Graceful Health

By Jane Wheeler, Grace Cottage Patient Resource Advocate

It’s getting cold out there. This is the time of year when people stockpile wood, fill their oil or propane tanks, and put extra food in their cupboards and cellars. With winter coming on, everyone has resource challenges that need to be addressed.

Winter also brings on health challenges, as colds and flu go around, and slippery conditions make accidents more likely.

Peace of mind comes with having needed resources in place, and peace of mind is important to your health.

Are you prepared for winter? If you have any questions about how you’ll meet your health and household needs this winter, if you live nearby or are a Grace Cottage patient, I want to talk to you. I work at Grace Cottage in Townshend as part of the Community Health Team, and my job is to help people get the resources they need to live healthy lives.

By Caroline Chase, Grace Cottage Behavioral Health Specialist

Throughout my life, I remember hearing members of the “older generation” saying “aging is not for sissies.” As a child, this never “struck a chord,” probably because I had a hard time coming to the realization that someday I, too, would reach, what seemed at the time, the dreaded “older generation.” Yet, here I am now, heading into the final chapters of my life, much more aware of the rewards and liabilities of aging.

I am now able to observe, both in myself and in the elderly population with whom I work as a psychotherapist, the attributes and qualities that contribute to healthy aging. While aging can bring with it the emotional freedom of being able to sort out one’s priorities, and hopefully, learning not to “sweat the small stuff,” aging can also bring with it complex and painful emotions that are often not recognized by society.

By Elizabeth Harrison, Grace Cottage Community Health Team Health Coach

Quite often, when I counsel my clients about nutrition, I find they have the mistaken idea that healthy food is more expensive. They believe they can’t afford to eat healthy. This just isn’t so.

The “Healthy Cooking on a Tight Budget” workshops that I have presenting along with two colleagues from the West Townshend Country Store is helping to dispel the myth that healthy food is high cost, and I would like to share here some of those insights we are presenting.

The first workshop, held in June, focused on soups. If you think about it, soup is one of the easiest ways to stretch a tight food budget.

Soup can be made out of any ingredients you have on hand, so it can save money by reducing wasted food that might otherwise be forgotten in the fridge and then end up being thrown away.

Speaking of food waste, what do you do with the ends when you cut up carrots, celery, onions and other vegetables? Do you throw them away? Next time,