Our Story

We have always been a natural product loving family, but we didn’t pay much attention to labels. Until our then six-year-old daughter was bitten by a deer tick in April 2013, in North Idaho. Ticks are common here so we go to the woods, come home, find a tick and remove it. No Big Deal! Lyme Disease simply does not exist in North Idaho... or so we thought. Unfortunately, that isn't true. Ticks that carry disease (all ticks actually) know no boundaries! Within 24 hours of that early spring hike, our sweetpea became very ill. We thought she only had the flu but her neck hurt and she had lymph nodes swollen to the size of a golf ball in two spots on her neck. She also had an extremely high fever, muscle aches, headache, vision changes (blurred and light sensitivity), fatigue, lethargy, nerve pain up and down her legs, cold sweats and pain everywhere.

We found a tick in her hair on day 4 of the illness that was attached just above her right ear. It had a strange red bull's eye shaped rash around it. We took our Sweetpea to the doctor but didn't think to mention the tick. After that, Sweetpea began a cycle of better, worse, better, worse for 4 months and each time we would end up with no answers. Finally at the prompting of a friend we had her tested for Lyme disease. Sweetpea showed slightly positive, even on the flawed testing available through the doctor. On her 7th birthday, we were told “it’s probably Lyme, you need a specialist”. We began seeing a Lyme Literate Physician 400 miles from our home 10 months after the tick. We were told that for Sweetpea to heal and stay healed, our entire lifestyle would have to change. We began treatment right away, though the doctor suggested giving Sweetpea a narcotic pain medicine to alleviate her symptoms. We chose to find an alternative and that was the birth of Be Free! Natural Living.