30/12/2021
Hello hello hello! Thank you for your beautiful well wishes, greetings & the love you’ve shown me in the past few days. I am feeling very heart-full hearing from you all. This morning the penny dropped (it took a few days...eek!) I need to share why I suddenly went MIA and if I am back practicing.
Why I went MIA:
I started 2021 excited to be studying a Masters in Human Nutrition. Nervously anticipating returning to study at the age of 50+ I reduced my practice to very limited online appointments infrequently, but I did plan to stay in contact with you all here regularly.
What I didn’t know or plan for was that most of my year would be taken up by an unfortunate situation in my home. Where I lived was found to have a serious mould problem. So much so we were told to evacuate immediately. I packed a small suitcase of essential hair care products, Bioenhanced Methyl Bs (for energy), my laptop, Francesca and a packet of Brazil nuts and moved into temporary housing. My partner and hero donned a hazmat suit and did the nasty job of packing our contents and shipping them to be mould-assessed.
Delays, delays and more delays meant the initial 6 week timeline for the remediation is currently running 9 months behind schedule. Not knowing when we’d be able to go home we bounced to 7 different living arrangements in 8 months.
All up 2021 was a steep learning curve into the world of mould, remediation, renovations and where to find building materials as it seems most of Australia decided to upgrade their homes this past year!
Yes I kept studying. I’ve learnt a huge amount more about the relationship between food and health that I am so looking forward to sharing with you all soon. To be honest it was a relief to escape into a world of chemistry equations and research papers on the (awful) consequences of a diet filled with ultra-processed foods. It might sound odd but exams and assignments were a safe place to bury myself when the anxiety of where I would be living next week threatened to overwhelm. A side effect of the situation is I ended up doing extremely well in terms of results! Who knew chaos was the key to unlocking study discipline ;)
Why an end of year 5 day program?
Unpacking a box at my latest home I found the goals I wrote down for myself for this year.
It’s not pretty. I’m going to confess I’ve only delivered against one of my list of many intentions.
I realise I’ve given myself a lot of excuses for not delivering against what I had planned. Pondering how these excuses could actually have been overcome if I had stopped for just a moment to re-adjust my plans, I started an exercise of reviewing the good, the bad and the ugly of 2021 and planning with more flexibility built in for 2022.
As I was doing the work - creating a movie of 2021 as a way to distance myself emotionally from the events of the year, reviewing what went right and what did not go so well - I started to think it might be of value to others if I shared the process I was undertaking daily. For this reason I’ve been jumping on video each afternoon for 10 - 15 minutes to walk you through what I have done myself the day before.
Has it been valuable? I'd love to hear if it's helped or not. Has it been too much? Not enough?
2022
I’ve now been accepted into a “Masters by Research” program so 2022 for me is more study. I do anticipate at this stage being able to start seeing clients at Mayfield Medical Connection at some stage as well. My timeline for this is still pretty vague as I do not know as yet how the research program I’ve qualified for plays out. Nor the ongoing saga of mould remediation. That’s not helpful for anyone needing a practitioner though, right?!
Am I back?
If you do want to see me I am now doing a limited number of consultations online typically via zoom. If you only want to see me “in the flesh” I’ve been running a wait list at Mayfield Medical and my own as well. Once I know when I’ll be back I’ll get in contact with everyone with a few week’s notice.
But you need someone IRL now
If you want to see someone in the flesh, IRL, sooner I have been referring to other practitioners I know and trust throughout Newcastle and the Hunter. Feel free to get in contact if you’d prefer this as an option.
Social media
I genuinely missed talking with you all! I loved our chats on the Facebook Lives we did together late 2020. So I am planning on doing more social media to stay in contact. I’d love for us to stay talking so let me know what you’d like to hear about / best ways for talk. Do you like the 5 day plan your 2022 program I created? I’d love to hear what you think!
Alrighty this post ended up being much longer than I thought it would be (no surprise to anyone that knows me I’m guessing).
Much love to you all Sonia x