Please allow me a moment to introduce my new blog!

Hormonally Speaking

Now before you get worried and start to fret about whether or not you’ll still get updates whenever I randomly post something new or will need to go follow me at some new internet address, please understand my new blog is completely separate from this one. They are very different.

Tales from the Laundry Room is my personal blog, where I write about my marriage, my adventures in raising five teens and tweens, my experiences as a foster mom to two rambunctious toddlers, my dreams and goals and aspirations. Basically, I write about my life … and usually I connect it back to what God is teaching me through it. Naturally, I hope you’ll stay right here with me as I continue to randomly write about whatever happens to be on my mind.

Hormonally Speaking is not a random blog.  In fact, it is a blog where I write for a  specific audience (women) about a determined topic (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome).

Perhaps you have a few questions you’d like to ask. Maybe the first one is:

What is Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome anyway?

Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, shortened PCOS, is a hormonal disorder.  (Now you know where I got the name for my blog!) It’s the leading cause of infertility among women, but also comes with a host of other symptoms.  Here’s a rather short list:

• weight-gain/inability to lose weight
• absence of ovulation
• irregular menstrual cycles
• miscarriage
• problems with breast feeding
• male pattern hair growth
• male pattern baldness
• skin issues (severe acne, psoriasis, skin tags, etc)
• higher risk for heart disease, Type II diabetes, and certain cancers

There is no cure for PCOS, and in general the medical community tends to treat individual symptoms rather than the whole patient.

Which leads me to question #2 …

Why do you need a whole blog dedicated to PCOS? Why not just write about it here on this blog?

The short answer is that I’m writing a book about my personal experiences  with PCOS, and I want to be able to engage with my audience and get to know them in a way that might not happen here with a wider audience.

The longer answer is that women who have PCOS deal with a lot of issues. Many of the symptoms chip away at a woman’s femininity.

For example, a woman with PCOS might have a difficult time getting pregnant. If she does, she might have a problem with maintaining that pregnancy. Hopefully that won’t happen and she will give birth. However, then she might discover that she cannot breastfeed her baby. It’s a real struggle many women face.

Another example might be a  woman with enough hair on her upper lip to grow a fuller mustache than her husband, yet she also has a receding hairline. How embarrassing! Yet there are many women who spend tons of money just on trying to hide the fact that they are going bald and have hair growing in places it shouldn’t.

Those are issues I want to address, openly and frankly, with my readers. But if I tried to write about those topics here at Tales from the Laundry Room, I might be tempted to hold back my thoughts and feelings on these issues. Emotionally, it’s very hard to discuss these issues. I already feel insecure and embarrassed talking about it in this post, much less if I wanted to go more in-depth on these issues. However, if I were writing to a targeted group of women who are likely to have had many of the same thoughts and feelings and emotions I have experienced, then it will be easier for me to open up and share my personal story.

And my story is important. It’s the reason I believe God called me to write a book about PCOS. You see, I don’t have a medical degree or special insider information about treating PCOS. But I do know the Creator personally, the very One who fashioned each one of us in the womb. And I know that knowing Him is the only way to find true self-worth. So you can see, being able to truly open up and share my heart is essential if I want to be an encourager to other women with PCOS.

The more I thought about trying to mesh the two purposes, the more I realized I simply needed two separate blogs, which is why I decided to make a brand-new blog dedicated to the topic of PCOS. Two blogs; two purposes. I’ll certainly continue to write on both.

The third question you might wish to ask me is perhaps this:

Well, if your new blog isn’t going to interfere with your writing on this blog, then why should I care?

Well, I mentioned earlier that PCOS is the leading cause of infertility for women. In fact, it’s so common that anywhere from 1-3 out of every 10 women has it, and many are undiagnosed.

Stop and think about that statistic for a moment.

Anywhere from 10% to 30% of women child-bearing age or older, suffer from this hormonal disorder.

That’s a lot of women! And what that means is that chances are extremely likely that you know a lady with PCOS. Perhaps it is your sister, your aunt, your next-door neighbor.

Here’s how you can help, both the lady you know with PCOS and me. Introduce them to my new blog. It’s so easy to share the links on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. I would appreciate it so very much!

I love this blog and my readers here. Tales from the Laundry Room has taught me quite a bit about the art of writing, the fun of engaging with my readers, and the importance of knowing my audience. I do not plan to abandon this blog at all. Rather, I hope each of my blogs will help me continue to grow as a professional author, and I’m looking forward to a long future of blogging at Tales from the Laundry Room.

Again, thanks for being a faithful reader … and thanks in advance for sharing Hormonally Speaking with your friends and family!