I was watching Young Sheldon last night from the beginning, for the second time in my life, and I immediately got goosebumps.

The first time I watched it, my mother was sitting right there with me. She always called me and my father her “Sheldon’s,” so when that pilot aired after he died, she spent the whole episode doing the classic Texan “bless your heart” face at me every ten seconds. The train model. The science. The moment he walked into high school with absolutely no idea what sweet teenage hell awaited him. She’d even had to pull the “please don’t wear this and I will take you to McDonald’s” move on me at some point in my own academic career. The family dynamics hit close too. Southern Baptist, Texas-raised, and a sister who had zero patience for my autism stealing the family spotlight. Even though Missy was Sheldon’s twin, I always saw my older sister Amanda in her once I got old enough to watch it through adult eyes. And Mary Cooper? My mother resonated with her deeply. Watching Mary now feels like watching my mom exist in some alternate reality. From that distance, I can finally see everything she did for me that I was too young to name at the time.

It was a strange thing, feeling her again. She’s been gone over a year now.

She put everything into me her whole life, and we ended up living together most of my life. After my father passed when I was seventeen, she had no one. Honestly, if he’d lived, I probably would have moved out like anybody else. Instead, we lived side by side. She believed in me through all of it. She believed in me so much that she even paid for this Gazette and everything I needed to get started. She said she wanted me to live my dreams and was proud to see me begin to live them when I started college. She wanted me to have a professional portfolio of nature articles and photography by the time I graduated college, and she was going to make sure I had what I needed to get there. An autistic mother always does.

She passed away in 2025, right around when the payments were coming due. To help cover her funeral, I sold my camera and decided to let the website go. It had nothing on it but a handful of science articles about endangered animals, and the only person it had ever made proud was my mom.

By March 2026, my Ehlers-Danlos had become so severe that I was medically forced to quit my job at Lowe’s and give up in person schooling, as if being in a wheelchair wasn’t already enough. My school didn’t offer environmental law, environmental writing, or anything sustainability or even wildlife related online. It barely covered what I needed in person, and I was already bridging enormous gaps through self-teaching. Four thousand dollars later, I realized I had chosen the wrong school due to my own internal ableism, and until I pay that balance, I am officially a college dropout. Or, more accurately, college homeschooled. Because if you thought I was putting the textbook down, you don’t know me.

Living with Ehlers-Danlos forced me to learn myself from the inside out just to survive. Nutrition, teeth, digestion, the nervous system, the vascular system, bones, ligaments, how to build muscle when your body is actively destroying it. All of it. And somewhere in that deep study of my own biology, something shifted. I started seeing the connections between human health and the health of our environments. We aren’t so different from the animals we share this planet with. Our surroundings shape how sick or healthy we truly are. My passion for wildlife conservation and my own survival story had quietly become the same story. I had never felt more spiritually connected to the universe, and never more aware of how precarious everything was. How could I heal myself, carry out my passions, and actually survive? A tough order in this economy.

Going forward, this Logbook will be filled with that kind of transparency. It will be the most authentic version of me on the internet, and in raising awareness about the environment and this planet, I also want to raise awareness about what it looks like to do this work from inside a disabled body. How Ehlers-Danlos and everything that comes with it affects my ability to advocate, write, speak, and move through the world independently.

By following this section, you’ll be coming with me as I face the obstacles and the victories of building something real and authentic, in a company of one.

That phrase funnily is the title of a book from Paul Jarvis, whose book I started reading on this journey alongside Shaolin Spirit by Shi Heng Yi, because I am trying to master myself, heal myself, and build this all with just me. And since I am medically retired, a company of one is all I can be right now.

As a personal update since I spoke earlier about my spiritual awakening that led me back to this gazette, I wanted to point out that also happened because the doctors can’t help me. Not that they won’t. Can’t. I currently have 13 different illnesses and some are under the Ehlers Danlos umbrella, but I state 13 because that’s how many different lists of symptoms I have to manage everyday. SSRI’s, pain meds, most anxiety meds, and nerve pain meds do nothing for me and I can’t metabolize them. I end up with stomach ulcers and they make me hurt worse. I can, however, metabolize supplements and natural things, so I started looking up healthy versions of the medications I couldn’t take, but needed. Honestly, over half are scams. The other third are synthetic or fake versions that my body won’t absorb. 

Finally, Three days ago, I found a multivitamin that bypasses the MTHFR gene that works very well! I even attained a perfect energy score on my wearable for the first time ever, and have worn smart watches every day for over 11 years now and never achieved this until today. I’m taking that as a good sign that this journey is meant for me. I even drank less coffee! Not because I didn’t want to, but because I wasn’t craving it as much to stay awake. I even needed less sleep. I awoke refreshed. 

But hey, I am me… and I’m going to drink that second cup of coffee now.

Have A Happy Sunday and hope you’ll follow along.

 – Jennifer