Lara Casey's Blog, page 3

Fit Together: Health Goals, Toxin Swaps, and a Giveaway!

Welcome back to our Fit Together series!

Affiliate links are used in this post—many with discounts for you. Find more discounts here!

Part 1 struck a chord with so many of you—my and Ari’s phones have buzzed with texts, calls, and messages since it went live! We’re grateful our story encouraged you to consider positive changes in your health. Most of all, we’re glad it gave you hope. Change is possible!

We shared why we changed in Part 1, and today, we’re digging into part of how that change has happened. Let’s go!

Ari: A quick reminder: while I am a physician, this is not medical advice, but rather meant to be educational. Read more in Part 1.

Lara: Ever feel like you’re going through the motions, unsure how to spend your time more intentionally? Do you lack intentional focus in your health journey? Maybe you know there are things you could change, but you don’t know where to start. A lack of clarity can be super frustrating.

Photo by Traci What’s The Problem?

Ari: Save yourself a lot of wasted mental and physical energy by writing down your specific health pain points. Maybe you’re frustrated with being sick too often or feel the effects of aging. Perhaps you lack energy during the day. What is it specifically for you?

Step 1: Name 1-3 pain points for which you’d like to find solutions.

Lara: Keep it simple. If you and I were walking together right now and I asked you, “What’s bugging you?” What would you say?

Ari: Lack of quality sleep, lack of energy, feeling weak, chronic pain (like Lara experienced!), being out of breath when you walk up the stairs, or a lack of motivation or stress resilience?

Lara: This might be the hardest thing you do on this journey. Writing down what’s been holding you back is often painful. It means seeing and facing it, which can bring some grief or emotion. Don’t be hard on yourself. Guilt, be gone!

Ari: Write down what’s bugging you, and then take a small step forward before you get overwhelmed about starting. One step forward gets the momentum going. You don’t need a plan for all your health issues to get started. My pain points were taking chronic medication that interfered with my gut health, dealing with elevated blood pressure, feeling worn out after work, and feeling distressed about physical changes associated with aging.

Lara: Taking just one step forward each time I identified a pain point helped me break through barriers on this journey. Act like the kind of person you want to be. Do the types of things they do. I was acting like a chronically ill person for a long time, which was understandable, but I got stuck there, and it perpetuated itself. As I shared in Part 1, there was a long period where I lost hope. Once I named the kind of person I wanted to be—strong, able to play with my kids, living a slower, faithful life, committed to the long game with my health—my actions changed.

What kind of person do you want to be? What matters to you in the big picture? What doesn’t? The answers to these questions will give you the oomph to begin something new, especially something that may take time and effort. Then, act like it right away with a micro-step! Send the email, make the call, make one of the swaps we’ll suggest below, read one of the articles we share that interests you, take a quick walk right now, take a single breath, or share a comment here for accountability—just do the thing. That first step will help you take the next. You will make little-by-little progress over time, and it will get you somewhere. You wouldn’t be reading this post if you didn’t have some fire to see this through. We’ll be here to cheer you on!

Ari: Now, what if you’re experiencing health symptoms, but you don’t know what the root cause is? Your pain point might be that you need to get some answers. In that case, testing can be a valuable tool. Our bodies are unique, and they have different functional needs. Your body may need nutrients that it is not getting–this can be determined with the proper tests and a medical professional to interpret the results.

Lara: Yes! My biggest problem, initially, was not knowing the root cause of my joint pain and inflammation. I didn’t know how to heal it because I had no idea what “it” was. It took several tests and labs, but now I know hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS) is the root cause.

Ari: In the next post, we’ll dig into testing—and all the specific tests we’ve done (it’s a lot, and some were more helpful than others). So, if that’s you and you need more answers, hang in there and stay tuned.

Step 2: With your pain points named, what does solving them look like? These are your goals. (I’ve heard a few things about setting goals from my wife over the years…)

My goals were stop my medications, get my blood pressure under control, have more energy throughout the day, and adopt new habits to slow the aging process. My big picture is all about being fit enough (in mind and body) to enjoy active time with my family for as long as possible. I also enjoy strength training and aerobic exercise and would like to continue these activities as I grow older.

Lara: Write down your specific goal(s). Take a note on your phone, a napkin, on the back of an envelope—anywhere. (I once started a business by writing down the goal on a sick bag on an airplane!) Get it in writing somewhere just for you. You are 42% more likely to achieve your goals if you write them down. I spent most of my career studying this and seeing its effects. Friends, there is power in handwriting. It works. For this reason, I can’t recommend PowerSheets enough. Get yourself a copy of Atomic Habits and a set of brand-new PowerSheets—an effective combo for real habit change.

You are 42% more likely to achieve your goals if you write them down.

Ari: What are your specific goals? Pick 1-3. Maybe your goal is to no longer take medication for an illness, like me, or to have enough energy to play with your kids after work—also like me. Or, as for Lara, to reduce chronic pain.

Lara: With a root cause in hand (hEDS), I now had a clear goal to tackle my problem: build as much stabilizing muscle as possible! Clarity leads to action. I shifted all my efforts to reduce inflammation and build muscle. This means eating a ton of protein daily, doubling the calories I was eating before, and focusing on solid form in the gym and physical therapy so I don’t hurt myself along the way. It has worked! Having a clear goal gave me focus, which produced focused results. The alternative is spreading yourself thin trying to fix many things that might not be the right things, and that’s not very fun.

Our full garage gym transformation reveal is coming soon!Your Health Foundation

Ari: You’ve written down your pain points and have a few goals. Great! Now let’s look at obstacles that may stand in your way.

As you now know from our story, we were tired of being tired and so over taking chronic medication. Our bodies were pretty fatigued, though, and we were both worried we’d do more harm than good to our systems by making such big changes all at once. We needed to give ourselves the best chance at healing by reducing toxins.

Step 3: Reduce toxins with some simple and impactful swaps.

In our current world, there are things we take into our bodies every day that we don’t even think about because we either can’t see them with our eyes or we pass them off as inconsequential:

Pollution in our air
Contaminants in our water
Chemicals in our food
Toxins in household products
Emotional stress
Overstimulation from electronic media
Artificial light

Environmental toxins interfere with glucose and cholesterol metabolism and induce insulin resistance and obesity through multiple mechanisms, including inflammation, oxidative stress, endocrine disruption, mitochondrial injury, altered thyroid metabolism, immune system overload, and impaired central appetite regulation. Dude…

Lara: Looking into the world of toxins was an eye-opener to me. I used what I thought were healthy products in our home, and some things I used out of habit. I never researched what things like dryer sheets, household cleaners, fragrance-filled soaps, and clothing fabrics did to our bodies.

Ari: Although our world has made tons of advances over the last several hundred years, this has come at a price–toxins! While we’ll never be able to avoid all toxin exposure, there are ways to reduce it and help our bodies function better. It doesn’t matter how much you exercise or what supplements you take if you’re constantly ingesting things that work against you.

Lara: This can feel overwhelming at first—there’s so much to consider, and we’ve given you a lot of ideas below. But, perhaps there’s a fun mind shift here for you. Instead of looking at reducing toxin exposure as burdensome, think of the good ahead! There is so much opportunity for positive change in your health—so many ways to feel better with micro-adjustments. The small things really are the big things.

When I started this functional medicine journey, I was encouraged by wise friends to get good at one habit or swap at a time. Don’t get overwhelmed trying to do it all at once. Once you get going, it’s fun to swap things out and feel the difference. I’m excited to hear what you think and a littttttle geeky about this stuff now. Don’t get me started talking about how much I love our wool dryer balls.

Ari: Life change can happen when you take it one day at a time (like flossing :)). Give your brain time to rewire and settle into new habits that will hopefully last a lifetime.

Toxins, You’re Outta Here!

Lara: Our whole journey, as you remember in Part 1, was fueled primarily by Sarah’s Autism. She experienced debilitating anxiety, an inability to sleep, gut issues, and episodes at home and school. Our functional medicine practitioner recommended the following:

—Clean your water
—Clean your air
—Get a Squatty Potty
—Optimize her diet for healing
—Remove sleep barriers
—Remove toxins from the house
—Make healthy sleep routines happen
—Help her process her emotions (everything is connected!)

These things changed our family’s health faster than we imagined. We’ll focus on Air, Water, Home Products, and Beauty today—with a few extra ideas to get you started below, too!

Let’s make some less-toxic swaps, shall we?

Ari: We are constantly bombarded by various claims made about our health from numerous sources. My advice is not to believe everything you read. As a physician, I am constantly looking up the latest research to shape my medical practice and lifestyle choices. I recommend you do the same! We’ve included some references that support the claims we are making about toxins. I encourage you to be skeptical and to review them.

Air

The challenge: Breathing dirty air affects our immune function and our body’s healing ability. ​​

— Reductions in air pollution can have immediate health benefits, such as improved children’s lung growth and longer adult life expectancy.
— Scientific studies have shown that pollutants within the house can be absorbed into children’s brains and affect development.
— In adults, ambient pollution is associated with stroke and depression and interferes with brain and immune function.
— Household air pollutants can cause high blood pressure.
— Here’s what poor air does to the body and what to do about it.

The solution: Reduce your exposure to damaging particles in the air.

How? Give one of these a try:
— Open doors or windows when you’re cooking—and whenever you can to let fresh air circulate.
— Consider an in-house air filtration system. Call the Doctor. This photo above is from yesterday – what our AirDoctor took out of the air in the kids’ room. Crazy!
— Depending on where you live, sleep with windows open or cracked for good air circulation.
— Use good ventilation with candles, fire, or open-gas cooking.
— Take your shoes off and leave them out of the house—lots of yucky things hitch a ride on shoes and get into your indoor air. We found the cutest “Please Remove Your Shoes” sign for our front door and garage gym. (I ordered it in English Sky with gold letters!).
— Opt for natural beeswax candles—we’ve even made them with the kids using these kits as a fun, easy project!
— Use the right cooking oils.
— Vacuum regularly. Here’s our HEPA favorite at a good price.
— Exercise away from busy streets where there is excessive car exhaust.
— Get your house checked for mold.
— Perhaps the most impactful daily change we’ve made to help us breathe better (and it’s simple and free!): learn the power of nose breathing. We get 25% more oxygen by breathing in through the nose, and we filter the air more effectively than mouth breathing. This is a game changer for health, sleep, and stress reduction.
— Do your own research and remember: there’s no way to eliminate all exposure to air contaminants, but you can intentionally reduce them by significant levels. There are so many more things you can do and swap for cleaner air. We’d love to hear your ideas, too!

Ari: Mold, bacteria, pollen, dust, smoke, pet dander—we breathe all of this in daily. However, by filtering our indoor air, we can reduce these contaminants significantly.

Lara: I sleep better with cleaner air. We’ve spent a few nights away from our house, and I always wake up with a stuffed-up nose from wherever dust or particles are in the room. I told Ari that I am 100% bringing an AirDoctor with us when we travel from now on—it’s worth being the crazy person bringing an air filter to the AirBnB in order to have a great night’s sleep!

When we had a flood in our house, I was super-concerned about mold and VOCs from the repairs. The AirDoctor went to town and removed so much of what would have gone into our bodies. We feel more confident that our kids are benefitting from cleaner air. When we have all the doors closed and cook with hot oils, our AirDoctor senses the extra particles in the air and revs up to remove them. We have a small cat; her fine hairs would make my nose so itchy. Not anymore—I canceled our auto-ship on tissues. This also helps with nose breathing. In all of my strength training workouts, nose breathing helps produce more nitrous oxide, which means more energy for my lifts. Everything is connected, and one good change can lead to another.

Getting our water officially tested. The kids loved it!Water

The Challenge: The majority of household water comes from contaminated sources. Just run a water report for your zip code and see what’s in there. Our water is full of environmental contaminants we don’t want in our bodies.

— The body is made of 60% water. It is the source of life for our cells and protection for our brain and spinal cord, and it metabolizes and transports carbohydrates and proteins that our bodies use as food.
— Our liver, kidneys, digestive tract, lymphatic system, respiratory system, and skin make up our detoxification pathway. They work around the clock to flush out toxins. Your water quality can help them or give your body more contaminants to detox.
— Most water surveys show that tap water contains high levels of PFAS (

The solution: Filter your water.

How? Try one of these:

Here are a few high, middle, and lower-investment ideas:

High: A whole-house water filtration system.Middle: A countertop or under-sink reverse osmosis water filter.Lower: Buy glass-bottled filtered water. Water in plastic bottles contains phthalates or bisphenol A, which are toxic petrochemicals. Basically, avoid drinking from plastic bottles altogether if you can. Mineral water bottled in quality glass is best. This adds up, though, over time. You might consider the middle option for long-term health.

— Common and inexpensive filters are available, such as carbon filters like the ones Brita makes, but they remove very little. Reverse osmosis filters remove over 500x the microns that carbon filters will remove. Reverse osmosis filtering puts the water through a multi-step process to remove these microbes, pesticides, metals, and other toxins. Distilled water has also been recommended to us for drinking.
— If you filter your water, you can add back trace minerals.
— If you have a countertop filter, put that clean water into your ice trays. There’s nothing like a glass of filtered water with chlorine/metal/contaminate-filled ice cubes. Here are our favorite ice trays.
— We’ll talk about this much more in our post on Nutrition, but a staple in our daily water consumption now is Real Salt. Allow the clean water to easily absorb into your cells with a pinch of real salt for electrolytes first thing in the morning (or for a little more flavor and minerals, try our daily favorite, Redmond ReLyte—it’s made with Real Salt).
— Here’s a podcast rec from Andrew Huberman on how to optimize water quality and intake for health.
— Do your part for water safety and dispose of paint, chemicals, and medications correctly.
— Consider donating to Charity Water or similar organizations to help others, too.

Ari: We did none of these things at the beginning of this year. We started with an AquaTru countertop unit, which has been a positive upgrade for our health and well-being. We are adding whole-house filtration soon. Our AquaTru will still be our drinking water filter, and the whole house system will give us cleaner water for showers and daily-use water.

Lara: The gentleman from the water filtration company tested our water yesterday (pictured above). It was incredibly insightful! He showed us these ppm (parts per million – see the colorful chart here) readings: the left is our tap water, and the right is our AquaTru water. From 139 to 3.7! He was super impressed with our AquaTru.

Household Products

The Challenge: Traditional household products like scented candles, cleaners, air fresheners, detergents, and mothballs release toxic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into indoor air and are readily absorbed through our largest organ: our skin.

— VOCs in cleaning products (even many “green” ones!) affect the quality of air both indoors and outdoors. But they contaminate indoor air two to five times more than outdoor air, with some estimates putting it as high as ten times more. Some products emit VOCs for days, weeks, or even months.

The solution: Swap household products for less-toxic options.

How? Try one of these:
— Get the Environmental Working Group’s free guide to healthy household cleaning.
— We’ll cover more about kitchen items in our next post on Testing and Nutrition, but here are a few healthier swaps to get you started. Trade your Teflon-coated pans for cast iron or safe ceramic, your plastic cooking utensils for non-toxic teak wood Spurtles and your plastic cups and dishes for clean glass. We swapped out our old Teflon cookware set for a few select Our Place, Lodge, and Caraway pieces. I did a ton of research on this, and these swaps have been a game-changer. First of all, we have far less cookware now. You don’t need as many when you have just a few good pots and pans. I am cooking far more than I used to, and these non-stick surfaces make it easier and more fun. I rarely need to oil pans, and they clean like a dream. While the care instructions took some getting used to, this has been one of the best investments in our health. I can’t say enough about how much I love cooking on our cookware and with non-toxic dishes and utensils!
— We swapped our metal and plastic spatulas for non-toxic teak wood Spurtles. Friends, where have these been all my life?! They make cooking more ergonomic for my hands and more fun for everyone. Also, they are so beautiful we put them in a container on our kitchen counter for easy access.
— Toilet paper, oh, toilet paper! It’s a major source of toxic forever chemicals in water and it’s often made white with bleach. Swap for sustainable bamboo.
— We have these sustainable salt and pepper mills.
— We recycled our plastic colander (that was likely melting every time we put hot pasta through it—yikes) for a well-designed metal colander.
— Simple things like dryer sheets cost a ton of money over time and add chemicals to your clothes and air. Check out the infographic here. Try sustainable organic wool dryer balls instead. This was an easy swap for me, and I’ve never looked back. They cut drying time, and we love adding essential oils to them. A couple drops of eucalyptus and lavender oil on them make our laundry smell like a spa!
— We use a mix of vinegar, water, and essential oils for cleaning now. It’s cheap, and it works. We also love Aunt Fannie’s.
— Trade your plastic dish brushes for bamboo or another natural material. I just ordered these.
— Switch your laundry detergent for a less-toxic version like Molly’s Suds. We use the unscented powder, and it works well.
— We’re scratching the clean home surface here, so be sure to look at other things like furniture, rugs, synthetic clothing, and paint. They can bring VOCs into your home and body, too. I recently placed my first order with a sustainable, organic clothing brand and will report back soon. I’m also on the lookout for an Avocado mattress sale in November!
— Check your library for a copy of Home Detox by Daniella Chase and A Healthier Home by Shawna Holman. I got a copy of these this week and love what I’ve read so far—excellent summaries of basic how-to’s for reducing toxins in your home with more details than we have room for here.
— This is a great post with more swap ideas.

My favorites!Clean Beauty + Personal Care

The Challenge: Traditional personal care products are laden with harmful chemicals.

— It has been estimated that 70% of personal care and makeup products are contaminated with harmful impurities like lead, mercury, and formaldehyde. Here’s a comprehensive list with risks that we found helpful.
— Phthalates in beauty products pose significant risks, including cancer, human reproductive and developmental toxicity, endocrine disruption, birth defects, and respiratory problems.

The Solution: Use clean products. Your skin is your largest organ and one of the body’s detox pathways—love it well.

How? Try one of these:
— Search your beauty products, lotions, and personal care items on EWG’s Skin Deep database.
— I’ve been a long-time fan of One Love Organics for all of these reasons. I LOVE this small business and their extraordinary skincare line. (I have something fun below for you from them!) My daily skincare routine includes Easy Does It Cleanser, Botanical Bio Retinol (super gentle on my sensitive skin), and the Botanical A Facial Cleanser. I faithfully make a purchase from them on Black Friday each year: the family size of Easy Does It. Grace and Ari love it now, too!
— Fluoride in our water and toothpaste can cause a whole host of health problems. This is one of those things that large companies pay a lot of money to tell you otherwise. Consider the switch to fluoride-free products and ask your dentist to hold off on using it when you visit. We use David’s toothpaste.
— Find more of our favorite Beauty and Personal Care finds organized here.
— We’re scratching the surface here, but we hope this gets your wheels turning! Bottom-line: read your labels, do your research, and make swaps where you can. We’d love to hear your swaps and what’s worked for you, too.

A Word on Detoxing

Ari: We’ve talked about the products we use to reduce toxin exposure, but what about helping toxins to come out of our bodies? This happens naturally through our kidneys, liver, and gut. However, the best way we can actively promote detoxification is by sweating! When we sweat, a lot of the bad stuff in our blood moves into our sweat glands and ends up on our skin. So, sweat more! Obviously, this can be accomplished through exercise, but regular time in a sauna or steam room is probably the most efficient way to get your sweat on.

Lara: I can’t help but think of Richard Simmons—sweat it out, friends!

Stress ‘n Stuff

Ari: To give our bodies the best chance at healing, Lara and I also needed to detox our lives of stress where possible. We started with our schedules and named the pain points that were keeping us from real rest:

We said no to weekend sports this year
We chilled out on after-school activities
We unscheduled our Saturdays to have time for an actual Sabbath
We started going to bed at… well, I’ll wait for our upcoming post on sleep.

Lara: After my Dad passed away last year, something clicked in me about stuff. Have you ever heard of Swedish death cleaning? After a loved one dies, you see the value of things and what lasts. More stuff = more to manage, less stuff = less to manage and less stress. I came home after Dad‘s funeral and started a year of clearing things out. When we had construction from a flood in our house and renovations in the spring, I could’ve kissed our dumpster it was so helpful. Less stuff, less stress. These two books got me thinking and encouraged me to let things go for the big picture: Being Mortal by Atul Gawande and The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson. (Also… I’ve been considering getting some friends together to do a year-long toxin-swap and declutter party—one room or area per month in 2024. If this interests you, let me know!)

Celebrate all the Tiny Victories

Lara: We hope this post gets your wheels turning on laying a solid health foundation to achieve your specific goals. Even if you make just one of these changes, it could bring a whole lot of good to your life. Where do you start with all of this? Where all good things begin: with what matters.

Ari: Share your answers to these as a comment here or write them for yourself:
—What are your health and wellness pain points?
—What are your goals to solve those pain points?
—What matters to you in the big picture? What doesn’t?
—What swaps interest you to reduce toxins?

Lara: If you need a boost of motivation, there’s nothing more motivating than tiny wins. You probably have one small action step you want to try from reading this post. What is it for you? Give it a whirl! Start with something small, and feel the positive change; it will give you more energy for the following change.

For example, I love feeling the strength of my muscles now. I did not always feel that way, though. Far from it! Just ask Ari. For most of the months in this year, I felt exceedingly weak, but I did see incremental change, even while feeling weak. By tracking my progress lifting weights, for instance, I could see my muscles gradually getting stronger. Eventually I felt strong, but it took celebrating little wins along the way to keep me going to that point. Celebrate all the tiny victories, and let them propel you forward to more!

And now, for a little surprise I’ve been cooking up… drumroll…

A Fit Together Healthy Home Giveaway

We’re thrilled to partner with these amazing companies we love to give away some of our absolute favorite products that have helped us on this journey! You guys, we wish we could have won our own giveaway a few months ago!

ENTER TO WIN!
—An AirDoctor of your choice
—An AquaTru countertop unit
—A collection of my favorite clean beauty products from One Love Organics
—A Lodge Dutch Oven
—And our favorite wool dryer balls!

There will be a separate winner for each item, so there are many chances to win. US entrants only. International friends, I’m adding a $50 gift card to the small business of your choice so you can get in on the fun, too!

How to enter:
—Leave a comment on this post. We can’t wait to hear your thoughts!
—Share this post with friends (tag me if you can!)—we hope to help many people make healthy swaps and feel the difference.
—Follow @LaraCasey @OneLoveOrganics @AirDoctorPro @AquaTru on Instagram. If you don’t have Instagram, sign up for their newsletters (mine is here)—they have such helpful resources. I’ll announce the winner on November 1, here on the blog.

YOUR TURN! We hope something in this post or our story encouraged you! What’s bugging you most in your health? What goals do you have? What matters to you? Any toxin swaps you’re going to try—or favorites you’ve done yourself? We’d love to hear!

P.S. Up next in our Fit Together series? Testing and Nutrition! Join my new email list to be the first to know when new posts are live.

The post Fit Together: Health Goals, Toxin Swaps, and a Giveaway! appeared first on Lara Casey.

What it’s like to sell a company you love

The leaves are about to show you how beautiful it is to let things go. – Unknown

Affiliate links are used in this post. Enjoy!

I’ve hesitated to write about my experience in selling a company—one I grew over many years with my heart and soul. I’ve rewritten these sentences and subsequently deleted them a dozen times. It’s hard to put into words because letting go of something, even for meaningful objectives and outcomes, is painful, and I could never capture the full story here. But, today, PowerSheets Launch Day, deserves an attempt.

God led me to step away from entrepreneurship for specific and clear reasons, some of which I’m just beginning to see the fruit of—and some of which I may not see in my lifetime. Even with God’s constant reminders of “why” over the last year though, the grief of letting go remains.

It’s not easy to let go of something that was so much a part of me.New photos by Traci

You see, Cultivate What Matters was a reflection of my whole heart: my love of connection, life-giving words, transformation, the colors in my garden (the growing ground for so much of what God has taught me), and living numbered days. I loved the joy, the metamorphosis in people’s lives, and the power of little-by-little steps that really did add up. I loved that I got to fail and learn (peonies grow through the dirt, and so do we). I loved helping people find healthy habits and discover that the small things really are the big things. I loved creating meaningful tools that guided me and many of you to focus on what is good, true, and lovely. I loved making beautiful things and watching my co-workers use their God-given gifts!

While there were daily challenges that refined me, that’s what cultivating does. It tills up the old and makes room for the new. Challenges change us for the better and make us more fruitful over time. It all grew me. Letting go of Cultivate meant letting go of living out my gifts in the ways I’d known for so long. It felt like a death. It was. In those early days, weeks, and months after Cultivate was acquired, I couldn’t bring myself to wear color, see flowers, or write about goals without pangs of grief. I couldn’t look at my shelves lined with Write the Word journals or see products with my handwriting.

God mercifully aligned those early weeks with the season of pulling all the plants out of our garden for winter. What a time it was: all this change and the loss of my dad in the same few weeks. The garden was a picture of life: it was time to let the ground lie fallow and step away from everything I knew to be “me.” I needed time to process and heal. I needed to hear from the Lord about my identity.

Who was I without this part of my life I knew for so many years?

Choosing a new path, or making a choice that requires great faith, is almost never easy. Maybe it’s hard to imagine living differently in your current circumstances. Maybe it’s a lingering decision that needs to be made or a lifestyle change for your health. Maybe it’s the new pursuit you’ve considered or a season of life that needs closing.

Or maybe you’re literally considering selling a business. Perhaps it seems impossible to find the right buyer – someone who will do things the way you would do them or someone who will understand your business at all. Maybe you’re worried you’ll disappoint people – many people – if you move forward. Maybe it’s hard to imagine what life would be like if you did find a fit. (Often, we’re more afraid of success than failure.)

Whatever it is specifically for you, what if doing the hard thing, taking a risk, or stepping into the unknown will change everything? What if giving something up will open space for something else—even if you have no idea what that is right now? That was me. I didn’t know what would come next. I just knew God wanted me to lay it down at His feet and trust Him.

As we’ve long known and explored together, something has to die before something new can grow.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted.
—ECCLESIASTES 3:1–2

Before a seed can sprout, it is placed in the ground. There in the dark, surrounded by the mess of the dirt, it begins soaking up nutrients that will eventually help it to sprout. The sprout breaks through the hard outer shell, leaves its protective covering behind, and presses through the dirt toward the light.

So, let’s talk about the box.

There are often encounters with grief that grow me—that bring my need for the Lord into the light. Since I no longer work at Cultivate, one of those was seeing the PowerSheets for the first time this year just a few weeks early, alongside affiliates and friends of the brand. The box arrived in the mail, and I couldn’t bring myself to go near it, much less open it.

It’s just paper, you say. Yes, and so are birth certificates and death certificates. In between my own birth and final days has been this book of dreams. To open the box was, in a way, to accept that they had moved on without me — which I realize was my bittersweet hope that they would. It’s hard to love and let go, but this is grief.

And so I let it sit by the front door for days. I’ve learned this year to listen to my body and give myself time to process, and I did, but the time came: I needed to open the box. I was going to see Emily for our bi-weekly walk, and wanted to be able to encourage her in all she had poured into the pages alongside the new Cultivate team for the first time without me.

I asked God to settle my heart and slowly let the scissors slice through the bright pink packing tape. Brown paper shifted, and I held my breath as I let my hands reach in to meet them.

Hello, familiar friend. Hello, pages I’ve poured my heart and soul into—and filled with my own messy handwriting, laying down hopes and dreams, and taking a thousand of my own little-by-little steps forward that, over time, led me here.

What a thought. My own PowerSheets guided me through a process of thinking big picture and taking small steps since I created them in 2012—and led me to this place, eventually, of letting go of them.

I let it all sink in momentarily as my hands brushed over the linen cover. I felt the indents of the font and letters that held a million stories.

A turned page after page, and with each, let out a breath of acceptance. I read words penned in prayer, refined over many years, familiar and true:

—Any day can be a fresh start.
—Naming what matters changes everything.
—We can’t do it all and do it all well, but we can choose to cultivate what matters.
—Reflection reaps rewards.
—Legacies start with one small seed.
—Little by little adds up.
—It’s okay to grow slow.
—You know all those things you’ve always wanted to do? You should go DO them.

And… it’s okay to let go of a dream.

That dream, I’ve come to see, was fulfilled.

While I no longer work at Cultivate or get the joy of connecting with you through these products and pages, I’m still a cultivator—over here growing good things in new places. Faithfully tending to life and health and little souls.

Sometimes we don’t know how the seeds we plant today will grow tomorrow, much less over a career or a lifetime. I certainly didn’t know I’d be here, ever-encouraged by words I wrote many years ago, today. What a thought. What a gift.

As I walked with Emily this week, I got to tell her what I discovered in this whole unboxing-of-my-soul experience: God makes good things grow out of hard things, and this year’s PowerSheets are the best yet. The changes brought an easy, seamless process that I can’t wait to dig into myself! There are so many new additions and tweaks I love—things I never thought of myself. For me, there couldn’t be a more perfect time to use the PowerSheets with truly fresh eyes, encountering each question without thoughts of changes for next year or launch logistics. It’s a new season of dreaming.

Ari told me this week that he thinks I am in the in-between.

“In between what?!” I protested. He went on: “We have such a limited view. Imagine a pie chart with a tiny little sliver and another slightly-larger-but-still-tiny sliver cut out, both collectively taking up just 1% of the pie. The tiniest sliver is what we know, and the slightly-larger-but-still-super-small piece is what we know we do not know, and the rest is what we don’t know we don’t know.”

Every single step forward in selling a company was a step of faith towards something I did not know. It still feels that way most days as I navigate this second-half-of-life journey. I just knew, deep in my roots, that I was supposed to let go and make room.

I’ll be right there with you this year as you open up your own PowerSheets and uncover what matters most in your season and stage of life as you consider letting something go or starting something new. I’ll be writing in full color on my Crocus-covered pages. (Yes, I own nothing purple in my life, but a cover named for the first flower of spring that presses bravely through ice and snow felt apropos for my season of life.)

Soon as the frost will get out of my bed,
From this cold dungeon to free me,
I will peer up with my little bright head,
And all will be joyful to see me.

Then from my heart will young petals diverge,
As rays of the sun from their focus;
I from the darkness of earth shall emerge,
A happy and beautiful Crocus!

Many, perhaps, from so simple a flower,
This little lesson may borrow,
Patient today, through its gloomiest hour,
We come out the brighter tomorrow.

~ Hannah F. Gould

With the Lord’s tender mercy and lovingkindness as our fertilizer, in His perfect ways and seasons, indeed we do.

This last year has been a time of being transformed under the surface. Getting through the one-year anniversary of my dad‘s passing in August was a milestone. I kept imagining what he would say to me on that day:

Play. Be creative. The life that is truly life is very real– I’m living it! Go and live like that’s true yourself, Lara. Your gifts and talents matter because they sing to the world to come, taste, and see that the Lord is good!

Friends, I didn’t know what the last year would be like, mingled together with the acute pain of walking my dad home and my health journey. Selling a company you grew from the ground up is an excruciatingly difficult blessing—a journey more complex than I can share in a simple blog post. But, letting go, as it turns out, has many gifts, namely, to get us to trust in something bigger than us.

I do.

—

The new 2024 PowerSheets launch today at 10—get yours here.

The post What it’s like to sell a company you love appeared first on Lara Casey.

October Goals

October gave a party;
The leaves by hundreds came—
The Chestnuts, Oaks, and Maples,
And leaves of every name.
The Sunshine spread a carpet,
And everything was grand,
Miss Weather led the dancing,
Professor Wind the band.

The Chestnuts came in yellow,
The Oaks in crimson dressed;
The lovely Misses Maple
In scarlet looked their best;
All balanced to their partners,
And gaily fluttered by;
The sight was like a rainbow
New fallen from the sky.

– “October’s Party” by George Cooper

It has been a month of blooming—in the garden and in our lives. Blooming always comes in God’s timing, and I was especially grateful for it in September.

A few highlights from September: affiliate links are below – enjoy!
—We kicked off our Health Series to a flurry of calls, texts, and messages. We are grateful our story has encouraged so many of you. More to come! If you’d like, you can join the email list to be notified when new posts are up.
—Gracie went to town decorating for fall. See a few of our decorating favorites here, and our organic herbal picks for tea season.
—We called The Doctor.
—We pulled out the summer garden to make room for winter seeds. Planting with the kids was fun—take a peek here!
—Our newly declared annual weekend in Blowing Rock was good for our souls, complete with a big solo hike I always wanted to do. This was a milestone for me in many ways and a hike I never thought I could do before. More to come in a future post.
—I love the Jewish holidays: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, etc. These reflective days reminded us of God’s faithfulness over the last year.

—Above: Equip collagen (15% off anything), garden blooms, and a new journal. New journals deserve a moment.
—I saw our new local functional medicine doctor at the end of September after being on the waitlist for most of this year. More to come in our health series.
—I used social media more than once in a blue moon for the first time in, I don’t know, five years? There was no grand plan here. I woke up one day, and God nudged me to share His goodness—that was it. There’s still no grand plan. I’m using it lately because it’s fun, and I hope to use my gifts to encourage a few people.
—Dear Butternut Squash Farmers of the World, I will happily volunteer if you need a spokesperson. I found a simple and delicious way to make it, and I love it!
—My long-time friend, Traci, came to take new photos of us and our house renovations for me to share with you soon.
—I saw friends and former coworkers for long autumn walks. It had been a long while, and I treasured this time.
—In my search for faithful affirmations for Sarah to listen to each day, given what we know now about her PDA Autism, I found a lot of fluff. I recorded my own for her, and we settled into new parenting rhythms from what we’re learning about her Autism. This has been groundbreaking for all of us!
—School started in full swing, and it has been wonderful. I finally gathered a few of my school favorites here.
—I did new things. I have always loved home design and curated meaningful decor for Southern Weddings and Cultivate product shoots for many years. I am a deep researcher when it comes to trying new products. A small thing I’ve always wanted to do? Gather all my favorite home, kitchen, health, and homeschool items into one place for friends to shop easily. Find all my favorites here. I’ll add a bunch to this this quarter—click “follow” for updates.

You know all those books you’ve always wanted to read? You should go READ them. Atomic Habits and the work we did for over a decade with Making Things Happen, I named the type of person I want to be in the present tense: I am the kind of person who consistently reads great books and puts them into practice. Yes!!

What I read or listened to:

— Gentle and Lowly – This was a challenging read for me – not my favorite writing style, so it took a while to get through. But it’s a book that frequently comes to mind after reading it, and it formed the way I see God’s character. This book is a treasure if you struggle with God as a gentle and compassionate Father. I’ve shared many of his points with my children, as well!
— I was grateful to get an advance read and endorse my friend Robin’s new book, Well to the Core. It’s fantastic, friends! Pre-order your copy before release day this week, October 3.
— Gifts from the Garden – One of many library treasures this month, this book has so many fun and simple garden gift projects. Grace loved it as well!
— Martha Stewart’s Encyclopedia of Crafts – No surprise, as someone who used to make a magazine, I loved this. From the photography to the innovative but simple ideas, it’s a classic.
—Other library recs this month: Handpicked, Erica Wilson’s Embroidery Book, From Vines to Vessels, the Needlecraft Book, and I picked up a couple of books on Renaissance music to go along with the kids’ studies this term.
— After last month’s read of Sacred Rhythms, I found The Daily Office Podcast. I have greatly enjoyed this and listen to it when I need to calm my nervous system. His voice is calm, and the teaching is living water from the Word. It’s well done!
— I’ve had the Pride and Prejudice soundtrack on repeat since last August. When you are in a season of grief, it can be helpful to make a playlist for healing. The movie is my favorite and I watched it again on the plane coming home from dad’s funeral. There’s something about that last scene that makes me long for the life to come—a beautiful time of all things made right.

In progress:
—Mere Christianity in honor of my Dad. This was one of his favorites.
—Parenting by Paul David Tripp is still—yes, still—punching me in the gut every time I pick it up. Taking this one slowly.
—Made for People by Justin Whitmel Early. Completing his trilogy of titles, I’m enjoying this so far!
—Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright. I started this with Ari shortly after my dad’s passing. It’s a deep dive into the resurrection and the life to come.

What I’m looking forward to in October:
—I have a lot of preparation to do in October for November events, and my mom is coming to stay with us for several weeks.
—Enjoying our last weekend trips for the year—one to Bald Head and one to Pilot Mountain.
—Ari and I plan to finish off our health series! Lots of writing this month.
—Enjoying the last of my zinnias before I pull them out in a few days to make more room for winter goodness.
—I’m prepping for a little 2024 PowerSheets retreat afternoon in a few weeks—stay tuned for a related post this week.

My October goals were fueled by the Q4 Goal Refresh in the PowerSheets. The process never fails to clarify my focus and make me want to take action—no need for forced motivation. My goals matter to me in the big picture, so I want to take action. I’m grateful for another month to tackle what God has given me to do.

What are you focusing on in October? Do we share any goals? I’d love to hear!

The post October Goals appeared first on Lara Casey.

Fit Together: A Journey to Health and Well-being

Well, friends, let’s get right to it: we’ve changed!

Our health has had an overhaul in the last seven months, with results that have surprised us. Granted, none of this change came by accident. For years, especially last year, we experienced difficult health symptoms that resounded through our lives like clanging alarm bells. Little by little, we changed how we live. We are in this for the long game—for the big picture of what matters most. Results came from old-fashioned hard work, researched-backed science, and focusing on the big picture. In this series, we will share what we’ve learned: what worked, what didn’t, and what we would change if we did it all over again. Welcome!

We hope y’all came hungry—this first introduction post is a meaty one! The rest of the series will be shorter, with actionable steps and our top takeaways for you to try. If you scroll past this first part, looking for links to what supplements we took or those tips before reading our story, that’s okay. You may miss the reason why what we’ve done has worked, though. Our history influences our healing and can give you valuable insight to inform your steps forward. Our bodies and stories are unique, and looking at the whole system under the hood is essential, not just the flashing red lights on the dash. We want you to land on those links with conviction and confidence instead of trying something that might not be right for you. Sound good? Great! We’re glad you’re here! Affiliate links are used in this post – enjoy!

Who This Series is For:

Lara: You might have clicked over to this post because you want your health and fitness to improve, but you can’t get motivated. Or, like us, you’ve experienced chronic pain or health challenges. Perhaps, also like us, you’ve reached a certain age, and your body has…um… over-reached beyond your age? You feel like some things are falling apart. Perhaps you don’t know where to start; you just know, deep inside, that something needs to change.

Ari: We had those questions and fears: What if it’s too late to heal our bodies after all this damage? What if we do all this work and nothing happens? What if we waste money or time? What are the right changes to make exactly? We didn’t know where to start and felt very behind.

The Journey of Change:

Lara: You’ll learn that Ari and I do many different things. His nutrition, for instance, is vastly different than mine because we know now what his body prefers for fuel. We take unique supplements and have different genetic makeups, blood panel results, and individual goals.

Ari: But, you’ll also learn the core truths of health that work for both of us—and likely you as well. While there are no one-size-fits-all programs, there are things that Lara and I have found beneficial for most humans.

Lara: The most significant thing we’ve learned is that true health is about living for something bigger than anything we see or feel. It’s not about getting the youth back that we had in our 20s, fixing all of our ailments, or finding the perfect nutrition plan or supplement. Our physical health is of some value, but our emotional and spiritual health are all interconnected. Emotional pain affects our bodies. Everything is connected, and my body was trying to tell me things for so long. This year, the best thing that happened was I learned to listen. I processed loss, fear, failure, and what I held as my identity and found a greater understanding of holistic wellness.

Can you spot our sweet guy who wanted to take our picture yesterday?

Who We Are:

Ari: First, a little about us. We met at the gym 18 years ago when I was training to be a flight surgeon with the Navy. Lara was a personal trainer, and I asked her for workout advice and a date.

Lara: Fast forward a few years, and three kids later, Ari is a men’s health doctor and legitimate professional rapper. This is not a drill, friends—medical companies ask him to share his expertise and… to rap.

Ari: That’s right, I shrink prostates and bust rhymes. Anyway, Lara has owned her own business for as long as I have known her: wedding planning, wedding magazine, and goal-setting planners. Within this last year, she stepped away from being a business owner. It was a big year of grieving the loss of her dad and transitioning into a new life.

Lara: While Ari is a physician, this series is not medical advice but rather meant to be educational. Talk to a knowledgeable doctor and research before making changes or adding supplements. We are not functional medicine, nutrition, or exercise science experts.

Ari: We are, however, reasonably intelligent people motivated to research on our own to discover solutions that work. We’ve seen some fantastic results, many of which we’ve tracked, but we didn’t evaluate each change we made with a scientific method–i.e., isolating each to assess its impact one at a time. We made many changes at once and, therefore, don’t know the exact measured effect of each one. We know certain habits and tools worked more than others, though, and the sum of all the changes. We are in a much better place than before. We’ll do our best to share what helped accurately with the data we have to quantify its effect. We hope this series encourages you to try new things and leave your comfort zone with your health and wellness.

Our Health Challenges:

Lara: I’m turning 44 this year, and Ari will be 46. At the start of this year, Ari was on blood pressure medication and in year twenty of taking a PPI (proton pump inhibitor). He was a tired dad and would crash while reading to the kids at bedtime. In the wee hours of the night, his mind would turn on, and he would stay up for hours on his phone. He also snored when he was asleep, which sounds benign, but it was another alarm bell for his health. There were notable swings of anger and withdrawal, pointing to a root cause we’d later discover that had a relatively simple solution—stay tuned for the rest of the series. There’s no way for us to fit our entire health history into one blog post. There were a lot of factors, and we’ve included what we thought would be most helpful here – we’ll unpack more along the way.

Ari: My turning point was a period of sharp headaches when lifting weights last year. After several tests and prayers, we discovered I was getting headaches from high blood pressure, making it difficult to work out—and exercise was supposed to help lower my blood pressure! The result was to reduce my salt intake and start a low dose of lisinopril. I was frustrated (man, did I feel old). Medication is a helpful and necessary tool for many (I prescribe it daily) and isn’t the only way to affect change. There had to be a better way. There was, and it didn’t take long.

Lara: I experienced many years of chronic joint pain, inflammation, IBS, anemia, hormone swings, night sweats, heart palpitations, acid reflux, and fatigue. I had labs done that were puzzling and difficult to make sense of. My doctor told us something was going on with my immune system, and we’d have to “wait and see.”

Ari: Sleep and daily living grew more and more challenging. Lara woke up through the night with neck, hip, knee, and shoulder pain. The doctor prescribed daily NSAIDs and PPIs, which she was on for 12 years. She would text me after each doctor’s visit in resigned frustration: no one knew what was causing all of this. They offered medication, but no answers. Lara knew all of this must be connected somehow.

Lara: The scary thing was losing feeling in my left arm, fingers, and leg over the last few years. There were several trips to the ER. They said it was happening from degenerative disc disease in my neck. If you’ve followed my journey here, you know there were years I couldn’t pick up my kids, open doors, cut things in the kitchen, or drive without pain and numbness. We were considering a major neck surgery to fuse my discs. But how would I care for my kids or employees to be able to have a major surgery like this? We didn’t have family nearby to help, and the surgeon told us he highly recommended I move forward with the surgery even though it “might make things worse.” Woosh! We prayed every night, throughout the day, on the phone, with friends, and over me when I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning from pain in my joints.

Ari: We had little energy left for our three children, one with Autism and high needs, and our full-time jobs.

Photo last year by Gina.

Surrendering the Stress:

Lara: I began to lose handfuls of hair early last year and asked a close friend in the hair industry what he thought. His advice was tender and unexpected: “Slow down, reduce stress – whatever it takes.” The things I enjoyed to reduce stress kept slipping away – gardening, hiking, walking, and playing with my kids. I had tried the doctor’s recommendations: anti-inflammatory diets, creams, oils, two steroid injections in my neck, and physical therapy for years with little improvement. The physical therapy I was doing seemed to make it worse. I stopped going. There was a long period when I gave up hope that anything could change.

I didn’t know it then, but God would soon teach me that we are more than our physical bodies. He didn’t just want to heal my neck; He wanted to heal my soul. Our thoughts, emotions, and experiences shape our character and our actions. Pain changes the makeup of our cells and lodges itself into the fibers of our being if we don’t process it—like a foreign object tossed into moving cogwheels. When it gets backed up, and stress remains stuck, we feel it. When we bring it into the light, though, pain becomes a pathway.

More than one person ever-so-gently suggested that all my stress was carried in my neck. I didn’t like that concept – it felt abstract. But they were right. Stress was stuck in my body. My nervous system was on overdrive trying to fight it. I was doing my best to parent, homeschool, and love my family amidst grief and loss. There were times I was grateful to have done what God asked me to do in stepping into a new season, and times I felt like a failure. There were times when the trauma of watching my dad die felt insurmountable and times when it led me to the reality of eternity. There were times I felt thankful for this new life and times I felt forgotten and, frankly, just awful at it. Yet, little by little, day by day, I’d try to wake up each day with gratitude for the gift of the breath in my lungs. I have such tenderness for the Lara of those days. God had allowed me to grow good things, but some needed extra care in this new season, and some needed to be pruned and pulled out. I had to learn to process emotional pain as an essential part of experiencing holistic healing.

This last year was about coming undone to come alive.

Ari: This journey hasn’t just been about our bodies but our faith at the center. God wanted us fit together (see what I did there?). We know now that there’s a balance needed for real health: do your best each day and know you are not in control.

Lara: No matter our good efforts, our health could fall apart tomorrow, but God won’t. While neck pain no longer rules my life, praise the Lord (the story is still crazy to me, and I’ll tell you more in a minute), there are things in our bodies that will never heal this side of Heaven, and we are pretty okay with that. A lot of this journey has been embracing aging, eternity, and our limits. It’s not all bad, believe it or not! We’re learning to slow down and see hard things as part of the path forward instead of feeling like we have to stuff them away. And those pain-filled years weren’t fruitless. When I couldn’t get out in the garden like I wanted to, I learned to give my kids one penny per pulled weed. Highly recommend.

We grew rainbow “glass gem” popcorn this year!

Misconception of Being “Healthy”:

Ari: We were blessed in many ways—who were we to complain about anything—yet, in these last few years, we were too worn out to steward those blessings well. Something had to give. Ironically, we considered ourselves “healthy people.” We ate mostly local and organic foods, took traditional multivitamins, and exercised a few times a week when we could. Lara’s father’s health began to decline rapidly last year, giving us a renewed perspective on the finite nature of life. We realized that we needed to make a radical change for ourselves and everyone who depended on us. God was asking us to steward what He gave us, including our health, in new ways.

Lara: We were deep into special needs parenting and needed more resilience to help her and our whole family. We only get this one life, and we were tired of being tired.

Ari: A big part of our lifestyle changes were motivated by our youngest, who has Autism. She was experiencing some violent episodes at home and school. We had tried traditional therapies for her over the years, with similar results to our own health journey: little change. Then, Lara read a book that sent both of us researching gut health and something new to us: functional medicine. The main idea is that disorders in the body can be helped by identifying the root cause and adjusting a variety of factors, including lifestyle and diet, appropriately. This contradicts the traditional approach of prescribing medications that blunt symptoms without addressing the root cause.

Lara: We wanted to dive in and try a few things for the whole family, but we prioritized Sarah’s health first. We found a functional medicine practitioner near us and implemented her recommendations. An organic acid test revealed what we expected: Sarah’s gut was a mess, affecting her ability to thrive. Her practitioner recommended several supplements and gave us the steps below. These steps were quite a process, but we were willing to try anything. We had read the research and knew this would be an investment in her lifelong health.

—Clean your water
—Clean your air
—Get a Squatty Potty
—Optimize her diet for healing
—Remove sleep barriers
—Remove toxins from the house
—Make healthy sleep routines happen
—Help her process her emotions – everything is connected

Ari: There’s a lot to each of these steps, which we’ll cover in the posts ahead. Some recommendations were just weird–squatty potty??–but we went with it. Within a short time, Sarah was sleeping better, reading more than a sentence at a time (before, she couldn’t sit still to focus on a book), and she seemed less anxious. We had a long way to go with her health, but it motivated our efforts to address our own issues with a functional medicine approach.

Lara: It’s worth stopping here to tell you one of the reasons we’re taking the time to write this series. Much of 1-1 functional medicine is cost-prohibitive for most of the population. It’s largely not covered by insurance, and labs can be expensive.

Ari: Several companies are working to make testing accessible, but it’s still hard to interpret test results without an experienced provider. We can’t solve all these problems ourselves, but we hope to pass along what we’re learning to help.

Lara: And we’re also here to tell you that money can’t do a workout for you – or breathe for you when you experience stress. You can implement many zero and low-cost things (we’ll suggest ideas!), and creativity goes a long way. When you’re determined, you can do a lot. I worked out in our living room for most of this year with just a few free weights and bands. You know one of your neighbors has a few free weights lying around that they do not have any intention to use—free them of those! We’ve made the most of podcasts, PubMed.com, and our library card. I can’t wait to learn from your ideas, too.

Ari: Don’t let anyone tell you a couple of shoe boxes won’t make a pretty good Squatty Potty! There are some things that we will talk about that were 100% worth it, and other things that were totally not worth it — we will warn you about these.

Lara: The purchases we did make, we took advantage of other people’s affiliate discount codes and links. I became an affiliate for a small handful of health companies myself for this reason. After buying their products and finding success with them, I want to recommend what’s worked for us, but not without getting a discount for you (and me!). I also appreciate getting access to inside research, and it’s a way for me to help small businesses I believe in. We earn a commission when you purchase using our discount links, which is no extra cost to you—it comes from the company. If we share a product, it means we bought it and used it for a good chunk of time before reaching out to be a part of what they’re doing. We hope the inside info and discounts are helpful to you if you choose to use them.

Ari: When we started this, we didn’t know anyone who was doing these types of things. So, we just had to jump in and try things based on our own research. I kind of wish we had a blog like this to refer to—and that’s why we are motivated to write this.

Rediscovering Health through Functional Medicine:

Lara: Okay, back to the start of 2023. We took in the latest evidence-based insights like a firehose, reading and listening to enough research to fill a Doctorate program over these months. Ari used his research expertise and spent hours pouring through medical papers while I dove off the diving board into Huberman and others, hunting for facts in all the fiction.

Ari: Although Functional Medicine was not part of my training at Med School, I was ready to try a different approach. There were a lot of intelligent voices describing the data that supported these principles. I had been on chronic medication for most of my adult life, and I wasn’t ready to accept that this was how it would be forever.

Lara: After all those years of suffering from neck pain, I sought a second opinion. I’ll never forget her words as she looked at my scans and history: “I don’t think this pain is coming from your neck.”

Full stop.
What?

As I listened to her, God was doing what I thought was impossible. We prayed for six years for Him to heal my neck, and in an unexpected way, He did. She said the pain was likely from a trap/shoulder imbalance and asked me if I had ever heard of Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS), a connective tissue disorder that affects collagen and causes unstable joints.

I had not heard of it and soon discovered I’d been living with it all my life. Discs in my neck may be misaligned forever, but that wasn’t the root cause of my pain. All this time, I was treated traditionally for a neck injury, causing undue treatment, physical therapy on the wrong body part, steroid injections, MRIs, medications, and a possible disc fusion surgery. I could have been angry for all of those lost years, but I was too busy trying not to ugly cry for what I’d just gained. Suddenly, so many things made sense in my life, and it didn’t matter how long it took to heal my joints. This was all connected, and I was listening. A thrill of hope.

With a new holistic plan, I’m standing here a few months later with my chronic neck pain 95% alleviated. It has been challenging and tedious work, and I’ll have this for the rest of my life, but I now know the cause and have a new perspective on wellness. In this, I’ve learned my true and healthy limits, which are freeing! For instance, I always felt like I “should“ run or do traditional HIIT or sprint at some point during my cardio workouts. Now I know God didn’t build me for that. Good for someone else, not for me! I now enjoy walking every day more than I used to. That’s what I do for cardio now: I walk, and my whole system is happier. I know how stress affects my joints and how unresolved emotions suppress my immune system: I have felt it anecdotally and seen it in my white cell count on labs and other markers. This is not an abstract concept; it’s real. I have a lifetime ahead of stabilizing my joints, and I’m here for it.

Ari: This is a long-term journey, and there are many health conundrums we’re working through like leaky gut, heavy metal toxicity for Lara, and more. There are always things in progress, but we’ve also learned that you can’t get hung up on seeking perfect health. There are some things we’ve had to just let go of. With all we’re learning, we’re taking it one day at a time—and thankful for what we have right now.

The Series Ahead:

Lara: It can be overwhelming to know where to start, especially once you dip your toe into the functional medicine pool. That’s why we’re breaking this series into several parts, so you have time to digest each and try a few things at a time. We’ll also take our time writing it, so feel free to sign up to get posts by email so you don’t miss anything. Today, we’ve taken a deep dive into why we changed, and up next:

— Where to start: removing barriers and staying motivated for the long term.
— Life-changing habits: the small daily things we do that add up.
— The 1 thing that will change your health quickly. (We don’t do shortcuts, but this is as close to one as you can get—it deserves a post all its own.)
— What we do for exercise and recovery.
— What we eat—and all about the experiment we did one weekend.
— How we optimize: supplements and seasons. (Some supplements we may benefit from long-term, and some are helpful for a short time.)
— A progress update and what’s next!

Our Results:

Lara: After a hearty introduction, we hope you feel nourished for good things ahead! Let’s summarize some of our progress from the last seven months of little by little steps. We had zero aesthetic aspirations in our health goals, but our bodies did change, which surprised us. We feel vulnerable sharing these photos, but now you know they are about more than what’s on the surface. Now you know these photos have a story to tell.

Ari: On the left: You know what I was experiencing back then. I was tired. My motivations were to not let the aging process passively happen to me. I wanted to do whatever I could do to be healthier so that I could have not necessarily a longer life but a longer, highly functional life. More years to be active with Lara and the kids (and grandkids). And I wanted to have a joint hobby with Lara. We were spending a lot of time and energy parenting and making life work, and it seemed like it had been a while since we had a joint topic of interest outside of work and kids to discuss. Our gut health was destroyed by PPIs (and NSAIDs for Lara). Gut health is the root cause of many of our health symptoms. It wasn’t until the beginning of this year that I realized how severely my absorption of other nutrients was affected by the lower acid levels in my stomach.

On the right: A few weeks into this, I was able to stop taking my Prilosec and was no longer experiencing heartburn. We learned our genetic methylation cycles and that the traditional multivitamins and fortified foods we consumed for so long were doing more harm than good. Our genetic variations – COMT and MTHFR for me – gave us data on how to fuel our bodies. I also stopped my lisinopril, and my blood pressure came down to a normal level. I’ve experienced a lot less anxiety as well as less frequent depressive episodes. I have increased energy and sleep better through the night. An unexpected side effect of all this: I gained muscle and lost body fat. I got a six-pack for the first time in my life (man, I wish I knew about this when I was 20…). And… I have a lot more to talk about with my wife!

Lara: On the left: I was living in chronic pain, with lots of makeup to cover up the bags under my eyes. I had no desire to change the way I looked, but on the inside, I was in emotional, spiritual, and physical distress. Most nights I didn’t want to go to bed because I knew I’d be up all night in pain. I was anemic, inflamed, experiencing anxiety, and didn’t know the chronic medication I took, along with other factors, compromised my whole system. Our bodies were suffering unable to get the nutrients we needed from food to heal. I was tired of being tired. When I started strength training in January, I could lift 3-pound weights with my arms and couldn’t do any weight on my legs. Just body weight for the first few weeks. I was terrified I’d hurt myself, which I often did with my joints.

Then, little by little by little by little…

On the right: Fast forward: this photo on the right was taken after a recent training session. I used 40-pound dumbbells for lunges (my legs could do more, but I’m limited by what my hands can hold at this point), squatted 100 pounds with a bar set securely on stabilized traps, curled 20-pound dumbbells, and did dips with zero shoulder pain. It has taken all these months of tedious work to strengthen my joints to lift weights at all. My strength has skyrocketed. I’m still working to heal a labral tear in my left hip, high hamstring tendinosis, and I have a hernia surgery coming up – all from that root cause of my connective tissue being loosey-goosey – but this new journey is a gift. I’m eating twice (!) as much as I was on the left – more in the post about what we eat. We’ve both learned that the food we eat today is not the same as the food our ancestors enjoyed. Farming practices and our soil have drastically changed, necessitating we adapt as well. We have learned about the harmful effects of glyphosate, the benefits of regenerative farming, and we’ve learned to grow some pretty great carrots and popcorn in our garden! This has been a lot of fun to do with Ari and has given us something to encourage each other in each day. Thanks to training, different physical therapy, cleaning up the toxins in our house, better whole food nutrition, the right supplements for my specific needs, rest and gaining resilience for stress, and a whole lot of God’s grace, I am sleeping through the night with little to no joint pain. This has been miraculous for me. I also just completed a hike I’ve always wanted to do but never had the confidence that my body could make it before. I was thankful to do it in honor of my dad. Functional medicine has helped me learn my limits and to thrive within them.

Ari: We both learned that muscle matters. Lifting weights is one of the single best things you can do for your health. But, we’ve also learned it needs to be combined with other factors to be beneficial.

Lara: Our kids are really into this, too. When I asked Ari about his top health tips for this series, they immediately responded with their thoughts. Their enthusiasm impressed me—they have been paying attention:

“Sleep!” – Gracie
“Attitude!” – Josh
“Focus, yeah, focus is a big one.” – Gracie
“Lots of food!” – Sarah
“And sleep, don’t forget sleep!” – Gracie.

We’ve all learned, once again, that little-by-little steps really do add up.

Ari: We’ve had a lot of fun doing this together, encouraging one another when we want to give up, and recently, we’ve all had fun making funny videos.

Lara: Change often happens when we’re willing to be wrong, teachable, and walk right into a paradigm shift because there’s no way we’re going back.

Ari: We’ve walked into that shift, and we’re just getting started.

Lara: I can’t imagine what’s possible in 7 more months—or a year or two years, Lord willing. The possibilities are energizing.

YOUR TURN! We hope something in this post or our story encouraged you. What’s on your mind with your own health journey? What are you learning? What’s been holding you back lately? We’d love to hear!

As promised, here are 3 time-sensitive sales and discount codes that we hope are helpful for you if you use them. We’ll share more about why we love some of these in future posts, but these sales will end before then, so I wanted to share these with you now.

First, our air purifier is on major sale right now! This is the same discount I took advantage of to get our first AirDoctor—and I know from being an affiliate now that this is the best sale for a while. Over 50% off most units. This sale-on-sale is available only through these links (you won’t see it on the regular website) and runs through September 27th:

Buy AD5500, AD3000, and AD2000 and receive $900 off
MSRP $2017 – Holiday Sale-on-Sale Price: $1117 [Total Savings: $900]

Buy AD5500 and AD3000 and receive $720 off
MSRP $1628 – Holiday Sale-on-Sale Price: $908 [Total Savings: $720]

Buy AD3000 and AD2000 and receive $450 off
MSRP $1018 – Holiday Sale-on-Sale Price: $568 [Total Savings: $450]

Buy AD3000 and receive $300 off
MSRP $629 – Holiday Sale-on-Sale Price: $329 [Total Savings: $300] — This is my pick if you want one for a bedroom or living room. We have this in our bedroom.

We love our water purifier from their sister company – an daily essential at our house:

Buy AquaTru Classic and receive $125 off
MSRP $449 – Pre-Holiday Price: $324 – This is what we have.

Buy AquaTru Connect and receive $150 off
MSRP: $499 – Pre-Holiday Price: $349

Buy AquaTru Carafe and receive $100 off
MSRP: $349 – Pre-Holiday Price: $249

Buy AquaTru Under the Sink and receive $100 off
MSRP: $349 – Pre-Holiday Price: $249 – This is on my wishlist for our kitchen.

Most of our supplements are from Thorne and Pure Encapsulations. I’m grateful to be an affiliate for both. Their products are high quality and recommended by our functional medicine practitioner. Just for the next few days—till September 17th—Pure Encapsulations gave me a code for 15% off + free shipping. Use the code FALLSALE23 at checkout. One-time use per customer, valid as supplies last.

Enjoy!

The post Fit Together: A Journey to Health and Well-being appeared first on Lara Casey.

Cultivating Health, September Edition

Welcome back for my fourth installment of Cultivating Health. I shared my story with you in part 1, new breakthroughs in Part 2, and practical tips in Part 3. What a journey this has been, with daily insights, new steps forward, and progress in 7 months. Little by little steps add up, friends. Ari and I are both so blown away by what we’ve accomplished in a short period of time—as are many of our friends—that we want to share what we’ve learned with more people to help them as well! I did a big update on my last post of tips and present to you here the 7 top things Ari and I have done in 7 months to improve our health and fitness.

We’re writing this together in the car on the way to the mountains. When I asked Ari what his top 7 were, the kids immediately chimed in with their thoughts. Their enthusiasm impressed me—they have been paying attention!

“Sleep!” – Gracie
“Attitude!” – Josh
“Focus, yeah, focus is a big one.” – Gracie
“Food!” – Sarah
“And sleep, don’t forget sleep!” – Gracie.

As always, while Ari is a doctor, I am not, and I’m sharing these recommendations that work well for us. Our bodies all have unique needs. Talk to a functional medicine professional, and do what you can where you are. Hopefully, these posts give you inspiration and a jumping-off point. Affiliate links are used in the post – enjoy. Before and after photos are at the end!

Our 7 Top Health Improvements:



1. We evaluate where we are in smart ways. Reflection reaps rewards and data can help determine your best direction. There are many ways to evaluate your health to know the right next steps—you will know what’s best for you depending on your health needs, budget, and time. For Ari and me, this has meant doing these things:

— We track our nutrition each day using MyFitnessPal. This app helps us know we are eating enough and the right balance of macros for whatever we’re doing that day. For both of us, the main focus is making sure we’re getting enough protein and a variety of whole foods.
—For the record, we’ve spent a bit of money on things that didn’t work along this journey. You can be sure we’ll tell you things that were a waste of time, effort, or money. One of those things is Inside Tracker. I heard many-a-fitness-pro talk about how great it is to have meaningful biomarkers and a place to track them over time. They do draw labs, but the platform and customer experience has been frustrating. Instead, we recommend finding a functional medicine practitioner in your area and getting labs done through them. It has taken us months to get an appointment with one, but it has been worth the wait. The IFM website is a good place to start. This can be cost-prohibitive, depending on where you live. Simply tracking what you eat and your sleep is a solid start!
— We track our rest and recovery using our Whoop bands. WE LOVE THEM. Have you thought about getting a WHOOP? We used our friend’s code for a discount, so I’ll share mine here for you, too. Get a free WHOOP 4.0 and one month free when you join with my link. I also track and do my workouts through Trainerize. All of these apps—MyFitnessPal, WHOOP, and Trainerize—connect together through Apple Health, which is fantastic! A win for technology.

2. We improved our SLEEP. All caps for a reason. Do not pass go, and do not collect your $200 until you dig into this one. Honestly, nothing affects us more than poor or great sleep. There’s an athlete I follow who said he tries to get good at just one thing each year instead of trying to do it all. I love this. After all these years together, you and I know about the power of little-by-little progress. The idea of focusing on one area of significant growth has stuck with me over the last month. Sleep, to Ari and me, is that one thing. It affects your recovery, hormones, mental acuity, mood, strength, longevity, ability to love others well, etc., etc. So, what do we do for sleep? We go hardcore. We’ve done this a little bit at a time over the last weeks. It has been uncomfortable at points to try new things, and it has been 1000% worth the effort.

— We got separate mattresses. Wild, I know! Stay with me for a minute. We were constantly waking each other up shifting around in bed. When one of us got up to go to the bathroom in the night, boom, the other was awake. We donated our mattress to Habitat Restore and got two of these Twin XL’s and put them right next to each other on the bed frame – super cheap compared to our King mattress. We have separate fitted sheets and still share the top sheet and comforter. Big win for sleep. The mattresses are CertiPur certified, but if I did it again knowing what I know now, I’d order this Eco Organic Mattress from Avocado. I’ve read great things about how comfortable they are, and it doesn’t get much more toxin-free than this.
— We raised the head of our bed by 6 inches to help our acid reflux while we work on healing our guts and systems from over a decade on PPI’s! We just used a few wood pieces to do this.
— We each have what I call our morning C.O.F.F.E.E. to get our circadian rhythms started well for the day:
C – cup of water with electrolytes – read this.
O – outside to see the sun – thank you, Huberman Lab. IYKYK!
F – functional warmup and workout
F – five-minute post-workout meditation – again, thank you, Huberman lab.
E – eat!
E – energize with supplements
Ari does a quick run with our neighbor in the morning before I get up and lifts weights after work. I lift weights at home after he leaves in the morning. He has a quick shake for breakfast, and I have the works: some sort of protein, maybe some collard greens from the garden, and oats.
— We eat dinner early and have our last snacks a couple of hours before bed. If your body is working on digesting food at night, it’s not working on restoring and clearing out your various systems. The kids are in bed by 7, and we are in bed by 8 and asleep before 9. This works well for us, with everyone needing to be up early. Ari runs at 5:30 before work, and I’m up at 6 to start breakfast for everyone. Now, let me just stop here for a minute. For the record, if I had read my own post just a few months ago, I’d say, “NO WAY, José!” How could I ever get to bed that early?? Friends, if you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired… and you know your days are numbered… you will be motivated to do just about anything to ignite change. I sold a business, finished a long and fruitful career, and had my dad pass away all in the span of a month last year. I’m at a turning point, knowing this life is in the Lord’s hands, not mine. I want to make the most of what we’ve been given. Going to bed at 8 pm didn’t take a second thought for us with the big picture goal: living for what matters while we have the gift of breath in our lungs! Ari and I are both in this for the long haul. Our brains and hearts are a whole lot happier. Besides, with all this new training and things we’re doing, we’re pretty tired by 8 and looking forward to good rest!
— We did some learning about EMFs. Many studies show that daily low-frequency EMF exposure decreases sleep quality, lowers melatonin production, and increases depression and anxiety symptoms. So, we unplugged the TV in our bedroom and don’t use it anymore. We’ll probably keep it here for a family movie now and then. I plug my phone in the bathroom and haven’t looked back. I turn it completely off at night. We also completely turn our internet off at night! Goodbye, nighttime EMFs. I got this helpful killswitch.
— We dim the lights all around the house around 6, and I wear blue-light blocking these glasses – even in the shower! I told you we don’t mess around with sleep these days.
— We breathe, meditate, or listen to scripture on Glorify. Ari even started doing nightly breathwork with our youngest to help her sleep. It works like a charm!
— We use a Dohm at night.
— Ari and I both take magnesium. Magnesium deficiency causes a whole host of complications (more in a future post, but start here), and it’s a low-risk supplement with a ton of upside. Ari loves Magnesium Breakthrough from BioOptimizers, and I’ve been adding Magnesium Glycinate from Pure Encapsulations before bed. We have both been sleeping better and recovering faster. I listened to two podcasts where health professionals I trust raved about Magnesium Breakthrough. My husband is such a fan that anytime someone has a booboo or really any problem in our house, he looks at me and jokingly says, “Magnesium?” with a smile. I’m always looking for discount codes on things, so here’s one for BioOptimizers. Use code LARA10 for 10% off.

There are hormones, life stress, and various sleep disruptors that happen. Over time though, we are accumulating more restorative rest. It’s all about the big picture. The results? SLEEP! Real, good sleep, praise the Lord. Last night…

3. Clean up your air and water. Air and water are foundations for life. This is something we invested in for our health and our children’s long-term health.
— We called the Doctor! The Air Doctor that is. I can’t say enough about how much we love our AirDoctor purifiers. I did a ton of research, and it has proved fruitful. We had a small construction project in our house this month to repair drywall and paint a few walls, and the AirDoctors went to town to get all the construction particles cleaned out of the air. When I do heavy cooking, they crank up, too—they sense everything. Between the pollen lately and general air pollutants, these have been well worth the investment. They are on sale right now!
— We filter our drinking and cooking water. After much research and MANY recommendations, we bought this AquaTru system. We aren’t ready to commit to a whole-house set-up, so this was a solid first step. This reverse osmosis countertop system is easy to use and comes with great reviews from people we trust. We add back trace minerals with Hi Lyte. Highly recommend the AquaTru! Clean water is the best foundation. We’ve tested both our air quality and water, and it’s a night and day difference now. Start with a free water report from the EWG Tap Water Database. AquaTru is also on sale right now!

4. “Reduce stress.” I have to admit anytime I’ve seen this listed as a tip in a post like this, I have scoffed in the past. It feels presumptuous to suggest someone “reduce stress,” not knowing the weight of the other person’s daily responsibilities and challenges. So, let me flip this one on its head for you: gather tools to combat stress when it happens. We all know stress is going to happen, but you can regulate the degree to which it affects your long-term health. That might mean, like me, you have some catching up to do—some stress detox work. It’s been a month of “stress resilience education” in our house – i.e., lots of stressors to help us practice! Our nervous systems can become more resilient over time. Learning how cortisol works has been a turning point in stress management for Ari and me, especially learning how to calm it down in the later part of the day to prepare for sleep.
— We practice breathing. Ari likes Headspace, and I love the daily reflections in the Glorify app. Use this link for a free 30-day guest pass to Headspace.
— We learn about stress, why our society has more of it these days, and how to be more resilient. This new episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy is a great starting point for practical guidance. Here’s another great podcast about recovery – they talk about the science of cortisol (and when it’s a good thing!).
— I take cold showers and ice baths when I can. This always gives me a boost!
— I see a counselor weekly to heal my grief and learn resilience in stress.
— We move our bodies. A walk outside can turn a whole day around.
— We are serious about workout recovery, so we don’t over-train and stress our systems too much. OOFOS Recovery Slides were recommended by my podiatrist for recovery and to wear around the house.
— We pray. Prayer changes things.

5. Lift heavy things. The benefits of weight training are endless, and I think we all know by now it’s good for us. My guess is, though, like me, you may need a little motivation, knowledge, or accountability. Maybe all three? Same here! Here’s what’s helped us lately:
— We get motivated by learning from experts. Listen to Andrew Huberman and Andy Galpin’s exercise series on the Huberman Lab Podcast. It took Ari and me a solid 3 weeks to get through this epic series, starting with this episode, and they are all well worth the listen. We gained what feels like a lifetime of exercise and recovery knowledge, with one of my favorite episodes giving a balanced fitness and longevity plan that goes with the seasons of the year. This was right up my alley. Thank you, Dr. Huberman and Dr. Galpin! Ari and I loved every minute. Listen here.
— We don’t do it alone. Ari goes to a small gym in our neighborhood, and I enlisted virtual help for my at-home workouts. There are so many ways to stay accountable. You could join an exercise class with friends, set up a run time with a neighbor like Ari does now, or have a regular walking phone date with a friend (looking at you, Em!). After losing my Dad recently, I wanted to take back my health with some expert help. I joined a 6-month virtual group training program in January with Bradee and several other women in various stages of life. Bradee sets my workouts each month through Trainerize and has been so encouraging through my ups and downs with joint pains and injuries from having hypermobility joint syndrome. I don’t have a gym membership and haven’t for years, so this extra investment in my joints and longevity felt right on time. I use weights and bands we have at home. Most of the first weeks were body weight, so I didn’t need extra equipment to get started. Friends, I have benefited from this so much. We check in throughout the week, and Bradee monitors my lifting progress and needs. I love her balanced approach to nutrition and exercise – no diets or crazy plans. It has been SO much fun, and I highly recommend her group program if you need accountability. As a former trainer myself, this has been such a blessing to have someone knowledgeable help me get back into heavier lifting after a long hiatus. Having a solid program with accountability has led to crazy strength gains in these 12 weeks. It all started as all good things begin: small and slow. Trust the process, friends, and lift weights!

6. Fuel. Let’s talk about metabolism for a minute. If you don’t eat enough, your body adapts. Your metabolism slows down. You lose muscle. I’ve been so busy growing a company and raising kiddos over the last few years that I got into the habit of eating fewer and fewer whole foods and relying more on easy foods. Ari and I got a metabolism reset over the last 12 weeks by eating more mindfully and plentifully: whole foods, pasture-raised meat and eggs, wild-caught fish, veggies from the garden, and a variety of colors and spices. We generally don’t eat out, so our food budget goes to groceries. I’m eating twice as much as I was before starting this journey in January. About 2400/calories a day from whole foods (no bars or shakes for me right now), and I aim for 150g of protein to help me gain muscle at my age. I often joke that my full-time job is eating meat these days (sorry vegan friends!), and my other full-time job is cooking for the family. It’s a ton of cooking daily, but I’m learning to batch it, and our cookware makes it easier. Ari is in the same boat, eating more than before and gaining lean muscle. It’s been a bit of a revelation for us to eat so much and see the weight training do its thing. I’ll chat more about what we eat and our favorite recipes in a future post! Listen to Dr. Hyman’s podcast as a great starting point for functional nutrition.

7. Try new things. You’ll see “Have fun with fitness with Ari” on my Tending List this month. If we’re not having fun, it makes the hard parts of getting our health in order, well… hard. Trying new things is one way to keep things interesting and fun. There have been MANY things we thought we’re a little off-the-wall at first glance (hello, getting separate mattresses and wearing my orange glasses at night!). You never know if it works until you try, though! We have, more often than not, been surprised by the results of trying new things—and energized by the discovery process.

Let’s start with some new kitchen essentials, shall we? To reduce toxins in our home from plastic and chemicals, we substituted our traditional kitchen items for these clean alternatives:
— We swapped our metal and plastic spatulas for Non-toxic teak wood Spurtles. Friends, where have these been all my life!? They make cooking more ergonomic for my hands and more fun for everyone. Also, they are beautiful—so beautiful we decided to put them in a container on our kitchen counter for easy access.
— We got these sustainable salt and pepper mills.
— We recycled our plastic colander (that was likely melting every time we put hot pasta through it – yikes!) for a well-designed metal colander.

We’re trying new protocols.
— We continue to see the benefits of doing sauna, red light therapy, and compression at Restore each week to help detox and recovery.
— We cool down quickly. One thing both Ari and I added this month was immediately doing downregulation breathing or meditation following a workout. This was recommended in the Huberman/Galpin exercise series in the episode on recovery. It helps prime the nervous system to know it’s time to heal. Wow, we have loved this – and it has helped me push harder in my training, knowing I’ll have the reward of this nice little spot of mediation right after.

With guidance from our practitioner, we’re also taking new supplements unique to our needs. I am working on restoring my liver function after all the medications I was on previously. My personal favorites right now that are making a big difference:

— Creatine from Thorne – Ari and I both take this daily. It’s one of the most researched-backed supplements after all these years with a ton of upside.
— Nutrient 950 from Pure Encapsulations
— NAC from Thorne
— Vitamin D3 from Thorne
— Omega 3 Fish Oil from Nordic Naturals
— Magnesium Glycinate before bed from Pure Encapsulations
— Amino Complex from Thorne – Ari and I both take this daily around our workouts and love it!
— LMNT before or after a sweaty workout or sauna. I also keep one of these adorable mini Redmond Real Salts in every bag and in Ari’s lunch cooler, too. Perfect for eating on the go! We continue to love our Redmond Real Salt. Use my link here for $5 off your purchase.
— Artichoke extract daily to help with estrogen dominance.
— Enzymes! I looooove Masszymes from BioOptimizers. I have had very few digestion issues since taking them. I have them with breakfast and dinner. They also smell good – like pineapple. Use code LARA10 for 10% off at my link.

Woosh! There you have it! I hope these recommendations and tips encourage you to try new things and choose what matters most for your health. I’m excited to keep learning and taking small steps forward. I’ll look forward to a quick check-in next month!

Your turn! How are you cultivating your health? Any favorites lately?

The post Cultivating Health, September Edition appeared first on Lara Casey.

September Goals and a New Year

Golden in the garden,
Golden in the glen,
Golden, golden, golden
September’s here again!
– “September” by Annette Wynne

Thank you for your kind words on my last post. I’m grateful for you, friends, and for your genuine words of encouragement in this last year—and always. August brought the hardest days of grief and, as I anticipated, an entrance into a new season on the anniversary of my Dad’s homecoming.

A few highlights from August:
—I got through this first year of grief, praise the Lord, surrounded by love and support from Ari, family, and friends. We celebrated my dad‘s life with a free flower stand for our neighbors. It was my hardest month of grief but the most fruitful. As I planned, I also took time to paint in his honor—all his favorite colors and some meaningful elements that represent his life.
—Our trip to Iceland was an adventure! Take a peek here.
—The homeschool year started with joy. This year, the Ambleside Online community and Charlotte Mason’s principles have been especially life-giving for our kids and me. Many of you have asked me how we homeschool and what we do, and I’m finally ready to start sharing about it. In all things, it has taken me this year to get quiet and process my first half journey to consider intentional next steps in this second half. Stay tuned.
—I made strides in my health and fitness. (I’m working on a post today with updates!) Little by little progress adds up. I completed 129 strength training workouts so far this year and didn’t want to do approximately 100 of them in those few seconds before I started. The smallest and most important step of simply beginning each workout is like having a cup of coffee. I get energized and grateful I took that step instead of giving up at the start. Sometimes, the hardest part of getting started is getting started, right? But it just takes one little movement toward your future self to get the momentum going. Then, guess what? You’re doing it!

You know all those books you’ve always wanted to read? You should go READ them. Atomic Habits and the work we did for over a decade with Making Things Happen, I named the type of person I want to be in present tense: I am the kind of person who consistently reads great books and puts them into practice. Yes!! Affiliate links are below – enjoy!

What I read or listened to:

—Sacred Rhythms – This has long been on my TBR list, and it was been a balm for my soul this last month. I plan to read it again, it was so helpful!
—Every Moment Holy: Death, Grief and Hope. I would buy this book for the world if I could. My friend, Nancy, gifted me a copy, and it met me right when and where I needed it. The writing is beautiful and I plan to return to it throughout the year at various milestones.
—Falling Upward – I resisted reading this, and while I don’t agree with much of his core theology, this is mostly a poignant study on mid-life. It has enlivened me in this second-half journey.
—A desk full of Autism research from our OT, specifically about Sarah’s presentation, PDA.
—The Common Rule. While I learned a lot from this book and plan to try kneeling prayer this month as a liturgical habit, it felt like a warm-up to Habits of the Household. The author finds his voice more in book two. A favorite quote: “Failure is the path; beauty is the destination. We walk toward beauty on the path of failure. Formation occurs at the interplay of failure and beauty. … We can become ourselves only by gazing at the words of the Bible. Once you know who you are in God, you will turn to the world in love.”
—I went back into the archives and listened to several Tim Keller sermons. His voice is a familiar friend, as I attended his church after college in NYC. We lived in the same building and said hello at the mailbox several times. His teaching illuminates life and faith in new ways for me.
—Josh and I also decided to begin our fourth (?) listen of My Side of the Mountain on our drive to pick up Grace from her weekly literature and composition lessons. I love it so much and he can’t get enough of it either. Acorn pancakes, anyone?
—The kids have also been working through the What to Wear Bible Study at night with Ari, thanks to my friend Catherine Parks. An excellent study for kids in bite-size devotionals.
—Lots of BRAND NEW BOOKS came in the mail last week – I shared them here (Hi First video in a year which felt a little awkward at first – good to see you all.)
—Just for fun, Gerry Brooks. He makes me laugh out loud. I was grateful to connect my literary agent with him for his first book!

In progress:
—Gentle and Lowly
—Mere Christianity in honor of my Dad. This was one of his favorites.
—Parenting by Paul David Tripp is still punching me in the gut every time I pick it up. Some good wisdom in these pages.

What I’m looking forward to in September:
—School starting in full swing. Our kids go to homeschool school a couple of days a week, and they cannot wait to see their buddies.
—Enjoying the cooler temps. I love fall! This month, the garden turns magical with butterflies, sleeping bees, and a long-awaited harvest. We will be pulling more carrots and already harvested the rainbow glass gem popcorn.
—A trip to the mountains. I’m attempting a solo 8-mile hike tomorrow that I’ve always wanted to do. I will report back, Lord willing!
—The start of the Jewish holidays.
—I went searching for faithful affirmations for Sarah to listen to each day, given what we know now about her PDA and anxiety. I found a lot of fluff, so I plan to record my own for her—and share it with you, too, if it’s helpful for your kiddos.
—Doing new things. I have always loved home design and spent many years curating meaningful decor for Southern Weddings and Cultivate product shoots. I am a deep researcher when it comes to trying new products. A small thing I’ve always wanted to do? Gather all my favorite home, kitchen, health, and homeschool items into one place for friends to easily shop. Find all my favorites here. I’ll be adding to this a bunch this month—click “follow” for updates.

My September goals were fueled by the Mid-Year Refresh in the PowerSheets. The process never fails to clarify my focus and make me want to take action—no need for forced motivation. My goals matter to me in the big picture, so I want to take action. I’m grateful for another month to tackle what God has given me to do.

What are you focusing on in September? Do we share any goals? I’d love to hear!

The post September Goals and a New Year appeared first on Lara Casey.

August Goals

God in His own right hand doth take each day—
Each sun-filled day—each rare and radiant night.
And drop it softly on the earth and say:
“Touch earth with heaven’s own beauty and delight.”
– “August” by Jean Blewett

Thank you for your kind words on my last post here and here. I am grateful for your encouragement and the gift of sharing our lives with each other—the changes, challenges, and joys!

July was full and abundant, like the garden right now. And, like the garden, there were gifts (our first carrots of the season, tomatoes, and blooming sunflowers!)—and a few weeds to pull and garden pests that tried to creep in. My proverbial garden foes were a sense of overwhelm and knowing the year mark was just ahead.

The first carrot of the season! Eeee!!! Gracie has relished her time in the garden the last month!

You see, I knew August was coming.
I’ve been thinking about it for 11 months since my dad died on a brilliant afternoon last August.
I’ve recounted where I was the year prior as each month and day has passed—where he was and what we were feeling and experiencing together. What did he say to me? Did he smile as I sang to him? What did it feel like to hold his hand in the hospital bed? Was he fading then? Was he warm? Was he in pain? I remember some details and some I cling to as they begin to fade. All these reflections have been steeping in my soul, like a cup of tea, all waiting for me drink deep of their gifts in late August. I don’t know what it will be like on that exact day and time. August 28th at 3:30 is ever-etched in my mind. I don’t know how I’ll feel or what I’ll do, but I know that I’ll enter a new season on the anniversary of his homecoming.

I didn’t manufacture this expectation. I didn’t plan to have a pounding desire to remember, reflect, and release. It is, I believe, in us because grief can’t stay in us. It must, instead, move through us—and it changes us as it does. It never leaves for good; it just changes. The Jewish mourning traditions, which center around the first year after a loved one’s death, have comforted me this year and reminded me to let this time have its space. Grief shows up unexpectedly and takes hold of you till you relent and roll out the welcome mat. This year has been a time of personal transformation. It has been a time of new life coming out of grief—like a seed in the dark soil losing its outer shell to grow, it has been a merciful gift birthed from a refining season. I didn’t think I’d be smiling on the other side, but the joy runs deeper now. Sorrow and love flow mingled down, indeed. I am grateful.

“Biltmore. If you ask me, they should have built LESS.” – my husband, everyone

More to come at the end of August as I have time to celebrate Dad’s life and listen to the Lord on this anniversary. For now, here is a recap of July. It was a month of memory-making and squeezing the last bit of summer fun in before we start homeschool this week.

A few highlights from July:

—Finishing many of our home repairs and renovations. The bigger projects are done; praise the Lord. No more flooding in our house, Lord willing, and we love our refreshed spaces. I hope to get you some before and after photos in early September.
—Josh’s birthday party! His nickname has always been “Bro,” so this year, we had a “Bro-BQ” with hot dogs, hamburgers, and lots of water fun in the heat. His birthday falls right before school starts, and it’s always a big friend reunion before the year starts. Such a joy to celebrate our sweet guy!
—Going to the Biltmore after five-ish years (when the younger two were still in the double stroller!). The kids listened to the history audio while we toured and it was fun to watch their eyes widen as they learned about the remarkable architecture, gardens, and library. We also did the Italian Renaissance Art Alive exhibit. This was especially good to get a preview of some of the artists we’ll be studying in the year ahead!
—Homeschool planning. This yearly pursuit took over my July. Stacks and stacks of books, oh my! It’s Christmas in July around here.
—My weight training. I am gaining muscle, and my joints are feeling better every day. This month’s unofficial goal is to write a health update on the blog.
—Making homeschool mom friends. I didn’t have much time to invest in this community when I was CEO-ing, and this has been a JOY to grow deeper roots.
—Doing “The 36 Questions that Lead to Love” with Ari in the mountains. They “worked,” and we felt much closer after going through them – highly recommend!
—The garden. A big highlight from the month has been enjoying the zinnias, sleeping bees, and garden treasures. It has been magical!

An early morning peek at our garage-turned-wellness space as it was being finished. I can’t wait to show you the final space!

You know all those books you’ve always wanted to read? You should go READ them. Atomic Habits, I declared that I am the kind of person who reads many great books and puts them into practice. IYKYK. Affiliate links are below – enjoy!

What I read or listened to:

—Atomic Habits – Yes, I am the last person to read this, and yes, I (of course) enjoyed what he teaches. Very in line with my first half of life’s work and almost identical to what we taught at the Making Things Happen Conference for ten years (we were onto something back then!). An excellent resource.
—The Whole-Brained Child – It took me maybe five years to get through this book. I digested it bit by bit and finally buckled down to give it a full and focused read this month. No surprise, it was insightful and timely for our ages and stages.
—Little House in the Big Woods and Farmer Boy – Our third (?) time through with Cherry Jones’s narration, and it never ceases to make me feel joy and wonder. Farmer Boy, in particular, made me cry this time in the last chapter; it was so moving.
—Habits of the Household – Five stars, two thumbs up, and a few cartwheels thrown in for good measure. This was my favorite read of the year so far, so much so that I cannot pick just one favorite part. Read Em’s review for a few highlights we share!
—For my yearly refresher on homeschool philosophy, l feasted on a buffet of episodes from the Simply Charlotte Mason podcast.
—“We Need Secret Gardens” – An article Emily sent me shares my heart for why we are Charlotte Mason homeschoolers. Such a beautiful read!

Our longest hike with the kids – 8 miles in Umstead State Park!

In progress:
—Sacred Rhythms – My sense of overwhelm this last month came from moving too fast and doing too much alongside homeschool planning and mounting grief. This has long been on my TBR list, and it has been a balm for my hurried soul.
—Falling Upward – I resisted reading this, and while I don’t agree with some of his core theology, this is mostly a poignant study on mid-life. It has enlivened me in this second-half journey.
—Parenting by Paul David Tripp – Another book I’ve wanted to read. I’ve already been punched in the gut several times by his words.

Also in progress:
—I made steps forward or completed all my July goals except painting. It took longer than expected to clear a space in my office for this, and now it has been overtaken by stacks of homeschool books for the upcoming year. I will do it this month to honor Dad, who always wanted me to be a painter!

At the Apex 4th of July bike parade! The kids had SO much fun decorating their bikes and getting sprayed down by the firetruck!

My August goals were fueled by the Mid-Year Refresh in the PowerSheets. The process never fails to clarify my focus and make me want to take action—no need for forced motivation. My goals matter to me in the big picture, so I want to take action. I’m grateful for another month to tackle what God has given me to do. This month we’re headed to Iceland and starting school!

What are you focusing on in August? Do we share any goals? I’d love to hear!

The post August Goals appeared first on Lara Casey.

July Goals

When the scarlet cardinal tells
Her dream to the dragon fly,
And the lazy breeze makes a nest in the trees,
And murmurs a lullaby,
It is July.
– “July” by Susan Hartley Swett

Today, as we turn the page to July, I also turn a page of my life. The end of June marks a year since I followed God’s lead to let go of Cultivate. In that process, and every day since, the Lord has grown me through and through. I am living a paradoxically different life than I was a year ago.

I know what it means to be planted—buried in the dark soil not knowing what will happen next, just that I’m supposed to be there in the dirt. I know what it means to have to trust in faith, not knowing what will grow or how long it will take. I know what it means to grow anew and feel exceedingly uncomfortable in the growth. I know what it means to experience God’s painful pruning—His grace and mercy to make life fruitful. I know what it means to be changed. And it has taken every part of this year.

I took my loves on a date last week. Each person was tasked with thinking of something for the family to celebrate at dinner—anything big or small they are grateful for. Mine: this family loving me through the last year of change and God’s faithfulness in it all. I am grateful!

It has taken me a year to

– release what was
– get quiet and step away from what I knew for 20 years to listen to the Lord afresh
– grieve deeply
– let go of my identity as CEO
– know my true identity as His daughter – deeply loved beyond what I can understand
– allow God to direct my steps, my grief, my view of this second-half journey
– let the waves of sadness come as they did and let them teach me
– see glimmers of what the Lord has for me now and in the future
– learn how to do a whole new life
– know this was good
– find a fire in my soul apart from any vocation
– find God in it all

It has taken me a year to e x h a l e.

I don’t take lightly having a new start in life. Like the parable of the talents, I’ve been given a chance to multiply what’s here—time, talents, joys, small moments, wisdom, seasoning—for something bigger than me. It’s a responsibility I’m taking with a spirit of energetic fun this next season. My focus? Exactly where God began this journey a year ago: to cultivate the hearts of our children. I’ve learned in this year that it starts with me and God first, and everything good grows from there. I’ve been given a chance to refresh others and be made new – or perhaps more like my true self at this new stage of life. Looking back on the last year, I marvel at how much life and I have transformed together. I’m thankful for what’s right now and hopeful for more growth ahead. This is the second half—praise the Lord!

A family tradition—passed down through many generations—continued in my kitchen this week! Blueberry jam from local berries, fresh lemons, and a lot of love and memories. I think of my mom, grandma Bunny, and great grandmother Irene every time I hear the pop of the Ball jar lids. I made blueberry in honor of Dad – his favorite.

Much like preserving sweet summer harvests, I’ve spent time over the last week collecting photographs and memories from my career with Southern Weddings and Cultivate into a special box. I’ve cried, laughed, and praised the Lord through it all. We preserve the good stuff in jam jars and photo albums, words and stories passed on from generation to generation. I feel exceedingly blessed to have worked alongside the women I worked alongside and to have gotten to do the work I was given to do. Even with all the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, I can confidently say I had a beautiful and blessed career. Not because of products or sales though—because of God’s faithfulness in it all to change me over time and surround me with wonderful people. This journey of sanctification is far from done, but I am grateful to have done so much growing alongside such generous people I treasure.

My July goals were fueled by the Mid-Year Refresh in the PowerSheets (which was, as always, right on time!). I loved every bit of it and completed it saying aloud to myself, “Wow, I love the PowerSheets!” The process never fails to give me clarity and clarity makes me want to take action—no need for forced motivation. My goals matter to me and in the big picture and so I want to take action. I’m grateful and ready to tackle what God has given me to do.

July Goals:
– Take starting steps on my Q3 goals!
– Make my “Mom binders” – my version of a commonplace notebook with things I want to teach the kids, specifically at bedtime. I often find poems to read to them, stories, scriptures, or encouragements and I wanted a place to collect them to share. I got this little A5 binder and can’t wait to fill it.
– Honor Dad. August 28th will mark one year since his passing, and I want to mark this moment with meaning. I’m not sure what to do yet but will be praying for a plan.
– Prep for our trip to Iceland.
– Complete my hospice volunteer application. Ever since walking Dad home, I’ve felt the tug to serve others in their final days. I took a year to pray about it and feel even more grateful for this call now. I reached out to our local retirement home and I have a few technical things to do to complete the application. I hope to start in a few weeks.
– Plan the new homeschool year. This is a BIG year in our homeschool journey: Josh is skipping ahead to 3rd grade, Grace begins middle school (!), and this will be Sarah’s first year of what I call Charlotte Mason hybrid-schooling. We’ve tried various special needs programs and school settings for her in the last couple of years, all with various levels of difficulty. With her autism diagnosis, we’ve gained clarity on what will help her thrive: a combination of daily therapy and homeschooling it is! I couldn’t be more excited for her and our family in this new season together. She is pumped!
– Enjoy our house after its renovation. Okay, I have been holding out on you as this has been all-encompassing the last few months—a lot has changed in our house! I will share before, in-progress, and finished photos with you soon!
– In a similar vein, enjoy our lives together after my own renovation. This one-year mark today is important to me. Looking back, I’m amazed at how my life and heart have grown. Good things grow in hard things. Praise the Lord.
– Paint. I sold my first painting several months ago: a very large piece to an architect. It was meaningful to me as my dad always wanted me to be an artist. I plan to – simply for the joy of it and to honor Dad – create several more pieces over the next months.
– My Daily Habits continue to be where I see the most fruit in life. One addition this month is “Read 2 chapters.” I’ve read countless pieces of reading advice over the years, and somehow this stuck—alongside a recent sermon on the Parable of the Talents. One of the most intentional ways I can pour into our children in this new season is to learn, learn, learn, and pass that learning to them through my words and actions. I’ve already started my 2 chapters a day and have loved it! I’ve alternated between chapters of Habits of the Household (the audio, read by the author, is excellent – thank you, Em, for the book rec!) and Sacred Rhythms. I also finally finished the Birds and Bees course and it was fantastic. I’ve already implemented much of what they shared. Highly recommend!

I owe you a big health and house update – coming soon. Till then, your turn! What are you focusing on in July? I’d love to hear!

The post July Goals appeared first on Lara Casey.

June Goals

Why was June made?—Can you guess?
June was made for happiness!
Even the trees
Know this, and the breeze
That loves to play
Outside all day,
And never is too bold or rough,
Like March’s wind, but just a tiny blow’s enough;
And all the fields know
This is so—
June was not made for wind and stress,
June was made for happiness;
Little happy daisy faces
Show it in the meadow places,
And they call out when I pass,
“Stay and play here in the grass.”
June was made for happy things,
Boats and flowers, stars and wings,
Not for wind and stress,
June was made for happiness!
– “Why Was June Made?” by Annette Wynne

Ahh, it has been good to exhale a bit from the pace of the school season. May was capped off with a trip to the beach with friends, a BBQ with neighbors, and lots of time enjoying the growing garden. We have our first zinnia blooms!

My June goals are lighter, a reflection of the change of season. My focus this month is prayer—a wholehearted connection with the Lord so I can pass it on to our children and others. I read this in Raising Emotionally Strong Boys and it stuck with me ever since: “The hope for all of us as mothers and fathers is to do the work needed to live a more whole-hearted life and to allow our kids to experience the overflow. Ultimately, we are always pointing them to a Parent who will never fail them. The only One who can offer them life, joy, hope, and peace. A peace that passes all understanding. A peace that will never make sense to this world. Peace that goes beyond our current circumstances to the eternal. That’s the greatest calling on our lives as mothers and fathers. It always has been, and it always will be.” Amen. For me, it starts with prayer this month.

Your turn! What are you focusing on in June? I’d love to hear!

The post June Goals appeared first on Lara Casey.

May Goals

Queen of months, supremely fair,
Cloth’d with garments rich and rare,
None in beauty can compare
With thee, sweet May.
– “Ode to May” by Peter Burn

Friends, a little late to my keyboard once more as we are deep in home repairs this week (more to come, with a little paint color peek below!) and Ari was in an unfortunate car accident yesterday on the highway. He is relatively okay—a hurt hand, a heart that’s shaken up, and a totaled car—and we are exceedingly grateful for God’s protection. This life is a gift and God’s promises are close to me right now. I am thankful for His love and for the gift of my husband!

Life has been full, so I’m combining my monthly Health and Goals posts today.

Looking back on all these years of writing about goal setting and motivation, I can see clearly I’ve written about them: because I’ve struggled! I know what it feels like to fail, lose steam, and forget the big picture. For all of those reasons, I created the PowerSheets – originally just for myself – in 2012. I needed a way to stay motivated and on track with the things that matter instead of forgetting, which I was apt to do.

All of this came to mind a couple of weeks ago when I felt unmotivated, and rather frustrated, with my health pursuits. I sat down with Ari at the dinner table one night and told him I felt pretty worn out, feeling like I was constantly trying to fix all of these health problems instead of just enjoying the health I do have. Just giving those words out gave me a sigh of relief. Facing the wall helps us jump over it.

My wall, it turns out, was a fuzzy big picture. To get out of this slump, I needed to do what I did when I first created the PowerSheets: get clear on my goals, plain and simple. And then… clarity breeds action. Just for myself (and I hope this encourages you too, in sharing), I laid out the specific challenges before me, why I believe they are there, and my goals. This was incredibly helpful and my motivation was quickly reignited—and in better ways than before!

My 2023 Vision Board helped me remember the big picture!

The Challenge: hypermobility. I was officially diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (the hypermobile type) this week, and of course, none of it was a surprise to me. It was such a gift, though, to hear an expert tell me what to do and not to do at this point—and that so much of what I’m already doing is optimal, like building as much stabilizing muscle as I can! Ehlers-Danlos is the root cause of my labral tear, neck issues, shoulder instability, heart tissue issues, low blood pressure, and more.
Why: I inherited this from my mom’s side of the family. EDS is an autosomal dominant disorder, which means both my brother and I likely have it and my kids may also.
Goal: Build stability and learn more about what my body needs and doesn’t need with EDS.
Action steps: I have the best physical therapist! I secretly want to be her BFF, we have so much fun in every session. I have about 8,287 PT exercises to do each week on various body parts, but I am making little by little progress. It’s going to take a lifetime and my hypermobility is frustrating and debilitating at times, but I am grateful to be on the right path. My doctor also recommended several books on EDS to read and asked my PT to begin dry needling on me. I had my first session this week on my shoulder and it was a little wild! I’ll keep you posted on its effects.

The Challenge: hormonal imbalances. High estrogen, heavy periods, anemia.
Why: No idea – I’m still trying to understand the root cause.
Goal: Understand the root cause of my hormonal imbalances; optimize them as best I can.
Action Steps: I completed testing last month (Dutch Complete through my doctor, labs) and I’m waiting on the findings. I’ve also done a lot over the last months to help my body metabolize estrogen and clear it from my system more effectively: sauna, supplements, exercise, removing estrogen-promoting foods, and making changes for better sleep.

The Challenge: grief. It felt right to include this even though grief is also a gift of sanctification and growing closer to God. It has been the hardest and most transformative experience for my mind, body, and faith.
Why: I walked my dad home in August, completed an acquisition of Cultivate in the same few weeks, and I am living life completely differently than I was a year ago.
Goal. Give grief a place and a space every day, every week – however often the Lord wishes. Really my goal isn’t my goal at all, it’s God’s: to change me through the act and experience of grieving. He is doing it.
Action steps: Listen to God; make space for grief when it comes and allow it to come instead of fighting it. It comes in waves, like this morning when I just wanted to hear Dad’s voice. I have all of my voice messages saved from him and I played a few, cried on a walk to the park, prayed, and felt better. Every day looks different and every day draws me closer to the Lord.

Challenge: a depressed liver (that sounds so weird – haha!). I have Gilbert’s Disease, high bilirubin, and some elevated liver enzymes – not related to each other, but all related to my liver’s ability to process things.
Why: genetics again! I inherited Gilbert’s from my dad, which has little visible effect on my life from day to day. My elevated enzymes, however, are from years on PPIs and the Tylenol/Naproxen my previous doctor told me to take for my neck pain. If I could turn back time, I wouldn’t have taken a single one. My neck discs are in the wrong place, but not the cause of my pain – a red herring.
Goal: Ditto to my hormones. Continue to help my liver heal and detox well.
Action steps: I am waiting on results from lots of testing, and until those results arrive, I’m focusing on good food, the sauna, helpful supplements, and my sleep stack.

The Challenge: sleep. My sleep is 1,000,000 times better than it was months ago—we work hard for it and it’s always worth it!
Why: Various things creep up though to thwart our efforts like stress, EDS joint flare-ups for me, drinking too much water before bed, and changes in diet.
Goal. Sleep well most of the time. I have balanced expectations here. Listen to my Whoop and properly recover from workouts when I need to. Rest, rest, rest.
Action steps: Ari encouraged me to try a keto fast he read about in Tools of Titans that is supposed to reset autoimmune response and ease joint pain. I was, admittedly, intimidated by such a drastic fast. Ari, always up for a challenge, decided to join me. We both modified it quite a bit after the first couple of days of fasting to be more like regular keto with higher protein for muscle, lots of fresh veggies, and healthy fats. We ended up really loving it. I do feel less blood sugar swings from lower carbs, but insomnia has been an unwelcome side effect. Ari loves it so much, he is continuing for the summer, but I miss my oatmeal and my sleep : ) I’ll keep you posted!

The Challenge: embrace my midlife moment, which is a beginning and a welcome ending all in one.
Why: God invites each of us to take this second-half journey. We either accept the spiritual journey or not. I’m all in. My life is paradoxically different these days and it was a year ago, which has been the doorway to this second-half passage.
Goal: Take the journey with the Lord. Go all in. While this is esoteric in writing, it’s abundantly clear to me and a journey that is hard to put into words. It’s an honoring of the first half of life and faithfully stepping into the second: a discovery of the true self.
Action Steps: Watch the birds. Love my children well. Serve my husband and our neighbors with God’s joy. Make our home a place of joy and rest, wild and free. Enjoy this life that the Lord has blessed me with. Read poetry. Sing hymns. Make meals. Make memories. Live numbered days. I’m reading several mid-life spiritual formation books.

What a gift to lay all of those big-picture goals out and get clear on the roadblocks—and what I can do to break through them. Little by little adds up, starting right here with my simple May Tending List.

Your turn! What are you focusing on in May? What helps you break through times of feeling unmotivated? I’d love to hear!

The post May Goals appeared first on Lara Casey.