Author: valebocca

A little bit about me ... I am not sure how interesting this could be, but I guess that if you are going to read any of my posts you may want to know something about the person who wrote it! I am a 47 years old single mum of a wonderful boy living in Ireland, but I was born in Italy and spent most of my life there. The only one dream I have always had (and was aware of) was to travel and have the chance to live abroad to get to know other cultures and lifestyles. I had developed a passion for the English language and wanted to become proficient in it since I was in primary school. With not much money available, I could not really afford to move earlier than I did ... but I cannot only blame the lack of money, had I been a bit braver I could have taken the leap much sooner than I did. Anyway, no time for regrets now, I guess I did it when I was ready to! Being a single mum has really changed my life and it has somehow led to me creating this blog. To cut a long story short, 2-3 years after my son was born I started feeling quite unwell, I had very low energy and bad mood swings. I had made it quite well until then against all odds, being the sole person responsible for the well being of a new human being, completely alone in a foreign country with no family to help me out. When I consulted with my GP, I was told that I was probably stressed or depressed and that was normal given my situation. I knew I was not depressed but I realised I could be very well stressed out so I did what I could to manage my stress and get on with my life and do the best I could for my son. After some time, I had a very hard time at work and I developed severe migraines that kept me in bed for around 2 months! Thankfully, I had an au pair at that time to mind my child while I was at work otherwise I do not know what would have happened to my child as I was totally unable to attend to him! This was the one event in my life that made me understand that I could not attend to others if I was not healthy in the first place! Till then, I had always been the one that would care for anybody around her and neglect herself! I was determined to get better and I did some acupuncture which helped me to control the migraines, although I continued to suffer from them until recent times. After a few months of feeling miserable, I insisted to have a full blood panel and I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, which would explain the mood swings, chronic fatigue, weight gain, and hair loss I was experiencing. I was prescribed the traditional therapy with T4 supplementation which did not work and things only got worse in time. Until last year I touched the bottom, I went on holidays in sunny Spain and despite the sun, the sea, the cheerful people around, I could not drag my body out of the bed in the morning. One day in particular, I spent the whole day in bed in a small hotel room, with my poor child constricted to spend the day confined in the room, bored to death! That was it, looking at him and still not being able to get out of the bed was breaking my heart! I could not take it anymore, I realised I had to do something to get my health back as not doing so would have hugely affected the quality of life I could offer to my child! So I started studying how I could suffice to the lack of proper treatment received from doctors. I spent days and months studying nutrition, stress management, the science behind thyroid and chronic fatigue issues, self-discovery and I realised it is all connected! Totally committed to regain control of my body and mind, I applied all that I learned that made sense and I have now re-gained a good quality of life! And this is why I have created this blog: I know that there are a lot of people like me out there and I want to help them as much as possible by sharing what I have learned and experimented! I really want to help you regain the control of your life, attend to yourself first because it is the only way you can attend to other!