Wellness Wake Up

I am not a “New Year’s” person.

The timing of this blog coming to life makes me laugh. What do I mean when I say, “I’m not a ‘New Year’s’ person.” I’ve never been a night person, so I’ve always been annoyed that I am forced to stay up until midnight to celebrate the turning of the clock when midnight happens every night. In my younger years, I felt the obligation to make plans to go out, when my own biological rhythm enjoyed the slow down after Christmas excitement. And my history with New Year Resolutions is on par with most statistics along the lines of giving up after 2 weeks.

Why this “New Year” feels different.

The timing of a series of events in my life happen to align with the end of 2022. Spoiler alert, I didn’t stay up on New Year’s Eve, even though it did feel more epic than usual, but I did recommit to making my health a priority in the weeks leading up to year end.

Flash back to November, I was traveling consistently every week for my job. I was excited to be part of this project and did not hesitate to jump feet first into the experience. I had traveled a handful of times for business, but this was my first time traveling multiple weeks in a row. I hopped in line with my business traveling peers and headed to a restaurant or hotel bar each evening.  If not on the road for business travel, I would have been home, cozily wrapped in the chaos of family dinner time somewhere between 5:30 – 6:30 pm, with my husband and two young girls, ensuring that we had a nutritious meal in some sense and not opening a bottle of wine at 8 pm (most weeknights at least 😊. Travelling for work however had me eating later, eating more, and drinking at least 1 – 2 alcoholic beverages 2-3 weeknights. Although I still worked out fairly consistently in the mornings on the road, I gained 12 pounds.

Literally, spinning out of control.

During this entire month, I was experiencing dizziness. I was diagnosed with Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) about 9 years ago, which to summarize, is occasional vertigo. My general experience in the past has been that it happens for maybe a week or so every time I roll over in bed or turn to my right suddenly, and then it stops as quickly as it came on.  This time however, it kept going for about 3 months.  Yes, 3 months of vertigo every time I rolled over sounds crazy in hindsight, but I didn’t even realize that much time had passed until the doctor asked me “how long has this been going on for?”. He was as shocked as I was when I figured it out and appropriately asked “well what have you been doing this whole time?”.  Any mother out there can likely relate to my response to him, which was “well, I’m a mom.”

One little spark…

As I walked away from that doctor office with a script in my hand for an MRI, a prescription for an ear infection that went untreated for months, and worries that the dizziness might be “something more”, a little spark reignited inside me. I needed to take care of my health first, but I ignored my intuition and continued on as usual. In the weeks that followed, my MRI showed that I have lesions consistent with those who experience migraines. This came as a surprise to me as I occasionally get bad headaches, but in my mind, the story I always to myself is, “this is normal for women.”  (More on this another time as I explore this on my wellness journey and share with you.) Unrelated to any of this, I threw out my back for the first time in my life which limited my movement and daily life activities. Yes, the pain was excruciating, but the hardest part for me was the mental challenge. I needed help for almost everything (hello husband putting my socks on my feet) and my 2 girls under age 4 didn’t understand why I couldn’t pick them up or snuggle in certain positions. During this time, I also stopped breastfeeding my almost 2 year old, so my hormones were a bit out of whack to say the least.

Reconnecting with my fire.

As I lay on my back alone in my house while my husband took the girls to a dinner event at our church, I knew this was my sign. That little fire that sparked in me as I walked out of the doctor roared a little brighter. I believe God (the Universe, Life force energy, insert what higher power you believe in here) communicates to us through our bodies. For me in particular, whenever I have an ailment of some sort, I have found that there is a bigger purpose. Sometimes, it is as simple as catching a cold when I need to rest more during a particularly busy season. As far as this back injury goes, well, I am guessing that it was a sign to slow down before what turned out to be a different Christmas season for us, and something is also nudging me that I will need this experience to connect with someone in my life soon. I have questioned this intuition time and time again during the COVID years as the world experienced more disease and death than I could ever imagine, and I still have come back to, God uses our bodies to communicate with us.

Time for me.

I am still bothered by my response to the doctor about my vertigo lasting for 3 months. As a mother, if my child told me they were seeing the world spin regularly, I would have sought care immediately. Since having kids, I have strived to model healthy habits, and by ignoring my own health issues, I was not living up to my own standard. 

If my girls see me putting my own health last, what will they do when they are grown?

As my back feels better and better through ice, stretching, standing more, and chiropractic care, I’ve been adding exercise back into my routine. I adjusted my nutrition to be mindful of snacking and follow an approach that I know works for my body at this stage of life.  I’m excited to share with you as I move forward on this journey how it’s going and maybe inspire you to look at your own health and wellness, a bit differently. I’m one month in and feeling more connected with my body than ever. So maybe I’ll never be a New Year’s EVE person now, but can appreciate using the turning of a calendar page to help me see the bigger picture of my daily decisions.