Life Lessons From A Tea Pot

This tea set gets a lot of love at my office.  It’s decor in the receptionist’s room.  You can see it from the checkin and checkout desks.  I bought it several years ago to be an office decoration but I loved it so much that I kept it at home for two years before I brought it to the office.  It’s an actual useable tea set that I’ve used many times.

Take a good look at it.  First of all, the tree design just speaks to my heart.  (Note: my practice logo is a stylized tree of life design.)  It’s whimsical.  It’s dainty.  It has a bell in the teapot that gently tinkles as the tea is poured.  It has multiple shades of green, teal, and yellow blended and running together.  It’s a bit wonky: the saucers don’t match perfectly, the cups lean a bit, the pot is a bit tipped back. 

The artist sold this as a second.  It wasn’t perfect.  She told me it warped in the kiln and she was so disappointed in it.  She sold it cheap, because she just wanted it out of her studio, because she didn’t want to look at it anymore.

What the artist saw as failure and disappointment and a mistake, is what I love about it.  It’s unique.  It’s one-of-a-kind.  The artist will never be able to replicate it.  The imperfections are what caught my attention (plus the tree design, obviously).  The imperfections are what make it special.

It’s the same way with life.  We want our mistakes, our failures, our disappointments to go away.  We don’t want to see them anymore.  We don’t want to think about them anymore.  Yet, those are the things that make us.  We become the people we are because of them.  They make us grow, stretch, realize what we really believe is true, and hopefully become better people.

So let’s celebrate who we are, because our mistakes, our failures, our disappointments are part of who we are.  And they help make us unique, one-of-a-kind, impossible to replicate, and special.  It’s how we live well and live abundantly.

Almost every woman experiences a hormone imbalance at some point in her life, whether it's PMS, perimenopause, or menopause, and some women are unlucky enough to deal with all three! You don't need to suffer! Hormone imbalances can be corrected when your levels are tested correctly (with a saliva test) and treated correctly with bio-identical hormones, nutrition, supplements, and lifestyle changes. For more information, please call us at 208-433-9188 or visit our website by clicking here.

And here I am, fourteen years later.  Has it been easy? No.   Am I glad I took the accountant’s advice and pursued my dream? Yes.

Happy 14th Birthday to Abundant Life Health Care.  It is worth all the work to be the Nurse Practitioner that I want to be, providing health care the way I think it should be done.  One on one, individualized, based on science, integrating natural medicine, and incorporating 14 years of clinical experience (and counting).

The majority of research suggest health benefits, though some studies offer conflicting results, which has led to research into each biologically active compound. Coffee contains hundreds of biologically active compounds (acids, carbohydrates, lignins, minerals, nitrogenous compounds, caramelized products, lipids, and volatile compounds), which all have different effects on health. 

Did you know that coffee is known to have estrogenic activity? This was documented over 80 years ago! Although estrogen’s action on the reproductive tract, mammary glands, and ovaries is well acknowledged, it should also be noted that estrogen effects other areas of the body such as the bone, nervous system, heart, and brain.  

Last week, my husband was injured at work.  I was coordinating between him, the ER, and our kids and had to take personal phone calls and return text messages during patient appointments.  Every patient that afternoon offered to reschedule their appointments.  Every. Single. One.  Often they told me, “No, really. It’s not a problem for me to reschedule, if you need to be with your husband.”

I am grateful for that.  My patients are some of the nicest people I know.  To offer to reschedule an appointment because my personal life was interfering with my professional life meant a lot to me.  I felt the love, understanding, and respect they gave me.  (I didn’t reschedule anyone, but did have to interrupt every appointment to take brief phone calls or return texts.)

So thank you to those patients, who were so willing to let me take care of my personal minor crisis in the midst of my professional business.  I hope if any of you are ever in this position, that you’ll be offered the flexibility I was given.

For those who are wondering, my husband’s injury is serious, but it could have been much worse than it is.  I am very thankful for that.  With time and healing, he will be okay.