Living with Intention

Happy New Year! Here we are 2 days into 2023. Have you started any of your resolutions yet? Do you even set resolutions for yourself?

I’ve never been one for resolutions. The beginning of a new year for me just seems to be another day. With a past working in academia there are multiple starts to a new year. September marks the start of the academic calendar. July marked the new fiscal year. Maybe you’d rather mark a new year with your birthday. In general the concept of time is one I’ve been contemplating lately.

After having a kid it seems like the years just fly by now. Regardless, I spent a good amount of time in December reflecting on the year that just ended. The one thing that stood out to me was that we didn’t have any family photos done last year. I realized this as I was thinking about putting a holiday card together. Such a silly thing to get caught up on (first world problems, I know).

Growing up our holiday card included a newsletter with life updates that my parents wrote up to share with our loved ones far and near. So as I reflected on the year and not having pictures done, I realized how fast the year flew by. 2022 was the year of transitions for me. I finally found a family photo from a trip to Arizona in January 2022 (note to self take more candids with my son and husband) to use for our New Year card and wrote up a little paragraph to include.

After starting my coaching business in 2021 and successfully working with clients (we now have 2 babies born) and another on the way from past clients, I took 2022 off from 1:1 work. I began to create and build out a preconception course which I will be finishing up early this year. The time off came for personal reasons as well. I transitioned out of a job that I had for the past 8 years and I taught a college course for the first time in 8 years, adding much to my to do list from creating lesson plans and assignments to actual teaching and grading, on top of my duties as a mom and wife. Not to mention, I squeezed in writing a book - My Awakening: a pregnancy guide and memoir of a first-time mom with autoimmunity.

Back in March of 2022, my husband and I also decided that we would like to grow our family. I feel very vulnerable sharing this information with my community, but in light of this decision, I decided I had to walk to talk and take my health to the next level as I am aware that maternal (and paternal) health preconception can make a difference in the long term health of future baby.

In doing so, I began to work with a new practitioner to detox mold from a past mold exposure. I knew that the mold was an issue, but I never took the time to address it. But when I recently found out that mycotoxins (toxins given off by mold spores) can pass through the placenta, I made the decision to delay our conception journey.

While this past mold exposure did not stop me from conceiving my first son, it is a root cause of why I know I’m not feeling 100% my best yet. One of my goals while working with clients is the help them get to the root of their health issues that may or may not be keeping them from conceiving. The benefit of being a health coach with a chronic illness is that I’ve been through it all. Luckily, many of my clients won’t have the same health woes I’ve experienced, but it’s the personal experience that I’ve lived through that makes me the coach I am today in addition to my formal training.

This new personal health journey also led to a new job working for a functional naturopath. This job is much more aligned with helping people improve their health than my job in higher education. So between all the transitions with work, and life I needed the break from “marketing” myself to get clients into my coaching business. I have no problem with sharing that I hate marketing on social media because that is authentic to who I am. Social media is draining but most if not all of my clients have come from social media in some way, and for that I am grateful for a way to connect with so many future moms. With 2023 upon us I am ready to get back into the game of coaching as it fits into my current life. That means I will be focusing energy on finishing my preconception course, and taking limited 1:1 clients. If you’re interested in finding out what it would be like to work with me, feel free to reach out to schedule a FREE discovery call.

With whatever 2023 brings my goal is to live with intention. To focus on the present moment. To make sure that my habits, my day to day behavior is a reflection of the life I want to live. This might look like slowing before acting so that I can make a decision that will best support me.

Maybe this means putting the phone down more often and picking up a paper book. Maybe it means setting reminders on your phone to get up and stretch more often. Maybe it means actually moving out of my comfort zone and doing the hard work to support my mental health.

I’ll be honest, doing this mold detox had me feeling more fatigued lately. I got comfortable with “doing nothing". I thought I was listening to my body. But by not doing anything different my mindset was staying the same. I’m sick or my body isn’t ready to have another baby. Not the mindset I want for myself, or any of my clients that want to conceive in the future.

By deciding to live with intention, in the past week I’ve been more intentional about getting time outside multiple times of the day. This behavior change helps to support my circadian rhythm, or the body’s internal clock. By supporting the internal clock I’m helping my body know when to send appropriate hormonal signaling. Hormones help our body communicate, and we want this communication to happen optimally.

As you can see this isn’t a grand New Year’s Resolution it is a simple reframing of how I think about my daily life and habits. By making small changes over time, you can expect big changes in how you feel.

My new practitioner always says, slow is fast and fast is slow. We slow down our progress by trying to move too fast. This come from our on demand society. I believe we will feel more alive, more human, more ready to take on the world and whatever it throws at us when we begin to slow down and live with intent. I hope you will join me in being more intentional with how you spend your time and the choices you make day to day, moment to moment.

Here’s to a great 2023, and I hope it brings you the baby you are longing for to start or grow your family if that is in your plans!