Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Ashley Iadanza. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Ashley, appreciate you joining us today. One of our favorite things to hear about is stories around the nicest thing someone has done for someone else – what’s the nicest thing someone has ever done for you?

The kindest thing anyone has ever done for me is given me an opportunity. When you have a low following, and someone that has been doing this for a long time is willing to share their spotlight with you, it’s huge. This happens a lot in the celiac disease community and I’m incredibly grateful for it.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I was diagnosed with celiac disease about 16 years ago and thought my life was over. I had always wanted to travel the world and so much of traveling and experiencing culture is the food. That felt impossible with having an autoimmune condition where I had to be so strict with my diet. But over time, I realized there were possible avenues to traveling and enjoying it while getting to be safe and healthy. I wanted to share that with people. So now I do a podcast and have a social media platform that shares my travel adventures and the lessons I learn along the way.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

We have a thing we call in the celiac community called getting “glutened”. This means we accidentally ingest something with gluten in it and become very ill. For me, it’s being sick for at least 6 hours and then being in a fog for days. My worst fear while traveling, especially because I usually travel solo, is getting glutened and having to take care of myself through it. That worst fear came true. I was traveling from Barcelona to Germany I believe, and as I got to the airport I realized the bagel I had that morning was definitely not gluten free. Luckily, I was 6 hours early to the airport but it was a struggle to get all of my luggage to the bathroom in enough time. I was scared and felt super lonely and defeated. But I reminded myself that I will come out the other side stronger. Now that I’ve been through it once, this won’t be such a big fear all the time. That’s been the case. I made it through to the other side and somehow made my flight on time with no issues. Everything with travel seemed easy after that.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

For me, the most rewarding experience has been someone sharing with me that they took a chance and either traveled at all, or took a chance and traveled on their own just because they saw me doing it and learned it was possible.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://theglutenfreedvocate.substack.com/
• Instagram: @theglutenfreeadvocate
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theglutenfreeadvocate
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@The-GlutenFree-Advocate