Being willing to change your stance on something in light of new information is a sign of integrity. I’ve been wrong about so many things. Oftentimes, my mind changed based on my direct experience of something.

I shared this reel on Instagram with a very incomplete list of things I have changed my mind about.

Here it is with a little before-and-after and why my views shifted. This is basically a short memoir, so I encourage you to scroll to whatever you’re most curious about, or impress me with your vast attention span and read this top to bottom, baby.

Eating Meat

Before: meat consumption is unhealthy, unnecessary, harmful to the environment and immoral. Compassionate conscious people do not eat meat.

After: meat consumption is healthy, necessary, can be consumed in a way that cares for the planet and animal welfare.

Why: I was a vegetarian from age 10-ish until my early 20s, at which point I went vegan and stayed vegan until I was in grad school studying Traditional Chinese Medicine and realized I was very malnourished. In my Masters program, I learned why Chinese Medicine sees meat as a healing food. It was undeniable how much better I felt after I reintroduced meat: more energy, less brain fog, better exercise tolerance, and I was getting sick less often. But I had been so indoctrinated by pro-vegan environmentalist propaganda. It felt like I was doing something dangerous and irresponsible and, gasp, cruel (!) to eat animals again.

So I dove into regenerative and sustainable agriculture, ethical sourcing of animal protein, and looked at before-and-afters of my own bloodwork to determine what felt correct for me. I landed on being conscientious about where I sourced my animal protein at least 80% of the time, still eating a fiber-rich and plant-heavy diet, and acknowledging that my body was thriving eating more meat and overall more protein, and I had the bloodwork and the energy to prove it.

It was a turning point for me, taking the morality out of food and looking at food more objectively. It required growing up and acknowledging the truth that there is no way to exist at the top of the food chain as humans and not contribute to the death and suffering of others. Does that mean give up on trying? No. But the hypocrisy amongst vegans is hard to stomach. There are 1000+ ways to adjust your lifestyle to be aligned with values like compassion and environmentalism that don’t require avoiding meat, and it’s arguably not even the most impactful of the available options.

Unless you’re a vegan who is growing all their own food, I don’t think you get to feel morally superior to the conscientious omnivores. Anyone buying plastic-wrapped produce that has been shipped from Central or South America, which is 90% of Americans reading this, is contributing to an economically, environmentally, and socially unsustainable food system.

I think local food sourcing is probably the most impactful choice we can make if we care about these things. I was blogging about this stuff 12 years ago extensively.

Aliens

Before: I believed in aliens as a child, as we do, wrote them off in my early 20s when I was worshipping academia, and then…

After: came back around to believing in them wholeheartedly in my 30s.

Why: The more I came to see how much I do not know, how much we do not understand about the universe, and how much is kept hidden from public knowledge by mainstream media and government, the more it became laughable to imagine a universe without other intelligent life. Also I saw the wildest UFO last summer outside Golden, Colorado. A straight up unmoving orb in the sky. It was there for hours. It defied physics. Through binoculars it looked like a spherical iridescent bubble was sitting stationary hundreds of feet in the sky. It was not earth technology.

Chemtrails

Before: delusional hippie shit.

After: 100% real and used for weather manipulation.

Why: I remember rolling my eyes at the hippies in Ashland, OR, where I went to high school, going off about chemtrails and the idea that our government would allow us to be poisoned with toxic chemicals. I put those people in the same camp as people who think the government is listening to everything we say and other such popular fringe conspiracy theories of the late 90s and early 2000s. Sounds insane to say that now, when weather modification was just quietly confirmed with no fanfare over the past 5 years. Do I think those sky streaks are just normal contrails? No, I do not.

“Colorado has used cloud seeding since the 1950s to enhance winter snowpack by 5% to 15%, primarily targeting mountainous regions to increase water supplies in the Colorado River basin. Seven active programs utilize ground-based generators and aircraft to disperse silver iodide, with new, innovative technologies being tested in 2026.” From the Colorado government website.

Google, “how is silver iodide put into clouds?” and you’ll see the that aircrafts spray it via aerosols.

Eating Sugar

Before: sugar is basically poison. Avoid all cane sugar or processed sugar products.

After: like most things, the dose makes the poison and glucose is not inherently bad.

Why: When I first started Amaluna Wellness back in 2014, I was obsessed with healthy eating and breaking my perceived sugar addiction. I did “sugar detoxes” multiple times, blogged about it, spent years trying to eradicate gut candida, and was orthorexic to the max. I wouldn’t touch processed sugar for a long time. I was militant in my beliefs that sugar was killing everyone.

Then I did a long stint of food-freedom eating to heal my metabolism, read all about it here. As I got back into a more intuitive way of eating, which included the occasional dessert and simple carb sources like rice, potatoes, and fruit, I realized I felt better. My sugar cravings actually decreased, the desire to binge on sweets went away, and overall I had less food noise.

Our bodies are designed to thrive on efficient sources of glucose. Is processed sugar good for you? No. But super low-carb, no-sugar diets without a specific medical intent can also lead to issues. These days, I feel best keeping processed sugar to a once-a-week treat, while eating plenty of carbohydrates in the form of fruit, honey, and starches to fuel my brain and workouts. I plan for a once a month decadent dessert of some kind right before my period and enjoy it guilt-free. This month it was a hot fudge sundae and it slapped.

The Moon Landing

Before: Never questioned it.

After: Then dove down the YouTube rabbit hole one day and have never believed that nonsense since. In fact, I could not fathom anyone believing that sh*t was real. Those men were not walking around on the moon. That didn’t happen. Fight me.

Marriage

Before: Never felt much draw to the institution of marriage in my teens or 20s. I thought it might be fun to have a wedding, but more out of princess fantasy than any real understanding of marriage as a rite of passage. I assumed marriage was a practical adult thing to do if you were serious about committing to someone and didn’t question other motives for the institution of marriage as a social control or economically exploitive practice.

After: I want to experience the ritual of marriage and I think many people are getting married for the wrong reasons.

Why: As my exploration into ceremonial and spiritual practice deepened, I came to see marriage as a powerful ritual and threshold crossing. I desire this experience not for the legal piece of paper or the status, but for the initiatory experience that I believe it can be to commit yourself to another human’s karma and dharma, in front of your community, ancestors, and a higher power. It’s a sacred vow, and all vows come with deep responsibility. I believe our vows build character and invite us into growth and evolution. I’m into that, should I meet someone who inspires me to walk that path with them.

The wrong reasons to get married IMO: social conditioning that has us center romantic relationship without question, the social expectation that you marry before having children, or after you’ve been with someone for a certain length of time, the status symbol we’ve made marriage (despite the divorce rate), the optics of a wedding as some kind of flex.

Americans spend obscene amounts of resources on weddings because of capitalist consumer programming that they don’t even know is driving their choices. I have watched so many friends spend months stressed out and draining savings to put on a show where they’re so dissociated the whole time due to adrenaline and overwhelm they hardly remember it and need weeks to recover. But no one can admit that because they have to justify the stress and money. Oh, but the photos look good.

It’s far too powerful a vow to take without a deeper why. I don’t think “I love you, I want to be with you” is enough.

Alcohol

After-Before: Alcohol is low-vibe poison that allows entities into your energy field.

After: Alcohol can invigorate the spirit in the right dose, set and setting but it is a high-consequence indulgence.

Why: I did a lot of experimentation with long stretches of zero alcohol after 10 years of hard partying from age 16 to 26. I had intense social anxiety for most of my life up until my mid-30s, and alcohol had become a crutch to feel functional in many social and group settings.

Then my body started rejecting alcohol when I was in the peak of my Sade Sati, a challenging astrological transit where Saturn sits on top of your moon, and I would feel awful after a single drink. I would go many months avoiding it and then think, “It’s a special occasion, a few sips will be fine,” but it didn’t have the relaxing, numbing effect it once had. I was deep in spiritual practice at that time and took it as a sign to remove it entirely. I also sort of enjoyed the righteousness of feeling too pure for any consciousness-obscuring substance. Oh, the spiritual ego.

Then, when my Sade Sati ended in 2023-ish, I found myself suddenly able to tolerate small amounts again. Since then, my relationship to alcohol has been similar to my relationship to sugar. I know I feel better without it, but sometimes that mezcalita in the right set and setting is worth a little fuzziness the next day. Most months, I don’t drink at all, but I’m not a puritan about it.

Astrology

Before: Eye rolls, there is NO scientific basis for this. People will see themselves in any archetype so this idea of it resonating or feeling accurate is bullshit.

After: Vedic astrology might be my next career. You heard it here first.

Why: My brain broke a little when I discovered Vedic Astrology was the astronomically correct system and Western astrology was kinda whack for a number of reasons. What I love is that it’s a system that connects us back into the rhythms of nature and belonging, not just to the earth, but to the entire universe. It’s not a personality diagnosis. It’s an exploration of archetypes inside yourself and how your unique soul wants to express in this incarnation. It’s a map of how to align more with the astrological weather, not to predict your future, but simply because if you’re planning a camping trip, it can be helpful to know whether to pack rain gear or not.

I find it removes the shame from some of our challenges, and takes the ego out of our gifts and strengths in a way that invites more self-acceptance, wholeness, and equanimity. It taps into your subconscious intuition as a way to more clearly know what is true for you.

And as for scientific backing? Knowing the power of the sun and moon on earth has me open to believing there is an electromagnetic effect from all the planets in the solar system. But, this is technology we can’t explain with current science– kind of like the pyramids, or UFOs ;). It’s beyond the Western colonized mind. The value of the system is in how it illuminates the karmic and dharmic path and connects us in to soul, spirit and nature.

Having Kids

Before: want them, even though the world is overpopulated and people should stop breeding.

After: could go either way, not sure it’s responsible to bring children into this world.

Current: Yes, I want to contribute to the world as a mother, and I think people go into parenthood too lightly.

Why: I babysat to make money through all of middle school, high school, and college. I was a full-time nanny my first year after finishing undergrad. Rather than turn me off motherhood, it made me fall more in love with having babies. I love children.

Then I got pregnant twice with my long-term partner at age 29 and 30. I was absolutely clear with the first pregnancy that it was not the right time and this man and I were not ready to raise a child together. I terminated the pregnancy at 5 weeks.

The second pregnancy was also a surprise. God, the universe, my body(?!) really wanted us to procreate because I was not in my ovulatory window for either conception. This decision was much harder. I felt panicked and stressed about the idea of becoming a mother in the midst of all my resources being poured into growing my business at the time, Amaluna Wellness. I was seriously concerned that my partner and I would emotionally traumatize our child based on how much work we still needed to do as a couple when there was conflict.

Then I started bleeding. I felt immense relief that I was miscarrying, and also fear and grief. I realized if I still didn’t want children with this man 6 years into our relationship, it was time to walk away. I ended things 6 months later, and it was one of the hardest chapters of my life. The grief felt otherworldly, and for years life kept bringing us back together. The kind of uncanny “coincidence” stories that have you believing in soul contracts, past-life karma, twin flames, all of it.

At 31, single, with my new life ahead of me, I contemplated freezing my eggs. I researched, did fertility testing, and sat with the choice for over a year before deciding I did not want to put my body through the hormonal stress of that. I was going to trust life, and I knew my fertility being something I could impact with my choices.

I lost all interest in having kids for about 4 years (or repressed it as a strategy to make dating less stressful). I felt confident I would live a good and happy life with or without children and felt particulary grateful in 2020 that I was not home with a baby.

The moment of clarity

Then, after a powerful drumming and dance circle outside of Asheville, NC, in the spring of 2022, I had a dream of being pregnant with this baby girl and woke up with absolute certainty that I wanted to be a mother. I had met the baby spirit that wanted to come in.

Fast forward to being 38 and currently single. Fortunately, I am still very fertile by all measurable metrics, but the baby daddy is another story. I feel clear that I am supposed to be a mother, and I have had many interactions with the baby girl spirit since that first dream. I continue to surrender the when and with whom to life.

The last 2 years, I have felt a shift in the way I assess relationships. What I’m looking for has expanded from my personal desires to a sincere consideration of how someone would be as a co-parent, or an ex and co-parent. I’ve been doing healing work around my relationship to my mother and watching things evolve in a beautiful way. At the end of 2025, I dove into more family constellation and ancestral healing work to reconnect with my maternal lineage and Irish heritage, and to reconcile and properly include the two pregnancies that ended into my heart and family constellation.

I don’t think anyone should have children who doesn’t feel the call to be a parent. We don’t need more wounded adults hurting other people because they were neglected or abused by parents who didn’t have the capacity to care for them properly.

Parenthood is one of the most difficult and paradigm-altering initiations we have as humans, and with how consciousness is evolving, I feel parents today have more responsibility than ever to shepherd the brave souls who choose to incarnate now in a good way. We aren’t just keeping the population going. We are shaping the next generation, and it’s not a job for everyone.

Lifting Heavy Weights

Before: That’s for dudes or chicks who look like dudes.

After: Oh, I feel and look HOT.

Why: Thought it would make me bulky and masculine-looking, so I avoided it. Plus, gyms intimidated me. Hired a coach and started lifting heavy. My body has never looked better, I feel amazing, and I am no longer scared of gyms. Overall, so empowering. Plus, epic for metabolic benefit, glucose control, hormones, you name it. Lift weights, y’all.

Gun Laws

Before: ban all guns, end gun violence.

After: If I’m living in this country as it currently is, I want access to guns and I want good men around me who know how use them.

Why: Banning guns seemed like the most obvious solution to gun violence, and I was really scared of guns.  Then, I took a class on gun safety and handling and shot guns for the first time in 2024. It made me realize how crucial basic gun safety knowledge is and how complex a skill it is to be able to shoot safely and well. I am now even more scared of guns, but not because I don’t understand them. Because I do.

The Second Amendment was intended to keep citizens armed so that, should the government become tyrannical, they could fight back. It was also intended to democratize the miltary, which didn’t happen as we have a standing paid military and have for many years. However, in a time where the government is well on its way to full authoritarianism and tyranny, I am grateful we can own guns in this country.

Basically, I think we’re too far gone to hold onto the fantasies of a gun-free peaceful nation. To get to that future, it’s gonna get far more violent first.

Do I think we need stricter laws around training, safety, background checks, types of guns civilians can own, etc.? Yes, yes I do. Has the NRA become increasingly radicalized and aligned with white supremacists? Also, yes.

It will only be a few years until governments are fighting wars entirely with drones and bots and your gun won’t help you if there’s an AI powered steel dog with a machine gun on it’s back chasing you down. Regular people not in war zones? Tyrannical govt will simply freeze your assets and cut off your access to the grid if they want to take you out. It’s not gonna be the police banging on your door 10 years from now. But as the US empire continues to crumble, it will only become more challenging for civilians to protect themselves from bad players, and I think guns are better than nothing.

Birth Control

Before: Very pro-birth control pills until my mid-20s, as any good feminist was taught to be.

After: I believe all hormonal birth control and copper IUDs are harmful to the body.

Why: A doctor put me on the pill at 16 for painful cramps and acne, and I didn’t stop until another doctor mentioned it wasn’t safe to take estrogen if I had migraines with visual changes, which I did at the time.

Stopped the pill and got a Mirena IUD. Felt a whole lot better. Loved it for a couple years until I started getting ovarian cysts that would rupture and land me in the ER in some of the worst pain of my life. Got the IUD out, another terribly painful experience. Decided I was done with Western medicine intervening with my womb.

Started tracking basal body temperature and my cycle when I was 28 and have been successfully using that and condoms as contraception since, minus the two freakish blips at 29 and 30, but that was spirit commanding biology… truly.

I believe all hormonal birth control and copper IUDs are harmful to the body. Not only do they keep your body in either a perpetual state of false pregnancy or inflammation, they change your physiology in a way that impairs your ability to choose a healthy mate (should you want one). I could go on about the vast body of research showing the negative effects of hormonal birth control, but you have access to google and pubmed, it’s not hard to find.

There are valid situations where the benefits of hormonal contraception and copper IUDS outweigh risks. Everyone should have access to all safe forms of contraception, and women deserve exponentially more and better education about their bodies, fertility, and hormones. We do women such a disservice with how little is taught in “sex-ed”. Much of what is taught in school or in the 5-min of talking with your OBGYN  is incomplete or downright incorrect.

Masc/Fem Teachings

Before: Omg this explains everything, I was just too “in my masculine” and now I know how to fix it.

After: This a tool for understanding energetic duality and power dynamics in service of wholeness but the gendered terminology is problematic. Polarity is a tool for creating sexual chemistry in the context of long-term partnership at best and at worst a deeply harmful construct that should not be prescribed as a lifestyle.

Why: I spent a couple years learning from teachers who used this model of masculine/feminine energy and teachings as a relationship construct. It brought up a lot of shame, confusion, anger, and curiosity. I judged myself as not feminine enough and believed that if I wanted a better relationship experience, I would have to learn to be more feminine, which I had conflated with softer, sweeter, gentler, and more receptive. This literally impacted everything from my hair color choice to the car I drove. I cringe now to think of it.

Look, it was true that allowing more of my natural softness, sweetness, gentleness, and receptivity to show was going to change the dynamic of my relationships in a helpful way. But doing it from a place of believing those were the only desirable qualities of the feminine, and conflating femininity with a particular aesthetic, was where the toxic patriarchal conditioning seeped in.

It’s so tricky to use concepts like masc/fem without people projecting patriarchy and misogyny onto them, because those be the waters we’re swimming in.

Taking gendered concepts like masculine/feminine and spiritualizing or moralizing them in a way that makes one superior or more desirable is harmful. I see people weaponize these terms against themselves and each other.

Presently, I’m very conscientious about how I teach these concepts, which are really about duality, power dynamics, and energy flow. I try to use non-gendered terms like alpha/omega, yin/yang, and when I do dive into “the masculine” and “the feminine” in my programs like Becoming the Muse, we take a good look at internalized patriarchy and what values we’re projecting.

Proceed with caution if you’re going to study or apply teachings using this kind of terminology.

Flu Shots

Before: Pro! Be responsible!

After: Anti! Be responsible!

Why: Got one every year from my teens to my mid-20s. Then in grad school, I learned that they’re at best 38% effective and contained heavy metals. Since I was already dealing with elevated mercury levels and doing a full mercury detox protocol, including safely removing my silver fillings, I wasn’t about to add to the pile with flu shots.

I was also newly empowered with all kinds of other tools to keep my immune system strong and healthy and treat influenza if I did come down with it. I have not had the flu, that I’m aware of, since the years of getting flu shots. Got the flu most years I got the shot. They’ve updated the wording now to say that the flu shot is “30 to 40% effective at reducing severity and risk of hospitalization”, but they don’t even pretend to claim it prevents the flu anymore.

Unless you’re elderly and weak or very immunocompromised, I recommend skipping them.

Diet Culture

Before: fat is unhealthy and fat people lack discipline.

After: the diet industry is so toxic… misogynistic, racist, ableist, just fcking oppressive!

Why: I was deeply indoctrinated into diet culture by my mother who was always trying to lose weight, the heroin-chic models of the 90s, and growing up in a fat-phobic era. This lead to damaging my metabolism and my health by going on and off restrictive diets, despite never being underweight. There was much I had to unlearn about health, beauty, exercise, and food.

I don’t believe having excess fat on your body is inherently unhealthy or inherently unattractive. I know both fatphobia and patriarchy have influenced how we view healthy bodies. That being said, I’m also not on board with normalizing obesity. Being obese is not optimal for the well-being of your body. I have compassion for what leads to disordered eating and obesity, and think we place far too much blame on individuals and not enough blame on harmful systems. Disordered eating is almost always the result of someone trying to cope with the impact of trauma.

Let’s stop judging people for not being more disciplined or more loving to themselves, when what they need is trauma-healing tools. They’re shaming themselves plenty without your judgment.

For more, see this post.

Supplements

Before: more is more. They’re either gonna help or at worst not do much.

After: proceed with caution, use labs and listen to your body.

Why: I have only started to change my views on supplements in the last two years. Prior to that, I was pretty much fine being a human experiment, taking a faaaat handful of things every day, and assuming it was all helping or, at worst, doing nothing. I didn’t truly have the experience of supplements making things worse, in a way that I could narrow down to the supplement at least, until more recently.

But as I’ve matured as a practitioner, I have been simplifying and reducing what I recommend to clients for years. I saw how often recommending too many things at once produced effects we couldn’t attribute to any one thing and often created issues when patients would stay on potent supplements, even seemingly benign things like B vitamins, long term.

So these days, I’m a less-is-more woman unless I am prescribing based on recent labs and layering things on one at a time so it’s more clear what the effects or side effects may be. And save for a small handful of supplements like magnesium and some food-based antioxidants, I don’t think anyone should stay on a supplement long term without regular bloodwork to make sure it’s helping and not throwing anything off.

They’re not regulated like pharmaceuticals, but can be equally potent. I think we assume that if we can buy it over the counter, it’s safe. It’s why people think ibuprofen and Tylenol are fine to take daily. They are not!!! I had this attitude about supplements for a long time: helpful at best, benign at worst. This is incorrect. Supplements can be positively life-changing and very damaging.

Crypto

Before: scam

After: genius, I’m gonna get rich

Current: shady

Why: I was head over heels in love with a man in early 2020 who tried so hard to get me to buy bitcoin. He offered to set up the account for me and everything. I thought he was crazy. He was a little crazy, but the good kind, the very psychic kind. I didn’t listen, but had I listened, held onto the bitcoin, and sold it in 2025, I would have made a 650% profit.

In May of 2021, I took a course on cryptocurrency to try to understand the whole thing so I could make an educated choice. I loved what I learned, I was down with the anti-government economic-freedom ethos, and I bought in. I sold when it was high a few times and ended up making about 10k in profit before getting out entirely earlier this year.

Will bitcoin surge again in the future? Likely. Is it tempting to keep crypto reserves to have some currency that is unreachable by the US government in the event that I end up on the wrong side of the current regime and need to flee the country? Definitely. And yet I can’t get over this feeling in my gut that it’s largely being used for nefarious purposes by bad actors and there’s a dark cloud over it.

Look, I didn’t say I changed my mind about everything because of irrefutable facts. Intuition just said, get out. I’m now looking into gold. Cash feels untrustworthy. My dad bought a place in Portugal and opened accounts overseas. That is probably wise, too. I don’t have the answers, but the dollar is going down. That much is clear.

What a Healthy Relationship Is / Is Not

Before: a healthy relationship is easy, filled with clarity and certainty, and it makes both people happy. Love is a feeling you have for someone.

After: a healthy relationship is two sovereign people coming together with the commitment to serve the field of love through their connection. I most resonate with Bell Hook’s definition of love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.”

Why: I’ve written about this extensively, like this post about my masculine cleanse. But I had a lot of princess fantasies that I didn’t even realize were entitled, immature, or downright dysfunctional.

Ideas about how the right relationship was supposed to feel: only amazing, safe, and loving.

Ideas about what my partner should be responsible for: making me feel beautiful, worthy, and loved.

Ideas about how I would be in that relationship: relaxed, radiant, and open all the time.

My template for “healthy” was far more emotionally entangled than what I currently view as healthy today. There are only a small percentages of relationships I see that fit my current definition of healthy. That doesn’t mean all the other relationships aren’t caring or worthwhile. But two truly sovereign people coming together and loving each other well… without trying to change each other and without abandoning themselves is quite rare.

RFK Jr.

Before: inspiration!

After: disappointment!

Why: My dad gifted me a signed copy of his book Crimes Against Nature in 2004, and it inspired me to consider becoming an environmental lawyer. I took the LSAT, applied to law schools, got into CU, which has an amazing environmental law program, and then had an epiphany about two weeks before tuition was due that I was on the wrong path and wanted to study Chinese Medicine instead. Talk about a life pivot.

All this to say, I idolized RFK Jr. I found him so inspiring for years. I agreed with a lot of his work, even some of the more fringe beliefs around healthcare. When he ran for office, I was excited. And then he sold out. I feel sick knowing how many of his fans voted for Trump, who did not like Trump, purely because RFK led the MAHA movement. The MAHA movement smelled like shit to me from the get-go.

I find it infuriating how gullible and dumb most people are. Screen rot is real. I suppose I too have been gullible and dumb, but getting wiser by the day. In any case, once I saw that he could be bought and, best-case scenario, fooled by whatever promises Trump made (more likely he was extorted), I stopped trusting RFK. I think he really f*cked up.

Hope this either made you feel less alone in a experience you’ve had, or opened your mind to seeing something differently.