About Annie

I didn’t build this because I had it all figured out.

I built it because I know what it feels like to look at your own body and think, “What happened to me?”

Annie Chitate, RN wearing a Health Is Wealth shirt
The real beginning
I was a nurse. I knew the language. And I still found myself searching for answers.

There were seasons when my body changed faster than my confidence could keep up. My weight felt heavy. One of my hips would lock. My hair came out in patches. I did what women do when we’re trying to survive something quietly: I figured out how to hide it.

That is a strange place to be when you are also the person other people come to for health answers.

I knew how to care for patients. I knew how to read a chart. I knew how to follow a plan. But none of that automatically taught me how to understand the whole picture of my own body, my hormones, my stress, my food, my life, and the way all of those things were talking to each other.

That gap changed the way I nurse, teach and coach. I stopped asking only, “What is the symptom?” and started asking, “What is the body trying to say?”
Annie Chitate, RN
Why Everyday Nurse exists

Women deserve more than “everything looks normal.”

I spent years around women who had real questions but not enough time, language or context to ask them. Sometimes the most important conversation happened in the hallway after the official one was over.

That bothered me. Because a woman can be smart, responsible and doing everything she knows to do and still be completely confused by what is happening in her own body.

Everyday Nurse grew from a simple instinct: explain it. Make it plain. Give her enough understanding to participate in her own care. Help her know what to ask, what to notice, and where she can begin.

Not because doctors do not matter. They do. But because fifteen minutes cannot always hold a woman’s whole life.

The mirror moment
One day my daughters showed me what I was teaching without saying a word.

I was standing in the mirror, pinching my belly and criticizing my body. One of my little girls heard me.

I saw the lesson land in real time. Not the lesson I wanted to teach. The lesson I was actually teaching.

That moment stopped me. Because our daughters and granddaughters learn womanhood by watching us. They learn how to speak to their bodies. They learn whether aging means disappearing. They learn whether a woman gets to take up space, have needs, care for herself and still be loving.

That is why this work became bigger than food, hormones or weight for me.

If I help a woman change the way she sees herself, I may be helping the women behind her too.
What I believe

Health should make your life bigger, not smaller.

I am not interested in making women spend the rest of their lives obsessing over food, numbers and perfect routines. That is not freedom.

I care about the health underneath the life.

Be there for your family.
Keep moving.
Feel like yourself again.
Bring sexy back.
Take the trip.
Finish the book.
Run the business.
Complete your purpose.
Annie Chitate in a Health Is Wealth shirt
Annie Chitate with her husband Joel and their six children Annie Chitate with Barbara O'Neill
The life behind the work

I teach sustainability because I need it too.

I’m married to Joel, who is also a registered nurse, and we are raising six children. There are schedules, groceries, work, ministry, dishes, dreams, tired days and very real life happening around here.

So if a plan requires a woman to disappear from her life in order to become healthy, I am not impressed by the plan.

I want what works at home. I want what still works on a yellow day when you are tired, busy, stressed or caregiving. I want the kind of wellness our children can watch us live, not just hear us preach.

That is also why faith is woven through the work. I believe our bodies are worth stewarding because our lives are worth living. Service, family and purpose are not side notes. They are part of the reason.

The line I hope you keep

Love the girl you’re in.

Not the girl you were at 22. Not the girl you think you have to become before you deserve your own kindness. This one. The woman standing here now, with years behind her and life still in front of her.