The Struggle No One Sees

If you looked at me today, you might think, Man, it must be nice; she stays active and looks healthy. And some days, you would be right. Other days, my body seems to wake up and choose chaos.

My health has been a struggle for as long as I can remember. In elementary school, I passed out several times in front of my entire class. (How embarrassing!) At the time, we thought it was nerves or something similar.

Then it happened again in middle school. I remember having to run for PE, and I must have overdone it because I passed out while walking back afterward. (Yes, in front of the whole class again. Apparently, my body enjoys an audience.)

Eventually, passing out became a somewhat normal occurrence. It happened here and there, including once in the middle of Subway... in front of everyone, yet again. Embarrassing!

That is one of the hardest things about POTS: my body is strong until it suddenly isn’t. I can’t always tell when I’m approaching my breaking point until I have already crossed it.

POTS is also weird because I can go an entire year without experiencing many symptoms. Last year, I honestly thought I might have grown out of it. I hadn’t passed out in a long time, I could work out hard without much trouble, and heck, I was running 5Ks like they were nothing. Running a 5K was something I never imagined I would be able to do, and suddenly, there I was doing it regularly.

Then last October, my body basically said, Just kidding.

All my symptoms came back out of nowhere, and I ended up in the hospital with a super high heart rate. Since then, I have been slowly rebuilding my stamina and working toward getting back to where I was last year.

Thankfully, I am not passing out as much now, but that doesn’t mean the struggle has disappeared. Some days, I wake up with literally no energy. It feels like I’m getting a cold, except I’m not. It is more like my body is using every ounce of energy it has just to get me out of bed.

I can feel that way for months and then suddenly have a couple of great months. I never really know which version of my body I am going to get, and the constant ups and downs can be exhausting.

Alongside POTS, I also struggle with my thyroid. My body can gain weight whenever it feels like it, my lymph nodes swell and hurt, and sometimes I am tired for no obvious reason. It can be frustrating to look completely fine on the outside while feeling anything but fine on the inside.

Then there are my food allergies; honestly, the worst part of it all. I am allergic to shellfish, eggs, and all fruits and vegetables, which leaves me with a very short list of things I can safely eat.

Food allergies affect more than just what is on my plate. In group settings, they can make me feel left out. Everyone else gets to enjoy all this delicious food while I try to figure out whether there is even one thing I can safely eat. Needing a special meal also makes me stand out, which I hate. I have never been someone who wants extra attention, especially over something I didn’t choose.

It also makes getting all the nutrients my body needs much harder. So yes, all of this sounds awful... and honestly, parts of it really are. But I refuse to let any of it define me or decide how fully I get to live my life.

I work incredibly hard just to keep my body stable. When I see other college students my age partying, drinking, and doing crazy things with their bodies, I know I will probably never relate. I would never intentionally do anything that might throw my body even further out of whack. It already does a pretty good job of that on its own.

Because no one sees that side of my life, and I don’t always feel the need to explain it, I probably look boring sometimes. But quite honestly, the most important thing to me is taking care of myself and protecting my health.

I have also learned that the people who truly care about you will adapt. They won’t define you by your struggles, but they will understand that there may be much more happening inside your body than anyone can see.

Still, understanding my limitations does not mean allowing them to control my life.

This summer, I went to Europe for an entire month. I was terrified, to say the least, not because I was going without my family, but because I needed my body to cooperate while I was halfway across the world. (A small request, really.)

My biggest concern was my food allergies. How was I going to find safe food with language barriers, unfamiliar ingredients, and completely different cultural foods?

There were plenty of reasons I could have decided not to go. But I went anyway.

I faced my fear, and it became the trip of a lifetime.

I found food I could safely eat, and I found amazing friends who understood my struggles. They always looked out for me and helped find restaurants where there was at least one thing I could have. I learned how to manage my POTS, take care of myself, and still enjoy every second of this huge adventure.

That trip taught me that even though parts of my health suck, and sometimes genuinely hold me back, I don’t have to let them stop me from accomplishing my dreams, especially my dream of seeing the world.

It also reminded me that everyone is carrying something we may not be able to see. Some people are struggling with far more than I am, and I am grateful that my body still allows me to do everything it does, even when it has to fight harder than most.

I could spend my life resenting my body for everything it puts me through. Instead, I am learning to appreciate it for everything it continues to carry me through.

My body may be unpredictable, but it is also strong. It took me across Europe. It has carried me through 5Ks, hospital visits, exhausting months, incredible adventures, and more embarrassing public fainting incidents than I would prefer.

My struggles may be invisible, but so is much of my strength.

Knowing I KANN

Hello, my name is Paula Rogers and this is my KANN story.

I was introduced to Keisha through my husband as she was once his coworker. Our friendship blossomed and getting to know Keisha as a person and having her in my corner has been very rewarding and uplifting.

She made me believe that I KANN accomplish more things than JUST being a stay at home mom. I put that lightly because that is a job in itself, but yet I just felt….incomplete.

One day I get a text “Will you run in Miss Wyoming with me?”

I immediately jumped on board “of course I’ll do it with you!”.

I wanted to run, until I saw there was a section where we’d be judged on bathing suit attire. Which immediately put a lump in my throat knowing I just simply wasn’t ready for anyone to see me with my postpartum body.

I respond back to Keisha “I’m sorry I’m just not comfortable with my body right now.”

She was understanding but most of all encouraging to take a risk, if I don’t do it this year…try next year!

Her encouragement and just overall compliment of thinking so highly of me to be able to compete with some amazing women well it made me think:

“You know what, I am destined for great things and I KANN accomplish ANYTHING I set my mind to!”

So that’s what I did.

It may not have been competing in Miss Wyoming but it set me up for greatness.

My mother and I started a business that took off like a rocket within the community. I started involving myself in more things and coming out of my shell a bit more.

I wasn’t “just a stay at home mom.”

I am also a business owner, a supporter of small businesses, a genuine friend, your favorite raver, a loving wife and someone my daughter can look up to.

No matter the obstacle, I’d think about how Keisha thought so highly of me. How she instilled the vision of “I KANN” in my head.

If it wasn’t for that push, I don’t believe I’d have the confidence I do now of KNOWING I KANN do anything I put forth the effort and energy into!

The First Chapter to a New Story

I met Keisha in December of 2025, during a time in my life when I was at a pretty low point.

I had been through a difficult breakup, major career changes, years of stress, and several other things in my life that just hadn’t gone the way I hoped they would. Somewhere along the way, I stopped feeling very good about myself. I felt stuck in a rut, overwhelmed by everything going on around me, and honestly pretty confused about where my life was supposed to go from there.

After carrying all of that for so long, I had started to believe that maybe this was just what my life was going to be. I would raise my kids, handle my responsibilities, get through each day, and accept that maybe there wasn’t going to be much more to life than that.

Then I met Keisha.

At first, I really didn’t know what to make of her.

She was positive. Really positive. Bubbly, encouraging, and genuinely seemed interested in how other people were doing. I wasn’t used to that at all. To be honest, I was skeptical of it.

I had built a pretty big wall around myself over the years, and I had become very guarded about people and their intentions. When Keisha would offer encouragement or tell me she cared about what I was going through, part of me wondered if she really meant it or if she was just being nice.

But she kept showing up.

And looking back now, that consistency mattered more than I realized at the time.

As time went on, I started opening up about some of what I was feeling. I was dealing with depression, anxiety, hopelessness, and times when I didn’t feel particularly valuable to anyone, including myself. I didn’t have many goals anymore, and there wasn’t a whole lot of positive stuff coming from inside me.

Keisha never acted like those feelings weren’t real.

She listened.

She communicated with me in a way that made it easier for me to actually be honest. She gave advice, offered perspective, asked questions, and gave me room to say things I had been carrying around instead of feeling like I had to hide them.

She also shared some experiences from her own life that helped me understand that she really could relate to things like anxiety, depression, hopelessness, and questioning your own worth.

And she kept telling me something I wasn’t very good at telling myself:

You are going to get through this.

A lot of times it was basically, we’ll figure this out.

At first, I was still skeptical. I was used to handling everything myself. My attitude had always been that I didn’t need anybody’s help and that I could figure things out on my own.

Eventually, though, I got to a point where I had to admit that doing everything my way wasn’t working very well anymore.

So I decided to try something different.

I opened up.

I actually told her what I was feeling instead of keeping it all buried. I listened to some of the advice she had been giving me. And when I needed help in areas she couldn’t personally provide, she helped point me toward people and resources that could.

When I was struggling with anxiety, for example, she helped me find someone I could talk to professionally.

That might sound like a small thing to some people.

For me, it wasn’t.

It meant I didn’t have to have every answer figured out before I took the first step.

From there, things slowly started changing.

Keisha encouraged me to get out of the house more, interact with people again, set goals, take better care of myself, and start participating in my own life instead of just surviving it.

Little by little, I started rebuilding something I didn’t realize I had lost so much of:

confidence.

Not fake confidence. Not pretending everything was fine.

Real confidence. The kind that comes from realizing you can make a decision, take a step, follow through with it, and then get up and do it again the next day.

She helped me see the importance of being around positive people and becoming part of a community instead of isolating myself.

She helped me organize my days, weeks, and months so I could actually see what I was trying to accomplish instead of feeling overwhelmed by everything all at once. She helped me make a calendar, schedule appointments, plan things to look forward to, and turn these vague ideas of “getting better” into actual things I could do.

And then there was probably the biggest part of all:

consistency.

It wasn’t about making one huge change and suddenly becoming a different person.

It was about showing up again.

And again.

And again.

Sometimes the encouragement was gentle.

Other times I needed a little more of a push.

There were days when Keisha basically told me, “It’s time to get up. Pick yourself up, put your dress on, and show up.”

And I did.

Not because she was forcing me to change, but because she was reminding me that I still had a choice.

That part is important to me.

Keisha didn’t come into my life and magically fix everything. She didn’t make decisions for me, and she never acted like she could solve every problem I had.

What she did was give me options.

She helped lay things out in front of me so I could see possibilities that I couldn’t see when I was buried under everything I was feeling.

Then she gave me enough encouragement to start choosing some of those possibilities for myself.

Today, this story is still very much a work in progress.

But in a pretty short amount of time, I can already see a difference.

I feel better about myself.

I am working on my health and my weight.

I am exercising again.

I am becoming a better parent.

I am becoming a better partner.

I have goals again.

I’ve started picking up pieces of myself that I left behind years ago.

My emotions are becoming easier for me to understand and manage, and maybe most importantly, I’m starting to recognize good things in myself again.

Keisha has also helped me start seeing more good in other people.

When life beats you down for long enough, it gets really easy to expect the negative. You start assuming things will go wrong or that people will eventually disappoint you.

I knew in my head that not everybody was bad and that life wasn’t always negative.

But knowing something and actually believing it are two different things.

I’m learning to believe it again.

One thing I respect most about Keisha is that she doesn’t just tell someone what to do. She helps people take responsibility for themselves.

She has helped me understand that accountability isn’t about proving anything to her or to anybody else.

It’s about proving something to myself.

At the end of the day, I have to show up.

I have to make the appointment.

I have to go to the gym.

I have to make the phone call.

I have to take the next step.

But sometimes having one person standing beside you saying, I know you can do this, is enough to help you take that step when you otherwise probably wouldn’t.

Looking back now, I can see how much of my progress has come through the same three things that are at the foundation of KANN:

Communication. Confidence. Consistency.

Communication helped me stop carrying everything alone.

Confidence helped me start believing that I was still capable of changing the direction of my life.

Consistency helped turn those intentions into action.

Those three things sound pretty simple when you write them down, but when somebody is struggling, they can be incredibly hard to find on your own.

Sometimes communication starts with finally admitting, “I’m not doing as well as I pretend to be.”

Sometimes confidence is nothing more than believing you can make it through today.

And sometimes consistency just means getting up tomorrow and trying again.

For me, those things have started adding up to something much bigger.

Another reason I’ve come to trust Keisha is because I’ve seen where she has come from herself.

Without sharing parts of her life that are hers to tell, I can say that she understands more than somebody might assume just by looking at her today.

Seeing someone who has been through difficult times of her own and worked her way forward has helped me believe that maybe I can do it too.

There’s something powerful about getting encouragement from somebody who isn’t just speaking from theory.

She understands what it feels like to struggle.

And instead of letting those experiences harden her, she has found a way to use them to help other people.

I think that says a lot about who she is.

Keisha has a big heart. She’s strong-willed, determined, compassionate, and genuine. When she tells somebody she cares, she means it. When she loves someone, she loves fully. And when she believes somebody is capable of more, she has a way of helping them start to believe it too.

My story isn’t finished.

Not even close.

This is really only the first chapter.

There are still things I’m working through, things I want to improve, and places I want my life to go.

But for the first time in quite a while, I’m looking forward instead of constantly looking back at everything that went wrong.

A few months from now, I hope I can add another chapter to this and say even more has changed.

For now, though, I can say this:

In a remarkably short amount of time, Keisha has helped me more than many people have been able to in decades—not by fixing my life for me, but by helping me believe that I was still capable of changing parts of it myself.

She helped me communicate when I wanted to shut down.

She helped me find confidence when I didn’t have much left.

And through her consistency, she helped teach me how important it is to become consistent for myself.

Sometimes that really is what a person needs.

Someone who will listen.

Someone who understands.

Someone who can point toward a door when you can’t see one.

And someone who reminds you that eventually, you’re strong enough to walk through it yourself.

I’m grateful that Keisha was that person for me.

And my story is still being written.

To Be Continued…….. (I promise)