SELF - C.A.R.E. Sunday 🌷

✨ Dropping in to share some bonus highlights from the week: My garden growth & a spontaneous mid-week tennis date 🫑🎾

Reflecting on the week and pulling out a highlight or two to express gratitude for is a beautiful way to romanticize your life more!

What’s been a highlight for you this week? Here are 4 more I want to share with you:

SELF - C. 🌿 A. 🎧 R. 📖 E. 🩸

🌿 Cooking: Homemade PESTO

Thanks to my thriving basil plant in my garden, I decided to try making pesto for the first time. I used to be in love with Trader Joe’s vegan kale, cashew, and basil pesto until I read the ingredient list and saw that it had seed oils :(

So I’ve felt deprived of my favorite pesto pasta for a while. But now I can bring it back a million times better 🥳

Pesto recipe:

With the pesto, I made a version of this sandwich for lunch before tennis 🥪🎾

Then I brought back the pesto pasta that I used to eat every single week for like year straight.

For this I simply sauté zucchini and bell pepper until soft, cook some pasta, then mix pasta, pesto, and veggies in one pot. Add a sprinkle of feta on top and serve for a cozy dinner at home 🍝🌿🤍

As always… it’s FAR better with the homemade ingredients 👩‍🍳🏡💆‍♀️

🎧 Art:

This new podcast is lighting me up with so much joy and inspiration.

I love the way these girls share their personal journeys of creativity and spirituality. Their conversations push me to think more about how to have compassion and understanding for myself and others during our most unflattering moments.

To see two women connected and embodying their truth while helping each other express in new creative ways is a beautiful example that I aspire to do more of myself 🦋💖

📖 Reading:

The Mastery of Love, by Don Miguel Ruiz: 

These books you guys… If everyone in the world read them, so much suffering would be gone.

Last year I read another book by the author, The Mastery of Self, and it blew my mind. Now, The Mastery of Love is giving me the same, jaw to the floor, full body shock at how simple, yet profound every single word is.

I can’t believe this wasn’t my plan right after reading the first book, but now I 100% intend to devour every single book by this author.

These books stem from Toltec tradition, but you don’t need to know anything about this culture or their belief systems before reading to feel deeply within yourself the spiritual truths and wisdom that is shared.

This section really spoke to me when thinking about past friendships and certain seasons of life:

🩸 Enthusiasm:

I’m excited about some girly stuff… learning about women’s infradian rhythm.

Along with our circadian rhythm which is human’s internal clock based on the sun’s rising and setting, the infradian rhythm is something that only menstruating women have. The infradian rhythm is based on our 28 day cycle. 

The reason I’m excited about this is because for the past year, I’ve been focused on healing my hormones. I was reminded how far I’ve come in a year after listening to this podcast with the woman who discovered cycle syncing. 

I almost never got a period for about 8 years, which I used to be happy about. UNTIL I learned that a consistent cycle is a sign of health. So I got off hormonal birth control, prioritized eating from nature, and balanced my circadian rhythm which included sleeping when the sun was down and getting outside at sunrise.

I highly recommend listening to this podcast if you’re interested in this topic or if you don’t have a consistent, pain-free period.

One new thing I learned from the podcast is how our metabolism is affected during each phase of our cycle. I’ve noticed I feel hungrier about a week before my period and it’s because our metabolism speeds up during this time. If we ignore it and don’t eat more than we do during the earlier phases, it creates a deficiency which is what causes PMS symptoms. 

It’s exciting to learn about all of this because up until now, most women assumed that everyone suffered through PMS every single month and it’s not necessary when you learn how to support and nourish your body well during each phase 🧈🥛🥗🚶‍♀️🍲🫖💤

So what’s been a highlight for you this week? 

When did you feel a spark of joy?

What do you love so much about your life right now that you wish everyone could experience it?

Reply and let me know!

🤍 Jaclyn

P.S. If you want to read more like this — meaning all my wellness thoughts, perspectives, and experiences, head over to the blog 🩷 There you’ll find posts on homemade swaps for common store-bought items, natural beauty tips, how to break unhealthy habits, and more!