the craziest thing my family ever went through. get to know me, part two

an insane ponzi scheme, my health ups & downs, how i became psychic, and beyond

hi hi! first of all, if you haven’t read part one yet, here it is. this is a refresher, a re-introduction, a “hello, this is me” series that has been so needed ever since our community started growing like wildfire several months ago. welcome to part two of three.

if you’re brand new here, know this: i’m an internet girly. the blog life chose me. i’ve been blogging since i was 8 years old. it’s unique I know, but i believe i was born as such an open book with such an insatiable desire to share… that if i didn’t have this mode of expression, i would perish. i love connecting with you guys, what can i say? and because of that, i’ve cultivated what i believe is the best community on the internet. thank you. <3

just like part one, this is a free post! i want this deep dive to be avail to any and everyone who is interested to learn more about all things tbb. typically, the real juice is in our VIP club, where we go deeper on life itself, i write series on topics from friendship to astrology, pop culture to marriage, spiritual awakening to healing, making money doing what you love to building the life of your dreams. it’s a lot of fun.

ok, so where did we leave off? oh yeah, February 2014. the most defining morning of my life…

as i mentioned, i was living in NYC during one of the most exciting times in my life. i was blogging by night, going to grad school by day, and living in the city that i still consider to be my spirit’s true home… manhattan, baby.

i lived in a 450 square foot apartment in the best area of the west village IMO (13th & 7th, hooomeee) with my best friend since kindergarten, Katie. life was truly a dream.

then… one early, freezing cold morning (it was the coldest winter New York had seen in decades, of course) i got a call from my mom that changed everything.

when my phone rang at 7:00am EST i knew something was up, because that meant it was the middle of the night in california. plus, my mom doesn’t really call me. we text all day long and if anything, i’m the one that calls her.

that morning, she was calling to tell me that one of my dad’s business partners and the company he’d invested his life savings into over the last 10+ years (remember how i told you my dad built an empire from scratch? yeah) was a complete fraud. a next-level, Bernie Madoff scale, sophisticated as hell ponzi scheme. the kind you read about in the news and think could never happen to your family.

the kind you certainly never believe could happen to your brilliant business-minded father and all of his most trusted friends and mentors.

my mom wanted to tell me so early because news would be breaking that morning and she didn’t want me to find out from the media. and by the way, my parents had been dealing with this knowledge for 6-8 months on their own not wanting to worry any of us, and suddenly everything was making a whole lot of sense. like being home for the holidays a few months prior, and having my dad go into what felt like random rages and tantrums out of nowhere. he was remarkably stressed, obviously. i’d had no idea what was on his shoulders, and my mom’s too…

going through this was an extremely tough thing to stomach, and even harder to try to put words to. i felt my life crashing down before my eyes. i felt violated, sick to my stomach, confused at how there was such evil in the world, and most of all… shattered for my dad because he is the most generous, open-hearted, trustworthy and FAIR entrepreneur (and human) i’ve ever known. to know that there were people out there running these kind of schemes, fooling even the wisest and most successful businesspeople, rocked me.

most of all though—it was hard to explain to other people, because what was i supposed to say? “oh, i grew up with the world at my fingertips like less than 1% of the population and then we lost everything and now i have to live a normal life?” even now it makes me cringe to type it out, because i know how it sounds. but that’s not how it felt… it felt like the only world i’d known was being ripped away from me, and i was also watching my parents and everything they’d worked their entire lives for deteriorate before my eyes.

at the time, i had the world’s WORST boyfriend (we were together for like 5 weeks only thank god) who was one of two people i told what was going on. he had the audacity to tell me that there were worse things that could happen and that i should basically get over it.

his reaction was giving Kourtney in the scene where Kim loses her diamond earring in the ocean and Kourtney says, “Kim, there’s people that are dying.”

but actually… we broke up that very night because i realized he didn’t get me. at all. and he was actually a shitty person but that’s another story for another day.

from there, i was faced with the question: what am i going to do with my life now? i can stay in New York, finish out my MFA program, and then be on my own… or, i can move back to LA to be closer to my family, drop out of grad school, and pursue my blog full-time to become totally self-sufficient, not be a burden to my parents, and to carry the entrepreneurial torch of my parents while they went through literal hell.

i think you know by now, i chose the latter.

it’s hard to explain just how much this situation rocked us as a family for more than a decade to come. my dad was a main investor in the company, so from the outside looking in, it looked like he was implicated when he couldn’t have been more innocent. there were law suits on law suits on law suits. the FBI was involved. there was a fear that my dad could end up going to jail for false accusations. people were suing each other left and right. the money that had been stolen was, quite literally, gone. the con artist was a one of a kind evil mastermind—thankfully, he is in jail for life, but even that doesn’t feel like justice.

so, at that point, what did i do? i moved back to LA. i signed with one of the first ever influencer talent management companies. i took my entrepreneurial skills to the next level. i grew TBV apparel. i kept teaching yoga. i built the TBB empire. i also publicly switched my brand from “the blonde vegan” to “the balanced blonde.” i got my first book deal. i went on every morning news show in america. it was time to provide for myself to get out of my parent’s hair, and i went all out.

meanwhile, back in LA…

when i first moved back to LA, i was miserable. New York had been freeing, blissful, adventurous, and thrilling. LA felt like some kind of weird facade of a universe that was an extension of college (after all, i did go to college here)… at least for the people i was surrounding myself with. i felt insanely lonely—bone deep lonely. like no one in my circle understood me or had similar interests to me, all over again.

i didn’t want to party, i wanted to work. but the problem with that was, i ended up spending a shit ton of time alone. i said no to everything, to keep building my business. even when i did hang out with people, it felt empty. it went on like this for at least a year before i found my footing and started making true connections with people who were more in my lane.

in fall 2014, i launched my first huge business venture: the balanced blonde app. it was a recipe app, and it was pretty iconic—the first of its kind. we populated all of the recipes from my blog plus hundreds of unique ones, and put them all in one place. i had a massive launch party at equinox that i invited my entire sorority to (plus everyone else i knew), and that’s the night i ended up meeting my husband Jonathan…. pictured below!!

my friends and i joked after this was taken about “Jonathan and the ladies” which then became an unofficial inside joke hashtag… especially considering he was someone we really did not know. who knew i would end up marrying that cutie and building a life and a family with him? so wild looking back on it all.

i eventually settled into LA and became happier here, and i could write an entire book on what those early years looked like, but for now i’ll skip ahead to the time many of you are most familiar with, which was… my Lyme disease journey. but not before telling you, i found great success with my business despite of course having no personal entrepreneurial background.

i was a writing major with a passion for acting, i didn’t study business, had no idea how to make a spreadsheet… you get it. but somehow, because it was so natural to me, this blog thing took off. and i can hands down say it was the best, most divine and meant to be thing that ever happened to me.

my Lyme disease descent & beyond

as you can imagine, in those early years of building my blog, i had endless amounts of energy. i had to! i was building a brand, running it solo, working out everyday at Orangetheory fitness (thanks to Jonathan inspiring me to become a fitness junkie, who was OTF’s director of operations), running marathons, juggling a huge social life, and then some.

but something started to happen in early 2017 that eventually became too loud and intense to ignore. i started feeling ridiculously, overwhelmingly exhausted. ALL of the time. first it felt like burnout, or maybe some kind of weird virus that i couldn’t shake. i also had head to toe hives, raging insomnia, cystic acne, hormone issues, and a huge fibroid on my uterus the side of a grapefruit. every time i google searched my symptoms, i would come up with mysterious terms like “fibromyalgia” or “Epstein Barr virus” or “unexplained chronic fatigue”—all of which terrified me, and all of which i found hard to believe were what i was dealing with.

i started seeing every type of doctor and healer under the sun. from Chinese medicine doctors to functional docs (way before those were cool and the norm), chiropractors to gastroenterologists, psychics to shamanic healers, ER doctors to rheumatologists to dermatologists… and when i tell you not one person could figure out what was going on with me, that would be an understatement.

running a half marathon with my siblings in 2015:

eventually, after searching for several years, i landed in the office of a tick-borne disease specialist… a.k.a lyme doctor. not only was i diagnosed with lyme on the spot, but every co-infection imaginable. babesia, bartonella, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, ehrlichia, tick-borne relapsing fever, EBV, MCAS, parasites, gut dysbiosis… the list goes on. i always say that receiving that diagnosis was both the best and worst news of my life—i was celebrating to finally have answers, but simultaneously devastated to be diagnosed with an ‘incurable’ illness at the age of 27.

it all felt like too much to handle, with very little answers or resources available for people who actually wanted to HEAL and live a normal life post-diagnosis.

internally, even back then i knew there was a spiritual and energetic component to getting sick. the years of stress after the ponzi scheme, the relentless cyber bullying from internet vegans when i stopped being vegan as well as the psychotic picking apart from the mainstream media, the comments about everything from my body to my voice to my wellness choices and beyond, not to mention my OG relationship with the first love of my life who was addicted to heroin for 10+ years (yeah, the lore runs deep—i think we need 100 parts to cover it all!)… i kind of just broke.

my soul felt done. i felt like a 99 year old woman in a 27 year old’s body. most days i was too exhausted to even lift a glass of water off of my nightstand, let alone drive to West Hollywood to be with my then-boyfriend (now husband) Jonathan. my world became very small. yet somehow, i kept working through the whole thing. #workaholic

then, we got married!

i won’t go into vast detail about healing, because that’s kind of what my whole blog, podcast, and online presence is about—so if you want the info, it’s all there for you.

i’d say this is my most popular and integrated post about what has officially healed me after all these years, if you are interested:

by 2019, i was well enough to get married. barely. but by the grace of god, we made it happen and we were to lucky to do so, because if we had waited to get married due to my health… we would have had our wedding canceled in the covid era. WILD TIMES we all lived through, right?

2019-2021 was a crazy time. we spent a lot of time traveling, which was amazing. from Bali to Costa Rica, Nicaragua to Miami, ibiza to hawaii and back again, i’d say we really lived it up—not because i was healed (i wasn’t yet), but in spite of my illness.

during this entire time, i kept journals about my healing process. i wrote every single thing down. i probably have filled 100+ journals over the last several years, maybe more. i even wrote a whole poetry collection in bali as an ode to my healing journey.

i also maintained my podcast the entire time, which i launched in 2015. we remained in the top health & wellness charts for TEN WHOLE YEARS until my recent hiatus, which i write all about here.

then, in 2021… i got pregnant! and then along came KING ATTICUS STORY. the light of my world!!!! AND I HAVEN’T EVEN TOLD YOU ABOUT MY SPIRITUAL AWAKENING YET!

so the third installment (and i believe the final, for now) of this get to know me series will focus on becoming a mom, our crunchy parenting style, manifesting the life we have now (including our dream home and my parents living down the street), the decision to pause my podcast, write fiction and so much more… plus what’s going on with my recent book deal (sadly it’s kind of a mess right now but we will sort it out).

if you have any questions that you want me to include in part three and beyond, drop them below. and please tell me all about YOU. i love to know who’s reading. 🥹