Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Krista Hernandez. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Krista, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
Where do I get my resilience from?
The place where it’s born for all of us, the only place where it can be cultivated.
That place is struggle, whatever form it may take.
Growing up, some part of me always knew that I didn’t fit in the family I was born into: my parents, my older brother, and me – Marilyn Munster. Unbeknownst to me then, I was the only one not afflicted with serious psychiatric disorders, all of which my parents refused to deal with. So I spent my first 12 years struggling to cope in a high-stress environment ruled by narcissism and rife with neglect.
The result of all that toxicity was the first of many lessons on the mind-body connection. I had just started middle school in September 1999. One morning, I was sitting on the bleachers waiting for gym class to start. When I leaned back on my hands, pain shot through my right wrist, and it didn’t go away. That week I saw the school nurse, a couple doctors at urgent care, and my pediatrician. None of them could find anything wrong with the wrist, or offer any explanation for the sometimes excruciating pain.
It only got worse from there. The pain spread to the other wrist, then my knees, and soon to all of my joints. Within a few months, a long list of other symptoms manifested: fatigue so heavy I could barely get out of bed, brain fog so crippling that I couldn’t handle homework, pressure points that made my body feel like one giant, deep bruise. That’s just to name a few.
School became even more of a nightmare than it usually is at 12. My new teachers didn’t know me, and therefore didn’t know that losing my brain power was a knife in my self-worth. And while teachers assumed I was a lazy liar, my classmates were jealous about the few accommodations I got, like a second set of books for my classrooms because I couldn’t carry anything heavy. After all, I didn’t “look sick” to anyone.
Meanwhile, doctors were giving a terrified, pain-ridden child no answers. That is, until I saw a rheumatologist the following spring. After a brief exam, no labs, and zero investigation, she diagnosed me with fibromyalgia. The doctor offered a grim prognosis of lifelong pain, limitations, and suffering. She put me on a low-dose antidepressant to “regulate my sleep cycles,” told me to get 30 minutes of exercise every day, and said, “See you in 6 months.”
When I got home, I locked myself in the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror sobbing. But in that moment, something flickered. There was a voice within me, and it said…
NO.
This was the moment my resilience was born, that first seed that I would spend decades cultivating into a strong, sturdy crop. I was not going to accept the bleak future the rheumatologist laid out for me. Instead, I was going to do everything in my power to improve my health & my life.
So on my own I totally overhauled my diet, cutting all the junk food that my mother used to medicate herself and me.
I begged my parents for a treadmill to get the daily exercise the doctor insisted upon.
I asked my grandparents for a computer so I could do research & find support groups.
And when a flyer came in the mail for a new corrective chiropractor in town who said he could help people with fibromyalgia, I badgered my mother into taking me for a consult.
The results?
Despite hostility about my improved diet at home, I lost about 50 pounds, massively reducing the burden on my heart & joints (yes, I was quite the obese 12-year-old). And the chiropractor discovered severe, but correctable, spinal problems. Three times a week for a year, I endured painful table adjustments & spinal traction to fix the curvature of my spine, a millimeter at a time.
Between the weight loss & the chiropractic treatment, I got a second chance at a normal life. Symptoms abated so much that I was able to get a job & actually be a kid for a little while. I even managed to go to college.
This was just a temporary respite, though. Symptoms returned with a vengeance my final semester of school. And why?
Because I didn’t have fibromyalgia. And because I hadn’t even scratched the surface of the emotional issues that were at the root of my actual conditions.
It took another 13 years to put all the medical puzzle pieces together. What I really had was lupus, along with a couple other chronic conditions that went untreated my whole life.
But I have no regrets about those years, or the years before. Because I can say with absolute certainty that lupus saved my life.
Prior to the onset of symptoms in middle school, I was well on my way to becoming a miserable, insufferable human being. Changing my diet & lifestyle was a tiny first step toward self-improvement, but I had a very long way to go.
By the time I finished school, I was back suffering through physical therapy. I was suffocating in an abusive marriage to a man I knew would one day try to kill me. And on my college graduation day, I realized I didn’t have a single friend on that campus, or anyone who even wanted to be in a room with me.
In those next 13 years, and the few since, it was my quest to be better & feel better that helped me create the woman I am today & build my resilience brick by brick.
Divorce at 22.
Becoming an Air Force spouse & managing all the turbulence that comes with military life.
More rounds of serious illness, due to the cyclical nature of lupus & untreated Hashimoto’s disease.
Cutting my biological family out of my life for good.
But I’m truly grateful for every trial I’ve had, because they’ve all been incredible learning experiences. My disastrous first marriage showed me the toxic patterns I’d fallen into, and taught me how to stand up for myself. Military life has helped me cultivate superpower-level executive functioning, and it also gave me my best friend, whom I met at our very first duty station. Cutting ties with my family was like shoving a boulder off my back, and it gave me the emotional freedom to truly heal & break free of toxicity.
Most of all though, I’m grateful to my body for all the ways it’s supported me. I understand now that when I first got sick, my body was just trying to protect & love me. And I know that every ache, every heart palpitation, every cold sweat was my body’s way of communicating with me. For years, it was screaming at me to address all the trauma stored in my body, the emotional pain that was causing so much illness. The day I stopped fighting the symptoms & started listening to my body, listening to my own pain, was the day everything changed in a seismic way.
Thanks to lupus, I did the work. I dug deep through all different kinds of energy practices, like tapping & meditation. I’ve journaled, I’ve done sound baths. I’ve had a yoga practice. I’m very committed to reiki and I’m getting deeper into astrology as time goes on. And I do this because there is no finish line. The work never ends; it just changes like the seasons. That knowledge is what pushes me to keep improving, to continue building up my resilience a little more each day.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I am a Wellness Coach helping women with chronic illness to unlock their innate healing power to transform their lives. Through my holistic coaching program, Route to RISE™, I work with women to RISE:
R- Review their childhood, adult life, & patterns of thoughts & behaviors therein
I – Identify internal & external blocks to healing
S – Strategize action steps
E – Execute their healing roadmap
Over 12 weeks, we look at every aspect of a woman’s life, because holistic wellness is about much more than just physical health. So while we absolutely review nutrition & exercise, we’ll also analyze relationships, finances, household management, and put together a care plan moving forward. Route to RISE includes weekly 1:1 coaching sessions, homework modules, meditations, custom tapping videos, journaling prompts, and intensive lifestyle support.
The energetic nature of my program is what makes it unique. Route to RISE™ is all about understanding the mind-body connection and harnessing that awareness to release trauma, toxic programming, and the symptoms they cause. I don’t claim to heal anyone; I simply teach others how to heal themselves. And they can then use the tools I give them as the foundation for a lifetime of holistic wellness.
It’s important to know that my program isn’t for everyone. If you’re looking for a magic pill or an overnight fix, I can’t help you. True healing requires deep and often difficult emotional work. So if you want to RISE with me, you have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
I offer tons of free, valuable healing content on my show, Route to RISE with Krista Hernandez, which you can download or watch: https://linktr.ee/kristahernandez
I’ll also be an exhibitor at several Illuminate Festivals in Maryland this year, beginning with Illuminate Bowie at the Comfort Inn Conference Center in Bowie on March 23. And I’ll be doing free wellness workshops for my fellow military spouses on bases in Maryland and Virginia.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
The two qualities that have been most valuable on my healing journey are perseverance and an open mind. And the most important skill I’ve cultivated & relied upon is bodily intuition.
The best advice I can give to any woman who’s recently been diagnosed with a chronic illness or has just begun experiencing symptoms is this: look inward & eastward. Look inward to explore the mind-body connection & determine the emotional issues underlying your physical symptoms. And look eastward to “alternative” medicine & energy work for true healing, because the standard Western healthcare system is designed to keep people sick.
What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?
When I feel overwhelmed, I crack open my own expansive holistic toolkit. To start, I stop whatever I’m doing and take a few deep breaths. This helps me calm my mind enough to take stock of what exactly is overwhelming me & where I’m feeling it in my body. Those answers determine my next steps. Sometimes I do a tapping (EFT) specifically on overwhelm or generally doing too much. Or I may break out my yoga mat for a deep stretching session while I listen to a podcast purely for entertainment. If I’m feeling overwhelmed more in my nervous system than my skeleton, I may grab a couple crystals and do a grounding meditation on my acupressure mat. Or I may harness the healing power of water & take a lavender epsom salt bath. On a more practical level, I’ll also review my calendar & to do lists to see what events or tasks can be moved, delegated, outsourced, or cut completely.
And I always remember my mantra: No one is going to die if I don’t vacuum today.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://kristahernandez.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kristahdez/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristahernandez-wellnesscoach/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@KristaHDez
- Other: Podcast: https://link.chtbl.com/oncuiuGT
Image Credits
The professional headshot was taken by a local photographer named Joe DeAsia. The rest of the photos are my own.
