Within four months she got pregnant and she had a baby. And it's funny, when she got pregnant she was in like the sixth or seventh month and she said to me she goes, Andrea, she goes. Do you know that if you teach people how to heal themselves, you going to be out of business?
Food is medicine. All right, Do you believe that? Now, if you've been listening to me for a long time on HIListically Speaking, I know that you're following that way of being right. Your body has healing powers. The planet does too right. And when you take a deep dive into the world of holistic health, you find that there's a lot of others like us and there's a lot of people sharing knowledge and they're passionate about it.
And I have to say I am girl crushing right now with who I'm about to share with you. When I attended the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, where I got my certification in holistic health, being a holistic health coach, I stumbled upon one person who was not only passionate about holistic way of living, but she is a firecracker. And if you are in this world as well, you know who Andrea Beaman is. Andrea, oh my gosh, I am so excited to have you here.
I remember the first time I saw you and watching the videos on IIN, when I was going through the program, thinking I am obsessed with this woman.
Not in a bad way, there's no restraining orders needed, but I resonated with how you were sharing holistic health, holistic way of being, and then to be in the room with you to get a chance to meet you at Heal the Healer, to introduce you, even because we were both on that stage, to be there with you and just say I'm so elated to know you and have you here to be able to share this amazing way that we choose to live. So thanks for being here.
Oh, thanks for that amazing introduction, sister. My heart is going boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I love her, love her back.
You're amazing and you just make it so much fun. That's what I remember, first, when you were sharing your videos, when you were giving us permission to live healthy and I love saying it that way, because a lot of times we deny ourselves that, thinking it's a way of being. It just seems so easy the way you shared it. You know, and you come with so much credibility. You're kind of like the OG of holistic health coaching and that's a big title.
You've won numerous awards, you've published books, you're a natural food chef, you are also a herbalist and there's so much about you that just adds onto layers of everything that breathes the word holistic. But I'm curious. I know people tuning in are like how did she get? How did this chick from Queens, new York, get into the world of holistic health?
It's such a good story because I was the furthest thing from a healthy person that you can imagine. I mean literally like smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. I was bartending At one point. I was working for MTV networks and flying around the country and just partying with people for a living. And my wake up call came believe it or not, when my mom got sick with breast cancer. She had breast cancer when I was a little kid. Right, it was back in the 80s.
I was like 11 years old or something like that and she got breast cancer and back in the 80s they would take off your breast and they would take off all the lymph nodes and they would do this radical mastectomy. She had that surgery and all that stuff. And then the doctors said oh yeah, we'll watch her for five years and see what happens and then she'll be considered cancer-free. So five years later no cancer came back and she was considered cancer free.
And 11 years after the initial breast cancer diagnosis, my mom faints in the bathroom. We take her to the hospital and the doctor comes out and they ran a whole bunch of tests and she's in there for a couple of days and they said listen, we have some terrible news the breast cancer that she had has come back and it's in her bones, it's in her liver, it's in her lungs, it's in her brain, it's everywhere in her body. And my dad said, okay, well, let's do whatever we can to help my mom.
But then he started researching other things, which was very smart. It dawned on me, I'm like how did this breast cancer come back? It was, the breast was gone, all lymph nodes were gone, everything was gone. How did it come back? Where did it come from? Like what? I don't understand the whole thing. And so my dad had read an article about a doctor that had healed himself with macrobiotics Remember, this is back in the 80s and the 90s. That was big.
So he had healed himself from pancreatic cancer, of all things, which is like the death sentence of all death sentences. So my dad read the article and he said, hey, let's try this with mom. And I said okay, I'll try this, we'll try it with mom, because I chose to do the cooking and all that stuff and take care of her. And he said I want you to go up to this Institute in Massachusetts, in the Berkshires.
We're talking about the Shires.
I want you to go up to this Massachusetts thing, the Kushi Institute, and spend a week with your mom and learn everything that you can. So I go up there for a week and my mom in that one week, because she was just like gray after the radiation and the chemotherapy. Like literally, she was just like gray color, gray lips, no life in her face, hair falling out.
So we go up there and we spend a week there eating that food which was like naturally grown and not out of a box, it was like right from the backyard garden that they had and it was all natural food. And one of the things that I noticed during that week was that the color came back to her lips and to her cheeks for the first time. And she had energy. And I started going to the bathroom, which was a rare occasion because I was a chronic dieter, right.
So as a chronic dieter, eating everything, no fat, low fat, you know, no, no, no, this, no that I couldn't go to the bathroom like maybe twice a week, three times a week, and then it was a struggle. So I saw her energy shift and I saw what happened to my physical body. So we left the Kushi Institute and we started using this diet and all that stuff with my mom and unfortunately my mom didn't have the energy to pull back from the devastation from chemotherapy and radiation for her body.
Some people can get through that, but for her she couldn't. And after she died I planted the seed in my mind If you get sick with anything, go alternative first. Don't destroy your body. You go alternative first and then see what happens. So, as fate would have it, four years later or five years later, I was diagnosed with hyperthyroid. I had a really large goiter right. My neck was like this big and that's what my little goiter looked like.
Wow.
I know A cute little goiter right I was like all neck, Like a conjoined twin I know I had a whole nother me popping out of my neck.
Did you name it? I always hear the people name stuff like that, like build a relationship with it, right, because it's still a part of you, right?
Yeah, but I didn't want any part of it. I was like this thing is just horrible. It walked into the room five minutes before I got there, oh jeez.
See, there's humor in the healing. I love that about you.
Oh yeah, of course. Of course not when you're in the throes of it.
When you're in the throat of it, you're like oh, this sucks.
I can't sleep at night, I can't go to the bathroom. All this crazy stuff happens. So when I went to the doctor, the doctor said okay, so you have hyperthyroid. You need to take radioactive iodine to destroy your thyroid and then be on medication for the rest of your life. And I was like no, any radioactive, nothing is coming inside this body. I said I'm radioactive, nothing is coming inside this body. I said I'm going to change my diet, my lifestyle, and then I'll get back to you.
And the doctor goes listen, your diet and your lifestyle have nothing to do with your disease. And I was like, okay, I get that, that's what you've been trained. But I saw something else. So I'm going to change. I'm going to do some changes.
So I left the doctor's office and instead of focusing on dieting which was my default no fat, non-fat, low fat, all that craziness, right I immediately shifted into okay, I'm going to do whole foods, natural foods, everything naturally raised, and see what happens. And initially I had gone macrobiotic, because that was like what I learned years ago about what happened with my mom. Yeah, so within four months I lost like 18 pounds without trying. My goiter started shrinking.
It started getting soft and shrinking. I was sleeping through the night, I was going through the bathroom Like all these amazing things were happening. So I go back to the doctor the same doctor and I said, and she took my blood and the blood work came back. And she goes listen, she goes your thyroid numbers have changed, but it's still not normal. And you got to take this medication. And I said, I said, doc, I said I'm not going to take any medication.
I thank you for your opinion, but that's all that it is. And at the time I was working with MTV Networks, so I had insurance. I haven't had insurance since I'm 29 years old now, or 28 years old, I know I'm 56. So for 28 years I haven't had health insurance.
You know people are like their minds are closed. New realization on HIListically Speaking podcast, Andrea just realized she's uninsured.
For 28 years. So you know, at that time, with my insurance, my MTV Networks insurance I just started bouncing around to different doctors to get a different opinion. So the first one was hyperthyroid. The second one that I went to at like six months later was, oh, you got hypothyroid. And then the next one I went to after that oh, you have Hashimoto's, right. So all of these different doctors had all recommended medication, medication, medication, medication.
And when it got to the Hashimoto's point, which is an autoimmune thyroid condition, it had nothing to do with my thyroid, it had everything to do with my gut and an overreactive immune system, right. So if I had listened to the initial doctor that wanted to radiate my thyroid, I wouldn't even have a thyroid today.
So I know that I'm a bit of a radical rebel, but I am so happy that I said no to that initial recommendation from my doctor to destroy my thyroid, which is part of the Western medicine medical model. Right Is to stop the symptom, whatever it is, and that comes with destroying the body, taking a medication that shuts your body up and I'm not anti-Western medicine that shuts your body up and I'm not anti-Western medicine. If I get going, I'm walking my dog and I get hit by a car.
You don't take me to the health food store, you take me to the hospital. That's the way that it works, but for anything-.
You're not that radical. Yeah, right, put me together with chopsticks.
We'll take the painkillers, but for anything else when it comes to your health. Go alternative first and foremost. Go alternative, holistic, natural. Go down that route because things are going to start to shift, and that's my story.
Yeah, what a story and such an incredible journey. And while I mean and if it wasn't for mom, that's right Do you think you would be where you are?
No, no, I'd probably still be partying. You know, I'd be like one of them, one of those 56 year old women that you see that's still hanging out in the bar. You know, two packs of cigarettes later, right Drinking all day long. That might've been my path, but it wasn't. You know that my mom's illness and death was a wake up call for me. It was a wake up call and you know I miss my mother every day. You know I miss my mom.
I know that there was a lesson to learn and to move forward from that lesson, whatever it was, you know, take care of yourself. I think was the best lesson.
Yeah, I mean, we learn so much in the healing too. You know, and it's sad we lose people, but we gain something from it. You know, like you said, everything's a lesson and if we take more time to think about that, even when we're going through it, obviously it's very hard to understand that. But afterwards you look back and you're like, oh, now I get it. Yeah, now I get it. Now I get it. So thank you for sharing that story. I never knew that about you and it's so amazing, or to that extent.
And it's amazing to think that in this world of modern medicine we're so fortunate to have the Western medicine and thankfully we see more doctors that are going to integrative approaches as well and functional medicine approaches. But just a reminder to folks out there doctors don't go through nutritional training. It's almost like an elective class. They'll be the first to tell you that they don't get the extensive nutritional training in medical school.
It's kind of like an additional training and we're seeing more schools, medical schools that do have more curriculum in that area. I will say that, but it's not the priority. So, having health coaches, I mean, where do you see the importance of health coaches in people's lives?
Oh my gosh. Well, health coaches are out of the box, where most people in the medical profession are in the box. They've been taught a specific way to work with people and that's what they are programmed. They're programmed to do that thing, whatever it is Look for the disease, suppress the symptom or cut out an organ or whatever it is right. So, thankfully, like you said, we have more and more doctors that are becoming integrative, right?
They're looking at the situation and going, hey, I don't know about this, let's start elsewhere, and they're actually hiring health coaches in their practices, which is very smart. It's very smart and even like me and my health coach journey, I started with macrobiotics, I started with diet, but then the layers were deeper and deeper, and deeper and deeper and deeper. You know, I started with food, and food is medicine.
And then, um, when I was um, when I had Lyme disease in 2012, I went deeper into like herbs right, I was like, oh, food is medicine, but you know what? Herbs that's the medicine too, right? I couldn't neglect that. And then, you know, the healing of my thyroid taught me that the thyroid and the body is just one layer right, and then there's an emotional body and then there's a spiritual body and everything is connected. Human beings are multifaceted creatures.
You have to look at the multifaceted person that is the human being.
Oh yeah, and that's what holistic is. It's the whole body approach. And when we say whole body, we don't mean just the body, it is everything that makes you up. And I get asked that question, a lot like what is holistic? What is holistic? And it is whole body, but it's more than that, it's really.
I think that's why, when I started out in the holistic health world and became a health coach, I wasn't really sure where I was going to fall right, watching people like you dealing more with the food aspect of it, the herbs, and then we started getting more into the mindset about how we can pull in the holistic, which is why I went into holistic mental health Because, as we learned in IIN, the primary foods are not necessarily the fuel that we eat. It's the smaller circle.
It's an important circle, but it's really that bigger. The primary wheel is what? It's our relationships, our spirituality, our mindfulness and mental health, our home cooking, which is a big part of that pie, so many things in that wheel. And it's just, you know, it's us being in control of ourselves and being our own healthcare advocates. I can't say that enough and thankfully you were, because there are a lot of doctors out there that don't understand.
And if you're just going to say, okay, I guess I'll just do this, who's living your life for you?
Yeah.
That's right and that's a hard pill to swallow, though no pun intended. That's a hard pill to swallow if you feel vulnerable and you're not able to hold space for yourself, because in those vulnerable moments it's hard to step up and be like, okay, the pill seems much easier. Yeah, right, and that's what the doctor that went to medical school told me to do. And then to really have to change a whole behavior and habit. Right, like, how was that for you? Was that difficult?
Well for me like watching what happened with my mom. It wasn't difficult for me at all, cause I was like I don't want to go through that, right, I don't want to go through that, which I thought was a nightmare. I used to take her every every week to Long Island to get another dose of radiation, right. I was like I was driving her to the death chamber, right. And she'd always say, ann, I don't want to go, and I'd be like Ma, you got to go. This is what the doctor said.
So I saw that firsthand and I was like I don't ever want that to be my experience, right, while I'm here on the planet, because life is short, life is short. We're in and out of the body in the blink of an eye, very quickly, just a blip of a moment in time, and I'm 56 years old now. My mom was 58 when she died. She was just not even halfway.
I think of myself as in the prime of my life now, as a woman who's beyond menopause and has a whole lot of stuff to say to the world and a totally different type of energy. Right, I feel like my mom was cut down before her prime.
Yeah.
So for me it was very quickly to hop on board with holistic health very quickly, and then I saw the results. Now I said I started with macrobiotics, but that's not where it ended. Now I eat everything from anywhere, as long as it's naturally raised and naturally raised, humanely raised. I don't want the energy of a CAFO cow inside my body. I'm going with the grass fed one that's being tended by the farmer. My diet has shifted throughout this holistic journey.
Sometimes you just have to follow whatever you're guided by. I'm not saying that veganism is bad. In my holistic journey it was so profound for me to take animals out of the body and then see what the body said when the animal went back in.
Absolutely. It's like I mean we learn about bio individuality. But I remember I did something similar. I took all the meat out, I think, when I was 18, I remember, before I even knew what holistic was. I don't even know if there were holistic health coaches back in the early nineties probably, but they were called gurus back then, right, because there weren't as many of us.
I remember doing a mock trial in high school in upstate New York, where I grew up on PETA, and I was like I will never touch meat again and I will never the lambs, the lambs, they're screaming. And I remember cutting it out and it took me I don't know um for a number of years until I went to visit my brother in Hawaii and he was making this like amazing tuna ahi steak and I could smell it and I'm like, yeah, I don't know what's going on around here.
He's like just eat the fish try the fish you know, because you feel like, no, I'm supposed to be vegan, I'm supposed to be vegan, I'm supposed to be healthy. And we start telling ourselves these, we label ourselves and I think the labeling can be very detrimental to who we are and how we're showing up in this world. Right, Finding who we are and realizing it's okay to choose this, it's choice. Right, Giving ourselves permission. Then you really find your people and your people find you.
I remember that. The labeling of no, I can't do that. I'm a vegan. But I feel like Andrea, when I was a vegan, I was like a 24-hour rollercoaster ride with Sybil at the switch, Because I'm eating all these things that were like high in soy and my body was all over the place. So I mean, you got to find what works for you, don't you? You really do.
Yeah, that's part of the path. Find what works for you and you take what I say. You take what you say. You take what the doctor says. You take what this one says. You take what? And unless it resonates with you, you don't do it, or maybe you do it for a little while, but then listen what is your body saying. Is this working Right? And if it's not working, you got to shift and you got to pivot and you got to change.
I remember a wise teacher once told me that the only permanent thing in this lifetime is change.
That's good, that's good.
That's true, wise teacher.
Wise Love that. So many little like truth bombs, right? Yes, Love that. Yeah, I want to ask you something too. You know you're graciously offering your ebook and and understanding how to use food and herbs as medicine. Um, is this a book that? Like, how, how, how are you feeling about giving this away? Like, what is it about this that you want to make it an offer?
Oh, it's interesting. Well, I think that your kitchen can be your pharmacy, literally, and when you know how to use food, then it can be applied as medicine. So a lot of people will just be like I'm eating kale, kale, kale, kale, kale, kale, kale, kale right, the kale monsters? Or the sprout monsters right, they're just sprouting everything. But everything that you put into your body energetically has a vibration, and the way that it's cooked has a vibration.
So if somebody is cold and deficient and not feeling well, this is not the time for raw salads, right? This is not. So it's a time for chicken soup, mushroom broth, right? So it's a time for chicken soup, mushroom broth, right? The Food is Medicine. Opt-in, right. When you opt in, you get that little ebook.
It teaches you what are the various ways to prepare the food so that it energetically works in your system, because not all foods are going to work for all people and not all preparations are going to work for all people, and that's something very important to keep in mind. It also gives you you know like what's diaphoretic, you know like the foods that make you sweat and you know the coagulants.
You know all this stuff in the terminology to really make it medicine, but in simple and easy to digest forms.
Yeah, so we're going to put that in the podcast notes of this episode. This is a free ebook. There's no better way than free when somebody is offering something, right, I mean, if it doesn't gravitate to you, you don't have to look at it but what a gift. I mean it really is a gift, and I will say this personally, folks if you don't know who Andrea is, you do now, but I come from experience following her for a number of years and she knows what she's talking about. So download the ebook.
You might find one thing that makes a difference.
That's all it takes is one thing yeah it's the basics, it's like the first things that you need to know as you walk, step into the kitchen and you want to make your kitchen a healing space. You need to have this basic understanding. Even if you're not going to cook it yourself, you have to have a basic understanding of what food, energetically and vibrationally, does to the physical body.
You know, like every I'm energy and you're energy and everyone, everything in the universe is vibrating at a specific energetic frequency, right. So when I was working at MTV, my boss used to take these really long lunches and that was my time to put my head down on my desk and take a nap for about an hour, and that was with four cups of coffee in the morning.
My gosh.
I know I just put my head down on the desk and I just good night, it's time for me to go Middle of the day. I couldn't even imagine that now, unless I'm sick. If I'm sick, if I get a cold or a flu or something, my body naturally says, okay, go into the bed. Yeah, it knows what to do.
We need to listen to our bodies more and I was just sharing this today, actually that our bodies are like a Doppler radar system. If it's going to rain and the weather person says it's going to rain and you decide to go out with an umbrella, you're going against the Doppler radar and the person that knows something about the weather, right, we have our own GPS and inner guidance system and when we don't follow it we're going to feel like crap if we go against it.
It knows your body knows it's a well-oiled machine. We tend to sometimes just don't listen to it because I don't know. I guess it's not trusting self sometimes. It can't be that easy, right.
No, you hit the nail on the head. It's not trusting self, because we haven't been taught to trust ourselves or to listen to ourselves. Yeah. We haven't been taught that you know like from the time that you're a kid in school. You're taught listen to the teacher and listen to this one and listen to that one, and never listen to what you're saying.
Listen to your doctor, listen to what you're saying, listen to your doctor, listen to your doctor and listen. This is no slam on doctors, because the ones that would even tune into this show and would be here part of this collaborative and this network and this collective are those doctors who believe in the functional and the holistic and the alternative. They're opening or they're considering possibilities Right.
So I'm not too worried about taking anybody off, but if I am, I don't care, because we're living our truth.
Right, you want to hear a funny story, a quick one. When I first started my business, I had um, I had a doctor client who couldn't get pregnant and she was trying everything for four years, miscarriage after miscarriage, after miscarriage after miscarriage. So she hired me. She heard about me through another friend, switched up her diet, took out all the cold foods, put in some warm soups and stews, right, just changed around everything. Within four months she got pregnant and she had a baby.
And it's funny, when she got pregnant she was in like the sixth or seventh month and she said to me she goes, Andrea, she goes. Do you know that if you teach people how to heal themselves, you're going to be out of business?
That's the best compliment ever, isn't it I
know, and I started laughing and I'm like I think, first of all, I think there's enough sick people in the world that I don't have to worry about ever being out of business.
I just had this conversation last week and I say this a lot that with the work that I do in holistic mental health I'm like the antithesis of what I do is I never want to see you again, like I don't want you to be small and need me. I'm here if you need me and support and further guidance. But to be able to push you out of the nest and say go, young one, survive, fly. You know, that's like the biggest gift ever.
So to have somebody say you're gonna put people yourself out of business and I can move up to the berkshires and everything's good tell me something that's going to make me upset, all right. So anyway, I love laughing with you. I want to just mention again this amazing food and herb as medicine free ebook that Andrea is sharing. I'm going to put all of that in the podcast notes of this episode. And I want to play a little game with you that I do with all of my guests.
So you got a hot minute to play a little game. Oh, I got a hot minute, sister. Oh, you got a hot minute, all right.
You're the best All right.
So I'm going to throw out a word, something that you actually have said. Okay, and come back to me with the first word that comes to mind. Okay, and this is like boom, boom, boom, rapid fire. Here we go. Queens Me, yeah, girl, energy Me. I see where this is going. Alternative.
Oh, everything.
Okay.
It's still me, it is you Herbs Right Uh herbs Fantastic. Cushy Good teacher, cancer Good teacher. Another good teacher Teaches us a lot about ourselves. Yeah, mtv.
Fun. I bet I want to hear more about that. Holistic Life yeah, definitely. Oh, that's a good one Life I like ending on that. Oh, one more word Menopause. Easy for me, yeah, yeah, okay, let's talk about that for a second. We'll come out of the rapid fire and, by the way, love doing that game. It's the game show host to me. I never got to be so.
Menopause I know a lot of my listeners are of that age, either in Perry or they're in menopause, and I'm curious what would be your number one tip to women in that part of their lives that you would share? And I know it's bio-individuality and everybody's different, but what would be one thing you would share that you see, maybe more with more of your clients and even serving yourself, like what you've done for you, okay?
So the number one thing that I would share about menopause is to step into it gracefully, to it, gracefully. So, in our society we have been taught that aging, especially women aging, is unattractive Aging we're discarded, we're thrown away. At some point, women, once you're out of the fertility zone and you move into the wise woman, sage zone, right so we've been called crones and, oh God, look at them. They're dried up hags. And who needs them now?
Right, that's the mentality of the menopausal, after menopause woman, and I'm going to encourage you to step into that zone with a whole different frame of mind. Yes, saying goodbye to fertility, but saying hello to wisdom, right. So there is a lot of wisdom in the female body, mind and spirit that is squashed when we're told that we're not allowed to age. So, um, step into that zone and nourish yourself more deeply, even more deeply, right? So I made a little tea.
Uh, here I got a little little tea, and in that tea I've got like goji berries, licorice root, oat straw, uh, comfrey, um, I got a little lemon balm. You know, I've got herbs Maybe you said herbs, and I love herbs. I have herbal tea every single day. But this is to nourish me more deeply, because when we move through menopause, we get a little drier, right? It's part of the natural aging process, right? Look at the color of my hair it's gray. My hair is gray.
By the way, I love your hair. Like you wear that. That's like the sage wisdom ethereal, like if I could do it and, if it happens, I would never color my hair. Oh, good for you, mark my words, yeah.
Yeah, you know, this is like my silver streaks from the universe, right? So, you step into that zone, you know that you need to nourish yourself and moisten yourself a little more. And part of that moistening process I know most women don't want to hear this is that maybe don't have so much coffee, because coffee is a diuretic and it's actually drying. So do a little moistening tea. It'll help you get through menopause a little easier.
You know, like, step into that wise woman, step into that woman who knows who she is and what she wants and what she needs to say.
You know, like, if you look at the history of hysterectomies by the way, the history of hysterectomies when women started to change, when they go through their change, they get emotional right, our emotional body goes up in upheaval and we're like you know I want to express this this thing sucks, this relationship is terrible, this job I don't want to be in, right, we get this burst of wisdom and you're like emotional body is going. What am I supposed to do with all of this?
This is a lot for me to digest and process. And in the late 1800s, early 1900s, they were like oh, this woman is hysterical. But we have found that if we remove the uterus via a hysterectomy hysterical hysterectomy we remove the uterus. Then the woman calms down, right. So hence the birth of the hysterectomy. It was actually an attack on women expressing themselves and stepping into their emotional body in a bigger way.
So I'm going to suggest and again, you do what's good for you, but I'm going to suggest that you step into that phase with grace and wisdom, take it slow and try not to be pressured into anything. This is the time for you to stand firm in who you are and who you have become as a woman, and women are way more powerful than we have been led to believe, right. So stand in that power, stand in that Athena, stand in that goddess.
Love that. I was just going to ask you if you had any closing thoughts and I'm like, yeah, pretty much think she covered that. That's amazing. And I feel like you're talking to me too, because I'm like in that stage and, look, I mean we can show up for others and we can be inspiring and helpful and it's a sisterhood, it's a collective, but sometimes we have to hear it, we have to be reminded all of us, right? So I love that. Thank you for sharing that.
It's a. It's a moment that I want to sit back and be like. It's a moment that I want to sit back and be like, yeah, be your Athena, be your goddess, always, always. I love you. You're amazing. I feel like I just had an amazing masterclass with Andrea Beaman and what a gift this is going to be for the HIListically speaking community because you share so much.
But in that, even though I know you shared beautifully about women going through menopause, what would you just share in general with folks that are tuning?
in. Oh, love yourself, beyond anything that you're eating and supplements you're taking and all this stuff, the holistic. It starts with loving yourself first and foremost, like looking in the mirror and saying, oh my God, I totally love Hilary, I totally love Andrea, I'm going to do everything that I can today to take care of her. Right, I don't want you to fret about, oh, I got, I got to lose 60 pounds right in the future. Right, just today. Take it one day at a time.
Love yourself every moment of every day that you can, because you know at the end of your life, what do you got? You'll have some people around you, but you, you're going to be taking your soul's journey with you wherever you go on to the next thing. If that's what you believe, that's what I believe. So, love yourself.
Whatever is happening in your life, love yourself as much as you can, as much as possible, and when you love yourself, you can take care of yourself and you can take care of everyone around you. You don't have to worry about that stuff?
Yeah, you can't pour from that empty cup, that's right, that's right, so what? Would. What would the wiser, more goddess like Andrea say to the younger girl that's passed out at the MTV desk after seven cups of coffee and a pack of cigarettes?
Well, I would say to her, I would say keep learning. So even that was an experience that I learned from. You know without judgment on my past. You know without judgment on my past. So keep learning. And when you reflect, you know like, build the story that lifts you up rather than brings you down. You know like so many people will go into this space of I could have, would have, should have done that.
Right, you've got this heavy thing you're dragging around that's keeping you down, but if you can build on your success, whatever your success was hey, today I made a great meal. Hey, today I took a walk. Yeah, today I exercised you know like, uh, today I love myself. So I would say to the younger Andrew just continue learning and loving yourself in the process without any regret.
I'll jump on that boat. That sounds amazing. Thanks so much, Andrew. This has been such a joy. You're a delight.
Oh, thank you, Hilary, thank you, love you, sister, love you.
If you haven't grabbed the ebook from Andrea on how to use foods, how to use herbs as medicine, now is the time. What are you waiting for? This is a free ebook with tons of information that you can put to use right away. You'll find the link to download the ebook in the notes of this podcast episode.
In addition to connecting with Andrea personally, and if this conversation with Andrea Beaman inspired you in any way or maybe you know one person who may find this valuable consider passing it along. Pay it forward. You never know how it might change one person's life in just a moment for the good thing that you've done. HIListically Speaking is edited by Two Market Media, with music by Lipbone Redding and, of course, supported by you. So thank you for tuning in week after week.
Thank you for showing up. It does not go unnoticed. On that note, remember that you have everything you need to be your own healthcare advocate. I know I say that time and time again, but I just want it to be a reminder. You have everything you need to heal, to grow, to learn. That's part of the HUG it Out way and it's an inside job first, but you're never doing it alone. I love you, I believe in you and I'm sending hugs your way. Be well.