Endometriosis, How to Cope in Life & Business

On this episode of She's Crafted to Thrive, our guest is Renee Hughes. She is a certified health coach and an aromatherapist. She's also one of my really good friends, and I'm so excited to have her on the show. She'll be sharing her personal journey with endometriosis and how she copes with it in her life and business. This topic of endometriosis is so important to me personally because it's something I deal with on a day-to-day basis, and I also think it's something that a lot of women don't talk about enough about the emotions that come behind it, and how we deal with it in our life. So stay tuned.

Welcome to She's Crafted to Thrive. I'm your host Nikita Williams, and this show is for all the ladies who are making and creating things that they love. You will hear conversations about the real everyday struggles of juggling life and business while trying to maintain passion and harmony. As women, we have the skill of getting things done, but sometimes we get in our own way. It's here where you'll see that you're not alone. You'll discover that success does not mean perfection. Fear and negative thoughts and challenges are all a part of the journey. And on this podcast, you'll find the inspiration and tools you need to have a life and business that thrives. I am so excited to have Renee on, you guys. She's a good friend and so many things. We go way, way back. Um, like way back, y'all. So I'm not even— I'm gonna just let her introduce herself real quick because as you heard in the intro a little bit about what she's doing, but let's hear from Renee Hughes and we'll see what she's got to tell us.

Yay! Thank you, Nikita. I'm so excited about this. I'm so proud of this young lady, you guys. Yeah, she's right. We've gone way, way back. I've watched her grow up, which means, yes, I'm old. She's so beautiful and mature and got everything together. And it just makes me feel like, when did all this happen? So it's crazy. But yeah, so I'm Renee Hughes and I am a certified holistic health coach. I'm an aromatherapist and I run a program for women, specifically for women that have chronic issues. I myself have endometriosis. And yeah, that's what I do. I have a membership program that I help coach people through a variety of things, pain management, and the emotional stuff that happens. So that's kind of my gig.

Yeah, so a little back history on me and Renée. See, I wasn't gonna call that out. I wasn't gonna say that you watched me growing up and all that stuff, but since you brought it up, yes. I gotta say it.

I gotta own it.

My grandparents and my parents, like, we— they— like, we are all close. Like, they've Renee has seen me since I was a kid, grown up, then I got married. But you got married and then you, you were doing volunteer ministry work, so we kind of just disconnected that way, you know. We knew we were still around and still knew of each other, like your sister and stuff like that. So, but now we reconnected because obviously life, but really because of our mutual suffering of endometriosis and things that we do. And she reached out to me to just share with me some things that were helping her that at the time I didn't think for myself would do anything for me, but I tried it and it's completely done that. And it's not only helped my health, it's rekindled our friendship and we like It's just been really nice to reconnect. And you are a wealth of information when it comes to all of this. And it's one of the things I think all of us deal with is when you're dealing with a chronic illness, it can be very isolating. It can feel very like you're very alone and the emotions, like you don't know how to describe things to anyone else because they're looking at you like, what are you talking about? And I know for me, like even my husband Maurice will say, I'm so happy that Renee's in your life because you can talk to her and she can talk to you. And it's like y'all are in a different language when it comes to talking about what hurts and what doesn't hurt and how does that correlate with your everyday life and just phrases. Like, I think one time we were boxing and you said something and I was like, "Oh my gosh, that's exactly how I feel." Those are the words. Those are the words. Exactly. It was, here it was. You said, "I don't know if you know how it feels to be nauseous." to your toes, like you feel like you're nauseous to your toes. And I was like, oh my gosh, I do know what that feels like because I feel like that all the time.

I love it.

Yes, it is.

It's something when you're in a community like that, it's just to have other people understand means everything because it is, it's isolating. It truly is.

Yeah, so I wanted to, you know, obviously this is a common thread for anyone that's in a business who's dealing with chronic issues, but I wanted to talk a little bit about your story, about how you've kind of gotten to where you are now to kind of find some kind of normalcy with dealing with what you deal with and some tips and inspiration along the way. So if you could just tell us a little bit about the struggle or the story about, you know, what is your endometriosis story, I guess? What is that?

Well, I guess the first portion of it comes with, and I think this is all of us as well, is first finding out what was wrong with me. I always had digestive issues. I don't really, I still don't really know when, at what age the endometriosis kicked in. There were some grumblings about it when I was way back when I was 19. But then fast forward many years later, it was like, no, you've got fibroids. No, you've got cysts. No, you've got this and that. So the first portion of a struggle for me was just saying, what? Why do I feel this way? And then with my periods, you know, some months they'd be really heavy and other months they weren't. So, you know, the gynecologists were like, no, you know, this is normal. You know what you have at your age, you're in childbearing years. And so you're supposed to have, you know, all these clots and stuff.

I was like, okay.

And then early 30s, it started to get really bad with the nausea and the pain was increasing and the pain was going to different places. It wasn't just— it didn't feel like it was cyclical anymore. It was just— I was just hurting and sick, you know. Finally, I actually did not get my diagnosis confirmed, confirmed until right before my surgery, which was 2 years ago. So it's like, uh, that was a long time of struggle of trying to figure out what was going on. And so the, the biggest part for me was finding the right health team. So, and I say health team because I, you know, I'm in the healthcare industry So of course I believe in alternative care and having somebody who can kind of guide you through all the different phases of this illness, the emotions, the questions, the day-to-day. I know I needed that. I needed somebody more than that could just give me a diagnosis or that I could go and see for half an hour, an hour, and that be it. So that was a struggle, finding the right team. And so I finally found a gynecologist who specialized in endometriosis and these types of, you know, female disorders. And not only did she specialize, she listened and she was a researcher and she was okay with alternative forms of care and she didn't push medicine on me or hormone replacements or anything that I didn't want to do. And finding her was a huge piece of getting some relief. And even prior to that, just dealing with the symptoms, my holistic care background helped me a whole lot. And then I found essential oils, which completely changed the game for me and helped me to balance my hormones. It helped me to manage symptoms. It helped me mentally. Definitely helped with the nausea. I rarely get it anymore. So even though I had surgery, which was a huge part for me and my success was the surgery, having a hysterectomy really helped me. It doesn't help everybody though.

I'm a testament.

I know, it really doesn't. And I talked to so many women that it doesn't, and I knew that before I had the surgery, and I was so scared because So if you guys are listening, you're trying to figure out, do I have it, do I not, you know, should I do it or not? You just don't know. The first thing is make sure you're working with a specialist and make sure you're working with someone who gets you and who's listening and who hears you and that you feel very safe with. Then have a team, have a holistic team. Also, in addition to my surgeon, I had a health coach that specialized in hormonal balance and an acupuncturist I also had. And together we kind of came to the decision that let's try the surgery because I knew I was going to have that backup to help me to heal properly afterwards. And that was a big portion of it. But you still have endometriosis. Here's the thing. Even when you have the surgery, if you opt for hysterectomy, you still will have endometriosis. So that's why some people are like, what, should I do it? Should I not? And I went through that because I was like, I'm still going to have it. And my, the specialist told me that. So I do have symptoms periodically, but it's nothing like it was before, prior to the surgery. And I'm able to balance those and deal with them. I have way fewer down days, in the bed days, where you cannot get up days. I do still have them, but, but they're rare. So that's, that's kind of my endo story.

Yeah, I mean, everybody that I talk to who has something to deal with like a female chronic issue like endometriosis or fibroids or PCOS or adenomyosis. I can never say this right.

Adenomyosis, I have that too.

There you go. It is the journey to get one to the diagnosis in itself is like you have PTSD from it. Like just to get to that point, right? Like just to get to that point, you know, from a doctor telling you, no, it's in your head. No, it's normal. No, you can't be possibly having that much pain. No. Or the doctors that just want to push medicine on you or tell you to have a baby because this will fix it. All these— those things that we all have heard. And we all in the back of our minds saying, no, this cannot just be in my head. And no, I don't think I want to have a child just because you said this will fix it.

Or—

Right, exactly. Or surgery thinking that that's— going to solve it all. All while living life, right? So all while being a wife, all while being a mother, maybe all while being, you know, running your own business or going to work. It's a huge thing. Like it's not an easy thing to be dealing with at all. Like we all know this. So for you and your story, like, you know, like you were saying, it was trying to find the right health team more than just like, what's wrong with me, but emotionally and physically in the sense of like, how do you— what do you eat? Do you not eat this? And all those kind of things all work. Do you feel that the holistic— because of the approach later in life, I guess, for you taking it as a more holistic approach really helped you get to where you are now?

Absolutely. There's a couple of pieces to that. The first piece I want to say is that a lot of us beat ourselves up because we're like, you know, it wouldn't be so bad if my diet wasn't so bad. You know, if I weren't, you know, maybe if I come off meat or if I come off dairy or this and that. And what I want to say to that is that's not true. Even, even though I have the holistic background and yes, I coach people to come off certain things and to adjust their diets. And to, you know, take in, you know, whole foods. It's not your fault that you have this. And even having that holistic approach, it's really important for me to just say that out of the gate because there's so many people in my industry who make people feel like anything can be cured with a vegetable. I mean, they do. They do. It's not true, people. And I love it too. I understand the passion behind creation and using the plants and the food and whole foods. These things do support your body. They do not cure everything. So that's the first thing. And I will say I was in a support group when I was going through the surgery and there were vegans on there and there were vegetarians on there and there were people like me, you know, who are in the holistic community they were— they had it too. So that's, that's the first thing that's important for people to know, that even though I have this holistic approach, it's not a cure-all. And the second thing to know is that yes, it did help because one, I knew I was doing the best I could to manage my symptoms, to take care of my body. I already knew that I was doing those things, even though not perfectly. And it also helped me because I could see things from a broader spectrum. Understanding the human body, understanding how it works, understanding what was happening to me, and understanding what could possibly make it better. And then having people that I was working with that also understood that and could nourish me, you know, my emotions, that could nourish me physically, that could give me recommendations, and they could check in with me and help me be accountable, and that really cared about the situation in whole, how I was feeling. Really carried me through the situation so that it wasn't as traumatic. Like you said, the PTSD is not— I mean, we laugh, but it's traumatic. It's traumatic. And especially when nobody gets it and you feel like you're by yourself. And our dear husbands is like, they're like, what? You know, what? You know, even if you got a great guy, they still like, after a while, it's like, we're going to hospital tonight. I don't know what's happening. You know, what is it? Like, what's going on? And it's just, it becomes a lot. So having the holistic approach It does. It helps because your body is attacked in so many different ways. And the more you can fill in gaps of the different spaces that are being attacked, the better you feel and the better you recover.

Those are like so good. That was so good because it's true. I mean, I mean, for a while before I even, you know, a lot of people would tell me, oh, you should be on a gluten-free diet. You should be on dairy-free. You should do all these things and all things will be all better for you. And then I would be like, when I started researching about the hysterectomy and what is that online kind of support, Hyster Sisters.

Yes, that's awesome.

I would go on there and I would see there's these women and some, you know, some of them there's pictures of them and they look like, I mean, compared to me as far as size and I'm like, okay, so this is not necessarily because I'm a little heftier than most people, you know what I'm saying? Or it's not because I chose— for a year I did a gluten-free diet and I felt nothing different.

Nothing different.

No different. I mean, I lost a few pounds, but I was still in pain. I was still going to the hospital. And so when I started to realize it's not necessarily about the food, it can help, but it's not necessarily about all these things that people are telling you that it's about, that this is the reason why you have endometriosis. They don't know why endometriosis is happening. They still don't know. So the idea that you can solve a problem without understanding why it began in the first place, you can't say that a vegetable is going to fix it. You can't say a wheat allergy is going to fix it. Like, you just can't. And our bodies are all so different. Like, you and me are like— your experience with endometriosis is completely different. From my experience in a lot of ways, but very similar in a lot of ways too. But our bodies respond differently. For you, you had the surgery and it worked really well for you. And for me, I'm a year and what, 2 months in, and I'm like, yeah, I don't think that did much for me. Like, I don't think that did much for me. I mean, outside of the obvious things of having like a cycle every month, like a period period, I still deal with the pain. I still have the cramps. Like I'm on it. The only thing is confusing in my brain and my body is like, you don't see blood. Right. That's the only thing. Yeah. It's a whole different situation. So it's so nice to hear someone in the health profession and be like, look, it's not really necessarily you eat a vegetable and it's going to be fixed.

Right.

Because that is not the mainstream way of thinking about it. It's very the opposite. Right. So Thank you. You're welcome.

It's true. I mean, I, I'm— it's, it's funny, it's— we, I hear it so much. They're like, okay, get to the root cause. And all that's true, you want to do the best you can to help your body heal, but it's not necessarily going to get rid of 100% of everything. You've got to take it in sections. And like you said, everybody's different, and see what's going to fit for you. And sometimes it takes a couple of stabs at it to even get a little bit of balance.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So while all of that is going on and being taken in a holistic— you, like I was saying before, you were running, you're a busy person, like, like, like really busy, y'all. Like, Renee is a full-time volunteer, and when I say full-time volunteer, she's feeling like a full-time job in volunteering. Like, this is what she does on top of running How many businesses is it?

A few businesses.

Yeah, two businesses right now, um, that are all around this kind of this baby of, you know, holistically taking care of people and their issues with whether it's chronic or day-to-day colds, flus, whatever. Um, so how, how did you find And I've been talking about this thing called balance with everybody that I'm talking to on my podcast. And my last conversation was with Gina here recently. And she was like, you know, someone had mentioned to her it's about finding harmony because there's not really— we can't really give everything exactly the same amount of time. Like, it's just— it doesn't work like that. Life doesn't work like that. But how did you find a balance in figuring out for yourself, you know, dealing with the pain, dealing with, you know, giving yourself some, you know, as people would say, grace, you know, like just, I can't do it today. We gon' be kiwi pat, you know, how did you find that balance?

That's such a good question because this is something I talk about a lot. It's similar to what Gina said about harmony. It's what I call it is flourishing through the stress because it's not going to stop. And waiting for— if I were to wait until I felt 100% good or things were not crazy, as we say, quote unquote crazy, I would get nothing done. So what I had to do is develop a mindset that allowed me to flourish through it. And like you said, let me just run down some of the things that I do so you can put your mind around how I have to do this. So yeah, I do. I volunteer like a full-time job. I get over 100 hours a month volunteering. I have a project that I work on with my husband called Couples in Business where we teach other couples to do what we do, to have these businesses and not drive each other crazy and not, you know, be able to flourish through the madness. But what I had to do, and then I have my baby, which is the aromatherapy. So that's my, that's my heart language right there. That when it comes to what I do secularly. But what we had to do was adjust. So you can't do every single thing. So for the project, even though there are people coming to me for business coaching and questions and stuff, we had to say, you know what, I do business coaching twice a year. I just do it twice a year.. I do it in the, the, the, the, um, like around January and then the summer and that's it. I can't do it all the time. Um, so you have to shift your focuses sometimes. You can't do everything. You can't give everything 100% of the time. Um, and so how I wrap my mind around that is I literally, I schedule and I'm not a regimented person. You know, some people are just good like that. Like they, they say they're going to do something, they set a schedule and they stick to it and they're just, that's not me.

But that's really hard to do, even if you are regimented like that, that's hard to do if you have a chronic illness that just all of a sudden decides to be like, ah, you know?

Yeah, like I have this on the books today, but I can't stand up or open my mouth.

Exactly.

Yeah, so when those days come, just what you said, giving yourself the grace and accepting it instead of— it's all about the conversation that you have. With yourself. So you can say, you know, I'm being attacked again. I mean, this is happening to me again and I'm not going to get anything done. Or you can get your— in my case, I get out my heating pad, I get out my oils, I massage, I get some hot tea, I get, I get my comfort zone around me and I accept that that's going to be a day for me. This is going to be a holy self-care day and it's okay. And when you accept that, that this is a day for you, this is a day your body's talking to you. It's telling you it wants some care. Give it that care. I look at it like a baby who's crying and saying, I want some attention, you know, and you don't get mad at the baby and say, just shut up. Well, maybe some, I don't know. I'm not a mom. I don't know what mommies do, but I would imagine that you just love that baby so much that you're like, okay, honey, what do you want? So we need to say that to ourselves, and we need to just say, okay, you know, very lovingly, let's get in bed, let's put your favorite little slippers on, whatever, some nice soothing sounds, and get your comfort around you. Get your stuff that makes you feel better, watch your favorite TV show, and be happy in that and allow yourself to have that. I think a big portion of those days is not only are we feeling so sick, but for me, I used to also get terrible anxiety around it. So I'm sick, a lot of times for me it's sick at the stomach, even more so than the pain. Head to toe nausea, just can't lift myself up out of the bed nausea and weakness. Like I'm gonna— I would feel like I was gonna die. Like if I go to sleep, I'm not gonna wake back up. That's how I would feel. And I still get that sometimes. So With that came a lot of anxiety. Am I going to die? Should I go to the hospital? Do I need to get my affairs in order? Like, go through all of that. Yes. And so all this anxiety around what's my family going to do? Well, why is this happening to me? All these conversations you have. So if you can shift that conversation to, I'm okay, I'm safe, I'm not going to die today. And even if I do, I have done everything I can possibly to comfort and nourish and take care of myself. And even that's okay. It's— everything is okay. And so when I was able to shift that conversation, I do a lot of deep breathing and essential oils to help me get to that place mentally. I can make it through the nausea. I can make it through that weird feeling that I don't know what's happening, you know, to me. And I'll massage and I'll do it every couple of hours and I'll go ahead. I used to be afraid to fall asleep. Because I didn't know if I was going to wake up. Now I allow myself to do that. You know, I'll fall asleep and then I'll wake up and I say a prayer, grateful that I'm still here. And if I'm able to eat something, then I eat something. So it's really just about taking those days and accepting that we're in that day. And honestly, I still get a lot of work done on those days if I can prop up and get my computer. And ladies, never put your computer on your laps. Never, ever, ever. Always have a stand or something blocking radiation and everything that comes out of your computer from, from laying on you. But I prop myself up and get my computer on and I will go through my to-do list and I'll just say, what do I feel like doing today out of my entire to-do list? And then I'll do some of it. I'll do what I'm able to do, even if I have to kind of force myself a little bit. I'll do some things off of that list. Because I'm laying there sick anyway. I'm not gonna— it's not going to, you know what I mean? So I try to get some people— maybe it's some study, maybe it's listening to something uplifting, but I get something done. If I'm not asleep, you know, which is good too, to go ahead and sleep, then I will prop up periodically through the day and get a couple of things done.

Yeah, those are really good suggestions and tips too. I mean, just taking that time to not drive yourself in more angst, right? Of thinking like, why am I not— why is this happening to me? Why can't I do what I want to do? All that stuff, it takes up a lot more energy than you— you don't even have the energy to be doing all that. Like, you really don't. And I do know just from connecting, I think for me personally, just connecting with people like you And just being more open about what's happening instead of feeling like it's some kind of taboo thing that nobody should know about because it's like I've done something wrong. Like, I ain't do nothing wrong. I didn't ask for this. Trust me, if I could give it to the sky, it can have it. I don't want it. So I really appreciate you saying, just giving your time to say, hey, you know, this is okay and this is what it's going to be. And if the inevitable of what we fear might happen, well, I've done everything I can. Because I know for me personally, I have gone through that conversation of, I'm gonna die tonight. I'm gonna go to sleep and I'm not gonna wake up in the morning. And that's a conversation that's really hard to have with yourself every time that happens to you. I mean, you either get really comfortable with death Or you just get more anxiety every time something like that happens. So I really appreciate that tip. And yeah, for me, taking those deep breaths and just trying to take it in and just take the moment for what it is and do what I can, not overdo anything, it makes it okay. It makes it better. It does.

It really does.

And then when you look back on the day, you can feel like, oh, well, you know, it wasn't too much of a— it wasn't a waste. You know, it wasn't a waste of a day. I did something.

Absolutely. And taking care of yourself is never a waste. And we need to get to the point where it's okay that we had a day in bed. We might have several days in bed. It's never a waste to spend a day caring for yourself. And so we really need to get there mentally and emotionally that it's okay.

So what if you, if you were to say to one of my listeners who is a creative woman and who is working physically, for instance, she's a photographer and she is, you know, doing her business, she's running, meeting with clients, she's doing photo shoots, things like that. And she's dealing with chronic illness like endometriosis or fibroids or PCOS or not being able to sleep or chronic pain, anything. What would be some advice or practical tips you would give them in order to just feel better about the choices that they're making?

The first thing is to try to be proactive in a couple of ways. Be proactive in how you're taking care of yourself. We can't stop these episodes. So we know that they're going to still happen. But if you have— if you are taking care of everything that you can, for example, I always have my clients find out what it is that they're allergic to. I want to know. Go to an allergist. Let's do a cleansing program, something that lets us know triggers in that area. So we got that. So stick to that, especially when you got a shoot or something important coming up. Let's make sure we're really, really nourished. I have them on an aromatherapy program that they are doing consistently, not just when the pain kicks in, but consistently. We're nourishing the body, we're nourishing the cells, we're nourishing on a regular, regular basis. It's gonna help you to have less of those days, first and foremost. The other thing is you need to have some fail-safes when you can't show up. So you need to be, you should have a partner, photographer, someone who you have an agreement with, that can show up when you can't show up. Because there are going to be days when you absolutely can't. There are going to be some days when you can work through it, if you can work through it, and you've got this nourishment, and sometimes it'll give you enough to get through a session. But sometimes you can't. So you need to already know ahead of time that you have this partner photographer. It should be part of your contract. It should be part of— so that your subjects, that they understand that this— me and my partner work together. They don't need to know all the background of why. Let them know that they're taken care of, but that should be part of it so that you need to feel safe and okay with being sick. Yeah, you can make yourself sick thinking, oh, this photo shoot, this is really important thing is coming up. I know, I know it's gonna kick in, it's gonna kick in, you know, and then it probably will. So if you're taken care of in that way, then you're gonna do better. When it comes to your creativity and being able to get out and do physical stuff, I would just say, just do the best you can each day to do as much as you can. And accepting not feeling well can help with that because sometimes we still, we can, we can still physically do it. It's just that we feel like crud while we're doing it, but you're going to feel better on the back end because the days that you do feel a little bit better, you won't have this trailer park of all this stuff that you, you know, didn't get done. So trying to get more done even when you're not feeling well and understanding that there's a difference between not feeling well and having a day where your body is like, no, I'm not— I cannot get up, right? So that you can honor those days when you cannot. When it's just that you're not feeling well, go ahead and try to get some stuff done. And then the last piece is get help. So you should have some kind of staff, a VA. If you're still building your business, there's plenty of people on Fiverr and Upwork that you can afford. But get some help. Don't try to do this whole thing by yourself.

Yeah, I think those are all like really good tips, especially about the having like for shoots. If you have a shoot, my recommendation, just because of working with creatives and photographers for that, is get someone that that you want to train. Let them be your prodigy, let them be your intern so that when that happens you can give them this because you've already spent the time, you know, you spent the time, they know what you expect, they know your editing style, they know everything about who you are. That will take some time but once you've done that you have something built in so you don't feel like you have to, you know, give it to another photographer that doesn't know your editing style or your posing style, you have someone. It takes a little bit of, you know, work behind the scenes to get to that point, but you can. So that's brilliant. Yeah, yeah, that's a really good point. Well, I mean, there's so much we could talk about, about this. Like, it's not even— like, it's seriously, there's a lot we could talk about when it comes to dealing with this. But for my listeners, what can't— what are some of the things that you I know you've mentioned it throughout the show, but give us a little bit more detail about your, um, aromatherapist program. Because I'm just talking for real, y'all, even if you aren't like really into essential oils, you don't really understand them, and you're just like, oh, they smell good or something, I don't know what you might be thinking about essential oils, but just coming from a place of being in a community of other people and other women who feel similar pains and anxiety and stress, having somewhere where you can go to like, hey, I need some help with this, or I need some suggestions with this, that in itself, just a community like that is helpful for you because I know for myself I say this to Renee every day, every time I talk to him, like, I am so thankful that you came back into my life because I was at a point in my time of life, like thinking like, ah, you know, you know what, I'm about to get emotional.

Yeah.

I was just feeling so alone, even though I knew I wasn't alone. I was feeling so alone because it is such a difficult issue to be having and I've had it for years and I've, going to the hospital. And at the time when Renee came back in my life, I had just moved to another state. What was I thinking? Like all these things were happening. I'm like, what was I thinking? And just being able to have someone to talk to. And now you've created this program where it's like, hey, let's take care of your body, your mind. It just makes it better. So tell us more about the program so they can understand why I think it's so amazing. Tell us a little bit more about that.

Well, it's holistic aromatherapy is what I call it, and it's, it's guided self-care. So it's what I'm doing is I'm teaching people how to take care of themselves and we do it together. So instead of just watching a video and saying, okay, let me do this, we do it together. I have 3 different memberships. So there's one that's a group coaching where you can come in and have a class every week. You can ask questions in a Facebook classroom, I'm calling it. And then I have two upgraded packages where you can get one-on-one time with me. And for people who are like, I really want to actually do this for work, or I really actually want to know the details, I have a package where you can get the same knowledge that an aromatherapist has. So I have those three programs and it just depends on what a, what a person wants. And I, the whole idea behind it is education because the more you know and understand the more you can take care of yourself. And it's not just oils. There's so much hype right now around oils and CBD and all these different oils, and people kind of get over it. But I just, I want to tell you that there is reality in what's out there in the plants. And always, always think of it this way. We know that we can't breathe, we can't have oxygen without plants and trees. We literally stop breathing. We need what they give us, and it's not just the oxygen, but they have things inside of it that are chemically very similar to what's inside of us. And when we take those in and we make those a part of our body, especially in an essential oil, because it's so concentrated, amazing things happen. Our bodies and our minds start to shift. So this is why we need to have that as a part of our life. Um, and so I teach people how to do it, how to get better sleep, how to get past one of those days. Even if you're still feeling it, I'm not saying that it's 100% cure. You're not going to feel any pain. You're not going to feel any nausea. You will still have those days, but it's not as intense. I mean, for me, it's cut down the intensity probably like 80 to 90% for me because I mean, I would have days. I mean, I won't even get back into that, but it just, It just really helps. It just really helps you to endure. And not to mention the emotional part, that you have somebody that you can talk to, that can listen to you, that can help you move past the fear and the anxiety and the depression and the fact that you feel like you are letting people down and you are letting yourself down and you are not accomplishing what you want. And to be able to coach people through that so that they are accomplishing what they want and they love themselves again. It's huge for me. So that is what the program is really about. It's guided self-care and education around aromatherapy and essential oils.

That was a really good explanation. I don't think I've heard you explain it like that, but I like that. That was good. That's so true about the tree and everything. That was great. Yeah, it really is that way. Um, And because there is so much information out there regarding essential oils and aromatherapy and holistic care, it can almost feel like everything is one size fits all. But what I like about your program is that it isn't. It's like, okay, let's see what works for you. Let's see what works for you, not just for your body, but also financially. Like, what's your budget? Your program is really affordable. It's not like crazy expensive. It's very affordable. So that's, that's one of the things that I love about it.

I would love to speak to that for a moment because when I was going through this, I had a holistic health coach, but I was paying her— gosh, I'm forgetting now, but it was like something like $100 and something per half hour. If I even sent her a question in email, I had to pay for that. Now, she was a specialist. She was great. She knows the same stuff that I know. But at the time I wasn't there. And even if you are there, coaches need coaches. So I needed that outside, you know, support. And I was determined that when I had my program, it was going to be something that people could actually afford to get the care that they need. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

That was a lot.

That's a lot.

That's a lot. That's insane. And I would be talking really fast when we would talk. It was like, okay, let me just get these questions out and, you know, it's crazy and it's not, not a good system.

Well, I want to thank you for being on the show, She's Crafted Thread. I think, I think this is going to be an awesome episode for women like who are going through things like us. And thank you again, and tell us where we can find you like online and all that, Josh, real quick. Real quick, I can't talk real quick.

I'm at thearomaspecialist.com. It's spelled aroma and then specialist, one word. And I'm on IG, The Aroma Specialist.

All right, ladies, thank you for listening, and I hope this conversation inspired you. Be sure to subscribe and tell a friend. That's it on this episode. And yes, you are crafted to thrive.