Health & Hormones, Part II

In a post a couple of weeks ago, I wrote about my diagnosed hormone imbalance, and what I started doing to fix it. I began taking progesterone and a couple of other supplements after my midwife recommended that as a course of treatment.

I started to see improvement within a month – my cycle slowly started to lengthen and become regular, and my irritability calmed down some. I wondered if the progesterone was really doing anything, but when I saw my cycle go from 21 days to 24, then 25, and finally to 26 days in length, I took that as proof that it was working.

But I kept thinking about two things: 1) I was only thirty-five and shouldn’t have to take hormone supplements for the rest of my life and 2) I wanted to quit my job.

I never saw myself becoming a stay at home mom, even in the thick of my “I want to quit” feelings. I wasn’t sure what I wanted yet. I found myself wracking my brain for other options. Could I stay at my company and change my career path? Was I tired of managing people, and would I feel better managing a program or project?

Maybe I could start my own business…yes, that’s what I wanted to do.

Over the previous eight years, I had been working in the fitness technology industry. The customers we worked with owned their own fitness studios, and we helped them run their businesses. I had also fallen in love with barre workouts. I am a big believer in intuition and following your gut. To me, this urge to change something and start my own business was “meant to be.” At the time, I thought I was meant to own a fitness studio. It all made sense… my experience in the industry, making recommendations to real business owners to improve their businesses, was preparing me for this moment.

My husband thought I was crazy.

But then I kept talking about it, and my passion with the idea started to change his mind. He reached a point (after six months of hearing me talk about it off and on) where he was ready to really look at it as an option. I was excited.

I did research on locations, looked up consumer data, met with a potential partner, broke down our finances, and set a goal for when I wanted to sign a franchise agreement. One evening, we sat down and looked at the projected costs of opening a new franchise location vs. the revenue per month that was likely to come in… my heart sank, because starting the studio suddenly didn’t feel right. Why give up the money we had worked for and saved in exchange for making less per month than I was making at my job? Yes – passion, a different lifestyle, and bringing health and wellness to people in our community was appealing. It wasn’t enough though. We were at dinner with our potential partner, and I could sense my husband was feeling the same way.

I want to go back to that feeling of my heart sinking over dinner. It wasn’t sinking because the studio was going to be more expensive than I thought – it was sinking because if we didn’t open a fitness studio, then what the hell was I going to do? I couldn’t continue in my same position; I wanted out.

My husband knew I was frustrated and unhappy. We had been talking at length for months about how I needed something to change. Yes, the hormone supplements were helping, but I was burnt out, and those were just a band-aid. He was so good at listening, but at the end of the day, I needed to decide what I wanted, and he would support that 100%.

One night, a few days after that business dinner, he was crunching numbers at the dining room table. I asked him what he was doing, and he said he was reviewing and adding up all our expenses to see our money coming in vs. going out. This is something he did regularly, and it had helped us stay on track towards our goals.

Then he said six magic words: “What if you just stayed home?”

It sounds weird, but I hadn’t let myself be open to that possibility until he spoke those words. He had looked at our expenses, factored in removing my income, and we were still in the green. I thought about it in that moment – and I felt a sense of relief and happiness wash over me. It felt like what I wanted.

It only took six months of talking, obsessing, and anguishing over what I wanted to do with my career that got us to this point.

There are more details to share in future posts, but now you have more pieces to the puzzle.

P.S. I stopped taking all supplements after quitting my job (except the Natural Calm magnesium supplement for sleep some nights), and my cycles are 28-29 days long and consistent.