What is normal?

We exist in a world with sickness as a normal, knowing someone with a serious chronic disease isn’t rare, knowing family who have been burdened with a serious disease isn’t only common, it has become almost expected.

For women, knowing other women who are tired, who spend their life on a diet or a new exercise regimen, or trying out the latest, greatest, magic supplements are all now normal.

Someone said to me the other day, they know they aren’t in a good place, but they are better than what “normal” is. 

This got me thinking, how many people are comparing themselves to illness as their gauge of wellness?

Think about it, if our “normal” is sickness, then what are we really comparing to?

Of course, just being exhausted seems better than cancer.

Of course just having pain seems better than MS…

But isn’t that how we get to those places?

Comparing our misery with dire situations and using...

I think it's time we destroyed a misconception that's propagated widely in the world. That misconception is:  if I'm skinny, I'm healthy. 

I have talked to so many women and have found that among those that don't need to lose weight, despite having a multitude of known health conditions, they will commonly say, “but overall I'm healthy.”

Now, sadly, this flies in the face of reason because if you've got known health conditions, despite wanting to proclaim your health, you no longer can stand as being healthy. 

What I have found is, many of these women look at themselves and say,  I'm the correct size for my body, my BMI is great, when I go to the doctor, they think I'm doing a fantastic job.  

But how off does it feel to be able to say both “I don’t feel well” and “I think I am quite healthy because of my size”?  Now, I get it, because we live in a world which evaluates overall health, success and...

My atypical Thyroid history...not what docs, including ND's are looking for.

I was watching the new Jack Ryan series the other day ...yes, I do watch shows.  But I noticed again, the female spy was portrayed as the sexy seductress, willing to use her feminine charms to gain information and get what she wants and she could take a beating as well as any of the male characters. 

What it made me think of isn't so much the sexualized nature of women but the fact that the things given for us to aspire to are either:

Brute force and iron will...push through no matter what

Or

Be a certain variety of sexy, thin and beautiful or not get anywhere

It's no wonder we chase external barometers of our health.  So many women have grown so accustomed to feeling poorly that they are willing to do crazy things to look better even if they don't cause them to feel better, just to keep up with these external ideals.

Some examples from people I have actually known:

A woman who was tired, angry, depressed and lonely in her marriage who got breast...

When medicine has termed the following issues as simply aging, depression or "hormones", you know women are not being treated as sacred:

Unexplained weight gain (as in your food didn't change)

Sleeplessness 

Fatigue

Depression

Anxiety

Pain

Foggy Brain

Mental sluggishness

These are REAL problems, not the result of aging, or depression or just hormones.

We need to remember our Divine feminine nature, our brilliant body and its inherent magic.

We need to be honored for the lives we live, constantly serving, planning, preparing and pushing forward to hold space for tomorrow.

We cannot be allowed to succumb to being tired as a state of being, because that tired has emerged from lives where taking a break is now synonymous with:

Guilt

Shame

Fear

And a sense of failure 

We cannot let misguided doctors using outdated models dispel what we experience as "in our head" when it is in fact in our cells.

We, you...have the right to heal, to thrive,...

There's a lie that is ruining the lives of women every single day...and it goes something like this. 

If I choose to advocate for my own healing, by addressing my exhaustion, I will deprive the people in my life of something. 

As women, one of the teachings we've inadvertently received is we must be willing to do everything that we can for what we love, have taken on or have committed to. 

Most women work more than one job...their career, home, kids, grandkids, spouses, and community obligations.  

They take pride in it…

I can multitask 

I can prep dinner while answering email and helping kids with homework.

I am a superstar...I get to the gym by 5 every day, even when I am tired.

Over and over, agreeing to one more thing...despite having to push to do so, despite having a headache, despite needing to rest.

We as women have collectively decided if we aren't overextended, we aren't living.

And we hide it! We mask our...

I was listening to NPR the other day and they were discussing technological gadgets that can make our lives better and the guy speaking was talking about a gadget that made it easier for you to keep track of how many times a day you had to take a particular prescription med and then another gadget that was his blood sugar monitor that spoke to him and then could download the information to a database which his physicians could then also access.

What really struck me was when he said, many people today, myself included, are dealing with diabetes...and I thought to myself, when did it become so normal for us to have chronic diseases?

When did we transform our conversations about our health into an acceptable level of illness as normal?

I thought, well, of course, that's how we live now, think about it…. I’ve had people proudly proclaim to me when they're above 50 and not on any medications.

It is so rare to be over 50 and not on meds we proclaim it like a badge we...

What does a healthy woman look like? 

What's the true picture of a healthy woman? 

If you open glamour or vogue, they're going to list off things like percent body fat and weight. 

Because we've all become so used to these parameters, we too have adopted them as our image of a healthy woman. 

But I'm going to break the mold and say that's not necessarily true. In fact, just because you're really low in body fat percentage does not mean you're healthy. 

There are a lot of athletes, professional athletes even who come out and tell us how they've gotten sick. Remember when Lance Armstrong, (not that he's a woman) got prostate cancer? 

I'm sure his body fat percentage was quite low. He certainly was lean,  and was not overweight in any way, shape or form. And yet there he was with cancer. 

So what does that say about those topics, those issues, those parameters?

A healthy woman will have a couple of characteristics in common...