Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
~Ferris Bueller
Hi Friends!
Another June has rolled around and I’m so grateful to be here and for all I’ve learned in the last year. June marks lipedema awareness month, and you’ll see that many of my colleagues on social media are doing big things to celebrate and raise awareness, and I’m no exception. I’ll be working hard to spread awareness of lipedema to the medical community and potential patient community. I’ll be sharing information within the patient community about treatment options and products/services that make our lives better, and I’ll be working to manage and maintain my own condition as well. Oh yeah, and I plan on 100% disrupting the footwear industry that has not met our needs for adaptive footwear yet by basically changing all that. I say it all the time. It. Is. Happening! By next June, we’re going to be putting in pre-orders for those fall boots in calf sizes that FIT US!
This month is a CRAZY one for me, but a great, amazing and fun kind of crazy. I’ve got eleven flights, and two cross country drives, with trips to DC, London and Paris, West Virginia, LA/Beverly Hills and finally, home, scheduled in the next thirty days. I’ll be putting the miles on my compression leggings, socks, and decongestive wraps while I do my best to keep swelling at bay and have a great time seeing the sites, and tasting all the foods. And I’ll be in the pool every day that I’m around one, swimming and enjoying how the water makes me feel physically and spiritually.
For the first part of the month, I’ll be in London and Paris with my Girl Scouts on a long-awaited trip. And while I’m there, meeting with my new friend Susannah Davda for coffee and to talk about shoes. Susannah owns a company called The Shoe Consultant and is helping guide me through the development of a line of shoes made just for women with the unique comfort and stability needs of lipedema and lymphedema patients, but who still want to look mainstream and fashionable. I’m incredibly excited to already be working with her as we’ve profiled customers, studied competition and looked at design features I want to incorporate in the last couple of weeks. I’ve also completed numerous focus groups with my lipedema community, because we are centering all facets of the shoe design around lipedema patients specifically. It’s been so much fun and crazy learning, but such a joy! I’m hoping to make a good amount of progress towards getting designs on paper this month.
Also, I’m super happy to report that I’ll be spending several days with a film crew as they make a documentary about lipedema and follow me around to show how I manage my condition, and sit with me while I do my advocacy work. Mid-month, the crew will be coming to my home for a couple of days (they’re even going to interview my mom!), and then we’ll go to LA to (hopefully) meet with my surgeon on film, and then hang out with a bunch of lipedema patients who are in town recovering from surgery that week. It’s a lot!
Did I mention my Jeans on a Beach Day book comes out on Kindle on June 3? Oh! And also, I’m putting the finishing touches on my second book, Aquatherapy for Lipedema, and it will go to editing this month for publishing in late July. Next I’ll be starting the audio recording project for the first book and just keep on rolling! I have concepts and outlines for the next several books of information about lipedema ready to go.
On Mondays, I’ll be continuing to meet with the professionals working at lipedema.com to review FAQs that I see daily from new patients, to get answers from the real professionals who treat llipedema patients. We will use the ‘official answers’ to these FAQs to create a massive, unprecedented awareness and education campaign using all the social media tools around.
It’s all terribly exciting! And I’m happy and fortunate to have the passion I’ve been searching for for years, and the skills and gifts that contribute to helping other women who look, sit, walk, and have the same needs as I do.
Please celebrate with me by living your best life in whatever way or scale works for you, this month and every month!
See you soon!
Susan
