Before the long days of summer parenting melt my brain, I want to capture some of the good that happened this spring. I wrote in late April about what life looked like in the first two months of my separation from my husband. Daily journaling for myself has become very important, but time capsules captured…
Holistic Health
What this spring brings
After BlogHer Health, I did lots of thinking about purpose and passion, about time and transition, about mothering and more. The month of January stretched wide, like the mouth of an animal whose jaws seem to magically open to the horizon. I began using The Best Part of My Day Healing Journal and began understanding how…
Recap: Inspiring BlogHer18 Health conference!
BlogHer18 Health, the first health-focused conference produced by BlogHer and SheKnows Media, was a terrific two days full of inspiring speakers, education and connection. To say that I’m glad I went is a profound understatement! It was terrific to be in a space with a shared language of health and wellness being spoken everywhere! I loved it! More…
On screens, suicide and surviving
It was a year ago that I got clear just how profoundly my brother’s suicide nearly 30 years earlier had affected my life. I’d started to think about its impact on my health when I read Donna Jackson Nakazawa’s The Last Best Cure in 2013 and, in July 2015, Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Biology…
Busy spring!
The first two weeks of May have been packed. The month started with a Clean Air Awareness event I helped to organize. It was successful and I hope will lead to more awareness about clean air habits, especially people turning off their cars while parked at school. That drives me crazy! The event went well…
Water me like a new lawn or watch me wither
My lawn and I have a lot in common. We both have struggled over the past several years, and we both require a lot of maintenance to thrive. When we first moved into this home that we fully renovated on the inside, there was no lawn. There were dozens – hundreds? – of baby oak…
Behind the scenes with Jennifer Robins of Predominantly Paleo
It’s super exciting to watch a friend be as successful as Jennifer Robins of Predominantly Paleo blog and author of five cookbooks including the new Paleo Kids Cookbook that comes out on September 6. I met Jennifer when she came to a Holistic Moms meeting I organized with Stacy Toth of Paleo Parents as our…
The highs and the lows of living full out in the world with chronic illness
I felt so much stronger this year. My energy was better. I made it through that whole long spring time of Mercury Retrograde with nary a blip in my emotional mojo. Morning yoga was a regular thing, and I’d been walking or using the elliptical with some regularly. I had been making progress on my…
Lab report & retort
If you don’t think blood test results from the lab are super exciting, I get it. It’s not like I expected to be distracted the entire afternoon by their bolded “high” numbers. I would have preferred to actually look at my children, to attend to them instead of breaking the rules about no screen time…
Declaring my love…for essential oils
Here is the post where I share that I am getting serious about incorporating essential oils into my family’s healing regimen. This time, it’s for real. I’ve been using essential oils for a long time and have been ordering them through a distributor since 2003! For a while, I built up a supply, loved some…
What I’ve Been Up To!
It was February the last time I wrote, in the wake of a Femworking meeting after which two members challenged me to think about what success means to me. Things have been moving a lot since then! I was also getting some coaching and working with a therapist, both of which helped me to integrate…
What would “success” look like
Today I was challenged to define success. This was at the end of a networking meeting, and I was spinning my wheels about what I’m trying to achieve with Mindful Healthy Life vs. what seems realistically possible given the commitments I have to my health, to my family, and to my community. Well, that was…
Broken
I felt broken. Like a camera that had been stepped on and would never take another in-focus picture. It’s hard to know what to attribute to what, but I think food was a big part of it. The short version is that I felt moody the day after Thanksgiving and horrible the day after that…
A blissful hour: Massage Envy review
When I heard that Massage Envy was looking for review bloggers from TheDCMoms.com, I relished the idea of a free massage. However, as someone with chemical sensitivities, I was worried that the place or its products might have fragrances that might trigger a reaction. Fortunately, the manager of the Potomac Yard location in Arlington assured me…
Interviewing a local leader – D.C.’s lil omm yoga studio owner Pleasance Silicki
My blog work today was to post an interview with a local – and national – leader in the children and family yoga scene here in Metro DC, Pleasance Silicki, owner of lil omm yoga studio. Mom of two Pleasance shared with me how she made the difficult decision to close her studio and how she…
Slippage
Whew, this month is kicking my behind. Or at least this week is. So much stuff to attend and cover, so much school stuff – all-day field trip Monday, two health committee meetings today. Business-building phone calls and interviews… Trying to build a team… I am waking early and exercising and writing. But I’m also…
Winter health tip #1: Homemade broth
Inspired by a friend who has a cold, I thought I’d do a series of winter health tips. My top favorite way to stay healthy in winter is to always have homemade bone broth around. If you can boil water, and if you can roast a chicken – or even if you can buy an…
Taking the message to heart
I had a wonderful time this weekend at the National Kids Yoga Conference. But I did end up missing the last hour so that I could heed the advice of Leah Kalish of Move with Me Yoga Adventures: to take care of yourself before your To-Do list. Or, well, maybe I kind of mixed them…
What I did today
Today I did write before the kids got up, but nothing personal for here. So behold a partial accounting of my day. Today, I: wrote this play review about Hansel & Gretel put together this quick weekend preview of DC-area wellness events after some research, emails, texts and a phone call added this School Garden Meetup…
My Experience Wish-List
On my yoga mat this morning, I had that feeling you get when you are addicted to exercising and you have just gotten a hit of the drug. I had just spent 22 minutes on the elliptical, which I’ve done (or exceeded) nearly every day of late, except yesterday. It’s been regularly followed by yoga,…