Julie Anderson Facebook ad: “Feel Like Yourself Again”

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I stood in my bedroom last April holding a black dress on a hanger and I couldn’t stop crying. The dress still fit. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was the little rectangular card sitting on my dresser that said “Ottumwa High School Class of 1985, 40 Year Reunion, Saturday May 3rd, Bridge View Country Club, 6:00 PM.” I had bought that dress 3 months earlier. On sale at the Von Maur in Des Moines when my daughter took me down there for my birthday. I remembered standing in the dressing room and thinking, for the first time in maybe 10 years, that I looked like a woman who could still turn a head. And now I was standing in my bedroom holding it and knowing I couldn’t wear it. Not because of the dress. Because of the shoes. You cannot wear that dress with orthopedic sneakers. You cannot wear that dress with the black clogs I wear to the bakery. That dress needs a heel. Even a low one. And I hadn’t been able to stand in a heel for more than 20 minutes in almost 4 years without my knees deciding they were done. My name is Doreen. I’m 62. I’ve lived in Ottumwa, Iowa my whole life. I worked at the Hy-Vee bakery on Quincy Avenue for 31 years. I decorated wedding cakes. I did birthday cakes for kids I watched grow up. I did the sheet cakes for retirement parties for people I’d known since I was 22. I retired 2 years ago when my knees told me I couldn’t stand on the mat behind that counter one more day. My husband Roy is 63. He’s a machinist. He’s still working, and he’ll work until he can’t. He has a shop out behind the house where he tinkers on old Ford tractors, and he loves it more than he loves most people, and that’s fine with me because I love that he loves it. We have 2 kids. Our son Ben lives in Cedar Rapids. Our daughter Kelly lives in West Des Moines with her husband and our 2 grandkids. I say all that so you know I’m not somebody who sat on a couch her whole life. I was on my feet for 8 hours a day for 31 years. I raised 2 kids. I have a garden that I still work every summer even though it kills me. I am not somebody who avoided using my body. But my knees started going when I was about 54. At first it was just when I got up in the morning. A little stiffness. A little pop. I’d stand up next to the bed and take a couple slow steps and by the time I got to the bathroom I was fine. Then it was the stairs. Our house has 12 stairs from the living room to the bedroom, and I started noticing that I was gripping the railing on the way up. Not because I felt like I was going to fall. Because I was pulling myself up with my arms instead of pushing with my legs. Then it was the kneeling. I could not kneel in the garden anymore. I bought one of those foam pads. Then I bought a kneeler with handles that helps you get back up. Then I stopped kneeling entirely and started using a small stool. My tomatoes got worse every year because I couldn’t get down there to tend them the way I used to. Then it was the standing. At the bakery I started needing to lean on the counter between customers. Then I started needing to sit on the little stool in the back during my breaks. Then I stopped taking my breaks in the break room and started taking them in the folding chair we kept by the walk in freezer, because the walk to the break room and back was too much. I went to my doctor at 57. Dr. Klein at the Ottumwa Regional clinic. She sent me for x rays. She said I had “wear and tear” in both knees, more in the right than the left, and that this was normal for a woman my age who’d been on her feet her whole life. Wear and tear. That was the phrase. Like I was a set of tires. She said we could try cortisone shots. She said I should lose 15 pounds. She said I should take Tylenol for the pain and use ice at night. I did all of it. The first cortisone shot lasted almost 5 months. The second one lasted 3. The third one lasted 6 weeks. By the fourth one Dr. Klein said the shots stop working after a while and there’s a limit to how many they can do, and that eventually I’d need to consider replacement surgery. I told her I was 60 years old, my mother had a knee replacement at 71 and never walked right again, and I was not doing that. She shrugged. She actually shrugged at me. She said, “Doreen, this is what happens. I know it’s not what you want to hear.” I want to tell you about the years between that appointment and the reunion. I tried glucosamine. I took it every day for 8 months. Nothing. I tried turmeric. I took the pills. I made the tea. I put it in soup. Nothing. I tried collagen powder. Kelly ordered it for me. I mixed it in my coffee every morning for a year. Nothing. I tried a knee brace. It helped for standing, but it made the pain worse when I sat down. I tried yoga at the Y. I lasted 4 classes. I tried water aerobics at the community pool. That one I stuck with for a year. It helped a little in the moment, but by the time I drove home from the pool the pain was back. I tried cutting out gluten. I tried cutting out dairy. I tried cutting out nightshades because Kelly read something online. I lost 12 pounds. My knees felt exactly the same. The whole time I kept thinking, I’m doing everything right, and my body isn’t listening. I want to tell you about the reunion invitation. The card came in the mail on a Wednesday in March. Roy brought it in with the bills and set it on the kitchen table. I opened it and I felt two things at once. The first was excitement. I had not seen most of these people in 20 years. I had not been to a reunion since the 20th. I wanted to see Karen Petrowski who moved to Colorado. I wanted to see Danny Vasquez who ran cross country with my brother. I wanted to see Loretta Fields. Loretta was my best friend from 4th grade through senior year. We drifted apart after graduation. She moved to Sioux City. I moved 3 blocks from my parents’ house. We sent Christmas cards for a while and then we didn’t. That’s what happens. The second thing I felt was dread. Because I knew what a class reunion looks like. You stand around for 3 hours at a country club with a drink in your hand and you hug people and you take pictures and you dance to Journey and you sit down for dinner and then you stand up and hug some more people. You stand. For 3 or 4 hours. And I couldn’t do that. I told Roy that night that I wasn’t going. He said, “Doreen, you’ve been talking about this for 6 months. What do you mean you’re not going?” I said, “Roy, my knees. I can’t stand there for 4 hours. I can’t. And I’m not going to sit at a table in a corner while everybody else is on their feet catching up. I’ll spend the whole night watching people talk and not getting to be part of it.” He said, “Then wear the comfortable shoes.” I said, “Roy, look at this dress. You cannot wear these shoes with this dress.” He looked at the dress. He looked at me. He didn’t say anything for a minute. Then he said, “Doreen. Wear the dress. Wear the shoes you can stand in. Nobody’s going to be looking at your feet.” I said, “I will be looking at my feet.” That was the truth of it. I went into the bedroom and cried for a while. Kelly called that weekend to check in and I told her about the reunion. I told her I wasn’t going. She was quiet for a long time. She said, “Mom, don’t let your knees make you miss this.” I said, “It’s not the knees making me miss it. It’s me. I’m choosing this. Because I don’t want to spend the whole night miserable.” She said, “Mom, please. Just think about it.” I thought about it for 6 weeks. The day before the reunion I decided I was going. Not because I felt better. Because Roy had spent 6 weeks quietly leaving reminders around the house. He left the reunion card on my bedside table. He left the black dress hanging on the outside of the closet where I’d see it every morning. He took my black flats to the shoe repair and had the soles redone. He left them by the front door. He didn’t say anything. He just did it. I told him Friday night. I said, “Roy, I’m going.” He said, “I know.” I said, “How did you know?” He said, “Because you love those people. And you weren’t going to let this stop you forever.” I wore the dress and the flats. I put my hair up. I put on lipstick I hadn’t worn in 4 years. Roy dropped me off at the country club at 6:15 and said he’d come back at 10. He was going to go home and putter in the shop. He hates parties. I want to tell you about walking in. The first person I saw was Karen Petrowski. She was standing by the sign in table and she looked at me for 2 seconds before she screamed my name and hugged me so hard I dropped my purse. Danny Vasquez was there. Bigger than he was in high school by about 40 pounds, but the same smile. Tammy Herring, who I hadn’t seen since our 10th reunion, was there. Her hair was completely white and she looked incredible. And then, about an hour in, I saw Loretta. She was across the room by the dance floor. She had short grey hair now. She was wearing a green dress that was maybe a size too big for her. She was talking to a group of people I didn’t recognize and laughing so hard she was leaning on the woman next to her. I stared at her for a minute before I walked over. Because the last time I had seen Loretta, at our 20 year reunion, she was in a wheelchair. She’d been in a bad car accident when she was 39. She’d been in and out of chairs and walkers for years. At the 20th she’d told me her knees were done, that the accident had accelerated everything, that she was on a waiting list for a double knee replacement. That was 20 years ago. And here she was, on her feet, at the far end of a country club ballroom, dancing. I walked over to her. She saw me from about 10 feet away and she screamed and hugged me the same way Karen did. She held my face in her hands and said, “Doreen. My God. Doreen.” I said, “Loretta. You’re standing.” She laughed. She looked at me for a long second. Then she said, “Come sit with me for a minute.” We sat at one of the round tables by the window. My knees were on fire. I’d been on my feet for over an hour and I couldn’t feel them anymore, I could just feel the pain. Loretta looked at how I was sitting. She looked at me lowering myself into the chair. She looked at my flats. She didn’t say anything for a minute. Then she said, “Doreen. Your knees.” I said, “Loretta. Your knees.” She smiled. She said, “Are you in pain right now?” I said, “Loretta, I am always in pain. I’ve been in pain for 8 years. I almost didn’t come tonight.” She reached across the table and took my hand. She said, “Doreen. Listen to me. My daughter Jamie is a physical therapist in Des Moines. She works with older folks. She works with a lot of people who have joints that gave out. And 3 years ago she came to me and she said, Mom, I want to try something with you. And I did what she told me. And 3 months later I stopped using the cane. And 6 months later I was walking a mile a day. And a year later I signed up for a line dancing class at the community center in Sioux City. I am dancing tonight, Doreen. Look at me. I am dancing.” I said, “Loretta. What did she have you do?” And she told me. She said, “Jamie kept reading these papers about cellular energy. About the cells inside your joints. She said the cells in your joints have to have energy to do their job. They have to be able to keep the cartilage healthy. They have to be able to manage the inflammation. They have to be able to keep the joint lubricated. And all of that takes energy. Real energy. The kind your body makes inside every one of your cells.” I said, “I don’t know what you mean.” She said, “Doreen. Inside every cell in your body there’s a little energy factory. It’s called the mitochondria. Jamie says it’s like the power plant of the cell. When those power plants are running well, your cells have energy to do their work. When those power plants get worn down, from age and processed food and stress and everything else, your cells don’t have the energy they need. And the cells in your joints are among the ones that suffer, because they need so much energy to keep everything working.” She said, “Jamie told me it’s like a construction site. You can deliver all the lumber in the world to a job site, but if there’s no power at the site, the workers can’t do anything with it. They can’t run their saws. They can’t run their drills. They can’t do the work. That’s what was happening in my knees. And in yours.” I was staring at her. She said, “All of the glucosamine and the collagen and the turmeric, that stuff is like more lumber. It’s not the problem. The problem is the power. And Jamie found something that helps the power plants start working again.” I said, “Loretta. What.” She said, “It’s a fruit called amla. From India. There’s a compound in it that helps activate something in your body called AMPK. Jamie explained it to me like a switch. When AMPK is switched on, your body starts supporting those little power plants again. They start producing energy the way they did when you were younger. And the cells in your joints start getting the energy they need to actually do their work.” I said, “Loretta. Come on.” She said, “Doreen. I know. That’s exactly what I said. I said, Jamie, you want me to take a berry from India for my knees, when I have $80,000 worth of medical bills and 6 different orthopedic surgeons telling me to get replacement surgery. Are you serious. And she said, Mom, just try it for 3 months. If it doesn’t work, do the surgery. And I did. And I never had the surgery.” She squeezed my hand. She said, “The one Jamie has me on is called Auniva. She said it’s the only one she trusts. She said the way it’s made matters, and most of the cheap ones online are not made right and they don’t have enough of the active compound. She said do not waste your money on the ones at the grocery store.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a little notebook and tore off a page. She wrote something on it and handed it to me. The page said auniva.co/amla/33. She said, “Try it. 3 months. If it doesn’t do anything, you’re out a little bit of money. But Doreen. Look at me tonight. Look at me.” I looked at her. She was 62 years old, in a green dress that was a size too big, standing next to a country club dance floor in Ottumwa, Iowa, with her knees that used to be in a wheelchair. Roy picked me up at 10 like he said he would. I got in the truck and I told him everything on the drive home. About Loretta. About the accident. About Jamie. About the power plants. About the berry. He listened the whole way home. He didn’t say much until we pulled into the driveway. He turned off the truck and he sat there in the dark for a second. He said, “Doreen. Order it tonight.” I ordered it that night from my phone at the kitchen table with a cup of decaf and my flats kicked off under the chair. 3 bottles. That’s what Loretta had said. She said it takes at least 4 to 6 weeks to really start feeling the difference and 1 bottle isn’t enough time to know. I want to tell you about the first 8 weeks. Week 1, nothing. Same knees. Same stiffness in the morning. Same railing on the stairs. Week 2, I slept a little deeper. That was the only thing I noticed. I hadn’t realized how often I was waking up in the middle of the night with my legs aching until I stopped doing it. Week 3, I got out of bed one morning and walked to the bathroom without holding onto anything. I stood at the sink and I thought, wait. I stood there for a minute trying to remember when I had last done that. Week 4, I went out to the garden and knelt down on the foam pad and pulled weeds for 20 minutes. I stood back up on my own. I didn’t use the stool. I didn’t have to grab the fence. Roy watched me from the kitchen window. When I came inside he was standing at the door and he said, “Doreen, you were kneeling.” I said, “I know.” He said, “Doreen. You were kneeling.” I said, “I know, Roy.” Week 5, I went up the stairs without holding the railing. I got to the top and I stood there on the landing and I cried. Week 6, I went to the store and I was on my feet at Hy-Vee for over an hour picking out groceries and having conversations with my old coworkers, and when I got home I didn’t have to sit down. Week 7, I put on a pair of heels I hadn’t worn since 2019. Just to see. I walked around the bedroom in them for 15 minutes and my knees were fine. Not gone. Not perfect. But fine. Week 8, I signed up for a line dancing class at the community center. Because Loretta had said that was what she did. I’m 6 months in now. I want to tell you what my life looks like. I wake up before Roy most mornings. I don’t lie in bed for 20 minutes waiting for my legs to be ready to walk. I get up. I make coffee. I go outside and look at my garden. My tomatoes are the best they’ve been in 6 years. Because I’ve been down there tending them. Kneeling. Pulling weeds. Doing what I used to do. I went to Kelly’s house 3 weekends ago to babysit the grandkids overnight. I chased my grandson around the yard for an hour. My daughter watched from the porch and she called me the next day and said, “Mom, I haven’t seen you run in 8 years.” I hadn’t run in 8 years. I hadn’t even thought about running. I hadn’t realized I’d stopped. That’s the strange part about this. You lose it so slowly you don’t notice you’re losing it. And then when it starts coming back, you don’t recognize what’s happening for a while, because you’d forgotten what having it felt like. Roy noticed before I did. He’d been quietly watching me all summer and one night in July at the kitchen table he set his fork down and said, “Doreen. Do you know you’re humming again.” I said, “I don’t hum.” He said, “You do. When you’re cooking. When you’re washing dishes. You used to hum all the time. You stopped somewhere around 2019. You started again in June.” I sat there with a piece of chicken on my fork and I thought about that. I hadn’t known I stopped humming. I hadn’t known that I’d been in enough pain, for long enough, that even that had gone away. If you are reading this, and you’re where I was, standing in your bedroom holding a dress you can’t wear because your body doesn’t do what you want it to do, I want you to hear me. It’s not your fault. You’ve been trying. You’ve done the glucosamine. You’ve done the collagen. You’ve done the physical therapy and the cortisone shots and the Tylenol and the ice and the compression sleeves and the anti inflammatory diet and the weight loss and everything else they told you to do. None of it addressed the power. Your cells need energy to keep your joints working. And the little power plants inside your cells have been getting worn down for years. And nothing you’ve been given up to now has been aimed at those power plants. Auniva Amla is aimed at the power plants. That’s what Loretta explained to me at that reunion table. That’s what her daughter Jamie explained to her. That’s what changed everything for both of us. It’s 2 capsules a day with water. Nothing weird. No powders. No mixing. No taste. A bottle is 30 days. If you’re going to try it, get 3 bottles at once, because the change doesn’t happen in a week and 1 bottle isn’t a fair test. Loretta said 3 months. Jamie said 3 months. I felt it at week 3 and I really felt it at week 6, but the real change was at 3 months, and it’s still getting better at 6. It’s made in the USA. It ships free. And it has a 90 day money back guarantee, which means you can try all 3 bottles, and if your knees haven’t changed, if you’re still gripping the railing, if you’re still avoiding the garden, you send back what’s left and you get your money back. Every penny. I want you to think about that for a minute. In 8 years of cortisone shots and prescriptions and copays and appointments, not one doctor ever offered me my money back when the treatment didn’t work. Nobody refunded the summers I lost. Nobody refunded the stairs I didn’t climb. The system doesn’t do refunds. Auniva does. 👉 auniva.co/amla/33 P.S. I want to tell you about the shoes. I saved them. The heels I wore to my niece’s wedding in 2019 and had to take off during the reception. They’ve been sitting in the back of my closet for 6 years. I wore them last week to dinner with Roy at the Canteen downtown. I wore them for 3 hours. I walked from the car to the restaurant and back and I didn’t limp. If you are somebody who has a pair of shoes in the back of your closet that you can’t wear anymore, or a garden you can’t tend, or a set of stairs you avoid, that’s the version of your life that Auniva is aimed at giving back to you. Not the pain. The life. P.P.S. About the guarantee. 90 days. Full refund. No forms. No arguing. You return what’s left and they refund you the whole thing. Compare that to what your knee doctor is offering you right now. Cortisone shots that stop working. Replacement surgery that most people never fully recover from. Prescriptions that upset your stomach. Nobody’s handing you a refund when the treatment fails. Auniva does. That should tell you something about who’s confident in what they’re selling and who’s just confident that you’re stuck. P.P.P.S. They run out. Loretta told me she and Jamie have both had to wait for shipments before because Auniva only makes it in small batches to keep the extract quality where it needs to be. I keep 2 extra bottles in the linen closet now. One for me, one for Roy, because after he watched me kneel in the garden he started asking questions, and now he takes it too. His back is better. His shoulders are better. He hasn’t complained about his hands in months, and this is a man who used to complain about his hands every night. They currently have a 3 bottle deal that I keep telling Kelly to grab for her father in law. Don’t wait for the next reunion, or the next wedding, or the next Christmas at your daughter’s house, to be the thing that makes you realize you’ve been sitting when you should be standing. I almost missed my reunion. I don’t want you to miss yours. P.P.P.P.S. If you take one thing from what I’ve written, take this. There is a power plant inside every cell in your body. It has been getting worn down for years. Your joints have been paying the price. Nothing you have tried up to now has been aimed at the power. Auniva is. Try it for 3 months. If nothing changes, send it back. If something does, you will know. Your mornings will get quieter. Your stairs will get shorter. Your garden will get closer. And one day you will be humming while you make coffee and somebody who loves you will point it out to you, and you will realize you didn’t know you had stopped. 👉 auniva.co/amla/33

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Feel Like Yourself Again

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