About Me
Jenna Richardson, INHC
Nice to meet you, I'm Jenna.
I fell in love with nature as a young child. My fondest childhood memories are those outdoors, playing in the juniper trees and rock formations of the Oregon High Desert. These places were my home and safe haven, and still bring me an immense sense of comfort as an adult. I spent many summers building tree forts, collecting rocks and native plants, and connecting with the wildlife. Nature was my escape from a tumultuous home life and one of the only places where I found true tranquility.
As I grew older and began to feel the weight of my childhood stressors, I grew apart from the land I was so lovingly connected to. My teenage years were riddled with depression, anxiety, and other emotional and spiritual difficulties. As a result of these struggles, I found myself enrolled in a Wilderness Therapy Program for troubled teens. I spent each day backpacking through the mountains, drinking from the streams, and regaining my child-like wonder. This program facilitated a spark that has stayed with me throughout my life. I knew that returning to nature and to the environment humans evolved to live in would play an integral part in my personal healing.
Entering my early twenties, I began to experience uncomfortable physical symptoms – brain fog, dizziness, and heart palpitations to name a few. Each doctor I visited over the coming years diagnosed my symptoms as Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and I took that answer as truth. For years, I believed I was experiencing anxiety and I chose to remedy that with a bustling social life and the over-use of alcohol. This lifestyle brought me a false sense of security and happiness, although the purpose it really served was a distraction from truly feeling and intuitively listening to what my body was trying to tell me.
Over the next few years, the voice of my physical body continued to elevate, getting louder and louder with each passing day. My body's cries for help morphed into screams that I could no longer ignore. I was in constant pain and each day seemed to bring about a new, sudden, and unexplained symptom. This was when I decided to make the faithful leap into functional medicine. I had exhausted all other avenues and this path was the last glimmering sliver of hope I had to find answers. Through my efforts to find the root cause of my health issues, I discovered I was dealing with intestinal permeability, food sensitivities, autoimmunity, hormone imbalance, mineral deficiency, as well as a genetic connective tissue disorder called Hyper-Mobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (hEDS). Anxiety was never my diagnosis; anxiety was a symptom of the many imbalances happening in my system.
Functional medicine validated my concerns and was an incredible tool in my healing journey. I felt grateful to have found medical providers that not only listened to me but believed me, and were willing to explore any test I requested. This experience taught me to dig deeper, put the puzzle pieces together, and learn how to advocate for myself. Unfortunately, functional medicine is not accessible for everyone. I quickly realized that continuing to see my providers was financially unsustainable – and even the doctors were beginning to come up empty handed. I was still not feeling well, and if my doctors could no longer help me, my healing would have to be in my own two hands. This is when I shifted my mindset and made a lifelong commitment to showing up for myself and my well-being. I enrolled in The Institute of Integrative Nutrition and began to devour as much information as I could in hopes of learning to heal my body and mind. It is through this experience that I have gained an invaluable education and understanding of holistic and multidimensional wellness.
It is not my goal to show the world that I have healed myself and I no longer experience my symptoms - this hasn’t been a quick fix, and I don’t wish to advertise as so. I, just like many others, have a complex set of challenges laid out before me. Some things are still hard. But – some things are easy, and these easy things used to be the hardest things I faced. What I wish to share with the world is that we are capable of changing the hard stuff.
I deeply and passionately believe in the human’s ability to heal and am grateful for my opportunity to facilitate that healing for my clients. Our medical system aims to take our power away, leaving us reliant and sick - I am here to gift that power back to the individual. I am here to help you revitalize your mind, body, and spirit and enable whole body healing on a cellular level. My goal is to empower my clients to take their authority back and feed the ripple effect of natural healing throughout our communities.
I would be honored to be your partner in wellness and provide the guidance and support you seek to reclaim your life - let's get started!