Blog Posts and Articles

Lately, I’ve received several inquiries about the status of my Thyroid health cookbook and why my newsletters have seemingly fallen off the face of the earth. Both good questions that deserve a thorough answer! 

This sums it up:

But I’d love to share some detail, if you’d like to hear my story.

If you follow us on Facebook, you can perhaps decode at least part of this image. I’m a first-time mom to beautiful, four-month old Harriet Grunewald. We adopted her in March in Florida and my world hasn’t been the same since. Here is a blog post I wrote when she was 13 days old.

She is the light of our lives and my heart isn’t big enough to contain all the love I feel for my daughter. I could gush on and on about her – let’s just say that her giggles, coos, smiles, and squeals delight and fulfill me like nothing else. My time with her is so precious and being a new mom is FANTASTIC. It doesn’t feel like work to me – it’s my new oh-so-satisfying and FUN “job.”

It doesn’t hurt that she’s been sleeping through the night since she was six weeks old. (I admit this with hesitancy – some moms have jokingly said, “I hate you!”)

Around the time that we were waiting for Harriet’s birth mother to go into labor, my father became very ill. He’s had health issues for some time, but things took a turn for the worse in March and we didn’t know if he’d make it until we brought Harriet home. Bless his heart, he hung on for another three months – he passed away four weeks ago, on Harriet’s three-month birthday. 

Harriet is a well-traveled infant. This spring, as my dad’s health declined, we flew back and forth many times from Minnesota, where I live, to Missouri, where my dad lived. It was so important to me to not only see my dad as much as I could, but to also make sure that he got as much time with Harriet as possible. 

I’m not looking for sympathy for my dad’s passing – he was ready to go. He really wanted to make it to his 80^th birthday, which dang it all, he surpassed by two weeks. And we were ready, as the final days of his life were no way to live. But the emotional and energetic toll prior to and after his passing has been challenging, as I’m sure anyone who has lost a parent can understand. I’m still in the disbelief stage.

One of the reasons that I included an image of Minnesota above is because of my other job – making sure Harriet is well stocked with donated breast milk. My husband and I have taken several road trips throughout Minnesota to obtain breast milk from wonderful, generous, loving women who overproduce or who have weaned their babies but want to provide for others. Amazing, right? Amazing.

Human Milk for Human Babies is a fantastic, international milk-sharing resource and I’ve made it my job to connect with as many women as I can so that Harriet is on breast milk for a year. We’re a third of the way there, with a chest freezer pretty well stocked. And given our success so far, I’m not too worried about keeping our supply up. I swear, getting a new donation of milk feels like winning the lottery. Seriously.

So what else? Well, the demand for thyroid and adrenal health coaching certainly hasn’t waned and, if I do say so myself, I’ve done a darn good job of working with many clients these last few months.

Many of you came to me through my Purposeful Intention Empowerment Series – version 2.0 of my annual event where I interview various health and wellness experts on all sorts of topics. We were halfway through this nine-week event when my husband and I adopted and it was pretty easy to keep the wheels under the series of interviews. (Stay tuned for information on version 3.0, coming in early 2014.)

I’ve really had to cut back on taking new clients as of late, not only for my sanity, but also because I need to get crackin’ further on my Thyroid health cookbook, which I know there is a lot of excitement about. There is nothing else out there like what Lisa, my co-author, and I are creating, plain and simple. She’s a Culinary Nutritionist and recipe-creating machine and has also suffered from Hashimoto’s (autoimmune hypothyroidism). We are a little behind our original publishing schedule, but it was self-imposed and life has been full for both of us. Never fear, the cookbook is coming!

As many of you know, my Administrator, Mary, is becoming a nutrition coach for Healthful Elements – she’ll be certified in October. Her expertise is Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes and like me, she’s also going to be coaching clients with thyroid and adrenal issues. She has a son with Type 1 and is a walking talking encyclopedia of how to manage blood sugar and insulin.

She’s put her law degree to good use, “…researching and reviewing everything [she] could find about managing blood sugar and holistic nutrition.” Click here to learn about how to get on her waiting list for her diabetes coaching programs.

This is a big deal for me – and very, very, very exciting. I’ve felt like an army of one for too long and having Mary’s administrative support has been a Godsend. Now that she’s becoming a nutrition coach, I can really feel the potential of what Healthful Elements will become. (Hint: there will be more “Marys.”)

Accordingly, we are doing a major website upgrade. We hope to have it live by October, when Mary is certified and ready to hit the ground running with her coaching. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while anyway, and Mary’s forthcoming coaching practice was the perfect fire-under-the-butt I needed to make it happen. We are super, SUPER excited about it.

Another thing that will take place this fall is my completion of Dr. Sara Gottfried’s Hormone Mastermind Program. You can find a directory of participants here, where you’ll see that I’ve been standing shoulder-to-shoulder with doctors and other holistic healthcare pracitioners. We have our own private online community where we share questions, insights, opinions, and support one another by weighing in on challenging client situations. I’ve learned so much!

Lastly, The Roundup is back. It’s something I started almost two years ago and let slide. Honestly, I was surprised at how many people expressed disappointment – I wasn’t sure people were actually reading The Roundup.

So it’s back. Each Friday (sometimes on Thursday (lately, Friday has been a swimming or berry-picking day – or both)), we’ve been posting on our blog informative and inspirational quotes, links, and articles that inspired us throughout the week. You can check back on our blog or like our Facebook page, as The Roundup is posted there. A few weeks ago, I added a “For Parents” section at the end of each Roundup that includes information on holistic parenting.

Thanks for letting me fill you in on my world. I like to “keep it real” and I appreciate you taking the time to read this. Please let us know if you have any questions or comments, either below, or by emailing inquiries [at] healthfulelements [dot] com.