Resilience Isn't Bouncing Back and What Your Dirty Laundry Has to Do With It (S2E12)

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What the hell does your dirty laundry have to do with resilience?
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Today we're going somewhere personal.
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Right into your dirty laundry.
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When we got to this topic of resilience today, I made a decision and I wanted to share parts of my own story, some parts that I haven't shared before, and some that I have, but we've gathered some new listeners this season.
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The first thing that I think about when I hear about resilience and what it is and what it isn't...
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have you heard of the parable of the carrot, the egg, and the coffee bean?
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I have not.
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Really?
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Uh-uh
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it's the parable of the carrot, the egg, and the coffee bean.
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And when you take the carrot that is strong and hard and unrelenting, and you put it in the boiling water, it becomes soft and mushy and weak.
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And the egg, which is fragile and fluid inside but has the exterior shell, and you put it in hard water, and it becomes rigid on the inside, right?
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But you take the coffee bean that's small and hard, and you put it into the boiling water, it transforms the water itself, and becomes coffee.
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So, the takeaway is that you can't control the hot water that life throws at you,
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Yeah
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but you can control what you become because of it.
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So a resilient individual becomes like the coffee bean.
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Under pressure, you grow, you elevate your mindset, and you impact your surroundings.
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I love that.
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It's a twist on making lemonade out of lemons.
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Exactly.
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Yeah, and the bean, the bean doesn't go back to being a bean.
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It can't.
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Whatever it was before the water happened, that's over.
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That's the part of it that we don't wanna hear because what most of us want when something knocks us down is to get, quote-unquote,"back to normal," back to the plan, back to who we were last week.
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And you can't force that.
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I tried for years.
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So, the hardest thing to remember was that resilience doesn't mean keeping going at all costs.
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That's where I had it wrong.
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Sometimes it's the opposite of that.
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Sometimes it means having courage to stop forcing something to be a certain way, whether it's your job, your body, a relationship When it's never gonna be the same again.
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It isn't always about getting back.
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Sometimes growth is going somewhere different than you were planning, and that isn't quitting.
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That's you finally telling yourself the truth.
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Yeah, I remind myself that because I feel like for a long time I thought of resilience as being this tough, hard, you know, I'm gonna just fight my way through life, and that's like the opposite of being resilient, right?
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But that's what I think about when I think about what it is and more importantly, what it isn't.
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"Why are we telling all this personal stuff?" Here's why.
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The way that I found my way forward through the things that were hard in my life were through the stories that someone else shared about their hard.
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And although no two paths are the same, I think that's how we turn and help another.
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If we're talking about resilience and reminding you that you have the strength within yourself to fall forward, then I also think that the audience needs to know kind of where I fell from.
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So I guess what I'm saying is we hear it all the time, bounce back, push through, get back to where you were.
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And for a long time, I believed that I kept trying to get back to the plan, back to my version of life that I had mapped out...
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and all that did was keep me stuck.
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That was a significant moment in the changing of the trajectory that I was on at the time, is when I asked,"Well, wait, what if it's not about bouncing back?
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What if it is about falling forward?" I do think that resilience, is one of the most misunderstood words out there.
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We bought into this tough it all out at all costs narrative, especially in Western PA.
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That's our MO, that's our work ethic, and we do need a good work ethic.
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But when it comes to resilience sometimes it gets interpreted as you just have to absorb all the hits and keep on moving.
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Push through the pain.
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And never let anyone see you struggle.
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And to me, that's not quite it.
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That's not resilience, and I think that can be self-defeating.
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Oh, it sure can be.
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I lived that, and it kept me from seeing what was really happening, and busy kind of became my shield.
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As long as I kept moving, I didn't have to deal with what I already knew.
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Take us there.
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I think that one version of resilience is really being honest enough to admit when something isn't working anymore.
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And I think sometimes resilience, the word itself gets used against people.
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Yeah.
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Resilient people still fall down.
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Yeah.
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I think it's recognizing what it is you need to become, right?
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So, you kept thinking you need to get back to your normal, your life, get back to yourself.
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I've been there too.
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Like, I just wanna be myself again.
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But something happened, and after that thing happened, there is no getting back to that old version of you.
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That's where you have to be the coffee bean.
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You were trying really hard keep being this version of yourself that you felt you were or needed to be, and now comes the moment, the realization that that Sherry is not gonna be that Sherry ever again.
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Yeah.
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Sometimes the answer isn't that you get stronger.
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You recognize you're in a situation that isn't safe, or the thing that you keep on enduring is something that should've changed a long time ago and nobody is changing it.
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And if you're being told to be resilient about that, that isn't help.
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That's how people get talked into staying.
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You brought this up in another episode when it comes to, um, safety.
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Like when you're in an unsafe situation.
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So sometimes before you even go looking for more strength, it's asking yourself whether the thing that you're enduring is a thing that you're supposed to be enduring at all.
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And so I, I think that's the part of resilience that we skip over sometimes and try to tough it out through things that we shouldn't be trying to tough out.
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100%.
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I mean, you think about it, like pain is a signal to our bodies, right?
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That something's wrong and we need to stop and check it.
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But people they're like,"I've gotta push through the pain.
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Pain don't hurt." And then something absolutely horrific happens because the body's screaming,"Stop, stop, stop."
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We try to quiet the signals, and then the signals just get louder.
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So, you ask about my story and before I do say any of that, I do want to say first that you and I and we and the listeners, no one's had the same life.
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So recognize and understand that some people are carrying things that I have never had to carry, things that I can't imagine, and I'm not gonna pretend that I can.
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And some of you are carrying something that looks, quote-unquote, small from the outside, and sometimes hold that as something that you would be, like, embarrassed to say out loud.
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But I want both listeners to stay with us because here's what we're trying to do for each other.
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Somebody tells you what they're going through, and sometimes the first two words out of our mouth are,"Well, at least it wasn't..." Fill in the blank.
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At least it wasn't worse.
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At least you still have your job.
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At least...
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And we mean it well.
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We say it like it's comfort, but that's not often how it's received.
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It more often feels like a door closing.
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It tells the person that- Well, this conversation's over and I should just be grateful When what a person...
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pain
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Yeah, and what a person may really need is to be able to be honest about their feeling in that moment.
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And I'm definitely not knocking gratitude.
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Gratitude matters, and it matters a lot.
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But it's something you find your own way to.
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I don't think anybody can hand it to you in the middle of your worst times.
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And I think we say it to ourselves harder than anybody, though, says it to us individually.
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I did.
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And I know that when my career ended, I was embarrassed.
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I, I looked around at what other people were getting through, and I somewhere in there decided that mine didn't count, so I didn't really say anything for a long time.
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And that's the part about this conversation that I wanted to make sure we had today.
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It's not a ranking.
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No, all hard is not the same size, and we're not gonna be here today and tell you that it is.
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There are things that are just unfathomable.
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But no one needs-
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But it's not just the unfathomable.
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Yeah, your hard doesn't have to beat someone else's to count.
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I wanna specifically loop back to an episode that we did last season.
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It was one that we think is one of our best.
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We had shared someone's story with their full blessing, the intention was pure.
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But I have to say that I really had a hard time after it.
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And it wasn't because of how the audience received it.
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They were pretty incredible.
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But I kept wondering how it looked to people closest to that story.
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And I couldn't get past the fact that it somehow felt like I was using someone else's pain to build something for myself.
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And I wanna be clear that everything that we're building here is for our listeners.
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What the purpose has been from the beginning, before it was even a podcast really, was the want to connect people to tools and inspiration so that you can see what you're already capable of because every one of us is capable of hard things.
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But sometimes in the middle of it, we forget that.
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And that's the purpose.
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We forget our own power, and that's what we're here for, Jodi and I, is to remind anyone who's listening, to remind them of that, of your own power.
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And
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You're not alone.
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Yes, and to that note, when we do bring in other voices in this season, those will be people who are already out there telling their own stories because in order to move forward in a way that feels like inspiration, not exploitation in some way, that's the way forward for us.
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I guess I have to tell where I fell from.
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Yeah.
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Okay, so this goes back to 2019.
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It actually goes back before that, but the part that changed the trajectory was in 2019.
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I was already dealing with excruciating nerve pain, which is 24 hours a day, seven days a week, burning in my face like a beehive or getting slapped with a wet towel and it never stopping.
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And I was teaching at the time, and that meant talking all day, which really turned the intensity up on the thing that I was going through, and I could get through the workday mostly because it's a very busy day, and you're not gonna stand in front of a classroom and fall apart.
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But the car ride home, that was another story.
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There was nothing there to distract me from it anymore.
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In the car, it was just me and the pain and the knowing that I still had a house full of people who needed me on the other side of that driveway, a husband, kids, other family members.
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And all I wanted to do was go home, go to sleep so that I would be okay enough to do it all again the next day.
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And that was the cycle.
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And that's when I found myself crying in the car a lot, because that was the only space where I felt that I didn't have to perform at some level.
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But Jodi, like you said earlier, I kept going because what else are you gonna do?
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I had a career.
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I had an identity.
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I had a plan, you know, for my life And,
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I think a lot of people know what that feels like.
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And that's exactly why I'm telling it.
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I had an MRI scheduled to look at surgical options, which I was terrified of, but I had reached that point.
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I never made it to that appointment because I went to the ER.
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I went to the ER because my baby finger was turning black.
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That's it.
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That's the whole reason why I went.
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It was like that for a couple days, and on my list of to-dos, after I did all the other to-dos that a mom's doing, like the week before school, uh, I went.
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And they ended up doing a CT scan and found a massive blood clot in my subclavian artery, which is, that's the artery that runs through your shoulder and feeds your entire arm and connects directly to your brain's blood supply.
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And that type of situation apparently happens in, like, less than 1% of people.
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But they admitted me immediately, and a couple days later, the clot led to strokes.
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It wasn't catastrophic, but it was enough to trigger a life change that I was not ready for, but that I came to find out I desperately needed.
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It's the thing where you mentioned earlier about your body's giving signals,
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Right.
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And yours had been screaming at you.
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Yeah, and, and that happens a lot to...
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that something needs to change.
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Right.
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Our bodies tell us things, but our minds aren't always ready to accept it yet.
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And I know how people like me are wired, and you.
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We're conditioned to push through, and I probably would have gone back to teaching, kept moving, told myself I was fine, but my body already made the decision for me because some more things happened over the next several days.
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And looking back now, going back would've been probably the most dangerous thing that I could have done, and I stopped trying to go back, and that's when I was intentional about falling forward instead.
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I realized I t- I almost talked myself out of my own emergency because I had that to-do list.
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You know?
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I tackled the to-do list, I did all the errands before I took myself to the hospital that day.
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And
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So many people do that.
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We do.
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Right Yep.
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I try not to ruminate on things, but you also have to have an accurate picture of your reality.
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And for me, Early expiration runs in my family.
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I don't know a nicer way to say it.
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On both sides.
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That's a nice way.
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My grandfather in his 50s and then cancer took my dad at 59, and and two of his brothers, too young on one side, and then on the other, seven people under the age of 55 lost to diabetes, pulmonary embolisms, and substance abuse.
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And there I was with a clot in the same artery that kills people.
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And once I took the time to kinda put that front and center instead of pushing it away, I realized really that having strokes at that time were a blessing.
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And it was that shift in perspective that made me realize that I got the chance to break the pattern.
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They didn't.
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If someone is listening right now and something isn't working, that's why we're here, to remind you that you do have it within you.
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And, but I-- try to be careful with that too, though, because falling forward can make it sound like everybody who ended up somewhere better just decided to, and it's not something you can just decide your way to.
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It does require a shift in perspective.
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Some people don't get the chance that I got.
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Some people fight harder than I ever had to, and it takes them anyway.
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And that's not a failure and it deserves to be said out loud before we go any further.
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Because there's people listening right now who are in the middle of that and still pushing through.
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You know?
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Yeah.
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Not sure what's coming next.
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And you don't have to have the immediate answer when, when you're faced with something like this.
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Because I think that's where the strength starts to grow, you know?
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I think when we take that minute to sit back and look at where we're at.
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Yeah, you might realize that you're just hanging in there like a booger.
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That's what I like to say.
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You know, sometimes, like, well, I'm hanging in there.
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Might be hanging in there like a booger, but I'm still hanging in there.
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That's right.
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Sometimes that's all you can do.
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You know, until you find your next right thing, next little thing that you can do.
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My plate was full, and it was cracking.
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Um, like many families, I had four kids at home who needed me, and we'll get into that at some other time.
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But multiple health concerns were surfacing all at once.
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I was still grieving my dad.
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I was navigating my sister's substance use and learning what I had the capacity for, making peace with what didn't, and that was a whole other episode.
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But I was barely surviving at that time.
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But they needed me to show up, so I did.
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And it wasn't because I was strong.
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It was because I didn't have a choice.
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But not having that choice Being forced, you did still find resilience.
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You found your pivot.
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You found your way forward by accepting what you had and accepting that you needed to accept help and be open and honest with the people around you, right?
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Yeah.
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I think that's kind of the point.
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It's hard to see that if we can't get still and we don't let ourselves get still because it's uncomfortable and I think the only reason it worked the way that it did, because I didn't, I didn't choose any stillness, it was forced on me medically.
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So I was forced to be with myself, and from there something shifted, and I don't really know where I would be today if I hadn't been forced to stop.
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I had to get honest with myself, and I...
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Like, I'm just trying to put myself where the listeners are right now with that,'cause most, most people don't get forced.
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No, and honestly, it doesn't have to be that.
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If you're feeling, I mean, there could be somebody out there right now just feeling just a little bit of pressure, right?
00:22:02.941 --> 00:22:06.280
And, and you don't know where it comes from.
00:22:06.760 --> 00:22:13.990
And I think I wrote a story about this, an essay not too long ago, um, where I knew that I needed a break.
00:22:14.040 --> 00:22:25.790
I just knew I needed a break, and I was sort of feeling very disorganized and all over the place, and I, I took a bunch of old, like, s- I have a billion journals, and my to-do lists are all over the place.
00:22:25.800 --> 00:22:32.590
And I just collected all of them, and I took a weekend by myself with all of my journals and my books and my calendar.
00:22:32.861 --> 00:22:43.300
And what I started to notice, is that in those moments when I was really out there, even my handwriting
00:22:44.174 --> 00:22:44.434
Yep.
00:22:44.441 --> 00:22:45.270
was erratic.
00:22:45.441 --> 00:22:49.300
I couldn't read my own notes because it was like...
00:22:49.300 --> 00:22:54.631
I s- it looked like a crazy person had wrote out my to-do list on certain days.
00:22:54.941 --> 00:23:10.371
And I, I took the ti- I forced myself to take the time to sit with that and reorganize it, and I thought,"I need to conduct myself in a better way, or I'm gonna end up in a really bad place." that was how I noticed.
00:23:10.371 --> 00:23:12.171
I started noticing it's my handwriting.
00:23:12.171 --> 00:23:23.550
When I start to not make sense and I start to notice myself drifting in certain ways, that's when I, I have to catch myself and say,"You're headed to...
00:23:23.911 --> 00:23:27.351
You're gonna crash through a wall." And I literally
00:23:27.371 --> 00:23:27.961
that's...
00:23:28.211 --> 00:23:28.641
did before, too.
00:23:29.931 --> 00:23:32.740
But you recognize that as a, as a signal.
00:23:33.351 --> 00:23:40.500
And we were talking about the body giving you signals, like that's another signal, and that's back to the first thing we talked about this season, which is self-awareness.
00:23:40.500 --> 00:23:44.740
And you recognize that you know, that's a clue.
00:23:45.053 --> 00:23:47.732
It doesn't mean that I'm never gonna have those experiences again.
00:23:47.732 --> 00:23:48.133
Guess what?
00:23:48.133 --> 00:23:49.133
It still happens.
00:23:49.681 --> 00:23:50.320
Yeah, it's life.
00:23:50.320 --> 00:24:01.411
I think our very first episode we talked about do you have those moments when you're, you know, you get in your car to go to work and suddenly you're at work, and you're like,"Whoa, I don't even remember the drive here"?
00:24:01.871 --> 00:24:02.701
That's a clue.
00:24:03.560 --> 00:24:04.530
It's a signal.
00:24:06.220 --> 00:24:06.660
It is.
00:24:06.711 --> 00:24:15.193
Trust me, because that is exactly what happened to me two winters ago when I did literally crash my car into the garage door.
00:24:15.243 --> 00:24:15.554
Uh-huh.
00:24:18.181 --> 00:24:20.070
'Cause I wasn't paying attention to the signals.
00:24:20.111 --> 00:24:22.550
They, apparently they weren't quite loud enough.
00:24:22.691 --> 00:24:22.971
That
00:24:23.150 --> 00:24:24.460
That's what happens.
00:24:24.460 --> 00:24:29.539
If we're not listening to those small signals, they will get louder and louder and louder until you're forced.
00:24:30.391 --> 00:24:30.820
Right.
00:24:31.642 --> 00:24:32.142
And
00:24:32.300 --> 00:24:34.201
the resilient person stops.
00:24:34.221 --> 00:24:36.080
You recognize it and you stop.
00:24:36.131 --> 00:24:36.911
Not keep going.
00:24:38.430 --> 00:24:38.670
Yeah.
00:24:38.710 --> 00:24:47.200
Well, I mean, I have to say that is in the tagline, keep going and keep growing, but you can't, you can't, you don't, you don't keep going recklessly.
00:24:47.579 --> 00:24:51.210
You keep going with intention, and that's the difference.
00:24:51.259 --> 00:24:51.529
Right.
00:24:51.529 --> 00:24:57.430
It's not like I'm saying,"Oh, I'm having a bad day," which is stop, call off work, don't do anything.
00:24:57.480 --> 00:24:58.279
I mean, that's not...
00:24:58.900 --> 00:25:01.589
It makes sure you're stopping productively, you know?
00:25:01.589 --> 00:25:01.940
Like
00:25:02.698 --> 00:25:02.988
Right.
00:25:03.407 --> 00:25:03.788
Right
00:25:04.019 --> 00:25:09.150
Blowing off your responsibilities to binge Netflix or play on your phone isn't, isn't a thing
00:25:09.665 --> 00:25:10.056
Yeah.
00:25:10.056 --> 00:25:12.895
The key part about it is getting honest with yourself.
00:25:13.445 --> 00:25:13.915
You know?
00:25:13.986 --> 00:25:14.425
Like,
00:25:14.634 --> 00:25:15.384
truthfully
00:25:15.655 --> 00:25:15.976
Yeah.
00:25:16.296 --> 00:25:24.665
And that's, that's what I had to do'cause what I really grappled with was I, I was, stuck on the fact that, like, here I, I had a master's degree.
00:25:24.895 --> 00:25:35.885
I built my whole identity around being an educator, and I had to come to terms with the fact that that wasn't sustainable anymore, and it wasn't because I failed it.
00:25:36.756 --> 00:25:38.596
My body just couldn't do it anymore.
00:25:39.256 --> 00:25:46.766
And then that was a really hard thing to sit with because it was like, well, who am I if it's not this?
00:25:47.925 --> 00:25:55.395
And in that stillness, I started to look at my family history differently.
00:25:56.175 --> 00:26:04.286
I'm up against some terrible genetics, and I realized that I didn't wanna look at it through the lens of doom and gloom.
00:26:05.516 --> 00:26:22.645
I would rather look at it and use it as fuel, and that was the shift in perspective where I decided that if I'm going to have a chance, I have to show up differently than the pattern that I inherited.
00:26:24.145 --> 00:26:30.945
And I couldn't do that while I was forcing something that was slowly killing me.
00:26:32.016 --> 00:26:37.016
And I wanna say something to anyone who's sitting in that space right now.
00:26:38.326 --> 00:26:42.385
Changing direction is not the same as giving up.
00:26:43.066 --> 00:27:00.023
Sometimes that is the first honest thing that you do for yourself in a long time, so you don't find yourself in, you know, these medical situations or absentmindedly r- wrecking into the garage door.
00:27:00.023 --> 00:27:00.653
You know what I mean?
00:27:00.653 --> 00:27:08.751
It's like listening to yourself and giving yourself, um, the space to To check your perspective, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.
00:27:08.971 --> 00:27:11.672
And yeah.
00:27:12.721 --> 00:27:25.751
So, and I, I do also I keep talking about perspective, and the perspective that kept me grounded and upright through it all is that recognizing that when I fell, I had things underneath me to support me.
00:27:25.771 --> 00:27:35.862
I had insurance, I had a hospital that admitted me that day, I had a husband bringing home an income, I had a roof that stayed over my head while I figured it out.
00:27:36.241 --> 00:27:37.422
I still had my degree.
00:27:37.422 --> 00:27:38.832
Nobody could take that back.
00:27:39.301 --> 00:27:45.481
Not everybody has that, and some people can't change direction that simply.
00:27:46.619 --> 00:27:46.900
Right.
00:27:47.869 --> 00:27:49.769
If there's nothing underneath you if you do.
00:27:50.049 --> 00:28:00.069
So again, I want to be direct that I'm not gonna sit here and act like I didn't have a net under me as I was falling, because I did.
00:28:00.730 --> 00:28:03.779
But that doesn't make what I went through any less real.
00:28:04.599 --> 00:28:17.400
It means I want to use what I went through to share the truth about how I got through it, because that's really what the focus is, is not what happened, it's how I got through it, like Jodi was saying earlier.
00:28:18.089 --> 00:28:19.740
It completely shifted my life.
00:28:19.750 --> 00:28:27.369
Like, when I was recovering, I wasn't doing much else except for all these various therapies coming to the house and this and that.
00:28:28.329 --> 00:28:42.700
And so I was home a lot, and I started to notice how out of control things had gotten around me, and I was like,"Wow, our environment really is a reflection of our state of mind." And mine was telling me something.
00:28:43.079 --> 00:28:53.960
So, nothing else to do in that time, so I started getting it together and slowly, on my own terms, and then recognizing when to ask for help.
00:28:54.299 --> 00:29:09.500
So I hired somebody to do my garage, and somewhere in that process, I realized,"Hmm, kinda good at this." So I started working with another home organizer as an assistant while I was figuring out what kind of work I could do that were within my medical limits.
00:29:10.180 --> 00:29:12.930
And it turned out that the answer was right in front of me the whole time.
00:29:13.289 --> 00:29:18.420
I just couldn't see it because I was too busy staying busy.
00:29:19.509 --> 00:29:23.069
And that's what that stillness did for me.
00:29:23.069 --> 00:29:27.809
It let me finally look up and see the real life around me.
00:29:29.549 --> 00:29:36.930
And I am not, I am not your typical Type A, color-coded, label everything organizer.
00:29:37.150 --> 00:29:38.329
I was a messy kid.
00:29:38.609 --> 00:29:41.099
My dad used to pay my cousin to clean my room.
00:29:41.769 --> 00:29:43.150
That really pissed me off though.
00:29:45.050 --> 00:29:47.881
So funny and ironic now where I landed.
00:29:48.055 --> 00:30:05.404
I think the important part of it is, so yes, you had the resources, but if you're somebody out there right now that doesn't, and you are facing something and you're not really sure, give yourself space and think about just that one next step.
00:30:05.846 --> 00:30:06.767
one single thing.
00:30:06.777 --> 00:30:15.037
And know this, there's probably more resources available to you than you think, it is work to find them.
00:30:16.616 --> 00:30:20.808
We do try to provide a lot of information and free resources.
00:30:20.898 --> 00:30:26.358
I do believe that people are placed in our sights for a reason.
00:30:26.368 --> 00:30:28.088
So maybe the
00:30:28.313 --> 00:30:28.452
Yeah
00:30:28.598 --> 00:30:43.808
is to try to get comfortable being honest with people around you, because The more you open yourself up, the more things will come in your sights that might help you keep moving that needle just one little step.
00:30:44.578 --> 00:30:48.778
Yeah, it is the synchronicities about when you let yourself be open,
00:30:49.525 --> 00:30:50.134
Yes.
00:30:50.189 --> 00:30:52.929
Things arrive along your path.
00:30:53.439 --> 00:30:57.499
And you're kind of foreshadowing our next guest coming up, Dr.
00:30:57.499 --> 00:30:58.318
Cindy Zurchin.
00:30:58.929 --> 00:31:04.358
There's an interesting thread on that, I'll save for next time, but that's exactly what happened there.
00:31:04.888 --> 00:31:05.759
I love that.
00:31:06.328 --> 00:31:08.249
All right, but I don't want this coming out wrong.
00:31:08.568 --> 00:31:09.848
You gotta work hard.
00:31:09.919 --> 00:31:11.459
That is not up for debate.
00:31:12.459 --> 00:31:19.878
If you want more than what you have, you have to work for it, and you have to take some chances, and you have to be the kind of person who doesn't quit.
00:31:21.409 --> 00:31:22.348
I am that person.
00:31:22.348 --> 00:31:23.699
I've always been that person.
00:31:25.269 --> 00:31:30.469
But when I say resilience isn't toughing it out, I don't mean don't be tough.
00:31:30.808 --> 00:31:31.429
Be tough.
00:31:31.469 --> 00:31:41.778
You need it but look at what you're being tough about I mean, I had had a blood clot and a black finger, and I ran my errands first.
00:31:42.318 --> 00:31:43.858
Groceries, week before school.
00:31:44.199 --> 00:31:46.189
I wasn't gonna let anything drop.
00:31:48.368 --> 00:31:56.298
That same drive got me a lot of good things in my life, but that day it almost killed me.
00:31:56.858 --> 00:32:02.848
And it wasn't because I worked too hard, it was because I was working that hard on the wrong thing.
00:32:05.520 --> 00:32:11.990
So I still have that drive, but I put it somewhere that's actually good for me now.
00:32:12.020 --> 00:32:13.000
Here's how I look at it.
00:32:13.050 --> 00:32:15.401
You can't go wrong if you always do your best.
00:32:18.636 --> 00:32:19.457
But here's the part.
00:32:20.366 --> 00:32:22.676
Your best isn't the same every day.
00:32:23.126 --> 00:32:28.817
Your best in one season of your life is going to look nothing like your best in another one.
00:32:29.747 --> 00:32:31.606
Some days your best is a whole lot.
00:32:32.287 --> 00:32:38.656
Some days your best is just getting up, and some days doing your best means you rest.
00:32:40.297 --> 00:32:41.676
But don't quit on yourself.
00:32:43.497 --> 00:32:50.507
So let me tell you where I actually landed because I did skip right past that, and that's where I want the focus to be, not on the fall.
00:32:50.507 --> 00:32:58.946
I started working with another organizer while I figured out what my body could handle, and while I was in people's homes, I kept seeing the same thing over and over.
00:32:59.797 --> 00:33:01.457
Everybody's drowning in laundry.
00:33:02.686 --> 00:33:04.836
Not the washing, the processing.
00:33:05.146 --> 00:33:08.027
Running the same load three times because you keep forgetting it.
00:33:08.527 --> 00:33:14.247
That and clutter, and the two of those together are enough to make the whole house feel out of control.
00:33:16.494 --> 00:33:19.595
And, when I was forced to be still medically, I felt the same.
00:33:19.644 --> 00:33:22.134
I noticed those same patterns.
00:33:23.785 --> 00:33:26.065
So I built a business around exactly that.
00:33:26.694 --> 00:33:32.805
Somebody who comes in on a schedule and keeps it moving from the floor to the drawer because that's where it bottlenecks.
00:33:32.805 --> 00:33:42.055
And I was surprised that what I found at the bottom of a laundry basket was peace and purpose.
00:33:43.535 --> 00:33:48.005
Because when that perpetual stuff stops piling up, you get your time back.
00:33:48.424 --> 00:33:49.805
You get your presence back.
00:33:50.224 --> 00:33:55.035
Most kids aren't gonna look back and wish their baseboards were cleaner.
00:33:55.035 --> 00:33:56.684
They're gonna wish that they had more of you.
00:33:57.979 --> 00:34:00.608
That's the whole why behind what I'm doing now.
00:34:02.148 --> 00:34:09.789
I've been in a lot of houses since doing this type of work, And I think a house gets away from you for one of two reasons.
00:34:10.329 --> 00:34:18.188
Either it's how your brain works, you mean to and you forget, and then you feel bad about it, or it's just time.
00:34:18.568 --> 00:34:19.478
There isn't any.
00:34:20.778 --> 00:34:25.108
Two jobs, kids going three or four directions, and it gets away from you.
00:34:25.869 --> 00:34:27.778
I've lived both of those at the same time.
00:34:29.159 --> 00:34:34.168
A house full of executive function challenges, mine included, and no time.
00:34:34.739 --> 00:34:43.898
Four kids, teaching all day, nerve pain around the clock, grieving my dad, watching my sister struggle, and a house that was getting away from me the whole time.
00:34:45.369 --> 00:34:50.599
So on the rare day that I did have an hour, I'd stand in the middle of the room and not know where to start.
00:34:52.079 --> 00:34:58.509
That's why I'm not building systems for an imaginary tidy person.
00:34:59.148 --> 00:35:02.028
I'm building them for the house that I was living in.
00:35:03.092 --> 00:35:12.411
People who mean to and forget, people who don't have a spare hour in the week, usually both, and in the same kitchen.
00:35:12.411 --> 00:35:16.382
And either way, you end up staring at the same pile thinking it says something about you.
00:35:17.601 --> 00:35:18.222
It doesn't.
00:35:19.322 --> 00:35:20.092
That's my why.
00:35:23.492 --> 00:35:30.913
One thing that I struggled with was that I was wasting my degree, and I didn't waste the degree either.
00:35:30.922 --> 00:35:33.012
An educator doesn't teach to one person.
00:35:33.012 --> 00:35:38.882
You learn how to build something that works for everybody in the room, and that's my job again.
00:35:39.503 --> 00:35:46.123
It's building a system that has to work for everyone in the house, not just the person who called me for support.
00:35:46.123 --> 00:35:50.702
The strokes were in 2019, and I didn't start this business until 2021.
00:35:50.702 --> 00:35:53.543
And when I started it, it looked nothing like what it is now.
00:35:54.152 --> 00:36:00.262
It's changed more than once since, and that pivot is its own story, and that's for another time.
00:36:00.262 --> 00:36:10.282
But, I don't want listeners doing math on themselves and thinking that you're coming up short if you're whatever number of weeks into your hard thing and you don't have it all figured out.
00:36:11.393 --> 00:36:13.972
I'm sharing mine because it took me years.
00:36:14.333 --> 00:36:20.503
And I wanna tell you what it looks like now because I think that matters a whole lot more than the details of the fall.
00:36:20.503 --> 00:36:21.913
I don't cry in the car anymore.
00:36:22.632 --> 00:36:24.742
That's the first thing I'd want people to know.
00:36:25.492 --> 00:36:28.693
For years, that drive home was the only place that I could fall apart.
00:36:30.713 --> 00:36:38.112
And now I make the drive, but I get to put on favorite jam and think about what's for dinner like a regular person.
00:36:39.512 --> 00:36:40.693
Yeah, I'm a little slower.
00:36:40.722 --> 00:36:42.293
I'm quieter than I used to be.
00:36:42.862 --> 00:36:44.742
And no, the pain didn't go away.
00:36:44.802 --> 00:36:49.813
I'd be lying if I said it doesn't run things, because plenty of days it does.
00:36:49.813 --> 00:36:54.193
What changed is I stopped fighting it and learned to work around it.
00:36:55.422 --> 00:36:58.393
I'm doing a lot more living now and a lot less avoiding.
00:36:59.045 --> 00:37:09.244
My brain does work a bit differently than it did, and I've stopped apologizing for that because it turns out that that's what makes me good at what I do now.
00:37:09.753 --> 00:37:18.284
So, I just stopped expecting myself to live everyday the same way I was living before I had this issue.
00:37:20.320 --> 00:37:23.342
I've adjusted what my win for the day looks like.
00:37:23.679 --> 00:37:29.179
But now I go into people's houses and I help them dig out And it's not because I'm organized by nature.
00:37:29.239 --> 00:37:31.079
I just told you I was the messy kid.
00:37:31.559 --> 00:37:36.478
But I know what it feels like from the inside, So I'm not judging anybody's mess.
00:37:36.528 --> 00:37:39.548
I've been in the middle of my own.
00:37:40.501 --> 00:37:47.021
So I'm sitting here doing this, talking to you, and right here is the purpose behind this whole damn thing.
00:37:48.192 --> 00:37:52.282
None of it was the plan, and it ended up better than the plan.
00:37:52.282 --> 00:37:53.632
I don't cry in the car anymore.
00:37:54.668 --> 00:37:56.039
One more thing before we go.
00:37:57.188 --> 00:38:06.878
Everything we talked about today, stopping, changing direction, becoming something else, none of it works without hope; even the smallest possible version of it.
00:38:07.768 --> 00:38:13.688
You don't stop forcing something unless some part of you believes there's something on the other side of stopping.
00:38:14.559 --> 00:38:16.878
Without that, stopping is just quitting.
00:38:17.199 --> 00:38:19.358
Hope is the difference between the two.
00:38:19.764 --> 00:38:23.673
And I wanna talk directly to young people for a minute, not about you, to you.
00:38:24.483 --> 00:38:27.083
You are the most resilient group I have ever watched.
00:38:27.713 --> 00:38:30.833
I spent my whole career in schools, and I saw it up close.
00:38:32.498 --> 00:38:34.597
You got handed a lot early in life.
00:38:36.047 --> 00:38:41.898
Every generation does get its hard thing, and every generation finds its way through.
00:38:42.688 --> 00:38:44.197
I have no doubt about yours.
00:38:44.443 --> 00:38:49.353
You're honest about what is hard in a way that my generation never was.
00:38:49.954 --> 00:38:51.233
You take care of each other.
00:38:51.233 --> 00:38:53.333
So I'm not worried about whether you're tough enough.
00:38:53.353 --> 00:38:54.503
You already settled that.
00:38:54.503 --> 00:38:57.574
But what I do worry about is that it does not let up.
00:38:57.594 --> 00:38:59.173
There's no off switch on it.
00:39:00.293 --> 00:39:05.224
You're carrying something that just runs all the time, and nobody was built for that for all the time.
00:39:07.364 --> 00:39:10.653
So here is what I want you to hear It does not stay like this.
00:39:11.844 --> 00:39:17.623
Not because somebody is going to hand you a different world, but because you will not be the same person carrying it.
00:39:18.423 --> 00:39:23.273
You're going to get stronger and smarter, and that is not a maybe.
00:39:23.273 --> 00:39:27.733
That part does happen, and where it is a maybe, that is enough.
00:39:27.733 --> 00:39:28.864
Maybe it gets better.
00:39:29.273 --> 00:39:31.824
Maybe I'm made for something I can't see from here.
00:39:32.103 --> 00:39:33.614
You don't have to be sure.
00:39:33.884 --> 00:39:35.603
The secret is in the maybe.
00:39:36.474 --> 00:39:37.443
And rest counts.
00:39:37.483 --> 00:39:38.474
I meant what I said.
00:39:39.634 --> 00:39:40.974
Resting is not giving up.
00:39:40.974 --> 00:39:45.443
Sometimes the most resilient thing you can do is nothing.
00:39:45.934 --> 00:39:46.643
Take a beat.
00:39:47.673 --> 00:39:49.423
When you're tired, hope is a maybe.
00:39:49.797 --> 00:39:51.657
But faith, faith is different.
00:39:51.717 --> 00:39:56.887
Faith is trusting there's more to your story, even when you can't see what comes next yet.
00:39:58.686 --> 00:40:03.755
I'm not gonna tell you what to believe, but I will tell you I believe we were all made for something.
00:40:03.775 --> 00:40:08.976
I believe there's a reason why we're here and that sometimes we haven't gotten to see it yet.
00:40:09.735 --> 00:40:11.925
I believe people get put in our paths.
00:40:12.326 --> 00:40:22.306
I've watched that happen in my own life too many times to call it luck, and I believe what is waiting on the other side of this is bigger than anything you can picture from where we're sitting right now.
00:40:23.755 --> 00:40:25.266
You already have what it takes.
00:40:25.465 --> 00:40:28.755
I just want you to make it to the part where it gets easier.
00:40:28.806 --> 00:40:30.815
Falling forward usually isn't graceful.
00:40:30.815 --> 00:40:31.826
It's probably messy.
00:40:32.365 --> 00:40:33.536
It's probably slow.
00:40:34.405 --> 00:40:42.146
It might be crying in the car and hanging in there like a booger, and it might even be finding your purpose at the bottom of a laundry basket.
00:40:42.146 --> 00:40:50.766
It can be a lot of days where you did the best you had, and then you look up and you're somewhere else, and it's better.
00:40:51.038 --> 00:40:51.487
Yeah.
00:40:52.860 --> 00:40:55.230
Okay, next episode, we're sitting down with Dr.
00:40:55.230 --> 00:40:59.130
Cindy Zurchin, who has come through things I'm not gonna describe here.
00:40:59.130 --> 00:41:00.230
I'll let her tell you.
00:41:00.719 --> 00:41:04.789
But what I will say is that everything that we talked about today, she's the proof of.
00:41:04.789 --> 00:41:08.230
And she didn't stop at just coming through it.
00:41:08.550 --> 00:41:10.130
She figured out how to teach it.
00:41:10.969 --> 00:41:13.409
She says resilience is something you can learn.
00:41:14.364 --> 00:41:15.034
Next time.
00:41:16.693 --> 00:41:19.534
And from here on out, we're closing with an intention.
00:41:20.554 --> 00:41:24.313
Just for today, I'll do the best I can with what I have right now.
00:41:25.603 --> 00:41:34.664
This is it! Before we go, hit follow so you don't miss the next one, and if somebody came to mind while you were listening, send it to them.
00:41:35.485 --> 00:41:38.315
And thank you to everybody shopping through our Amazon link.
00:41:39.315 --> 00:41:43.605
It's linked in the show notes and also at thrivingyinzers.com.
00:41:44.945 --> 00:41:46.164
It helps us keep going.
00:41:46.164 --> 00:41:51.925
This podcast is meant to be informational and inspirational, but it is not a substitute for professional advice.
00:41:52.269 --> 00:41:58.000
We are not licensed therapists or medical professionals, and what we share here comes from personal experience only.
00:41:58.539 --> 00:42:02.349
If you or someone you love is struggling, please reach out to someone trained to help.
00:42:02.619 --> 00:42:08.030
And if you're in crisis, you can call or text 988 The Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
00:42:08.300 --> 00:42:09.940
It is available 24-7.