I take my green drink everywhere I go and it always starts the same conversation. What IS that in your cup?

The short answer is, I created my own energy drink. Not because I thought I was "inventing" anything. Not because I wanted to start a company. Because I was falling apart and nothing else was working.

It was 2020. I was heartbroken, suffering the end of a significant relationship with the person I thought was the love of my life — someone I thought I would share my life with but had to walk away from because it was toxic. I was starting over from scratch, alone in a small house in Holiday, Florida, spending most of my days and nights alone in the garage workshop I had built for two — flipping flea market furniture, painting bikes, making crazy paintings with my bare feet and of course writing my way through the stages of grief. Hiding from my own life and trying to figure out who I was without the person I had planned to spend it with.

I was a mess. Diagnosed with major depressive disorder, anxiety, and panic attacks. Two years of pancreatitis that kept landing me in the hospital. I had discovered I couldn't take antidepressants — every single one had the same side effect. They made me suicidal. So I started researching. That's what I do when I'm scared.

Then one afternoon my old garage door came off the tracks — literally lodged diagonally into the brick surrounding the door frame. My landlord sent his guys, who showed up with a brand new welding machine from Lowe's and spent two hours arguing about the directions. Eventually he sent a professional and that's how Chris walked into my garage and changed everything. He took one look at the mess, confirmed a weld would not hold, and advised my landlord to replace the entire thing. Only he stayed. We stood there in my garage laughing and talking about everything — my projects, my plants, and eventually kratom. Specifically organic white kratom.

I bought a variety and invited him into my kitchen — made my spicy lemonade with the moringa and added some to my mason jar. It did not taste quite right so I added cinnamon and cayenne and made him taste it.

That's really what started it. Together, through research and conversations still going on today, we created the formula I now call EcoFit™. Chris will argue and say it was all me, but he was the catalyst with the ideas. And it does not really matter because it never would have happened if he had not shown up when he did.

I had been drinking MudWater and loved the energy I got from the mushrooms and cacao but not the taste. So I started experimenting — adding organic cacao and carefully curating seven powerful adaptogenic mushrooms, then turmeric to support my liver function. I wanted something I could mix and go that would not spoil.

Within a week I had stopped reaching for coffee. Within a month the weight was coming off — and my skin was tight instead of loose. Within four months I realized I did not need to go to the salon. The gray hair was not growing back. And I had so much more hair.

More importantly, I was changing. I slept better than ever. My depression subsided. I stopped having panic attacks. My energy and focus were on full throttle. Suddenly I was completing all kinds of projects — wrote two books, created and coded an app.

That was five years ago. It is still my only daily ritual.