"I get by [being gluten free] with a little help from my friend"

We all need help in our lives sometimes. Becoming gluten free was a challenge for me, but through my mom's help I was able to learn how to make things gluten free and how to live life to the fullest!

My mom has always helped me through my entire life. I could count on her for anything.

When I found out I had celiac, she was the first person who was able to calm me down and was able to show me that life would still be great.

My Mom: Brooke Grieve

A little bit about my mom, she is the oldest of her family and has 2 siblings. When she was 16 she was diagnosed with dermatitis herpetiformis, which is the sister disease of celiac.

This disease is another autoimmune reaction to gluten that instead of giving you stomach issues, you develop itchy sores all over your skin whenever you come into contact with gluten.

For years she had dreamed about working in a bakery, but when she got her diagnosis, she quickly came to realize that this wouldn't be able to happen.

She then tried for the next several years to eat gluten free, but resources were limited. So, she pretty much gave up on the diet and suffered in relative silence.

When she started eating gluten free again

When I was around 16, my mom started eating gluten free again. Since she had been eating gluten for years now, her Dermatitis Herpetiformis had developed into Celiac from the constant irritation.

So, she started trying a few different things, but she would still cook everyone's dinner normally and prepare a small version of glute free for herself.

It was not ideal. She couldn't really find much she liked and her portion wasn't usually filling either.

But, she kept looking and trying to make the best of things.

The moment everything changed

Two years later, I made the decision to go gluten free and we started making fully gluten free meals at home. However, I hadn't fully committed to the lifestyle until a day I will never forget.

This is a picture from the day that I truly went gluten free. We had gone to meet up with some family that had traveled from Kentucky to Las Vegas that we hadn't seen for a super long time.

We had met around lunch time and decided to eat before they took a tour of the strip since they had never been before. So, we stopped at a food court in one of the many malls on the strip.

My mom and I had tried looking for some gluten free options, but there were absolutely none. She had advised me to wait and see if we could find something else, but I was stubborn since I was hungry, and we decided to take our chances at Panda Express.

Sadly, it was 1000000% not gluten free and we both immediately felt like death.

For the next 3 days, we endured extreme swelling in our stomachs, painful cramps, and the inability to use the bathroom while walking through the strip through sweltering heat.

From that moment on, I decided to be fully gluten free with the help of my mom.

Since then, my mom has been my biggest helper in figuring out how to fix recipes, finding resources, and altogether just being there for me. So not only do I feel better, but I know she is always there to help me through this journey.