Trauma and stress were always the chapters I skipped in every book. Perhaps you can relate. I didn’t really understand what trauma or stress was and how it drove our bodies into fight-or-flight (survival mode). But I’ve since learned the place it holds in our lives and what it can do to our bodies and our minds. We come into this world a blank slate then we may encounter mean girls, ex-boyfriends, abusive partners, inflammatory foods, toxic bosses, and the stories we tell ourselves all of which are part of the physical, emotional and energetic toxicity that can keep us stuck and cumulatively contributes to us feeling unwell over time.

During this journey, I learned the incredible power of the human spirit and I spent half a million dollars out of pocket trying to understand what was going on inside my body on a deeper level. What I’ve learned is that you can detox your food, your home, your personal care products (all of which are outlined in my first book, Eating Clean: The 21-Day Plan to Detox, Fight Inflammation, and Detox Your Body), and you can even detox the deep subconscious limiting beliefs in your mind, reset your nervous system from your past and allow your conscious desires, such as wanting to be healthy, to manifest in your life.

What I didn’t learn from Western medicine is that our brain is malleable like plastic, which means we can train it any way we like, rewire it and reprogram it from what no longer serves us. This is neuroscience. You can go from the victim and blaming to power and agency with the right support and a deep dive into the subconscious mind of our past, which is completely out of our conscious awareness.

The Missing Pieces I Discovered

What I share with you goes far beyond conventional medicine, and the wisdom that I offer about transforming your mind, your body, and your life aren’t written in any of the textbooks. I had to discover all of this myself by myself because no one else was putting together the missing pieces for me. It took me 12 long and painful years to understand all of this and to truly embody all of it and live it in my day-to-day life.

Our health is so much more than what’s on our plate. Yes, anti-inflammatory food is a piece of the puzzle but there’s far more that needs addressing that can surprisingly shift the way we approach our health and our lives. While you can see a therapist for your anxiety, a western medicine doctor for your physical aches and pains, and take a yoga or meditation class to calm your nervous system, there was no approach that was combining all of these pieces simultaneously for true health and wellbeing in my mind and body. While these approaches offered me some short-term relief, they did not lead me to true health because I was suppressing the underlying root causes and before I knew it, suddenly another symptom would pop up a few months later.

I remember feeling as though every “method” I tried or every professional expert I sought advice from was trying to squeeze me into a one-size-fits-all approach that wasn’t addressing what I needed. I started to rely on these “experts” as the authority and trusted their advice more than I trusted myself. This meant I lost complete trust over my own intuition and I also completely lost myself in the process. However, as I remembered what my father told me that day in the hospital bed, I slowly year-by-year guided myself to a place of balance, self-worth, self-acceptance, and deep reverence for a body that was running on empty and self-hatred for so many years.

My father was right, we can take our power back, we just have to find it within ourselves. While we’re all brought up believing that the answers are out there somewhere, my philosophy has always been about making you the expert of you and not relying on anyone else to “save” you or “fix” you. While I know this can be hard to digest because I didn’t want to hear this when I was suffering, the power IS within YOU and only you. When you tap into the physical, emotional and energetic layers of your body and you start to realize you are in charge in every moment creating your life from deep within your subconscious, everything (and yes, I mean everything) in your life will shift. What we shift internally, always shifts externally…something I never believed until it started happening in my own life.

I am here to tell you that most of us are living in a millimeter of joy, and we can actually have miles. This is not about self-help or positive thinking. This is about what it means to advance to the next level of yourself- to reach a true and very vast potential that’s waiting on the other side of our work together.

After my first book, Eating Clean became a bestseller, and I dove into another handful of years of deeper subconscious work to heal my body, I entered a new chapter of my life that I’m ready to share with you. Together we’ll take a look at the deep layers that are often overlooked that play such a profound role in our health and wellbeing. By sharing the missing pieces I put together along the way, I have moved thousands of women and myself to a place of true alignment, mind, and body.

I share my own passion and stories to spark your curiosity and help you to feel less alone. After shedding my old skin and identity from being unwell for so long, I’ve had to look inside myself and say, “What am I all about?” to really think about my place in the world and all I’ve been through.

As you’ve probably seen from what I share on Instagram, the healing process is a long process of unraveling and does not happen overnight or even in a few years. Each year I reclaim more parts of myself that were lost for over a decade. In 2018, my personality came back. In 2019, my creativity came back. And now, in 2020, at the ripe age of 37, my self-expression is emerging in full force and I feel alive. More and more comes back to me each month, which is what lead me to create this work that’s designed to bring you to a new level of deep self-acceptance and worthiness within yourself to recognize your own inner power.

Knowing you can reach this level, too, is what inspired me to create The Valpone Method™, which shows you step-by-step how to detoxify your body, your mind, and your life so you can step into who you’re meant to be and realize you have the power and creative energy within you to manifest the life you desire. I have yet to find a book, method or technique that offers all of the components of this groundbreaking method while shifting the physical, emotional and energetic layers of the body and I am so excited to share it with you. If you’d like more, we can work privately together. My goal is to set you up for a path of hope and to teach you how to have more autonomy over your health and your entire life.

My creative drive, my child-like curiosity, and my passion to share science-backed research to get you to the next level of yourself are what make me feel alive. I am always seeking growth in myself, in my craft, and in my relationships and I deeply believe we must embody the connection between the physical, emotional, and energetic layers of our body for true health and happiness to manifest in our lives. This doesn’t have to be a chore, it can empower us to step fully into who we are and add to our sense of self-worth on a daily basis.

I have a pretty strong engine to keep growing so you can expect to see a lot of shifts and a-ha moments in your own life from what I have created for you as I guide you in creating what you desire and deserve with your physical health, emotional well-being and energetic alignment – a reflection of your true identity and essence. Now it’s time to step into the very next version of yourself as well.

My Transformation Timeline

PHASE 1 // The Triggers that Popped My Balloon

How My Body Shut Down

My 20’s

• I had past emotional experiences from my childhood that shut me down emotionally and energetically on a level I was unaware of. I was a people pleaser, highly sensitive, walking on eggshells, over-giving, ignoring my own needs, and not listening to my body. I had absolutely no idea I was doing any of this.
• I experienced a traumatic college breakup and betrayal where I went into a state of shock and I fell into a numbed out trance-like state feeling completely disconnected and disassociated for 15 years. I felt like I had to prove myself to be accepted and loved and my self-worth was at an all-time low. This situation created a huge limiting belief that I was not enough and fell into a deep state of self-hatred and fear of everything and everyone thinking everything was a threat and could hurt me. Life itself was scary and unsafe. I blamed myself for over a decade thinking there was something “wrong” with me. I started living in survival mode run by cortisol and adrenaline day in and day out. All of this was completely out of my awareness because I am a very positive, happy, outgoing, “life of the party” kind of person, which is why it was so hard for me to understand I had suppressed emotional pain.
• My focus was on calories and working out at the gym because I thought that was what “health” was all about. My life revolved around my external appearance.
• I started my corporate career in NYC at Ralph Lauren in design and then at Vogue magazine. Overworking and pushing myself “no pain, no gain” was my subconscious programming. I numbed myself out with work and keeping myself busy. I had no idea I was doing this (and what was driving me was the underlying physical and emotional pain that was too strong to look at and feel).
• A cumulation of additional emotional experiences shut me down even more. I checked out mentally and was emotionally numb, not feeling any of my feelings but again, I had no idea I was doing this because I’m a naturally “happy” person. Many of us check out and leave our bodies during this time because life itself becomes too overwhelming and this is exactly what happened to me.
• I was on disability from my corporate job because I became so unwell. I was lost, confused and felt isolated and scared. I was a Western medicine lab rat for over a decade, in circles with steroids, water pills, antibiotics, given 24-hours to live with c-diff colitis, myositis and more. I started a blog called The Healthy Apple, taught myself how to take photos and cook foods without gluten, dairy, soy, sugar and started my own business to keep my mind off of what was happening in my life.
• I felt trapped in a world with established rules and no alternatives to medicine. I was still trying to convince myself that I was doing the right thing with Western medicine because trying something new along with the thought of trying to wrap my head around something like alternative medicine was too scary and unknown.

Recommended Reading

My Health Story

The Trigger that Pops Your Balloon

Unworthiness + Not Enough-Ness

The People Pleaser

The Highly Sensitive Empath

How to Become Brave & Fearless with Your Health

PHASE II // The Next Layer

Beyond Western Medicine

My early 30’s

• I discovered functional and integrative medicine, which was a whole new layer of looking deeper at the body. The focus was on anti-inflammatory food and supplements as well as epigenetics and alternative liver detoxification protocols. I was skeptical of this at first because I had always used my analytical mind to figure out my health “issues” up to this point by focusing solely on medical research, which led me to take pharmaceutical pills to cover up symptoms and to only see a Western medicine doctor for answers…yet something was pulling me to a deeper level of medicine that looked beyond conventional testing to really understand what was going on in my body.
• I was diagnosed with over a dozen chronic health issues, which had been misdiagnosed for years: an MTHFR-gene mutation (outlined extensively in my book, Eating Clean), Lyme disease, hypothyroidism, candida, SIBO, heavy metal toxicity, mold toxicity, meningitis, Fatty Liver Disease, PCOS, gallons of biofilm that I couldn’t believe was stored inside my little body, plus more. I was living in a pile of brain fog that felt like jet lag every day and a hangover because my liver was so toxic, my hormones were imbalanced and I neurologically wasn’t right after the Lyme and c-diff colitis. I was living in a constant state of fear and anxiety in a daily struggle, trying to survive because I felt like no one was on my team trying to put the pieces together for me.
• I received more answers from doctors but started gaining weight and having hormonal issues, which stemmed from the c-diff colitis and steroids that completely damaged my adrenals, gut microbiome and oral microbiome.
• In trying to balance my hormones after c-diff colitis, I was given an incorrect dosage of a so-called “natural” hormone cream by a doctor I trusted that spiraled my body into a six-year period of PMD, brain fog, anxiety, and massive complications. I became “too complicated” for doctors to help me anymore and at this point, food, supplements and working out didn’t help anymore. This was my lowest rock bottom and I was desperate for anything to help me get relief.
• I felt shame and humiliation and thought I was the only one going through this so I repressed my emotions because I didn’t know what to do with the overwhelming feelings and imbalances inside of me. It was unmanageable and no one else understood me. Everyone else my age was off living their life and I was lost and felt pathetic and like I was being punished for something.
• While still dealing with a lot of this, I tried to take my mind off of the pain and I published my 1st book, Eating Clean, which became a #1 bestseller and a media favorite. It lifted my spirits to be able to share everything I had learned up to that point with other people that were also suffering with their health. My audience kept me going!

Recommended Reading

Before and After: How I Overcame a Toxic Situation

How to Get Out of Survival Mode to Heal Your Body

What is Functional Medicine?

Functional Medicine Testing

My #1 best-selling cookbook, Eating Clean

PHASE III // Getting My Life Back

The Next Chapter

Mid 30’s

• The catalyst for my next layer of healing was that I found myself desperate after being given the wrong dosage of a hormone cream and experienced the symptoms mentioned above that were debilitating. Getting better meant going deeper because solely treating the physical body was no longer helping.
• I discovered an even deeper layer of healing: energy work, energy medicine, and mind-body medicine. I then started to realize that for true healing to manifest, we must look at how the mind and body are closely connected, the two must be in alignment. What I discovered also needs to be in alignment within us is our conscious and subconscious mind because we could be thinking we consciously want to feel better however subconsciously we feel resistance and fear through our body that blocks us from moving forward.
• As I started to experience the shifts from energy work and watched my trauma unravel before my eyes (this took many years and was a slow process), I slowly had the clarity and consciousness to begin understanding that trauma is more than going to war or seeing a bloody scene in a movie but something we all have to some degree and we don’t realize it’s keeping our entire nervous system on overload in a chronic state of fight-or-flight (survival mode). By understanding this, a whole new level of awareness opened up inside of me and I realized there was more to health beyond treating the physical body. This is when energy work started to actually make sense to me since before these profound shifts in my mental and physical health, I was so skeptical.
• After six years and dozens of types of deep energy work, energy medicine, and mind-body neuroscience practices, I was able to rebuild my body, rewire my brain, and reset my nervous system back to homeostasis. I went from a numb and anesthetized way of living to feeling fully present, embodied and alive. I started to come back to life and my creativity, self-expression, and personality came back. I craved pleasure in everything I did: cooking, walking and so forth. I started to be able to eat foods I couldn’t eat for over a decade such as fruit and I started exercising every day in my own home to build back the muscle tone I lost for over a decade of not being able to workout.
• I rebranded from The Healthy Apple to Amie Valpone, which is now a platform for a much larger conversation in which I’ve reframed the work I do because I’ve evolved since the 24-year old girl who started this business and because you deserve to know the missing pieces I discovered that were not found in any books or doctor’s offices. I launched Dear Amie to bring you deeper into understanding how our physical and mental health is tied into aspects of ourselves that are often overlooked and not taught to us. I created The Valpone Method™, which is the three-layered approach to healing your body and your mind. This method includes absolutely everything I learned in my 12 years of deep healing and is my way of giving back and sharing the answers I had to discover myself that weren’t found in a book or doctor’s office.
• My focus was on intuition, understanding the subconscious mind, quantum physics, the nervous system, neuroscience and rewiring the brain. I discovered how our conditioning creates mental blocks in our lives that keep us stuck, symptomatic, unwell and scratching our heads “Why?”. I was able to see how many of us are in our own way so we can’t even see how we’re causing our own obstacles and health issues. Moreover, we can’t see what’s triggering our physical symptoms because we have only been taught to treat the physical body with modern medicine and we’ve left out the powerful understanding that everything is energy- what we’re spending our time focused on in our lives through our thoughts, beliefs, etc. grows and expands in our external reality the more we focus on it and keep our attention on it (ex: the pain of your health issues or the victim mindset you have from someone you believe hurt you). You can think of your external reality as a mirror reflection of what’s happening in your inner world and it’s quite shocking when you realize your external reality is always a match to what’s going on internally inside of you. It’s hard to grasp, I know! I didn’t want to believe it but it’s true. With this level of awareness, we start to realize we’re in charge of what shows up in our lives and instead of being a victim, we are the creators of what we experience each and every day. This is not to say you are to blame for your life circumstances. It is simply a way to look within you as to why your external reality (your health, your relationships, your career, etc.) is the way it is and start to see what you can shift within you that will then, in turn, shift your life outside of you.
• My 12-year journey to becoming a healthy woman has inspired me to leave my work in the medical field behind because I’ve discovered a much deeper way to heal the body. Through my work, I showcase a lifestyle of nourishment through personal storytelling as the intersection of wellbeing, food, creation and self-expression to bring you to the next level of yourself. My work has become another way to reframe health beyond the way we’re all taught. I see my healing as an opportunity to explore new unconventional ways of being alive and my hope is that my work inspires you to do the same, to become more conscious of what you’re putting into your body and into your mind, as well as how to believe in yourself to know anything is possible. If I can get through these last 12 years in once piece, you can do it, too.

Recommended Reading

My Year of Healing: The Breakthrough that Changed Everything

Defining Trauma & How Trauma Impacts our Health

How to Trust Your Body Again Part I

How to Trust Your Body Again Part II

Self-Acceptance