health

Fibro Friday – National Pain Awareness Month

September 2, 2022September 2, 2022 MstldelanoLeave a comment

Happy Fibro Friday! Yesterday kicked off the beginning of National Pain Awareness Month, an observation that I was completely unaware of until a couple of weeks ago. I am using this time to explore the stories shared by other people dealing with chronic pain conditions. I’m also reviewing the resources being shared in various chronic pain spaces.

I’d guessing that most of you are already quite aware of chronic pain: after all, you’re reading a Fibro Friday post! But, if you’re still unsure why a Pain Awareness Month would be needed, I have a few insights that may clarify why this observation is still relevant. For starters, more than 20% of Americans have experienced chronic pain, and it disproportionately affects women, people struggling with poverty and unemployment, and other traditionally disadvantaged groups. Chronic pain is also the #1 reason for doctor’s visits in America, and the pain can severely limit quality of life for those suffering with it. The current chronic pain situation is widespread but poorly understood.

One great resource that I saw is posted on National Today. This post has some great, bite-sized facts about chronic pain, and can be a solid introductory resource for those unfamiliar with chronic pain and its effects (making this an excellent post to share with oblivious friends, family, and even employers). If you’ve had a hard time explaining the effect of your condition to the people in your world – or, if you have struggled with understanding the symptoms that you’re experiencing – this article may be helpful.

I hope that you take some time this month to find out more about the effects of chronic pain, as well as lending support and connecting to those that suffer from chronic pain conditions. I plan on taking some time to learn more as well as lending my voice to the discussions surrounding chronic pain.

That’s it for this week. Take care, and I’ll talk to you all soon!

Inviting In Prosperity

January 6, 2022January 2, 2022 MstldelanoLeave a comment

One very popular New Year tradition involves deep cleaning a home, from top to bottom, in order to “bring in” the year properly. I do not deep clean a home simply because the calendar changes from December 31 to January 1, but I did spend a little time thinking of the significance of this, and how, energetically, this applies to a lot of things (not just New Year’s Day).

I wonder how many times abundance or prosperity knocked at my metaphorical door and felt uninvited, because I had too much going on and didn’t have the energy to answer the door. This year, I’m determined to keep inviting in prosperity by clearing out anything that doesn’t serve me currently or reflect the life that I’m creating. This starts with eliminating unnecessary physical items but extends to intangible things, too, like obligating myself to tasks or activities that don’t bring me delight, or that take up more time than I can afford to waste.

I found a few resources that I think will help me with this. I found two ebooks which are FREE as of today, along with a podcast, that are great for helping to set yourself up for prosperity. First, this book by James Goi, Jr. promises to explain the, “Ten Metaphysical Secrets of Manifesting Money: Spiritual Insights into Attaining Prosperity, Riches, Abundance, Wealth, and Affluence”.

Next, part of being inviting is being gracious and grateful. “A Pocketful of Thank You: 9 key areas to bring joy, harmony, health, wealth & happiness into your life” by Maria McMahon should give me more tips for how to invite in prosperity in all areas of my life by learning to be more mindfully thankful.

Finally, one of my favorite vloggers and podcasters, Francesca Amber, posted a podcast about how to use feng shui principles for abundance (available on Amazon Music and Apple Podcasts). I love how easy it is to implement little practices and actions to invite more abundance into our worlds!

Do you all have any tips for inviting in more abundance? I’d love to hear all about it in the comments below!

*This post contains affiliate links.

life curation

Are You Ambitious?

July 20, 2020July 20, 2020 MstldelanoLeave a comment

Happy Monday, friends! I hope you all had a safe and fun weekend.

Today’s post is courtesy of a fantastic free workbook that I downloaded from the Tory Burch Foundation website. As a newbie female entrepreneur, I’m constantly on the lookout for information that can help me to successfully grow my businesses. I’m fascinated by how many individual “parts” need to sync in order to create business success. So I read a lot of guides and do any of the associated exercises to ensure that I’m testing the theories and learning – for myself – what works and what doesn’t.

The Tory Burch Foundation’s Ambition Guidebook is a wonderful resource for anyone beginning on the entrepreneur path. The exercises in the booklet lead you through self-discovery, and if you do the exercises, you’ll eventually reveal to yourself the strengths that you possess, potential roadblocks on your path, and actionable steps that you can take to achieve your goals.

That leads me to the title of this post: are you ambitious? Many of us have been taught to shy away from this personality trait, out of fear of offending others. Women, particularly, may have gotten the messaging that ambition is a “masculine” trait and thus undesirable in any authentically “feminine” woman. For those that are still a bit nervous about the word “ambitious”, you can easily substitute the words “passionate” or even “enthusiastic”. When substituting different words, it’s clear that ambition is a good thing: one could even say that ambition is the spice of life!

Yes, so many of the things that we enjoy are the products of extreme ambition. Strong desire is what inspires us to create new things, even in a world where it seems like “everything” has already been created! One of the saddest things I’ve ever seen what someone that no longer had any ambition: a lack of desire leaves a person feeling lost and disinterested in life. Most of us have had brief periods when we don’t feel very ambitious, but that’s not an energy that we want to linger in. We want to always find something to “light us up” and inspire us to do/have/be MORE.

So, I’m going through the exercises in the guidebook and enjoying it so far. I love how user-friendly this is, and the fact that it’s free is definitely a good thing! If you have a few friends that are interested in finding their life’s purposes or rekindling their passions, this booklet would be great for you all to download and complete together as a group. If you decide to download it, let me know how you enjoy it!

health

Fibro Fridays: Resources for Chronic Pain Sufferers

April 17, 2020April 16, 2020 MstldelanoLeave a comment

Over the past year, I’ve compiled quite a few resources that I’ve used regularly. These resources consistently provide reliable information and guidance for handling the next steps in my health journey.

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One of the first resources I uncovered is The Fibromyalgia Digest. This is an excellent website that provides information related to obtaining government benefits if you suffer from chronic pain. Their team is very proactive about reaching out to digest subscribers and offering assistance. I most benefited from the website’s encouragement to keep a log of my daily symptoms to identify trends and keep track of what treatments work best.

WANA is We Are Not Alone, an app that provides a virtual community for chronic illness sufferers. Users can connect based on similar illness or specific symptoms. What’s really cool is how the app lets users learn more about traditional medical treatment as well as explore alternative treatment options.

Fibromyalgia Association of Michigan is a great resource for learning about the most recent research on fibromyalgia and treatments. I usually follow their Facebook page for updates, but the main website is fantastic, too: you can easily get updates from the blog within the website.

I hope these websites can help you! This chronic illness journey doesn’t have to be a solo one: there is support for us.

That;s all for this week! I’ll talk to you all soon. Take care!

life curation

Preparing for 2018: A Resource for Developing Your Vision

November 1, 2017October 29, 2017 MstldelanoLeave a comment

Happy Hump Day! And YAY for making it to November 1st! You already know that I’m doing NaNowWriMo, so a lot of the posts for this month will be brief but (hopefully) useful.

You can check out the links at the bottom of this post to see the rest of the “Preparing for 2018” series. Today’s post is going to provide a resource that will help you get clear on what you envision for your life, both next year and for years to come.

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(photo courtesy of HappyBlackWoman.com)

Rosetta Thurman of HappyBlackWoman.com has created an amazing guide that will help you shine a light on multiple areas of your life, and will guide you in finding out what your ideal life looks like.

With your ideal life clearly envisioned, you can figure out what steps need to happen in the next year, in order to get you closer to your dream. You can download the guide here. By the way, this resource works for anyone, not just happy Black women. So no matter what your demographic is, check it out! I think you’ll find it very useful.