End of Summer

I’ve pretty much taken a good break from the blog this summer and it was much needed. It’s really nice to be able to escape from something, even if it’s just a short while and really focus on self love, family and good old mental and emotional health. I would never classify myself as a stressful person, but this year I realized I became very stressed and it actually affected me physically. At the beginning of summer my jaw began to pop frequently and became very sore. Eating was painful and because I knew my jaw was irritated I began clenching at night. After a visit to my dentist I learned I had in fact dislocated it and since it wasn’t a direct result of an injury such as taking a soccer ball to the face like I did in high school, it’s then stress induced. Say whaaaaat? I had no idea stress could cause me to actually dislocate my jaw. And since the jaw isn’t like other joints like say a shoulder that can be popped back into place, the muscles of the jaw have to become relaxed enough to naturally move back into place which can take some time and medications. I’ll be honest, talking to my dentist about three different medications he wanted me to take sent me into a panic attack in his chair. It was absolutely embarrassing and it was very clear just how stressed I had become. I refused the medications other than a muscle relaxer and applied our Panaway essential oil down my jaw bone. About a week later I had to eliminate the muscle relaxer, but that’s another twist in this whole story that will just have to wait a little bit!

Today I can happily say, I have removed the things in my life that were causing me ample amounts of stress, I took a break from nearly everything I do and spent the summer taking care of myself with much needed rest. By the way if you happen to go through a similar experience with your jaw talk to your dentist about an Aqualizer, it worked wonders! On top of my jaw incident, a few days later Mike thought it was a great idea to sprain his shoulder by falling off our dining table bench. Okay, okay, he did sprain his shoulder and yes he did do it falling backwards off the bench, but he also completely protected and saved Olivia from falling and hitting the back of her head on the floor which would have been so much worse. We are so very thankful it was Mike who was injured and even more thankful it was just a severe sprain.

Today, even though it’s August, I felt like I spent most of July throwing spaghetti at the wall so I’m jumpstarting into fall. Mostly because I’ve been ready for it for awhile, but I just need a fresh new season. We’ve spent the last few weeks stuck inside with constant rain and we finally had some sunshine this weekend to make life enjoyable again. We’ve also spent our summer weeks celebrating the 4th of July in Southport, traveling to Maryland and Raleigh to visit friends, chasing butterflies, catching fireworks at the beach and taking trips to the pool, beach and splash pad as long as we had breaks in what seemed to have been non-stop rain. We’re getting ready for Kensi to start kindergarten and Finn preschool which just seems crazy. Having a few days with just Olivia this year will be a new routine I”m excited to learn.

I hope your summer was packed full of fun and you were able to get some much needed R&R as well. I have so many fun things to share in the next few weeks and I hope you’ll join me and our fam as we get back into the swing of things here on the blog!

xoxo