Women Protect Their Health When They Stop Pushing Through

Your body isn’t being dramatic, it’s sending data. We sit down for a candid monthly community conversation on women’s health, and we start where most of us actually live: doing everything for everyone else, running on low sleep, and telling ourselves we’ll deal with it later.

We connect the emotional side of women’s health to the physical reality, including why chronic stress shows up as fatigue, inflammation, digestive issues, and brain fog. From there, we get specific about the risks women often underestimate, especially heart disease and stroke. We talk about how women’s symptoms can look different than the “classic” signs, and we share the BE FAST acronym (balance, eyes, face, arm, speech, time) so you can act fast when something feels off.

We also zoom out to the long arc of a woman’s life: postpartum shifts, perimenopause, menopause, and aging. Along the way, we share practical tools that build real-world power, like journaling to track patterns, creating ceremonies of care that protect your sleep, and self-advocacy that doesn’t apologize. One of our favorite takeaways is simple: interview your doctor the way you’d interview any professional who affects your life.

If you’ve ever felt dismissed, overwhelmed, or unsure what to do next, this conversation gives you language, perspective, and a starting point. Subscribe, share this with a woman you care about, and leave a review with the health topic you want us to tackle next.

Transcript

Welcome, Mission, And Disclaimers

0:49

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Project Human's monthly community conversations and think a new way to think. I'm so excited to have you guys here. This month in May, we are talking about women's health, and this topic is very important, not only to me, but obviously every woman around us. And I can't wait to share more with you. We want to talk to you a little bit about uh who Project Human is and what we're all about and who I am. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Adela Hittel. I am the founder and CEO of Project of Project Human, Think A New Way to Think about mental and emotional health. And we're here to have a conversation through the arts about it. Tonight's discussion will be led by Jen Lathan, and who is one of our volunteers. She is also our program and educator coordinator on our side. So she helps put all of our MCCs together. And this one is a very special one. So please, please, if you're not subscribed to our channels, if you're not part of what we're doing or following, please do so. We've got a lot of things coming up for you. Again, thank you for joining us every month on our last Thursday for one hour of your time because it does help not only us when we talk about and when we need to process and what we're doing and where we're at as individuals here at Project Human, but we also get the responses that it helps other humans uh understand themselves a little bit better or hear something from a different perspective and or hear some new information they didn't know. And that's what we're here to do to inform, advocate, and educate. Before we continue tonight, a couple of disclaimers we want to start with. Number one, we're not medical professionals. Uh, if you are in crisis, reach out to your local medical professional. If you need immediate assistance, please dial 911 or 988. Uh, we are recording and live streaming tonight's event and on our YouTube channel. And again, if you are not subscribed, follow. Please do so. We would love to have you. If you don't wish to be for Zoom participants tonight, if you do not wish to be part of our live stream, please take a moment to mute yourself and take yourself off camera right now because we will be sharing this on our YouTube channel and other social medias for promotional and marketing purposes as well. And uh by participating in it, you do give us permission to do so. So this is your moment to take a time to not do so. Anyway, um, let me tell you a little bit about Project Human. Project Human is a human-first nonprofit focused on bridging gaps in mental and emotional health through communication, education, creative expression, and community connection. This is one of our bigger ones for our MCCs. Our work creates intentional access points for people to pause, reflect, learn, and connect with support in a way that feels human, approachable, and grounded and grounded in real life through our monthly community conversations, quarterly mental health days, which we have one coming up June 13th at 11:30 to 330 or to 3 o'clock at Aspendo's Italian Cuisine Um and Pizza Spot in Oakleaf. So please mark your calendars in there. We would love to have you there. Uh the Artist Within Podcast, which, if you're not subscribed to or listening to, please do so. This will be also uploaded to that for you to be able to hear there. We're stream on all platforms. And um other creative initiatives like our documentary and other creative projects that we've done in the past. We bring live lived experiences, resources, education, and honest dialogue into the community. Our impact begins with a conversation, literally a conversation. If you guys know me, I don't stop talking about anything anytime. I love to talk. And that's what a therapist told me one time, Adela, you're paying me $100 an hour to talk. So here we are. Now we talk all the time. Because we grow through that. We grow through we go we grow in connection, in awareness, and reflection and action. And at the heart of think is a human-first ecosystem. We build, um, we build access, prevention, support, creativity, and community care. Our goal is to remind every human being that healing, resilience, and change can begin with one honest moment of connection. And that starts with even our little red messages of inspiration. So if you guys don't have one, if you have had one, um, go find one in our city too. But if you have had one, share your experience with it. I think they're really, really great. They've helped me over my last couple years, which is why I know that they'll help you too, and they have helped. Um, we have a campaign called the Red Fuel uh Fuel Your Fire and Spread Your Flink Spread Your Flame. Oh, spread the flame, I'm sorry, spread the flame campaign across uh city of Jacksonville and St. Augustine. So if you find one, tag the location you found in, tag us, and then we will do the rest. Anyway, without further ado, I'm really, really excited to introduce our uh team tonight, our host, and everything else in between. And um, again, pardon for my ramble as I always do, but that's why we're here and what we do. So, welcome to our team. Welcome to everyone. Thank you guys so much for joining us tonight on our meeting. And uh, Jen, I'm gonna go ahead and let you take over.

Why Women’s Health Needs Real Talk

5:36

Thanks, Adela. Hi, everyone, and welcome again. My name is Jen. I'm so honored to be here and hosting this conversation about such an important topic. These monthly conversations that we host are a space where our community can come together and explore real topics that impact our mental, emotional, and physical health and our overall well-being. And we try not to come at them in a clinical way, but in a real and human way that applies to real life. Now, the topic of women's health is broad. So I will bring in some facts and figures from a clinical lens, but I'm not a medical professional. I am a woman, and I am coming at this from the desire to help my fellow women as well as myself learn just a little bit more about all the facets of health that affect us. So I don't want to overwhelm anybody with information. So I'm going to make this mostly a conversation. Um, I just want to build awareness, maybe drop some facts or discuss some topics that you might not have thought of when you think about your own uh health or the women around you and their health. So I would like to help us think about understanding our bodies a little better and most importantly, uh helping each of you to feel empowered to take action for your health and your own life. Um we talk about women's health, a lot of us immediately are thinking about doctors' visits, our annuals, well-woman checkups, um, and really only caring about health when something feels wrong. Um and I think for a lot of us that no one really taught us to pay attention to our health consistently. We were taught to push through and take care of others first and focus on handling what's in front of us. And somewhere along the way, our own needs, our own health, paying attention to that went on the back burner. And tonight I hope that we can change that a little

Caretaking Roles And Burnout

7:40

bit. So I would love uh some answers from folks in the in the audience today. Um I would like to know, and there's no right or wrong answer, but what does women's health mean to you? Where are we coming into this from? Uh anybody feel free to come off of mute and speak up. What does women's health mean to you? You know, as a mother and a wife, I'm happen to be a mother to five children. And um, that's a great part of being a woman, um, is being um for me being a mother as well and a wife. And um for me, because I am a woman, um, I feel that I have to be the a source of so many things for um the man I'm married to and the children that I I bore and raised. Um so certain things come naturally, and uh sometimes when I don't feel like being that statue, that statute of or that reservoir of what all that uh woman gives, um I still have to, like you said, Jennifer, push through. And so um for me, uh woman's health, um it's hard. This is a hard topic because I identified immediately with what you said, Jennifer, about pushing through, putting my needs and well-being aside for the well-being and needs of others and making sure their needs are met. So I'm about 50-ish. And so going uh forward, I have learned that that's not healthy. That that um that, yeah, I could probably get by, but if I'm gonna go another 50 years, I have to um and keep that reservoir going. I have to feed it and I have to pay attention to my needs. So I'm finding it easier now to to pay attention to my needs and make it important, as important as the needs of the people I love, um, so that I can be comforting, so that I can be um a cheerleader, so that I can be wise, so that I can be a source of love and positivity, so that I can uh be creative, you know. Um, and those things used to come easily um when I was younger, as we know, it just kind of pours out of you, um, and then you get better at it. But then, you know, life gets harder and harder and harder, and it gets harder to produce those things easily and on, you know, just on command. So um in order for me to keep doing that, I have to take breaks, I have to say no, I have to say wait a minute, I have to say not today. A lot of you notice a lot of a theme here. No, no, never, not now. And so that requires me to put myself in the place of those no's to other people and put myself in that space. So um, and it took 50 years to learn that. I think I learned it from other women in my life who I perceive as strong. Um, so I don't think it's bad. I think it's of course not. I think it's uh kind of a habit of generosity when you're giving and it just seems so you just love to give and see the fruit of your giving. You know, of course, you just want to keep it. You touched on it, Tunis so hard. I just want to back up on that too. This morning I had a moment you talked about push through and walk in there. Uh, you know, you get up in the morning for those of you who are mothers, um, and this is having other additional things on there, even if you're not and taking care of other people. But again, as a woman, that care getting up, I got the breakfast ready, I ran to the store, did all these things all before they got up, all before they did all that stuff, you know, and I was a little stressed about something. So I made a comment about something and whatever, whatever. And they came back on, well, you know, you don't have to do all those things, and you have to do all I'm like, well, what what do you what do you mean that I don't have to do all these things or you know, for you, or I'm not doing things for you. Well, I'm I'm not, you don't need to do anything for me. What do you really do for me in the morning, you know, on there? Because it's so easy for them to get up, get their coffee that's on the island, go to their job because there's no other stuff for them to think about. Because right before that, we've put three loads of laundry in there to make sure that they have socks and underwear, to make sure that the thing that they need for this is done, to make sure all of that before seven o'clock. And then the comments sometimes come back and say, Well, you know, those are the tasks that you decided you want to get on, get it earlier on ahead. And you're like, Oh, how do you how do you push through that on an emotional level? Because I cried about it. I sure did this morning. I was ooh. But then it was like, well, that's part of the natural of who I am as a human. I'm gonna give way more than I'm ever gonna get back. One because I am a woman, especially to my family, and to the requirement of them to notice me for all those little things when they're not even wired. And also I have laid out this groundwork for them not to have to worry about it. And now I'm gonna have a moment of that's okay. I had my moment, come back into it. But as Tunu Yu said too, now I have to come back and go, what do I have to prioritize as a woman for myself right now? Because at some point they were right. I am putting way too much emphasis and way too much on their care when they can get up and make their own, pick up their own socks, pick up their own laundry, like they're capable. I'm just doing it because that's what a wife and a mother does. So now I'm thinking and rethinking also my own boundary and structure. And, you know, I'm hitting my 40s too, and in that, from women that we've talked to and had conversations over years too, that's how we build that, and through these conversations like this, too, to push through and to have a support group and to think about it that they're like, hey, um, because I thought about it today. I was like, this is a great topic. I can't wait to get there today. I was so good, so calm, because I knew I would have the support to have a moment to say, like, I didn't feel appreciated this morning and all the work that I did as a woman and all the ways I show up and all the things, not just at my home, but in anything that I do, especially in the professional place. So let's not even get there. But to start to be there, I know that there's so many of us alike that feel that, that are processing that navigating that. And that's just an emotional and mental aspect of our. That's not our physical health, right? That we'd never need to touch that. Yeah. I've I've heard a number of themes come up while Tunu and Adela were talking. Um, the biggest one is the roles and identity of women that we fall into, whether they're societally made or made by ourselves and our own beliefs about what should be. Um and the um the reservoir that Tunu described, which for those of our monthly viewers that come in regularly, you'll remember our discussion about the energy cup and being our own energy battery and what we do to refill that battery. Uh, great session. Go back and watch it. Really good um bits of information in there. So with our identities and with our belief that the woman is the resource, that the woman is the ongoing giver, the caretaker, the doer, um these identities that we grasp onto can have us often um focusing outward and less inward. Now, with Tunu, uh through time, experience, um, mentors, age, wisdom, you've come to a place where you recognize the need for boundaries. You recognize your patterns, and may you may still embrace all of the roles and identities that you've adopted over time, but you've also said, I'm going to still prioritize myself so that I can continue to be those things. Well, as we gain that wisdom, we're also traveling through phases of

Physical Health Check-Ins And Barriers

15:53

life. Um, and we need to check in on our health, not only mentally and emotionally, but physically at multiple different phases of our life for different reasons, because being time-bound, our bodies change. Um, so I do want to ask, uh, when was the last time each of you really checked in on your physical health? Just thinking, how am I really feeling physically right now? Uh, when it wasn't prompted by having a cold or a flu, uh, or being absolutely worn out beyond threadbare. Um, I'm I'm sorry, Alicia. Did you want to say something? No, you're go ahead. Go ahead. Um, well, I just finished going through it um and responding to what I know was a a long delay in responding to my body. Um, much of that was financial. I was against my will. I just didn't have the means to see a doctor and pay for the services that um that um that cost so much. Um and so in the meantime, what I had to do was just make smart choices. But um I I don't know if that actually helped. You know, going forward, um now that I have an idea of where my health is, now that I'm finished with um checkups and annuals and all of that, is um being more disciplined and monitoring my own health. I always tell my kids, like when you cross the street, it is not the driver's job to stop and look out for your life. You have to be you have to care more about your life to cross the street carefully. They don't have to stop. So I have to care more about my life than anyone else. And so the best way to do that, I think human civilization has proved it, is to just write it down. So I have um I have many journals. If you were here, you would see them over. I write a lot of things down, and the thing is it works when I write stuff down. I can tell you from like 2006 why I wrote that down and what mood I was in when I wrote that down, and what I was talking about, everything I tell you so many details about the moment I wrote that down, and um and I absorb it. So when I write stuff down like uh like this meeting, um my day, my to-do list, the things I observed, uh things I um realized, it will have it will go with me a lot further than not writing it down. So um things that I'm observing about my own health and uh of course food. What I'm looking forward to going forward with like just the world is that I would love to know today how much B12 I do not have and how much more do I need. I would love to know today, how much how many more milligrams of vitamin C do I need to survive? But we don't have that information. But I want to be here, I want to be here when that happens because that's the information I need. Yeah, that would be awesome just to find your optimal because everyone is different too. That's I think the key. Um, you know, like we have these checkups because, you know, like these like designated checkups that they like recommend because everybody like this is a time of life when this typically happens, but it doesn't happen to everyone because otherwise we would just come up with hopefully a preventative for it, right? But um, yeah, I think that that's the key is that everybody's different. So sometimes I think one thing to keep in mind too is when you are going to the doctor and you are like, you know, getting these physical checkups is to be your own advocate too, because I think a lot of my friends have had issues where they go to the doctor and then you know, doctors are recommended by insurance or something to say like a specific thing or diagnosis first or something like that. So I think um, you know, trust your gut feeling, especially as women. I think that we have that a lot more um than the other sex. I will I will add that this is not just for women, it's but it's primarily for women

Sleep As A Nonnegotiable Foundation

20:16

more so too. And there is a statistic, but I'm not giving it now too, so look it up for your own self. But sleep, physical help, like for us as women, we exert so much more energy. We just talked about how much energy we exert before everybody else even wakes up, right? So we exert mental and emotional energy, let alone the physical that comes for the rest of the day. So our sleep is lacking, which is something I've learned I lacks when mine lacks completely. I am off completely on my whole week, and it takes a while to regain. And I just pulled an all-liner last week and it literally just took me a whole week to regain who I am. And I was like, I'm never doing that again. And and and and I'm a I'm an avid advocate for sleep. But one of the things, anything you know, you have to see where you're in your pattern. Are you getting six hours or more of sleep? Like, and that's a minimum required. Like, you should you should at least be that. But if you can add on just a couple more hours of your sleep for women in in your nightly routine, it changes a lot for you, a lot in your physical, in in your mental, and everything. So um that's that's something that I know that I keep track of all the time. The moment I start to lack in my sleep, my cognitive function starts to slow down, my inability to process, literally, just process anything visually or emotionally, I start to feel my body slow down, like I as if I'm a snail compared to, again, the spider monkey that I am, and I like being that. So, what fuels you um, and one of the things that they're finding out because they have not done many studies on women's health the way they should have, and and the research has not been there. Our sleep, we are absolutely sleep deprived. That's where our vitamins are, that's where all of the stuff that we need to rejuvenate and reheal because we produce that naturally so much. And and that's part of our our genetic makeup. And yet, because our body cannot regenerate and we don't fuel it with our diets or things like that in in a different way, we we don't know where to go. And that's where our loss of confusion and when we go to the doctor, you're called crazy, you're called hormonal, you're cold, it's in your head. And every other thing that can be thought of, so advocating for yourself and saying, Cool, thank you. I want to see another doctor. And it's not until you hear what you want to hear, like please know that too. It's until you you understand that you've tried what they're saying. I've tried, I've changed the diet, I've done these things, I've done the steps, and you're still telling me it's in my head, it's not. And that's what I had to do to reverse my fibromyalgia, my rheumatoid arthritis, everything, because that's what they diagnosed me with. That's what they said I was. And for me, it was trauma. It wasn't that, but they gave me diagnoses, wanted me on pills, wanted me to have my system so much more jacked up just to numb me out, versus focus on the trauma or focus on what I needed to heal that way. So being able to sit and say, I'm not crazy, I'm not gonna be on pills because I don't like this. And again, everybody's different. Some things work for people, so please, when you're doing the steps, but it's know how to again be accountable for like like Tunu said, you are the only one accountable and responsible for your health. You are the only one who can say this works, this doesn't, because you're the only one who lives with yourself 24-7. Um what with I'm sorry, with your sleep routine, Adela, do you have a routine or I'm discovering 100%?

Ceremonies Of Care And Clear Boundaries

23:26

I'm discovering the art of ceremony. So one day I I was um at work and my um co-worker was on break, and uh she was she sat down and she took out her lunch and it was beautiful lunch. I think she had goat cheese in there, she made some effort. It was beautiful. She's not married, she just did it for herself, and she sat down and she took her cracker, put it in this beautiful dip that she made all by herself with all these delicious ingredients, and I said, It looks like you're having a ceremony, and she said, I am this is an important time, and she said it just like that, and I never forgot it. I was like, Wow, and and then I go ahead, yeah, it was ceremonious. I love that word. I was gonna say that's beautiful. Instead of routine, we should change it into ceremonies of your care because, like, for real, because routine gets so overused and it becomes a little bit daunting to people and overwhelming. So it's like ceremonies. What are your ceremonies of care? And I love that, and I absolutely do too. I I'm in bed before like by 9 p.m., I am in bed. I don't care what it is that I have to do. I mean, sometimes you, of course, a little bit right after, but like no later than nine. Um, I have a little shaker that I do with a vibrating plate, I do in the morning and at night to get all my jitters off of that. And I've noticed when I don't do that, my body starts to jitter and all the extra energy, all this. So that's part of my routine. Um, and of course, I I'm I'm an avid prayer, so I sit and I pray for the strength and the wisdom and the clarity for the next day. For the um, and I thank um for the great sleep I'm gonna have and the healing I'm gonna have. Like I have a very big mantra that I do for my tip to toes before it lay down. And I always have to make my bed. My bed has to be made before I lay back down in it. You know, my husband's like, Why do you make your bed? Because you're gonna lay back in it. But that to me, is it that's the shelved. That doesn't give me a good night's sleep. So I have a ritual that I'll make sure that the whole area before I go to bed, I don't care if they're ever in it or not. Part of me, like I used to wait for my husband. I used to do all these things because that was, you know, the good wife thing to do. Now I don't care, sleep on the couch. If it's more comfortable for you, have fun. I have a big queen bed now that it's like that's great. Me and my doggies will have a great time. We've got like, I'm good. I love you. If that's where you're comfortable, cool. And if you wake up with a crooked neck that ain't got nothing to do with me, like I would have slept great. So, like, but I'm not gonna exert that energy or get up in the morning or at night or in the middle of it anymore because, well, you don't care enough about yourself to do that for you. Why am I gonna have to mother you or or or baby you or like nah? I'm going to sleep. I need a good night's sleep because I've got things to do. So I'm very like adamant about that. Even when I travel, I take an extra day before I go anywhere. I take an extra day after because my sleep is required. I don't, I used to stretch it. I used to be like, no, I can be there tomorrow. No, I can't be there tomorrow. I also also have a two-week, two-week rule. I don't if it's like if you're calling me to do something tomorrow, I'm sorry, that's two no two weeks, two weeks. That's how far out I need. No, but it because if you really know and understand your life, you already committed to your family, you've committed to some things already within the week, you've committed to your work. Where else are you gonna pop up someone? And no offense to an emergency, whether that's a conversation, whether that's whatever, be but where else are you gonna be, unless it's part of your job, to actually have to be like, let me exude all that energy. No, I'll see you in two weeks. If you can't do it in two weeks, then I mean, I don't know why we're here having conversations. Like it's not the end of the world. So those boundaries, you know, I do have those ceremonies that I'm very, very strict on now. I really like that word. I like it too ceremonies of care. I wrote it down. Yeah. Adela speaks with a very high degree of self-awareness. Not everyone has the level of self-awareness that she does, but we all do endeavor to get to know ourselves and our needs and our boundaries as much. And I I want to say that when when Adela mentioned going to a doctor and being an advocate for yourself, that self-advocacy. You cannot truly be a self-advocate without self-awareness. It begins with self-awareness. You must know thyself. So I want to do a quick activity together.

Body Awareness Activity For Stress

27:57

Uh, I'm going to put a slide up. Give me just a second to share. All right, super. So, what you're gonna see is the image of a body, a female body, because we're talking about women's awareness. For anyone who's watching this that is not female or does not identify with this body, please just bear with us, consider your own body, your own needs, and participate along with us. Um, this can be uh gender neutral. So if you're looking at this slide, uh, I want you to look at it and think about yourself, your physical body. And I'm challenging you now to look at this figure and think about where do you feel stress, tension in your body right now. Maybe it's your shoulders, maybe it's your chest, maybe it's your back, your stomach, your head, your skin could be crawling. Where do you feel the stress? I'm gonna give you ten seconds to think about it, maybe take a pen and write down all the places you feel it. Being aware of where you're holding your stress can tell you a lot about your body and your needs. So keep in mind where you personally are holding on to stress right now, and bring that with you, that self-awareness, into this next part of the conversation. You might start to see some parallels uh between where you hold stress and where health could be at risk in your body. So uh I want to share some educational uh information that maybe not everybody knows about women's health. Um, it helps us to see the bigger picture about our bodies and also the risks to us that we may not be anticipating and maybe even because of genetics, possibly unable to avoid. Um, building awareness creates a time gap so that we have options. If you are aware of your needs, you can get ahead of them. But as women, um, many of us are drawn to the I'll just deal with this later, and we can't avoid it when it hits us smack in the face. So build awareness first, get a little time gap, make options. Um, and options, the more we understand, the more choices we can make when we need to take action for our health.

Heart Health Warning Signs Women Miss

31:05

The number one um biggest impact, I think, that women need to think about is heart health. And uh heart disease uh is the leading cause of death in women statistically. Um and it's it's in some cases avoidable and in some cases hereditary, but it doesn't always look the way that we expect it to. Um, you know, we're taught that a heart attack might feel like a tenseness in the arm, a labored breathing. Um for women, it can show up as just fatigue, just shortness of breath. Oh, maybe I'm not getting enough sleep, I'm just super tired, or oh, it's probably hormones. I'm just uh I'm out of it. You know, I'm I'm I'm just I don't have the energy. Or maybe you feel discomfort that's not necessarily pain. Um, like you're you're thinking, okay, I'm feeling a little congested, but maybe I had some spicy food, I'm just gonna ignore it. But it's not always obvious when something's going on in your body with your heart muscle and your blood flow. So it's important to pay attention to the signs, get educated, go to the American Heart Association website, learn about heart health, um, huge amounts of information and preventative options uh out there. Number two, biggest thing that I think women need to be thinking about and cautious over is stroke.

Stroke Symptoms And The BE FAST Tool

32:37

Um, stroke symptoms don't always look like what we're taught to expect. We're taught to believe that strokes hit you, half of your face sags, and that's it. It is so much more than that. It can be sudden dizziness, it can be confusion. Your vision might change without any slackening of your muscles. Your uh you could have headaches, you could have um things that could very easily be brushed off as too much stress or exhaustion from over-exerting yourself that day. And it isn't always that that numbing or the drooping of one side of the body or the face that tells you a stroke is about to happen. Um, but if you feel that, you know, that dizziness, that confusion or vision changes, get help right away. It would be great to be wrong. It's called great to be wrong. Yeah, it's especially for stroke. I do want to touch up on that. It's called um be fast in the acronym because the acronym stands for um uh like the balance of uh balance loss, eye and vision changes, face drooping, arm weakness, speech difficulty, and the time to call 911. And for strokes with the window is within the before they say three-hour max, but within the first hour, like as soon as possible, like as soon as possible. But if you feel those things, um be fast in your thoughts on that. Um, try to remember that um there is that um that acronym. So take a look at that, get really familiar with that, and that should help you to um also start to again see those signs. I love that. Adela, if you could, do you mind putting that into the chat for folks that are following along? I like that. It's always good to have mnemonics. Um one of our previous um volunteers at Project Human Um was our also a model and part of our creative team. And she at a young age in her um early 30s suffered a stroke and had to relearn, had to redo uh everything in there. And if it wasn't for the FAST method with the be fast, which is that acronym of knowing the face drooping, arm weakness, speech difficulty, and then the time um that they called, there would have been a lot more I mean damage, you know, and permanent stuff. So uh it always reminded me on that. So we'll put we'll put that in the chat for you guys too. But for those of you who um are listening and watching and following, please do uh take a moment to uh get familiar with the signs of stroke and and how you can make some cheat sheet codes for you to there. You go. Good job, Jen. You're so awesome. Oh no, that was Alicia. Alicia, I think. Alicia, I see you. Alicia, you popping in over there, my superheroes. There you guys go. We have a little visual for you, too. Thank you. And stress, there should never be an underestimating of what stress can do to your body. It can kill you, it can cause cancer. Stress has a physical body impact, and we talk about this book often. Uh, highly recommended. It's called The Body Keeps the Score. Your body will literally hold on to your stresses and traumas until you process them, or it will make you sick to get your attention. Think back to a time where you noticed your body holding stress. Maybe it was tonight looking at the image of the body on the screen. Maybe it was checking in with yourself while journaling recently. Where you hold stress, this is this is where things start to really connect between our body health and our mental and emotional well-being. Our bodies don't separate emotional stress from physical health. It's all the same package. Chronic stress, if you are stressing something on and on and on, your job, your life, your role as a mother, your role as a daughter, your role as a caretaker, if you are chronically stressing that, it can impact your heart health, your sleep, your energy, your metabolism, your immune function. Your body will suffer from your chronic stress. So it can show up as tension, sore muscles. Ow, I didn't sleep right. Fatigue. Oh, I just, my brain's been so busy thinking about these things that stress me. I just got no energy left. Inflammation. I think we all know what inflammation can do to a woman's body. Um, digestive issues. There is nothing so wonderful as being so stressed out that now you can't eat, or when you do eat, you get a stomach ache and you're miserable. So what you feel emotionally matters to your physical health and your physical body. And it's time for all of us to pay attention to our bodies and listen to what it tells us.

Stress, Trauma, And The Body Keeps Score

37:38

Um, we talked about earlier about the phases of people's lives, especially women, as our bodies age, our bodies sort of take us through phases. Um, and we process those through the influx and outflux of hormones. And uh best friends. Let's talk about our second best friend of our lifetime. Okay. Mother Nature was our first one. All right. The hormones have become our second best friend. We never asked for. I'm just saying. Absolutely. You can't avoid hormones, they happen to the best of us. Um, they can be great for driving us, and they can also be a pain in the butt. Um, they can affect our moods, they can give us anxiety, they can affect our ability to focus, they can affect our energy levels, they can affect how we feel as being a successful or complete woman. Sometimes we feel like um we're just going about our day and we're like, uh, something feels off. Maybe it's the moon phase, you know, maybe, maybe something's happening in like the earth energy, and it could be connected to what's happening in your body because of your hormones at that time. And we'll talk more about that uh a little bit of later when we talk about life stages. Oh, I love that, Alicia. Yes, Mercury must be in retrograde. I'm completely off my game, that kind of thing. So um I think that part of education is knowing what you're up against, what's common uh for women. And I I gathered some facts and figures. I did a bunch of research before tonight's conversation to try and bring you some information and also to educate myself because I don't store this stuff in my head, but it's good to know.

Hormones And How They Shape Daily Life

39:31

Um, and heart disease, stroke, stress, hormones, these are just a piece of a bigger picture of women's health. So um I did some research. I went on the Office on Women's Health, uh, which is a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the Society for Women's Health Research, uh, diabetes.org. Um, I just I went all over the place trying to find information. And I learned that 16% of women report fair or poor health status in polls, according to the CDC. 16% of women report fair or poor health status, and those percentages are even higher if you narrow it down to women of color. We know we know that we're not in good health. What are we doing about it? Maybe nothing. Maybe it's financial, maybe it's status quo, maybe it's being afraid to take action for what we might find out. Or not trusting people. Say it again, or not trusting people. Like my mother-in-law just doesn't trust doctors, so and not trusting doctors. Maybe they're in it for a quick buck and you can't trust them, or you haven't found a good doctor that makes you feel like they're really in it to take care of you. Maybe you think that you can find what you're looking for on WebMD, although we all know where that goes. The um cardiovascular disease, uh, sometimes abbreviated on websites as CVD, cardiovascular disease, um, broadly describes all disorders that affect the heart and the blood cells, um, coronary artery disease, stroke, heart, uh, failure, and arrhythmia. It is the leading cause of death of women in the United States and globally. And I found this one shocking. More than 44% of women in the United States, that's 60 million women, are living with some form of heart disease. That is mind-boggling to me. That is nearly half the population of women living with some form of heart disease. Makes me want to go get some kind of a heart test to figure it out. Especially because I know in my um genetic side, we do have heart issues. Does that shock any of you? 44%. I mean, it doesn't, I mean, it doesn't shock me. I mean, it shocks the number when you say it out loud. It's a shocking number when you say it out loud. But when we're talking about how we are still so discouraged from having the conversation about our health or from showing up in that and our uh we don't have the pathways we mentioned trust. I want to touch back on that. That's one of the biggest things that are are are literally preventing human beings from going out and doing anything in any shape or form, let alone their health, because they can't trust when they walk outside that they will be safe, they will be secure, that they will have the ability to walk to someone and they will be honest with them and provide them with a good some kind of way. We have been so polluted with so much of everything everywhere that even our neighbors or our friends, so like anyone around us, we question everything on that. So we don't even have an internal compass or an internal way to know what's right for us right now, because there is no truth out there for you, if you will. So it's makes it very difficult to go to doctors. It makes it very difficult for us to say, hey, I'm having these issues. I had heart palpitations when I was going through my health screenings in 2023. I started getting nosebleeds, literally walking through my whole house because I was under so much stress. My whole body was repelling my existence, shutting down, nosebleeds, couldn't walk, numbness, everything. Thought I was gonna die. And when you go and talk to people and doctors, all they'll tell you, Adela, sure, it's stress, but they don't tell you how to fix it. They give you a medicine, they tell you this, they do that. So you don't have any trust when you walk in there that somebody else will listen to you. Because again, you think you're crazy in your head. What's the point? So when you go in and say, I'm having these things, and they go, Nothing's wrong with you, nothing's wrong with me, two, three, four doctors. Why else are you gonna go to? Who else are you gonna talk to? So you resort to WebMD, you resort to Chat GPT, you resort to these other resources. Um, and So it's not shocking when we really think about it in that logical sense and through the conversation, but it is absolutely shocking when you say it out loud that we are still in 2026 not being able to have a conversation about the health of women in especially again in the United States where we have all the privileges we have to do what we need to do, and yet we're put at the back burner of everything because you know what? To mess with our hormones means a buck to be made. That's just the statement I stand on. Yeah. So so it it's not uncommon to worry. Does your doctor really care about you? Does your doctor really have your best interests in mind? And it's important to find a primary care or a specialist that you resonate with. And if that means you have to find more than one and interview them, maybe that's the step that you

Trust Issues And Interviewing Your Doctor

45:01

take. Maybe that's we have three good words. We have two good words we've said this. Self-advocacy. We we have said two goods ceremony of self-care and interviewing them. We talk about being interviewed for jobs and interviewing other people for other things. Why would we be not interviewing doctors when we walk into that? Especially when we have sure you have to pay your 15. I understand, I do understand financial and the copay, I get it, I get it. But it is your health. And it is your health. So if you're gonna go have a $15 conversation with someone and they don't answer the questions that are required for you, why would you be hiring them to give them the money for the rest of your health? So interview your healthcare facility. I love that. Yes. Interesting. Yeah, I I definitely feel like I've interviewed my therapist, but I've never thought of interviewing my doctors because you would think that it would more because they have more control, right? Like they're saying I interview models to be for a show, I interview photographers for this, I interview people to come like and I don't mean stupid, silly things, but when we're talking about real life health, who you are, we're not interviewing the people who are going to give us access to things that will alter our mind, body, soul, and the way we see and perceive reality. I think it could also be the medical field, Adela. I know that people who seek out reconstructive surgeries, it's common to interview. Oh, interesting. People who seek out body enhancement surgeries or hormonal treatments, it's common too. It's expected. So there's a culture to it. I think primary care physicians and specialists, maybe like orthopedists or rheumatologists, they have so much demand, they don't have to be interviewed. And many cases they don't feel that they need to stop. Well, then that's where we can go no, no, I don't, I refuse that I refuse those excuses for us to not step up and do all the sure. That's culture, but cultures changes, and we're the ones to change it. I am not sure. No, no, absolutely no, no, no, no. Sorry, that's it. But no, I also feel like culturally culturally we've been taught to look at the doctors that they're so much more intelligent than us. So it's kind of like we look at them as like a you know, like a like they're being no, no, they don't live with you. That's the other part. That's and that's the part. They don't live with you, they don't live in your mind, they don't live in your body, they don't live in your thoughts or in the way you live your life and the way you function. And as Miss Uh Tunu had mentioned, if you're not writing down, we talk about writing down, you guys. I'm on our, if you want one, you can get one on our website. But I'm on our fourth book right now. We talk about writing down. I have a daily check-in with myself under my self-care category, daily check-in of my body, mind, soul. Where am I at? How did I wake up? Did I wake up with body aches and where? How did I wake up mentally and emotionally? Did I wake up thinking of other things? Or did I wake up in a good spot? And if I woke up thinking of other things, I need to go back to my realignment. So you, but you have to figure out, as we've talked about, your functionality or how you because you know that. You know that you don't trust it. You know it. You don't trust is because everyone's told you that you don't know it, but you do know it because you're doing it. So write it down. That sounds like the um self-awareness that you're talking about, going back to that. Um, I read this book and uh it had a great impact on me as far as giving me self-awareness and giving me the language I needed to describe the things I was learning about myself and others. Um, it's called the temperament that God gave you. And so there are four of them. Um melancholic, sanguine, sanguine, um, phlegmatic, and choleric. And you we all we have four of these temperaments in us, but two of them usually are stronger in you and in a season, and depending on what season you are, they could change. So um, and what I like about it is that it does it's long-living, so it's been um these this knowledge has been long-living throughout time, like back into the Greek times and such. Um, it it does touch on the medical industry now, but not so many people um embrace this knowledge. But it um has taught me that why I'm so serious and why I fixate on things, and why I get really emotional and sad, and why I love a blue day, and um and why other people are just so happy and joyful, but um other things make them blue. Um, why other people are driven by goals and so um um excellent, um, but yet controlling. And there's so many different things, and this is not your personality, but this temperament that is the way you are can affect how you act and behave and talk. And now that I know what I am, do you want to know what I am? Yeah, tell us I am melancholic phlegmatic, which that changed. I used to be phlegmatic melancholic. Um, my husband says I'm that's not true, that I'm sanguine, but I'm actually on the cusp of being sanguine, but I think that's because I'm forced to be extroverted when I don't want to be. So, with that said, I think that knowledge has helped me understand some of my stresses and the things I fixate on, and some of the things that bother me that may not bother other people. Um, it's just a predisposition that I've had since I've been born. And um and I see it in my children. Like I can see like what what they do and why they do it, and just like their tendency to do something naturally. Um so going back to self-awareness, Adela, it's it's allowed me to say that's probably why I have those gut issues, because my I keep my stress in my gut. It is, yeah. And uh it's allowed in the jaw in the body. Listen, you guys, the body keeps the score. We'll go back to that. It's in our link, it's on our and on our website too, under our podcast, too. You guys click the links on there, but body keeps the score, it keeps all the stresses, it keeps everything. Just because we think just because we think that we are past something does not mean our body actually is, and so it's stored. And and that's in your red card, Adjula. That's in your red card. Yep, good. See the body remembers, your body remembers, it does. And again, we as women, that's why our our our our we'll go back to the statistics real quick, and because we're I'm gonna make sure we're on our time. I just saw the time too, so everybody's good too. Um, but we're or um we need to, as you just mentioned, self-awareness. We're really good at knowing how we feel in those senses or what our colors are or what all that. Let's also add that education to ourselves about our physical health, you know, study those aches, monitor those moments, um, change that some things that stretch a little bit more, do these things, and don't just do them for an hour or a day. Like really give yourself time to for your body to relearn some things, reform some things. Um, because you have to remember that you've had 10, 20, 30, 40, sometimes 80 years of one way your body working. You will not change that overnight. Um, but you will with persistency and you will with consistency. Paying attention over time uh is something that we all need to think about.

Life Stages From Postpartum To Aging

53:09

And when we look at women's health across the various stages of life that we go through, um, our health is not static. It's not going to just hang out in one place. You know, day-to-day our B12 might be different. Day to day our vitamin C might be different, and so will our hormones, and so will our stress levels, and so will our anxieties. Um, there are stages of uh youth where the body is doing its best. There are stages of motherhood where uh a woman may choose to conceive and create a baby. There are stages of postpartum after the baby, the time after giving birth, where the identity shifts, the emotional overwhelm um may begin, and then it kind of patterns out for a little while, and then you go into perimenopause. Perimenopause is the time before full menopause, and it can feel unpredictable. This is when the hormones start behaving differently than we just knew how they were doing. Um, the body starts changing physically, the world for us changes emotionally, the roles that we're playing may shift, our identities may shift. Um, we reach menopause, the time of transition that brings both challenges with our physical body and the changes, and also emotional and spiritual redefinitions of who we are and what our purpose is in the life. If we have passed the stages of um being a young woman or a mother or um a colleague, and maybe we're reaching the times of retirement, and then long-term aging. As we reach our later years in life, we've definitely got shifts in energy. We've definitely got shifts in uh how we see feel seen, how we feel visible to other humans, if we feel valuable. Um, all of these, all of these feelings are are happening in those later years, defining our purpose. Do we feel like there's anything left of us? Can we grasp on to our personhood as uh all of the identities that we've had over the past have fallen away? And still, these are just the physical changes and what they bring with uh mental and emotional shifts. Think about your body in all of those times. The decomposition of the body over time brings with it more and more demand for supplements, for doctor's appointments, for self-care, for maintenance, possibly surgeries, um, bone or joint replacements, for uh enhancing and maintaining quality of life. All of these are stages of our lives that need to be considered as stages of health. Think about the need to self-advocate and be self-aware as we go through each of those. Uh so pause, focus, think about what's happening within you right now, where you are in your life, what's coming soon for you, and what it would mean to take care of yourself and create the best condition for health uh for you in your life now and in the near future. Um, and I want to leave you with something.

Resources, Next Steps, And Community Invitation

56:25

So get ready your screenshots, ladies. I'm going to share one more resource slide right here. Um, this is uh a women's health resource slide of resources that you can use, websites, support lines, tools. You don't have to do all of them, but screenshot this. Start with one. It could be scheduling an appointment, it could be reading a website resource, it could be paying attention and journeying journaling about something that you've been ignoring, but maybe I ought to kind of think about that ache or pain or how I'm eating this week because I've been stressed. It's enough to just pay attention to yourself. But take a step. You deserve to understand your body, you deserve to prioritize your health, and you don't have to wait for something to go wrong to start paying attention. And with that, I want to thank all of you for the rich conversation today for discussing your health in such a vulnerable and honest way. Thank you so much for um being part of Project Human. Um, we are always looking for resources and volunteers to help us expand the mission so that we can reach more people, educate, create community with, create safe space to talk about things that challenge us. And if you ever feel called to be part of something amazing, this could be your moment. We would love to have you. Please visit us on our website www.phinc-ing.org slash join dash us. Thank you for being part of this conversation. Next month we're going to talk about men's health. So bring a hubby, bring a boyfriend, bring a brother, bring a cousin. We need to talk to them and get their perspective and promote health across all of the humans on this planet. Your voice matters, your health matters, you matter. Thank you for being here. You're so worth the effort. Thank you, Jen. Thank you, Alicia. Thank you, Tunu. Thank you, Miss Victoria, for those of you who are on the call today. Thank you for everybody who's tuned in. Again, please don't forget to subscribe, follow, like, and do all the good things that require us to help us raise awareness about Project Human and our mission. Because humans are worth the effort. And every human is a human, right? You're a human. So if you're not, uh let me know too, because I want to know how we can get to the spaces where I'm supposed to be, because like, you know, I'm trying to navigate it. Um, but in the meantime, uh, we look forward to seeing you guys next week. One more reminder uh June 13th, we have our quarterly mental health day. We'd love to have you there. Our website is host, our spendos is hosting it, hosting it, and um we will be talking navigating PTSD transitions and creative tool um toolkits and uh healing. So it'll be a great conversation. Bring a friend, uh bring your kids and your family members, grab a bite to eat, support a local business. And if you're a vendor and are interested in participating, please reach out to us. We do have limited spots. Until next time.