My Story

Ten Years Ago, Everything Changed.

Ten years ago, my life changed forever. We had just purchased a new construction home. I was pregnant when we moved in, caring for a two-and-a-half-year-old, and running a busy real estate business. As a Realtor, I knew the importance of inspections and regular home maintenance, and I felt confident we had done everything right.

A few months later, my son was born—and soon after, I began experiencing strange and unsettling symptoms. The fatigue was unlike anything I’d ever known—deep, unrelenting exhaustion that sleep couldn’t touch. I lost my voice repeatedly, battled eye irritation, and my thyroid labs came back irregular. My doctor reassured me it was normal: I was a new mom with two young children, nursing constantly while managing a business. Of course I was tired.

Around the same time, we started noticing problems with the house. The first major issue was water intrusion around our living room windows. Whenever it rained, water pooled inside. Soon after, I noticed a sharp “cat pee” odor in our bedroom. I assumed the two issues were connected.

We brought in multiple experts—window specialists, structural engineers, and architects. Eventually, the team determined that the window flashing had been installed incorrectly and out of sequence, which caused the leaks. Still, the odor in our bedroom persisted. Some blamed houseplants, others the carpet. We eventually called an indoor air quality “expert,” who ran basic air tests and told us everything was fine. But the smell lingered, the stress grew, and my health continued to decline. I worried constantly about my newborn, who slept beside me in that room. Late at night, I began researching mold exposure and illness—but at the time, very few people were talking about it.

The Turning Point.

A year passed after the IAQ person gave us the all-clear. The odor in the bedroom came and went, seemingly without explanation. Then one day, I walked into our bathroom and noticed a mushroom growing in the corner of the shower. I thought, Gross. I was a clean freak, and our home showed no visible signs of mold—no staining, no musty smells—just this bizarre little fruiting body that I kept scrubbing away with bleach (little did I know that bleach would only make the problem worse), only for it to come right back.

I begged my husband to check the crawlspace under the bathroom. When he did, he made a shocking discovery: major water damage concealed under batt insulation beneath the shower, so severe that the floor was compromised. I was stunned the shower hadn’t collapsed, and the situation was far worse than we had imagined.

I immediately called a contractor I trusted—someone I’d worked with often in real estate. He said failed shower pans were common and that he’d have it fixed in a few days: demo the floor, replace the pan, re-tile, done. I had no idea at the time about the importance of proper containment or protecting the HVAC system and belongings during remediation. Neither did he.

On day one, he discovered the damage was far worse than expected. He removed the tile, stopped for the day, and left a fan running to “dry it out.” My gut told me that wasn’t a good idea. After a few calls to a local mold remediation company, my suspicions were confirmed—but by then, the damage had already spread.

When the remediation team arrived, they shut off the fan, set up containment, and ran air testing. The results were devastating: several strains of toxigenic molds were now airborne at extremely high levels. While containing the bathroom, they also discovered that the persistent bedroom odor was stemming from hidden mold growth on a joist in the crawlspace beneath the bedroom—completely unrelated to the windows or the bathroom leak. The “cat pee” smell was actually microbial VOCs being released from this very small, hidden growth.

The Fallout.

I packed a bag—thinking we’d be gone for the weekend. It turned into four months of displacement while our home underwent costly remediation and rebuild. We lost belongings, stability, and peace of mind. The emotional stress was enormous, and recovery—both physical and mental—took years.

In the years that followed, we experienced building defects in other brand-new homes as well. Those homes were repaired, but the experiences left a lasting mark on me. They completely reshaped how I approached real estate and home ownership.

A New purpose.

Out of that painful season came a new path. I immersed myself in learning about building materials, building defects, moisture dynamics, and how our indoor environments affect our health. That journey led me to Building Biology—a science that connects the health of our homes with the health of our bodies—and eventually to creating a Healthy Home Membership to help others avoid the mistakes I made.

I did it all wrong, but you don’t have to. My mission now is to empower others with the knowledge and tools to make their homes truly healthy—because knowing better means doing better.