W E L C O M E

To our blog!

First off, thank you so much for stopping by to check out our new blog! We hope you are here to stay! We are excited to be able to share with you our journey in life through our eyes in hopes to inspire and motivate somewhere along the way. We are Garitt + Marlee Church and here is a little rundown of who we are. 

We are a married couple, both born and raised in Georgia, who met while playing collegiate softball + baseball but found a love much greater for our pups, adventures, travel, outdoors, photography + videography and food, which has now led us out West. We both played ball all through our college careers, then after graduation took a leap of faith and moved to Charleston, South Carolina to continue our education in Culinary Arts. What a change that was!

A few months prior to attending Culinary school, Garitt was diagnosed with moderate to severe Ulcerative Colitis at 23 years young. For those unfamiliar with UC: Ulcerative Colitis is a chronic disease of the large intestine, where the lining of the colon becomes inflamed and develops tiny ulcers because of one's immune system overactive response. (Source: https://www.crohnscolitisfoundation.org/what-is-ulcerative-colitis) For a person with a "normal" immune system, you fight off colds without even knowing you are really fighting off a cold, virus or whatever is airborne. For someone with an auto-immune disease like UC, one's immune system is not only fighting off the bad bacteria, it is fighting off the good bacteria as well and doing double the work! And it's not something you just get rid of over time either, this disease is here to stay my friends.

Imagine instead of just having a cold but having flu like symptoms on top of it as well for months. Yes, MONTHS! This is considered their "flare ups" meaning they have inflammation going on in the gut and symptoms sometimes go on for days, months, and even years depending on how it is being treated. Flare ups can happen anytime, anywhere, any place. Their bodies are working overtime day in and day out to fix the problem while creating new problems and daily struggles. Sometimes just to even get out of bed is a struggle. It ends up becoming a vicious cycle that really can take a toll on one's body + mind! Imagine constantly being in and out of doctors' offices, GI doctors' offices, hospitals non-stop and nobody being able to tell you how to fix it but instead just writing you prescriptions after prescriptions in hopes it helps put the band-aid over the wound until doctors knew more about the disease itself. Especially at such a young age when you are supposed to be enjoying your young years! How would you feel? Alone? Depressed? All the above? Or would you use that to fuel your fire and make something more out of it? 

Garitt used his frustrations with modern medicine and let it fuel his fire. He was determined to figure this thing out and he sure did the damn thing and I could not be prouder of him!!! He is going on 4 years prescription free by maintaining his disease with better eating habits + food, natural medicinal, a different approach with stress management, and taking more notice of his body and actually LISTENING to what it needs. Watching your loved one go through something that you are not even capable of understanding is hard, but through this process we have learned so much about one another, our bodies and how they work! It is absolutely amazing what we as humans are capable of doing when we put our minds to it! It is not always going to be easy but going through tough times are what makes you that much stronger in the end!

Fast forward to 2020, we are so much more knowledgeable about this disease and what seems to be key trigger points to flare ups for G. Looking back at that year and what all was going on, we can see how and where this all could have started. We have become more understanding and more forgiving of it, doctors included. We were both going through major life transitions at the time. Ending our baseball/softball careers that we had grown to know and love over the 20+ years, jobs, graduating college then deciding to continue both of our educations in a complete opposite direction than what either of us were used to. We have always been so used to that "go, go, go" lifestyle that we were so eager to jump to the next thing whatever it was. For us, the next thing after graduation was moving to Charleston. It ended up becoming the best thing that ever happened to us. 

Charleston brought us a different love and respect for food. We were lucky enough to be able to have the opportunity to attend the Culinary Institute of Charleston and it truly could not have been more perfect timing. The culinary program was a completely different scene than we were used to. We both grew up outside on the ballfields so to jump to the kitchen was a bit of a change, but we jumped right into it and took it as a challenge! Through the culinary program, we not only met some incredible people, but we learned so much while getting to do so! We learned so much more about food, the food industry, ourselves, our bodies, respect of food and where it comes from, respecting our bodies and what we feed it, and how powerful food can be as a natural medicine. We did not fully understand where the journey of food would take us at the time, but now we can see a little preview of the bigger picture. 

Here we are in 2020, five years later, together 8 years now, three years into marriage, two big fur babies, and a big move across country to follow what has seemed to play an even bigger part of Garitt's journey to better health and we could not be happier with where we are now. Through this process of Ulcerative Colitis, we have not only grown as individuals but as a couple as well. Our communication and love for one another has grown stronger than ever and we have UC to thank for that. 

Through our page we hope to bring you motivation with exploring, food, health, travel, photographs, videos, quotes, life views, positivity, and love to help you reach whatever it is that you are struggling with and to let you know that you are never alone during the process! Keep on going and pushing through! It gets better. Always love your body + yourself first and do not let anyone or anything stop you from becoming your best self! Only you know what is best for YOU and YOUR life!

Stay tuned for more about us! Subscribe if you want to be the first to hear about new posts. Thanks for stopping by! Hope to see you soon! Stay wild Pak friends! Peace + Love

xx, The Pak