Carrie Saum

As a woman, it feels damn near impossible to be heard sometimes. But we are working hard at this life thing, and we deserve to be taken seriously. Here are five tips to get closer to that goal.

So, what do you do when you make something that looks a mess but tastes like the Virgin Mary give birth in your mouth? You add more sugar and salt to hide its minor imperfections and nobody gives a damn how it looks after the first bite.

My BFF has been trying to go easy on the grains lately.

Whoever Waldorf is, I love their style of salads the most. Fruit, celery, creamy goodness. It's hard to go wrong. I mean, you CAN go wrong, but you shouldn't because that would be silly.

You feel it. The change.

The shame was overwhelming. Why was my body broken? What had I done to my baby? I began to spiral into self-loathing. Gestational diabetes felt like a failure.

Here’s a crash course on self-talk. Self-talk is the voice in your head, the invisible responder, the captain of your brain ship.

If you tend to eschew your inner child and prefer to feel somewhat sophisticated and faux-healthy, you can call a frozen wine drink a smoothie and it totally counts. Because we are all of a legal drinking age here and there is no shame in consuming your daily super fruit serving in a nutritious, fermented, frozen liquid form. The best part about all of this is you don’t need GOOD wine, you just need not-chardonnay.

Here's my favorite lazy food dish. I like it because I feel like I'm doing my body a solid by plying it with veggies, and my taste buds rejoice with spicy-sweet comfort food. It's like your very hardworking grandmother is hugging you from the inside.

Over the years, I've compiled a list of things I look for as a woman, mother, health advocate, and human. I firmly believe that the relationship you have with your doctors and healers is paramount to your overall well-being.