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…
Holistic Health
Bring it, Fall!
In the past two days, I’ve actually done two things I really wanted to do and done them with joy. I spent the day at the Natural Products Expo East where I talked with some truly inspirational people about amazing products. And I talked with moms and other local leaders in the holistic parenting community…
Modeling moderation when mama abstains
As a woman whose health can’t support her drinking any alcohol, I feel pretty out of the mainstream with all the funny jokes out there about needing a drink. I can’t even tolerate decaf coffee anymore, so I feel similarly out of step when others talk about the day not starting without java. It’s not…
Our days, these days
Welcome to the March 2015 Carnival of Natural Parenting: Day in the Life This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month our participants have given us a special glimpse into their everyday. *** Since I’m always wondering where the time…
Failure to thrive in motherhood
The moment I realized I could no longer handle teaching high school, I was sitting in a Teaching for Change-organized class with Enid Lee, one of the authors of Beyond Heroes and Holidays: A Practical Guide to K-12 Anti-Racist, Multicultural Education and Staff Development and a huge force in the area of critical literacy, which was…
Believing in work (and parenting): Femworking conference interview and reflections
What a delightful conversation I had last week with Kelley Sanabria, founder of Femworking, LLC and Nicole Dash, author of Tiny Steps Mommy blog and the co-chair with Kelley of the upcoming Blogger and Small Business Conference taking place in Arlington on October 26. They offered a discount for covering the conference for TheDCMoms.com, and…
A snapshot of health: tired adrenals
In the past few weeks, I’ve had to cancel some appointments for my own healing because my children were sick and I didn’t have childcare. I got so down, I canceled even more that I could have made; I got overwhelmed and started to question how I was ever going to feel better. It felt…
Morning with a high-maintenance mama
If “high-maintenance” means “requiring a lot of attention,” put my picture by the definition. With all the things I’m having to do these days just to make my body function (or to figure out what that even means in this shifting landscape of health), I feel like my children’s lives are passing me by, and…
Yoga as birthday gift
I turned 40 on Monday. On my birthday eve — last Sunday — I had the most beautiful yoga class with a small group of friends. I walked in anxious and grumpy and walked out grateful and open-hearted. This weekend, I am off on a retreat through Beloved Yoga at the lovely Kent Manor Inn….
A day of focus
That crazy sound you hear is my head spinning so fast I think my eyeballs will melt from the inside out. In other words, today blew my mind. I left the house at 9 a.m. for a workshop with healer Dr. Claudia Welch on breath, Ayurveda, and hormones. I left that gig an hour early…
Food for thought
I can’t stand it. After 27 days of writing poetry, I want to write about nutrition! Aside from the fact that tomatoes are out of season and that I didn’t preserve any local ones, and aside from the fact that I’d once all but banned even gluten-free pasta from our house as a processed food…
20 years ago today: How I Met Their Father
I met my future husband at a dorm room party on Friday, April 24, 1992. Twenty years ago today. “You were babies!” people exclaim when I tell them this. Yes and no. I was 19, he almost 21. We did, in some ways, grow up together. We’ve seen the world change together, from days of…
Diary of a wimpy kid’s mom
My son is not strong. He is, as the kids say, a shrimp. On the soccer field, the kids complain when picking teams, “But he’s so small.” When one of his good friends found out he was taking a sports class after school, he told my boy, “You suck at sports.” I imagine he’s probably…
Back on the mat: $5 class special at Radiance!
When my friend and neighbor asked if I would watch her son so that she could take advantage of a $5 yoga deal, I said, “How about I offer up my babysitter instead and go with you?” I’ve been meaning to get to Old Town Alexandria’s Radiance Yoga for a while, but it’s just a…
Blooming trees and buzzing Bs
Eighty degrees in March, and nothing is at rest. The flowers are up, stretching their arms after nary a winter’s nap. The magnolia has exploded into blossom way before its time, dropping its once-precious petals onto the ground where they turn slipper and slimy like a million mini banana peels. After she sat down on…
Mediocre would be good enough
No one has to convince me not to try to be perfect. Okay, I do have perfectionist tendencies in some areas, but when I read about mothers having epiphanies that they don’t need to keep the house spotless, I feel like I am living on some other planet. One with lots of spots. My floors…
Now is the time for now
The instant I read the words, I regretted picking up my BlackBerry that one last time before going to bed. A well-meaning relative of mine had read my recent post about my health and my leaky gut problem and told me: “This is not the time to volunteer for things.” She intended to point out…
My gut, she leaks
I wouldn’t have even bothered to do the test if I didn’t think I had digestive problems. I know I do. But some of the information I got from my labs this week was information I didn’t even know could be found. It’s been 11 months since I went on the GAPS diet, which has…
Staying healthy this winter (with a giveaway!)
For me, food is medicine. If health is a priority, take out foods that don’t work for your body — because of allergies, because they rev you up (like caffeine or sugar), because they draw you down (like alcohol) or because they add to inflammation (like sugar and a lot of the Standard American Diet)…
A weekend of holistic health and blogging
A tale of two conferences I’ve had a split personality this weekend. Much of my time has been spent at the wonderful blogging conference, Blogalicious. Since I first arrived at the conference Friday morning, I’ve met great people, caught up with friends, and learned a ton about social media and media resources in general. A…