Black mold is not a scary headline, it can be a life-altering reality. Jeffrey Bowen joins me to walk through what happened after years of exposure in a poorly maintained office HVAC system, how it spiraled into chronic illness symptoms like crushing fatigue, pain, headaches, memory issues, and insomnia, and why getting answers can be so hard when you’re living with something complex and invisible.
We also get honest about the emotional toll of being dismissed, misread, or told it’s “just anxiety” while you’re fighting to function. Jeffrey shares the surprising practice that helped him survive the darkest stretch: writing poetry. He explains why poetry worked when plain prose didn’t, and how putting words to suffering can create structure, agency, and a small pocket of relief when your nervous system is on constant alert.
From there, we widen the lens to purpose, faith, and community. Jeffrey talks about pivoting from psychologist to chronic illness coach, creating journals that give people space to reflect instead of being told what to do, and why real self-help should ultimately lead to helping others. If you’re navigating toxic mold illness, chronic pain, long COVID-like symptoms, or any season where your old story feels cut off, this conversation offers both grounded tools and spiritual encouragement to keep going.
Subscribe wherever you listen, share this with someone who needs hope, and leave a review so more people can find support. What part of your story are you ready to rewrite?
To connect with or work with Dr. Jeffery Bone, visit his website at: https://www.drbone.live
To download a free chapter of host Sylvia Worsham’s bestselling book, In Faith, I Thrive: Finding Joy Through God’s Masterplan, purchase any of her products, or book a call with her, visit her website at www.sylviaworsham.com
Transcript:
If you’ve ever struggled with fear, doubt, or worry and wondering what your true purpose was all about, then this podcast is for you. In this show, your host, Sylvia Warsham, will interview elite experts and ordinary people that have created extraordinary lives. So here’s your host, Sylvia Warsham.
Hey my bringers, it’s Sylvia Warsham. Welcome to Released Out Reveal Purpose. And today’s Jeffrey Bowen. He’s gonna talk to us about chronic illness. He was exposed to black mold. Some of us know at first hand what black mold can do to our systems. It can shut us down. It could actually produce these neurotoxins within our bodies that can be very, very dangerous. Some of it is fungus, you know, this aspergillus. I used to work at Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, and one of the main drugs I promoted was for aspergillosis, very deadly fungus. And some of these things can pass on very quickly. And if you’re an immunocompromised patient, it can really put you in serious danger of death. So black mold is no joke. I know Jeffrey is here to walk us through this dark chapter and to share with us how you can navigate through that grief and do it in a way that is in the most healthy way possible. So without further ado, Jeffrey, thank you so much for joining us on Released Towerville Purpose.
Well, thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it very much.
I appreciate your perspective on this and your journey. So please honor us, if you will, on that that incident of being exposed to black mold and your journey to this point.
Well, I was working in an office and it was only there’s an HVAC only going to my office. So I had my office and my waiting room, and the building was turned over a few times in bankruptcy, really wasn’t well maintained. And for about three years, I was working in an office where there is black mold. And there’s actually two different types of neurotoxic mold in that HVAC. And I didn’t realize it until I developed this, which ultimately was sinusitis, but it was a horrible headache that wouldn’t resolve. And then I took uh pregnisone and my body freaked out because pregnisone will lower your immune system. And then the mold said, okay, we win, and it took over, and I developed all kinds of difficult symptoms. I had memory problems, I had pain problems, I had incredible fatigue. I bounced around many different doctors trying to find the right answer, and it was an incredible journey. It was very, very difficult.
I imagine that that just sounds excruciating, actually. And I know that some people after COVID developed these chronic, this, these chronic illnesses that have like really been dark chapters for them. I’m sure you you went through those dark chapters yourself. How did how did you start coming out of that darkness? Like this whole bouncing around from doctor to doctor.
And not being believed and being told, oh, it’s anxiety. And I remember talking to one doctor say, could this be molding? It’s like, well, what if it is? What are you gonna do about it? And it was just being completely dismissed. And so in the chaos of it all, and finding the right doctors and getting tested and testing the office and really ensuring that this is what we’re dealing with. It’s like, okay, well, we have that figured out, but what about me? What about my sense of self? What about my soul? And what I turned to was being able just to write. And I was starting to write poetry, actually. Poetry was where I found a place where I could like just scream into the universe and to be able to have a voice. I had never written poetry in my life, and I was just guided to express myself through poetry, to have a voice, to be able to try to organize a little bit of the chaos and that darkness within myself.
Poetry? Who guessed it? My goodness. Okay, remind me again what you did before.
I was a psychologist.
Okay, so you went from psychology, not a big gap there, though. Think about that. Because I mean, psychology, philosophy, poetry, it’s kind of like those, right, with each other. But I imagine, Jeffrey, that you probably had this within you and was this door closing for you.
Yes.
Because it was a door that closed, and it’s how the Lord sometimes manages us, right? I mean, he takes our choices to work in certain environments. In my case, he took my choice of taking birth control pills and said, hmm. I’m going to use that choice of hers to kind of wake her up. Just a little bit.
Yes. Protection through rejection.
Yes. I’m going to wake her up because she’s in corporate sales, and although she’s really good at what she does, and she’s made a good living, and she impacts my people day in and day out, that’s not why she was created. So I’m gonna that’s not her path. So how do I do this? Let me let me do this now. And that’s so primary embolisms for me and Bug Carey syndrome were the way he went, and it was really painful uh in 2012. For you, it sounds like this black mold was your awakening of sorts. How did you first get that inkling to start writing? Do you remember that pivotal moment?
I was sitting in uh it was during a volleyball uh tournament, and I was sitting in the stands, and I just had my phone with me and surrounded by people, surrounded by noise, whistles, people yelling, people playing volleyball. And and I just felt this need to kind of express my story because throughout the two and a half decades of working with the clients, it was always somebody else’s story. And what I needed to pull out was my story. I wasn’t telling my story, I wasn’t living my story, I was helping edit and you know assist other people with their story, but I I wasn’t telling mine. And there was that moment where I knew I couldn’t write in prose because I didn’t think in prose. I think in shards, I think in pieces, and the shards and pieces, it just lent itself to the idea of poetry. It kind of gave me this permission because it doesn’t have these hard, fast rules. You want to capitalize, you want to use commas, it’s up, it’s up to you. It’s whatever it is that you want to do. There’s a sense of allowing, which is just this free space, to just put your voice down on paper however it comes out.
I love that. And I’m actually visualizing this. I’m a visual learner, so I can hear it, but then my mind starts it speaks to me in visions, and that’s how he speaks to me in visions. Yes, I see things happening, and then he’ll remind me like if I’m in a dark space. Um like I was recently, I was watching this video and I don’t know something, and it triggered. You’re a psychologist, so you know. And and I my mind wanted to take me down like the path of when my father wasn’t for me or with me, right? My and immediately the Holy Spirit was like, No, you’re not doing that to yourself again. You’re you’re gonna stop punishing yourself. And I mean, and so he replaced it with visions of when my dad was there for me. Yes, and then the scripture from uh Philippians, I believe I don’t know if it’s like four-seven or think of what is true, what is noble, what is what is good came into the forefront of my mind, and so it was God God’s way of reminding me. Your dad was there. That’s the enemy that wants to keep you stuck, and and you’re past that, you’re way past that. You don’t need to go back there. That’s an old identity. Your new identity, you are my daughter, first and foremost. You’re the daughter of a king, you’re the son of a king, and you’re co-heirs with Christ. So you have a place here in heaven, go for eternal life with me. That’s you need to understand that, and you don’t need to be going back to those places. And so, for me, as you were speaking to shards, I’m curious to listen to one of your pieces if you’re willing to read one of your poetry pieces online on on air. Would you be willing to do that?
I I would. I don’t have it pulled up, but I I can I can look for it.
Sure, I can pause this right now and you can look for it. And if it’d be okay. It’s for me.
Okay, so I just pulled up the first one and just let it be the first one uh here, and it’s just called broken. Sharing my break, no hairliner full, hurts like the devil as I continue to fall. A few x-ray eyes, my friendly spies, diagnose and treats, they still want me around. Poetry is anesthesia for the crack in my soul, immune disorder, chronic pain, insomnia, and more. Round out the story a web to be woven. Words can be weapons, but these are my stitches, just me and my glitches.
Oh my goodness, I got tingles. I can’t it’s you know why? Because I was thinking of brokenness this morning.
Okay, perfect. So that’s why we’re talking.
That’s why we’re talking, because it’s a divine invitation for me to start over. And uh Start Over is actually the title of a song by Hope Darst. Hope is the wife of a the my husband’s partner, business partner, and she’s all over Amazon music now. Like everywhere. She’s she’s a Christian uh singer, and she’s got one very famous song called Peace Be Still, and but start over caught my attention this morning because in it she’s it’s like she’s written a love letter, like God has written a love letter to her, basically saying we need to start over a baby girl.
Yes.
It’s okay to be broken. I just want to mend you. And God uses broken people, yes, he uses our brokenness, and that’s how he redeems us in the places where we broke. Yes, you know, and in my case, my redemption came sometime last year. Um I felt it in my soul to close certain chapters I had been believed in high school extensively, and for a long time kept that resentment and that bitterness inside of me, and it just poisoned me. It it caged me up. Right? My life can’t be fully seen, it cannot be fully released if I’m holding on to so tightly to this resentment and bitterness. And I remember asking God, like, how do I do this? And he said, You you already have the answers up on your wall. And in my war room, for those listening, the war room is based on a movie by the Kendrick brothers, and the Wheel Room is is a real closet where you go to war with the real enemy. It’s your spouse. It’s not your colleagues, it’s not your bullies, it’s Satan who is playing a very big role in in the background, you know, enticing people, you know, through their what they want and need in the moment, the sense of the flesh, basically. So from the biblical perspective, it’s the sense of the flesh versus being spirit-led. Right?
Yes.
And where it’s like the carton characters when we you and I were kids, Jeffrey, the devil on one side and the angel on the other, and it’s like who’s whispering and who are you listening to? Makes sense. And so on my wall was the scripture from Job, and he had led me to Job years ago, and I was terrified of Job because that book is terrifying. It is. But the gist of Job is how much faith he had despite his trials and tribulations. He kept strong in his faith, right? My book is called In Faith I Thrive, Finding Joy Through God’s Master Plan. There’s a powerful reason why it’s called In Faith I Thrive. In our faith, in our faith, in a higher purpose, in a higher identity, in a higher being that uh brings us to our light, right? It brought you to your poetry. You would have never known it had it not been for the darkness in your life. So here you are releasing yourself from that darkness. Now you’re stepping into your joy. You’re now in your joy, and now I’m assuming you’ve surrendered to that higher calling. And what do you think that higher calling is for you now?
Solidarity and helping others, acts of service for other people. Um, I believe that all self-help should lead to helping others, and because we’re not here for ourselves, we’re here for other people. And I and I think of it as acts of service. It’s like when in doubt, serve other people. When in doubt, help other people up the ladder as much as possible in life. And so I’m working as a chronic illness coach. I I put together this uh podcast so I could just kind of broadcast my message of my illness and and how I think and how I just kind of bring myself into the world. And it’s still this ongoing process of finding that voice and what I want to share. But my point is to be able to broadcast it out the best that I possibly can to reach people, to reach people who are in difficult, dark places with chronic illness, so that I may be able to be of assistance to people in those places, to the best of my ability. And I am that kind of half doctor, half patient. I I know both sides of that coin, and so I have a unique perspective in that. Because a lot of people, they don’t feel as though that they’re really understood when the word chronic is in the diagnosis, when they’re having to deal with something that just sometimes doesn’t resolve, doesn’t change. But despite the chronicness, there’s still places for us to expand. But we have to be humble to let go of certain things so we can find other places within us to expand. And so I’m a big proponent of finding those ways to expand and to expand the soul, the sense of self and our meaning and our purpose. It’s just because one avenue gets cut off in life, we think, oh, we have to just maintain this avenue rather than trusting ourselves so we can pivot to the next. Because there is a next if you allow yourself to be curious and humble to it.
So can you I love what you said, by the way. I just want to say, wow. I was like entranced as you were in this trance of like, wow, this really is the higher good. This is a clear definition of the higher good, is to serve our community to the best of our abilities with the gifts we’ve been given. You were given a gift unbeknownst to you, even through your journey of chronic illness, because now you became a student. And because you became a student of it, you can explain it in a way that that they know they’re feeling because you’ve been in that spot, right? You can actually explain it instead of explaining it just from the psychologist’s perspective of like, oh, this is you know, because that’s what your training teaches you, that’s right and all. And there’s some aspect to it that is comforting, but what’s even more comforting is when you’ve actually been in the journey.
Been been there, yes.
Been there and can help help you navigate there. So kind of guide us on a relatable example, if you will, of how you’ve done this.
And so one of the things that I’ve done is I’ve created two uh throughout my path, because I started with the poetry, and I’m like, okay, this was great for me. Now I was like, how do I kind of put this out to other people that I can encourage them? And just one example here is that I’ve created these two different chronic illness journals, and I thought, well, maybe I should write a book where I can just like tell people what to do. And but for me, for my unique, you know, offerings and gifts that I possess, it’s like I needed to give people space so that they can find their own story. And so all of my journals, one is called The Expanded Life, the other one’s Breath Between Battles. And it’s all about these questions and the space for you to be reflective, not for me to tell you, because I’m just a simple human being. You know, I and I say I’m here, I I can’t just so you need to do this and you need to do that. It’s like I wasn’t going to, you know, I’m not here just to prescribe things. And you know, as I’m working with people, of course, there’s certain techniques and there’s certain things that I can tell people uh what to do, but I really wanted to give some space so that they could tell their own story to open up so that they can find it within themselves, their own path. Because everybody’s different, everyone has a unique gift, and everyone has their own unique paths in life. So it wasn’t about me just having a course and saying, okay, everybody, this is what you need to do. It’s much more of here are these, I have more questions, I have more inquiry, I have more compassion to be able to help you find that story within yourself. I’m not here to tell you what your story is. Is that I’m here to be able to help you so that you can find that story. For example, I’ve never cured anybody, I’ve never healed anybody, but I allow people to find that healing within themselves. And we’re not supposed to, by the way, just so we’re clear on that.
Uh we it’s not your responsibility to heal anybody, that’s God’s role. Yes, our responsibility is to lead them on the space with our skill set, and then he takes over. Uh, and that’s where people confuse it. That’s where there’s codependency. Like, oh, you don’t depend on me. No, they don’t. They actually don’t. So you’re guiding them. Like we guide our children. But we got if we try to control their every aspect, you’re you’re disempowering them from stepping. I made that mistake as a young parent to my firstborn, and then came my second one that really awakened me.
Yes.
She’s very vivacious, and I love her to pieces, but she is a deep thinker like I am, and she will question things. And you know, the idiot will be like, Wow, this is coming from an 11-year-old? I girl. Yes, yes. I can’t imagine you later. Or you know, wow. Like it’s a she’s a profound thinker, and she has these profound ways of viewing the world, to the point where my husband and I have have kept like on our cell phone like notes of the thoughts that have come to her. So she’s she’s challenged me to be a much better parent um than I was just go around in person.
And it was then trickles to other people.
You know, but like you, I uh I became a student first, and he has me being a student right now in the last mastermind that I have out. Um, that is the title of it is uh trusting in God’s sovereignty.
Yes.
Because we want to control our circumstances as human beings and the outside world, all the information coming in is control, control, control, perfectionists and all these are illusions. You and I both know that.
Yes, we’ve listened to it. So it’s all just culture, you know, domesticating us, yeah. So you know it’s culture shaping us.
Yeah, uh, absolutely, and it’s limiting us. I see limiting us absolutely in a way, I see a cage, and it cages us, and when we allow the Lord to come in, and when we humble ourselves and say, I don’t I don’t have all the answers, nor am I designed to have all the answers. I’m designed to depend on him, depend on him to guide me because there’s certain scripture out there. I I get the vision that he’s giving me right now is him at the well with the woman from Samaria. I provide water that is eternal, it’s like you will never. Be thirsty, the kind of water I provide. And when you look at the imagery of what he’s actually saying, is like your dependence is on me. You’re here, you’ve been gifted a particular set of skills. That’s why we don’t compete, you and I, Jeffrey. I don’t see you as compet- I’ve never seen my fellow human being as competition. Uh, because not just spiritually, I mean, this came later spiritually, but my own father was like this. My father was a urologist in in a small town in in Brownsville, Texas, which is a border town. And he always tell me, like, Sylvia, I need my competition because I want to rest too. I can’t, I don’t want to work 24-7. I want to do, you know. And he was the only specialist, the urologist, that would sit and have lunch with his fellow competitors, quote unquote.
Oh, okay.
You know, and they would when my father passed away almost two years ago on Father’s Day, his competitor, Dr. Asasi, came to the house, and and it was if I get emotional, I apologize because he’s coming on.
Oh, never apologize for being human.
Second year anniversary of his passing, but he came to the house. I’ll never forget him. He said, you know, I would enjoy going out to lunch with your dad. He was so wonderful. Our friendship was it invigorated me every day, you know, and it was nice to hear that from someone that was considered his competitor.
Yes, absolutely.
His competitor, and yet my dad just never saw him like that and never treated him like that. And I think when we when we’re in what’s happening in our world currently, Jeffrey, I I’m concerned because people are always competing with each other.
Yes. Oh no, that’s a huge problem. It’s I I I see it as the over-empha emphasis on the individual. And we’re here for each other. We’re all walking each other home.
Yeah.
We’re all here for each other. And when we over-emphasize the individual, then the individual becomes paramount. It becomes but it’s not about the individual. It it’s it’s not, it’s it’s about the community. And and it is it’s not competition. That’s your that’s your brother, that’s your sister. We’re all children under the same sun.
Yes. Well, yeah, I don’t see divisions. I don’t see borders. I don’t. He didn’t either when he was here on earth. Like he he was like, Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek, blessed. I mean, like, he embodied the love that we’re supposed to be showing ourselves. And for the least of the for the least of the people. He didn’t he didn’t see like he had women in his ministry 2,000 years ago. That was like mind-blowing, considering some of the countries we’re at war with right now that are still stuck in the dark ages where women aren’t even allowed to vote. That’s silly. It is so weird. I’m like, why would we want to do that with another human being? It’s beyond my comprehension. Um he doesn’t like extremes either. If you give into his word, uh when I saw that, I was like, okay, so then my OCD really needs to be tamed.
Yes.
OCD wants to take me to extremes, like the what ifs, you know. And so, okay, come back to presence, come back to middle. What is presence? What is middle? And we have different modalities to bring us back. I know for me, it’s going out in nature in my pergola and seeing the the gifts he wants to give me every day.
You know, when that nature wants to erase in our in our body, they they they’ve done all the tests, you know. When you go out in nature, you walk in nature, you spend time in nature, the stress hormones go down, you feel better. It’s like biologically, you can see how we’re just wired to be in nature. Yeah. Not, you know, just in the two. Yes, not in that’s not how we’re designed. That’s modernity. That’s churning out profit, that’s shareholder benefit. And and again, that’s not a higher calling. That’s that’s not that’s not that’s not how we live 99.9% of the time of our time, you know, on this planet. So it’s kind of like that’s not us. That’s not us. And it separates us from each other.
And from our our divine calling, and just we forget that we’re one part of one body. Like you mentioned, brother and sister, yes, we’re you’re my brother in Christ. And I and I’m gonna do what I can to help you, to to bring your light out and to maybe refer you to some people that I know are are having this chronic illness and they need to get out of their own way, you know, because they they view that as the end of be all, and there’s more to it. There’s ways of expressing and getting out and of that stress, right? So um, if I wanted to work with you, Jeffrey, how do I how do I find you? And do you have any last words of encouragement for the listeners?
Well, the the easiest way to find me is go to drbone.live. That’s dr b-o-ne- dot live. That’s the easiest way. And oh I I love um, I think it was Robert Frost who said, I can summarize all of humanity that I’ve learned through all of my years. And it’s that the story goes on. For humans, the story goes on. But you have to we get into places where we think our story stops, and we’re trying to force that same story, and we we have to be humble, we have to let go so that we can find these other stories that go on, because our stories do go on after we die, they go on, and here on earth that they can go on, but we have to be able to be humble, to let go so we can find the next story, to serve ourselves so that we can serve other people. Because for me, it’s uh the end result is always community. Community, community, community. It’s for others. And um that that’s that’s the mission at hand. But you have to you have to fill your own cup enough so that you have something to give other people. So you have to but so it’s like when your story has been broken, when your story has been lost, through my specialty is obviously chronic illness. When that story you feel has ended, it’s not the end of you. There’s more stories to be had, but you have to open yourself up to those possibilities.
I love it. I could end it right here, but I always end it the same way. To remember Matthew 5.14 to be the light, because when we are the light, when we reflect his light in the world, we are unstoppable as a human race. And just like Jeffrey said, we got to be humble, gotta let go, let go and let God step in. Let him guide you into your light, let him guide you like he guided Jeffrey, like he guided me into my light after our awakenings, because our awakenings came for a reason. He will redeem us in the place where that broke us, and then that redemption piece, that’s the whole I am redeemed in him because he he heals, he’s the great surgeon, he heals, he’s the one that steps in and he’s the one that brings you to faith. We don’t do that, we simply guide you, we simply use our talent in the way he’s gifted us and the way he’s spoken to us and guide you into him, into his light, and then he’s the one that reveals that gentle truth to you.
Yes.
So be the light, don’t be afraid, he’s always with you, and you are so loved in this world. Jeffrey, thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been my honor to host your own release out revealed purpose, and to the rest of you, have a beautiful, blessed rest of your day. Bye now.
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