Ava Heartwell

When I first suspected mold, I didn’t feel “sick enough” to be sure. My symptoms were confusing, inconsistent, and easy to explain away. Looking back, there were clear signs my body was reacting to my home — I just didn’t know how to recognize them yet. This post walks through the most common clues mold is affecting your health, especially the subtle ones doctors often miss.

I used to believe what everyone says — that a little mold is normal, harmless, and nothing to worry about. Doctors said it. Inspectors shrugged it off. Friends repeated it. But after watching my health unravel and my kids change inside our own home, I can’t say that anymore. This post explains why the “harmless mold” narrative is deeply misleading, who it protects, and what I wish I’d questioned sooner.

No one prepares you for the guilt that comes with realizing your own home harmed the people you love most. I didn’t just get sick — my kids lived in it too. This is the hardest part of my mold journey to write about: the shame, the grief, and the slow process of forgiving myself for what I couldn’t see at the time.

For a long time, I couldn’t explain why I felt clearer, calmer, and more like myself whenever I left my house — only to feel sick again when I returned. It wasn’t stress or coincidence. It was my environment. In this post, I explain why mold exposure often causes symptoms that improve away from home, what that pattern really means, and why your body is often the first warning sign.

I used to think mold coming back meant I hadn’t cleaned well enough. I scrubbed harder, tried different products, and blamed myself when it returned. What I didn’t understand yet was that recurring mold isn’t a cleaning failure — it’s a moisture problem. In this post, I explain why mold keeps coming back, the mistakes I made, and what actually stopped the cycle in my own home.