First thing: Amy’s husband is back to talk infertility + adoption…something that a lot of people requested. Second thing: Not feeling happy??! Amy shares some keys to happiness…things to keep in your back pocket that should help dig you out of a rut. Third thing: Curious about the benefits of drinking matcha tea? Amy breaks down why matcha is an antioxidant powerhouse. Fourth thing: Do Breast Implants Affect Your Health? Bethany Ugarte (@lilsipper) is back on sharing her thoughts on this and why she is having a breast explant surgery (removing implants).
(Episode 22)
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Cast up little food for yourself life. Oh it's pretty Bay,
it's pretty beautiful things, beautiful, laugh for a little mouth
kicking four. Welcome back to another episode of four Things.
(00:35):
Super excited about this one. And you know how in
my song it says be kind, choose joy, laugh a lot,
eat cake. It's part of our joy seeker line in
a squaw that supports Haiti. Well, I lived that this week,
this weekend, this last week, I guess um I ate
cake like three days in a row, and it was amazing.
But that was me just living life, being in the moment,
(00:56):
not trying to miss out. Because I will say there's
times in my life where we would have avoided the cake,
but that would have been zero fun because I was
out in California with my kids. Took him out to
see Mary for the weekend and for my birthday and
we took the kids to Disneyland and all the things.
It was so much fun. But she ordered two of
(01:17):
my favorite cake, so Mama Fuku Milk Bar Store is
my favorite cake ever. She's actually the one that introduced
it to me like four years ago, and I've had
it pretty much, I think, every birthday since then. But
they now have a gluten free version of the birthday cake,
so she ordered the regular cake and the gluten free cake,
and we did taste tests with people like her family
(01:38):
and friends, and nobody could tell the difference. And I
ate both and I couldn't really tell. But honestly, I
think I ended up eating more because I kept going
back and forth between the gluten free one and the
regular one, trying to see if I could really tell
a difference. So I definitely lived out the whole eat
cake thing. I've got you guys covered. If y'all needed
to eat some cake, I ate it for you. And
(02:00):
I turned thirty eight years old. I don't really feel
any different. I guess my jeans feel a little bit different,
but I'm okay with that because I had so much fun.
Like I said, we took the kids to Disneyland, and
they have never done anything like that. I mean, they've
only been in America a year and a half, so
of course they didn't even really know what Disneyland was.
In fact, when we were driving there, you would think
(02:21):
most kids would be so excited on Cloudline it's like
Christmas morning, but my kids were bored and wondering where
we were going, and they didn't understand why Mary and
I were so excited to take them. And then at
the end of the day they had the best time.
We spent like I don't know, seven eight hours there.
And then in the car ride on the way home, Stasshira,
(02:43):
my daughter who's eleven, and she it's kind of hard
to to get to admit when she's having a good time,
like she was so pumped and she just said today
was so much fun. And hearing her say that just
was worth every every penny, you know, going out to
l A, getting the Disney tickets and doing all the stuff, like, yes,
(03:04):
totally totally worth it. So speaking to Mary and being
in California when I was with her, we decided to
on a whim randomly launch our four Things custom pullovers.
So part part of our spat line is four Things,
Like we've got the four Things tote and four Things
pullovers and a little pouch thingy. Well, you can customize
(03:26):
the totes, but you can never customize pullovers, and now
you can. Like we were like, I don't know, we're crazy,
because it's definitely a process and something Mary has said
to work hard on figuring out. But she was like,
you know what, let's just go for it because right
now we're raising money for Project Meta Share, which is
a maternity center in Haiti, and we we just know
that these are going to be a big thing for
(03:48):
people like y'all are gonna love them, and hopefully we
sell a lot, which means we can, you know, send
more to Project Meta Share. So we're like, let's just
go ahead launch it, let's get it out there. And
so yep, if you haven't heard because you haven't really
promoted it, that might yet because again we're trying to
ease into it and take the order slow. But I
thought I would let you guys know that are listening
to the podcast that four things customized pullovers are now available.
(04:11):
There is a limit on them though, um like character wise,
try to think of words that are smaller because it's
a shirt. You can't do as long as you would
on a tote. Like my custom for things pull over
says yoga, netflix, pancakes, and sleep, so all kind of
short ish things like thirteen is the character limit, but
try to stick with eleven. We think eleven looks best.
(04:34):
But anyway, you can check all that out if you
go to Radio Amy dot com and scroll down and
click on ESPOI and pimp Enjoy. There's a little picture there.
Click on that. It'll take you right to everything that
you need to shop and support Haiti. So, I guess
let's talk about today's episode. Pretty pumped to have my
husband back. He is talking infertility and adoption, something that
(04:56):
a lot of people requested. So that's the first thing.
Second thing, if you're not feeling happy, I mean, sometimes
we just aren't feeling that happy and we can't get
out of the rut. Well, I'm gonna share some keys
to happiness stuff to kind of keep in your back
pocket that will help dig you out if you feel stuck.
Third thing, if you're curious about the benefits of drinking
macha tea, well I'm gonna break down why it is
(05:18):
considered an antioxidant powerhouse and I personally drink a Macho
lat pretty much every day. Fourth thing, to breast implants
affect your health. I've got Bethany Ugarte back at Little Sipper.
She was on a couple of weeks ago talking about
how she healed herself by eating a certain way. She
healed her digestive issues and ibs. So great episode. If
(05:41):
you want to go back and listen to that, if
you've got stomach issues, I think you'll find it really beneficial.
And following her, but she's back on sharing her thoughts
on this and why she is having a breast explant
surgery which is removing the implants. So now that all
of that is said, let's just go ahead and get
right into today's episode. Here we go. First, I've got
(06:04):
my husband here to talk adoption and infertility, which is
a request that we've gotten from a lot of you.
So I got him in here to talk about it,
which we're I feel like, well, we're not experts, but
we have been through infertility, we've been through adoption, and
we're now the proud parents of two beautiful Haitian kiddos
(06:25):
that are much older than we thought we were gonna be.
Like when we got married, honestly, I thought, oh, I'll
probably get pregnant. Let's be married for two years and
then I'll get pregnant, and then we'll have a baby,
and maybe we'll have three kids. But wouldn't it be
fun to maybe have five? And then we never I mean,
have you seen my head? Right? But three five kids?
(06:48):
What's a basketball? Team, I know exactly. So then we
know we weren't able to get pregnant. It seemed like
my sister's popped out four babies, your sister gave birth
to three kid. You know, nobody could give us an explanation.
And all of our friends were having babies. And then
(07:08):
every month there I was buying pregnancy tests negative and
you know, I wonder how much money we've spent on
pregnancy tests A lot. And then but I mean, you
were in the Air Force, so you were gone six
months out of the year. So during that time we
had to be strategic, like the six months that you
would go two months gone overseas, two months home, two
(07:30):
months gone, two months home. So the two months that
you were home, we would would have to be strategic
because that's two chances to get pregnant, basically maybe three,
defends on time, depending on that. And then I would
always start my period and it would just be it
just I remember being in our first house in Southern Pines,
North Carolina, a little white, two bedroom, one bath house
(07:54):
with our dog Josie, and I just remember being in
our little bathroom and I would start my peerad and
I would be able or you know, I'd get a text,
like an excited group text that someone else in our
family or friend circle was pregnant, and you want to
be so happy for them. At the same time, it
hurts because you can't get pregnant and you're desperately trying, right,
(08:17):
I mean, you don't have the same emotions of like
you didn't have to start your period, but I mean
I did, and then I would have to come tell you, well,
it didn't work this month I started my period. So
then we started seeing that fertility specialist on bass At
for brag and I had to go get my fallopian
tubes tested. And they yeah, because I walked in and
(08:38):
they were wearing camo or b d U S or whatever.
What does b d u S stand for uniform? Okay,
they were wearing battle dress uniform. I walked in if
I felt like, yeah, I was in Afghanistan when I wasn't.
Let me tell you when I'm about to have my
I'm doing stuff with my girl parts, like I want
(08:59):
to walk in, not feel like camo. You want to
have flower hats on? Like no, But I mean, I
know we had to go on base, but I was
used to going to all females my whole life like
it being like a guy innacologist girl office, like hey,
and then here I am on base, like going to
this fertility doctor. He was one of the best in country.
And actually we were really lucky to be in a
(09:19):
base that had a fertility specialist because not all bases did.
And weren't they one of the guys that they're like,
if you even look at this guy, you're gonna get pregnant,
and you'll get pregnant with twins. And was like, oh
my gosh, could you imagine if we had twins? Shoot me,
not really, I'd be happy with it, but I know
that having twins is really difficult, so uh huh, double
(09:42):
the fun. So okay, and I say that now having
adopted two kids, older kids from Haiti at the same time,
like two at once was a lot, But now that
we're a year into it, I'm like, Okay, no problem,
it's great. Like it's well, but they're not screaming like
diaper changing, the we have other things. Well, yeah, we
have other things, But what I'm saying is like we're
(10:03):
not like, hey, you do the diaper, you do the
diaper like type of stuff. Yeah, No, I we're just
dealing with other stuff. Hats off to that is parents
out there that have multiple babies at once like I,
or even one baby like hats off. So one of
the benefits of adopting, right, Yes, older children, they're potty trained.
(10:25):
That's cool. So I went on base and he had CAMO.
Turns out it wasn't my fallopian tubes. We had all
the tests done and we were fine. Like it was
totally like, I was fine, you got tested, you were fine.
And then we saw another fertility doctor in Austin, even
once you got out of the Air Force, and then
we there was another one we went to anyway, but
that guy was really that was another one. That's when
(10:47):
that Kevin said, He's like, listen, you even walk in
this guy's office, you're gonna get it. Like you like,
both of us may get pregnant. That's how confident here. Yeah,
is that like a thing that people say, look at
this fortuity, even look him in the eyes, and you're
gonna get pregnant, which I guess is a great thing
to hear, especially if you're gonna be spending money. We
really decided early on, first of all, our experience with
(11:07):
fertility doctors. Was mostly just testing to see why we
weren't getting pregnant, and then from there we needed to
make a decision did we want to do IVF or
not and we opted not to. Well, you were nuts
as it was on that pill. Well that's one thing
we did do that the fertility doctor recommended. I mean,
(11:29):
it's not your fault. I'm just saying like we couldn't,
like we goose couldn't handled more emotions. Okay, So to
explain the pill that you're talking about, I took clond
which is a drug that makes your eggs more attractive.
You can't create more eggs than you already have, like
all the eggs we have as women were born with
those eggs and there they are, so um, I couldn't
make anymore, but I could make them a little more
(11:50):
attractive to Ben's sperm. But yeah, so, but I couldn't
take it really long enough to make a difference because
it made me crazy and I made everybody around like
literally it was nuts, like everybody was. It was like
everybody walking around and like defense, like you see those
(12:11):
women's defense classes where they wear the whole padded suit.
It's like what I felt like everybody around you have
the nut harmful emotional cup to get close to you,
an emotional cup. You were never harmed in the process.
Emotionally fried, there was no emotion. There was nothing to
tell which left or right? What was going to happen? Okay, fine,
(12:34):
I right. Then you're angry and laughing at the same time. Yes,
I would get angry. So anyway, we opted to get
off that, and then that's when adoption really so when
we were in North Carolina, adoption was really on my heart,
even though we continued. When we moved to Austin to
(12:54):
seek fertility help, the adoption seat had already been planted.
And in North Carolina you were pretty hesitant. But you
did start reading that book Adopted for Life, which you know,
I think is something that changed your point of view
right after you read it, because you really were having
(13:14):
a hard time with like not having the Brown kids,
like that's our last name, Like you wanted kids with
our blood, Our genetics are everything, are you know? The
Brown I wasn't against adopting, Like there's two things, like,
I wasn't against adopting to start. I just was thought, like, hey,
let's why are we giving up on trying ourselves, like
(13:35):
I I just had never like I'm resistant to change,
as you know, whereas my wife knows. And so I
was just like, hey man, well let's keep trying. Let's
not give up so early. UM. So reading that book
Adopted for Life is really kind of the thing that
if you know, if to me, you can get you
can't even I couldn't even get through the introduction without
(13:55):
being changed on my perspective of what adoption was and
what it means to be adopted. UM. And I was never,
like I said, I was never against a growing up.
It just was nothing I had seen. Yeah, I mean
we just didn't think that we would need to do
it because we would get pregnant. Um. And so then
I've got I wanted to say that Russell More, Russell
(14:16):
Dmore is the author of the book in case anybody
else is interested in they want to check this out,
because you know, I think that it was an important
book for us, and it could help you if you're,
you know, trying to figure out if you're thinking about it.
You can't get through the intro without going I could
do this. Okay, that's helpful information, especially like for you two, Yes,
(14:38):
you have a hard time changing the plan because our
plan was, you know, have our own babies. And then
when that wasn't which I would pray for that all
the time, like Lord, just like when are we going
to get pregnant? Like we would pray for that. And
then now I'm so thankful that our prayer wasn't answered
because now we have Stevenson and Stashira, and that was
the plan for us. That was the plan for us,
(15:00):
and that's what we no. I definitely agree. And then
I think the other parts, so the two there were
two things for me that we're critical. I think you
were always kind of on board. You were excited, you
wanted to build our family, whether we had apparently three
of our own and two we adopted. Somehow we were
getting to five that I didn't know about. But the
second part was when we met with a fertility doctor
(15:20):
in Austin, and and that that guy, right from the beginning,
remember like on like a napkin, he drew out the
female parts, like the internal stuff, which was super fun, honestly, Yeah,
my favorite. Like so we're going through and he's drawing
this and he's like, hey, this is a sience of this,
this is a sience of this and then he draws
the loop where they connect on the outside and goes
(15:41):
in this area, we don't know what happens. And I
was like, wait a second. Kevin said, this is the
leading fertility doctor in Texas and this guy is telling
me as a scientist he does still doesn't know what
happens in this sect. Like, as a scientist, you don't know.
So that told me that this was God telling us, like,
this is what he wanted us to do. He wanted
(16:02):
us to adopt because we knew we didn't know that
there was anything physically wrong with either one of them.
Actually still could probably get pregnant, right, which would be
a crazy town. Yeah, it would be crazy. But at
the same point, like literally, like when he said I
don't know what's going we don't know what's happening here,
I was like, Okay, he wants us to do this,
he wants us to adopt, so spindly like we're just
(16:26):
trusting this is what's going to happen instead of us. Now,
adoption was expensive for US, especially international, but for us,
like we knew of friends that spent thousands and thousands
of dollars on IVF on fertility treatment and then it
wasn't successful. So then that money is just gone unless
they you know, reinvest or do it again, do it again,
(16:47):
and see what happens. Now it is successful for some people,
but there was some a lot of your military friends
they had to do this. I'm thinking one couple in
particular where they had some unsuccessful goes and I think
they were like thirty grand deep. I mean, and this
is a military family, like this is either all their
savings or they're in debt like I don't even know,
or like they did fundraisers or where they got the money. Um,
(17:10):
I mean that's personal, you know, however you get that,
but it's not like it was a cheap thing and
we like bucks in the military, like that's a lot,
Like that's a lot of money, right, so we don't
have that. We decided that we were just gonna put
the money where we knew was a guarantee for us
(17:30):
and that these kids, our kids were already born and
they needed a family. And so that's how we made
that decision. Which that's not for everybody, and no judgment.
If you want to spend a million dollars trying with IVF,
like go for it that's this is not it's just
our story. And so we didn't want to spend the
money on that and and it not work out. Like
(17:53):
we wanted to spend the money on kids that were
that needed a home, that were born and we're a guarantee,
which getting our kids was definitely hard, and there were
some days where it wasn't necessarily necessarily a guarantee. It
was a bumpy road for sure, but we have them now.
It took five years, but even even bigger part like
(18:13):
so today like officially, like I'm super excited about it
for a few seconds, like literally in the mail, got
the final piece of paperwork he says, certificate of citizenship,
which you get separate after the adoptions. So we're a
year whatever into having the kids here and we got
their certificate, which means now I just got done into
Social Security Office. We're going to get so security numbers
(18:35):
and that's like that's that's when they're legit, Like nobody
can question it. There's no well are they legal? Are
they not legal? Like we're getting passed for an American.
That means we can take them back to Haiti to
we can do all the things. It's all official but
this is like the final I've got birt we goose
have birth certificates. We think we goose a lot. You
already said it, like maybe that was on the Q
(18:56):
and A, but it's because that's that's a movie quote
that's from Top Gun if y'all haven't seen that movie.
And my husband's a pilot. So I'm just explaining because
people will be like, who's goose? Is goose in there?
Everybody knows that every there's no goose in the room.
I know it too. I'm just clarifying, Um, okay, so yes,
we goose. We have Now they're official like birth certificates,
(19:17):
birth certificates, and yes American, they're born in Tennessee. Well
basically well their certificates as it reborn in Tennessee. It's
pretty awesome reborn. It's pretty great because it's huge like this,
like tracking this stuff down. If anybody who goes through
this and anybody in the adoption process, just no, like
(19:40):
it's not easy and it's so much paperwork that nobody
is on your side and it's not in your favor.
It's actually set up against you. So just it's just
I'm just saying, just be patient. There are people on
our side. There are people on your side. There are
people on your side. I'm just saying, like, just be patient.
You have to be patient because a lot of times
it seems like everybody is against you because it should
(20:02):
be easier, but it's just not. But we had a
lot of amazing people help us along the way, and
we had a lot of people create annoying roadblocks. But
it and we're legal. Okay, well let's celebrate. So I
hope that this helped if an even if you listening
have been considering adoption or you're dealing with infertility, know
(20:23):
that you are not alone, and that especially if you're
a couple like us, we're just unknown. Like some people
can give you an answer like right away, well it's
because your husband X y Z, you can't get pregnant,
or your wife has this this this year, there's no
way you're pregnant. Like, we literally have not been given
an answer. So we live in that unknown space, which
(20:44):
is really crazy, but we have. It took us a
long time to accept it, but now I think we're
at peace with it and I better not get pregnant, okay,
right right, yeah, right, have any idea it Like we
we're talking about. I'm just happy. We're through the paperwork. Okay,
we got we got two kids. Slip you just go ahead.
(21:06):
Any questions just call slip into her d M. Yes,
my d M. My instagram is at Radio Amy, and
then my email is four Things with Amy Brown at
gmail dot com. You can hit me up. Slide into
my email. It's not slip, it's slide into the You don't.
(21:27):
You can't slip into a d M. Now you slide
into a d M. What's the difference slip in and sliding?
Slide sounds more cool? Okay, all right, thanks for coming on,
Baby love It. I saw an article that said the
keys to happiness that are scientifically proven, like if you
do these things like you'll bring happiness into your life,
(21:48):
and happiness is something that we definitely like to promote
here on the podcast. So I thought I would just
run through some of this stuff because maybe you're stuck
in a rut and you're just not really feeling that
happy and you need little reminders like this. This is
stuff you can just keep in your back pocket figuratively speaking,
unless you literally want to write them down and keep
(22:09):
them in your back pocket and pull them out for
a rainy day, which saying that, like, literally, I just
had a thought that came into my mind. I had
no intention talking about this, but when I think of
writing things down, I don't always think of this. But anyway,
let me just get to the point this story popped
in my head of this blind date I went on
with this guy, and we had been emailing back and forth,
(22:30):
but again we didn't really know each other, and we
decided to meet up. And in the email we were
talking about the weather or no. Actually I think I
said whether or not you want to do this, but
I spelled it like the weather, you know, w E
A T h E R. But I don't know if
it was auto correct, but obviously I know the difference
(22:52):
between whether or not and the weather and the sky. Well,
he was being cute and on the date he pulled
this piece of paper from his back pocket and opened
it up slowly, and he's like, well, since we're getting
to know each other, I just have a few things
before we really get into this day that I need
to clarify before I keep talking to you. And I
(23:13):
don't remember all the things on the piece of paper,
but one of the things was can you please spell
whether like whether or not. And I was like w
h E t h E R. And then he was like, okay,
we can keep we can keep going with this date
because literally he was concerned that I didn't know the
difference and if I didn't, then he didn't think he
(23:33):
could keep dating me. So I just had that because
right when I said keep in your back pocket, for
whatever reason, this guy that I haven't thought of in
a year's probably like fourteen years or something, now I'm
thinking of him pulling that piece of paper out of
his back pocket. So totally random, has nothing to do
with the Key to Happiness. Which speaking of that guy too,
(23:55):
So he had carpet time we were twenty we were
like twenty three years old. He had carpal tunnel syndrome
in his arm from using his computer mouse too much
because he was an engineer or something and he had
to at work. He had this red dot he would
put on his forehead that his computer recognized. It was
(24:17):
like this piece of tape he would put on there,
and his head became the mouse because his arm, his
carpal tunnel syndrome was so bad he couldn't he couldn't
use the mouse. Anymore. And we were young, and he
would like shake his head around and around and it
would go on his computer and that was his mouse. Yeah.
I think I think we only went out like twice
(24:38):
or three times. Maybe I have no idea what he's
doing now. Hey might be listening to this podcast, but
probably not. Okay, so here are some some things that
will make you happy. These are keys to happiness that
are scientifically proven. Okay, giving to others, do things for
other people, like seriously, maybe go try doing three ran
(25:00):
of extra acts of kindness today. Bring a smile to someone.
It's sort of like pimp and joy, which is another
thing we promote. Choose joy, spread joy. I mean, it
could be simple, like get the door for someone, just
smile at them, use your manners, say please and thank you.
I don't know, like something. I don't know what manners
really has to do with that. I guess I'm working
on manners with my kids, but I don't know that
(25:21):
would necessarily be like you're doing something for others, but
maybe showing respect to your elders. Okay, connect with other people,
make more time for people who really matter to you,
which I definitely need to do this some girlfriends and
I went on a walk the other day and we're like,
why are we not doing this? More? Like, this is
(25:41):
so great to connect And seriously, we have every intention
of trying to do it and having that quality girl
time on a walk and catching up and talking about
girl things and marriage and life and babies and husbands
and you know all the stuff. And you know what,
we're on a group tech still trying to make it
happen again, and you know, and other two months will
probably go by before we actually get together. Exercising taking
(26:06):
care of your body can make you feel happy. I mean,
notice how it lifts your mood once you do it.
Like nobody ever wants to go into exercise. Nobody's ever
pumped up like yeah, I'm going to work out, But
you don't ever regret having worked out. You normally feel
awesome and you're proud of yourself for doing it and
working out. Releases and doorphins and doorphins make you happy.
(26:26):
So I could see how that's a key to happiness. Uh,
be appreciative, notice the world around you, Like, just stop,
maybe take a couple of minutes to just breathe in,
be in the moment. What's the saying smell the roses.
Maybe you literally could smell a rose and I don't know.
Maybe take time to learn something new, they say, trying
(26:47):
stuff out can make you happy, Like learn a new skill,
like however small it is, or maybe it's something big.
Have goals to look forward to. Maybe think of a
goal that you're aiming for and do one thing to
get it started, because maybe it's hard to start it,
Like if it's a goal you're like, it could be daunting,
but maybe just move an inch closer to getting there. Uh,
(27:08):
take a positive approach to your emotions because again, like
if you're feeling down, you're not necessarily feeling happy. We'll
just try to smile and say something positive every time
you walk into a new room or something. That's the
challenge they put forth, Like you know, every time you
walk into a new room, like think of something positive
or look in the mirror and smile and say something
positive to yourself, like it really can help. Like that's
(27:31):
the power of positivity. And then acceptance is another key
to happiness, like being comfortable with who you are. Be
as kind to yourself as you are to others. I
think a lot of times you can we we can
be really really hard on ourselves, and we talk to
ourselves in our heads in a way that we would
never talk to somebody else. But for whatever reason, we're
(27:53):
okay with like being rude to ourselves and then find
meaning like be a part of something bigger, which I
think is huge, like give your time to support a
good cause and find ways where you can get involved
and whatever that looks like for you. Um, you know
we have outlets on this show or through this podcast
or through the Bobby Bone Show where if you're looking
(28:15):
for a way to get involved, well, Pimp and Joy
is an easy way to do it. I've been telling
you all right now, All Pimp and Joy stuff goes
to Tornado relief and for those that need it, like
they've lost everything. I mean, imagine being those shoes and
you could get a Pimp and Joy hat or shirt
or something cute that reminds you to choose joy, and
then every time you wear you'll know you made a
difference with it. That's being a part of something bigger.
(28:35):
Pimp and joys a movement that we have where you
can do that, or even a spua like anything you
buy from a squad goes towards supporting UH ending the
orphan cycle in Haiti right now. So those are little
ways that I know where you can be a part
of something bigger that you know where I'm proud to
be a part of. But it doesn't even have to
be that. Find something else, like find something in your community,
(28:58):
whatever it is. I'm just throwing those out. There's options
that I'm passionate about. So there you go. Those are
some things, according to science that will make you happy.
And I hope that that helps if you're feeling in
a rut and you drop those down, keep them in
your back pocket, bust them out when you need to.
(29:20):
Something I pretty much have every single day is a
macha latte, one that I make at home, and I
get messages from you all the time like wanting to
make it or you're asking why do I drink it?
What are the health benefits of macha? So I thought
I would make it a thing and share with you
all today some of the benefits. I did a little
research because I kind of wanted to know myself. Honestly,
(29:40):
I just had heard it was good for you, So
I started drinking it and then I just really really
liked it and it's something that I enjoy. I drink
it hot or iced. So you can check out the recipe.
I have it in my highlights page like what I
used to make it on Instagram. Under highlights, just go
to a Radio Amy and then at radio amy dot com.
Even under my Amazon page age that's linked there, you
(30:01):
can shop some of the stuff that I use for
my Macho latt's. But here is what I found while
I was researching machet tea. Pretty much its nickname is
an antioxidant powerhouse, and I'm just going to run through
some reasons why. First of all, Macha powdered green tea
has a hundred and thirty seven times more antioxidants than
(30:22):
regular brewed green tea. So when you're shopping for it
at the store online, just make sure that it's powder,
because I've been at the grocery store before and accidentally
bought tea bags and it's not the same. It's not
the same thing. You gotta buy the powder. And one
cup of Macha equals ten cups of regularly brewed green
tea in terms of nutritional content, so it's unparalleled nutrition.
(30:46):
Like I said, it's packed with antioxidants, a boost metabolism
and burns calories, detoxifies effectively and naturally calms the mind
and relaxes the body. It's rich in fiber, chlorophyll, and
vide mints, which chlorophyll that reminds me. I haven't been
doing this for a while, but I bought some chlorophyll
drops and I used to just drop some in my
(31:08):
water and make it this really pretty green and I
felt really healthy. I wonder why I quit doing that.
I gotta go find my chlorophyll drops. I'll keep you
all posted on that, and then if you need to
start doing that or you want to, you can just
research it. I do know it's good for you. Now
back to macha. It enhances mood and aids in concentration.
I definitely need that, provides vitamin C, chromium, zinc, and magnesium.
(31:32):
Prevents disease. Okay, I'll give it that. Maybe because it's
so high in anti accidents, lowerst cholesterol, and blood sugar.
So it says here machete is an easy and simple
way to add powerful health benefits to your everyday diet.
So if you want to make it a part of
your morning routine, I feel like my recipe is pretty
good I mix it with almond milk and a little
(31:53):
liquid stevia and cinnamon. Tastes really good. If I'm feeling
really basic, I put and pumpkin spice like a seasoning,
which if you all don't have pumpkin spice seasoning in
your cabinet, you're missing out because you can sprinkle that
on all kinds of things and it just like makes
you feel like you're having a pumpkin spice latte or
even oatmeal, and all this you can make at home.
(32:16):
One of our followers or listeners Johnny. Johnny, if you're listening,
you know I'm talking about you. But he posted to
Mary and I that he went and bought the Starbucks
Macha Latte. Because Macha latte or matcha in general is
gaining popularity, you're going to see it start popping up
places like Starbucks now has it, which is what Johnny tried,
and he didn't really like it. So I've never had
(32:37):
that one. I can't speak to it, but I have
ordered Macha latte's out, but I really really prefer my
recipe and the one that I make at home because
I can control everything else that is in it. So
Macha does have benefits, um so, and those of them,
I ran through them really quickly for you. Um again,
if you're trying to find the right one. Sometimes they
don't really taste the same. There is a cheaper one
(33:00):
I found on Amazon, because macha can be expensive but
it'll last a little while. But the one I found
on Amazon that was cheaper, it just does not taste
as good. So I don't feel good recommending that one,
But anyway, give it a try if you want to.
I'm here, I'm looking at a list of like the
antioxidant analysis of Macha green tea, and it's got Macha
(33:21):
on here, pomegranate, blueberries, broccoli, and spinach, and Macha is
basically off the charts when it comes to anti accidents.
So who knew basically you'd have to eat like a
bajillion blueberries to have the same effect as macha by
looking at this chart. And obviously I'm exaggerating, but dang,
even I didn't know how great Macha tea was for
you much of powdered green tea, So definitely check it
(33:43):
out if you are looking for something new. You can
have it hot or ice, so it's great in the
winter or in the summer. I'm excited to have Bethany
Garte back on. She's at Little Sipper on Instagram L
(34:04):
I L S I P P E R, and she
was on not too long ago talking about uh, you know,
ibs and a lot of digestive issues she had to
deal with. Bethany, So glad to have you back on.
I know when you were on last time, we talked
about you coming back to talk about your breast implants
and why you are getting them removed, how they can
(34:24):
harm the body. Full disclosure. I don't talk about this
too often, but I have talked about it on the
Bobby Bones Show before. When I was twenty four, was four, yeah,
maybe twenty three, I got breast implants, and it was
something I always wanted to do. I was very insecure
about that. I can't even remember, like I mean, my
(34:47):
parents were all about it, like friends. My mom drove me.
I think my dad picked me up or maybe my
step mom at the time, but it was it was
definitely something I mean, I was young. I look back
now and think like, wow, I don't know that I
could have done it if I didn't have all that support.
But then I'm like, why were so many people supporting me,
but it just was common in in our family circle.
(35:09):
A lot of people I knew had them, a lot
of girls that I knew had them, And again it
was just something I was insecure about. I feel okay
with them, but I am extremely curious as to what
your story is and your removal of them. And maybe
this will resonate with somebody else listening that's either thinking
about getting them or has them and is considering taking
(35:32):
them out. Yeah. Well, and it's great that you had
that support and UM. In fact, I had that support
to my My parents drove me there, drove me back,
and I got it done solely for myself. I didn't
try to UM. I didn't do it to to please
someone else. So I feel like so many people do
have them, you know, as long as you're doing it
(35:53):
for the right reasons, you know, and have that support. UM.
And I was about UM at the time. However, you know,
looking back, not knowing then what I know now about
implants and how they can really cause a lot of
gas to intestinal disorders as well as really affects your
immune system and make you susceptible to viral infections, bacteria, infections,
(36:18):
even formation of antibodies because breast i plants are a
foreign object put into the body, and so your body
reacts as kind of like a defense mechanism, and it
responds with so many inflammatory issues. So because it for
an object in your body, it's almost like your body
is constantly having this autoimmune thing going on. So after
(36:39):
tons and tons of research, and of course I had
my implants put in before my huge IBS flare, which
is let me um, I'll just say to yes, the
ib S flare and you like you were basically on
your deathbed, which you did talk about in the other
podcasts that you were on. So again, if people haven't
listened to that, they can go back and listen to it.
And they even see pictures on your website. It really
(37:02):
is so scary. So you'll probably address this. But do
they think the breast implants caused part of your flare up?
No one really, even if I go to doctors even today,
because I'm you know, it's full disclosure. I mean, spacy
your doctor. I'm I'm personally just I haven't had a
good experience with doctor pers So you know, they think, oh,
your breast implants, they're fine, don't worry about it. But
(37:24):
I'm definitely not blaming my my huge ibs flare from
my implants. Definitely not. It was a whole, you know,
other issue of not being able to digest things. However,
I do feel that it has contributed to some aspects
of how I'm feeling. And I feel like once I
do get them out, because I do still have them,
they will eventually or my body will hopefully be like
(37:48):
because I think we all still get upset from digestion
and stress of life, and that's just that's just life.
You know. It's just something that I had done a
lot of research on. And there's something called breast implant illness.
I mean, you could just type that in and look
it up, and there's so many people that have these
testimonies of once they got their breast and plants out,
they felt so much better. They weren't getting stick as much,
(38:09):
they weren't getting the flu, they had less inflammation. You know,
it's just something to think about if you know someone
have them, or thinking about getting them to really search
breast and plant illness prior and so you know, of
course I'm not judging anyone that does have them. This
is something that I've been wanting to do for a while,
and I was supposed to get them out about a
(38:29):
year ago, and then I went into a coma about
a week right before I was supposed to get my surgery. Um,
talk about that real quick, because that's all right, don't yeah,
it's it's very interesting. And I it was completely obviously unexpected,
and um my SODIU to keep it short. My sodium
levels dropped just super suddenly, and I went into a
(38:51):
state of shock, and I went I was in a
coma for about three days, and they didn't think I
was going to come out of it, or they thought
I would be a vegetable the rest of my life.
And it's taken about a year to recover, which is
the average time for someone that's ever been in a
comma to recover. And that's one of the reasons why
I have waited to get my breast implants out, is
to make sure that my body is fully ready to
(39:13):
go and undergo something so drastic after after a comma,
because it takes time. When I woke up from the coma,
Praise God, I was just you know, I didn't know
where I was at first, and um, I couldn't write
my name on a piece of paper for a couple
of weeks like it was. I mean, it looks like
a kindergartener was writing my name. I had blurred, like
my speech just wasn't correct. You know. Working with the
(39:35):
holistic doctor that I worked with prior for my digestive issues,
he helped me get back and here I am today,
and it's just amazing. Um, everything that I've gone through,
and to anyone that's been through it doesn't have to
be a comma, but to anyone that's been through something
so traumatic, just to know that you know you can,
(39:56):
you can keep going and that there's hope. I mean,
I was, I've been divorced, my husband left me. It's
just been you know, I was molested. There's just so
many things in my past and I just don't this
is like going. I don't know where this conversation is going.
But I just really wanted to just say, hey, you
know what, there's hope for whatever you have in the
past or whatever you're going through, to keep going because
(40:17):
you know you're going to make it. So just to
knock it up. Yeah, I just got goose bumps too,
because I didn't really know. I thought, you know, obviously
we were just going to do this segment on the
breast implant, but then your coma came up, which then
kind of probably led you to think of, you know
that you're so thankful and grateful to now be living.
You know, you're you're better like they thought you might
be a vegetable, and you probably are just feeling a
(40:38):
lot of gratitude and thankfulness to be back to yourself.
And then I think that probably led you to want
to just encourage people to know that there's hope, which
made you think of you have been through a lot
in your life, but you are someone that you're not
going to let that stuff define you. So now I
got I got a little bit of goose bumps because yeah,
you know where to know you didn't at all Like
(40:59):
I That's what I want this podcast to be encouragement
and inspiration to anybody listening. And sometimes you never know
that one person that might need to hear it that like, hey, gosh,
why is my life? So you know, some people go
through more things than others. But when you see like
what I see in you, I see a lot of
strength and tenacity and faith and hope. And sometimes someone
(41:20):
listening may need that reminder of like how yeah, like
crazy awful things happen, but you can pick yourself up
and you can get through it. And you can use
your your story to be um an encouragement to others,
which is what you do on your Instagram, Like your
stories are so great. I you take time to respond
(41:41):
to as many people as possible because so many people
come to you with questions and when you're full of
the knowledge that you have on these particular subjects, especially
with health and well being and digestion and just taking
care of of your body. Yeah, I mean you you
truly care about your your fall wers and this has
become your because you had to quit. This came up
(42:03):
in the last podcast that I did with you, but
you mentioned having to quit your dream job to take
care of yourself. So when you're taking care of yourself,
then you're at home. And fortunately these days there's ways too.
We have platforms with Instagram and whatever people use, YouTube
or whatever people use to be their thing, and it
seems like Instagram and your website is your thing, but
(42:25):
that's now your business, Like that's not what you do
to survive, and you've dedicated so much of your time
and energy. Now see, now I'm the one taking it
off topic, but I'm just passionate right now because I'm like, Okay,
she has been through a lot, and she she's not
letting it define her, and she's still wanted to get
out there and help others. And you do do that,
and you do it, you do it so well, and
(42:45):
you you try to give. You try to give so
much of yourself to people. And I see that in
your instant stories and in your comments that you take
the time to respond to people and in your recipe
creations and your ways to try to give people a
way to have, like something awesome to eat when they
may not be able to eat. You know, the real
crappy thing like you even have on your website. You
(43:07):
have like a twix bar recipe that's, you know, mimics
a twig spar Now, is it gonna taste exactly like
a twickspart? No, because it doesn't have all the crazy
process sugar and chemicals and stuff. But you've done your
best to recreate something so that people and and listen,
we all should be eating this way anyways, because we
don't need to put those chemicals in our body. But literally,
(43:27):
you can't eat that, or you may not live. Now
I might be able to go eat it. I'm gonna
feel crappy, but I'm I'm it's not going to send
me into some inflammation craze spiral. Actually I will get inflamed,
but not it's not going to affect me on a
level at least yet, like ten years from now if
I keep it up. Because certain things are carcinogenic. Who knows,
(43:48):
Like I may be feeding something into my body and
inflammation leads to disease, and you know, I may pay
for it down the line. But I think, just to
wrap up what I'm saying is I don't want people
to go there and make the twigs bar and be like, well, shoot,
this doesn't taste like a TwixT bar, but you know what,
it tastes similar, and you're giving that gift to people.
It tastes better. You're giving that gift to people, um,
(44:09):
free of all the crap, and you're you're working hard
on it. So I just want people to know that
that you're there and you're you're grinding it, yeah, and
you take it a week yeah, And you know, to
be someone who had to give up their dream job
because of their health and then now to kind of
create a job out of that as someone on Instagram
(44:30):
that can be there for people. I don't know, I
just think it's super cool. So I want people to
go check out your stuff and check out your page
at Little Sipper l A L S I P pe er.
No judgment for the breast implant people, but you just
want people to be informed. And so what is it
that they can google breast implant illness, Yes, breast implant illness,
breast implant awareness, things like that, and um, you know,
(44:53):
just make sure that you you educate yourself and you
know both in before you know doing something or maybe
you have them and your bariencing all these ib s upsets.
That could be the light bulb and it's worth checking
out for sure. Yeah, I'm actually on your website right
now while I'm talking to you, and I'm looking at
your five ingredient cookie dough bread. I made that, I
guess a couple of weeks ago, and my kids even
(45:16):
liked it, which they are so hard to please. But yeah,
and it's got I mean, check it out. It's so easy.
It's got four eggs, one teaspoon, baking soda, a cup
of cashew butter, a heaping scoop of vital proteins collagen peptides.
Now you recommend the vanilla collagen peptides, what which you know,
I'll have to go order, but I just have the
(45:37):
blue can the regular collagen peptides. Can I use that
and add some like vanilla extract or something? Yeah, yeah
you can. Um. You know, I used the collagen because
it's so great for gut health. Of course it adds protein. Um,
but the vanilla just add you know, that true vanilla
taste because it has real vanilla bean in it. Um
(45:59):
extracts where some people can be an ib s upset. Okay,
it has you know, alcohol in it and things like that.
So I guess what I buy organic non alcohol vanilla extract.
I try to make sure it's not alcohol. So anyway,
I'm just throwing that out there. Is like something that
I made and my kids actually really liked it, and
(46:21):
so did I. Like, we ate the whole loaf of bread.
So that's something that yeah, a kid approved and some
stuffs has been approved, and you know, you just got
to give it a try, play around with some of
the recipes, see how you feel. But thank you Bethany
for coming back on and um, hopefully a lot of
people will go check you out. Thank you, Amy. That's
(46:43):
a wrap on today's episode. A big thank you to
my husband and Bethany for coming on and being the
guests for this week's episode. And another thank you I
want to send now is to all the people that
have rated and reviewed the podcast. I went over to
iTunes and was checking it out the other day and
I was like, what, like, this is amazing, Like y'all
are awesome, and if you haven't been able to do it,
(47:05):
but you could take the time to do it, and
you really do like the podcast and you want to
give it five stars, that would be awesome as well.
So this is me thanking you if you've already done it,
and then me thanking you in advance if you're going
to do it. And also this is the time where
I do my email shout out. You never know if
your email is going to pop up in here, but
y'all can send me emails. Four things with Amy Brown
(47:26):
at gmail dot com. And this one came from Jessica
and she pretty much wanted to know what that quote
is that I butcher all the time? The look good
you feel good, feel good, do good quote, and I
never get it right. And honestly, I didn't even know
who originally said it, and I don't know that I
knew the exact quote. That's obviously I was never getting
it right. So I decided to google it. I straight
(47:47):
up typed in if you look good you feel good
quote and boom, it came up right away. So, first
of all, it's Dion Sanders, that's who originally said it,
and this is his quote. If you look good, you
feel good. If you feel good, you play good. If
you play good, they pay good. So there you go.
I think it comes up a lot when either I
(48:09):
have Kelly from Velvet's Edge on talking fashion or the
Nashville beauty girl Carrie coming on to talk about you know,
your face and looking good and stuff, which sometimes both
of those topics can seem a little like vain, like oh,
not really going anywhere with this, But no, you should
want to take care of yourself and feel good and
look good because, like Dion says, if you look good
(48:31):
and you feel good, then you play good, and if
you play good, they pay good. So we're all doing
it to feel our best and do our best like me,
for like, if I have an important work event, and
that's where this quote comes into play for me, Like
I try to take care of myself leading up to it,
try to eat really clean so I feel my best
and I'm mentally strong. I try to take care of
my skin, make sure I've got, you know, whatever makeup
(48:54):
I want to wear, or like I'm washing my face
every night and being diligent about that, using my mask.
That way, my skin feels good and then I've got
my outfit on point probably thinks to a tip from
Velvet's Edge, And I'm feeling confident, and I do my
power pose and I go up there and I'm just
way more confident and I do so much better. It's
so true, Dion, Dion Sanders, you are so right. If
(49:17):
you look good, you feel good, and if you feel good,
you play good. And if you play good, they pay good.
I mean they pay good. Part you might have to
wait for, really sometimes you have to put in all
the all the feeling good and the playing good and
then eventually maybe it'll pay off. But you might as
well try to feel your best when you're out there
trying to do something. Okay, So that is that what
(49:37):
else did I want to say? Oh, one last thing too.
I was getting some messages about Pimp and Joy products
and those of you were wondering if there were some
of you, excuse me, wondering if they were still benefiting
the tornado relief in Alabama and Georgia. And the answer
is yes, because some of you were waiting and you
didn't buy in the last two weeks, but now you're
ready to buy. So yes, proceeds are still proceeds still
(50:00):
going to that. They definitely still could use the helps.
If that's something you want to check out, you can
now go to Radio Amy dot com and there's a
link to Pimp and Joy right there, take you straight
to the shot forward. So easy, easy peasy, like my
son would say, or actually I think he says it backwards.
Whenever he says something, he looks at me. He's like,
peasy easy, mom, And I think it's easy peasy. But
(50:21):
I could be wrong. Maybe he's right. Who knows. Okay, Well,
I hope y'all have a great rest of your day
and we'll see you on Tuesday for the Q and
A episode. Okay, cast up a little food for yourself life.
(50:49):
Oh it's pretty bad. It's pretty beautiful that for a
little mothka it was fourthing with Amy Brown
Cast up little food for yourself life. Oh it's pretty Bay,
it's pretty beautiful things, beautiful, laugh for a little mouth
kicking four. Welcome back to another episode of four Things.
(00:35):
Super excited about this one. And you know how in
my song it says be kind, choose joy, laugh a lot,
eat cake. It's part of our joy seeker line in
a squaw that supports Haiti. Well, I lived that this week,
this weekend, this last week, I guess um I ate
cake like three days in a row, and it was amazing.
But that was me just living life, being in the moment,
(00:56):
not trying to miss out. Because I will say there's
times in my life where we would have avoided the cake,
but that would have been zero fun because I was
out in California with my kids. Took him out to
see Mary for the weekend and for my birthday and
we took the kids to Disneyland and all the things.
It was so much fun. But she ordered two of
(01:17):
my favorite cake, so Mama Fuku Milk Bar Store is
my favorite cake ever. She's actually the one that introduced
it to me like four years ago, and I've had
it pretty much, I think, every birthday since then. But
they now have a gluten free version of the birthday cake,
so she ordered the regular cake and the gluten free cake,
and we did taste tests with people like her family
(01:38):
and friends, and nobody could tell the difference. And I
ate both and I couldn't really tell. But honestly, I
think I ended up eating more because I kept going
back and forth between the gluten free one and the
regular one, trying to see if I could really tell
a difference. So I definitely lived out the whole eat
cake thing. I've got you guys covered. If y'all needed
to eat some cake, I ate it for you. And
(02:00):
I turned thirty eight years old. I don't really feel
any different. I guess my jeans feel a little bit different,
but I'm okay with that because I had so much fun.
Like I said, we took the kids to Disneyland, and
they have never done anything like that. I mean, they've
only been in America a year and a half, so
of course they didn't even really know what Disneyland was.
In fact, when we were driving there, you would think
(02:21):
most kids would be so excited on Cloudline it's like
Christmas morning, but my kids were bored and wondering where
we were going, and they didn't understand why Mary and
I were so excited to take them. And then at
the end of the day they had the best time.
We spent like I don't know, seven eight hours there.
And then in the car ride on the way home, Stasshira,
(02:43):
my daughter who's eleven, and she it's kind of hard
to to get to admit when she's having a good time,
like she was so pumped and she just said today
was so much fun. And hearing her say that just
was worth every every penny, you know, going out to
l A, getting the Disney tickets and doing all the stuff, like, yes,
(03:04):
totally totally worth it. So speaking to Mary and being
in California when I was with her, we decided to
on a whim randomly launch our four Things custom pullovers.
So part part of our spat line is four Things,
Like we've got the four Things tote and four Things
pullovers and a little pouch thingy. Well, you can customize
(03:26):
the totes, but you can never customize pullovers, and now
you can. Like we were like, I don't know, we're crazy,
because it's definitely a process and something Mary has said
to work hard on figuring out. But she was like,
you know what, let's just go for it because right
now we're raising money for Project Meta Share, which is
a maternity center in Haiti, and we we just know
that these are going to be a big thing for
(03:48):
people like y'all are gonna love them, and hopefully we
sell a lot, which means we can, you know, send
more to Project Meta Share. So we're like, let's just
go ahead launch it, let's get it out there. And
so yep, if you haven't heard because you haven't really
promoted it, that might yet because again we're trying to
ease into it and take the order slow. But I
thought I would let you guys know that are listening
to the podcast that four things customized pullovers are now available.
(04:11):
There is a limit on them though, um like character wise,
try to think of words that are smaller because it's
a shirt. You can't do as long as you would
on a tote. Like my custom for things pull over
says yoga, netflix, pancakes, and sleep, so all kind of
short ish things like thirteen is the character limit, but
try to stick with eleven. We think eleven looks best.
(04:34):
But anyway, you can check all that out if you
go to Radio Amy dot com and scroll down and
click on ESPOI and pimp Enjoy. There's a little picture there.
Click on that. It'll take you right to everything that
you need to shop and support Haiti. So, I guess
let's talk about today's episode. Pretty pumped to have my
husband back. He is talking infertility and adoption, something that
(04:56):
a lot of people requested. So that's the first thing.
Second thing, if you're not feeling happy, I mean, sometimes
we just aren't feeling that happy and we can't get
out of the rut. Well, I'm gonna share some keys
to happiness stuff to kind of keep in your back
pocket that will help dig you out if you feel stuck.
Third thing, if you're curious about the benefits of drinking
macha tea, well I'm gonna break down why it is
(05:18):
considered an antioxidant powerhouse and I personally drink a Macho
lat pretty much every day. Fourth thing, to breast implants
affect your health. I've got Bethany Ugarte back at Little Sipper.
She was on a couple of weeks ago talking about
how she healed herself by eating a certain way. She
healed her digestive issues and ibs. So great episode. If
(05:41):
you want to go back and listen to that, if
you've got stomach issues, I think you'll find it really beneficial.
And following her, but she's back on sharing her thoughts
on this and why she is having a breast explant
surgery which is removing the implants. So now that all
of that is said, let's just go ahead and get
right into today's episode. Here we go. First, I've got
(06:04):
my husband here to talk adoption and infertility, which is
a request that we've gotten from a lot of you.
So I got him in here to talk about it,
which we're I feel like, well, we're not experts, but
we have been through infertility, we've been through adoption, and
we're now the proud parents of two beautiful Haitian kiddos
(06:25):
that are much older than we thought we were gonna be.
Like when we got married, honestly, I thought, oh, I'll
probably get pregnant. Let's be married for two years and
then I'll get pregnant, and then we'll have a baby,
and maybe we'll have three kids. But wouldn't it be
fun to maybe have five? And then we never I mean,
have you seen my head? Right? But three five kids?
(06:48):
What's a basketball? Team, I know exactly. So then we
know we weren't able to get pregnant. It seemed like
my sister's popped out four babies, your sister gave birth
to three kid. You know, nobody could give us an explanation.
And all of our friends were having babies. And then
(07:08):
every month there I was buying pregnancy tests negative and
you know, I wonder how much money we've spent on
pregnancy tests A lot. And then but I mean, you
were in the Air Force, so you were gone six
months out of the year. So during that time we
had to be strategic, like the six months that you
would go two months gone overseas, two months home, two
(07:30):
months gone, two months home. So the two months that
you were home, we would would have to be strategic
because that's two chances to get pregnant, basically maybe three,
defends on time, depending on that. And then I would
always start my period and it would just be it
just I remember being in our first house in Southern Pines,
North Carolina, a little white, two bedroom, one bath house
(07:54):
with our dog Josie, and I just remember being in
our little bathroom and I would start my peerad and
I would be able or you know, I'd get a text,
like an excited group text that someone else in our
family or friend circle was pregnant, and you want to
be so happy for them. At the same time, it
hurts because you can't get pregnant and you're desperately trying, right,
(08:17):
I mean, you don't have the same emotions of like
you didn't have to start your period, but I mean
I did, and then I would have to come tell you, well,
it didn't work this month I started my period. So
then we started seeing that fertility specialist on bass At
for brag and I had to go get my fallopian
tubes tested. And they yeah, because I walked in and
(08:38):
they were wearing camo or b d U S or whatever.
What does b d u S stand for uniform? Okay,
they were wearing battle dress uniform. I walked in if
I felt like, yeah, I was in Afghanistan when I wasn't.
Let me tell you when I'm about to have my
I'm doing stuff with my girl parts, like I want
(08:59):
to walk in, not feel like camo. You want to
have flower hats on? Like no, But I mean, I
know we had to go on base, but I was
used to going to all females my whole life like
it being like a guy innacologist girl office, like hey,
and then here I am on base, like going to
this fertility doctor. He was one of the best in country.
And actually we were really lucky to be in a
(09:19):
base that had a fertility specialist because not all bases did.
And weren't they one of the guys that they're like,
if you even look at this guy, you're gonna get pregnant,
and you'll get pregnant with twins. And was like, oh
my gosh, could you imagine if we had twins? Shoot me,
not really, I'd be happy with it, but I know
that having twins is really difficult, so uh huh, double
(09:42):
the fun. So okay, and I say that now having
adopted two kids, older kids from Haiti at the same time,
like two at once was a lot, But now that
we're a year into it, I'm like, Okay, no problem,
it's great. Like it's well, but they're not screaming like
diaper changing, the we have other things. Well, yeah, we
have other things, But what I'm saying is like we're
(10:03):
not like, hey, you do the diaper, you do the
diaper like type of stuff. Yeah, No, I we're just
dealing with other stuff. Hats off to that is parents
out there that have multiple babies at once like I,
or even one baby like hats off. So one of
the benefits of adopting, right, Yes, older children, they're potty trained.
(10:25):
That's cool. So I went on base and he had CAMO.
Turns out it wasn't my fallopian tubes. We had all
the tests done and we were fine. Like it was
totally like, I was fine, you got tested, you were fine.
And then we saw another fertility doctor in Austin, even
once you got out of the Air Force, and then
we there was another one we went to anyway, but
that guy was really that was another one. That's when
(10:47):
that Kevin said, He's like, listen, you even walk in
this guy's office, you're gonna get it. Like you like,
both of us may get pregnant. That's how confident here. Yeah,
is that like a thing that people say, look at
this fortuity, even look him in the eyes, and you're
gonna get pregnant, which I guess is a great thing
to hear, especially if you're gonna be spending money. We
really decided early on, first of all, our experience with
(11:07):
fertility doctors. Was mostly just testing to see why we
weren't getting pregnant, and then from there we needed to
make a decision did we want to do IVF or
not and we opted not to. Well, you were nuts
as it was on that pill. Well that's one thing
we did do that the fertility doctor recommended. I mean,
(11:29):
it's not your fault. I'm just saying like we couldn't,
like we goose couldn't handled more emotions. Okay, So to
explain the pill that you're talking about, I took clond
which is a drug that makes your eggs more attractive.
You can't create more eggs than you already have, like
all the eggs we have as women were born with
those eggs and there they are, so um, I couldn't
make anymore, but I could make them a little more
(11:50):
attractive to Ben's sperm. But yeah, so, but I couldn't
take it really long enough to make a difference because
it made me crazy and I made everybody around like
literally it was nuts, like everybody was. It was like
everybody walking around and like defense, like you see those
(12:11):
women's defense classes where they wear the whole padded suit.
It's like what I felt like everybody around you have
the nut harmful emotional cup to get close to you,
an emotional cup. You were never harmed in the process.
Emotionally fried, there was no emotion. There was nothing to
tell which left or right? What was going to happen? Okay, fine,
(12:34):
I right. Then you're angry and laughing at the same time. Yes,
I would get angry. So anyway, we opted to get
off that, and then that's when adoption really so when
we were in North Carolina, adoption was really on my heart,
even though we continued. When we moved to Austin to
(12:54):
seek fertility help, the adoption seat had already been planted.
And in North Carolina you were pretty hesitant. But you
did start reading that book Adopted for Life, which you know,
I think is something that changed your point of view
right after you read it, because you really were having
(13:14):
a hard time with like not having the Brown kids,
like that's our last name, Like you wanted kids with
our blood, Our genetics are everything, are you know? The
Brown I wasn't against adopting, Like there's two things, like,
I wasn't against adopting to start. I just was thought, like, hey,
let's why are we giving up on trying ourselves, like
(13:35):
I I just had never like I'm resistant to change,
as you know, whereas my wife knows. And so I
was just like, hey man, well let's keep trying. Let's
not give up so early. UM. So reading that book
Adopted for Life is really kind of the thing that
if you know, if to me, you can get you
can't even I couldn't even get through the introduction without
(13:55):
being changed on my perspective of what adoption was and
what it means to be adopted. UM. And I was never,
like I said, I was never against a growing up.
It just was nothing I had seen. Yeah, I mean
we just didn't think that we would need to do
it because we would get pregnant. Um. And so then
I've got I wanted to say that Russell More, Russell
(14:16):
Dmore is the author of the book in case anybody
else is interested in they want to check this out,
because you know, I think that it was an important
book for us, and it could help you if you're,
you know, trying to figure out if you're thinking about it.
You can't get through the intro without going I could
do this. Okay, that's helpful information, especially like for you two, Yes,
(14:38):
you have a hard time changing the plan because our
plan was, you know, have our own babies. And then
when that wasn't which I would pray for that all
the time, like Lord, just like when are we going
to get pregnant? Like we would pray for that. And
then now I'm so thankful that our prayer wasn't answered
because now we have Stevenson and Stashira, and that was
the plan for us. That was the plan for us,
(15:00):
and that's what we no. I definitely agree. And then
I think the other parts, so the two there were
two things for me that we're critical. I think you
were always kind of on board. You were excited, you
wanted to build our family, whether we had apparently three
of our own and two we adopted. Somehow we were
getting to five that I didn't know about. But the
second part was when we met with a fertility doctor
(15:20):
in Austin, and and that that guy, right from the beginning,
remember like on like a napkin, he drew out the
female parts, like the internal stuff, which was super fun, honestly, Yeah,
my favorite. Like so we're going through and he's drawing
this and he's like, hey, this is a sience of this,
this is a sience of this and then he draws
the loop where they connect on the outside and goes
(15:41):
in this area, we don't know what happens. And I
was like, wait a second. Kevin said, this is the
leading fertility doctor in Texas and this guy is telling
me as a scientist he does still doesn't know what
happens in this sect. Like, as a scientist, you don't know.
So that told me that this was God telling us, like,
this is what he wanted us to do. He wanted
(16:02):
us to adopt because we knew we didn't know that
there was anything physically wrong with either one of them.
Actually still could probably get pregnant, right, which would be
a crazy town. Yeah, it would be crazy. But at
the same point, like literally, like when he said I
don't know what's going we don't know what's happening here,
I was like, Okay, he wants us to do this,
he wants us to adopt, so spindly like we're just
(16:26):
trusting this is what's going to happen instead of us. Now,
adoption was expensive for US, especially international, but for us,
like we knew of friends that spent thousands and thousands
of dollars on IVF on fertility treatment and then it
wasn't successful. So then that money is just gone unless
they you know, reinvest or do it again, do it again,
(16:47):
and see what happens. Now it is successful for some people,
but there was some a lot of your military friends
they had to do this. I'm thinking one couple in
particular where they had some unsuccessful goes and I think
they were like thirty grand deep. I mean, and this
is a military family, like this is either all their
savings or they're in debt like I don't even know,
or like they did fundraisers or where they got the money. Um,
(17:10):
I mean that's personal, you know, however you get that,
but it's not like it was a cheap thing and
we like bucks in the military, like that's a lot,
Like that's a lot of money, right, so we don't
have that. We decided that we were just gonna put
the money where we knew was a guarantee for us
(17:30):
and that these kids, our kids were already born and
they needed a family. And so that's how we made
that decision. Which that's not for everybody, and no judgment.
If you want to spend a million dollars trying with IVF,
like go for it that's this is not it's just
our story. And so we didn't want to spend the
money on that and and it not work out. Like
(17:53):
we wanted to spend the money on kids that were
that needed a home, that were born and we're a guarantee,
which getting our kids was definitely hard, and there were
some days where it wasn't necessarily necessarily a guarantee. It
was a bumpy road for sure, but we have them now.
It took five years, but even even bigger part like
(18:13):
so today like officially, like I'm super excited about it
for a few seconds, like literally in the mail, got
the final piece of paperwork he says, certificate of citizenship,
which you get separate after the adoptions. So we're a
year whatever into having the kids here and we got
their certificate, which means now I just got done into
Social Security Office. We're going to get so security numbers
(18:35):
and that's like that's that's when they're legit, Like nobody
can question it. There's no well are they legal? Are
they not legal? Like we're getting passed for an American.
That means we can take them back to Haiti to
we can do all the things. It's all official but
this is like the final I've got birt we goose
have birth certificates. We think we goose a lot. You
already said it, like maybe that was on the Q
(18:56):
and A, but it's because that's that's a movie quote
that's from Top Gun if y'all haven't seen that movie.
And my husband's a pilot. So I'm just explaining because
people will be like, who's goose? Is goose in there?
Everybody knows that every there's no goose in the room.
I know it too. I'm just clarifying, Um, okay, so yes,
we goose. We have Now they're official like birth certificates,
(19:17):
birth certificates, and yes American, they're born in Tennessee. Well
basically well their certificates as it reborn in Tennessee. It's
pretty awesome reborn. It's pretty great because it's huge like this,
like tracking this stuff down. If anybody who goes through
this and anybody in the adoption process, just no, like
(19:40):
it's not easy and it's so much paperwork that nobody
is on your side and it's not in your favor.
It's actually set up against you. So just it's just
I'm just saying, just be patient. There are people on
our side. There are people on your side. There are
people on your side. I'm just saying, like, just be patient.
You have to be patient because a lot of times
it seems like everybody is against you because it should
(20:02):
be easier, but it's just not. But we had a
lot of amazing people help us along the way, and
we had a lot of people create annoying roadblocks. But
it and we're legal. Okay, well let's celebrate. So I
hope that this helped if an even if you listening
have been considering adoption or you're dealing with infertility, know
(20:23):
that you are not alone, and that especially if you're
a couple like us, we're just unknown. Like some people
can give you an answer like right away, well it's
because your husband X y Z, you can't get pregnant,
or your wife has this this this year, there's no
way you're pregnant. Like, we literally have not been given
an answer. So we live in that unknown space, which
(20:44):
is really crazy, but we have. It took us a
long time to accept it, but now I think we're
at peace with it and I better not get pregnant, okay,
right right, yeah, right, have any idea it Like we
we're talking about. I'm just happy. We're through the paperwork. Okay,
we got we got two kids. Slip you just go ahead.
(21:06):
Any questions just call slip into her d M. Yes,
my d M. My instagram is at Radio Amy, and
then my email is four Things with Amy Brown at
gmail dot com. You can hit me up. Slide into
my email. It's not slip, it's slide into the You don't.
(21:27):
You can't slip into a d M. Now you slide
into a d M. What's the difference slip in and sliding?
Slide sounds more cool? Okay, all right, thanks for coming on,
Baby love It. I saw an article that said the
keys to happiness that are scientifically proven, like if you
do these things like you'll bring happiness into your life,
(21:48):
and happiness is something that we definitely like to promote
here on the podcast. So I thought I would just
run through some of this stuff because maybe you're stuck
in a rut and you're just not really feeling that
happy and you need little reminders like this. This is
stuff you can just keep in your back pocket figuratively speaking,
unless you literally want to write them down and keep
(22:09):
them in your back pocket and pull them out for
a rainy day, which saying that, like, literally, I just
had a thought that came into my mind. I had
no intention talking about this, but when I think of
writing things down, I don't always think of this. But anyway,
let me just get to the point this story popped
in my head of this blind date I went on
with this guy, and we had been emailing back and forth,
(22:30):
but again we didn't really know each other, and we
decided to meet up. And in the email we were
talking about the weather or no. Actually I think I
said whether or not you want to do this, but
I spelled it like the weather, you know, w E
A T h E R. But I don't know if
it was auto correct, but obviously I know the difference
(22:52):
between whether or not and the weather and the sky. Well,
he was being cute and on the date he pulled
this piece of paper from his back pocket and opened
it up slowly, and he's like, well, since we're getting
to know each other, I just have a few things
before we really get into this day that I need
to clarify before I keep talking to you. And I
(23:13):
don't remember all the things on the piece of paper,
but one of the things was can you please spell
whether like whether or not. And I was like w
h E t h E R. And then he was like, okay,
we can keep we can keep going with this date
because literally he was concerned that I didn't know the
difference and if I didn't, then he didn't think he
(23:33):
could keep dating me. So I just had that because
right when I said keep in your back pocket, for
whatever reason, this guy that I haven't thought of in
a year's probably like fourteen years or something, now I'm
thinking of him pulling that piece of paper out of
his back pocket. So totally random, has nothing to do
with the Key to Happiness. Which speaking of that guy too,
(23:55):
So he had carpet time we were twenty we were
like twenty three years old. He had carpal tunnel syndrome
in his arm from using his computer mouse too much
because he was an engineer or something and he had
to at work. He had this red dot he would
put on his forehead that his computer recognized. It was
(24:17):
like this piece of tape he would put on there,
and his head became the mouse because his arm, his
carpal tunnel syndrome was so bad he couldn't he couldn't
use the mouse. Anymore. And we were young, and he
would like shake his head around and around and it
would go on his computer and that was his mouse. Yeah.
I think I think we only went out like twice
(24:38):
or three times. Maybe I have no idea what he's
doing now. Hey might be listening to this podcast, but
probably not. Okay, so here are some some things that
will make you happy. These are keys to happiness that
are scientifically proven. Okay, giving to others, do things for
other people, like seriously, maybe go try doing three ran
(25:00):
of extra acts of kindness today. Bring a smile to someone.
It's sort of like pimp and joy, which is another
thing we promote. Choose joy, spread joy. I mean, it
could be simple, like get the door for someone, just
smile at them, use your manners, say please and thank you.
I don't know, like something. I don't know what manners
really has to do with that. I guess I'm working
on manners with my kids, but I don't know that
(25:21):
would necessarily be like you're doing something for others, but
maybe showing respect to your elders. Okay, connect with other people,
make more time for people who really matter to you,
which I definitely need to do this some girlfriends and
I went on a walk the other day and we're like,
why are we not doing this? More? Like, this is
(25:41):
so great to connect And seriously, we have every intention
of trying to do it and having that quality girl
time on a walk and catching up and talking about
girl things and marriage and life and babies and husbands
and you know all the stuff. And you know what,
we're on a group tech still trying to make it
happen again, and you know, and other two months will
probably go by before we actually get together. Exercising taking
(26:06):
care of your body can make you feel happy. I mean,
notice how it lifts your mood once you do it.
Like nobody ever wants to go into exercise. Nobody's ever
pumped up like yeah, I'm going to work out, But
you don't ever regret having worked out. You normally feel
awesome and you're proud of yourself for doing it and
working out. Releases and doorphins and doorphins make you happy.
(26:26):
So I could see how that's a key to happiness. Uh,
be appreciative, notice the world around you, Like, just stop,
maybe take a couple of minutes to just breathe in,
be in the moment. What's the saying smell the roses.
Maybe you literally could smell a rose and I don't know.
Maybe take time to learn something new, they say, trying
(26:47):
stuff out can make you happy, Like learn a new skill,
like however small it is, or maybe it's something big.
Have goals to look forward to. Maybe think of a
goal that you're aiming for and do one thing to
get it started, because maybe it's hard to start it,
Like if it's a goal you're like, it could be daunting,
but maybe just move an inch closer to getting there. Uh,
(27:08):
take a positive approach to your emotions because again, like
if you're feeling down, you're not necessarily feeling happy. We'll
just try to smile and say something positive every time
you walk into a new room or something. That's the
challenge they put forth, Like you know, every time you
walk into a new room, like think of something positive
or look in the mirror and smile and say something
positive to yourself, like it really can help. Like that's
(27:31):
the power of positivity. And then acceptance is another key
to happiness, like being comfortable with who you are. Be
as kind to yourself as you are to others. I
think a lot of times you can we we can
be really really hard on ourselves, and we talk to
ourselves in our heads in a way that we would
never talk to somebody else. But for whatever reason, we're
(27:53):
okay with like being rude to ourselves and then find
meaning like be a part of something bigger, which I
think is huge, like give your time to support a
good cause and find ways where you can get involved
and whatever that looks like for you. Um, you know
we have outlets on this show or through this podcast
or through the Bobby Bone Show where if you're looking
(28:15):
for a way to get involved, well, Pimp and Joy
is an easy way to do it. I've been telling
you all right now, All Pimp and Joy stuff goes
to Tornado relief and for those that need it, like
they've lost everything. I mean, imagine being those shoes and
you could get a Pimp and Joy hat or shirt
or something cute that reminds you to choose joy, and
then every time you wear you'll know you made a
difference with it. That's being a part of something bigger.
(28:35):
Pimp and joys a movement that we have where you
can do that, or even a spua like anything you
buy from a squad goes towards supporting UH ending the
orphan cycle in Haiti right now. So those are little
ways that I know where you can be a part
of something bigger that you know where I'm proud to
be a part of. But it doesn't even have to
be that. Find something else, like find something in your community,
(28:58):
whatever it is. I'm just throwing those out. There's options
that I'm passionate about. So there you go. Those are
some things, according to science that will make you happy.
And I hope that that helps if you're feeling in
a rut and you drop those down, keep them in
your back pocket, bust them out when you need to.
(29:20):
Something I pretty much have every single day is a
macha latte, one that I make at home, and I
get messages from you all the time like wanting to
make it or you're asking why do I drink it?
What are the health benefits of macha? So I thought
I would make it a thing and share with you
all today some of the benefits. I did a little
research because I kind of wanted to know myself. Honestly,
(29:40):
I just had heard it was good for you, So
I started drinking it and then I just really really
liked it and it's something that I enjoy. I drink
it hot or iced. So you can check out the recipe.
I have it in my highlights page like what I
used to make it on Instagram. Under highlights, just go
to a Radio Amy and then at radio amy dot com.
Even under my Amazon page age that's linked there, you
(30:01):
can shop some of the stuff that I use for
my Macho latt's. But here is what I found while
I was researching machet tea. Pretty much its nickname is
an antioxidant powerhouse, and I'm just going to run through
some reasons why. First of all, Macha powdered green tea
has a hundred and thirty seven times more antioxidants than
(30:22):
regular brewed green tea. So when you're shopping for it
at the store online, just make sure that it's powder,
because I've been at the grocery store before and accidentally
bought tea bags and it's not the same. It's not
the same thing. You gotta buy the powder. And one
cup of Macha equals ten cups of regularly brewed green
tea in terms of nutritional content, so it's unparalleled nutrition.
(30:46):
Like I said, it's packed with antioxidants, a boost metabolism
and burns calories, detoxifies effectively and naturally calms the mind
and relaxes the body. It's rich in fiber, chlorophyll, and
vide mints, which chlorophyll that reminds me. I haven't been
doing this for a while, but I bought some chlorophyll
drops and I used to just drop some in my
(31:08):
water and make it this really pretty green and I
felt really healthy. I wonder why I quit doing that.
I gotta go find my chlorophyll drops. I'll keep you
all posted on that, and then if you need to
start doing that or you want to, you can just
research it. I do know it's good for you. Now
back to macha. It enhances mood and aids in concentration.
I definitely need that, provides vitamin C, chromium, zinc, and magnesium.
(31:32):
Prevents disease. Okay, I'll give it that. Maybe because it's
so high in anti accidents, lowerst cholesterol, and blood sugar.
So it says here machete is an easy and simple
way to add powerful health benefits to your everyday diet.
So if you want to make it a part of
your morning routine, I feel like my recipe is pretty
good I mix it with almond milk and a little
(31:53):
liquid stevia and cinnamon. Tastes really good. If I'm feeling
really basic, I put and pumpkin spice like a seasoning,
which if you all don't have pumpkin spice seasoning in
your cabinet, you're missing out because you can sprinkle that
on all kinds of things and it just like makes
you feel like you're having a pumpkin spice latte or
even oatmeal, and all this you can make at home.
(32:16):
One of our followers or listeners Johnny. Johnny, if you're listening,
you know I'm talking about you. But he posted to
Mary and I that he went and bought the Starbucks
Macha Latte. Because Macha latte or matcha in general is
gaining popularity, you're going to see it start popping up
places like Starbucks now has it, which is what Johnny tried,
and he didn't really like it. So I've never had
(32:37):
that one. I can't speak to it, but I have
ordered Macha latte's out, but I really really prefer my
recipe and the one that I make at home because
I can control everything else that is in it. So
Macha does have benefits, um so, and those of them,
I ran through them really quickly for you. Um again,
if you're trying to find the right one. Sometimes they
don't really taste the same. There is a cheaper one
(33:00):
I found on Amazon, because macha can be expensive but
it'll last a little while. But the one I found
on Amazon that was cheaper, it just does not taste
as good. So I don't feel good recommending that one,
But anyway, give it a try if you want to.
I'm here, I'm looking at a list of like the
antioxidant analysis of Macha green tea, and it's got Macha
(33:21):
on here, pomegranate, blueberries, broccoli, and spinach, and Macha is
basically off the charts when it comes to anti accidents.
So who knew basically you'd have to eat like a
bajillion blueberries to have the same effect as macha by
looking at this chart. And obviously I'm exaggerating, but dang,
even I didn't know how great Macha tea was for
you much of powdered green tea, So definitely check it
(33:43):
out if you are looking for something new. You can
have it hot or ice, so it's great in the
winter or in the summer. I'm excited to have Bethany
Garte back on. She's at Little Sipper on Instagram L
(34:04):
I L S I P P E R, and she
was on not too long ago talking about uh, you know,
ibs and a lot of digestive issues she had to
deal with. Bethany, So glad to have you back on.
I know when you were on last time, we talked
about you coming back to talk about your breast implants
and why you are getting them removed, how they can
(34:24):
harm the body. Full disclosure. I don't talk about this
too often, but I have talked about it on the
Bobby Bones Show before. When I was twenty four, was four, yeah,
maybe twenty three, I got breast implants, and it was
something I always wanted to do. I was very insecure
about that. I can't even remember, like I mean, my
(34:47):
parents were all about it, like friends. My mom drove me.
I think my dad picked me up or maybe my
step mom at the time, but it was it was
definitely something I mean, I was young. I look back
now and think like, wow, I don't know that I
could have done it if I didn't have all that support.
But then I'm like, why were so many people supporting me,
but it just was common in in our family circle.
(35:09):
A lot of people I knew had them, a lot
of girls that I knew had them, And again it
was just something I was insecure about. I feel okay
with them, but I am extremely curious as to what
your story is and your removal of them. And maybe
this will resonate with somebody else listening that's either thinking
about getting them or has them and is considering taking
(35:32):
them out. Yeah. Well, and it's great that you had
that support and UM. In fact, I had that support
to my My parents drove me there, drove me back,
and I got it done solely for myself. I didn't
try to UM. I didn't do it to to please
someone else. So I feel like so many people do
have them, you know, as long as you're doing it
(35:53):
for the right reasons, you know, and have that support. UM.
And I was about UM at the time. However, you know,
looking back, not knowing then what I know now about
implants and how they can really cause a lot of
gas to intestinal disorders as well as really affects your
immune system and make you susceptible to viral infections, bacteria, infections,
(36:18):
even formation of antibodies because breast i plants are a
foreign object put into the body, and so your body
reacts as kind of like a defense mechanism, and it
responds with so many inflammatory issues. So because it for
an object in your body, it's almost like your body
is constantly having this autoimmune thing going on. So after
(36:39):
tons and tons of research, and of course I had
my implants put in before my huge IBS flare, which
is let me um, I'll just say to yes, the
ib S flare and you like you were basically on
your deathbed, which you did talk about in the other
podcasts that you were on. So again, if people haven't
listened to that, they can go back and listen to it.
And they even see pictures on your website. It really
(37:02):
is so scary. So you'll probably address this. But do
they think the breast implants caused part of your flare up?
No one really, even if I go to doctors even today,
because I'm you know, it's full disclosure. I mean, spacy
your doctor. I'm I'm personally just I haven't had a
good experience with doctor pers So you know, they think, oh,
your breast implants, they're fine, don't worry about it. But
(37:24):
I'm definitely not blaming my my huge ibs flare from
my implants. Definitely not. It was a whole, you know,
other issue of not being able to digest things. However,
I do feel that it has contributed to some aspects
of how I'm feeling. And I feel like once I
do get them out, because I do still have them,
they will eventually or my body will hopefully be like
(37:48):
because I think we all still get upset from digestion
and stress of life, and that's just that's just life.
You know. It's just something that I had done a
lot of research on. And there's something called breast implant illness.
I mean, you could just type that in and look
it up, and there's so many people that have these
testimonies of once they got their breast and plants out,
they felt so much better. They weren't getting stick as much,
(38:09):
they weren't getting the flu, they had less inflammation. You know,
it's just something to think about if you know someone
have them, or thinking about getting them to really search
breast and plant illness prior and so you know, of
course I'm not judging anyone that does have them. This
is something that I've been wanting to do for a while,
and I was supposed to get them out about a
(38:29):
year ago, and then I went into a coma about
a week right before I was supposed to get my surgery. Um,
talk about that real quick, because that's all right, don't yeah,
it's it's very interesting. And I it was completely obviously unexpected,
and um my SODIU to keep it short. My sodium
levels dropped just super suddenly, and I went into a
(38:51):
state of shock, and I went I was in a
coma for about three days, and they didn't think I
was going to come out of it, or they thought
I would be a vegetable the rest of my life.
And it's taken about a year to recover, which is
the average time for someone that's ever been in a
comma to recover. And that's one of the reasons why
I have waited to get my breast implants out, is
to make sure that my body is fully ready to
(39:13):
go and undergo something so drastic after after a comma,
because it takes time. When I woke up from the coma,
Praise God, I was just you know, I didn't know
where I was at first, and um, I couldn't write
my name on a piece of paper for a couple
of weeks like it was. I mean, it looks like
a kindergartener was writing my name. I had blurred, like
my speech just wasn't correct. You know. Working with the
(39:35):
holistic doctor that I worked with prior for my digestive issues,
he helped me get back and here I am today,
and it's just amazing. Um, everything that I've gone through,
and to anyone that's been through it doesn't have to
be a comma, but to anyone that's been through something
so traumatic, just to know that you know you can,
(39:56):
you can keep going and that there's hope. I mean,
I was, I've been divorced, my husband left me. It's
just been you know, I was molested. There's just so
many things in my past and I just don't this
is like going. I don't know where this conversation is going.
But I just really wanted to just say, hey, you
know what, there's hope for whatever you have in the
past or whatever you're going through, to keep going because
(40:17):
you know you're going to make it. So just to
knock it up. Yeah, I just got goose bumps too,
because I didn't really know. I thought, you know, obviously
we were just going to do this segment on the
breast implant, but then your coma came up, which then
kind of probably led you to think of, you know
that you're so thankful and grateful to now be living.
You know, you're you're better like they thought you might
be a vegetable, and you probably are just feeling a
(40:38):
lot of gratitude and thankfulness to be back to yourself.
And then I think that probably led you to want
to just encourage people to know that there's hope, which
made you think of you have been through a lot
in your life, but you are someone that you're not
going to let that stuff define you. So now I
got I got a little bit of goose bumps because yeah,
you know where to know you didn't at all Like
(40:59):
I That's what I want this podcast to be encouragement
and inspiration to anybody listening. And sometimes you never know
that one person that might need to hear it that like, hey, gosh,
why is my life? So you know, some people go
through more things than others. But when you see like
what I see in you, I see a lot of
strength and tenacity and faith and hope. And sometimes someone
(41:20):
listening may need that reminder of like how yeah, like
crazy awful things happen, but you can pick yourself up
and you can get through it. And you can use
your your story to be um an encouragement to others,
which is what you do on your Instagram, Like your
stories are so great. I you take time to respond
(41:41):
to as many people as possible because so many people
come to you with questions and when you're full of
the knowledge that you have on these particular subjects, especially
with health and well being and digestion and just taking
care of of your body. Yeah, I mean you you
truly care about your your fall wers and this has
become your because you had to quit. This came up
(42:03):
in the last podcast that I did with you, but
you mentioned having to quit your dream job to take
care of yourself. So when you're taking care of yourself,
then you're at home. And fortunately these days there's ways too.
We have platforms with Instagram and whatever people use, YouTube
or whatever people use to be their thing, and it
seems like Instagram and your website is your thing, but
(42:25):
that's now your business, Like that's not what you do
to survive, and you've dedicated so much of your time
and energy. Now see, now I'm the one taking it
off topic, but I'm just passionate right now because I'm like, Okay,
she has been through a lot, and she she's not
letting it define her, and she's still wanted to get
out there and help others. And you do do that,
and you do it, you do it so well, and
(42:45):
you you try to give. You try to give so
much of yourself to people. And I see that in
your instant stories and in your comments that you take
the time to respond to people and in your recipe
creations and your ways to try to give people a
way to have, like something awesome to eat when they
may not be able to eat. You know, the real
crappy thing like you even have on your website. You
(43:07):
have like a twix bar recipe that's, you know, mimics
a twig spar Now, is it gonna taste exactly like
a twickspart? No, because it doesn't have all the crazy
process sugar and chemicals and stuff. But you've done your
best to recreate something so that people and and listen,
we all should be eating this way anyways, because we
don't need to put those chemicals in our body. But literally,
(43:27):
you can't eat that, or you may not live. Now
I might be able to go eat it. I'm gonna
feel crappy, but I'm I'm it's not going to send
me into some inflammation craze spiral. Actually I will get inflamed,
but not it's not going to affect me on a
level at least yet, like ten years from now if
I keep it up. Because certain things are carcinogenic. Who knows,
(43:48):
Like I may be feeding something into my body and
inflammation leads to disease, and you know, I may pay
for it down the line. But I think, just to
wrap up what I'm saying is I don't want people
to go there and make the twigs bar and be like, well, shoot,
this doesn't taste like a TwixT bar, but you know what,
it tastes similar, and you're giving that gift to people.
It tastes better. You're giving that gift to people, um,
(44:09):
free of all the crap, and you're you're working hard
on it. So I just want people to know that
that you're there and you're you're grinding it, yeah, and
you take it a week yeah, And you know, to
be someone who had to give up their dream job
because of their health and then now to kind of
create a job out of that as someone on Instagram
(44:30):
that can be there for people. I don't know, I
just think it's super cool. So I want people to
go check out your stuff and check out your page
at Little Sipper l A L S I P pe er.
No judgment for the breast implant people, but you just
want people to be informed. And so what is it
that they can google breast implant illness, Yes, breast implant illness,
breast implant awareness, things like that, and um, you know,
(44:53):
just make sure that you you educate yourself and you
know both in before you know doing something or maybe
you have them and your bariencing all these ib s upsets.
That could be the light bulb and it's worth checking
out for sure. Yeah, I'm actually on your website right
now while I'm talking to you, and I'm looking at
your five ingredient cookie dough bread. I made that, I
guess a couple of weeks ago, and my kids even
(45:16):
liked it, which they are so hard to please. But yeah,
and it's got I mean, check it out. It's so easy.
It's got four eggs, one teaspoon, baking soda, a cup
of cashew butter, a heaping scoop of vital proteins collagen peptides.
Now you recommend the vanilla collagen peptides, what which you know,
I'll have to go order, but I just have the
(45:37):
blue can the regular collagen peptides. Can I use that
and add some like vanilla extract or something? Yeah, yeah
you can. Um. You know, I used the collagen because
it's so great for gut health. Of course it adds protein. Um,
but the vanilla just add you know, that true vanilla
taste because it has real vanilla bean in it. Um
(45:59):
extracts where some people can be an ib s upset. Okay,
it has you know, alcohol in it and things like that.
So I guess what I buy organic non alcohol vanilla extract.
I try to make sure it's not alcohol. So anyway,
I'm just throwing that out there. Is like something that
I made and my kids actually really liked it, and
(46:21):
so did I. Like, we ate the whole loaf of bread.
So that's something that yeah, a kid approved and some
stuffs has been approved, and you know, you just got
to give it a try, play around with some of
the recipes, see how you feel. But thank you Bethany
for coming back on and um, hopefully a lot of
people will go check you out. Thank you, Amy. That's
(46:43):
a wrap on today's episode. A big thank you to
my husband and Bethany for coming on and being the
guests for this week's episode. And another thank you I
want to send now is to all the people that
have rated and reviewed the podcast. I went over to
iTunes and was checking it out the other day and
I was like, what, like, this is amazing, Like y'all
are awesome, and if you haven't been able to do it,
(47:05):
but you could take the time to do it, and
you really do like the podcast and you want to
give it five stars, that would be awesome as well.
So this is me thanking you if you've already done it,
and then me thanking you in advance if you're going
to do it. And also this is the time where
I do my email shout out. You never know if
your email is going to pop up in here, but
y'all can send me emails. Four things with Amy Brown
(47:26):
at gmail dot com. And this one came from Jessica
and she pretty much wanted to know what that quote
is that I butcher all the time? The look good
you feel good, feel good, do good quote, and I
never get it right. And honestly, I didn't even know
who originally said it, and I don't know that I
knew the exact quote. That's obviously I was never getting
it right. So I decided to google it. I straight
(47:47):
up typed in if you look good you feel good
quote and boom, it came up right away. So, first
of all, it's Dion Sanders, that's who originally said it,
and this is his quote. If you look good, you
feel good. If you feel good, you play good. If
you play good, they pay good. So there you go.
I think it comes up a lot when either I
(48:09):
have Kelly from Velvet's Edge on talking fashion or the
Nashville beauty girl Carrie coming on to talk about you know,
your face and looking good and stuff, which sometimes both
of those topics can seem a little like vain, like oh,
not really going anywhere with this, But no, you should
want to take care of yourself and feel good and
look good because, like Dion says, if you look good
(48:31):
and you feel good, then you play good, and if
you play good, they pay good. So we're all doing
it to feel our best and do our best like me,
for like, if I have an important work event, and
that's where this quote comes into play for me, Like
I try to take care of myself leading up to it,
try to eat really clean so I feel my best
and I'm mentally strong. I try to take care of
my skin, make sure I've got, you know, whatever makeup
(48:54):
I want to wear, or like I'm washing my face
every night and being diligent about that, using my mask.
That way, my skin feels good and then I've got
my outfit on point probably thinks to a tip from
Velvet's Edge, And I'm feeling confident, and I do my
power pose and I go up there and I'm just
way more confident and I do so much better. It's
so true, Dion, Dion Sanders, you are so right. If
(49:17):
you look good, you feel good, and if you feel good,
you play good. And if you play good, they pay good.
I mean they pay good. Part you might have to
wait for, really sometimes you have to put in all
the all the feeling good and the playing good and
then eventually maybe it'll pay off. But you might as
well try to feel your best when you're out there
trying to do something. Okay, So that is that what
(49:37):
else did I want to say? Oh, one last thing too.
I was getting some messages about Pimp and Joy products
and those of you were wondering if there were some
of you, excuse me, wondering if they were still benefiting
the tornado relief in Alabama and Georgia. And the answer
is yes, because some of you were waiting and you
didn't buy in the last two weeks, but now you're
ready to buy. So yes, proceeds are still proceeds still
(50:00):
going to that. They definitely still could use the helps.
If that's something you want to check out, you can
now go to Radio Amy dot com and there's a
link to Pimp and Joy right there, take you straight
to the shot forward. So easy, easy peasy, like my
son would say, or actually I think he says it backwards.
Whenever he says something, he looks at me. He's like,
peasy easy, mom, And I think it's easy peasy. But
(50:21):
I could be wrong. Maybe he's right. Who knows. Okay, Well,
I hope y'all have a great rest of your day
and we'll see you on Tuesday for the Q and
A episode. Okay, cast up a little food for yourself life.
(50:49):
Oh it's pretty bad. It's pretty beautiful that for a
little mothka it was fourthing with Amy Brown
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
Host
Amy Brown
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!