So its been a while since I have written any posts on this blog. Let me catch you up.

I think the last time I wrote anything, I was in the middle of a break between jobs. The pandemic had not hit yet. Things were not totally insane yet. But for me they were. That break between jobs was completely necessary as I was going through major job burnout. It is common in the early childhood education field for teachers to experience burnout. I had never had it happen to me before, and let me tell you: Burnout is no fun.

So I was taking a break and sitting in front of the pool a lot. During that break I sat down with a friend who introduced me to essential oils and all of the amazing things that they can do. And during that discussion, one thought kept going through my head: “If the oils from plants can do all of these things, then what can the whole plant do?”

This is how my journey toward studying herbalism started, about 4 years ago. I’ve had a few twists and turns along the path, but my fascination with these plants has not waivered. I have used plants to help heal my nervous system from burnout. I have used plants to keep me from getting sick with colds. And even though I have been studying for 4 years, I have finally found a program that is making me feel like I am learning what I need to learn in order to become a clinical herbalist, which is what I have been dreaming about for 4 years.

Before today this blog was about weight loss. I had taken several weight loss journeys on this blog, and if you happen to go through the blog archives, you will see this journey laid out. There are even recipes on this blog that I posted when I went Paleo. I am not going to remove these from the blog. I think it is important to remember where we came from. But where my focus used to be on weight loss, now my focus is on health and wellness. I have accepted myself in a larger body and am working to be the healthiest version of myself that I can be in this body. The weight loss see-saw that I have been on most of my life is no longer sustainable since I am at a weight that has been hard for me to wrap my head around. I have looked into Intuitive Eating, which I have talked about some on this blog, and I am also reading the book Health At Every Size by Linda Bacon. It turns out that you can be healthy, even if you are in a larger body.

By the way, those links go to books on Amazon, but I do not have an Amazon affiliate account so I get no kickbacks from posting these links.

I will talk more about this journey and how it is affecting my health and wellness on this blog. I am also going to be doing posts about different aspects of herbalism that I learn about. So far this has been a very interesting journey, and I can’t wait to share it.