Today we’d like to introduce you to Summer Githens.
Hi Summer, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Grace Wellness Company is a story very dear to me that actually dates back about 8 years. In 2017, I walked through a season of what would be one of the most challenging time of my life. After just graduating nursing school with a new kindergartener, I unexpectedly suffered lower extremity paralysis from transverse myelitis, a cervical lesion from C2-C5 caused from an autoimmune response. During that long hospital visit, I gained a diagnosis of 2 autoimmune diseases that would change my outlook on life forever. With a long battle of learning how to walk and function normally again ahead of me, I also had to learn what having an autoimmune disease meant and if there was a way to potentially help myself. I learned very quickly the importance of nutrition and what we put in our bodies truly does have the ability to aide in our healing or promote our suffering. I quickly entered into a new lifestyle hoping it would all be worth it. Throughout the last 8 years, I have struggled with relapses, new symptoms, new potential diagnosis and the list goes on when you deal with autoimmune disease. In those years, I have also had the joy of learning what it means to truly depend on the Lord no matter your circumstances. I have also learned that He has built our bodies to do amazing things, including helping to healing itself. It has taken many years of this personal adventure but the ups and downs of the adventure has been the very thing that drove me to deep diving into functional health education. Interestingly enough, I have also been a Hospice Nurse for the last 8 years. The venture into this business owning has been completely unexpected and as I pray, is the Lord using the trials He has given me to prayerfully help someone else walking through the same thing. Hospice has been my true love since graduating nursing school and will forever be but as one can imagine, becomes emotionally taxing after a while. For this reason, I chose to venture into medical aesthetics 3 years ago as a joyful outlet. There I have found so much joy in helping others feel seen and heard in their daily lives while helping them to feel better and more confident in their own skin. This adventure has been such a beautiful one that I am grateful for. Within the last year of this aesthetics adventure, I felt heavily called to something deeper and more personal in addition to aesthetics. I absolutely love making others feel better about themselves and felt like I could also be doing more. Our careers are always a place of ministry and I wanted to create that even more than it has been. I hear so many incredible stories, challenges and struggles in my room. I love more than anything being a safe place for each one. It was very evident that all I have been gifted to walk through over the years, while so incredibly hard at times, was clearly the very thing I felt the Lord leading me to do and I felt silly for a moment never seeing that. I am excited to take my experiences and functional education to offer help to those that are walking through the very feelings, worry and uncertainty that I did and still do at times, with my health. I am excited to bring something unique like this to our sweet little town because it is a desperate need. To help the whole person. To be there for them, encourage them and guide them to the tools to help themselves. I realize that is a very sporadic story but isn’t that how the Lord works. Using all things for His glory and our good. He uses every piece of our story. He uses the pieces that even though feel so heavily sorrowful can be used for a big, beautiful purpose even many, many years later. I am so excited to see how He uses all of this.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It has indeed not been the smoothest road but a good adventure never is, right? Some of the struggles have been feeling doubtful of the ability of actually owning a business — that part is hard in itself. It truly challenges you to solely on the Lord to provide all things along the way. Learning to do that has been hard at times but He has provided every single time and I feel it has absolutely strengthened my faith. There have been questions of if all of this is the right decision and how will it affect this precious family of mine. There’s the hope of trusting that each move is the move He wants you to make. Praying over those decisions. Finding the confidence to put your heart and passion out there is also challenging but also trusting that the Lord will use it no matter what does provide peace when you decide to lean into that. That is something I have quickly learned. There have been many struggles and that is expected in anything challenging I think. But it’s been beautiful. I do think the Lord places us in areas where we can be stretched and where we can learn true dependence on Him and I think that’s what this has been for me. One of my favorite quotes is by Elisabeth Elliot and it says, “Just do the next right thing” and that is all we can do. The beauty of seeing it all play out and how others have already been greatly helped outweighs every struggle that has come or will come. I remind myself often what joy it is to have obstacles so that we can lean on the very One that can help guide us through them.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Grace Wellness Company & Aesthetics ?
Grace Wellness Company & Aesthetics is a place where its services can benefit most anyone. We offer functional wellness services and testing, gut health solutions and testing, supplements, nutrition and weight loss guidance. In addition to functional health services, we offer all aesthetic services that includes botox, filler, collagen stimulators, microneedling and medical grade skincare. Given my history of a hospice nurse, I have learned the importance of what trauma and our own personal experiences can also do to our health. In our one hour consultations, we dive deep into your health and personal history in attempts to find keys or contributors to your symptoms or what may have triggered them and then we approach helping those symptoms with the tools the Lord has already given us. In partnership with skilled Physicians, I am deeply passionate about getting my clients the help they need. I do believe the personal experiences I have had having autoimmune disease and the daily struggles that I have endured is what sets Grace Wellness apart. It brings so many of my patients relief when they hear they are sharing their story with someone who understands it to the core. I believe it is important to reassure those walking through their health struggles, that they are not alone and I can share those same feelings with them. We are all on this healing journey together! That makes my heart so happy. Brand wise – I am proud of the bluebird that sits in my logo. If you have wondered why the bird is there and what it represents, then wonder no more. The bluebird represents all of my precious hospice patients I have cared for over the years. It is a representation of a beautiful chapter of serving so many sweet families and patients. One patient in particular encouraged me to see the bluebird a different way and why it stands the center of the Grace logo but I will share that story for another time.
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
I do not consider myself a risk taker. I actually do not do well with change nor anything I cannot predict. Which is so ironic because starting your own business is the opposite of that. This adventure has challenged me in so many beautiful ways. It has absolutely required me to step out of my comfort zone and take the risk. I tell myself that taking the risk of this dream of helping others is better out there trying than to keeping it all to myself. That is how I feel about it. While it is so hard not being able to predict how it all will go or what the days will hold, there is so much beauty and growth in trusting the Lord the entire way through. We grow in unknown and challenges. We grow in the risks we take. I do think we become stronger because of each one of them. Stepping outside of your comfort zone can lead to so many new beautiful things you never would have dreamt of had you stayed where you were comfortable. That is something I have learned within this process. Nothing is a failure and no risk is wasted, everything is an opportunity to learn and grow. Everything we do is what continues to shape us into who we are and what we can be for other people! I do feel like if we can be assured that we walk through all we do for a greater purpose then our outlook on everything can change. We can see the opportunity to use all of what we’ve endured to help someone else and our story becomes more beautiful.
Pricing:
- Functional Wellness Consultations $75
- Botox $10-13 per unit
- Supplement prices vary
- Functional Wellness Testing varies
- Microneedling $300 per session
Contact Info:
- Instagram: Injector.summer_rn
- Facebook: The Functional Nurse (Grace Wellness Company)
