Twelve years ago, I went in for a follow-up appointment because I couldn’t keep food down. Bread especially — it felt like it was getting stuck in my throat. They did an endoscopy. They found celiac disease.
And then they handed me a piece of paper.
That was it. A diagnosis on a sheet of paper, a follow-up appointment two weeks out, and a “see you then.” No dietitian referral. No “here’s what this means for your life starting tonight.” No list of what I could eat, what I couldn’t, what would make me sick, what was hiding gluten in the ingredients list under a name I’d never recognize. Just: you have this. Bye.
So I went to the grocery store.
And I stood in the middle of the aisle and cried.
I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know what I was looking for. I didn’t know that soy sauce has wheat in it, that most oats are cross-contaminated, that “natural flavors” is a phrase that can ruin your whole week. I didn’t know that the thing I’d been eating my entire life — bread, pasta, crackers, the basket they put on every restaurant table — was the thing that had been making me sick.
I just stood there. In the store. Completely lost.
Nobody in my family has celiac. Nobody I knew had celiac. There was no one to call and say “okay what do I actually do now.”
There was just me, a fluorescent-lit grocery store, and a piece of paper.
Here’s what I want to say to anyone who’s had that moment — or who’s having it right now:
That moment is real. The overwhelm is real. The grief is real, and yes, I’m calling it grief, because that’s what it is. You’re not being dramatic. You’re not overreacting to “just a diet change.” You are mourning something — a version of normal that you didn’t even know you were going to lose until it was already gone.
Bread is at every table. Every holiday. Every office meeting, every birthday, every first date where you split an appetizer. It’s communion. It’s your kid’s classroom snack. It’s the thing that sounds so small until you’ve said no to it ten thousand times and explained why and watched someone’s face do that thing where they’re trying to be nice but they clearly think you’re being a little extra about a dinner roll.
You’re not.
And now — NOW — a loaf of gluten-free bread that tastes like a foam pool noodle costs nine dollars. In a grocery store where everything costs more than it did two years ago, and your “budget fallback options” were already half what everyone else’s were.
The celiac tax is real. It has always been real. It did not get the memo about easing up.
I’m not going to pretend there’s a clean fix for any of this. The grocery prices, the isolation, the exhaustion of managing a medical condition that most people treat like a quirky personality trait — I don’t have a magic solution.
What I have is this: twelve years of figuring it out. A kitchen that actually works. Recipes that don’t taste like compromise. And a stubborn belief that people with celiac deserve to eat food that’s genuinely good — not just “pretty good for gluten-free.”
That’s why Fern and Fog exists.
Not to be another wellness brand telling you to try cassava tortillas and think positive. But to actually be useful. To build something real, made by someone who stood in that grocery store aisle and cried and then spent the next twelve years learning how to feed herself well anyway.
You deserve a table where the food is good and safe and nobody looks at you weird for asking questions.
We’re building it. Glad you’re here.
Fern and Fog is a celiac-safe home and kitchen brand based in Lawrence, Kansas. Small-batch baked goods, spice blends, teas, pantry mixes, and soap and skincare — made by someone who gets it because she lives it.
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