20 Years in Wellness + 20 Lessons Learned (Part 2) (let's stop outsourcing our selves...)

This week, it's all about clearing that vessel... 🏺+ making MORE room for MAGICK 🪄

Good (hopefully sunny) Sunday morning.

Firstly, a warmest welcome to my subscribers new + old; there’s been a lovely influx this week (partly due to the lovely

Melissa Hemsley feelgood food

recommending my Substack last week – THANK YOU!), and I’ve had a flurry of DMs, comments + emails from those who enjoyed part 1 of this ‘20 Years in Wellness’ post (which you can read here).

I love reading your comments… they give me pause for thought, and remind me, over and over again, of how often our experiences are mirrored by others. That brings great comfort… particularly through these messy, middle years of life + motherhood.

I went into today’s post with one question at the back of my mind: When it comes to my own health + wellbeing, how would things have been different, prior to the internet?

It is so easy (I’d say, knee-jerk automatic), to have a question, and rely on the ‘net to answer it for us. The recent journey I’ve been on with perimenopause and subsequent, sudden histamine intolerance, has led me down SO many internet rabbit holes, and at some point (about two weeks in), I really had to draw a line. From one day to the next, the supposed cause of my sudden skin flare-ups was either toxic mould, H.pylori, oestrogen dominance, gut dysbiosis or a thousand other insidiously complex + deeply worrying diagnoses.

I ended up in a disempowering rut… fearing everything from the damp weather to airborne spores, and began to overthink everything. Recognising that shift in my own being – from someone who lives + eats + moves + behaves largely intuitively – to one who felt fearful + frozen – unable even to decide what to have for dinner, because the dreaded ‘high histamine foods’ list kept flashing away in the back of my mind, like a beacon – was the catalyst to walking away from the ‘crisis management’ mode I’d entered (having already spent £100s on histamine intolerance supporting products), and entering a place where I am increasingly TRUSTING + GRATEFUL to my body for what it’s doing right now.

It was Anna, my acupuncturist, who pointed out that my body is doing something quite amazing… it is taking something that my body needs to get rid of (in my case, an excess of histamine), and pushing it out through the skin. And it takes a relatively strong body to be able to do that… to push outwards, in such an obvious, sustained way, rather than let the issues remain inward, in the blood, organs, cells, whence they might result in something far more damaging + concerning, than eczema + skin sensitivity.

Which takes me into lesson 11…

11. Give your body your undivided attention

Obviously, I work full time, have two (pretty needy) teenage kids, and also do a fair bit ‘on the side’. SO I am not suggesting that all the layers of everyday life grind to a halt (however lovely that may be for a few, quiet, restful weeks). Rather, this is about making regular opportunities to feel into, listen to, and respond to your body.

The moment I stopped seeing my body as something that was working against me, something shifted. This is not a one-time, single-dose realisation, either. I’ve had it many, many times over the years… from my first shift away from disordered eating in my early teens, to intuitive eating in my late teens.

Whatever my body is experiencing, and however painful, uncomfortable or inconvenient it is, it is happening for a reason. Something is being communicated with me, and it’s on me to stop what I am doing (i.e. slow down, stop denying, suppressing, ignoring the signs), and LISTEN. A lot like that sensitive child who some might dismiss as difficult or annoying – but who persists until they have your full attention. And as soon as they get it… things start to calm down, almost immediately.

In the two months since these new health issues cropped up, I have been far more diligent in the care I’ve taken of myself. I really don’t have a choice. I can’t do the things I (have + love to) do if my eyes are swollen shut, or if I can’t comfortably shower (when it’s really bad, water stings like hell), or get dressed, or sit in a meeting without wanting to scratch my skin off. I simply can’t go out into the world in the ways I long to be out in the world, UNTIL I have found my way back to some semblance of calm, balanced ‘centre’.

This is also tricky, because one of the other things I’ve struggled with, with histamine intolerance (which is also true for MAST Cell Activation Syndrome) is the common pattern of waking between 2-3am… and disrupted sleep is certainly a tricky thing to navigate when you work full time, and need to be up early, switched on, and ready to ‘shine’, day in, day out.

After two months, however, things are getting better. I know what helps (avoiding certain foods but enjoying many more, meditation, getting to bed at a good time, shatavari + acupuncture, magnesium for sleep…) and all of these things which help my symptoms, also help the whole of me, and help me look after myself properly.

And although it was initially immensely difficult to cut so many things out of my life – from Mr R’s sourdough bread (both gluten + ferments are unhelpful for those with HI) to nightshades, dairy + cacao. It was ALL I could think about – the stuff I couldn’t have. Since then, however, it’s shifted more towards all of the nourishing choices I can make, that are helping my body in a time of need… and my gut feeling is, that once the body’s taught me the lesson it needs to learn – and rooted it into knee-jerk habit, every single day – it’ll let go, and let me go back to enjoying a lot of the things I always have – more mindfully, for sure… but no less deliciously.

The instructive cards which came to meet me, during my Restorative Yoga class last Sunday

And as if to support my ‘instinct’ with the above, and the path I am on, with simplifying what goes into my body, and increasing the things that most support it… last Sunday’s cards arrived with a thump of recognition. TIME TO HEAL. CLEAR THE VESSEL. HERE and NOW. Brilliant. Message received! And yep, I am not only paying attention, I am living it through my actions + choices, too.

And while I am still taking 2-3 supplements a day (still a lot of trial + error with this… and unending internet contradiction, but the brands I trust are Wild Nutrition, Terranova, Viridian. There’s also a robust, well-researched selection of brands at Healf, if you do need to stock up on basic essentials such as Mg, Iron or Vitamin C). Pssst: Please feel free to use my code https://www.healf.com/EMIN52564 for £10 off any purchase at Healf.com.

You may have heard it said before, but HEALING isn’t a straight line. Nothing in nature has straight lines. 🌼

Read on for more on tracking your cycle + finding experts you trust, to flower essences + minimising micro plastics at home…