I ask myself that question a lot. But I’m only going to answer it for Here being the Families.com Health Blog. The rest, you can figure out for yourself, and if you find an answer, let me know!
I’ve spent a good portion of my life struggling with various health problems. At the age of five, we had to give up our family dog Sparky because my brother (age three) and I had developed severe allergies. And not just to dogs. Cats, trees, dust, mold, pollen… if it grows, we were allergic to it. I used to have a horrible reaction to mosquito bites; they would swell up until I went to the emergency room for a shot. The next sixteen years were filled with scratch testing, allergy shots, allergy pills, and more allergy shots… but by the age of twenty-two, I had mostly grown out of my problems.
I have never been what you’d call a graceful or athletic person, and have suffered more than my share of strange injuries and broken bones. I broke my finger when a friend threw a brick at my hand, thinking it was a slug. I once put my hand through a window on a moving train. I’ve fallen up AND down stairs. I had a large, heavy, wooden well cover hit me in the shoulder and head. I’ve broken toes walking into the sofa and the door frame. The correct term, I believe, is accident prone.
While I was in college, I began suffering from depression. I cried a lot. I stopped eating. My friends tried very hard to get me to talk to someone, but it took me a long time to be okay with needing help. My parents’ response was something along the lines of “Just Be Happy!” It wasn’t that easy for me. Through therapy and medication, things are mostly under control. I’ve been taking Zoloft for the past six years, and it has made an amazing difference in my life. I don’t stub my toe and cry for two hours. I don’t have panic attacks on airplanes. And therapy has helped me see a lot of the situational influences on my moods. Some of my depression can be helped by medicine, some of my depression stems from actual life issues and events. I’ve learned a lot about expectations and disappointment — if you expect the Perfect Family Christmas and then don’t get it, you end up cranky or angry or hurt or depressed. (Or in my case, all of the above.) I fight disappointment with more realistic expectations. I don’t expect anyone to change for me; all I can do is change the way *I* think and feel about things.
You may be reading this and think that there are a lot of people out there who are a lot worse off than I am. Totally true! I try not to spend too much time on the Pity Train, wallowing in my own personal misery.
I became interested in alternative health and especially aromatherapy when I was living in Vermont. My apartment had mice, and I was looking for a natural way to keep them out. Dead mice are just about as gross as living ones are, if you ask me. Through research, I discovered that mice don’t like the scent of peppermint. So I bought peppermint essential oil, put it on cotton balls, and distributed it around the apartment. NO MORE MICE. It was amazing. And, it made me think that maybe aromatherapy isn’t all just B.S. So I started reading. And experimenting.
Today I own a small web-based business that sells hand made bath and body products. They’re all natural and scented with essential oils, so you get the aromatheraputic benefits AND some nifty bath stuff.
After aromatherapy, I branched out and spent time learning about other alternative medicine and mental health stuff. Massage therapy. Bach Flower Remedies. Energy work. Meditation. It has all sort of changed my outlook on things. I don’t immediately run to the doctor every time I have a sniffle. I try natural remedies first, and hit the doctor later. I’m not going to say that what works for me will work for everyone… but you may find that you like adding a little “alternative” to your “health”.
Thanks for reading this far (if you made it!) and welcome to the Families.com Health Blog!