All right. Hello everyone. I’m Rhonda Velders with Illuminated Pathways Family Therapy, and I’m really excited about this video for sure. And so I am excited to introduce to you a really great friend of mine, Dr. Angelina Ferrella, and she is someone that I’ve got to know back in 2021. And since then, the journey has been a really cool ride. Lots of learning, lots of education, but man, worth every step of it. And we have great news, but I would like to introduce you to her. And I want you to know how I met her was actually at a Republican meeting and she was talking, she had the white jacket on and she’s an American frontline doctor. And I had been following them since 2020 when they were on the steps of the justice in Washington DC. And so I followed all of them. And when I learned that she was wearing that white jacket, she turned around and it said American frontline doctor.
I knew I felt like I had gone to heaven. It was amazing. And so because they mean so much for the humanity of who we are that God placed us. And so I don’t say these things to just puff up anybody, but when people are fighting for the life of humanity against the narrative that’s been spoken, these people are in my camp 100%. And so when I got to be able to work in her office a couple of days a week for a little over two years, then this opportunity now to join her again is beyond a joy. So Dr. Farella, go ahead and share a little bit about you and what you do.
Well, thank you for having me first and foremost. It’s always so much fun, Rhonda, when we get together, you just never know the shenanigans that might happen. For sure. For sure. Yeah.
So I’ve been a functional integrative physician for years, predominantly pediatrics. But then when 2020 came along, which is not too long afterwards is when I met you, is when I started noticing that medicine had changed drastically from what I believed was true medicine in the sense. And I think I probably just was like an ostrich with my head in the sand because I had my own practice, I was independent, I was doing my own thing. I really didn’t pay attention to what large associations like the AAP was saying. I mean, I listened peripherally, but I wasn’t involved. I actually had dropped my AAP, my American Academy of Pediatrics Fellowship, which is a membership to them in 2008 because I was very upset with some of the representations that they were trying to push on physicians. And really it was something that we weren’t qualified to do, and I thought it was putting us in a position of liability.
And so that was one of the first things that I noticed that I was like, okay, I don’t have to belong to them. It’s not that big of a deal. There’s other places that I can make an impact.
So 2020 rolls around and I find out that all these hospital systems basically closed their doors to patients that were sick. And I’m just sitting there going, “This is what we signed up for. We’re physicians. We should be treating sick patients, not telling them to stay home until they’re blue and let’s dampen that two-week curve.” Which initially I was like, okay, if they know something more than we know, meaning is this a virus like chickenpox that has an incubation period of two to three weeks? The two-week curve made sense to me, honestly. But then I was like, “I don’t think so. This is an mRNA virus. This is a 72-hour turnaround time.” Which basically in English means that if you’re exposed to somebody within 72 hours, you’re going to get sick. That might be 24 hours, that might be 48 hours, it might be 72, it might be even a little longer.
But generally speaking, mRNA viruses like the influenza will actually get it transmitted and if your immune system doesn’t beat it off in that first 72 hours, you’re going to get sick. I mean, that’s humanity. That’s what the immune system does. So initially when they said that, and then I started doing my deep dive, I’m like, “This is not like a varicella virus. This is a totally different type of virus. So I don’t think this is true.” Well, then I started to hear what we call the fear porn from the hospital system saying there’s no ICU bed. So of course I figured that one out, that they were lying to us flat out. I don’t know if you ever saw that. That was a live that I did on Facebook. And I showed the people of Houston how to check what the bed status is in hospitals.
Within hours, within hours an email came to my email that basically from the Harris County medical, the medical alert system that said, “Oh, someone misspoke this morning on a morning TV show.” So I knew they saw my live. Somehow they must have seen my live because there was no way. There was no way that they would’ve sent that out. And that was a live that went completely viral. I can’t even tell you how many views got on there. It was insane. And then it got shut down. And then they also shut down that website, which is for public to see. So I had tracked that for a long time on my Facebook. I have no idea if it’s still there because I got blocked, censored, screened, shadow banned, all the things that really go against the American society, First Amendment rights, the whole thing. So that’s when I realized at first, truly at first I was like, “Huh, that’s kind of funny.
They’re doing that to me. ” Then I got angry and then I ended up on the SCOTU steps because I said, “I have to find my people. I have to find doctors like me, ” because apparently in this area, they were too over-indoctrinated or too scared to step forward and make a wave. And I said, “That’s it. I’m done. I can’t do this to the American people and I can’t do it to my neighbors. I can’t do it to my patients. I can’t do it to my patient family.” So I opened my doors to everyone, all ages starting in 2020 and applied the same functional integrative approach that I’ve been doing for 30 years to the adults. And it was wonderful. I mean, we did really, really well. We did it well with telemedicine. We did it well with in – person medicine. We didn’t care.
We kept the doors open. We weren’t scared. I wasn’t scared. I’m like, “This is what I signed up for. This is combat right now. If you’re in a pandemic, you’re in combat. Did the soldiers go into the foxholes and hide? No, it’s not what they do. And doctors shouldn’t do that either. They shouldn’t go in the corner and suck their thumb and cower because there’s a virus out. That’s silly. And so that’s kind of what happened with me. And from there, we really expanded our practice. Medical freedom had really taken a forefront because I think medical freedom is a huge thing and it was being beat down. Parents were getting beat down. Prior to 2020, let me just kind of encompass this little part of medical freedom. Prior to 2020, when parents said they didn’t want vaccines, they just didn’t get the vaccine. There was no hoopla about it, so to speak.
And if the schools said something to the parent, parent wrote a letter saying, no, my kids aren’t getting vaccinated, whatever. Well, post – 2020, all of a sudden it became this mandate and I don’t do well with being told what to do. I’ll tell you that.
So all of a sudden all these parents are in this panic and I’m like, What’s going on? I don’t even understand this. And that’s when I found, again, ignorance is bliss sometimes, but I didn’t even know Texas had an immunization exemption form. I had no idea because we never needed it. We didn’t need it. But then all of a sudden we started to need it. Okay, great. So in other states though, they don’t have them or they have to get certain distinct reasons for their exemptions.Freedom is not free across the 50 states. I can tell you that right now there are still parents that are being oppressed, still parents that are really having issues. There are still people that are being treated in a 2020 way with protocols that are deadly and have been founded not to work. So here I am. I’m still here.
I’m kicking. So now we’re taking it to the streets, I think. And we’ve expanded into another part of Houston. There was a functional medicine practice that the doctor was retiring and leaving, so I couldn’t let those patients just flounder. So that’s what I did. I jumped in and ended up, I went in to buy some medical equipment and ended up with a medical practice and a building. So I’m super excited to really help the people of Houston because now we’re getting into the heart of Houston now. And I think it’s going to be a lot easier for those of you that don’t know, Houston’s as big as Rhode Island, so it’s a pretty vast state and a vast city. So I’m just in a different part of the city. I have a place in Southeast Houston and now in what’s called the Galleria area of Houston.
And so we’re going to be able to service just so many more people. I’m really excited about this and you’re joining me. So hey, the dynamic duo are starting up again.
Yeah, that’s for sure. I’m excited about that. Yeah, I remember when you still have your Webster office, so for those who are listening, please hear that’s not going away. This is an expansion for Dr. Farella and an expansion for Illuminated Pathways. And so I will be housed inside her facility there once again. And so it’s very exciting. You’re talking about all of those different vaccines. I remember as a young mom and my kids, I could pick and choose which ones I wanted and there was no harm, no foul. And then when this all started a few years ago, I had people coming to me as an ordained elder, and I would help write religious exemptions for even medical people so that they weren’t forced to do things that they felt their body being a temple of the Lord, that they didn’t want this in their body.
And so I was able to help write some of those exemptions. And so I did the religious side of those and I learned about that because I heard you talk about them and I’m like, well, I think I… And then I started learning about them and began doing them. So we were together in our own right fighting for humanity and allowing people to still retain their First Amendment right to say these things like what happened.
It’s slowly being pushed away for sure. But there is the remnant. I really believe we are part of the remnant, Dr. Angie, and I know that people pay attention to that for sure. So yes, the exciting part is that Illuminated Pathways will now be in the Galleria area. So our locations are existing as in Nassau Bay, Conroe, Texas, Missouri City, Texas, and now in the Galleria they’re on Winsome Lane. And so I’m excited about that and get to partner and go reach God’s people and help heal them from mind, body, soul all the way around. The holistic pieces and that medicinal piece that’s necessary, but God’s given our bodies everything we need. He’s given us the tools that we need to help heal ourselves. And so I really believe in that full, fully. I know that I didn’t recognize you because I didn’t know you in 2020 when you were on the SCOTUS steps for sure.
But I knew Dr. Robin Armstrong. And so Dr. Robin Armstrong was an amazing, it still is, I don’t want to talk like it’s past tense, but was amazing in 2020 and what he did with his patients in that nursing home. But the fight to save lives was a battle and it was one to be reckoned with. And so he didn’t lose a patient that whole time, but boy did the…
I’m just going to say people came after him because he saved people. So this is who you have in front of you right now. Somebody wants to save people. So I want to help save you through hope and healing. And Dr. Angie wants to save you through your body and the physical manifestations that can be going on in your body. And we together team to help provide a most succinct process to help heal God’s creatures that he created. You are born with a purpose and with major amounts of opportunities to do the things that you were set out to do. And so we want to help you find what that purpose is.
I know that with Illuminated Pathways, we offer support groups. These are things, Dr. Angie, that I’m not sure that you’re aware of. When we’ve expanded over a little over a year ago now, we now have online support groups, one’s for grief, one’s for parent support groups. So that’s also something we do. And we also offer webinars for technology, how to protect your kids and your family. And so we offer that about every other month. And then we also offer, we have marriage intensives, whether that be a three-hour or five-hour or a three-day. So we want everyone to know that there’s something we believe that if anything worth having is worth fighting for, which we’ve been in the fight for this too. So these are things that we also do. What are some of the pieces at this new location? Maybe it’s some of the things that you’re doing from Webster still, you’re doing there also, but what are you going to be doing in the Galleria area for the community?
So the Galleria area is actually for patients that need a little more time. These are for people that maybe they’re hitting walls with their medical doctors and they know that there’s more. They know that they can get better in a different way, but their medical doctors are just not either well-versed or educated in the alternatives. And so it’s quite a bit different. I will be seeing adults over there. And the reason why I say it’s different is because we are looking for root cause. And of course, the way I look at this is as a pediatrician, my superpower is I can grow kids. I do it very well. I’ve been doing it for years. I keep them healthy. I haven’t had a hospitalization, knock wood, for years. I mean, actually that was one of the reasons why the hospital couldn’t have active privileges anymore was because I didn’t have enough patients admitted to the hospital.
And so concurrently with that, my job is to keep people well. That’s really what it is. And to try to find the core root of why things might be going wrong. And so with that being said, adults have a lot longer to mess up, for lack of a better term. We do.
So
It’s a little more challenging for me, but I’ve been doing things like Lyme’s disease and autoimmune disease secondary to chronic infections for about 30 years. People just didn’t know because I don’t advertise it because it’s intensive. And in a practice like I have in Webster, there’s just not enough time with a patient. Whereas when I’m in Galleria, I’m going to have a lot of time with my patients. I’ll be able to really dig down and explore what’s going on and then we can actually go through and explore. So this is a really different type of practice. This is more of a consultation only kind of thing with care following that. The kiddos will be mostly kids that are very intense also. We started, you were talking about groups. We started an autism and neurodivergent parent group actually last Thursday. And
I just know it’s going to grow and grow and grow. The folks that showed up were very involved, very engaged, one of which wasn’t even a patient of ours. They just found out from a friend, so that’s pretty exciting. And then we’re going to continue that. So we started a program called A Brighter Path to a righter mind. And this pathway is a way to help parents with neurodivergent children to really seek their utmost potential, honestly. We are using the body to heal itself with different techniques and different avenues. We start with the core and then we just work our way out. And we are seeing great success. We decided to package this because we were doing things on some scale. We were doing them where some parents weren’t really wanting to do the intense treatment modality, therapy modality that we know helps rebuild brain tracts and helps rebuild a patient from their mindset.
There’s a lot of inflammation in the brain and we have to do some things to reduce that brain inflammation. And so there are some parents that are very insecure about that, which is fine. I understand that. I totally get that. And then there’s others that just want to jump in with two feet plus some. So we are meeting people where they’re at, but this intensive is a year long. They get over 10 touches with a physician, which is huge. So we’re meeting with these kids and their families almost every single month. We are hoping that this is a publishable program because we’re going to prove things that even the psychological community believes doesn’t change and we’re changing it. We know we’re changing it. So it’s pretty exciting. I’m excited for it. I know one of my colleagues, Dr. Annie Baker, she’s doing part of it as well.
And so we’ve partnered up and sometimes God just puts the righ people in front of you and when they do, you just make waves. I mean, it’s amazing. You were put in front of me for a reason. Somebody told me to go and talk at that Republican party meeting in San Jacinto and I was like, “Okay.” I didn’t even know that’s what started my speaking journey walking around and talking to people. It wasn’t just one-on-one in the office. So I always tell people about the ripple effect. You just don’t know who’s in that ripple and how far that ripple’s going to go. I mean, it took me all the way to California. It took me to DC, of course, on multiple occasions. It’s taken me to Florida. It’s taken me to New Hampshire in front of their legislature, Texas state legislature. And it’s not that my story…
Mark Twain says, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to worry about what you’re talking about. ” And that’s the awesome part of this is that my story really hasn’t changed much at all. There’s a couple of things now that I think the scales were removed from your eyeballs every once in a while. You could see something.
And then when 2020 came around, I mean, that was just like getting a two by four clocked over your head. And sadly, there’s still people that are very involved not in the disbelief. And it’s really sad because these are educated people. And the fact that they are so one-sided, which I never saw that before 2020. It’s really crazy. 2020 truly made sides. This conflictual thing where you can’t see the other side, especially in medicine, there’s something called sidewalk consults. I couldn’t even use any of my peers because they thought I was crazy.
Well, I wanted to share with you, because I don’t know if I mentioned this to you when we started reconnecting in more of an intimate way, this now coming back together. But in Missouri City, we are housed inside of a private school called King’s Academy. And Keegs Academy is located at Southminster Presbyterian Church on their campus and King’s Academy rents the property, their school, and then Illuminated Pathways is camped inside the school. That school is an autism school and we are partnering with them because they want us to help them with that autistic neurodivergent, all the things. And so I did not know this about you until just now. This is not an accident. We’re back together. And I think we’re going to be able to do some really cool things. And I think it’s 25 minutes from your location to the school. So people who might be interested in this school, and then we’re going to be helping out.
We’re going to begin to develop a plan and how to help support the teacher staff. We’re going to have support groups for those parents. But we can talk about this a little bit more in length about maybe how Luminated Pathways can help participate with a brighter path to a brighter mind and see what that can look like because that was not intentional to know that that happened. We were just looking for space and we found it through somebody in my Bible study I go to. And then we actually have people who actually know how to work with the spectrum working out there. It’s God designed, God divine all of it. It’s just amazing. But yes, I think that’s pretty cool. It’s just something new I just learned. And so how cool is that? I’m excited about that. Yeah.
I think the Houston area is, especially with the voucher programs, it’s really going to start to explode with this.
I word for the Momentum Academy, which is a special school for high schoolers that have just different teaching needs, different learning needs, and many of them are on spectrum. So it’s not coincidental. I always say that you might say it’s a coincidence, but it’s not. And you circle back to those who are true to you and you circle back to those people who supported you when you may have felt like you just got your headbeat against a wall. I mean, it is what it is. I mean, I think we have to live in a world where unfortunately now we have to find our people and we have to work from there. No that we’re going to block everyone out. This is not an exclusivity thing, but we have to what I call circle the wagons. And then once we get our core straight and clear, then we can actually expand out and start moving those wagons westward, so to speak.
And that’s
What
Has always been brought to my mind. And I’m thinking divinely, this is one of those things where during 2020, I just couldn’t think of better ways to try to reach out. And I don’t know, I woke up one day, circle the wagons, circle the wagons. That was what was in my head. I’m sure God was trying to tell me to do something crazy. So what I did is I went around our area and I called some churches and I said, “Hey, let me protect you so that you can continue to preach hope to the people because they need hope now.” And I did. I worked with many churches, many clergy, and I said, “Look, we’re going to do this. This is so that you can feel confident and not fearful when you need to go and pray with someone or be at their home or do whatever it is that you need to do in order to bring God’s word to them.” And because shutting down the churches was an absolute horror show.
And I think there’s still a ripple effect. I think the resurgence really is because people feel a little more free. And also now they’re starting to realize like, “Oh my gosh, that was horrible. Why did we do that? ” And now we have clergy that are telling us they’ll never shut down again ever. They’re going to chain themselves to the front doors of their churches to keep the doors open. Which to me is huge because my children during that whole debacle were in middle school, which it’s a very impressionable time. It’s a hard time. My youngest was in middle school and my older two were in high school. And one thing held true is that my oldest child’s youth leader didn’t stop. She didn’t stop. I love her for that. The kids were able to meet with her. She would do Zooms. She would invite them into the garage and they would be outside so that they can talk and meander and all the things.Because the kids were doing great as far as health-wise, but they weren’t doing great mental-wise.
And we’re still seeing that ripple effect today. I’ve been telling
People that
I knew, and I said this I think in 2021 as well, that the shutdown was going to start something called social autism where these kids do not know how to communicate with other people and they only know how to communicate with a device or through a device. And that is extremely dangerous, which we all know that. And here we are. So we’re combating a lot of evil right now. It truly is a struggle between good and evil. So that’s where we are stepping in. We’re trying to bring a bright light to that. I think your commitment to these kids and your commitment to your patients also shines through, hence the reason that it’s illuminating. A brighter tomorrow was my brainchild back in 2004 because that was it. It was like the beacon of hope, the shining through. That was what was given to me when I was trying to name my place.
And it just was like, no, it may not be better, but it should be brighter. And so that was always my mantra is like a brighter tomorrow. It may not be better, but I want it to be brighter. I want you to feel like you’re part of our small family. And that’s how we’ve had. We’ve had this boutique practice for years. And
Now you’re a part of it again. So I was really
Excited. Well, I know that for Illuminated Pathways, we’re always looking for holistic ways. So we really want to be the best holistic counseling Houston, Texas has to offer for all the communities no matter where we’re located. And now we get to do that now with maybe participating with some of your patients that might need our services. And so I know especially with going… Oh man, I think what lit me up too is when I saw your little training room, I’m like, “My webinar can still be a webinar, but it can also be in person.” So I’m like, “Yes.” And so I was kind of upset because the flyer we started hanging in your office over there, I forgot the word webinar. And then I thought, “No, that’s okay because I can do it right there.” And so oh man, the opportunities that just happen, and it’s not by chance, you’re so correct.
There’s no coincidence. This is truly a walk where the Lord is putting us in. He’s put us in charge and what a task. And the way he’s holding us accountable to that too, so that we’re actually able to teach people to take charge, to use their voice, to let people know that they have a right to say what they need and what they want and what they don’t want. And that idea of advocacy, that’s true. I always tell my people, if there’s one thing you learn is how to advocate respectfully and politely, but advocate so that you can know that what you’re asking for or doing, you’re getting what you’re needing. But educate. I can’t remember where I saw this or where I heard it. It might’ve been from my mentor, Kathleen Mills, but I think she said that people who get along think the same, but people who want to grow question and have conversation and learn.
And I’m like, “That’s it. You have to have conversation and that idea of not being able to have conversation anymore because I can’t believe you said that. It’s like, what? You can’t think beyond you’re just these blinders, but then they’re really blind Finders. It’s just sad. And we do see a lot of different vaccine injury people, not just what you’ve sent our way too. There’s been others that I’ve gotten and it’s so heartbreaking those who have received whether the jab and multiples, multiple jabs and try to figure out, and then they’re on major amounts of medicine, they can’t think, they can’t. And so trying to teach people how to make a task list for themselves and how to look for something new in their life or something exciting or how can you take care of yourself? This is a list now I have everybody fill out every time they come in for an appointment.
And so those might seem super basic, but after the pandemic happened in 2020, people didn’t learn how to… They couldn’t ascertain what I was asking them like, “What do you got to do today? I don’t know. ” And I’m going, “Okay, well you’re here for your appointment today, so good job. You had a task and you got yourself here to your appointment today. What else do you have to do today? Oh, is that what you’re asking?” Where prior to that, everybody carried around a daytime or everybody carried around these things and how to do. And when everybody went home, it was this mass psycho… Really it is mass psychosis of losing their mind, not knowing for sure. They didn’t realize that was happening. It was subtle at first. Of course we wanted to help out everybody, but then it went, yeah, this isn’t passing the smell test for sure.
And I already had my own example of my experience in the hospitals in May of that year because I had broken my arm in a very severe way from a bicycle accident. And so I saw it firsthand. And so in order to get treatment, I had to have a COVID test 17 times just to have surgery. My bone was separated. It was complete, what do they call that? A complete separation.
And I had to have two COVID tests the day before and the day of. I’m like, “Would you have not done surgery if I had COVID? What is this? I’m in trouble, fix my arm.” And I saw my own things, and then I lost my brother that year also, and my husband lost his mother. So it was a very rough year for just our house. But I think that idea of learning to communicate and really teaching people how to do that because the masks really did a very horrible job for the death. They couldn’t read lips anymore for children, couldn’t watch lips on parents, and that’s how they learned to communicate is to how to do things. And so teaching these things, and so we are seeing some things, but I do want to say there has been some super good growth with some of those that we’ve been working with and how to help them regain those things prior.
But those that were born or in the informidable years of growth, their brain development, everything else, they’re coming from that, but there’s still a… I don’t want to say a problem, but there’s still an issue. There’s a deficit, that’s a better word. There’s a deficit to these things. And I think that I learned a lot from you. So I know that that’s how I even got to become one of the best holistic counseling centers that Houston, Texas has to offer. So I know that for sure because there was things that I learned from you that I really didn’t ever… Well, I guess I didn’t pay attention to like you. It’s like I just do my own thing, doing my own job, doing what God called me to do. And then bam, you’re looking at those things. Is there anything else that maybe you might like to share about what specialty items might be at your new location?
Yeah, we’re exploring a lot of new things. I have a lot of cool new certificates and holistic healing. So I think you’re going to see things that are a little different in Houston than you’ve maybe seen before or in a different way. So maybe you’ve seen it before, heard it before, maybe haven’t seen that it was applied in the way that we’re going to apply some of these things, but we’re doing a lot of really great things. I mean, some of this stuff, I’ve traveled to St. Louis now for almost three years to take care of very high risk kids in the St. Louis area. And I’m applying some of the techniques that they use out there to overhear basically because it was started by that particular practice was started by an adult physician who’s a surgeon, but now is a functional medicine doctor. And so it’s been really fun because as a surgeon, you have to have that oomph where you are not actually scared.
They kind of step forward with and then think later, I guess. But that’s how they’re trained. They’re trained to be, “Let’s go. We got to do this now.” And so she has that mindset, which is nice because sometimes, especially when you’re a pediatrician, you’re like, “Let’s sit back, let’s wait, let’s just make sure this is what it is. ” And so I’ve kind of stepped into a slightly different role where I’m pushing forward a little quicker because time, especially in children is really important. I think time’s important for every human being on the planet because only God knows how many minutes we have left, how many heartbeats we have. But I think it’s important that because we know that if we take care of ourselves, it does add quality, it adds quantity, it adds so much more. And so in Houston, the Galleria area practice is going to operate very different because we are very focused on really treating the whole person.
We’re treating the person from the core. We are really excited about being able to take time with our patients. In an insurance model, you have maybe 15 minutes with a patient and that’s a long time in certain insurance models. And so this is exciting because we’ll have up to an hour and a half with a patient. So
Way different, way different. So we’re not going to be seeing patients in the same way that we see patients in Webster. They are welcome to come to either practice, but their expectations need to be understood that Webster does not operate the same way as the Galleria does. And the Galleria is going to take on patients that have a little more instability or a little more chronicity. They need a little more intensive help. So I’m pretty excited about it. I know it’s just going to open up a whole new theater for us. We’re doing things like oxygenation and ozonation of your blood. We’re just doing a whole lot of different stuff. So I think it’s going to be really, really cool.
That’s great. I know that through this process for Illuminated Pathways to be the best holistic counseling Houston, Texas has to offer, is I have come to value the holistic whole body and spirit aproach that helps better address your unique needs.This perspective gives clients access to a wider variety of therapeutic options, which is what you’re going to be offering also. And then before considering medication, while medicine does have its place, it’s not necessary in every instance. And so that’s when she was talking about getting to the root of things. We want to do that even for our own mental health, empowering them. We want to empower each and every one of you that comes through the door there to make informed choices about your treatment. And when you’re able to make informed choices about your treatment, then you’re able to then believe that the things that you’re going to be doing for yourself is you’re empowering yourself to…
Yo either want to treat the symptom or cure the cause. I know there’s a great naturopath doctor that I follow and I’ve heard several years, Dr. Peter Glidden, and I’ve learned so much from him even how to, not just my own personal life, but how to even address things in the room that can still, I’m able to still stay in my lane and yet still provide these things for people so that they go, “I had no idea that wasn’t even an option.” We can understand a little bit more about big pharma’s involvement and I have my own skepticism about what the DSM is about. And this is a Rhonda-ism. I’m not quoting that this is factual, but it is a belief I have. I believe that the DSM was made because the pharmaceutical pieces were made first and now we needed a diagnosis to go with these drugs so that they could pass out these drugs.
And then next thing you know, we got more things happening among our young people that these school shootings are shooting up things or whatever. Every single one of them have been on some sort of psychotropic drug of some sort when they find out the background from this person. For example, even I believe that school shooting, the Christian school shooting that happened in Minnesota and the one that happened in Nashville, we’re in Texas, this is banned. They were on things that made their body do things that it wasn’t supposed to do. And so I’m talking in code. I definitely don’t want this taken off, but you know how things are. And then the insurance industry. So I know Illuminated Pathways with this location, we’re going to begin to just delete as we go forward using insurances because they seem to dictate what I can and can’t do and the number of minutes I can, just like she was mentioning, 15 minutes to an hour and a half over there.
So we’re going to be really catering to these appointments and the different things that we’re going to be doing out there. But again, for Illuminated Pathways, this will be our first location that does not accept insurance. And so that is really important to know, but these other locations that we have currently do. But every location I ad, it costs me to add these insurances. And so I’m just going to jump in and take the leap of faith that God’s going to provide. He always has, and he’s led me into this venture. And the practice model, the majority trend amongst holistic practitioners is an independent practice business model. No corporate office dictating treatment quotas. And that’s what I love about my practice. And I’m sure that’s what Dr. Angie loves about what she does because many doctors over the years, they closed their doors and became members of these hospitals and then the hospitals own you, then the insurance companies own them.
And it’s like this hierarchy of it’s destructive. It just takes away these things. But I know that that’s one way for us to be the best holistic counseling Houston, Texas has to offer. Is there anything that I mentioned you want to enhance or are you – I
Was going to piggyback on that because I can tell you that since 2004 is when I opened up my practice, my independent practice. Prior to that, I was in a small single specialty group. And one of the things that I noticed is in 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016, there was a ripple effect because the ACA, the Affordable Care Act was enacted in 2013 and it really dictated down to insurance companies what patients were entitled to really and truly or what they weren’t. And so we saw this huge, huge flip-flop where our autonomy was really starting to get taken away. And in those couple of years, I can tell you that even in just my little small community, we lost six OBs in one year. So they all went to corporate medicine or they moved out of their independent practices, six of them within six months or something.
It was crazy. And that was a huge referral source for me. So now I am floundering because I’m not getting babies. Then we saw a secondary wave of where the insurance companies had control over when they were going to disperse funds to the physicians. And so there was a hold on our payments. Everyone else in the United States has to pay their bills every 30 days or so, but only physicians have to wait 90 to 120 days to get their money back. And it’s not even our money that we’re asking for. It’s not like a bill of sale because we send in a bill and they say, “Well, you’re not worth that. You’re only worth this. ” And then they send us what
They think we’re worth. And that’s something that the American mindset has to shift and understand that if you don’t care who your doctor is, then just pretend I’m not talking to you. If you don’t care, you don’t mind hopscotching around and seeing who takes your insurance and not getting continuity of care because maybe you’re relatively healthy and you’re okay with that. That’s good. But there are other people that that destroys the patient-physician relationship and it has for years. Insurance has gotten in the room with us for the last 20 years or so, and it’s very, very disruptive. And people have to understand that, and I tell this to them all the time, look, you purchased your insurance. I did not. I am not in charge. I can try. But insurance companies consistently lie to people. If you buy yourself insurance, why is it that you need an intermediary to explain your insurance to you?
That doesn’t make any sense. Why do you not have a relationship direct with your insurance or an insurance agent that can explain to you exactly what your coverage is? So I think the American people are starting to get privy to this, that there’s so much hidden that you don’t know until you actually put in the bill what you’re going to be paid for and what you’re not going to be paid for, that I tell them all the time, you’re wasting your money on your healthcare because this is not sick care, this is healthcare. And unfortunately, unless you’re willing to step to the plate and ask some different way to get your own funds back, because these people are paying $20,000 a year to an insurance company that’s giving them nothing, providing them not what they necessarily need, and they can use those dollars to go so many other places and get so much better results.
So that’s what I always want to impress on the American people is that look for other options that will suit you. You don’t want to be that circle that always has to fit into that peg circle piece. You want to make sure that you can expand and look at other options.
Yeah. I know I’m going to also piggyback just to let people know we are contracted providers with these insurance companies. And so I’ve been doing counseling. I began in a room doing counseling in 2008 and I have been now a provider with, let’s just use, I don’t know, I should even say it. That’s okay. Cigna. Been a provider of Cigna since 2015. And with all of my experience, they pay me $71. So while that might seem a lot to some people, but when you’re looking at what all goes into all that I can’t… And just recently I got a $2 raise, so do the math. So all the years experience, they just said I was worth a $2 raise. I mean, this is what insurance does. And so they dictate what the value is, then they get the bigger pieces of that money or wherever that’s coming from because you all are insured by them, for example.
But then you have huge deductibles. And then when you have huge deductibles, then you have to pay out the rest of whatever that is till your deductible is met. And so I’m going to begin to probably dwindle my insurances. And I know that’s probably going to be painful to some degree. I’ll keep some, but going onto this new location and going forward, we will not be doing insurances at any of the new locations. And so I know that for me, I’m tired of being hogtied. I’m tired of being told when to do a CPT code or when to do what kind of diagnostic code. We’re the ones in the room and they’re telling us that they won’t accept a certain code. I’m like, wait a minute.
Either you let me have the freedom to the expertise that I have or you don’t, and this is just mental health. And so imagine that on the bigger scale of things for the medical people that are really like Dr. Angie who are really working. And then all of a sudden, the only way we can get around this is by just branching out so that we can take care of your needs in such a way that you feel that you are being heard and listened to and paid attention to. And then given ideas, tools, techniques, different things, different proceses, different procedures that nowhere else allopathic medicine in general would not do because there’s no insurance coverage. So I think that sometimes you have to make a decision of what’s important for your life. And I know that when this all happened in 2020, I canceled all my other doctors.
I wasn’t doing it. So I took charge of my own life and paid attention to the Dr. Robin Armstrong and to Dr. Stella Emmanuel, Dr. Farella. These were doctors that now that are in the Houston area that became in my pocket and actually helped me with my husband when he got COVID because I had lost my brother a couple months before. So there are opportunities and things that we can do that are not mainstream. They should be, but they’re not, and they’re available for us if we want them. So that helps us be the best holistic counseling Houston, Texas has to offer. Do you have any closing statements?
No, I’m super excited. I mean, I think we’re in Texas, we need to take back our medical freedoms. We need to take back just our individuality. We need to take back our individualism and really celebrate freedom. I think medical freedom has been in the forefront now for over six years. I’ve always been very open with my patients about, look, this is how insurance works. And I think in the future, more and more people, if they’re interested in this, you and I could do a webinar on exactly how to navigate insurance and how to get out of that system and what your alternatives are, because I think that’s important too. We’ve kind of gotten into this fear mode in the United States and I always say fear not. It’s in the Bible 365 times to remind us every day to fear not. That’s what I was trying to say.
It’s all good. It’s all good.
And that’s what I tell people. I tell them that all the time. I said, we’re here to help and it’s up to you if you want to receive it, but I think that’s a huge part of it. We need to take control.
So what is the name of your new organization out there? Because I love it. I just want you to say it.
So our new building, the building itself is called the Freedom Health Institute. Yeah, I’m so stoked. I can’t wait to put that on that building. We’re getting the sign made now. And then inside is where there’s going to be different places. So Illuminating Pathways is going to be there. A Brighter Tomorrow Whole Health Center is going to be in there. And we also have a couple other, an independent nutritionist, and we’re bringing in other independents in there as well. We have all kinds of cool stuff. I mean, this is going to be, and my vision is to really make it a complete holistic center. We are going to be doing all kinds of cool stuff that really, we’re bringing in Chinese medicine, we’re bringing in all neat, neat stuff. I’m super excited for this. I mean, it’s going to give us a really big opportunity to do a lot of stuff and offer a lot of different things to different people.
It’s going to be amazing. So Freedom Health Institute, a Brighter Tomorrow company. I love it. I love it. So what better way to launch this business than in the 250th birthday of America? And so happy birthday America and happy birthday to the idea of being capitalism, being able to do the things that our founding fathers helped us get to. And so be able to freely develop business and freely go serve and freely provide tools and ideas for people to take control of themselves. Well, these are some extra things that I just wanted to make sure that you knew. Did you know that IPFT, which is Illuminated Pathways Family Therapy, has a YouTube channel? You’re on it right now. So hopefully you’ll share this with other people to let them know what’s going on in the Galleria area. And we also have, once again, I want to mention about King’s Academy, which is an autism school in Missouri City.
Dr. Lewis, she is an amazing leader of that school and she’s got decades of experience. And so you definitely will have a great voice there. And then Conroe, we are hosting a marriage intensive the week of July 23rd through the 25th. And the goals of this will be to help couples with relationship commitment, conflict resolution, security and trust, communication, compassion and intimacy among many, many other things. And the accommodations will be at the Hyatt Regency in Conroe and then we’ll have the workshops at a different location offsite. So you’ll have a way to go back to your hotel this day. If you want to know more information about that, you can call 972-768-0754. Again, that’s 972-768-0754. Or you can reach out to our website, which is illuminatedpathways-therapy.net. And I believe there will be in the bottom thirds of our video here, you’ll have the link right in front of you and a phone number.
So please take the time to reach out, get yourself scheduled. You won’t want to miss that if your marriage is struggling. We also have, again, the reality of kids in technology, and we want to help parents know how to protect their homes and protect their children from these things that their curiosity wants to go look at, and then they’re being preyed upon all at the same time. So this is a great way to welcome an overview of the workshop awareness for parents, high risk predator ideas, guidance for screen time, age-appropriate limits, and books to help you with protecting your family. Those are things that we will do. The next one that we will have will be August 29th, and it’s at 10 o’clock for 90 minutes. Again, we will host it over in the… It is a webinar, but we can also host it in the Galleria area with that center we have.
So we most definitely can have an opportunity to do things face-to-face and in person. Is there anything upcoming for you that you want to highlight?
Yeah, join us at Facebook, Abrighter Tomorrow Family Health and Wellness, Abrighter Tomorrow Pediatrics. Angie Farella, MD. You will see highlights. We are putting together that family therapy group for, really, it’s just a social group for parents to get together of kids with neurodivergent autism. So we are doing that pretty regularly, at least once a month. And then we also are doing A Brighter Path to A Brighter Mind. If you’re interested in that, you can call our office at 281-332-0500, or you can look me up on americaoutloud.news. That is my radio show. I go into depth about A Brighter Tomorrow Path. I’m sorry, A Brighter Path for a Brighter Mind. I have a radio show there and a podcast on there that you can listen to, and I go in depth for about an hour on what we are doing for these kids. So I think I’m super excited.
This is going to be one of those great years. Lots of growth, lots of stretching, but I think we’re going to do really amazing things in the next couple years, honestly.
Great.
250 years. We’re the foundation for the next 250 years. That’s what I’m going to do.
Yeah, right? And for such a time as this that God has us alive during this time to see it’s a wild ride, I could say, but it’s been really good. I’m pretty excited about that. Well, Dr. Angie, thank you so much for taking time to spend with me today and I so look forward to our new journey where the Lord’s going to lead. May we continue to be obedient to what he’s called us to do and take care of his people. So again, big hugs to you. Super thankful to be able to partner with you again and thank you for the opportunity.
Oh no. Amen. Amen, girl. I can’t wait. This is going to be amazing.
Yeah, it is. It is. All right. Well, hang on. I’m going to ahead and stop the video, but just hang on with me just one second.