How to Take Care of Yourself So You Can Take Care of Everyone Else

☀️Join me at Rise and Flourish 2025 in Deerfield Beach, Florida🧘🏻‍♀️

🎟️Needing a day of self (soul) care? Rise and Flourish is October 25th in Deerfield Beach, Florida from 9am-5pm. Registration includes access to ALL workshops and breakouts, a day spa pass, healthy snacks throughout the day and more! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:00

Hi friends, welcome back to the Raising Wild Hearts podcast. I am recording this in real time. Normally I publish episodes on Monday. Today's Tuesday. So if you think you're going a little crazy seeing my new episode drop on Tuesday, you are not. So today's Tuesday, August 10th. If you're listening to this in real time, and all three of my kids just went back to school today. And um I had this big exhale as my husband and I pulled away from the car line and they all three walked in together. And um, it's the first time we've dropped them off all three in one place at the same time, and um it felt really good. And it was really sweet to watch them walk away hand in hand and the big sisters helping the little brother, and um I am celebrating that today. Uh it was a long summer of different camp schedules and kind of juggling work and podcasting and parenting and vacationing and all the things. Um, but in retrospect, it was a full summer and a blessed summer. So I am here on the other side of that, just uh showing up for the fall, showing up for what's to come, kind of leaning into this next month, which is kind of a transition season, right? We've got a month to go until the official fall season hits. And so I am leaning into it's okay to be in a transition. It's okay to be getting used to new schedules. What I plan to talk about today was how to take care of yourself so you could take care of everyone else, because it's so obvious when I am not taking care of myself, and it comes out in the way that I show up for my family, first and foremost, right? The whole mission of the show, the whole mission of my life really is nobody gets taken care of if I don't get taken care of first. And, you know, that's played out in many different ways. At first, in my motherhood journey, so a decade ago, I thought, well, I have to put everyone else's needs above my own, including sleep and and food, everything. And so, as many of you know, I quickly hit burnout and uh had acute postpartum depression and just thought, is this all there is to life? And that was the beginning of asking myself some really challenging questions. Who am I? What do I believe in? Why am I here? What's my purpose? And much of the past decade has been unraveling that. And this show is a testament to that. So I show up and I share with you what I've learned, I share with you what I'm still learning, I talk to different experts, different authors, and get their take on what makes a full life and what makes a life well lived. And this week, I didn't put my mascara on yet because I figured I would cry. This week, actually, just um as I'm recording this on Tuesday, Sunday, my 98-year-old grandma died. She left her body and um left this earth. On August 7th, we celebrated her 98th birthday, 98 full years. And I look at her and I look at the time that she grew up in and the choices and lack of choices that she had in raising her six children and just being a woman and a wife. I look at her life as a testament to how do I want to show up in my life? When I'm 98, God willing, on my deathbed, how do I want to speak about the choices I had in my life? How do I want to say that I show up, that I showed up for the people I loved and the people I didn't love? And I won't get into her regrets. I think she had a couple that she shared with different family members standing in this life where I am, 42 years old, you know, three kids, 10 and under. I really look at this moment as like this is it. There's no, you know, thing that I'm working for, no stage or phase that will be easier than this one. There's no pinnacle of my career success. There's no pinnacle of the podcasting. There's nothing else out there or in this future in my mind. It's only the here and now. When I think about caring for myself so that I can show up for the ones that I love, sometimes it's just so simple. It's not like the new outfit. It's not the shopping trip. It's not the nails done or the haircut or the new car or the new, you know, insert freaking gadget or gizmo or cute throw pillow for the house. Like those things are such a temporary dopamine hit, you know? What it really is, like what really for me caring for myself looks like these days is like choosing to like grab a piece of beeswax from my kids' beeswax stash. We have these little bl blocks of beeswax all around the house because they use it in school and they do different models with it and different projects. And grabbing a piece of beeswax and just like holding it, like I'm actually doing it right now, and um just feeling it between my fingers and letting it take me back to the present moment, where my other choice, instead of fidgeting with the beeswax in my hands, would be overthinking or feeling caught up in overwhelm and letting myself go down this river of doom of all the bad things that could happen. Overanalyzing, overthinking, insert over thing here for you that resonates. But I think we all do this. You know, I think we all kind of get caught up in our mental lives and our work lives and these things that really seem to matter in the moment, but they really just don't. It's these really small choices. I invite you in your life to see what choices you can tweak. You guys know I'm a book fanatic. I'm all about the nonfiction, I'm all about consuming things to help me optimize my time and be a better interviewer and be a better parent and a better wife and a better human. And this summer, for the past two months, I've been binging a fiction series, which I'm just like loving. And it feels like vacation. And it's been this loving like hug for myself. At the end of the day, I sit down with my book and my beeswax. And when we think about the choices we have to take care of ourselves so we can show up for the people in our families, there is a dropping of the balls, like figuratively speaking, like dropping the balls you're juggling in the air and just letting everything kind of fall where it falls. And there will be things that go between the cracks. Like I have a to-do list right now of like 25 things, various projects that I'm working on behind the scenes for the podcast, various work projects, uh, you know, various commitments that I've made. And I chose to set that list aside, know that the list is there, and hop on and record this because it's important for me to show up. The invitation here is really for you to pause and get quiet and think about the one or two small changes you can make that would help you feel nourished from the inside out. Another thing that continues to help me is community. So I have a couple of close people who I can say, Hey, I'm really struggling, or hey, I'm really celebrating, or hey, this is going on behind the scenes. What do you think about that? Or even just to vent of like, oh my God, I'm just venting here. That has been such a blessing. I'm planning an event behind the scenes called Rise and Flourish. It's a summit where we're going to have amazing speakers. My friend Ashley and I are co-organizing it. It's going to be a day of self-care and community, finding your people, hitting the reset button, resetting your nervous system, walking away, feeling so filled to the brim that you can go love your people well. So I'm working on that behind the scenes, and that has been challenging and fun. Something that I value so much is learning about different things, creating different things, following my intuition. When I find that I'm aligned in these areas, I'm showing up for my people really well. I'm filled from the inside out, and it's not even a trying or a striving. It just happens. It just happens where I'm able to show up and give the extra hug, read the extra book, be present for the tantrum, listen to my kids, reflect back, work through arguments and disagreements with my husband with more grace. So in every facet of my life, it's enabling me to show up in the car line on the interstate. You know, there's always a traffic metaphor to be had here in South Florida. If you know, you know. So I hope that you have a week where you are able to reflect at least for a few minutes and ask yourself what it is that you need amidst all the chaos in the house and in the world, really giving yourself the opportunity to slow down education, community, self-care. How can you cement those things into your life? And what does it look like for you? Because it's not going to look like what it looks like for me exactly, right? We can get inspiration from others, we can hear ideas, we can go that really rings true. And then we can leave the rest. Like whatever you heard today that really vibes with you, take it with you. And whatever you're like, no, that doesn't fit, leave it. And I think when we can become discerning like that in our lives, opportunities start to unfold. You know, things start to line up and become synchronous. And it's a beautiful thing. So I am walking that path right now. And I invite you to walk along with me. If you want to join Ashley and I at our event, it's going to be beautiful. I will put the link in the show notes so you can check out more. It's in Deerfield Beach, Florida, October 25th. I would love to see you there and meet you in real life and give you a hug and go through the day with you. Like it's for me too. We're going to be resetting our systems. We're going to be doing some group healing. We're going to be moving our breath, moving our body, learning about the ways our nervous system responds in times of stress and in times of calm. These tools that you walk away with that I'll walk away with too help us discern in our daily lives what's for me and what's not for me, what's gonna fill me up and what's not. So I hope you have a beautiful week. I'm so pumped to see you in real life in October in Deerfield Beach, Florida, at the Five Elements Day Spa. It is a beautiful, luxurious venue. As soon as Ashley and I walked in there, we were like, yep, this is it. It just feels like a little sanctuary. I will talk to you guys soon. And until then, go love someone well.