Kintsugi Heroes
Dr. Traci Potterf · 55 min
After nine years unknowingly breathing lead dust and toxic mould in her own home, a functional medicine expert nearly lost her will to live — and then rebuilt herself using the very science she had spent her career teaching others.
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Dr. Traci Potterf spent nine years unknowingly poisoning herself. Living in a rental with crumbling lead paint and mold, she developed tremors, blurred vision, debilitating headaches, muscle pain that felt like fibromyalgia, and a growing list of symptoms that made no sense. She was meditating two hours a day, eating cleanly, exercising regularly. By every measure she knew, she was doing everything right. Doctors offered blank stares or told her it was just aging. Then one day, a meditation brought sudden clarity: she tested her home and found lead everywhere, in the peeling paint, the kitchen cabinets, the dust she'd been breathing for nine years. The moment she reported it, her landlord gave her three weeks' notice during a housing shortage and the pandemic. For eight months, she couch surfed between friends' homes while severely ill, hitting closed doors whenever she searched for medical help. There was no doctor in Hawaii trained in environmental illness. By the end, suicide felt like the only way out.
What changed was permission to stop fighting. Instead of pushing harder, Dr. Potterf gave herself permission to sleep ten hours a night, to lie on the earth, to rest without guilt. A plunge in a freezing river with friends stopped her tremor and became her first moment of not feeling broken. She discovered that temperature, earth, water, and sleep worked better than anything else. A year and a half later, she hiked twelve hours up a pyramid in Guatemala without pain the next day, something unthinkable when she was bedridden. A recent mold exposure brought some symptoms back, but this time she knew she would solve it. She no longer believed her body was broken.
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses abuse & exploitation and suicide & self-harm prevention, which some listeners may find distressing.
If you need support, you're not alone. Help is available: • Blue Knot Foundation (complex trauma): 1300 657 380 · blueknot.org.au • 1800RESPECT (family, domestic & sexual violence): 1800 737 732 · 1800respect.org.au • Lifeline (24/7 crisis support): 13 11 14 · lifeline.org.au
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