Charlene’s health struggles started almost at birth: weaned off breast milk at three months, reacting to every formula her parents tried, then a childhood defined by recurring strep throat, constant antibiotics from the family medicine cabinet, asthma attacks, and allergy shots for sensitivities to almost everything. Her grandfather was a doctor and her mother a physical therapist — medicine surrounded her — yet it always felt wrong to her, and she fought it from the very beginning.

Then came second grade. Sitting at story time with an irritated sore on her eyelid, she pulled out a clump of eyelashes — and by the end of that day, every eyelash and eyebrow was gone. That moment marked the beginning of trichotillomania, a hair-pulling disorder that followed her through middle school, high school, college, and her working years — until she and her husband Joe finally found a way of eating that quieted it for good.

Charlene offers a perspective almost no one else in this space can: she’s a true carnivore OG who found this way of eating out of pure necessity, using it to fight over 100 health issues — the four biggest being Lyme disease, amenorrhea, degenerative disc disease, and trichotillomania — along with binging and purging. And she’s built a vibrant, creative life on the other side of chronic illness.

We dive into ideas like:

• Growing up steeped in conventional medicine — the doctor grandfather, the overflowing medicine cabinet, the preventative antibiotics — and why it never sat right with her.
• How trichotillomania took hold at seven years old, what it was like living with it for decades, and what finally made it stop.
• The real cost of healing: why she and Joe downsized from a big house to a 360-square-foot condo, kept one car, and were among the last people they knew to get a cell phone — all so they could afford to eat the way their bodies needed.
• The painful reality of losing family members who stood against their lifestyle — and why Charlene urges anyone without family support to find their people in the growing carnivore community, whether they’re strict carnivore, animal-based, or somewhere in between.
• Life after healing: how deconstructing and reconstructing clothes with no sewing machine experience turned into a beloved handmade retro clothing business — from eBay experiments to movie producers and professional models wearing her designs.
• Rediscovering roller skating in her fifties — the wobbles, the falls, the weekly videos — and the feeling of losing all track of time doing something you purely love.

Charlene speaks with the hard-won calm of someone who spent decades searching for answers and nearly three decades living them — part pioneer, part maker, part proof that a body given what it truly needs can come back from almost anything.

If you’ve ever felt like you’ve tried everything, lost people along the way, or wondered whether real healing is possible after a lifetime of being sick — this conversation is for you.