Where do I even start? Haha! I, Mandy, have decided to go back to school in probably the busiest season of the year. This time of year is the time for canning, fall garden, processing meat birds, homeschool, and typical every day life. So why not add on and start my own school learning? I mean who wouldn’t want to do so with a busy life already. Haha!
Thankfully this school is laid back and minimal craziness. There are quizzes that happen through out but thankfully you can go at your own pace. Plus it is all online without actually having to report to someone. So as laid back but intense with information as you can possibly get. I truly haven’t had the chance to get too far with it all but I have to say so far this is well worth the money.
So what exactly am I going back to school for? I am learning Herbalism and how to properly use the herbs and wild plants found to assist in our health journey. If you know anything about my health as a kid and as of late then you know I have been struggling to keep my health balanced. One minute I am completely fine and the next minute I am struggling. For example Monday night I was laying in bed trying to fall asleep when I just felt my stomach start to struggle and bam I was fighting very hard to not go into a cyclical vomiting episode. Very thankful that I was able to curve the episode but it was a very difficult task.
This is exactly where the journey to learn about Herbs come into play! My goal is to find ways to maintain my health and improve my health so these episodes are limited. I know one factor for myself is self care. I do not always get enough sleep for my system and not always do I fit time into my schedule for a little rest and relaxation. Now every night I take time to chill out and watch tv shows but that doesn’t mean I am actually replenishing the soul and giving myself the time to refresh. I am the type of person that wants to sit down alone and just do whatever brings joy to myself and that’s how I will replenish. But with the lack of that going on and running myself on fumes, I am creating a path for cyclical vomiting to come in and wreck so easily on my body. Let me also add that this body does not take a beating like it used to. It takes time to get back up and back to normal. So I guess you could say step one is to work on the whole not overbooking my life part but its truly a hard thing to hold onto when you live the life style I live.
The other goal I have is to use herbs to assist my health. I am planning to learn everything and anything I can to start making different products to assist my health. So far I can see a benefit of drinking tea more often but now the journey is to actually find tea I enjoy. Otherwise there are many options like salves, tinctures, teas and much more that I can use to benefit my health. The main target is gut health and from there then autoimmune health. If I can get these things under control then I can possibly get my episode risk to decrease. I also am hoping to use this all for my kids to continue to grow their immune system health as well. They can greatly benefit from this with simple scrapes and bruises to an upset stomach or a cold. There are so many possibilities!
For the next year I will be working on two courses that will end with certificates and the ability to start our herbal journey. If this is something I truly enjoy then I can continue on with other courses next year. For now I plan to continue with this new routine of an early wake up to feed the homestead animals, coming into the house for a quick change and shower and then head to my computer for an hour of school. I may be consuming a lot of coffee and green tea in the next year but so far the knowledge is impeccable. I truly am enjoying the feeling of learning something new and being able to actually use this information to benefit my family. Don’t get me wrong my pastry arts degree helps with all the baked goods in our house but I don’t use that certificate as much as I will for the herbal certificate.