One of my kids had a minor accident last week, sending us to the emrgency room… and sending me into a deep reflection on motherhood and how our choices affect our readiness in crisis. Listen to hear why this is important for your own life.
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EMERGENCY ROOM THOUGHTS – EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the show. I am recording this episode, totally impromptu I just have had quite the 24 hours and just really feel compelled to record this. So here it goes. Those of you guys who follow me on Facebook and are in the Facebook group probably know that one of my kids had a really small accident last night, she was totally fine. But she fell essentially on her head doing gymnastics and sprained her neck pretty badly. It took an ambulance ride to the hospital, and three and a half hours in the emergency room to ascertain that it was only a sprained neck. And of course, I was there. By myself with three kids, my husband being in the military was out of state and ended up getting home from his trip around the same time that we got back from the hospital.
So it was quite an evening. And it really sparked a lot of reflection. For me, I think there’s something funny about hospital rooms. And we’ve we’ve been in them a lot.
If you haven’t been following me for a while, I’ll kind of give you a little bit of a brief history of our experiences with the hospital. So I have three kids which predisposes us to emergency room visits for all the things that three kids usually get into, right. Everybody’s had stitches, all the things. But on top of that, I have one child with life threatening nut allergies. And we’ve been to the emergency room, I think three times with anaphylaxis. Luckily, nothing in the last several years. Most of it was in the toddler years when we were still figuring out new allergies and just stuff like that. I also had one child that was in a burn accident a few years ago, we were in a car accident when my oldest my oldest was five, I think he would just turn five. And my youngest was still I think two now my youngest, my middle one was still tail, and somebody ran a red light. While we were taking a left hand turn on a green arrow and hit us almost head on. Luckily, everybody was okay, we did have to go to the hospital in an ambulance.
But we have a, long story short, we have an extensive history with hospital stays, or emergency room staff all of that. So I’ve spent a lot of time in hospital rooms. And the thing about hospital rooms is once you get in them, there’s not a lot to do. There’s a lot of like, twittering your thumbs and thinking about life and dealing with a situation right. And this particular hospital visit was very…. there was a stark contrast between this one and the last several that I’d done.
And I was sitting in that room with all that time to reflect on my kids binge on cartoons and all the various devices that I had hooked up. And I was trying to figure out like, what is the difference of why am I not freaking out right now? Why do I feel so calm and present isn’t just because I have so much experience with hospitals? Is it because they told me right off the bat that she was gonna be okay probably because a pediatrician medicine they’re almost immediately and said that he was almost certain that it was muscular and there was no damage to her spinal column. And I said no.
The reason I feel so grounded right now is because of what I did for myself today. Before that moment before I had picked my kids up from school, I had gone to the gym that day, showered dead at face mask, blow dried my hair nicely which guys I like never do that. It’s my resolution right now to start styling my hair. I had, I had taken time to myself to read. I had set boundaries with myself that I would be doing this instead of cleaning the house and doing all the things that I would normally be doing in general. I just really really cared for myself that day. I had taking time for myself. I was wearing a nice outfit I’dput together like a really nice outfit I’d put on my makeup.
So I arrived at that moment of chaos fully primed to show up strong for my family. And I was really feeling the difference of what it was like to have a moment of crisis while I was filled up, while I had been taking care of, and it was a noticeable difference from past experiences. And it really got me thinking about how, as, as an entrepreneur, as a woman, as a nutrition coach, as a mom, all of those things have really pushed me out of my comfort zone to really become a different person.
And I’m very different from who I was 10 years ago, I used to push down everything that I needed to give my kids something, I remember, my husband came back from deployment lens, and we were looking at the finances. He’s like everything that you’ve spent this year you’ve spent on the kids, you haven’t done anything for yourself. And he was almost irritated with me about it, which made me irritated with him for being irritated. Because wasn’t I supposed to be praised at that moment, for just giving up everything of mine, for the kids, for the kids for the kids, right? And that wasn’t what he saw, interestingly, but I used to do that I used to invest in them, it would come before my trips, my clothes, my hair, my coaching, because I thought that’s what a good mom does.
She gives and gives and gives, and gives and gives, and gives them more and never takes, right. But we really need to redefine that. And I’ve heard that said so many times all over the internet, like it’s important to fill your own cup up. Because you can’t pour from an empty cup. And it’s almost this, like cliche now kind of like the word self care. It’s like, Oh, are we talking about self care again, it’s like just this key word that people use to boost their Google Search ratings, right. But in that moment, it really came to life for me what that meant. A good mom pours into herself regularly and continuously so that when the crap hits the fan, her family does not get her depleted, washed up and exhausted, they get her fresh, strong, capable patient and capable of being the mama bear that they really need in that dire moment.
And I’m telling you guys, we have done this hospital thing a lot between the allergies, the burn accidents, ditches, I want you guys to know, you never know when that moment is coming. There’s never an opportunity for you to wake up in the morning and have it broadcasted to you that today is going to be the day that you have to take your kids to the emergency room, that tomorrow is going to be the day that you find out that you only have a few months left with one of your parents, or that next week will be the week that your husband ends up blowing out his knee. It’s never going to be broadcast to you. You are responsible for being prepared and for being filled up for those moments that come to you.
And this is guys, I’m not pretending that this is easy. I’ve got to tell you, this is one of the hardest things in the world, because you will be the leader in this amongst your friends and your family in your community. And in fact, it’s kind of interesting to sit back and look at the people around you who are in crisis right now with different things in their lives and look at how they’re handling it and look at the at the habits and the lifestyle that they had laid out for themselves up until that crisis happened. And then just consider if those choices that they made for themselves are serving them in those moments of crisis. And if you do that, you will see a lot of people who are really struggling, because they didn’t make the proactive choice, the proactive choice to live a lifestyle of consistently filling themselves up and consistently putting their needs first and taking care of themselves.
And so now they’re in this place of crisis where it feels almost impossible to do so because who would do that when you have a loved one who has cancer who would do that when your husband has to have knee surgery who would do that? When you have a child that’s home for the week because they had an accident, right? You have to be proactive about living this kind of life. So that when crisis hits you are prepared for it you are built up you are nourished.
And like I said, people are not going to understand this, you are going to be the leader, which is one of the reasons that I have this podcast and one of the reasons that I have a Facebook group for this podcast because it’s really hard to be somebody who’s shifting the culture. People will not understand there will be times where your spouse does not understand. There will be times where your children don’t understand. There will be times where your parents, your brothers, your sisters, your community members, your church mates, your girlfriends, don’t understand. But it’s not your job to make everyone understand it’s your job to live your truth, to live what you know is best for your family.
And through that through being Natural example, through talking about it through living it through walking it through modeling it for other people, we are slowly going to shift the culture around how we treat ourselves as women. And I say as women just because this is a podcast by a woman, and I tend to speak to a woman, like that’s who my target person is who I speak to naturally. But the truth is, our husbands need this to our sons need this to the men in our life, need this to I feel like women, we are at least having this conversation about filling ourselves up and putting ourselves first.
And I see in the men in my life and in what I see of the world of men that they might not even be hearing about it. So this becomes even more important for both sides of the coin. So I’m not sure exactly how I’m landing this impromptu episode right now. That was kind of it. Like I said, I didn’t really plan this out very much. But I hope that if anything, this really inspires you to shift the way that you view your own self care that you view filling yourself up and that maybe it places a little bit more of a sense of urgency into you to make a change in how you allow yourself to be treated by yourself and by others.
I finished the posts that I made on Facebook with this statement. It’s not selfish. It’s selfless.
And I think until you are in a position where your family has a crisis, and you are the person that everyone is looking to to be strong. You don’t realize how important it is for you to be there for everyone, especially for your children when they’re scared and they’re hurt. And something like this happens. So thank you guys for listening. As always, I love to hear what moments of inspiration this strikes for you. So make sure you reach out let me know tag me on instagram let me know in the Facebook group and I can’t wait to hear from you guys. Have you joined at the Rock Your Wellness podcasts official Facebook group? If not what are you waiting for? It is the best place to continue conversation about these episodes and get to know your fellow listeners. If you’d like to do that and be linked in the show notes for this episode. Can’t wait to see you there.