Empower Your Inner Architect: Building a Life of Epic Wellness

I'd like to introduce you to Flo.  Nope. Not the same Flo all you ladies think I am referring to! There is a special Flo in the nursing world--she's the one that pretty much established nursing as a respected profession. I'm talking about Florence Nightingale. Now, doesn't her name just SOUND heavenly? I mean, how could anything go wrong if you were being cared for by Nurse Nightingale? Flo was of the mindset that every woman at sometime in her life would need to take on a nursing role. Think about it. How many of you have children? Are taking care of elderly parents? Babysit a younger brother or sister? Flo wanted ALL women to benefit from her discoveries so they could care for others. October 16-22 is International Infection Prevention Week. We are all exhausted in our conversations about COVID 19, so we aren't even going to address that. I thought Flo and I could bring you back to the basics of infection prevention so you can see where it all started.  It was dur...

October is a huge month in the world of mental health. Mental Illness Awareness Week is October 4-10. National Depression Screening Day falls on October 6 th . October 10 th recognizes World Mental Health Day, and October is even heralded as National Bullying Prevention Month—a practice that has tremendous damaging effects on the mental health of anyone, but especially our youth. Now, my intention is NOT to steal the thunder of your Mental Health Monday Blogger. In fact, as of this moment, I give mental health over to its rightful day of the week. I only needed to mention mental health as a lead-in to my topic today. But I AM going to dip back into Mental Health’s September subject to help support today’s health discussion. Now, remember when I said that I can find humor in any life experiences? I lied. Someone very close to me is amazing. This someone has a great family, supportive parents, loving siblings, good friends, and a pain-in-the-butt dog that will only behave for he...

WHO? HIJACKED? SEPTEMBER? I cannot even believe this month is over. Hopefully, you and your family are all back into your routines of insanity (as opposed to your unstructured summers of chaos.) My children are all adults now, but I still have the occasional nightmare where all my kids are in diverse activities in different places, and I cannot get to all of them in time to pick them up before dark. You would THINK I could clone myself in my dreams. But it doesn’t happen. I must choose what child to leave alone and afraid. Yes, I know. That is terrible! But it's not all gloom and doom, folks. Our kids are resilient, and they really DO make it through! It’s the parents that need the help! With the kids back in school, it’s time to take care of YOURSELF! Caring for yourself is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation. The world today honors self-sacrifice, so taking care of your own needs first seems to be…kind of a… radical decision. But it is not because you are selfish—...

I am going to share a little something about myself—not to brag, but it will KINDA help to lead into my next discussion (this next topic is a tough one!) I have always been a very conscientious student. I won eight spelling bees in my 6 th grade classroom (I was terrified to be in front of crowds and refused to participate in a school-wide spelling bee.) I was a FAST speller—my teacher would always tell me to slow down so she could make sure I was spelling the word correctly. Many years later, while I was assisting my own child with his spelling words, he was attempting to spell “refrigerator.” He was stuck on the letter “g” and began to sound it out. “Juh…juh. Mom, is it G or J?” So, I asked, “What do you see?” Kid: “HUH?” Me: “Like, in your head. What do you SEE?” Kid: “Mom, I have NO clue what you are talking about. Sometimes the G and the J make the same sound and I get confused. Which one is it?” Me: “Wait a minute. You can’t see the word “refrigerator” in your head? ...

I almost quit today. Raise your hand if you almost quit today too. Doesn’t matter what. Your workout. Doing the dishes. Helping your kid with his math homework. Your job. A relationship. Things get hard, people. And then—we have all seen that trick where the magician fluently pulls the tablecloth out from under a table adorned with your best serving dishes—well, life hands you the gawky version of this, where fine china ends up in perfect stained glass window fragments all over the floor. You think you have reached the end of your rope. And then someone gets head lice. You all just scratched your heads, didn’t you? Who would have thought that there would EVER be a National Pediculosis Prevention Month? And what better time to discuss Head Lice Prevention Month then at back to school time! But first, I share with you my misery… The unauthorized cell phone call from my 8 th grader goes like this: Mom: “Hi babe, is everything ok? You aren’t supposed to have your phone on in...

My poor husband. Not only has he had to endure back surgery, a long and painful recovery, and his wife blasting it all over her blog, he developed shingles on top of it. Now, I won’t go into great detail about shingles, but it is a virus—the same virus that gives our young ones the chicken pox. Once you have had chicken pox, that virus can lay dormant in your body and resurface as shingles later in your life. And know this. It involves specific nerve tracks and is INCREDIBLY painful. My hubs is a beautiful beast of a man—large in stature—and this about brought him to his knees. Even as a nurse and a massage therapist, my skills were useless in helping him. “DON’T. TOUCH. ME.” I hear ya, honey. September also happens to be Pain Awareness Month. Just for giggles, I want you all to think back to the worst pain that you have experienced. For many women, childbirth tops the list. Many men compare the famous kidney stone to what they think childbirth might be like (by the way, my hubby...