August greetings to our friends of the Featherstones Comfort Pad!
And if we’re counting our weeks correctly, looks like we’ll get one more newsletter out during the summer season. Even if it will likely feel like fall – already! What’s up with summer flying by again! It’s supposed to slide along, all mellow and slow, right? Sigh!!! 😊
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New news!
So – we have some good news to follow up on last month’s note about getting the Featherstones Comfort Pad into Boston Children’s Hospital’s MRI department. I concluded that exciting news with, “we’re working up plans to hopefully develop more institutional users of our patented product.”
What we didn’t know at that time was that a significant shift in our lives was soon to occur. My husband, Scott, who has been so supportive and helpful in my Comfort Pad campaign, has departed the newspaper company that he worked in for 23 years. He held the position of senior managing editor, overseeing the local newsroom, which produced several community newspapers and websites. After some recent company changes that impacted his responsibility (and others’), and following an announcement of looming cutbacks, he decided to proactively address the situation, and he and his employer mutually agreed that he would depart the company under truly positive circumstances.
To know Scott is to know that he is incredibly positive, and he sees this as a wonderful opportunity to devote his fulltime attention to helping me in Featherstones LLC with marketing the Comfort Pad. I’m still in my massage therapy practice, which I have cut back to dedicate more time to the Comfort Pad, but I could really use more help – there is so much to do! So, this timing – as we look ahead to September and the coming of the real new year – is perfect! He took a week off to enjoy a transition, and we have jumped into the planning phase. When things ramp up again over the coming weeks, we’ll flow into the execution phase. We both believe in the saying, plan your work, and work your plan.
Of course, while we’ve proven we’re a great team personally, will we also be professionally? LOL! I guess time will tell, but I’m betting on us! 😊
Here’s Scott taking orders at our launch party!
Our gift to you!
I am so thankful for the response to our Summer Super Sale offer we made last month and want to repeat it again while our sale is still going on. We have some super Comfort Pad sale prices set up to help us through the slow summer retail period. And not only can you enjoy these great prices on the entire line for a limited time more, but also, anyone who receives this newsletter can win a FREE Comfort Pad Carry Bag just by referring a new customer who makes a Comfort Pad purchase! The customer can put your name in the purchase notes, or you can simply let me know who it is by emailing leigh@featherstonesinc.com. We still ship for free to anywhere in the USA!
Just send your friend to https://featherstonesinc.com/comfort-pad and once the sale is confirmed we’ll send you a Carry Bag with our thanks! One free Carry Bag per person. Do your friend and yourself a favor! Thanks!!!
Recognizing the myths
You know that breast health is an important topic in my world. My massage business focuses on women’s wellness, and I specialize in prenatal care. Also, some of my clients are breast cancer survivors. I am tuned into some clients experiencing breast pain, which, as you know, caused me to develop my Comfort Pad. So, I look into breast health topics off and on and thought I’d share a bit of recent reading.
One source I like to cite is the National Breast Cancer Foundation, and a few months ago I recommended a free e-book download of the Foundation’s “Breast Problems that aren’t Breast Cancer” (Breast Problems That Aren’t Breast Cancer eBook – National Breast Cancer Foundation).
I was reading in the Free Resources section (Free Educational Guides – National Breast Cancer Foundation) and came across something I thought I’d share (we have the Foundation’s permission to share their information in our messaging). Here are some of the Foundation’s breast cancer myths:
Myth: Finding a lump in your breast means you have breast cancer.
Truth: Only a small percentage of breast lumps turn out to be cancer. But if you discover a persistent lump in your breast that is new or notice any changes in breast tissue, it should never be ignored. It is very important that you see a physician for a clinical breast exam. He or she may possibly order breast imaging studies to determine if this lump is of concern or not.
Take charge of your health by performing routine breast self-exams, establishing ongoing communication with your doctor, getting an annual clinical breast exam, and scheduling your routine screening mammograms.
Myth: Men do not get breast cancer; it affects women only.
Truth: Quite the contrary, each year it is estimated that approximately 2,190 men will be diagnosed with breast cancer and 410 will die. While this percentage is still small, men should also check themselves periodically by doing a breast self-exam while in the shower and reporting any changes to their physicians.
Breast cancer in men is usually detected as a hard lump underneath the nipple and areola. Men carry a higher mortality than women do, by 25%, primarily because awareness among men is less and they are less likely to assume a lump is breast cancer, which can cause a delay in seeking treatment.
Myth: If you have a family history of breast cancer, you are likely to develop breast cancer, too.
Truth: While women who have a family history of breast cancer are in a higher risk group, most women who have breast cancer have no family history. Statistically only about 10% of individuals diagnosed with breast cancer have a family history of this disease.
If you have a first degree relative with breast cancer: If you have a mother, daughter, or sister who developed breast cancer below the age of 50, you should consider some form of regular diagnostic breast imaging starting 10 years before the age of your relative’s diagnosis.
If you have a second degree relative with breast cancer: If you have had a grandmother or aunt who was diagnosed with breast cancer, your risk increases slightly, but it is not in the same risk category as those who have a first degree relative with breast cancer.
If you have multiple generations diagnosed with breast cancer on the same side of the family, or if there are several individuals who are first degree relatives to one another, or several family members diagnosed under age 50, the probability increases that there is a breast cancer gene contributing to the cause of this familial history.
Myth: If the gene mutation BRCA1 or BRCA2 is detected in your DNA, you will definitely develop breast cancer.
Truth: According to the National Cancer Institute, regarding families who are known to carry BRCA1 or BRCA2, “not every woman in such families carries a harmful BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation, and not every cancer in such families is linked to a harmful mutation in one of these genes. Furthermore, not every woman who has a harmful BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation will develop breast and/or ovarian cancer. But, a woman who has inherited a harmful mutation in BRCA1 or BRCA2 is about five times more likely to develop breast cancer than a woman who does not have such a mutation.”
For people who discover they have the harmful mutation, there are various proactive measures that can be done to reduce risk. These include taking a hormonal therapy called Tamoxifen or deciding to take a surgical prevention approach which is to have bilateral prophylactic mastectomies, usually done with reconstruction. Most women will also have ovaries and fallopian tubes removed as well since there is no reliable screening test for the early stages of developing ovarian cancer.
More breast cancer myths can be found at Breast Cancer Myths – National Breast Cancer Foundation. I hope the men and women in our lives stay current on breast health, and I hope the partners in their lives become equally interested, and, heaven forbid, should cancer strike, become their loved one’s best health advocates. I know well how breast cancer can become all consuming, and having an ardent advocate can be a wonderful asset in the potential cancer battle. ♥
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It’s recipe time!
With the great response last month to my mom’s Blueberry Bramble recipe, I’m excited to share another blueberry favorite. When I was a little girl, my mother, Missy, would take her four daughters by train to Boston to shop at the former Jordan Marsh department store (Jordan Marsh – Wikipedia) for back-to-school clothes. We might have a snack at the lunch counter, and when we’d leave, we’d stare longingly at the case of muffins – especially the Jordan Marsh Blueberry Muffins.
Well, we were obviously not the only ones to be enthralled! The recipe exists in variations, and can be found all over. The following is the one I use.
Jordan Marsh Blueberry Muffins
Ingredients
½ cup butter
2 cups unsifted flour
¾ cup sugar
2 large eggs
½ cup milk
2 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
2 cups fresh blueberries (go crazy with 2½ if you want!)
1-½ tsp vanilla extract
3 tbsp sugar for top of muffins
Instructions
Preheat oven to 375ᵒ
In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy; add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition.
In a second bowl, combine all dry ingredients. You can use an electric mixer or whisk to combine the dry ingredients thoroughly so that you won’t need to overmix once the wet and dry ingredients are combined.
Gradually add the dry ingredients to the creamed butter and sugar mixture, along with the milk and vanilla.
Optionally, mash ½ cup of the blueberries and stir in by hand (this will turn the batter to a light shade of blue and add a touch of blueberry flavor, but this step can be skipped). Add remaining whole berries and stir in gently by hand.
Spray a 12-muffin baking pan with Baker’s Joy (or other nonstick spray). Fill greased muffin cups. Or use muffin paper cups.
Sprinkle sugar on top of unbaked muffins.
Bake at 375ᵒ for 30-35 minutes. Cool in pan. Run a knife around the edge of each muffin for several minutes to free it from the pan and cool on wire racks. (Remember those paper cups? Much easier. You’ll have trash, but all those blueberries will make the muffins prone to sticking to the pan.)
Enjoy! (I wish we had a photo from our last batch but they went too fast! lol)
Tiny favors
If you enjoy your Comfort Pad, please be sure to leave a rating and brief review on your Comfort Pad’s page at https://featherstonesinc.com/comfort-pad. They help immensely with our marketing, so thank you!!!
Also, it’s equally helpful for viewers to share our social media posts so others in their world see them. We’ve learned that introducing a brand new product to the marketplace is difficult, so your sharing our posts will help put them in front of like-minded people. Word of mouth works, and this is a form of that. As we say in our posts: “Featherstones – pass the word!”
And please feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone you think might enjoy it – if they like it, they can sign up at the website. We’ll never sell or give anyone’s info away!
Thank you so very much for your support and inspiration! We’re coming up on our first year anniversary – the time is flying by! We simply could not do this without all of you. We are so very grateful for your purchases and referrals, and even more so for your kind words and encouragement.
From our hearts to yours!
With love, Leigh
PS, You can follow the Featherstones Comfort Pad social media pages: @featherstones.comfort.pad on Instagram and @FeatherstonesComfortPad on Facebook. We post twice a day five days a week, a mix of business, info and fun. 😊
