We’ve all been through those ‘seasons’ when life explodes! Where it takes everything in us just to stay afloat! The season of life where one minute, life is running smoothly and the next, you feel like everything is turned upside down! Today’s episode is exactly about that! The last few weeks my family has gone through sickness, ER visits and just a lot of drama! It’s been tough! So I want to talk about wellness and my truth about how I make it through when life explodes around me! A truth that is going to rock your wellness!
Disclaimer: This podcast does not constitute medical advice. You should always speak to your doctor before changing your nutrition or exercise habits.
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when life explodes – episode transcript
Lauren Chante 0:02
Hello friends! Welcome back to my show. I have been absent for the last couple of weeks because, honestly, it’s just been a really hard few weeks! I have not released a podcast episode for the last two Wednesdays. I’ve really just needed to get my feet back on the ground. Sometimes that’s what we need to do when life explodes around us!
Lauren Chante 0:21
I wanted to come on and share with you guys what has happened in our lives. I also want to share some key takeaways. Takeaways I think are important in being transparent with you guys as your wellness strategist and your digital friend. Key takeaways on how to cope when life explodes around you.
Lauren Chante 0:34
I want to let you guys know I am not at home. I’m not in my usual recording space. So I apologize if there are audio quality issues like a fan in the background or you hear other voices. I’m in Lake Placid, New York on a trip with my family. And I just barely have this opportunity to squeeze in a quick podcast episode.
Lauren Chante 0:53
So apologies in advance if you’re listening for the first time! My audio quality is usually a lot better than this, but we’re just going to rock and roll with it. The message is more important than the mess sometimes!
Lauren Chante 1:04
So for the last couple of weeks we’ve been plagued. Plagued with nonstop sickness, emergency room visits, and just general drama with my kids. My husband was away for Tuesday and Wednesday night. And it’s been like so long that I honestly can’t even remember how many weeks ago this was! My girls got sick that Thursday and Friday. When my husband came home on Thursday, he got horrible food poisoning for about four days.
Lauren Chante 1:36
Then my girls were really sick. It turned out that they ended up, one of them at least, ended up having strep. I’m not sure if the other one did but it was this weird type of strep. Her throat didn’t start to hurt until late into having strep. It actually didn’t even pop on the rapid tests. It was the lab testing in the end that showed us that they had strep.
Lauren Chante 1:56
By the time they recovered and my husband got better, it was over Martin Luther King Jr. weekend. That night, I took my son to hockey and he had a horrible hockey accident. He was playing defense and he was being a real go getter, going after the puck against the other team. They had a breakaway. They were really close to the goal. As he got the puck away from his opponent, their skates and their sticks got tangled. So he basically was no longer able to slow down and he went head and neck first into the boards.
Lauren Chante 2:30
He hit his head, twisted his neck and also got hit with the impact of the other player behind him. He almost couldn’t get up. I knew immediately, before the ref even blew the whistle, that it was really bad. I immediately was sprinting down there. Thank goodness another mom on the team is an orthopedic physician assistant. We were able to get him off the ice and evaluate him. She was pretty clear that we needed to get him to the emergency room and have him checked out.
Lauren Chante 2:54
So I took one of his jerseys from his bag and made a makeshift soft collar for him. I found the nearest emergency room, went over there and we were there until 2 in the morning. He was in the most pain I’ve ever seen him in in his entire life. For me, as you guys who follow me know, I have a lot of experience with emergency rooms.
Lauren Chante 3:14
His youngest sister has life threatening nut allergies that we’ve been to the ER for on multiple occasions. She had a burn accident and burned half of her face and neck at the tail end of 2020. She has also fallen on her head and her neck doing something related to gymnastics. So, I’m a pro with this emergency room thing, right! I’m a pro at it.
Lauren Chante 3:36
He ended up being completely fine but I there was a little bit of a recovery. He was in a lot of pain that day and the day after. There was a lot of follow up with orthopedic pediatric specialists who specialized in concussions and in neck and spine. And thank goodness, through all that, he seems to be completely fine.
Lauren Chante 4:00
Now of course, when life explodes like this, it takes up a ton of our energy and our resources. He wasn’t able to go to school for a little bit. Then right after he finally was able to go to school, his sister had to be home due to a skin infection. That ended up being something that she couldn’t go to school with unless she had medication for a certain number of hours.
Lauren Chante 4:22
Then we went right into the weekend with a four day family trip. We had planned this initially during the school year, right! Thinking that oh, not a big deal if we miss a couple days of school. My kids never miss school. They’re hardly ever sick, always in school, like it will be totally fine.
Lauren Chante 4:39
So basically I have had, I think, one day to myself in the last like two and a half weeks. I’ve continued to work through this. I’ve also continued to run our household and my husband has not taken off additional time from work for this. So basically, most of this has fallen on me and it has just it has been a season you guys! I’m used to these things happening but I’m not used to them happening back to back to back to back!
Lauren Chante 5:08
So, when life explodes, I’ve really had to put my life preserver on. Just as a way to try to keep my head above water! I want to be really transparent about what this has been like. I feel like when these hard seasons come, we’re conditioned to think that other women are getting through it better. To think that they’re continuing to work out through all this. That they’re continuing to eat healthy meals. And that they’re continuing to do their meditation or their daily Bible study or whatever it is.
Lauren Chante 5:39
I am a professional wellness strategist and a pretty amazing mom. I want you guys to know, the first thing that had to go out the window (when life explodes) was working out. This is actually something for my students who have worked with me behind the scenes know. I actually don’t believe that working out is the number one most important thing for maintaining your health.
Lauren Chante 5:58
For me, I’m very consistent with working out. But when life explodes, I feel absolutely no shame about letting that fall off my plate. I’m also really smart and artful about knowing how long I can go without a workout without losing my gains. Strategically placing the times that I am able to work out to prevent myself from sliding backwards.
Lauren Chante 6:23
Basically, I know how to place my workouts to prevent complete detraining. I’m not getting the volume of exercise that I usually would get. I’m just preventing the strength and those neuromuscular losses.
Lauren Chante 6:34
So I, you know, went through this couple of weeks without really working out. Then I get to go on this trip where I’m wearing a bathing suit and still not really able to work out over the four days because I have my kids constantly, right?
Lauren Chante 6:49
I want you to know that the body image stuff totally comes up. I joked on Instagram that I somehow managed to lose all of my favorite bathing suits before this trip. Usually, I don’t show below my navel on my body. I don’t want to say it’s damaged because that’s not the type of love I want to speak on my body. It’s just so different from how it used to look before I had kids.
Lauren Chante 7:17
It’s so funny because I’ve been a mom for 11 years. Yet, when I look at that part of my body, my brain still expects to see something different. It expects to see my 20 year old belly button and my 20 year old abdomen! I don’t know why! It’s been 11 years, you would think that my brain would get used to it. Every time I see that part of my body I think “That’s not mine” or “That doesn’t look like mine”.
Lauren Chante 7:39
So I usually wear a high waisted bathing suit or a one piece that will cover that area. When that area is covered, I look at myself in the mirror and I feel like “Oh my gosh, that’s me”! I see myself, I feel good about myself when I see that.
Lauren Chante 7:54
As I said, I managed to lose my two favorite bathing suits right before the trip! So 8 a.m. Monday morning, before we left for our five-hour drive, I had to run to Target. I literally grabbed the first thing off the rack & I didn’t even try it on. I just crossed my fingers, right? Of course, it’s not a high waisted bikini since they don’t carry a lot of those. It’s just a regular “Spring Break” style bikini and it brings up all the things!
Lauren Chante 8:22
I haven’t been working out for a couple of weeks. I’m wearing a cut that I don’t feel super comfortable in. And it’s just real! The whole body acceptance thing is very challenging. I just feel so blessed that I’m not in the position where I’m struggling with body acceptance. I’m not beating myself up for “Oh, why couldn’t I just workout for this entire time while all this was happening?” or “Why am I not motivated enough?”. “Why am I not tough enough?”. Because, I know, that narrative is just inaccurate and not helpful for anyone.
Lauren Chante 8:54
The other thing that I was thinking through all of this is that I hate going to hospitals. But I also think going hospitals is really good in another way. Okay, so let me back up because guys, I’m tired! I’m in a hotel room and I’m like muttering right now! I’m muttering like a crazy person! When we were in the ER, there were a couple of kids, a couple of younger people but for the most part it was all senior citizens.
Lauren Chante 9:19
It really depresses me! The emergency room is very depressing for me. I really struggle with the idea of growing old and not having all of my faculties. The idea of not being able to use my body and all that. It is really sad for me when I go to the hospital and I see seniors who just don’t have a good quality of life.
Lauren Chante 9:41
Those who are really struggling with their health. Those who are lying on stretchers moaning and in pain. They’re using ventilators, or have oxygen masks on. It just breaks my heart. I don’t want to say that it motivates me to take care of myself more. I don’t know that that’s necessarily true. It just helps me to keep in perspective why I’m building the habits that I’m building on a daily basis. It is for my life now but it’s also for my future life. It’s really easy to lose track of that.
Lauren Chante 10:16
The other thing that I was thinking while I was in the hospital, as I was sitting there not knowing if my son was okay or not. Being very concerned that he may have broken his neck and being pretty sure that even if he didn’t, he definitely had a concussion. I just kept thinking about how everything had just changed in a moment. How in one second, everything was fine and I was enjoying watching him play hockey. Then the next moment things were not okay.
Lauren Chante 10:42
There was this level of uncertainty about our lives and our future. And I just remember thinking, very calmly, that all we have in this moment is now! That’s all we ever have is the now. We don’t have the future that we get so anxious about. The future that we worry about so much, that we plan for so much. The future that we put so much of our resources away for & that we sacrifice our current wellness for. Our future, in many instances, that moment doesn’t actually exist.
Lauren Chante 11:13
The moments in the future that you are thinking about, planning about, giving up things for now, right now, you may actually never get to. You could get hit by a bus. Somebody who you thought was going to be in that future with you, like a child or a spouse, could suddenly get taken from you. The way that that person is with you could get violently altered, right?
Lauren Chante 11:34
I just kept thinking about how silly it is that we all focus so much on the future and allow it to steal so much of our present joy. When the truth is all we have is this moment right now.
Lauren Chante 11:47
I know so many of us also get stuck on the past. Getting worried, stressed, or fixated on our stories of things that have happened to us. Things that have been done to us by others. Of course all of us have, in most cases, very reasonable reasons for feeling the way we do about our past stories. But the truth is, even the past can steal our ability to be in the present moment. Like I said, the present moment is all that we have.
Lauren Chante 12:20
That’s actually something that a lot of psychologists and therapists really try to get people to focus on. Using their five senses to bring them back to the present moment. People say I want to be more present. It’s about literally what I’m saying right now. Not allowing yourself to be thinking about the future or the past or something else. But to focus on, with your five senses, the things that are around you. What you see, what you hear, what you smell, what you taste and what you feel.
Lauren Chante 12:51
That’s something that I always really struggle with because I’m a planner. I’m a type A person. I very much maintain a lot of control over my life in my environment. I think of everything & I plan 10 steps ahead. In that moment I was reminded that has the possibility of taking me away from the present moment. And that present moment is the only thing that is guaranteed.
Lauren Chante 13:11
I see so many of my students who want to work with wellness strategists but won’t allow themselves to do the same thing. There’s a level of paralysis. It’s like we can’t give ourselves what we need in the current moment because of the fear of uncertainty of the future. And I think that we forget that the future is always uncertain. The only thing that is certain is what you can do for yourself right now. So if you make the next right choice, that is going to be the best for you in the present. In all likelihood it’s also going to be the best for you in the long term too.
Lauren Chante 13:45
I don’t really know how to land this plane! I really just wanted to get on here and kind of mentally dump everything on you guys. Everything that has been going on and share some of my takeaways. Takeaways about how I deal when life explodes around me. I don’t feel like I did it particularly eloquently! It’s just important to me that I get on here and I do it. I know that I’m not the only one who’s going through tough times.
Lauren Chante 14:08
So if you loved this episode about your wellness and how to deal with things when your life explodes and you felt kernels of it that really called to your heart make sure that you pop on and you share this. Share this with people on Instagram. You can send an email, text it to a friend who’s going through a hard time. It doesn’t always have to be public sharing on social media.
Lauren Chante 14:25
Make sure that you’re subscribed to this. Tap those little dots on your podcast app and make sure you subscribe so you’ll get notified when I have a new episode out. And send me a personal note! I love hearing from you guys on Instagram and through Facebook Messenger even or through my email.
Lauren Chante 14:41
Just hearing that you guys appreciate these episodes because you know it’s not always easy to get on here and be vulnerable. Even the best podcasters and the biggest, I would actually say especially the biggest and the best, we get trolls, we get haters, we get people who don’t agree with what we’re saying or don’t like the way that we’re putting ourselves out there.
Lauren Chante 15:01
So when you make the effort to personally connect with me about the things that I share, it really means the world to me! So I just want to thank you guys. I’m so grateful that you guys take the time to listen to my episodes and that I get to do life with you guys and share these things with you guys.
Lauren Chante 15:15
Hopefully I will be back on schedule for my regular podcast episodes starting next week, if not sure I’ll have some great reason and hopefully some reasonable takeaways to show for it! Love you guys. I’ll talk to you soon.
Lauren Chante 15:25 And I really hope you enjoyed this episode about your wellness when life explodes!