EXPANSION

More opportunities for care. More flexibility for families. The same EXCEPTIONAL CHIROPRACTIC EXPERIENCE” you’ve come to know, trust and love.  We are in the season of EXPANSION!

There is something incredibly special about growing alongside the community you love.  Best Chiropractor Fenton Michigan Dr Peabody Dr Rozboril

When I opened Café of LIFE Chiropractic in Fenton in March of 2005, I had a vision: to create a place where people of all ages could feel welcomed, cared for, heard, and empowered to live healthier, more vibrant lives.  At our fourth location and more than twenty-one years later, that vision continues to grow. And today, I’m excited to share another chapter in our story.

Café of LIFE Chiropractic has expanded and incorporated another CHIROPRACTOR, Dr Sarah Rozboril, and also EXPANDED HOURS!!!  

But before we talk about what’s changing, I want to talk about WHY we’re growing.  It is BECAUSE OF YOU!  Over the years, you’ve trusted us with your health, your families, your children, your pregnancies, your challenges, and your victories.  We’ve watched your babies grow into teenagers. We’ve cared for parents who are now grandparents. We’ve celebrated milestones, witnessed transformations, and built relationships that extend far beyond the chiropractic adjusting table.

You’ve shared your experiences in our office with friends, brought your loved ones into our office, written heartfelt reviews, and continued to choose Café of LIFE Chiropractic as part of your family’s wellness journey.

Our growth is a direct reflection of your trust, loyalty, and referrals.

And for that, I am deeply grateful.  Best Chiropractor Fenton Michigan Dr Erica Peabody Dr Sarah Rozboril Pediatric chiropractor

Expanding Our Hours to Better Serve You

Life is busy. Between work, school, sports, family commitments, and everything else that fills our calendars, making time for your health can sometimes feel challenging.  Our expanded hours are designed to provide more opportunities to prioritize your health and well-being.  Whether you’re an established patient continuing your care, a busy parent coordinating appointments for the whole family, or someone considering chiropractic care for the first time, we want to make it easier to find time for your health.

While our availability is expanding, our commitment remains the same: providing the EXCEPTIONAL CHIROPRACTIC EXPERIENCE built on genuine relationships, individualized care and attention, and a passion for helping people move and function at their best.Best Chiropractor Fenton Michigan Dr Erica Peabody   Prenatal Chiropractic care

Growing Our Team, Growing Our Impact

One of the most exciting parts of this new chapter is the continued growth of our chiropractic team.  Having an additional doctor, Dr Roz, and expanded availability allows us to welcome more individuals and families while preserving the personal attention and welcoming atmosphere that have always made our office so special. From newborns and growing children to expectant mothers, active adults, and grandparents, we remain committed to serving people through every stage of life. We believe that health is about more than simply responding to pain. It’s about supporting movement, function, resilience, and the ability to participate fully in the life you love.

The Best Part? We’re Just Getting Started.

After more than two decades in practice, my enthusiasm for chiropractic and the people we serve has only grown stronger. Our beautiful office in the heart of downtown Fenton continues to be a place where community, connection, and health come together. To every patient who has walked through our doors, referred a friend, trusted us with a family member, or encouraged us along the way: thank you.

Thank you for growing with us.Best Chiropractor Fenton Michigan Dr Erica Peabody Dr Sarah Rozboril    Good Thank you for believing in what we do. Thank you for allowing us to be part of your family’s health journey. And thank you for making Café of LIFE Chiropractic what it is today. We are excited about what lies ahead and look forward to serving even more of our Fenton community in the years to come.

Here’s to more LIFE, more opportunities for wellness, and continuing to grow together!

With love and gratitude,

Dr. Erica Peabody
Café of LIFE Chiropractic & Massage Therapy at Peabody Center for Well-Being

WHOLEHEARTED

I am living wholehearted.

I am nine weeks post heart surgery. It feels crazy to even be able to say something like that and it has been an incredible shift in my life!

Best Chiropractor Fenton Michigan - Wholehearted - Dr Erica Peabody

14 years ago I was diagnosed with what is called a Patent Foramen Ovale, a congenital heart defect that is present in twenty percent of the population. Many go un-diagnosed and often the first sign is stroke. I feel very fortunate to know this info and I also feel really fortunate that I didn’t have to have a serious incident in order to get this information.

Playing sports growing up, there was clearly something wrong but they just lumped it into the group called “exercise induced asthma” and “when you start gasping and wheezing (which was happening all the time on the soccer field especially) take this inhaler.”

The inhaler never worked, never made a difference except just to make me shake…and be more frustrated because I still couldn’t catch my breath. I continued to play sports and excelled regardless.

When I was 12 years old, I started getting migraine headaches. I can remember my very first one as I woke up around 2am one morning and told my parents “It feels like a bowling ball hit me in the side of my head.” At 12, those were the best words that I could come up with to describe that pain. The migraines have happened anywhere between 2-10 per month since then.

I am sure there are some migraine sufferers out there reading this that know the kind of pain I am talking about, debilitating to say the least. I learned through the years just to deal with them and after the first few years, I still had the same level of pain but I never let it stop me. Life, school, tests, finals, patient care…nothing stops just because I have a headache and pushing through all of it has always been the way I handled them…and most other things in my life.

Best Chiropractor - Wholehearted - Dr Erica Peabody
they made me lay on my back for 8 solid hours following my surgery which was the hardest part

Shortness of breath upon exertion and migraine headaches, combined with numbness into my hands (which would come and go since my late teenage years) are the classic symptom group for Patent Foramen Ovale and I tested positive. To top all of these symptoms off, chronic hypoxia (lack of oxygen) was the over-riding theme since the blood would just skip the trip to the lungs altogether. On a scale of 1-5 for the size of the hole, I tested as a 4.

I scheduled to see the cardiologist 14 years ago and was looking forward to having all of these things improve for me through a surgical procedure where they inserted a patch in the heart. His exact words “I make a lot of money doing these patches but we do not have the research of what happens to the current devices 30-40 years down the road and so if you are not suffering every single day, don’t do it.”

I was bummed because I was truly looking forward to a shift for me, but I was going to listen to the expert.

I revisited the idea and the tests and all of the procedures this past fall. When I went back to the same cardiologist he said “We have the BEST devices now and so YES!!! …considering how you test and just how compromised you are, lets do it!”

I know what you are thinking out there, “How compromised is she? She has done all these things with a hole in her heart, long distance running and biking, hot yoga, taught aerobics classes for 10 years, even climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro! How is that possible?”

I am (well was) VERY compromised but was going to do all the things anyway because that is the fabric I am built from. I do my best not to let anything slow me down.

November 21, 2019 I went under the knife. This is the procedure they did.

The cardiologist wanted me to take on Thursday off work to have the procedure done, stay the night, go home Friday and head back into work on Monday the 25th. Unbelievable to me in the moment he had said that but that is exactly what I did, and I probably saw many of you that day!

I didn’t share much about this ahead of time for the simple fact that the words “heart surgery” freak most people out. I wanted to get through it, survive it and then tell the story when I can really share the details.

This post is getting lengthy and so I will leave this info here for now and then I will share more in the next post.

When you take a moment to do the math of chronic hypoxia my entire life and never slowing down, to getting full amount of oxygen moving forward, you can see how great of a thing this is and the how freakin’ incredible the medical profession is to be able to develop a fix like that video I shared. Literally I am now finally living wholehearted.

THE SECOND STRAP

He always reaches for the second strap.

It doesn’t matter how many hundreds of times I have put this walking boot on, he reaches for that second strap to help out.

Most of you know I have been in a walking boot since early August.  This has been an overuse injury do to my climb of Mt. Kilimanjaro back in March.  Actually it didn’t happen on the mountain, it was when I got home and never took the proper time to rest that the injury happened.  And beyond that I have been dealing with plantar fasciitis off and on for the past 4 years in my left foot.  It was simply the perfect storm of events.  Chiropractor Fenton Michigan - The Second Strap - Dr Erica Peabody

The trip to Mt. Kilimanjaro was life changing and amazing however since Kilimanjaro it has been the best seven months of my life and all due to meeting one heck of an incredible man.

He has been such a light in my life and I will be sharing our incredible life adventures as we go but I wanted to introduce you all to Mike.

He is the most kind, gentle, generous, hilarious and loving man I have ever been around and I feel lucky to even be able to hang out with someone like him on a regular basis and even luckier to be loved and supported by him.

The other day as I was leaving to head back into work after my lunch, he was there grabbing the boot and helping me.  Of course I am the only one that knows exactly when I am putting it on and taking it off but as soon as I grab and velcro or un-velcro the first strap, he always grabs the second strap.  I got choked up “Even after all this time, how do you just keep doing that and helping me?”

Last week must have marked 500 (not exaggerating) times or so that I have taken this boot off and put it back on.  If he is with me, he jumps up from any place and is instantly up in my business and helping me get this thing back on and he is always fast enough to grab the second strap.  There are 5 total and by the time he has his hands on the second strap he is fixing the rest of them up for me to go out and take on the world.  Every.  Single.  Time.

We have worked and camped and traveled and danced and played since I have had this boot on.  He is always always always making sure it is handled.

There is an air pump on the boot that pumps air around the liner and softens the hard rough corners of the boot.  He knows it takes 8 pumps to pump it up to a comfortable level and that when I stand up it needs 2 more pumps of air for it to be solid.  He counts out loud as he does it.  It comforts me.

I have never ever known a man so willing to help me in my life.  He is there for the fun times but also there, right by my side for the mundane-ness of life…like taking this boot off and putting it back on.  The extent of his help is endless, I am just using this simple task as illustration.  Chiropractor Fenton Michigan - The Second Strap - Dr Erica Peabody

I would be a liar if I said this has all been easy for me but honestly, to accept help in my life isn’t easy to begin with and it has taken this long to really be alright with leaning on him.  His continual willingness to grab that second strap has been eye-opening, as well as mind-boggling.  For the 40 years of my life so far, I have never had so much help, love and support.

Does it sound strange to say that I believe the Universe sent me such a crazy injury that needed so much tending to and sent him at the same time just so I could truly have a shift in my being and allow him to infiltrate my life?  Does it sound crazy that this boot has been like a “boot camp” of sorts to break me down, break all the guards down and teach me to allow someone, him, in?

A friend said to me the other day “I sympathize with your foot thing as I dealt with something similar for 6 months.  It took me getting to a place in my mind that if this is how it was going to be for the rest of my life, if this pain is permanent and I have to deal with this limitation for life, I accept that as my reality…and then I started healing.”

That hit me like a ton of bricks mostly because I have learned to accept it into my life with the condition that it is just for the time being assuming it will heal and feel better.  But taking the idea up a level to the concept that if I have to live in this boot for the rest of my life and be alright with that has really allowed a huge emotional release for me and I can feel the healing happen…on many levels.

…because if I get to have his help with this (which I am finally healing so I will be back to normal in the next few weeks so I won’t need help with it for a lifetime BUT there are ALWAYS other obstacles) life for the rest of my life, I open my arms and heart fully and accept it.

After all of these months and never wavering ever even once, I know he will always be by my side ready to grab that second strap and help me move forward.  I am forever grateful for his love.

 

FOUNDATION

If you are following me on this journey, you know that I am currently building a house. In fact, this week they are finishing with the foundation.Chiropractor Fenton Michigan - Foundation - Dr Erica Peabody This house project is about 1 year delayed but it is a tricky lot and there has been a lot of time spent on putting in the foundation. The house is set back into a hill and so the foundation has to be done in pieces and locked together.
The house project has been going on for quite a while and the one right next door finished just about a month ago. Of course because that one is ahead of us, it puts a bit of pressure from outsiders that are wondering why they aren’t finished at the same time. What they don’t realize is that the neighbors had their house plans in the works even before I had dreamed of purchasing my lot. Their efforts began much before mine did, but sitting side by side, onlookers forgot about that part.
I am fascinated by demolition as well as construction and I am the homeowner that sits on the sidelines, literally on the sidelines, and watches as much of the process as possible in person. I have a very talented builder working on my house and have been sitting right by his side since the very first line was drawn.
I feel very lucky to be part of the process but also even luckier to be privy to the very beginnings and all pieces along the way.
Currently it is difficult to not spend every extra minute out there watching what they are doing on a day to day basis.Chiropractor Fenton Michigan - Foundation - Dr Erica Peabody It started with excavation and then on to footings. Footings started with just boards for forms and then the cement was poured. At this point it felt like something was actually happening.
The next was forms for the foundation. Watching the crew work so hard and putting together this steel puzzle that would eventually be the foundation of my home, absolutely fascinating. I have an incredible team hired to do the foundation and to watch as they all worked together to make this thing happen was really interesting.
Then the pump truck pulls in and they start filling the forms with cement. I sat there and watched from the neighbor’s stairs as this puzzle soon became my basement.
It has been a beautifully sunshiny fall here in Michigan and that day was no exception. It was in the low 60s and the sun was shining on my face as I sat and watched them do this process.
I have been in awe of this entire building process but to actually watch something like this come together, I called my builder and said “It must be so gratifying to watch lines on paper become something!”
Not everyone will get a chance to put a mark on the Earth.
Not everyone who does get a chance to build will be able to watch the process every step of the way.
In that moment, I realized how strongly I was fighting back tears of

Chiropractor Fenton Michigan - Foundation - Dr Erica Peabody

gratitude. I had to have the events of my life to line up exactly the way they did in order to be able to have this chance. During this long and drawn out process, I had no idea if it was going to actually happen and, truthfully some of the process has been very very difficult and some of it actually quite painful.
The nay-sayers will always be there. The ones that want to give opinions on what to do and how to do it will always be waiting in the wings to chime in. I have heard “Do this.” “Don’t do that.” “Have you considered this?” “If I were you, I wouldn’t do that.”
Yup, you know what? We got this covered. There is a reason, well many many reason, why I am chosen the particular builder I am working with. In the midst of all of this I am confident he has it handled as he has shown me over and over and over.
In a moment, those tears of gratitude busted through the surface and I was balling.
Of course I am sure this looked so bizarre to the crew of guys that a woman would sit on the sidelines and ball her eyes out. It was a combination of tears along with laughter as it must have been a pretty bizarre energy coming through from me (I caught some of this in my instagram story:  follow me @drericapeabody)
So I am in this. I have been in this but I am truly in this in a way that I can feel it from head to toe. I have created this beautiful home in my mind for years now. It is amazing to see the beginnings of its foundation, a foundation that has so much strength it is palpable.
This also rolls over to the fact that I am currently building a strong foundation for my life in other ways. Using the visual of the powerful foundation that is built for my home as a vision for my future, I have confidence it will be able to withstand the many tests that come with time.

SURRENDER

Many things have crossed my mind over the past 3 months, many, many, many life lessons learned and one of the greatest has been SURRENDER.

In the 10 days that we were on Mt. Kilimanjaro and and traveling to and from Africa, I counted somewhere around a total of 24 hours of sleep.   Once I was on the mountain, I averaged around 3 hours of sleep per night.Chiropractor Fenton Michigan - Surrender - Mt Kilimanjaro Dr Erica Peabody

The dayss would look like this:

  • The team would come to each tent and wake us up at 6:30am.
  • We would make it to breakfast at  7 and on the trail around 8.
  • We would hike for 3-4 hours and stop for lunch.  We would hike another 3-4 hours to the next camp so our days were around 6-8 hours of total hiking time.
  • We would get settled in and they would call us for dinner around 6:30-7pm.
  • We would get our briefing for the following day, turn our water bladders for our camelbaks in and head back to our tents around 8-8:30.

At this point we were free to go to sleep and that would have been AWESOME if I would have been able to.  There is this thing called “high altitude insomnia”.  It happens because the heart is beating faster than usual, like it does for exercise, because there is less oxygen.  My my mind thought my body was still working out and it is very hard to sleep with my body in that mode.

My usual is I would finally find sleep around 11ish and sleep for about 3 hours and then be up for the rest of the night.  This happened every single night.  I would lay there frustrated because I knew every minute I wasn’t sleeping was also a minute my body wasn’t truly resting and recuperating from the intense day before and not really able to prepare for the next intense day ahead.

When the team would come by the tent at 6:30am to wake us up again, I would be so beside myself with frustration.Chiropractor Fenton Michigan - Surrender Hike - Dr Erica Peabody Mt Kilimanjaro

I would get my stuff packed up anyway.  I would strap my boots on and get my backpack ready, grab my water and be ready for breakfast no matter what.  In the back of my mind I would think to myself, “maybe later tonight I will be able to finally sleep”.

The thing is, I felt miserable inside in those moments.  But there are 30 other women maybe feeling just the same or having some other experience just as miserable.  It didn’t do me any good to complain to anyone.  I would get in this mode of I need to do what needs to be done right now, which was strap my boots on and prepare for the day ahead.  Even though it would have felt good to at least express my stress and frustration to the staff, that didn’t matter either because the trail heads in one direction, it isn’t an “out and back”.  We start on one trail and continue to another one for the descent.  Forward momentum is vital.

It didn’t matter how much I slept that night, or the night before, or the previous 6 nights.  It didn’t matter how sore I was, how foggy my head was, nothing mattered but forward momentum and so I knew I better get started.

Endurance, the whole “put your big girl panties on and step forward“ness of this trip was such a powerful lesson in surrender.  I had many logical reasons to resist what was happening and most people in that position would have similar self-talk going on about the whole scenario.  But pure surrender, strapping on my boots and getting after the task at hand for that day was my only option.  There was no turning around, no turning back and only one way to move.  FORWARD!

When I equate this to things in my life back home, I see how this lesson has served me so well in the past few months.  I have a different view on life.  I have spent a lot of my years paddling upstream.  I have spent so much Chiropractor Fenton Michigan - Surrender Hikers - Dr Erica Peabody Mt. Kilimanjarotime and effort pushing against the current going in the other direction.  The past three months I have spent more time setting down my oars, surrendering and allowing myself to be pushed in the direction that life is trying to naturally take me anyway.

I have always had high and lofty goals for my life and I always will.  Though I have goals and the “WHAT” I want to accomplish figured out, I don’t have to be so wrapped up in trying to control the “HOW” it all happens.  I set some really powerful intentions at the beginning of April this year and life has unfolded more beautifully than I could have ever imagined.  I am in shock and awe sometimes knowing that the most powerful move I can make is keep surrendering my own plan for the bigger plan of the Universe.

Maybe surrender in your mind means “to give up”, “to give in” an “to stop progress”.  To me, it means to “let go and let God”.  It also means to set the goals you want to achieve but surrender to the process of how it all unfolds.  Our thoughts about how we want things to be or how we want them to look is usually a limited view of what is really possible.  I have been taught this lesson over and over and over.

My action of surrender in the mornings on Mt. Kilimanjaro was the moment I strapped my boots on.  From that point I would stand up from the tent, put my arms through the straps of my backpack, embrace the unknown for the day ahead (have no idea exactly what the day would hold, which direction we were going or how long it would take) and start stepping one foot in front of the other.

“Surrender isn’t about being passive, it is about being open.”  -Danielle LaPorte

For 8 solid days, this strategy worked and I realized it would work for my life when I got home as well “Have a goal and a destination ahead, surrender to the process of the steps in getting there.”  Yet another humbling life lesson and a huge THANK YOU to KILIMANJARO!!!

 

Chiropractor Fenton Michigan - Surrender - Dr Erica Peabody