Jessica Bennett Facebook ad: “Feel Like Yourself Again”

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I sat down on my aunt Reba's attic floor last Saturday and I couldn't get back up. I don't mean I hurt myself. I didn't fall. I sat down criss cross like I was 8 years old to sort through a stack of shoeboxes, and 20 minutes later when I tried to stand my knees wouldn't lift me. My legs felt like wet cement. My arms had nothing in them. I ended up rolling onto my hip and using her old cedar chest to pull myself up, and I stood there breathing like I'd run to the mailbox and back. I'm 54 years old. My aunt was still driving to the beauty shop at 74 to get her hair set. And here I am with cement legs on an attic floor because I sat down for 20 minutes. My name is LaWanda. I live in Meridian, Mississippi, about 15 minutes from where I grew up in a house on 34th Avenue where my grandmother taught me to snap green beans on the front porch. I work as an aide at Poplar Springs Elementary and I have been there for 19 years. I know every kindergartener in that building by name. I have wiped more noses and tied more shoelaces than any woman my age should be legally required to. I am also tired all the time. Not sleepy tired. Not the kind of tired you fix with a nap. I'm the kind of tired where you wake up at 6:15 in the morning after 8 hours of sleep and your body feels like somebody left it out in the rain overnight. Where you sit down on the toilet to put your socks on because standing is too much. Where you look at the flight of stairs at school and you calculate whether you really need to go up there right now or if it can wait. I have been this tired for 6 years. I told my doctor about it every single visit. He checked my thyroid. He checked my iron. He checked my B12. He did a sleep study where I slept in a room with wires on my head for one night. All of it came back fine. Fine. He said, LaWanda, honey, some of this is just getting older. Try to walk more. Try to eat cleaner. Get to bed by 10. I wanted to reach across that desk and shake him. I was in bed by 10. I walked. I ate the salads. I did the whole thing. And every morning I still woke up feeling like somebody had unplugged me overnight and forgotten to plug me back in. My husband Ezra noticed it more than I did toward the end. He'd catch me sitting in my car in the driveway after work for 15 or 20 minutes with the engine off, just gathering enough to walk into the house. He never said anything mean about it. He'd come out and open my door and take my bag and say, come on baby, I got you. But I saw the look. That worried look a man gets when his wife is disappearing in slow motion and he doesn't know what's taking her. My aunt Reba passed in April. She was 84. Sharp as a tack right up until the last two weeks. She died in her sleep in her own bed in the same little brick house on Poplar Springs Road she'd lived in since 1974, and the whole family came for the funeral and my mother, who is Reba's older sister, cried the way you cry when you've lost your last living witness. Reba and my mother grew up sharing a bed. They were the last two. My mother made me executor. Not because I wanted to be. Because Reba named me in her will. She left her house to me and my cousin Denise 50/50, and she wrote a note that said LaWanda will know what to do with everything else because she's the sensible one. That's what she called me. The sensible one. I don't know if I've ever felt more tired than the day I read that note. So there I was on a Saturday morning in late June, up in Reba's attic, trying to make progress on 40 years of accumulated life. Denise was downstairs going through the kitchen. My husband was in the yard putting things in the truck. And I was on the floor with the shoeboxes. Reba had a system. She had shoeboxes going back to the 1970s. Every one labeled in her tight little handwriting on a strip of masking tape on the lid. 1978 - 1981 taxes. 1982 recipes. 1984 - 1987 birthday cards. She was that kind of woman. She kept everything and she kept it in order. The shoebox that stopped me was labeled 1995 - 1996 journal. Reba was born in 1941. So in 1995 she was 54. Same age I am right now. I don't know why I picked up that box first. I really don't. Something about the year, maybe. Something about seeing my own age on the lid of a dead woman's shoebox. I opened it. Inside were three composition notebooks. The black and white marbled kind kids used to take to school. Wrapped in a rubber band that had gone brittle and snapped when I touched it. I opened the first one to a page in the middle. March 14, 1995. Woke up tired again. Body feels like lead. Told Dr. Bailey and he ran the same tests. Everything is fine, LaWanda-fine. Everybody keeps telling me I'm fine. But I'm not fine. Something is wrong. I know my body. I read that sentence three times. Everything is fine, LaWanda-fine. She was writing about me. She meant it as a joke, I think. Because I'd probably said the same thing to her once, that the doctor said I was fine and I wasn't fine. I don't remember when. But she'd tucked the phrase away and used it in her own journal like a private wink to herself. I kept reading. April 3, 1995. Couldn't finish reupholstering the ottoman today. Had to sit down every 20 minutes. Grace came by and finished it for me. She didn't say anything but I could tell she knew. April 22, 1995. Tired. Tired. Tired. Woke up tired. Went to bed tired. Napped in between and woke up tired again. What is this. May 11, 1995. Ezra Sr. brought me groceries because I couldn't get to the store. He is a good boy. I don't want to be the aunt who needs groceries brought. Ezra Sr. That was my husband's father, who used to drive Reba around when she wasn't feeling up to it. I forgot he did that for her. I sat in that attic and I read her journal from 30 years ago and I could have been reading my own diary if I kept one. The same tiredness. The same doctor's visits with the same nothing answer. The same slow shrinking of her life, one canceled plan at a time. I read 15 more pages of it and I felt like somebody had reached into my chest and squeezed. Then I turned the page and the entries stopped for a while. There was a gap of about 6 weeks with nothing written. And when the entries picked back up, the handwriting was different. Not shakier. Steadier. And the tone was completely different. October 4, 1995. I want to write this down because I know I'll forget how it started if I don't. Grace's daughter Mildred came by yesterday with a paper bag of what she said was medicine from her mother-in-law. Indian medicine, Mildred called it. From a fruit that grows over there. I said Mildred honey I am not putting whatever that is in my mouth without knowing what it does. Mildred said sit down aunt Reba and let me tell you what her mother-in-law told her. I stopped breathing for a second. I kept reading. Mildred told me it wasn't for the tiredness directly. She said it was for the cells. She said every cell in the body needs energy to work and that energy is made by these little factories inside the cell called mitochondria. Her mother-in-law called them the powerhouses. When they slow down, the whole cell slows down. And every part of you that depends on those cells starts to slow down too. Which is why you feel like you're running on empty even though everything looks fine on paper. I set the journal down. I got up off the attic floor, and this time I did get up, and I walked down those pull down stairs into the kitchen where Denise was wrapping juice glasses in newspaper. I said, Denise, do you remember anything about aunt Reba in the fall of 1995. Denise looked at me like I'd grown a second head. I said, I know that's a weird question. But there's a journal up there. Something happened to her in the fall of 1995 and I need to know if you remember it. Denise sat down. She said, LaWanda, that's the year she got herself back. I said, what do you mean got herself back. Denise said, I was 19 years old that year. I remember it because I moved in with her for a summer while I worked at the KFC on 22nd Avenue. She was so tired that year. I remember her sitting at the kitchen table with her head on her hands. She used to fall asleep in her chair after dinner and I'd cover her up with a blanket. She would go to bed for 14 hours and wake up worn out. She kept going. Then something turned around for her. I don't know exactly what it was. She started taking something Miss Grace's daughter brought her. And by Christmas she was standing at the stove making a full Christmas dinner and I hadn't seen her cook like that in over a year. I remember thinking, aunt Reba is back. Denise looked at me. Denise said, LaWanda you look like her that year. You know that right. I didn't say anything. I went back up to the attic. I read the rest of the journal. Reba had gone home and looked into what Mildred had told her. She wrote pages and pages of notes. She had a beautiful, careful mind, my aunt. She wrote down what she was learning and she made it make sense to herself in her own words. She wrote about how the doctor was checking the wrong thing. Not because he was a bad doctor. Because the tiredness she was feeling wasn't showing up on the blood panel. It wasn't a thyroid problem. It wasn't iron. It wasn't sleep. It was something deeper. Something upstream. It was that the little factories inside her cells were slowing down. She wrote about a pathway called AMPK. She circled the letters. She wrote next to it in her little cursive: this is the switch. Amla helps activate AMPK. When AMPK is active, the mitochondria start working better. When the mitochondria work better, the cells get more energy. When the cells get more energy, you stop feeling like you're dragging a chain. She wrote about the fruit itself. Amla. Sometimes called the Indian gooseberry. Traditional medicine in India calls it the nurse because of what it supports in the body. She wrote that it has one of the highest concentrations of antioxidants ever measured in a food. Which matters because oxidative stress is one of the things that wears down the mitochondria in the first place. So amla wasn't just supporting them. It was protecting them from the thing that broke them down. Her handwriting got excited. You could tell. She wrote, everybody else was trying to give me more sleep. Or more coffee. Or a walk. Or a vitamin. All of it was showing up at the front door of a house with no electricity. What good is a delivery if the power is out. First you turn the power back on. Then everything else can work. She wrote that at the top of one page. Underlined it twice. I sat there on the attic floor with tears coming down my face for the first time since Reba died. Not for her. For me. Because I could feel her writing to me across 30 years. Because she had been where I was and she had figured it out and here I was reading her figure it out in her own handwriting. I turned another page. November 18, 1995. Two months in. I want to be honest with myself. The first three weeks I felt nothing different. I kept taking the capsules because I told Mildred I would give it 90 days. Week 4 I noticed I made it through Sunday service without wanting to lay down on the pew. Week 6 I woke up before my alarm. That has not happened since I don't know when. I made coffee. I sat at this table and drank it and I looked at the sunrise through the kitchen window and I thought oh my Lord. I feel like a person. November 30, 1995. I finished a slip cover in one day. One day. Two months ago I could not have done that in a week. I don't want to write anything down that I might have to take back later. But something is happening. I feel like the light is coming back on inside me. December 22, 1995. Made Christmas dinner. Full spread. Turkey, dressing, greens, macaroni, sweet potatoes, cornbread, pound cake. Denise ate three plates. Ezra Sr. came by after work and ate with us. I stood at the stove for 4 hours and I did not have to sit down once. I want to remember this day for the rest of my life. This is the day I got myself back. I closed the journal. I sat there in that dusty attic and I put my hand flat on the cover and I stayed like that for a long time. Then I called my mother. I said mama, do you remember Miss Grace's daughter Mildred. My mother said, honey, Mildred passed 10 years ago. Why. I said, did Reba ever tell you about something Mildred brought her one time. Something she took. My mother was quiet for a moment. She said, LaWanda, your aunt Reba was tired for a long time. I remember. Then one Christmas she was different. I asked her what she'd been doing and she said she'd been taking something Mildred brought her. Some kind of berry from India. She said she took it every day. I asked her if it worked and she said, Betty Ann, it didn't work. I worked. It just let me. I sat there in that attic holding the phone. I said, mama, I've been that tired for 6 years. My mother said, honey I know. I said, why didn't you tell me. My mother said, because I didn't put it together until right now. Baby I forgot. It was 30 years ago. I forgot. I found the last journal entry that mentioned amla. Reba had written the brand name down. She had written down where Mildred said to get it. She had written down what the bottle looked like and she had written down what she paid for it. The brand was different back then. Companies come and go. But she had written down what to look for. Standardized amla extract. Full spectrum. Something you could trust to have the real thing in it and not just powder they scooped off a warehouse floor. I went home that Saturday night and I sat at my kitchen table and I looked online. I found a company called Auniva. They make an amla supplement that is standardized the way Reba had described. Extract, not just powder. Made in the USA. Sourced properly. I read every word on their site. I read the reviews. I read the ingredient panel like I was studying for a test. The one thing that decided it for me was the guarantee. 90 days. They said if it didn't work, send the bottles back and get every penny back. No questions. That felt fair to me. That felt like a company that had thought about it the way Reba would have. 90 days is enough time to know. And any doctor I ever paid never once offered me my money back when he told me I was fine and I wasn't fine. I ordered two bottles. They came in a small brown box that Tuesday. I opened it at the kitchen table with Ezra sitting across from me. I told him the whole story. About the attic. About the journal. About Reba's handwriting getting excited. About Mildred and the Indian medicine and my mother saying I worked. It just let me. Ezra listened to the whole thing without interrupting once. Then he said, baby, take the pills. The first two weeks I felt no different. I want to say that clearly because I don't want you thinking I'm selling you a miracle. Reba wrote in her journal that the first three weeks she felt nothing. Mine was a little shorter but not much. The first 14 days I took two capsules with my coffee and I went to work and I came home and I sat in the car in the driveway just like I always had, and I thought, maybe this isn't going to work for me. Around day 16 something small happened. I woke up at 5:52 in the morning, before my alarm went off at 6:15, and I laid there in the dark and I did not feel like I'd been hit by a truck. That was the whole thing. That was all it was. I just laid there and I felt normal. I didn't get out of bed excited. I didn't go running around the house. I just laid there and I thought, huh. Week 3, I climbed the stairs at Poplar Springs to bring a class of second graders back from the library, and I got to the top and I wasn't out of breath. Week 4, I stayed after school to help decorate a bulletin board for reading month and I got home at 6 and I made dinner and I sat down to eat with Ezra like a normal person instead of collapsing on the couch and asking him to bring me a bowl of cereal. Week 5, I gardened. I hadn't touched my flower beds in 3 years. Ezra had been keeping them alive for me. I went out on a Saturday morning and I pulled weeds for two hours and I planted some marigolds my neighbor had given me and I stood up when I was done and I walked into the house and I put on tea and I sat at the kitchen table and I felt like Reba writing in her journal in November of 1995. I felt like a person. Week 6 was when I called my mother. I said mama, I feel like myself again. She started crying. She said, LaWanda, I've been so worried. She said, I've been laying in bed at night thinking my baby is disappearing and I don't know what to do. I hadn't known that. I hadn't known she'd been laying in bed at night worrying about me. She hadn't wanted to add to what I was already carrying. I told her about the mornings. About the stairs. About the flower beds. About coming home from work and having something left in me for the person I'm supposed to be for my husband. She said, thank Reba. I said, mama, I have been thanking Reba every day. I still take Auniva's amla every morning. Two capsules with my coffee. Ezra started taking it about 4 weeks after me because he said if his wife is standing at the stove again he wanted to be sure he could keep up. He's noticed a difference too. I went back to Reba's house last month with my cousin Denise. We finished the attic. We finished the whole house. We split what we wanted to keep. Denise took the china and the wedding photos. I took the shoeboxes. All 40 years of them. They're in my hall closet now, stacked in order, and once a week I pull one down and I read through it. Reba wrote in one of them, near the end of 1996, this line that I keep coming back to. She wrote, the tiredness was never who I was. It was just what was happening to me. And once I understood that, everything was different. I understand it now too. If you're reading this and you've been tired for years and every doctor's visit ends with you being told you're fine when you know you're not, I don't want you to keep going through what I went through. I don't want you to keep telling yourself this is just aging. I don't want you to look up 6 years from now and realize you've handed away half a decade of your life to a tiredness nobody could explain to you. Auniva has that same 90 day guarantee I read about that night at my kitchen table. You order the bottles. You take them for 90 days. If nothing shifts for you, you send them back and they refund you every penny. That's fair. That's more than fair. That's the kind of guarantee a company offers when they know what their product actually does. You don't have to figure it out the way Reba had to. You don't have to be an executor rifling through a dead woman's shoeboxes to find out. Reba did that part for us. She wrote it all down. She left me a map. And I'm doing my best to pass it on. 👉 auniva.co/amla/33 P.S. I called Grace's daughter last month. Not Mildred, because Mildred passed. But Mildred's daughter, who is 51 years old and lives in Jackson. Her name is Yvonne. I asked her if her mother had ever taken the amla too. She said, Miss LaWanda, my mother took it every single day until the day she died at 88 sharp as she'd ever been. She said her grandmother had brought it to her mother, and her mother had brought it to Reba, and now here you are calling me about it 30 years later. She said, isn't it something how the good things get passed down. I told her yes it is. I told her about Reba's journals and she cried a little bit on the phone and then she asked me if she could see them one day. I told her she could see them any time she wanted. P.P.S. I took Reba's journal from 1995 and I read it to my mother out loud on her front porch last Sunday afternoon. My mother is 87. She sat there in her rocker with her eyes closed and she listened to her little sister's voice come out of my mouth for two hours. When I finished she opened her eyes and she said, that was the best afternoon I've had in a long time. She asked if I would come read her another one next Sunday. I'm going to read her every last one of them if she'll let me. There's 40 years of Reba in those shoeboxes and I want my mother to hear all of it while she still can. P.P.P.S. If you're waiting for the right moment to try something, this is the right moment. I waited 6 years and I regret every one of them. I had a granddaughter born last spring and I could barely hold her for 10 minutes without my arms giving out. Now I keep her on Saturdays. I take her to the park. I get down on the ground with her and I get back up without thinking about it. That is not a small thing. That is 6 years I almost missed and now I don't have to. Auniva has a 90 day money back guarantee. There is nothing to lose. There is a whole life to get back. 👉 auniva.co/amla/33

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