[299] From Flu Prep To Life Prep: Building A Space, A System, And A Sisterhood

When life gets loud, confidence needs a home. We start with a chair, a candle, and a cup of tea—and end with a blueprint for handling chaos with more ease. After a week that knocked our whole household down with the flu, I share how a simple room refresh turned into a creative reawakening and why building a space that feels like you can change how you show up, even on the hard days.

If you’ve been craving calm, the nervous system toolkit here is for you. We talk grounding in nature, sensory anchors like a signature candle or essential oil, a “sleepy song” that cues relaxation, and tactile objects that steady your breath. These rituals are rehearsed on neutral days so they’re ready when things wobble. We also practice flexibility on purpose—swapping dinner plans, shifting workouts—to teach our bodies that change isn’t danger. Add in real-world readiness with an updated first-aid kit and go-bag, and you’ve got compassionate preparedness without fear.

Community is the final pillar. I relaunched the Selfish Sisterhood with connection first, plus an optional Moms Club thread for parents who need a village in their pocket and local meetups for those near Halifax. Whether you’re a new mom, a creative craving momentum, or simply tired of the noise online, you’ll find tools and people here to help you steady your week and protect your spark.

Join the Self(ish) Sisterhood at the Founding Sisters Rate: $22/month or $222/year.

If this resonates, subscribe, share with a friend who needs steadier days, and leave a review so more women can find their people and their calm.

Thank you for listening to Self(ish) Confidence! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or on your social media and tag me @jess.clerke so I can personally thank you for helping spread some confidence + love!
 
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Transcript

Reclaiming The Creative Chair

Making Space After Motherhood

Creative Awakening And Tools

From Flu Low To Gratitude High

Family Teamwork Through Sickness

Relaunching The Selfish Sisterhood

Moms Club Add‑On And Boundaries

Prepping For Chaos, Not Just Flu

Nervous System Grounding Practices

Scent, Sound, And Ritual Anchors

Forecast Your Week And Ask Help

Practicing Flexibility Daily

Build Your Village And Hire Help

Emergency Kits And Practical Prep

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Selfish Confidence, a place where we can connect and be real about artists to be your damn self. My name is Jess, and my goal is to help you build confidence and belief in yourself to live any life path you want, even if it's unconventional. It's time to flip off societal pressures and connect with women who've also felt on the outside by their life choices. We're here to encourage you to grab the mic and speak your truth. I know it can be scary, but we're in this together. Let's get started. Hello, hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the Selfish Confidence Podcast. It's Jess here, and I am so excited to be sitting down and hanging out with you here today. I love my Monday evening rituals of coming and sitting down with my cup of tea, lighting a candle, and chatting with you just to kind of give you a visual here, and to give you an even cooler visual, if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, since we moved into this house, probably like almost four years ago, I got this really cool chair that I absolutely love. Side note, I saw it on one of the Queer Eye episodes, which was also really cool. And it's been living in my son's room because there was no room in my office space to bring it downstairs. I podcasted every episode in it for a really long time. Even after my little guy was born, I was podcasting in his bedroom in this chair. And just this past weekend, I got the creative urge to move everything in my office around and make space for me to create my podcasting corner again. And it's giving the nostalgic vibes of like early selfish selfish confidence days of like my chair with my light behind me, my UR Badgick poster. Like it just like it just feels right to be sitting in this chair. And I don't know about you, but having a creative space is so important to me. It was always a goal of mine to have a space that felt mine. And I had that in our old house in my office space, and in this house and our new house in my office space. But when my little guy was born, he needed the bedroom beside us, and we moved everything downstairs. And by we, I mean my husband Glenn, bless his heart, moved everything downstairs and like created this basic office space for me. And it's worked really well over the last year to get things done and to, you know, be able to come down here and work and get a couple things off the list and then you know be able to pop back out and go into mom mode, but it never felt anything other than a placeholder, which is fine. Like it really was fine, but I had this urge last week to I didn't want fine anymore. I really wanted a creative space that was mine, and so I moved my desk, and then moving my desk turned into a literal overhaul of this whole room and organization of everything that's in the closet, uh, taking uh the old bookshelf out and building a whole new corner bookshelf over here. Again, shout out to my husband who is just the best. He never once even questioned, like, really, Jess, like, we don't get a lot of time, and this is what you want to do. He just went into full creative mode with me, and I'm so so grateful for that because I can also get in my head and be like, I don't need this, like again, this is fine, but it is not fine if you don't have a creative space where you can sit down and do the things that you want to do, especially with this work that I do, like sitting down and hanging out with you, it has to be the right energy for me. I do not like showing up on this microphone if the energy's not right. And this just feels so much better. Like I feel so much better being able to be in this space and to have a bit of a creative outlet, and it's obviously still not perfect. We have a limited amount of space now that we've added to our family, but it's better than it was last week, and it feels really good when you come in here, and it's just yeah, it's really nice. So I'm excited to be sitting down and hanging out with you tonight because it feels, yeah, nostalgic. It feels like good vibes, it feels so right. It feels so right. And uh yeah, I just I'm really, really grateful. I started reading the book The Artist Way. If you've never read it, it's a book about finding your creative spark if it's something that you've lost. And I don't feel like I've fully lost it, but I do feel like I'm starting to step into this creative awakening, which is really awesome. And I'm using this book as a tool to help me to open back up and to really see what's gonna come out this year because I feel like there's something big on the horizon this year. How many times have I said that, right? I feel like there's something on the other side. I just have to crack it open and I just have to get there, and I will take all the tools that I can get. I will take the tools in the time that I have. This one feels really, really good. So I am excited. I'm really excited, and I think that that also comes from when you f when you're really down. Oh man, I think about like back to when I was super pregnant, sick absolutely every day, uh, awful, uh, peridepression. I didn't even know perinital depression, didn't even know that that was a thing until my baby came out and I felt like a million bucks, like literally overnight, went from like the lowest to the highest. And I was just like, this is amazing. Well, that same thing kind of happened this week, not with birth, thankfully, but with the flu. On Sunday, the flu, last Sunday, the flu hit our house, and oh man, it took us out hard. It took us out so hard. We have not been sick like that in a really long time, and we have never been sick like that with a baby. That was the first time, and it was rough. We were just tag teaming where we could tag team, making the most of being the greatest team. Like, I'm so grateful for my husband. He is the best teammate that I could ever have asked for. And that was just proof. Last weekend when he was down, I had to take over, take care of bedtime, do all the things, get the baby down, and then I went down slowly after that. And it yep, it took us out. It took us out. But what happened here was when you are low, when you are at your lowest, whatever that low looks like, that was a low for us. When you feel like crap, man, do you ever appreciate when you feel good? You like it feels like heaven when you finally feel good again. And this hit us for like a good chunk of like four days, I want to say, four or five days. It was not great. But when we started to feel better, like when you got a meal in you, and it just like oh man, felt so good, everything turned around. Everything turned around because my glitter goggles got to be put back on and I could just see the clouds and the sun and the light. Everything was just like so bright and beautiful because I finally felt good again. And I think through that process, it gave me kind of that creative boost that I needed because you just, yeah, you're like, I feel good. Let's do something about it. And so yeah, I redesigned my whole office space here in the space that I have, making use of this uh time that we were kind of isolating away from people because we did not feel good, and I did not want to give what we had to anyone. So all of our plans kind of got washed away off the calendar, and we just had a week of like really solid family time because when you can always spend time with each other, that's who you spend time with, and it was actually really lovely, despite the not so lovely symptoms that I will not get into detail for you, but I bet you can imagine, okay? Besides those not so lovely activities, it was a really nice week. And I laugh when I say that, because who can say that about the flu? Me, right? Me, obviously, because I'm gonna be the crazy person who's gonna celebrate getting sick, right? But it just like, I don't know, there's something about it. There's something about it. That's something that feels just good after. And now here I am sitting in my new office space and just like okay, I'm ready for this next chapter. I'm ready for what's coming. Like something's on the horizon. And if you didn't see, I just relaunched the Selfish Sisterhood, the new version of the Selfish Sisterhood in a space that's all about connection first. It's all about you finding those people that you need to find in your life, whether that's a new biz bestie, if that's a new uh bestie, if that's a sister, like it's someone who you can lean on, someone who you can talk to. I've created this space to be all about connection first. And it's in your pocket, on the go. You can take it with you everywhere you go. And this is the last month that there's going to be founding sister rates because we're gonna have our very first connector call, which is all about connecting with people, both in our larger group setting and in smaller group settings, so you can really get deep with people and find the friends and the people that you're looking for. And then we also have for our local sisters our very first Sisterhood Brunch, which is happening this month, and our first family meetup, which is happening this month, and just like the calendar is stacked with so many beautiful things, and where we have so many of the firsts, I wanted to extend the Founding Sisters rate to March so that you can be a part of all of our firsts, and then that will close at the end of this month. So if you've been looking for a community, if you're looking for a sisterhood, a place where you can meet new friends both online and in person, this is the space for you. And just until the end of the month, you can get it for$22 Canadian a month or$222 for the year. So that'll give you a couple months free if you want to go with the year option. And yeah, I'm so excited to see this community booming and the conversations happening. And oh, I should also add, if you're listening to this and you're a parent, I created an add-on for the Selfish Moms Club. So the Moms Club is this added, you know, family meetup that we're gonna have once a month and also a group chat that you'd be able to connect with and just be like, hey, you know, this, this, this about moms. Like, I gotta complain about this, or I'm celebrating this, or I'm excited about this, or what have you done with this? And if you're a mom, you know how vital that is to have, especially if you're a mom without a village. This is basically for you to be able to have your village in your pocket, and I'm working to create that in person in Halifax too, if you're local. But yeah, I created an add-on for moms, which I have never done before and feels so out of my comfort zone, but I'm doing it anyway. And if you're listening to this and you're like, well, I'm not a mom, I don't want that part. They're actually two separate threads. I did it separately because I do have a lot of people in our community who are not parents. And I don't know about you, I know when I wasn't a mom, the gibber jabbers of talking about mom stuff was just like way over my head and like not interested in it at all. So I wanted to make sure that they were separate so that if you didn't want to be a part of it, you weren't gonna get any of the noise. But if you did, it was added support in your pocket that you could have. No extra for the mom's club add-on either. It's just something that's included if you want to add it on. And I'm just really excited to see this come to life because I launched it, kind of soft launched it, and didn't really say much about it, and it has already been blowing up. So I will put all the information in the show notes for you to check out if you're looking for a community. This is a beautiful space. I have a gift of bringing the best women together. I don't know how I got this gift, but it just is what I have, and I'm gonna use it to its full advantage. And that being said, today I really wanted to talk to you about how I prepared for the flu, but really the overarching theme being more just about like how to prep for chaos, because the world is feeling really crazy right now, right? Like it is chaotic out there, it is noisy out there. I even beyond any kind of like actual life crazy events that are happening, you know, even just going on social media and I find all of the AI videos that I've been seeing lately, oh my gosh, so annoying and chaotic. It's filling my feed in a way that I just do not love. Like, okay, if I'm gonna scroll, like I want to scroll some real stuff. Like, I don't want to be watching these weird AI videos that just like are not real, but they almost look real, so you get really trapped, and I just am not loving all of the noise that's around us. And maybe you're feeling the same way with the news on, because that is noisy as heck right now. Um, with social media, with life in your house, maybe you guys got the flu too, or just in general, you're just like, oh gosh, these kids are nutty and loud. I see you. It is so hard to prep for anything, to even think ahead when everything just is so, so, so, so heavy. And last week, when I suspected that the flu was gonna hit me too, I decided, instead of sitting down and waiting for it to smack me in the mother freaking face, that I was going to get everything done before it hit. And I I bought got the baby down to step one, right? But between putting the baby down and the flu hitting me too, I made sure to get the dishes done. I got the cleaning done that I wanted to get done, I made sure to clean the toilet bowls because between Glenn getting sick and me getting sick, I did not want there to be an overlap, okay, is all I gotta say. And I just prepped all of the things that I knew if this hit, I wasn't gonna want to do. 24 hours from now. I was doing it for future Jess, okay? 24 hours from the moment that I'd start to get sick, she would thank me. She would. I made sure to put on the nicest and comfiest pajamas that I had, the comfiest undergarments, uh, knowing that it could be a long night. Tied my hair up with a really comfortable scrunchie, like nice and tight, so that if anything happened, we were secure. I took my vitamins because I thought maybe I could avoid this because I'm delusional, and also had a quick snack, because maybe it was also just hunger. The ticky feeling I was feeling in my tummy, maybe, maybe it was hunger. Side note, it was not. Uh, but I tried, I tried, and I took all of these measures into place just in case it was coming for me. And I said a little prayer, please God, don't let this hit me. Let this be a Glenn thing and not me. Well, it had to be mine too, which is fine, right? It's fine. We all have to have these moments of getting sick too. But it was those steps between knowing that it might come for me and actually taking the action that made a big difference in me having a better experience with sickness. And I know that that sounds really strange, but we can use that example in everything in our life. We don't know what tomorrow's gonna bring, we don't know what's around the corner for us, and especially right now with everything going on in the world, is we don't know. We literally do not know what tomorrow's gonna bring. And I think that a lot because yeah, it the you could have your most difficult day a week from now. You could have it a couple years from now. And the things that you do between now and then to prepare yourself to be able to handle it is really important. And I'm not really someone who loves to think about the darkness or the things that could be happening or any of this stuff. It's not my favorite topic, but it is important because it's gonna come. Hard days are gonna come. It's inevitable. You might be in a season of hard days right now, and if you are, I am sending you a big hug. I am thinking of you because it is not a bright, shiny road. It is a really difficult place to be in. And we can do some things to help us to prepare for these seasons, but when you're in it, and if you are, I love you, I see you, my sister. When you're in it, it can be really hard because you have less energy. You don't have the same kind of structure in your days if you're in some of this stuff, and it just makes it really difficult. So try to use these tips if you think that they'll help, but also know that when you're in it, the best things you can do is rest, prioritize what helps to light you up a little bit more, give yourself some grace here. But if you're in the hey, things aren't so bad. You never know what could be around the corner, kind of prepping. It's like storm prepping, but for your life, okay? Flu prepping, but for your life. There's a couple things that I find really, really helpful. Nervous system work. It's more than just a buzzword right now. It's actually really, really helpful and really important for you to find a way to get your nervous system ready for whatever could come. Basically, what that means is like if the craziest chapter was about to knock on your door, your body would be prepared for it instead of going into fight or flight, instead of crawling under your desk and crying. You could handle it. And some of the ways that I do that is through getting grounded, whatever that looks like for you. For me, it's literally getting out in nature and spending as much time outside, breathing in the fresh air, putting my bare feet on the ground, touching some trees, whatever I need to do in order to feel really connected to nature is what I need. That's not the thing for everyone. For you, it could be, you know, getting into your creative space and doing some watercolors or meditating at home and just that being you journaling or whatever a meditative state looks like for you. Maybe it's getting in the water and having a nice bath after a really long day. It could also be like when you wash your hair, visualizing, washing the energy off your body and getting grounded and just picturing the roots coming out of your feet and getting into the earth. I know. You're gonna be like, Jess, these are some weird woo-woo things. They make a difference. These are preparing you for if something were to happen, you can use these tools to get back into like the right state that feels really good, or at least feels neutral. I shouldn't even say really good. Because if there's a storm around you, there's hardly ever a space that feels really good. But we can get into a neutral space through some of these practices. It's like bringing back again. Like I talked about this chair, like sitting in this beautiful chair brings me right back to the energy of podcasting that I have wanted to get back to for a while. So getting grounded in a way that works for you is one of the greatest things you can have. I also find it helpful to have some kind of calming tool. So if there's a candle that you use or like a scent that you use that's really calming for you, I would start to use that as like your base on a day that feels really neutral and feels really like safe for you. Start lighting that candle or using that essential oil or whatever it is to help emulate that energy so that when things go awry, you could light that candle and go back to that peaceful space. We actually did this with our son with a song that we call the Sleepy Song. And I don't know how I stumbled across it. I think a friend of mine suggested like using a shusher and using maybe on Spotify like a playlist of this woman shushing because I was just so tired of going like shush, you know. And anyone who has a baby knows. So this app or this playlist that I had had a couple different shushers, a couple different types of shushin, if you know. And there was this one song that would come on and it had like a frequency sound behind it, and it just relaxed him so well. Like it just worked too well to relax him. And I think it's because I listened to a lot of frequency music when I was pregnant that this maybe just kind of reminded him of that sound. I have no idea why it worked, but it just did. And when he was upset or when he couldn't fall asleep, this was one of the songs that we would play, and it would just help, I think, to calm his nervous system. It certainly helped to calm mine, and it gave us that neutral state again that we really needed to get to. And this song, still now to this day, if we need him to fall asleep, or it's like, oh man, like we are desperate for something. This one works, and I think having a scent, a sound, anything that can help with your senses maybe it's something that you have in your hands. Like right now, when I record podcasts, I like to hold a piece of rose quartz in my hands, like something that can. Help to give you that sensation of calm that you use in the moments of calm. So it's something again that you have to prepare for. You can't just pull out a crystal when everything's going crazy and hope that it's gonna work. I feel like there's parts of ritual around these things that are gonna help to enhance the properties that you need to have. So have a candle that is like your calm scent, have an essential oil that is some kind of calm scent, like have something that helps your uh nose come back to calm, or maybe even have some kind of playlist or song that brings your body back to calm in these moments when things are just a little crazy, okay? Find the things that get you grounded, and if it's not nature, find something that's gonna bring your nervous system back to that little bit of calm because you're gonna need it. I'd love to say that hard days are never gonna be ahead, but that's just not true. If the pandemic taught us anything, it's that we do not know what tomorrow's gonna bring. And the better we can prepare for things, the better we're gonna feel. And so one of the things that I really like to do is I like to forecast the whole week so that I can make a plan. This is almost like looking at things short term. So again, we don't know what's knocking on the door, but you can at least look at your calendar and have a safe plan ahead for the time that you need to go to this activity or to work or you have this meeting or vet appointments or whatever it is for you that you're just like, I know I need to be here at this time. Look at your week and just start to make a plan on if there's anywhere in there that's gonna help to make it the easiest week for you. If that means on Fridays you pick up pizza because that's gonna take one thing off your plate, then it's Fridays, pick up pizza, take that thing off your plate. Stop trying to overcomplicate everything and having to do everything your way. Give yourself some ease and you can almost just look at your week ahead and plan those pockets. If you know that you have a 12-hour workday on Wednesdays, it's every Wednesday you have the longest workday. What do you need to do on Monday and Tuesday to make Wednesday an easier day for you? Is that prep some food and have it in the fridge? Is that plan to have takeout that day? Is it asking for help or hiring someone to take your dog for a walk? Like what do you need in order to make that tough day easier for you? And that's just one of the ways that I look at short-term weeks. Where do I have pockets that I can make things easier for me? Because yeah, life is already hard enough. Okay, stop trying to do it all yourself. Stop overcomplicating, look at your week, plan your pockets. It's gonna make a big difference if you can kind of see things a little more clear where you need some extra support. And then ask for that help, okay? The more you start to get comfortable with asking for help now when things are neutral, okay. It's not that big deal if they say no. It's gonna make it better for when you really do need help, and the no is not really negotiable, like you need help, it's gonna make it easier, starts to start to feel more comfortable with asking for help. A lot of us feel really uncomfortable with it. This is something that I have started to learn and to lean into into my feminine energy to really start to feel like being taken care of is an important tool, I think, especially for women, but I think for everyone. And so start to get comfortable with asking for help when it's not that big of an emergency, so that when it is an emergency, you feel more comfortable, more safe to do so. And then the last thing I have here is to be flexible. Plans change, things change. We know that. This isn't as simple sometimes as like your bestie canceling plans and you're just like, sweet, I'm staying in my pajamas anyway, right? I wanted to stay home anyway. No, this is gonna be like something might be life-altering. Something big could happen. So can I be flexible, right? Can I take some things off my plate? And can I be okay when the plan changes? Will I be okay when the plan changes? My type A people listening are like, oh god, I hate when the plan changes. I love to have good, solid, safe plans in place because it helps us to feel secure, right? It helps us to feel calm because we know what's coming. And I just need you to be a little bit more flexible. Practice this, play with it on the daily too. If it's like, I knew we were gonna have lasagna for dinner, but I'm flexible and now we're having curry, like whatever. Like, just start to play with it so that flexibility also feels safe for you. Some of these things, like when something hits, like let's say the craziest thing hit and you have to be flexible on everything in your calendar, but if you are someone who doesn't feel safe with flexibility, this is going to be the hardest time for you. So I'm talking like micro little things. Give yourself the gift of learning to be more flexible. Give yourself the gift of changing plans last minute if you need to. Give yourself the gift of getting comfortable with your nervous system, finding calm and peace in your day-to-day, forecast the pockets, ask for help, do these things because when you need it, you've at least practiced it. You're at least ready. And a lot of people do not do this work because we think we can do it all ourselves. But we can't. We need a village, we need our people. And if you are someone who does not have a village, you gotta start to find them. You gotta start to find some people that you can lean on. A neighbor, a long-lost friend, reach back out to them, go and find a parenting group and like start to connect with people, a church group, a community group, a new sports team. Like find your people and surround yourself in them and make a mini village. And this can also be a hired village. I don't think people talk about that enough either. You can hire a cleaner, you can hire a doula, you can hire whatever you need. But remember that having some people around you and having a village is also really, really important, okay? And yeah, I don't think we plan for this stuff enough. And honestly, let's be real. Like, if the pandemic taught us anything, again, it should it taught us to that anything can happen. Be prepared. Uh buy your toilet paper, stock up on toilet paper. No, but seriously, like little little things. I'd also say have an emergency pack that's prepped, right? Have a first aid kit that's prepped. These little things that we don't think about are not so little when we need them. And so I still remember when the fires were happening here a couple years ago, we prepped an emergency kit. We definitely need to update that emergency kit because I don't think it has any baby stuff in it. It just had cut cat and dog stuff and stuff for us, obviously. So that needs to get updated too. But also like just making sure that you have some kind of emergency prep kit, you have a first aid kit. Um, just yeah, this isn't an episode to be like, be prepared. Actually, it is. It's not to scare you about wherever the world is going. I just think that there's things that we can do to help prep so that when something happens, we're ready for it. You feel more confident because you're ready for it. You put the efforts in so you're ready for it. And that makes a really big difference. It makes a really big difference. So that's what I've been thinking about this week when we got the flu. But I'm I'm very honest in saying like it was a really nice week. I am now sitting in my semi new office space because of it. All it took was me moving my desk and the rest was history, and it's just like, you know, there's always a beautiful I shouldn't say there's always a beautiful end. There's always an end to the rainbow, right? And sometimes I can come out brighter, sometimes it can come out darker. I'm not gonna sit here, you know I want to put my glitter goggles on, but that's not always the truth, and that's not everyone's story. So the best thing you can do is prepare your body, prepare your nervous system, give yourself some tools for calm, and then also prepare some things in your house in case the flu comes for you. I hope it doesn't. I really hope it doesn't. Uh, but you never know, you never know. Get that OJ, get that soup, be ready. Actually, that was one thing. I had prepped a bowl of soup because Glen was starting to feel ill in the afternoon, and so I was like, I'll just make a pot of soup, because that's my love language. I love to make a soup. And thankfully I did, because we needed that pot of soup. We needed it. So we had food prepped just by chance, because I happened to make one when he was still not feeling good. So, you know, make a pot of soup. Make a pot of soup, my sister. I hope you are having the best week and that you do not need any of these tools, but you have them in your pocket just in case. Because yeah, I'm just so grateful to have you here to hang out with you, to be sitting in my pink chair again, and I cannot wait to be talking to you soon. What's up, sis? I am so glad we can hang out today. If you love this episode, send it to a friend or share it on your social media and tag me so I can personally thank you for helping me sprinkle some confidence in the world. And don't forget, you are magic. Let's show the world your shine.