued well into adulthood, through college, occupational therapy graduate school, marriage, working, and having children. Burning the candle at both ends and staying busy would prevent me from being a failure, I thought. After having our second daughter, I suffered from postpartum depression. To stabilize myself, I took a variety of medications and returned to taking birth control pills. It didn’t help. I was stressed, depressed, and felt like a failure. Shouldn’t I be happy? I otherwise had everything I had ever wanted!

At 37, I stopped taking the pill but rarely had a menstrual cycle after that. It dawned on me that maybe I was going through some kind of early menopause and that’s why I was feeling so terrible! There was hope, right? My traditional medical doctors ran my blood labs to check my hormone levels, but ultimately, the labs came back “normal.” I felt so deflated, even more so because my doctors could offer nothing much more than antidepressants. I felt they gave up on me — there was little empathy and no reassurance that they would work with me to get to the bottom of it.

At that moment something in me changed and I knew I had to take charge of my own health, so I set out on a long and exhausting path to solving my health mystery. I learned that not only could my overall health be better by implementing the use of digestive enzymes, supplements, probiotics, and specific food combinations, my menopausal symptoms could be influenced for the better as well! But I also had to truly understand the root cause of what was triggering my issues because, without that, these solutions were still just a band-aid. This is when I became a true student of Functional Medicine.

As time went on and I engaged with holistic, functional practitioners and further testing, I learned that my perimenopausal symptoms had been legit for a while, but also deeply connected to stress levels, and underlying autoimmune and gut issues (all of these conditions can have similar symptoms). With an understanding of the body’s interconnections, my unique patterns, and taking the right steps, I’ve been able to make the positive changes in my life needed to heal and live a full and healthy life (yes, even in menopause)!

If you are suffering from ongoing health issues and frustrated with the limitations of traditional medicine, or you are being told to simply take hormones and “deal with your menopause symptoms,” I am here to help because you deserve a happy, healthy life!