This wasn’t the life I saw for myself.

I’m a 43-year-old disabled mom to three kids, married to a woman who’s walked with me through hard seasons and healing. We’ve been together for nine years and finally married on March 2, 2024. We spent seven of those years searching for answers about my health. She literally saved my life when I was dying from respiratory failure; something the doctors blamed on polypharmacy and sleep apnea. She’s been there for the darkest moments, and she stood right beside me when we finally started to get real answers and celebrated every small win like it mattered. Because it does.

At 34, I was working full-time Monday through Friday, clocking hours at an auction house where I handled customer service and specialized in solving problems. I already had a bachelor’s degree in organizational communication, but I was going back to school and taking prerequisite classes in the evenings, prepping to apply for a master’s program in physical therapy. I was a single mom to a bright 4-year-old daughter who went to public school. Life was exhausting, but I was grinding toward a future I thought I could build if I just pushed hard enough.

Most people with chronic illness can point to the moment everything started to change. For me, it began with a spontaneous spinal fluid leak.

Out of nowhere, I was hit with an excruciating headache that got worse every time I stood up. I was practically bedbound for more than two weeks, unable to work or care for my daughter the way I used to. That spinal fluid leak was the beginning of a long, confusing journey into chronic illness;, a journey that still hasn’t ended.

A journey that won’t ever end for me.

I finished out that semester from bed. Then I took a break from college, thinking maybe it was just a setback. I tried to keep working part-time while chasing answers in doctors’ offices spread across a two-hour radius of where I lived. Test after test, specialist after specialist, and still no clear explanation. Just more questions, more symptoms, and more exhaustion.

I didn’t plan on ending up here; in low-income housing, on SSDI, raising three kids while managing neurodivergence, trauma, and chronic conditions that often leave me wiped out for days after a single outing. I was training for a career in physical therapy. Now I was applying for disability. I didn’t expect my path to veer so far from what I envisioned. But over time, everything shifted. Slowly. Then all at once.

Although this blog focuses on my own journey, I’m not the only one in this family who’s had to fight hard to keep moving forward. All three of my kids are neurodivergent, and my wife lives with bipolar disorder. We’ve each faced our own mountains. But one thing we’ve learned is this: our love of nature and family adventure is medicine for our souls.

We homeschool. We camp. We spend our best days in nature. Nature helps all of us regulate. On our hardest days, it’s the only place that feels easy. The life we’ve built isn’t glamorous, but it’s grounded—messy and real and ours

Midwest Mimi is my space to tell the truth. It’s a place for other families who live outside the lines. Families who are doing their best with what they have, who’ve had to start over, who are learning how to create something beautiful from what’s left.

If you’ve ever felt like your life took a turn you didn’t expect…

If you’re raising kids while managing your own health or healing…

If you’re just trying to make it all work, one day at a time…

You’re not alone here.

This isn’t the life I planned. But it’s the one I’ve made mine.

And I’m finally learning how to live in it with purpose, with honesty, and with enough space to breathe.

Thanks for being here.

I’m Mimi. and this is just the beginning.