I feel like I’ve risen from the dead.
Well, I pretty much did. More details on that later but, I’m back! My dearest readers of Balanced Babe, you may have noticed that things around here have been pretty mellow for quite some time. Believe me when I say I wish my team was able to churn out articles and content and continue with workshops and community events throughout half of 2017, and the majority of 2018 up until now, but it’s been a quite a year (really a little bit over a year) to say the least.
As I sip on my MCT oil coffee and stare at the baby monitor of my sleeping boy (yerp that’s an update for ya), I’m feeling refreshed and excited to let you know that the biz is officially back in action.
What the heck happened, you ask? Well here’s the dirt…
Flashback 2017. I decided to try something new with my career path which involved using my marketing skills for other awesome businesses, which sparked the start of Balanced Babe being neglected. Yes I tried to sustain content and services after hours and on weekends, but when you decide to work full time and use all your creative mental capacity for other companies, it’s hard to try to manage another full fledged business on the side. SO that happened. Instantly content dropped and my day got busy thinking about everything else besides nurturing my own business “baby”.
This chapter of my professional life lasted for a good year. In addition to this and in the midst of serving others instead of Balanced Babe, a beautiful miracle happened: I got pregnant! Pregnancy and working a 9-5 full time..talk about a double whamy. As my pregnancy continued on and I continued working an office job, my own business naturally fell to the back burner and it was barely sizzling.
Once we welcomed our beautiful baby boy earth side, life changed again and I was home all day everyday to love him up and nurture myself and my newborn. I thought I’d be able to get back to work 3 months later to start anew, but NOPE that didn’t pan out either. Cue why I think I’ve literally risen from the dead:
The past I would say 3 months I’ve been *horribly* sleep deprived and barely functioning/surviving all due to my beloved little son going through what is known as a “sleep regression” meaning that BABY ISN’T SLEEPING FOR MORE THAN AN HOUR OR TWO AT A TIME. All night. Every night.
JESUS CHRISTMAS.
I read an article that marines are trained to power through all-nighters and tough situations by being forced to stay awake and listening to baby cries overnight. I read another article that in renaissance times people were tortured by being forced to stay awake for days. Being sleep deprived is pretty much torture. You feel like your organs are shutting down one by one.
Soo yea it’s not a fun situation. Not a fun situation at all. As you can probably imagine, I had weeks where I barely showered (my poor fiance), was only able to muster up the energy to *gasp* make microwavable meals, and I completely fell off the bandwagon of living the Balanced Babe life I once used to.
After about three months of this, and when lil bub was at the appropriate age, I delved into gentle sleep training and his sleep LITERALLY changed overnight from waking every hour, to sleeping 10+ hours straight! This was my signal from the universe that now I can FINALLY get back to work. After about a week of adjusting my own sleep (since I was so used to waking every few hours), I now feel human and have the energy and creative spark once again to re-launch this sh*t. HOLLA.
Here’s what you can expect now:
— Regular articles. There are already over 700 articles here on Balanced Babe on SO many different holistic health topics, remedies, recipes, etc etc. Now that our writing team will be getting back into action, you can expect even more articles popping up here on the regular once again!
— Extra educational content on Instagram. I personally have a love hate relationship with Instagram, but I understand the importance of using it for any business. My goal is to provide educational content on insta that serves you, inspires you, and lifts you up. In a sea of what seems just like people bragging about their own lives, I want to create a space on there that allows you to love your own.
— More videos. We’ll be creating educational videos that will be published here and on social media, because videos are fun – yay!
— Online courses. There are a few online courses in the works that have been pending *for a whileeee*, but since we are back in action, they’ll be launching very soon!
— In person workshops and community events. If you’re a Balanced Babe OG reader, you probably remember the BeHealthful Retreats that brought together the wellness community in Chi! Even though summits of that size won’t be planned anytime soon (unless you want to join the team and create one with me!), we will be starting our fun DIY wellness workshops and community events once again. Because making in person connections and real genuine relationships is SO rare these days, I want to create that space again.
— A community and online space for preggy ladies and new moms. One thing I did do during my hiatus from Balanced Babe: Learn EVERYTHING about holistic health and wellness during pregnancy and motherhood! I’ve got a new wealth of content to share for my pre and postnatal readers, so I am going to create a new space and community just for this purpose. Mom’s unite!
So that’s pretty much that in a nutshell. This break was just a reminder that change in inevitable, and there’s a natural ebb and flow to everything in your life. There are peaks, and dips. My dip just happened to last for a really long freakin’ time! Anywhooo. Hope you’re just as excited as me to learn about everything holistic in Chicago and beyond!
OH and if you are going through a chapter in your own life where you are focusing your energy inward instead of outward like I have the past year, there will be a new video coming in a few days discussing how to “deal” when you need a break and advice on how to power through a whole new person on the other end.