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filler@godaddy.com
Signed in as:
filler@godaddy.com
You’re a smart, determined, hard-working woman who can do it all.
You wear so many hats each day...or...in your case, boots.... You pull on your rubber boots with pajama pants to do morning chores. You put on real clothes and your good boots to make an appearance at your grandchild’s field day. You zoom back home and change into old boots to go to the hayfield and rake hay. When you finally sit down after feeding your critters and your family, it isn’t long before you have to hit the hay and start all over again in the morning.
You love your life and wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world…. But….you rarely take any time out to take care of yourself. You’re pushing through the aches and pains right now but worry that if you don’t learn to take care of yourself you won’t be able to tend to everyone and everything that depends on you.
As a Country Girl who knows all about the joys and struggles of running a family and a farm…
I GET IT!
Hi, I’m Monica,
I’m a hard-working, determined country girl who believes that you have to take responsibility for your own health and well-being. I work with ladies to figure out what is affecting them on a daily basis and then help them make the necessary changes in their routine to regain their strength and energy in order to continue to live the life they love.
I’ve always loved doing the variety of activities it takes to run a family and a farm. It annoyed me when I started having difficulties keeping it all going. I’d love to share a little bit about where I found myself a few years ago and how I laid out a plan to get to where I am today.
My Journey
When I was 52, I injured my knee pretty badly. I stepped off our porch on the back of the house and my foot went into a hole and I twisted my knee. At the time I remember thinking that I was glad that it was my right knee instead of my left because if it had been my left I would’ve had a hard time pushing in a clutch…… priorities (lol). Later on, I self-diagnosed it as a torn meniscus. Of course, I kept using it (things have to get done) and every evening it would be blown up like a basketball and hurt so badly.
Close to the end of 2015, plantar fasciitis set in on my left foot and then developed into achilles tendonitis. I figured it was partly because I had been overusing it because of the knee injury on my other leg. After working on it all day, I would have crawl to the bathroom in the evening because it was easier than trying to walk. It was so intense I knew that I couldn’t just “continue to deal with it.”
Rolling downhill at breakneck speed
I felt like I was falling apart….I was tired of hurting physically…. I was tired of being tired. I felt like I had come to the top of the proverbial hill and was headed down the other side. I knew I needed to work out but if I did I ended up re-injuring my knee. I wasn’t eating correctly so I didn’t have enough energy to exercise and felt horrible when I did. I had to think twice about getting down on the floor to play with my grandchildren because it wasn’t a very pretty sight when I had to roll over on all fours and use the coffee table to get back up. It was a struggle to carry the 50 lb. bag of feed to the chicken house. I had to set the feed down and use the post to step up on the porch because I didn’t have enough strength to step up with the feed in my arms and then had to fight to pick the bag back up.
I finally came to the realization that my feelings of constant pain and exhaustion were not benefiting anyone! In order to break the cycle I had to start taking care of myself for a change. I couldn’t even imagine where I would be in the next few years if I didn’t figure something out.
Determined to make changes
In May of 2016, I finally realized that these “problems” were not going to go away by themselves. I knew I had to give my body the time and self-care that it needed to heal. It was very hard to discipline myself, especially going into hay season, but I was so tired of the constant state of pain that I was in.
I knew that if sports medicine teams could heal bull riders and football players that with the right amounts of rest, stretching and exercise I could get back on my feet again, literally! I began wearing a knee brace for support most days and resting and icing my knee in the evening. I also massaged the scar tissue around my knee which seemed to help immensely. As for the plantar fasciitis, I bought shoe inserts that were specifically designed to help and ended up cutting them down to the shape I needed in order to alleviate the pain in my foot, achilles and calf. After searching and trying several different inserts, I finally found one that gave me immediate relief. I can remember exactly where I was the day I tried those inserts. You wouldn’t believe how intense the pain was from the plantar fasciitis and achilles tendonitis. I had my babies naturally but this pain just about made me cry.
Over the last 2 years I’ve studied lots of different resources in depth about foods and diets. I’ve always been a “figure-it-out” kind of person so I tracked what I ate and learned how it affected my body. I’ve realized that it mostly comes down to eating the correct amount of macronutrients, micronutrients and portion sizes to lose weight or maintain your body weight. I lost 20 lbs by making small daily changes in my diet. My plantar fasciitis is completely gone and with the rehab I’ve done on my knee, I don’t have to favor it anymore, I’m able to workout and I have the same flexibility in it that I have in my good knee.
I know there are a lot of busy women out there that don’t have the time to figure it all out by themselves so I felt called to create a business where I could share what I’ve learned with others in hopes that they can make simple changes to their daily habits, feel better and support their loved ones in leading a healthier life.
A big part of my WHY
I remember in May and June when I had just begun posting about my journey, my sister Julie saw my posts and reached out to say that she really wanted to make changes in her life so she could lose weight, have more energy and feel better. One month later she was gone...we lost her to a massive heart attack in July of 2016. She was a single mom raising three teenagers by herself. She was under a lot of pressure from work, stressed out from trying to take care of everything and never took any time for herself. It was difficult losing my sister. I wish every day that we had started taking care of ourselves sooner. Losing her made me even more determined to figure out how to heal myself and deepened my passion to help others make changes for themselves and their loved ones.
I’ve climbed back up the hill and am on the other side again
Now I am feeling great again and have more energy than I’ve had in the last 5 years put together. I can get up off the floor after playing with the grandchildren without having to turn over and get on all fours first. I can carry the 50 lb. bag of feed to the chicken house AND step up on the porch with it. The inflammation is gone from my joints and I can sit cross-legged on the floor again.
I love sharing what I’ve learned in my life and how I've arrived at where I am today. I get to help amazing women by providing easy-to-follow systems that give them the knowledge and support they need to feel the freedom and relief of learning how to carve out a little time to give back to themselves. Emotionally and physically.
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