“After struggling with illness for much of her life, which ultimately led to having her thyroid gland surgically removed, Cassiopeia set out on a journey to discover the root of her illnesses and unlock the secrets to health and wellness.” 

Cassiopeia was born and raised in the southwestern portion of the United States, in the beautiful Land of Enchantment, near Albuquerque, New Mexico. (Go Isotopes!) Cassiopeia is highly passionate about health and wellness, but things haven’t always been that way.  

Cassiopeia struggled with her health for a major portion of her life. As a child, Cassiopeia found herself sick for much of the time. From experiencing strep throat multiple times within a year, to digestive issues including peptic ulcers, Cassiopeia struggled with chronic health issues from her teens all the way through diagnosis of Graves thyroid disease at 32 years old. 

At 34 years old Cassiopeia had a total thyroidectomy, where they removed her thyroid gland completely due to the escalated point of the Graves thyroid disease. With a rapid recovery from the surgery and a renewed sense of physical and emotional freedom that hadn’t been felt since childhood, Cassiopeia was optimistic about the future of her health and her life for the first time in a very long time.

However, Cassiopeia quickly realized that simply removing her dysfunctional thyroid gland wasn’t the cure all that the medical establishment claimed it was, and her health began to decline once more. 

Feeling broken, defeated, and hopeless once again, Cassiopeia knew something had to change, and this time something was different. Maybe it was the fact that she felt like she had nothing to lose, or maybe it was the intense anger she was experiencing for feeling like she was lied to by her medical team, but this time Cassiopeia set out to find answers. Real answers. 

So, Cassiopeia began to do what most people do when they’re on a mission looking for answers, she set out on a journey to acquire as much knowledge as she possibly could, wherever she could find it. She looked in books, across the internet, podcasts, summits, YouTube, she went back to college, and she even asked people about their own health struggles and healing. Soon the realization of a pattern began to develop.

Cassiopeia started to see how life and health are so beautifully woven together through balancing a framework of things like nutrition, movement and exercise, relationships and social experiences, our environment, and through the things we expose our bodies to daily, like toxins.

Cassiopeia began to see that although she was told that diet made no impact on her thyroid, that indeed it may have been one of the biggest contributing factors to her decline in health. 

In the process of learning and implementing the knowledge to improve her own health and quality of life, a huge epiphany was made for Cassiopeia, and that is that we aren’t taught the true life-skills in our society that are necessary for happiness and health!

We are not taught to listen to and connect with our bodies to find out what we need. We are not taught that food is not just for fuel, but it is medicine (or poison). 

Cassiopeia knew that something had to be done about this, so she set out on a mission...a mission to educate as many people as possible. To teach people that there are other ways, healthy ways, of doing many of the toxic things that we learned growing up. 

Cassiopeia knew that though positive inspiration and self-care solutions that she could help enrich the lives of so many people! She knew that she could help others live happier, healthier lives and not have major organs chopped out of their bodies like she did. 

With this vision of joy and vitality for all of humanity, Cassiopeia was inspired to create the wellness company Essentially Perennial. 

Essentially Perennial’s mission is to help enrich as many lives as possible through positive inspiration and self-care solutions.

Due to the multifaceted nature of wellness, Cassiopeia began to look at the steps in her own healing journey and to the questions she received from family and friends along the way, and that is what inspired her to create the educational resource, Cooking with Cassiopeia. 

Cassiopeia emphasizes the art of intuitive cooking and shows us how to connect with our own innate cooking instincts.

Cassiopeia is honored and excited to bring you all that she has learned in ways that are fun and easy to follow.

So, let’s get cooking!