January Newsletter
I am writing today with high energy for my work life in 2024 and wanted to share a bit of that with you today. While Hearts and Hands has been pretty quiet for the last few years, a new energy began to build over this past summer which was matched nicely with the set up of my office at its new location, 9 Vose Farm Road. As I reflect on the year, and my hopes, the word transition keeps coming to mind. I have a pattern of being very slow and resistant to transition in my own life, but despite all my attempts to hold on to what I thought I wanted, or thought should be, transition happens. They happen all around me, in the weather, in my household with my ever-growing daughters, and ultimately, with my interests and energy at work.
This past year, I started practicing awareness in my work day, to see if I could tell what is draining and what is energizing. This started because I felt depleted in aspects of my day to day in a whole new way, but since I had not changed anything in years, I could not figure out where it was coming from. After a few months of paying attention, one appointment and one birth at a time, I realized that working with women in their day to day, rather than in their big birthing day, was where I felt energized. The more I listened to that, the more I felt the energy, and new ideas began to flow. A big part of this energy is oriented toward coming back to providing care in my community, the Monadnock Region.
As I followed the energy of my day to day, I found myself jumping into long animated conversations with teens about how their cycles affect their energy and mood – cause guess what , it does! I found myself explaining the variety of estrogens to women in the peri-menopause years, with what to expect as they taper down. Estrogen impacts our use of energy, mood, appetite and physical well being, and every morning, a woman wakes up with a new ratio of circuiting estrogen (not to mention the other handful of hormones shifting daily), what a trip! Once I began incorporating that conversation into my visits, I found that many, if not most women were naive to the information, and in that, they were missing the opportunity to harness what their body has to offer and accept treatment where it needs support. These conversations were fun and inspiring, both for me as a provider and for my patients as they left the office with new tools to understand the going-ons of their body.
Because I am a visual learner, I am a visual teacher…and I could not find a tool out there on the interwebs that fit this conversation, so I am making my own, and I wanted to share the first one with you today. I will continue to send each month along with a monthly newsletter and other graphics as we progress through 2024. This first tool that I have ready to share is a simple monthly tracking system, that can be used in endless ways. It can be used to track symptoms (mood, energy, appetite, sleep), the menstrual cycle (pain/cramping, signs of ovulation, bleeding, energy) or goals (movement, rest, reading, meditation, sleep), and can be reset each month. Like with tracking my work/life/energy, getting the information is the first step to creating goals for change.
See the pattern of what is so you can set a pattern of what you want.
In April I am doing a talk at a conference for Nurse Practitioners around these topics, including the attached symptoms/habit tracker and a (to be created) feelings wheel tool to learn how our moods, thoughts and feelings affect or behaviors…so lots more to come! I plan to offer in person or remote counseling on this tool as a way to further support women through the transition of our journey of being.
In the meantime, you can find me for all care related to being a woman at my beautiful new office in Peterborough NH. I will start the year off with just a few days a month while I transition down from full time work in Nashua, with hopes to be back in the Monadnock Region full time by the summer/fall. I am cultivating connections with local providers and compound pharmacies to fully settle into all things transition…including puberty and moods, menstrual cycle and irregular/heavy/painful periods, conception prevention or enhancing, postpartum depression/anxiety or hormone support in the menopause phase of life.
In the coming weeks there will be a new website to lead this new energy, so stay tuned for that as well. And as always, booking is easy and online, with virtual appointments available for many visit types, I look forward to seeing you in 2024.
In wellness,
Sarah Bay, APRN, CNM
Hearts and Hands Women’s Care, LLC