The rise and fall and rise of Deliciously Ella

Last week, Deliciously Ella founder Ella Mills wrote a very powerful piece for Grazia.

In it, she describes feelings of ‘self-hatred and sense of failure’ coupled with ‘rock-bottom self-esteem’, which peaked with intrusive thoughts after the birth of her daughter.

Some of you might be thinking, ‘Wait, are we talking about the beautiful woman with the picture-perfect family and health food empire? What on earth does she have to feel bad about?’ (And I know people think this, because they have said it to me in the past week.) 

This got me thinking about how the story of Deliciously Ella perfectly encapsulates a problem with how we treat women in the public-facing part of the wellness world.

Just over a decade ago, Ella Mills was a student and had been diagnosed with a condition called postural tachycardia syndrome, a nervous system abnormality that meant she couldn’t control her heart rate and blood pressure. She was prescribed a cocktail of medications, with limited success, and sank into …