The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star Mikayla Matthews is officially on island time after moving to Hawaii amid her health journey.
“Travel with me to heal my skin!” Matthews, 26, captioned an Instagram video on Wednesday, April 29, in which she revealed she was leaving Utah for Hawaii while continuing her search for “healing.”
The reality star — who shares four children with husband Jace Terry — documented herself packing an oversized suitcase (which cost her $200 at the airport) and getting ready for takeoff. (Matthews and Terry announced their separation during season 4 of SLOMW, which aired in March, amid intimacy issues. The couple, however, spent time together as a family in California in April.)
Matthews took two of her four kids along for the trip, which she said was hopefully going to help her combat her ongoing battle with chronic inflammatory response syndrome. CIRS is an “innate immune dysregulation” involving “a range of symptoms that simultaneously [affect] multiple organ systems,” per the National Library of Medicine.
“Officially starting the new chapter. In the most beautiful place, how STUNNING is this resort!?!” she wrote via TikTok on Wednesday, showing off her digs at the Westin Maui.
Although Matthews had a few skin flare-ups because she was “stressed,” she told her followers upon arrival, “I’m just so excited to be here. Positive vibes.”
Matthews’ move to Hawaii came one week after she returned home to Utah following a month away.
The TV personality, who has documented her health struggles on SLOMW, explained on April 22 that she was “terrified” of returning to Utah after being in California for three weeks and in Costa Rica for five days.
Matthews explained via an Instagram video that after living a month away, she felt “a little more normal without these flares.”
She got emotional, saying that once she was back in Utah “in this environment,” her skin almost immediately began to have a reaction. “I’m just surviving,” Matthews said of her life in Utah, while she was actually “living” in California and Costa Rica — even if the chronic illness wasn’t totally gone.
“I want to go to Switzerland and do a detox retreat,” Matthews said at the time, confessing that her health problems have “completely stripped me of so much happiness, of so much time with my kids that I’m never going to get back.”
One week later, Matthews uprooted her life for the coastal air of Hawaii ahead of her planned detox in Europe. But once she arrived in Hawaii, she broke down thinking about how lucky she is to be able to afford treatment and move at a moment’s notice.
“I think every single day how grateful I am to be in the position that I’m in,” she said in a separate Instagram video posted on Wednesday. “The stress of having to heal your body and having to worry about taking care of your kids or paying your bills — it’s just so overwhelming.”
Matthews noted that because of her financial privilege, she wanted to pay it forward and bring one of her followers who is also “dealing with chronic illness” along with her to the European detox retreat.
“[I would] pay for your flight, pay for your treatment at the detox center that I’m going to,” she concluded. “So if you or anyone you know will benefit from this, I’m going to leave a link in my bio for you to just share what you’re going through.”
