And now for the acutal About Me..

Hi, I'm Kara! Above all, I am a child of God, a mom, and a wife. But for years I have STRUGGLED with how to live in this world and I feel like I'm finally starting to figure it out! I lived with misdiagnosed Bipolar II Disorder for 20 years and after years of deteriorating cognitive, emotional and physical function, my functioning bottomed out in about six months spent isolated in bed due to anxiety, fatigue, inability to walk and a multitude of other symptoms. I was diagnosed with Functional Neurological Disorder in September 2025 and that's when my life began to change for the better! (see below for more FND info)

As my husband drove me across state lines to a FND treatment program, while wearing earplugs, headphones and a blackout eye mask, I listed to the audiobook version of Strong Female Character by Fern Brady. And as she started talking about her experiences leading up to finding out she was autistic, I ripped everything off my head and face, looked at my husband and shouted "I think I'm autistic!"

After a successful FND treatment program, I re-entered real life and my recovery lasted all of about 2 seconds and I began looking into getting an official Autism evaluation. I was diagnosed with ASD Level 1 and possible ADHD (kind of impossible to tell if it's both ADHD and FND or just FND). Learning about my autism opened my eyes to actual reality and it's not an exaggeration to say EVERYTHING changed. At first it was the biggest relief to finally understand why I've always felt so different and why I've struggled with life so much, but then it expanded into really heavy grief. Grief surrounding the loss of the life that I've always aspired and failed to have, knowing it never could be. Eventually this led to acceptance and motivation to figure out what life CAN be and it's definitely been the easiest and hardest thing all at once.

I wanted to start this website as an outlet for myself to document all of the progress I've been making in figuring out life. There's only so much information you can bombard your friends and family with! But they can always check on here if they're curious too (or text me if you're one of them!)

Functional Neurological Disorder (FND)

FND is supposed to be a lot more common than what people think even though nobody's ever heard of it. If you look it up, you'll see that it's most commonly described as a "software" issue in the brain. So that means there isn't anything structurally wrong with my brain, but I deal with a variety of neurological symptoms anyways. I like to describe FND as my body's funny way of making me look like I'm faking a disability while actually being debilitating. 

The FND symptoms I deal with are:

• Severe fatigue (a sleep doctor actually told me I may have Narcolepsy Type 2, but that diagnosis journey is on hold for now)

• Difficulty walking (sometimes it's a balance issue, sometimes it's gait freezing - I can walk normally if I wave my hands in a very specific way though)

• Motor tics (usually just a neck bob, but has escalated to repeatedly and violently banging my head on things)

• Voice loss (has lasted anywhere from an hour to 5 days)

• Pain (can be localized to recurring areas of my body, or could be full body pain - "Fun" Fact: Fibromyalgia is under the umbrella of FND)

• Muscle weakness (this has been so severe that I've been essentially paralyzed)

• Brain fog (this sounds benign, but when it gets severe, it would blow your mind if you still had one)

• Bladder issues (this has been a fun cycle of overactive bladder and urinary retention leading to UTIs)

• Decreased sensitivity (I can't feel my calves as I type this right now)