Hey there! It’s been a minute!
Apologies for {metaphorically} dropping off the face of the earth for a few months; but sometimes life gets tricky and you have to enter survival mode.
This time last year I was doing everything to learn how to start a blog. This included finding a website host, designing my own branding, and renting multiple library books on how to use WordPress. It was exciting but also scary to think of putting time and money into something so vulnerable for the sake of my ~passion~ project.
I launched in April of 2023 and was up and running. I was so excited to share all things holistic health in the hopes of helping others who have struggled walking the same path in the western medical model that I have dealt with my entire life. I thought I had everything figured out.
After 2.5 months of blog posts, life really knocked me down. Things came to light that I had been suppressing for longer than I care to admit. One day my body just said “no more”. I was chronically stressed, my nervous system was deregulated, I couldn’t control my emotions, I lost 30% of my body weight, and I had barely enough energy to even brush my teeth. I had a low grade fever for 3 months. I was forced to put a lot of my life on the back burner and even took a medical leave of absence from work.
In my 12 weeks of medical leave, I was depressed, isolated, and at times I slept for 18 hours a day. I wasn’t able to even stand for more than a few minutes at a time, much less go for a coveted walk around my neighborhood. I missed out on friend’s weddings, time with family, and even cancelled a delayed honeymoon trip to Italy with Ross.
I don’t write any of this to make you feel sorry for me, but to show you how important it is to take care of yourself each and every day. This can look vastly different depending on what is going on in your life. You can’t just meditate for 5 minutes and call it self-care.
Our culture teaches us that we need to be feeling amazing and hustle all of the time. If we’re not feeling amazing, we take a pill to make it go away. We’ve really accepted this “pill for every ill” mentality. In reality, our bodies are not designed for this. But what they are designed for is healing. Despite what others were telling me to do, I listened to my body.
During this isolating time, I found that I didn’t even have the energy to read, watch tv, or scroll on Instagram. My body just wanted me to simply “be”. I think a lot of us have never learned how to do this – I know I hadn’t. We have to always be thinking, moving, or accomplishing something. I learned how to “just be” mostly because it was all that I was able to do. I’d lay on the couch for hours looking out the window, meditating, or listening to Dead & Co’s live concerts with my eyes closed (bless you, John Mayer).
I learned a lot during this time – more than I can capture in one post. Some of it, I’m still working on putting into words.
This is what I know, the future of Penny Health is imperfect, spontaneous, and real. Most importantly it is here because of God’s will. As far as a spiritual component to Penny Health goes, this is not something I ever thought of when I launched. However, now it is impossible to ignore the presence of God in my life. I can’t help but share my story with anyone who would like to hear it.
My next post will be my testimony.
From there things will based on how I’m feeling and what is on my heart to share. Previously, I was posting once a week, at the same time, on the same day. And really it became another checklist item in my life (despite feeling so strongly in what I needed to share). These days, I’m feeling like there may be times I post once a month and other times where I post twice a week. The only thing I have planned is to write based on feeling, rather than based on the fact that I promised one blog post every Tuesday.
As difficult as it was, I am so grateful for the time I spent reflecting and learning to “just be”. I look forward to sharing more with you and embarking on this new chapter of Penny Health together.
