Today’s Mold Talks Heroes guest is Laura Knight, a parenting educator, author, mom of two, and mold survivor. During the episode, Laura explains how mold exposure impacted her children and herself and how she came to realize that this fungus was the root cause of their chronic health issues. While she never would have expected their home to be struggling with a mold issue, it turned out to be highly contaminated and had been for years.
Over a year later, their home has now been remediated, and they are all working towards detoxing. She’s now using all of her knowledge and experience to help others who are suffering through similar experiences.
As a parenting educator, she helps parents bring calm into their homes and quell the chaos with practical, easy-to-use parenting tools that are effective and yield lasting results. But her mission as a parenting educator doesn't stop there: she wants to raise awareness and provide support for major issues and problems that many people are unaware of, such as mold toxicity.
In this episode:
0:30: Laura explains how she was impacted by mold and the effect it had on her young child. At first, doctors thought it was PANS, but Laura felt this wasn’t the right answer. “I can kind of chuckle now because we’re passed it now, but the truth is that it was traumatizing.”
2:30: Laura details how she and her family were tested for mold, leading to them testing their home. “It didn’t smell. It wasn’t what you think of when you picture a moldy home. There was nothing that looked wrong with our house at all.
3:45: Laura describes her first thoughts when the functional medicine doctor first suggested that mold might be the underlying cause of her child’s health conditions.
8:15: Laura goes through the remediation process and the extensive amount of decontamination that was required. “Our house required over a year’s worth of remediation.”
10:30: Laura details how quickly her child recovered after moving out of the toxic environment and the detoxing process they adhered to. She also explains how she and other members of the family recovered and the processes they followed. “Mold is tricky because it needs to bind to something.”
16:15: Laura explains how she practices mindfulness to help get through traumatic events like mold toxicity and how she uses her knowledge to help others going through similar situations.
18:15: Laura details how situations like mold exposure can impact parenting and the effect it can have on a child’s mental state. "I always try to answer children's questions as age-appropriately as possible while also sticking to the facts as much as possible... giving them hope and light at the end of the tunnel."
22:30: Laura describes the resources she’s created for others to help with parenting techniques and potential contamination situations in their home. “The website is a home for tools and resources that I wish I would have known then, but I know now and can share.”
26:00: Laura explains how difficult she found it to be to find proper testing to help analyze a home before moving into a new space.
