Nobody Else Has It This Hard

This week I’m sharing a really personal story—not all the details, but the emotional experience of finding myself in a very sudden, very public, and really scary moment with Levi. It was one of those times where I could’ve spiraled, but something shifted in me.

We’re talking about the sneaky nature of self-pity, how it isolates us, and how powerful it can be to not go down that road—even when things are objectively really hard. I reflect on how my work as a coach gives me daily reminders that I’m not alone, and neither are you.

I also share a powerful coaching session I had earlier that day that helped ground me in what I needed when everything hit the fan. This episode is your reminder: nothing has gone wrong. You’re still in the driver’s seat, and thriving doesn’t mean everything’s perfect—it just means you’re still showing up, step by step.

And PS: The Pathway to Peace Coaching Community opens again October 14! Even if you're just a little curious, join the waitlist to get the details when they drop.

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Connect with Kara, host of The Special Needs Mom Podcast:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thespecialneedsmompodcast/
Website: https://www.kararyska.com/

Transcript

Speaker: 0:05

Hi, I am 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 the 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.

1:13

Hello and welcome to the Special Needs Mom podcast. I wanna start the episode with a couple shout outs. I always think these are kind of fun and last, not last week, several episodes ago, we released the episode called Extreme Mothering. In which I dared you to respond and declare and own the identity for yourself. And you did. And I love the variations that came in and how you just added a little bit of note about what was going on in your life. And it really did. I mean, I told you in the episode it would make my day and it did more than that. It was so much fun. So thank you and keep it up. This is also a, by the way, you're welcome anytime to send this show a ka me, basically a message and note, I don't get to see your name unless you tell me. I do get to see where you're from and it's super fun. So here's a couple of the messages I received. Hi Kara. I'm an extreme mom too. Thank you. It reached out to me this morning. Myself and my oldest daughter went for a sea swim in Ireland between the showers and it's 17 degrees here. That's Celsius, ladies and gentlemen. So bur, which that sounds like super cold. Okay, thanks again, Sheila and Ireland. Well, welcome. I was just tempted to try to do, and. Irish accent in which I think we can all be thankful. I did not try that. Okie dokie. Next we have a mom from Hawaii says, I am an extreme mom. Left it simple. And I was like, yes you are. Thank you for declaring it. And lastly, from Murphy, North Carolina. We have, I'm an extreme mom. Thank you for helping me feel seen and validated as an extreme mom. Well, thank you for helping yourself feel seen and validated and for taking on my dare. So well done. with speaking of validations and feeling seen, that is the essence of our conversation today. My goal for this episode is to give you additional data points. To build the case for yourself that you are not the only one that has it this hard. Nothing has gone wrong to have had it go this way. It is just what it is. Why does this matter? It matters because the thoughts that we tell ourselves, were maybe better said specifically when we tell ourselves that we have it harder than others or that others don't have it as hard as we do. That leads us to self pity. Self-pity being defined as excessive, self-absorbed unh. Unhappiness over one's troubles. Now, if you're like, oh, geez, now let's add this to the list of all the things I'm doing wrong. Just hold your horses for a minute. Let's, let's not go there. We're actually going a different direction. Self-pity is a sneaky little creature. It leads you to resentment, hopelessness, bitterness, loneliness, all the things that I know. We often deal with so does not traveling down a deep, dark road of self-pity, does that make the hard go away? Indeed, it does not. I think everyone understands this, but the good news is that you are a whole person. You are a capable person, and you are in the driver's seat of your life, even though I know it probably doesn't feel like it. You can do hard. Especially when you know there are lesions of other moms just like you sweating and crying and giving their all just like you. It's literally my job to relate to you in these ways. And let me just tell you, it's not a hard job because I believe so strongly in the essence of who you are. I get to experience women. And men. I work with some men, but mostly women. I get to experience the deepest, most powerful expressions of who you are. And I think that is like the biggest gift for me. And as I was saying, it's literally my job to relate to you in these ways. Powerful. And responsible, meaning you are at cause. You are in the driver's seat of your life and whole. And we often forget this. I do too. And as I was saying, it's my job to reflect it back to you, to be a mirror, to hold a reflection back. Shining towards you until you are able to get back in touch with yourself. And you might be like, well, I don't know if that's that great. It is that great. Trust me, I get to experience the gift of who you are, you being the humans, the powerful beings that I get to work with, and it's pretty incredible This episode is inspired by a personal story and sometimes I share a little bit of details, but I do try to actually pull out my experience rather than all the details. So I'm not gonna give you a play by play of what happened. It actually is quite a long story. And actually I do have Levi's permission to share the entire story, but I've decided that it's going to be a more relatable story to not have the play by play, but to actually have and know the experience that I was having. So let's go back to that day. It was a Tuesday afternoon and I found myself in a sudden confusing and scary situation. My son happened to be homesick, so it was just he and I and it wasn't clear if he was or wasn't involved in what was going on. Thus, the confusion and because of the nature of my son suspicion, the situation was life threatening. I. It was very public and a lot of other people were involved, and it was completely out of my control. I wanna emphasize how scary it was. It was also unbelievable. Like this thing happens to other people, but certainly not me. I never thought I would find myself in that particular situation. Yet there I was. In the midst of it, doing what needed to be done, acting quickly, and might I add heroically and I, in those moments, experienced something. What I'll say is critical and profoundly powerful, full. Those are the moments where I could have easily thought something has gone wrong. Nobody has it this hard, there's no way out, which, as I mentioned before, this, this concept of self pity would lead me down the dark road into loneliness. And, you know, the road that self pity leads down to things like resentment and bitterness and hopelessness and loneliness, yet I was on a much different road. To explain why. cause I'm not suggesting it's because I'm profoundly evolved. Yes, I've done some work and I've, you know, have some training as a coach, which is very helpful. But let me back up to earlier that day, I met with a client. This is a woman who I deeply respect and admire, and she, as clients do, leaned all the way in. To share the actual experience she was having, the thought she was having, and actually in this case, the thought she was afraid to have, but was too afraid to admit or maybe even couldn't even acknowledge that that's what she was actually thinking and feeling. And we talked about her particular situation, one that if I stripped back all the details was about. Being with something that was uncontrollable and uncontainable. And I sat with her in the devastation of her own disappointment that she was having these experiences, not just having the uncontrollable situations or the circumstances, but actually the experience that she was having in relationship to that. And I reflected back to her that which she wasn't able to see. And that is how hard this is, how high her expectations were of herself, of how she believed that she should be handling it. And I offered the opportunity of acceptance. Just was accepting what is, this does not mean we're approving it. It just is letting what is be, what is, which leads to peace. Reminding her that she's not alone. Nothing has gone wrong and nothing is wrong with her for thinking the things that she was. so these are the stories. These are the experience I get to hold all day long as I coach other people. It's the inner concerns and the deepest desires. I get to see people the way that they may not share with anybody else. And the experience is beyond moving because I get to see people well at their most vulnerable, but also when one shares their deepest desires and yearning. It is just a beautiful experience of being with another human being. And beyond making a living, the impact to me is that I have so much evidence for the thoughts that I need, that I want to have the life experience that I want. These are thoughts, like what I'm living through is hard, but I'm not alone. Nothing's wrong with me. It reminds me I can't do this alone. A lot of us have that belief that we think we should be able to do it on our own, or that because we need other people so desperately that something's wrong with us. And I'm like, oh, actually, it's the opposite. Like we literally can't do this on our own, and I don't believe that we can. And that there's hope. I get to see people orient themselves toward more of what they want and watch them. Create it. Does it happen overnight? It does not. I won't lie to you about that, but day by day it does. We don't stay in these dark and desperate places when we orient ourself toward this possibility. So back to the experience that I wanted to share with you. And like I said, I did not share the details of my story, and I probably will eventually. But for now, I want you to leave this conversation with the assurance that your life has not gone off the rails, that there is hope, and that you have what it takes to not just survive, but to take one small, seemingly impossible, maybe even undetectable step after another. And another, and to thrive. Now, sometimes when I hear this word thrive, I'm like, maybe that's going a bit far. But I wanna clarify that thriving does not mean perfection. It doesn't mean we've arrived. It doesn't mean all things are going well. Thriving for me means that you know you've got it what it takes. You have your own back. You deeply love yourself. You offer yourself compassion, and as I was just saying, you orient yourself towards what's possible and go after it. You get to experience the gift of being authentically you. That's thriving to me, So leaving this episode, I want you to go live your life and the next moment that you have when your child is perhaps having destructive behavior out of control, whether medically things are not going well and you can't do anything about it. You have done everything you can. And it's still moving where you don't want it to go, when you just don't see a way out. I want you to remind yourself that Kara me over here also has those moments where she finds herself in a sudden, confusing, scary situation. That did not have a clear ending yet. When we have the assurance that we're not alone and we can get to the support that we need, it changes everything. Now this feels like too good of a time, not to remind you. I know I mentioned it in the middle of the episode, but I want to remind you that the doors will be opening to the Pathway to Peace Coaching Community in less than a month when this episode comes out, specifically October 14th, i've changed the way I'm doing it. I only open it. Several times a year. And even if you're just a bit curious, like, oh, I, I kind of just want the details. I wanna know what that would be like. And maybe you can't totally picture yourself doing something like that yet, but like, you're like, well, it doesn't sound terrible. Well, I hope it sounds awesome actually. I've been doing interviews with current members and trying to get feedback.'cause we're always growing in trying to, I'm trying to figure out how to serve the community better in ways that meets our needs better. And it has been unanimous that people's favorite part is having a safe, non-judgmental place to be seen and to share their life with. Even though it's just for these moments in time during the week and second, they love the coaching, but first they love the community, which I think is pretty amazing. And I do hope you give yourself the chance to check it out. What you wanna do after you listen to this episode, or right now basically is go click on the show notes, which you'll find a link to the wait list, and basically that's going to put you on the list so that when I send out information you are. Sure to receive it. Okay. Well, and with that, we'll see you on the next episode.