As a young woman, Jennifer Ragazzo experienced various chronic autoimmune diseases, which led her to a deeper understanding of the intricate blend of faith, wellness, and personal transformation. As a functional wellness coach, Jennifer shares her expertise with Christian women facing the whirlwind of midlife. As we peel back the layers of Jennifer's story, from battling endometriosis to harnessing the power of holistic health, we uncover the transformative potential of functional medicine, bridging the gap between spiritual and physical well-being.
The resilience of the human spirit and the special bonds of family helped Jennifer cope as she openly shares the journey of the critical health conditions that occurred within her family. The fierce fight of her newborn nephew against a life-threatening virus and her father's courageous battle with stage four prostate cancer revealed to her the remarkable capacity for hope and healing beyond conventional treatments. Her very personal stories share not only the fragility of life but also serve as a blueprint for the strength of family support through difficult times.
This episode provides hope and simple steps for anyone navigating their own personal wellness journey along with some of the challenges we all face throughout various seasons of our lives with the ultimate goal to a path towards a more vibrant and fulfilling existence. The importance of mindfulness, the vitality found in simplicity, and the significance of making informed lifestyle choices that resonate with our bodies and souls is emphasized throughout the episode. The insights that Shelly and Jennifer share into the mind-body connection along with practical steps for achieving wellness, offers guidance for anyone ready to embark on a journey toward abundant health in the prime of their life.
High quality, clean nutrition and beauty products: https://shellyjefferis.isagenix
Thank you for listening to the Words of Wellness podcast with Shelly Jefferis. I am honored and so grateful to have you here and it would mean the world to me if you could take a minute to follow, leave a 5-star review and share the podcast with anyone you love and anyone you feel could benefit from the message.
Thank you and God Bless! And remember to do something for yourself, for your wellness on this day!
As a young woman, Jennifer Ragazzo experienced various chronic autoimmune diseases, which led her to a deeper understanding of the intricate blend of faith, wellness, and personal transformation. As a functional wellness coach, Jennifer shares her expertise with Christian women facing the whirlwind of midlife. As we peel back the layers of Jennifer's story, from battling endometriosis to harnessing the power of holistic health, we uncover the transformative potential of functional medicine, bridging the gap between spiritual and physical well-being.
The resilience of the human spirit and the special bonds of family helped Jennifer cope as she openly shares the journey of the critical health conditions that occurred within her family. The fierce fight of her newborn nephew against a life-threatening virus and her father's courageous battle with stage four prostate cancer revealed to her the remarkable capacity for hope and healing beyond conventional treatments. Her very personal stories share not only the fragility of life but also serve as a blueprint for the strength of family support through difficult times.
This episode provides hope and simple steps for anyone navigating their own personal wellness journey along with some of the challenges we all face throughout various seasons of our lives with the ultimate goal to a path towards a more vibrant and fulfilling existence. The importance of mindfulness, the vitality found in simplicity, and the significance of making informed lifestyle choices that resonate with our bodies and souls is emphasized throughout the episode. The insights that Shelly and Jennifer share into the mind-body connection along with practical steps for achieving wellness, offers guidance for anyone ready to embark on a journey toward abundant health in the prime of their life.
High quality, clean nutrition and beauty products: https://shellyjefferis.isagenix
Thank you for listening to the Words of Wellness podcast with Shelly Jefferis. I am honored and so grateful to have you here and it would mean the world to me if you could take a minute to follow, leave a 5-star review and share the podcast with anyone you love and anyone you feel could benefit from the message.
Thank you and God Bless! And remember to do something for yourself, for your wellness on this day!
In Health, Shelly Jefferis
Speaker 1:
just mind blowing to me, and it also revealed to me that God's the ultimate physician and we need to stop putting limitations on our our health and wellness and stop living into the disempowering labels that we are often given.
Speaker 2:
Do you get confused by all of the information that barges every day on ways to improve our overall health and our overall wellness? Do you often feel stuck, unmotivated or struggle to reach your wellness goals? Do you have questions as to what exercises you should be doing, what foods you should or should not be eating, how to improve your overall emotional and mental well-being? Hello everyone, I am so excited to welcome you to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelly Jeffries and I will be your host. My goal is to answer these questions and so much more to share tips, education and inspiration around all of the components of wellness through solo and guest episodes. With 35 plus years as a health and wellness professional, a retired college professor, a speaker and a multi-passionate entrepreneur, I certainly have lots to share. However, my biggest goal and inspiration in doing this podcast is to share the wellness stories of others with you, to bring in guests who can share their journeys so that we can all learn together while making an impact on the health, the wellness and lives of all of you, our listeners. The ultimate hope is that you leave today with even just one nugget that can enhance the quality of your life, and that you will. We all will, now and into the future, live our best quality of lives, full of energy, happiness and joy. Now let's dive into our message for today. Hello everyone, and welcome back to Words of Wellness.
Speaker 2:
My name is Shelly and I will be your host today. I am very excited for our guest today. She is a functional wellness coach with training in integrative nutrition, naturopathy and applied functional medicine. She has a passion for guiding Christian women through midlife transitions. Specializing in holistic wellness, she empowers her clients in her Vibrant Rise functional wellness coaching program and she helps women move beyond fatigue, anxiety, inflammation and just helps them embrace a life filled with energy, peace and vitality. Boy, you're speaking my language there. She has navigated years of chronic illnesses, which includes endometriosis, infertility, autoimmune conditions and more. She definitely has learned what works and what doesn't, and through personalized functional health and lifestyle coaching, she brings God to the forefront, eliminating hope and helping women align their physical, mental and spiritual selves. I love this. Welcome, jennifer, today to the show.
Speaker 1:
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2:
I'm really excited to have this conversation Me too, and I just love everything that you are doing, and I know we're going to have an amazing conversation about all of it. We're probably going to have to maybe fit this into maybe two or three different episodes, I'm not sure but I would love for you to share a little bit about what you. What brought you to this journey? What was, what was your experience to lead you to what you're doing today?
Speaker 1:
Right, absolutely. That's a good question, because my journey has been long and there's been a lot of twisty, windy roads that landed me to the place of being a functional wellness coach and working with women to offer them hope and working in the way that I work. So my journey, navigating through different health challenges, really began in my teenage years. At 16 years old, I was struggling with debilitating periods really heavy, very, very painful, was put on the birth control pill as the solution to the symptoms that I was having. I now know today that it's not a solution, that is a bandaid and at 19, it just was worse and I would have periods that felt like I was dying. There was a burning knife inside of me, I would be vomiting in pain and they decided to do exploratory surgery and they found stage four, endometriosis, and endometriosis is a condition where the endometrial lining grows outside of the uterus and in me. It was all over everything, and I remember being 19 and sitting with my mom at the gynecologist's office post-op and having her show me a picture of my insides and say this is the worst case I've ever seen in my entire career no doctor should ever tell anyone that, by the way and all I could do was sit there and stare and say I don't even know what this means.
Speaker 1:
I'm 19. I'm in college, I just want to feel good. I'm in college, I just want to feel good. And I don't even really. I wasn't even really aware of like when I started to just slip down that path of not feeling well. I just knew that I was feeling worse and worse and worse, and around the same time I started to struggle with debilitating anxiety and chronic migraine headaches and was put on medications for those. And so, with the endometriosis, they did an aggressive surgery at 19 and put me into chemical menopause. So anyone listening who is an actual menopause? Imagine being in menopause in college and three or twenties. I can't.
Speaker 2:
As you're talking about this, I just keep thinking about what was I doing at the age of 19. And I can't imagine going through that. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1:
It's hard and I didn't know what I didn't know. I was just looking to my doctors to lead the way. I did whatever I was told to do. There was never a question as to why this is even happening. We weren't looking for that. It was how are we going to treat this? And at 21, I was still struggling. So I had another surgery, even more aggressive than the first, because even on the medication that put me into chemical menopause, I it was still growing all over everything. So they were more aggressive with that surgery.
Speaker 1:
And around this time I really started to struggle with other health things gut issues, um. I started struggling really bad with acne, was put on medication for that, a medication with some pretty hefty side effects and in my own health, being so very young, it all felt so out of control, like I didn't know how to control any of it. So I did what I knew how to do at the time and that was control my health and wellness in the way that I perceived health and wellness um to be, which was over exercise, um like get step into a plate place of like chronic dieting. I'm going to call it chronic dieting. It was like obsessive dieting, um calorie restriction I had bought. I struggled with body dysmorphia, I struggled with um, I struggled with body dysmorphia, I struggled with orthorexia all through my twenties. But that, to me, was the only way that I knew how to control all these other things that were going on. That felt very out of control. So we'll jump forward to my late twenties. I was married, we wanted to have children and I stepped onto that path of trying to get pregnant and it wasn't happening. And when I stopped the medication, the endometriosis quickly started to overgrow and so I started my infertility journey.
Speaker 1:
And the infertility journey was interesting. For someone who wanted to control everything, um, that was felt very scary to me and was very out of control. So we did IVF and my first IVF cycle failed and I was told by that doctor that I had premature ovarian failure and I? Um would most likely never get pregnant unless I did some extra things that they were offering to me. And that was the first time that I really took a step back. I had always believed in God, but I didn't really know at all what it was to surrender to trust, to invite God into anything at all. And I heard this inner voice just say Jen, take a step back. You're trying to control everything in your life right now and none of it is working.
Speaker 1:
And I took a break from the infertility treatments for a little while. I spent some time working on myself. I found a new doctor who offered a different treatment plan and I started working with an acupuncturist. I'd never worked with an acupuncturist somebody in the natural alternative world and the acupuncturist quickly identified in me that I was holding on to a lot of negative beliefs about my body and my inability to heal, my inability to get pregnant. And when I was 19 and that doctor had shown me that picture and she had also said to me you most likely will struggle to get pregnant. So I stepped into the identity of being someone who was infertile. I took that on. I took on that belief that my body was incapable, it was incapable of having a healthy baby, of getting pregnant on its own, and so I was functioning from that place of being an infertile person, of functioning from a place, a belief that I was broken. So that was very eyeopening for me to start to connect the mind to the body, and he did different exercises with me that helped me to shift that. I was also in therapy at the time.
Speaker 1:
And then I had a conversation that changed my entire life. I had a conversation with the nurse that was assigned to me in my infertility, my infertility IVF cycle, and she talked to me about my diet and she talked to me about simple products that I might be using that could be disrupting the endocrine system, and she said it very simply. She said we're trying to control your hormones right now, so we want to be really cautious, not to be consuming or exposing ourselves to things that are going to interfere with that. And I'm like wait, I'm sorry, come again. This is over 20 years ago, so over 20 years ago. Organic, I'm sorry, come again. This is over 20 years ago, so over 20 years ago. Organic foods were not common. They weren't found in every single grocery store. The nearest Whole Foods was over a half an hour away from me.
Speaker 1:
But it ignited in me a desire to understand more and to learn more. I was fascinated. That was the very first person between the acupuncturist and then this nurse having this conversation that even alluded to me having any type of control over what was going on in my body by addressing some other things like the mind, what I was consuming or perhaps even putting on to my body. So we proceeded with that IVF cycle. That IVF cycle actually is my oldest daughter and my son. So, my oldest daughter. I got pregnant. With her, we froze embryos and my son came from the frozen embryo cycle and then my third baby was our surprise, all natural. Oh, my goodness, my body does work. I can't get pregnant on my own, and that's such a common story, and what I had started to do was make massive changes.
Speaker 1:
So the more that I learned, the more that I understood about the impact of our diet, our choices that we're making, inso far as what I put in my body, my belief system was I, was I believing that I could heal? Did I have a mindset of wellness, or do they have a mindset of sickness? So very, very elementary compared to where I am today. Again, this was a really long time ago, but it put me on that path of just wanting to understand more and more and more about this beautifully designed human body that we've been given to live in on our earthly experience. So our bodies are the house that we have to live in, right? This is it. We get one body, we get one house for our time here on earth, and so I wanted to learn how to best support the body that I was in. So my 30s were. I was the person. I was the go-to person that everyone would go to when they wanted health and wellness advice. I wasn't doing it professionally, it wasn't what at all what I do today. I actually was an elementary school teacher prior. But I look back and I'm like goodness, I have a bachelor's in psychology and a master's in education, and what I'm doing today is I get to use those, but in a very different way. So how I landed on becoming a functional wellness coach? That happened 14 years ago.
Speaker 1:
My father was diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer and he was given three to five years to live. If he did the treatments, there really was no cure. They said it will spread to your bone, liver or lung. It will metastasize. So my father looked at that as just a death sentence and thought, all right, well, if that's all I'm going to get, then I'm not going to treat it. Why am I going to go through all the treatment to still die anyway?
Speaker 1:
And so we were still all reeling from the shock of that, and two months later, my sister had her second baby and he was born healthy. But when he was one week old he contracted a virus and it was called the human parkeovirus and it's a virus that in anybody else would just be a common cold, but in a little tiny baby with an underdeveloped immune system. At six days old Carter developed a high fever and was seizing and within hours had blood on the brain and they didn't think he was going to live through that initial virus. My sister was in Kansas City at the time, I was in Pennsylvania, my parents were in New Jersey and we we all quickly gathered together in that hospital around this little baby who was on life support at the time, and we didn't know what else to do other than pray and um and and. In that time I was the first time in my life I'd ever really felt the peace that surpasses all understanding and we were just giving this little life up to God.
Speaker 1:
And my sister and brother-in-law at that point were just catatonic and couldn't really even have those conversations with the doctor. They weren't able to even hear, they were so in shock. With the doctor, they weren't able to even hear, they were so in shock. And so I took over advocating and I would have the conversations as different doctors and medical professionals came in to take a look at Carter and I had I heard. I talked to them about where he was and they said if he does survive the virus, he most likely will be a vegetable. He will have no quality of life. He most likely will be a vegetable. He will have no quality of life. He will be blind, most likely blind, deaf. The brain damage was covering was 40% global brain damage. So within a few days the virus had passed and my nephew lived through that and amazing things started to happen. He came off the feeding tube and he would start making little sucking sounds.
Speaker 1:
And my brother-in-law is an entrepreneur. He's always had this mindset of like you don't tell me that I can't do something, like I can do anything that I believe I can do. So I'm going to search. If you're not, if the doctors here are not going to give my son hope in healing, I'm going to find people who can help him because they really weren't giving them anything, nothing. And I'm here going there's gotta be something. What about like nutrition or some sort of therapy? And nothing. And so my brother searched time wide and he found a clinic out in California that does neural movement therapy and moved his little family out to California and this little tiny baby started to make all kinds of progress with neural movement therapy and my sister gave him a brain-based diet and they did cranial sacral therapy and hypobaric oxygen.
Speaker 1:
And so here I am watching and witnessing all of this, already being fascinated by the health and wellness space and learning as much as I possibly can. And then we've got my dad and at the time, my dad. When he saw his grandson fight for his life, my dad turned to me and he said, jennifer, my grandson is going to fight for his life, I'm going to fight for his life. My dad turned to me and he said Jennifer, my grandson is going to fight for his life, I'm going to fight for mine. I'll do anything. I'm like anything. It was like my permission to dive deep into more learning and more research and more possibility of healing.
Speaker 1:
And I did, and I did the best I could at the time with all the knowledge that I could find out there, and my dad did a combination of alternative and conventional treatment for his cancer and he is alive today, 14 years later. He was finally dismissed after many, many years of just going for checkups and having, where he went, the doctor say to him I don't know what you're doing, but whatever you're doing, we didn't expect you'd be here, but just keep doing it. And I mean we changed. He lost 80 pounds, he retired early. I mean I went through that house with a garbage bag and pulled out every single carcinogenic endocrine disrupting chemical, anything that could possibly be pouring gasoline on the cancer in his body, and my dad changed his diet and he started doing things that were really fun and he worked on a stress and it was amazing to see that alongside witness my nephew, who my, my sister and brother-in-law were told would just be a vegetable nurse eat, laugh, learn how to crawl. I mean it was amazing. I'm like this is just just mind blowing to me.
Speaker 1:
And it also revealed to me that God's the ultimate physician and we need to stop putting limitations on our our health and wellness and stop living into the disempowering labels that we are often given. So I had lived into so many of them myself and even throughout all of my own journey, I mean autoimmune diseases started popping up for me due to early years of a lot, a lot of like hits at my gut and, you know, dysfunction in the gut and medications and things like that and I started to believe that there's a better way and there's different way of living. And so when my nephew was almost two, he was taking a nap and a tiny little blood vessel from the original brain damage burst. Never would have known that it was there. It was never meant for us to know that it was there. His time was done. You know God, numbers are days and he was here for almost two years and when Carter died, it was really hard. It was hard. Every one of us had to process it in our own way. Obviously, my sister and brother-in-law had a lot to process and losing their son, and brother-in-law had a lot to process and losing their son, and I spent two years running.
Speaker 1:
I was a runner at the time. For a lot of reasons, I was running. I was just like an intense runner and I spent those years praying and processing like God. I just what I just witnessed in my nephew and my father in my own journey. There's something here, there's a message that I want to share with the world. But how do I do that and what does that look like? And it was.
Speaker 1:
It was about two years later that I heard of this thing, this career called health coaching, and I'm like that, wait a second, I can actually combine all these things that I love. I love teaching. I'm a teacher at heart. I can teach people how to live a better life. I can teach people, I can coach them in into their own health and wellness journey. Like that sounds amazing. So I went back to school for integrative nutrition and I started health coaching and that was was. I loved it and I wanted to know more, like I was so, so hungry for more.
Speaker 1:
And that's when, even in my own personal health the back end of that I was still seeking answers to a lot of things that were going on with me autoimmune diagnoses and it was starting to find answers, and this new thing called functional medicine. So functional medicine really, it's been the last decade that functional medicine has become more mainstream. So functional medicine is looking for where the breakdown in function is, that is, expressing the disease symptoms. So, whether it's a symptom, a label, we've received a disease diagnosis, getting underneath that, looking for breakdown and function and not stopping there. So the root cause drivers are the cracks in the foundation of our house. Again, we live in this house. And so, instead of going to the third floor and finding a crack in the wall or in the window and slapping some duct tape and spackle, we go all the way down we might even need to tear the house down and we get down to the foundation and we said where are the cracks? Every one of us has specific things that we need to be really, really solid in order to then lead to really good function in the body.
Speaker 1:
And I went to school for applied functional medicine changed my entire world, changed my view of the human body, my understanding of health and wellness, and I was able to help people in such a deeper way. And I was practicing. I've been in practice now almost a decade and I just continued to learn. I continued to learn with every person that was in front of me. And I'm a questioner, I'm a, I'm somebody who is a critical thinker. I want to understand why. Why is the question I asked the most? And I started to make observations and I was going back to even my infertility days and my work with the acupuncturist, as I'm working with clients and I'm like, wait a second, it's not just the physiology we need to pay attention to. What about the thoughts going on in our minds? What about dysregulated emotions? What about trauma that's been unaddressed?
Speaker 2:
about dysregulated emotions? What about trauma that's been unaddressed? Well, that's amazing because if you think about going back to everything that you experienced in as a 19 year old, it led you to all of that, to experience all that with your health. I mean, I just your story is so fascinating and I love just hearing the different stages of it and how it's gotten you to where you are today, and I can't imagine going through what you did as a young woman. And what I love and can so resonate with when you're talking is there's so much more to it than going to the doctor and getting a diagnosis. There's so much more than just what's going on physiologically in our bodies. So, like you're saying, it's like what are we feeding our minds with? And and just so interesting. Like you're saying how you had that one nurse or doctor tell you that you probably will never have children and then you ended up believing that thought and it's just amazing how powerful the mind is and so much of the time we don't. I think we do more. So now put the connection between body and mind, because obviously it's there. But also I went through the same thing as you did.
Speaker 2:
And the fact that, again, this isn't to bash medicine or doctors, but I was given, my husband and I were giving a diagnosis and statistics with our daughter, our first pregnancy.
Speaker 2:
And back then and you might have done this too, but back then they did the blood testing, the AFP testing, and it came back positive.
Speaker 2:
And so with that that meant there could potentially be a problem with the baby, and so we were. It was recommended that we refer. We were referred to university, we had further testing done and they thought they saw a cyst on her brain and this is our first time, you know, becoming pregnant. So we hear all this and we're like, what does this mean? And I'll never forget that they had told us that and we, we went and my husband and I had like, went and tried to have some lunch and just process it, because they said that because of this test coming back positive and because of what they thought they saw was a cyst, the percentage of her having issues was very high. So they gave us all these statistics and I'll never forget much like your story coming home and having that realization that okay, shelly, these are doctors, they're just giving you what they know yeah by the book, these statistics, and I'll never forget.
Speaker 2:
I got home and I opened up the bible to the verse. You know, proverbs 3, 5, just not trusting in yourself. And you know, it was that moment where I went okay, this is not. They don't have all the answers. God has the final say right and um. And you know, you know lo and behold, I mean our, we had the amno, we had the testing, came back fine, came back normal. She's amazing, completely normal.
Speaker 2:
But I, I can so relate to that whole experience and and it's heartbreaking to me for those who rely so much on those statistics and so much on those, this potentially could go wrong. Right, you hear those stories so often that you're told this and then everything turns out totally fine. But there are those stories where not everybody trusts in that and they might go through a procedure or something more drastic because they thought there would be something wrong when potentially there wouldn't be anything wrong. So it's such a journey that you've been on I just I can't even imagine it, but it's brought you to where you are today in such an amazing way. So that's, I guess that is always the, the purpose, right, be able to connect the dots and see where it's brought us to where we are today and why we went through what we did.
Speaker 1:
There's so much wisdom gained as we walk through this life, and the majority of growth happens in the abrasion of life and the hard things. And I look back on my life and I'm so, very grateful. I'm grateful for all of the experiences that God has provided me with to really dig deep and to learn and to continue to question. I'm so grateful that he put people on my path to help me, to shine light, to guide me in my own journey, and that he also blessed me with a mind that is a questioning mind, that didn't stop looking for answers and stop asking why, why is this happening? Where is this coming from? And a lot of the clients that land here on my runway that I end up working with, are people who've been through very similar experiences. They could be very different in detail, but they have been trying to navigate their own path and to get better, like, right, like we just want to feel better, and we know that something isn't right. We know that there is a better way. We just haven't yet found it. So they'll come here and, because of what I've walked through, I get them and I understand, and I also understand that it's a very unique journey that we each go through and step on, and one of the other things that I've also come to see is a lot of the challenges that are put in front of us or the physical pain that we might be experiencing. Those are invitations. So they're love, like some of the physical things that might be popping up for us. So their love, like some of the physical things that might be popping up for us, those are love notes from our body, from God, even inviting us to slow it down and to take a real good look at what we need more of what we need less of what are we being invited to? And so, as I work with each client on unpacking their story, unpacking their journey, helping them to look for the cracks and those foundations of their functional wellness, when we do that, it is taking a good hard look at what can come with you. You know what are you being asked to step away from? And, sure, sometimes it's inflammatory foods or too much alcohol or gluten. Okay, sometimes it's like, actually, really, I call those, you know, quite simple things. Other times it's toxic relationships, chronic people, pleasing Right, my clients.
Speaker 1:
Earlier today, right before we started recording this podcast, she just, she just came to her breaking point. She's a high, high, high achiever type A. I've been working with her for a while and I been guiding. Never my job to tell someone it's my job to just it's reflective inquiry, hold a mirror, invite them to see. And she wasn't ready to see and she said that to me. She goes, I can see now, john.
Speaker 1:
She came to her physical body just is screaming really, really loud and she's like I am at my point of surrender. This is what God's been trying to invite me to for so long. And he just let me know through my testing that my worth is not found in my achievements, that I'm actually worthy. Without ever doing a single thing. I'm here going. I have tears in my eyes. I was like yes, yes, yes, you're listening, you're hearing.
Speaker 1:
So the goal isn't to live out in perfection. So, even as we're optimizing our health and we're learning what our body needs more of and less of just to really experience, um, the holistic wellness that we all desire, it's the goal is not to be perfect we're not going to be perfect on this side of existence but learning how to live a life of abundant wellness and what looks like and the freedom that is found on the other side of it, as we let go of all these things that aren't serving us and we embrace more of the abundant life that is available for us more joy, more peace, more calm, more confidence, that is so much of what I share.
Speaker 2:
I love it. It's so in alignment with what I share with my listeners and share when I'm teaching, also, because it's so true and it's so interesting, because that's my goal as well is to help everyone just find the things that are maybe not serving them in their health and their wellness, and how do we swap out, maybe do some healthier options, and what can we do? What do we need to remove? What can we add more of so that you can experience more joy and have vitality and live a quality of life, but, you know, with longevity and energy and vitality, not just to live and go. Okay, I guess this is just how I'm supposed to feel, cause I'm, you know, certain age. You know, some people just don't understand that there's so much more and that's that's exciting, like and I and I and I've experienced that too where I went through a journey of about a decade ago where, all of a sudden, I was doing some things different with my nutrition and I felt so much, even more energy than I had before, and I was felt like I was pretty energetic and my background is in health and wellness and kinesiology. So I I had the tools, but it was so great to experience even feeling that much better, not realizing that I could. So having that experience and being able to share that with other people, and you know, so much of the time I feel like individuals just kind of get into this acceptance, like, well, this is just how it's going to be, you know, instead of going no, no, it doesn't have to be that way, you could feel so much better and have so much more energy. If you do, maybe X, y, z, you know, and and I just love this because it's really that's the ultimate goal is to help others just feel their best.
Speaker 2:
And I can relate so much to when you're talking about your dad and you know when I again going back to when I first became pregnant was when I became more in really intentional, looking at food labels and realize what was in what we're putting in our bodies, right, and. And then, years later, my mom was diagnosed with cancer and she ended up losing her battle. And then, years later, my dad was dealing with some other illnesses and same thing I mean, he ended up losing his battle. So when you talk about certain things that we experienced in life that really light a fire under us to do more.
Speaker 2:
Those were kind of the three real big moments, especially with my parents, where I went okay, there's, there's more to this, there's more to this, and I want to find out more, I want to do more research, I want to learn more and then be able to share it with others, so I can so relate to everything that you're saying, and it's so wonderful what you are doing and how you're serving your clients and the people that come in your path, and you again are speaking from not just an educational perspective, but all of these years of experience to be able to be relatable and help these people come into your path, and it's just a beautiful thing. I just I love it. I love hearing all your story and hear everything about what you're doing and what you're sharing with others. It's very inspiring.
Speaker 1:
Oh, thank you. I feel very blessed every single day with what I get to do and what I get to witness. We're just witnessing someone else's transformation. I just get to be a guiding light. I'm an educator. I'm here inviting people to move forward and up, and when they accept the invitation, the work for them, it comes from within them. The answers are within each and every one of us. Sometimes we just need someone to help navigate the path. But what I witnessed, when I witnessed the unfolding of healing and the transformation, it's so amazing to me and it never ceases to amaze me the things that God is doing in each individual person, like those call-ups, like those invitations.
Speaker 1:
People will come here because they have chronic migraines or they have a thyroid disorder, that is, they just can't get under control, or they've got like a lot of gut issues.
Speaker 1:
Like that will be what they think is the thing, and of course, we'll dive deep into all of that. I can geek out all day long on functional stool tests and blood chemistry Like I love that stuff. But what I really, really enjoy seeing is why is this happening? What is this for? And most often it's because God's inviting them to a even better way of living. It's a life of freedom, of more joy, of more purpose, of setting healthier boundaries, of getting up every day with energy and vitality so that they can bring their divine gifts to the world in fullest form. Right, really, really hard to show up as our best self and to use our divine gifts and we've all been given them. When we are sick and we're fatigued and we're anxious and we're in pain and we feel hopeless, it's we're not using them, choosing healthier foods and buying healthier products that are friendlier to our endocrine system and I mean you name it in doing that. That's stewardship. I look at that as stewardship.
Speaker 2:
It makes a world of difference. Right, it makes a world of difference and that's something that I educate on and I share about just products. Like you're saying, what we're consuming, what we're putting on our skin, what we're cleaning our homes with, because so much of that is affecting our, our health and, and like you say, clearing out your dad's home, I mean, when we know that 95% of cancers you can relate it back to environment and diet. That's huge. So that's in our control. Like, when you talk about what can you do, that's in our control. And what you did back as a young woman, you know that was not as healthy.
Speaker 2:
But when we talk about what can we do, that's in our control. That's the perspective that I always come from. It's not going to be perfect. Like you said, what are the steps that we can take? What is, what are things we can do and we can be in control of? Let's do that, because we're exposed to so much, as you know, every day and coming at us toxins from all different directions, that what we can do, that's the best that we can do.
Speaker 1:
right, whatever we can take control of and then do our best, it's never going to be perfect, but once we know, we then have the education to then be able to make better informed decisions and choices. We can't always control our circumstances. We cannot always control what happens to us in this life, but we can control how we perceive it, what we do with it, and then we can make better choices. So even simple little things. So for the people listening to this today and you're like wow, this is, this is eye opening. I have some things going on in my own health and I don't even know where to begin. Begin anywhere, really, really, you can start anywhere and know that it makes a difference. Where I was 20 plus years ago and that tiny little conversation that I had with that nurse who opened my eyes to starting to read food labels and like stop burning Yankee candles because that was no disrupting my hormones at the time, like okay, great, but those swaps that I started to make back then, they made a difference and they all add up. So for some people it's not even in the physical, it's working on our mind. It's calming our nervous system down, using our breath, shifting away from being in fight or flight and calming ourselves down because we know that when we being in fight or flight and calming ourselves down, because we know that when we are in fight or flight, that is going to affect our physiology as well. So pick something that you can start to do, to begin to shift yourself forward. And it's those tiny steps that we take with intention, over and over and over again, with patience and persistence and belief and healing, that create the momentum that is going to lead to that transformation and, before you know it, you're feeling better. That energy compounds and, like you experienced even a decade ago, you thought you were feeling really great and then you learned more and you feel even better.
Speaker 1:
And I'm still doing the same thing. I'm still on my same journey. I'm still learning at this season of my life, in midlife. Things do change in midlife. So what am I being invited to? I'm seeing so many women in this space in midlife. We're being invited to a less is more space in midlife. We're being invited to a less is more, to fighting the noise, to a simpler way of being, to slowing it down. Like, really, why are we moving so fast? Why are we not savoring what is before us? We're not even present in the moment, this precious present moment of time, because we've been so, so programmed to go, go, go and that's that's very toxic to our health A hundred percent.
Speaker 2:
A hundred percent and that's something I share always is just taking just a little bit of time. And it doesn't have to be a lot of time, it can be five minutes, right, and like you're saying one to two things that you want to maybe do a little bit better, or one to two health swaps or snack swaps of something that maybe isn't so healthy, swap it with something that is a little bit healthier for you. So just those little steps add up over time. That's really the bottom line. It's overwhelming and that's not realistic. It's overwhelming and that's not realistic.
Speaker 2:
But if you can take one to two things that you want to do better and work on that and then later maybe add another one to two things, just little steps at a time, that's all that it takes and it adds up over time and it's amazing what such small little tweaks can do. And you're so right in the fact that we're constantly growing and learning and changing and it's a beautiful thing. That's just how it is for ourselves, our lives and our bodies, right, and so being in tune with that and listening to our bodies and what they need is so important. And going back to taking that quiet time being, in the present moment, helps us to do that so much more.
Speaker 1:
It sure does. I was thinking that, as you were saying, the listening. But in order to hear, we have to slow it down, we need to quiet the noise. We are surrounded by so much noise and the noise becomes distractions from being able to hear.
Speaker 2:
I love working with moms and I have a wellness mentorship program and I understand, when we're young moms our children are young it's more challenging, right, but if we can learn early on to take out and carve out those small little moments during the day, it just makes such a world of difference.
Speaker 2:
And, of course, as we are older and wiser, we I mean it comes with the territory we have more wisdom because of what we've experienced and so we can share that with others, and so that's what I love being able to do I'm sure you feel the same way is sharing, you know, our education but also our experience, and helping condense time so we can help those that are trying to figure it out. But we've done that and we've gone through it so we can give them tips and help them and guide them, as you say to to just doing things that are going to help them achieve a just a higher level of wellness and wellbeing and just vitality. So I just I love so much what you're sharing today, jennifer, and I want to be conscientious of your time and our listeners. But how can our listeners reach out and and contact you? I mean, I will put it in the show notes, but what's the best way to?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so my website is JenniferRagazzocom. So that's Jennifer with two N's R-A-G-A-Z-Z-Ocom. You can find me on Instagram. I'm really active on Instagram. I'm in my stories every day just sharing little bits of wisdom and tips for my viewers, and that's Jenniferragazzo. And I also have a free guide 12 ways that Christian women can fight and win the battle against anxiety and fatigue in midlife. So in that guide, if you download that, you'll have that access to that.
Speaker 1:
In the show notes I have a couple self-assessments for four different areas of wellness. So our physical optimization like being able to optimize physical body, emotions, your spirituality and your mindset and then I give three tips like very tangible things that you can start to apply. And when we talk about where do we start. If you just take those tips and that guide and you intentionally and consistently start to apply even just one or two of them, you will experience a shift and that shift again is going to move you forward and up and that's going to create a momentum that will just open you up to more and more and more, a momentum that will just open you up to more and more and more.
Speaker 1:
And I have coaching programs. My coaching programs are the vibrant rise, functional wellness. So I do one-on-one coaching where I go really custom, it's very customized, it's very deep with each individual person that comes before me and we'll dive into all areas of health and wellness, including we do get into functional lab work and functional testing. And then I have a group program and in my group program I teach all the foundations of functional wellness and we walk through them very thoroughly and I teach you to become a super sleuth detective in your own health and wellness and I equip you with so many tools to be able to do that and to create your own shifts in function which again lead to the resolution of all of those symptoms that you're walking around with. So those are my two different current offerings right now.
Speaker 2:
I love that Well when I I'm going to have to have you possibly be a guest coach when I have my mom's wellness program started up again. That'd be amazing to have you in on one of the days. So I will keep you posted about that and I just want to thank you so much for sharing with us today. It's been so inspiring to hear everything from you and I will put all of the information in our show notes for our listeners and any last minute tips or words of advice or inspiration for our listeners today.
Speaker 1:
I just want every single person who is listening today to really, really know that you are so worthy of wellness, that you are deservant of feeling and functioning your very best, and that there is hope. Don't give up looking for answers. Don't stop asking why and invite God into that. Invite God to guide the journey, because he will. He will bring the people the modalities of healing, the answers. He will put them on your path. They may not come in the way that you expect it, but there's hope. So, if you're feeling not the way you desire feeling, and you know that there's more for you, there is more for you that wouldn't be inside of you if there wasn't.
Speaker 2:
Love that. That is beautiful. Thank you so much. And, as you all are listening and hearing, reach out to Jennifer. She has so much to offer to Jennifer. She has so much to offer and I am excited for us to do some collaborating and, you know, work together in the future, because we are very much aligned and I just appreciate you so much for being on today and sharing everything. So thank you so much.
Speaker 1:
Well, you're so welcome and thank you for what you're doing in the world too.
Speaker 2:
Thank you and thank you everyone for listening and, as always, do something for you and your wellness on this day and have a wonderful, beautiful, blessed rest of your week and we'll see you next time. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. I hope you gained value and enjoyed our time together as much as I did, and if you know someone who could benefit from today's episode, I would love and appreciate it if you could share with a friend or rate and review Words of Wellness so that more can hear this message. I love and appreciate you all. Thank you for listening and if you have any questions or topics you would like me to share in future episodes, please don't hesitate to reach out to me through my contact information that is shared in the show notes below. Again, thank you for tuning in to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelley Jeffries and I encourage you to do something for you, for your wellness, on this day. Until next time. I hope you all have a healthy, happy and blessed week. Thank you.
