In this episode, Kara gets vulnerable and shares about how she is reintegrating into her life after her son's unexpected ten day hospital stay. Her hope as you listen is that you will remember that you are not alone in the balancing act of survival mode and living a whole hearted life. We are all walking this winding road together.
Connect with Kara, host of The Special Needs Mom Podcast:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thespecialneedsmompodcast/
Website: https://www.kararyska.com/
Coaching Opportunities
Pathway to Peace {Group Coaching Program}: Schedule a Consult or Contact Me
Join The Special Needs Mom Podcast Community FaceBook Group!! Click here to Request to Join
In this episode, Kara gets vulnerable and shares about how she is reintegrating into her life after her son's unexpected ten day hospital stay. Her hope as you listen is that you will remember that you are not alone in the balancing act of survival mode and living a whole hearted life. We are all walking this winding road together.
Connect with Kara, host of The Special Needs Mom Podcast:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thespecialneedsmompodcast/
Website: https://www.kararyska.com/
Coaching Opportunities
Pathway to Peace {Group Coaching Program}: Schedule a Consult or Contact Me
Join The Special Needs Mom Podcast Community FaceBook Group!! Click here to Request to Join
Hi, I'm Kara, life coach, wife and mom to four incredible and unique children. It wasn't all that long ago that my son received a diagnosis that had my world come crashing down. I lacked the ability to see past the circumstances, which felt impossible, and the dreams I once had for my life and family felt destroyed. Fast forward past many years of surviving and not at all thriving, and you'll see a mom who trusts that she can handle anything that comes her way and has access to the power and confidence that once felt so lacking. I created this Special Needs Mom Podcast to create connection and community with moms who find themselves feeling trapped and with no one who really understands. My intention is to spark the flare of possibility in your own life and rekindle your ability to dream. This isn't a podcast about your special needs child. This is a podcast about you. If you are a mom who feels anxious, alone or stuck, then you are in the right place. Welcome, hello and welcome to the special needs mom podcast.
Kara:This episode's going to be a little different than most. I grappled for a little while here with exactly what to bring to you, and I landed on bringing you my story. I guess it's more my recent story, recent journey, recent struggles, because I deeply believe that stories connect and stories heal, and it's a part of me getting to be part of this community. So I'm just four days out of an unexpected 10 day hospitalization for my son, which was a complication of a recent and what was supposed to be very simple orthopedic surgery, and actually it was. So, this hospitalization came out of nowhere because we thought we were sailing along and we were fully in the recovery zone. And now the zone that I'm finding myself in is what I'm calling the fallout zone. the fallout zone of the recent explosion of my life. I'm unraveling the impact of this unexpected and certainly unwelcome strike. I'm calling this episode the shadow side of being strong because, as I'm kind of coming back online, I'm noticing that the degree that I had to shut off my heart and armor up to get through the stresses and the challenges of a hospitalization like that is to the degree that I have to reengage my heart and to pick back up my dreams and desires from where I had to basically throw them overboard, to just completely surrender them. And I'm in this coming back online phase, the fallout zone. I'm assessing the damage. I'm trying to literally find the piles, figure out what I threw in them, figure out what's urgent, what's important, what I can just leave behind, what do I try to really restore and what do I just leave there or throw away. There's this rub of the place that I'm in. There's this strength that we can come from when we're in these survival states and I feel like that's actually the part I'm really good at. And the rub is, it seems, that I need almost the exact opposite as I'm recovering, restoring, kind of assessing the fallout zone, and so you can see like there's distinct difference of like letting go of this strength and I feel like it's such a clunking.
Kara:Getting back to where I was, if I just kind of look at myself in the hospital life and this could go for any season of stress, right, this happens to be about hospital. If you don't have as much medical stuff, this can be for really anything. I look at how I have to have tunnel vision and just complete focus on my own survival, my like physical comfort and taking care of those needs my sons and then my children at home, and then my husband. He has to defend for himself. I mean, obviously we look out for each other, but he's an adult and numbing right, like really portioning off huge sections of who I am to deal with this stress. And then, of course, there's comfort coping, like eating all the things, like fried food and, oh my gosh, did y'all notice my love for Rice Krispie treats. And then there's the controlling part For me. I get in these like routines where I come home and do all the laundry because it just feels so good to have that level of organization, or when I get to the hospital room after my husband has been on shift for a while and I get to like tidy all the things.
Kara:So letting go of all that, like letting go of the tunnel vision, the numbing and this dance between surrendering that, like letting go of the things that made me feel safe to make room for what I ultimately really want, which for me, to kind of use Brené Brown's words, is to really have a wholehearted life. And you cannot have a wholehearted life from what I'm calling this strong survival mode state. It's a bummer. So, with coming back to, in quotes, normal life, I'm noticing all these things that were lost in this survival stage and it's like re-engaging all the parts that were shut off. So it can feel very overwhelming, very vulnerable because, like I said, I shut off a lot of my heart, or in other words, like feelings to survive, and so bringing them back online feels very overwhelming and vulnerable.
Kara:It feels confusing because my head's been doing a lot of work trying to figure everything out and literally planning and re-planning and pivoting and like kind of figuring out, okay, if this goes here, then that goes there as in, like my kid management, and so my brain's been working but I've been operating not really that wholeness that I'm used to and that I like, that I feel the best as oh and ungrounding. I mean, do y'all know what I mean when I say ungrounded? For me? I have this experience like I'm on an elevator. It's actually hard to put words t o. Like I'm on an elevator or like the ground is like moving below me to a certain degree. It's not like feeling dizzy, but it is definitely disorienting. And this feeling sometimes is so strong that I almost like look around to other people, like did you feel that earthquake? And they don't seem to be feeling it and I don't say anything. Usually I'm like, okay, that's just me. And I learned to recognize I don't actually even have a word for this besides ungrounded. So I learned to recognize that this is my experience when I'm in these really, really stressful states, and it's actually interesting.
Kara:I look back to my early years when I was like completely fresh into all of this and did not have any of the skills that I have today, and I had that feeling all the time. Particularly, I would have it in doctor's offices and I would try to figure out what was going on. I did a lot of gobbling and I did a lot of experimentation with really extreme like different food protocols, because I was convinced I had all these different conditions. It turns out I just was really ungrounded. You guys have that feeling. I know I'm not the only one, but it's actually one of the feelings I hate the most.
Kara:So there's this coming back online piece of where I'm at now and, like I mentioned earlier, I was really grappling like what am I gonna do for this recording? Am I gonna completely abort mission and just bring something out of archive or use one I have recorded for the future? And I ultimately decided to just share authentically and perhaps somewhat vulnerably, about where I'm at, because it is like the other image I have as I was thinking through how I'm feeling is you know when a train I mean, I've not done this with a real train, but I have played with many of train sets and, like when you get the train off track, like you can get that first train back on, but it takes a little second to get, like all those little cars and the caboose all back on track and it's kind of clunky right Like you get one another, one falls off. It doesn't just happen fluidly Like I really wish it did, and so that's the phase I'm in now, and rather than try to produce one of the episodes that I had planned for you that takes a whole different part of me that I just don't have access to right now I'm recording this for you.
Kara:I believe that stories heal and they connect, and what I want you to take, what I hope you take, from this episode, is knowing you're not alone. You are definitely not alone. I am not alone. Maybe that's why I'm recording this episode Number two. It's not a smooth ride. It is just not a smooth ride. Have you all seen that image where healing or growth trajectory or really any kind of thing in life? We imagine it as a straight line, like from point A to point B, and what it usually looks like is like a yarn ball, a really tangled yarn ball, where it's like here, squiggle, squiggle, squiggle forwards, back, up and down, and then maybe you move forward. So that's kind of the experience I'm in right now. And the other thing that I was like, hmm, what I want you to take from this, what I want me to take from this, is that it's worth it.
Kara:I do have the fortune and I think many of you do too of knowing that this is a time. This is a time period. This will not be forever. There will be a point in which the fallout has all settled, that I will feel myself again that I'll like fix the budget that just exploded With it right Cause, like, all of a sudden, my income totally shifts because I'm canceling all of my work and then, of course, we're going to restaurants like we don't know how to cook. That time will end.
Kara:So this is the shadow side. The shadow side is that there is fallout, or, in other words, there is impact of having to go into survival mode. The shadow side of being strong is that we can't stay there forever. We have to let the vulnerability back in, and when we've had to step up in the way that we have. I know if you're listening, you have had to step up. It feels so fragile and disorienting to let go of the thing that helped us survive, which is that strength, survival mode that I am speaking of. But that mode, what I'm going to call strong for simplicity here, is just not the thing that will allow us to thrive. I'm going to end on that note. We'll see you on the next episode. Bye, bye.