Becoming a farm family
We were living as a family in Milwaukee. I was teaching on 15th and Center. My husband was just beginning a dog training business. I was a special education teacher and taught in full inclusion classrooms. I was passionate about investing in the kids in my classroom, but also in their families …
I was having long stretches of unexplained bouts of illness, wasn’t anything I was catching from my kids in the classroom. It was discovered I had lupus. It is very unique to each person, how it affects you and how you manage it. I had no idea about anything with that back then; I was just happy to have a name and move forward. I discovered you don’t easily move forward from lupus. I kept getting progressively sicker. I was diagnosed with another autoimmune disease, gastroparesis, paralysis of the stomach. It is like having the flu 24/7. Very unpredictable. That took me out of the classroom, and I never went back. We wound up moving to Elkhorn.