Navigating Unexpected Life Changes

Life doesn’t always go according to plan, and sometimes the biggest growth comes from the changes we weren't prepared for. In this episode, we’re diving into navigating unexpected life changes, from career shifts and health challenges to educational turns, or whatever you may be experiencing. Together, we’ll explore how to embrace uncertainty, find strength in the transition, and recognize the opportunity hidden within the pivot. If you’re facing change or standing at a crossroads, this conversation is your reminder that you’re more resilient than you think 

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Hey y'all, and welcome back for episode four of season two of Cookies, Couches, and Conversation. As always, I am your host, Mallory Pettinger, and we have a really good topic today. I asked people to reach out and let me know some of the things that they wanted to hear on the podcast this season. And the topic of discussion that was recommended, like top three, was navigating unexpected life changes. That looks different for everybody, but in general, everybody just kind of wanted to see how do people react when plans change. Mind you, plans change all the time, but plans don't necessarily change to the point where your entire life plan is now completely different than what you expected it to be. So I kind of wanted to talk about that a little bit and um see what people are thinking and how you are feeling because I know that I have had many, many, many life changes. I think it was Mike Tyson. Mike Tyson said something to the effect of everybody has a plan until you get punched in the mouth or punched in the face, or it's something, you know, something like that. But the truth in that is wildly insane. I have had several plans. First of all, let's start here. I come from a family that uh sings and plays instruments, right? Everybody, like both sides of my family, mom's side, dad's side. There's musical talent all across my family. So obviously, I grew up singing and around instruments and music just all the time. You could not tell me that my path in life was not to be a singer. I grew up like I'm going to be a singer. I want to be a singer, that is what I'm doing, that's it. So fast forward um to I think I was early 20s, I got the opportunity to get hooked up with KJ Rose. If you don't know who KJ Rose is in the music industry, I feel sorry for you, but you should Google that. Anyway, I got hooked up with her. She emailed me and she's like, hey, John Legend is having an audition in New York for a background singer. One of his singers is pregnant. She's going on maternity leave. Get to New York. I don't care how you gotta do it, get to New York, do that audition. This is my big break, right? Background singing is one of my favorite things to do, even to this day. I love singing with other people. I love just the blending of the music. I love the blending of the voices, the creating something different than what the original was supposed to be. It's just, it's so fun for me. Mind you, at the time, I am broke living in, I think it was Charleston. I was living in Charleston, Illinois, completely broke. It just so happened that tickets to New York were cheap because I think it was a weekday. So I had to be in New York in like two days. Call my best friend. Hey girl, will you go to New York with me? And she was like, uh, yeah. So she was gonna do the audition too. Get to New York, I lose my voice. Plan changed. I lost my voice. Like, I couldn't talk. How was I gonna do this audition? I am in New York. I am staying in a hostel for like $20 something dollars a night because that's all I could afford. Because I wanted to audition for John Legend, and I have now lost my voice. So I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna go anyway. We're gonna see what happens. I go anyway. I'm a soprano at the time. At the time, for the people who still try to make me a soprano today. So I'm a soprano, and I'm like, how I can't get this out unless I sing really loud. And even then, I have no voice. So I have no speaking voice. So I don't know if it's gonna happen. Get up there, and it's literally like, okay, y'all, this is the part. This is your part. We're gonna call people and you're gonna have to be ready. We're just gonna keep the music playing, and then when the one person goes, the next person steps up, you go, and then you walk off. I'm like, oh my God, I'm so nervous. I ain't take my coat off. I ain't take my hat off. I don't think I had on a scarf, like I ain't do nothing. I was just nervous because I didn't have a voice. I get up there, I sing the living snot out of that soprano part. Like I am loud and everything. The girls behind me were like, oh my gosh, she did really good. And then I stepped off. No voice again. Never heard anything. So obviously I didn't get it, but it was at that time I was just like, you know, maybe I'm not gonna be a singer. Not saying that the John Legend audition killed my dreams, but it was just like, maybe I should rethink if this is for me, because it it happened really, really fast. So I tend to think when things happen like that, it happens for a reason. And good or bad, you're meant to learn something from it. Well, fast forward a couple weeks after getting back, I find out I'm pregnant with my son. Definitely won't be going on anybody's tour or anything like that. So I'm I'm knowing that I got that opportunity to let me know that that was not for me. At least it wasn't for me then. My plan changed. It changed in the most amazing way because I got the greatest gift I've ever been given out of it. But it was it was the starting point of me learning how to pivot. Okay. So I said all that to say we're gonna talk about pivoting because I feel like unexpected life changes happen, but the lesson is not in the change, the lesson is in the pivot. And I hope that makes sense. Like things are going to change, and what you do, how you pivot, really determines the outcome and how you navigate that. And I'll try to better explain as we go on. So one of the things that I did want to talk about from my past was first of all, in college, I had I had a plan. I was not gonna go straight to college. I was going to go to community college. I was gonna do community college for two years, and then I was gonna transfer to Purdue University. At Purdue University, I was going to be a computer engineer. In comes the unexpected life change. I'm at home with my grandmother and my mother. They have such the same personality and they don't know it to the point that the one is complaining about the other for doing the exact same thing that they're doing. It's hilarious. But at the time I'm 18, I'm like focused. I'm zeroed in on my goals. And when I realized that I was going to have to listen to them complain about themselves for another two years, I was like, yeah, no, I ain't got it, boss. I was like, actually, I think I'm gonna go away to school, then we'll figure it out from there. So that was my first pivot. I applied to a school that I knew I had some friends that I asked them about, like how they liked it, and they were like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, we love it. You should come. And so I applied to the school maybe like a month or two before school started. And the very first time I ever saw the school was registration day when we were moving in. Look, hey, I was going to figure out what it was that I wanted to do from there. I just needed to get there. So that was that was my first pivot that I didn't realize was an actual pivot in response to a life change. I'm going to school. I've never really had a super serious boyfriend. I meet somebody. I fall madly in love with this person, right? Just such a kid. And the plan that I had for my schooling just goes completely away because now I'm distracted. Which wasn't his fault. It was my fault, really. And it was just learning to be an adult, which sometimes, you know, we learn to be an adult the hard way. And so I won't bore you with the details of all of that. But the plan that I had to be a computer engineer was now gone. And like I said, early 20s, I ended up having my son. And so now everything that I had thought that I would do in life has completely changed. I have no direction. I'm just like, let me just focus on getting a job. So I worked my way into this one company, and I'm working there, and I'm just kind of moving up through the ranks. And one of the things that was going on was I would often hear people say, HR is terrible. HR is not here for you. HR is working for the company, not you. HR doesn't care about you. And I don't know anything about HR. I've never had to deal with HR, but I'm like, that doesn't make sense. Because I'm I'm looking up what HR is supposed to be. Human resources, they're here for the human resource. They're here for us. So obviously they're here to help you and the company. No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. That's not true. They're they they're here for the company. All right, cool. I never believed that. And I never had any experience with that. So I I just let people say what they wanted to say. Now we get to a situation where I need HR's help. Multiple situations, actually. HR let me down so bad. First of all, one of the things that happened was I felt like one of the men at the company, uh a high-up man actually, um, touched me inappropriately. So I'm talking to some other girls, one of them who's in HR, and one of them who is kind of like training to be in HR. And I'm like, yeah, he like rubbed me in an inappropriate place, and then like he kissed me on my cheek and stuff, and it was unwanted, and it just kind of threw me off and kind of just shocked me and froze me in place because we don't have that kind of relationship at all for you to feel comfortable with kissing me and putting your hands in multiple places on my body and just pretending like you just brushed by me. The one girl in HR responded, like, yeah, he does that. He's such a creep. Huh? What do you mean, HR? If you know that this person is a creep and he's touching people inappropriately, why are you, as HR, not doing anything about that? So that was my first indication that maybe HR, at least in that place, was not all it was cracked up to be. We get to another incident where I am being severely harassed by my manager. And it was hard to explain to people at the time what was happening because it sounded like I was making it up. But there are people who saw it in real time, and it was like, is she okay? Like, what is her problem with you? And I'm like, exactly. So it got to the point where I couldn't take it anymore. I was having to do things that nobody else had to do. I was having to explain things that nobody else had to explain. I couldn't make a move without this lady coming looking for me, right? So I went to HR. The first thing HR said was, Well, have you talked to her? No, I'm literally coming to you to figure out what I'm supposed to do because I don't want this to blow back on me, and now I lose my job because I said something. Well, we really think you should talk to her. I don't feel comfortable doing that alone. So can somebody help me out? We really think you should just talk to her alone. Okay. So I did. There was fake surprise and fake hurt. Like, oh no, I would never do that to you. But ensure HR never helped me. And I wouldn't say it hurt my feelings, but it was one of those things where you feel like I never want to experience something like that again. But then you also feel I never want anybody else to feel like that. Like, why are you here when you're supposed to be supporting the employee and the company? Why are you here if you have no intention on doing that? So that was kind of my next pivot, career pivot. Out of the life change of everything that worked through at me, that literally left me um hurt, scared, depressed. I went through a whole thing, right? I pivoted to wanting to be on the side of the people who are actually going to do the right things and be there for the employee and let people know that HR is not only there for the company. And so all these years later, here I am. I've been at HR for several years now. Um, and I'm actually about to graduate finally with my bachelor's degree next month in April. And I'm thinking of keeping going, but I don't know. But I'm at least gonna get my next HR certification. I already have one. But that life change, those dramatic life changes, once again turned into something beautiful because I decided that the life change wasn't gonna dictate the outcome. My pivot was. And I think a lot of us have very, very similar experiences in that the things that we plan for our education, the things that we plan for our career, they just don't always turn out how we expect them. And I do know several people who have allowed that to kind of knock them down. And so they just became content with getting a staple job and just, you know, working and being comfortable in that stability and making decent money. And I am not saying that that's a problem. I'm not saying that that's right or wrong. You do whatever it is that makes you happy, but ask yourself is the contentness because this is what really makes you happy? Or is the contentness from being scared of the pivot? Let that sit with you for a bit and then make the decision from there what it is that you want to do for the rest of your life. I would hate for you to just be content because of fear. The pivot could be monumental for you. One of the other things that I kind of definitely had knock my socks back was uh 2023. I'm I'm feeling like something is wrong with my body, right? I'm not feeling like myself, something is off. And I'm feeling internally some pain and that something is just not right. I don't know how to explain it. I'm telling my husband, and he's like, Well, you know, we'll get you checked out. We need to get you checked out then. If something is wrong, if you're not right, then let's let's figure it out together. So before I actually got in to see my doctor, I started feeling things in my abdomen. And the only way to describe it is like it felt like a small hard ball in my abdomen. I'm like, well, that's not supposed to be there. And he's like, I kind of feel it, but I don't really. So my doctor tells me, let's let's get you some exams going, let's get you some imaging, and then we'll we'll figure out next steps. So the imaging comes back that I have fibroids in my uterus, right? He's like, I think you should see uh a specialist pretty soon, you know. But at the time it's like not urgent. I'm like, all right, cool, I'll I'll I'll figure that out, you know, I'll get to it when I can get to it. It's painful, but not like uh keep you up at night type pain. It's just, you know, it is what it is. I can deal with it, I can tolerate the pain, it's fine. I want to say, maybe three or four months later, I'm laying down in the bed, and I get the worst pain. And I'm like, baby, this hurts. And he's like, What? And I feel my stomach. And the thing that felt maybe like this before feels like this now. Like it was lower in my abdomen, but now it feels like it's almost to my rib cage. That's not good. So he's like, You want to go to the hospital? I'm like, Yeah, I think we should do that. Go to the hospital, I'm in the emergency room, they do some imaging. One person comes in, then another person comes in and talks to me. He's like, Yeah, so you need to see a specialist right away. So you have a very, very, very large tumor in your uterus. And the thing that's concerning, well, there are several things, but one of the bigger things that was concerning was the fact that it grew so fast since my last imaging just a couple months ago. The biggest thing that was concerning was that it looked like on the inside it was dying, but at some point it stopped dying and continued to grow. So I think I was I think I was actually working at the hospital at that time. So I told my manager, my manager was like, I'm gonna call some people, hang tight, because I was in a lot of pain at that point. She called some people, they get me an appointment in like that Tuesday, right after this. The appointments were booked out for weeks. They got me in that Tuesday. I'm like, thank God for them. Um, and my doctor, she's like, so I'm gonna give you your options, and they are surgery or surgery. And so she she tells me, um, the first option of surgery is removing the fibroids, the tumors. There are multiple, but the one is like huge. She's like, it's taking up basically your whole uterus so we can get them out and hope they don't come back. I'm like, okay. Second option is she goes, total hysterectomy. Boom, unexpected life change. I'm like, oh, oh, oh, oh, okay. Um, yeah. So, okay. I need to, I need to think, I need to talk about this. I had always joked before that, you know, I was done having kids. Me and my husband, when we got together, first of all, we have a 13 year age gap. So when we got together, it was kind of like if we wanted to have, you know, a kid together, we needed to do that rather fast. Um, and we had talked about it, but we had pretty much decided that it probably was not a good idea. Um, our personalities, we just we love other people's kids and we love the kids that we have. More kids, we don't really know that we could I mean, if that's what God wanted, then we would have did it and been happy. But like choosing to try to have more kids, that was gonna be rough. So I don't really know if we want to do that. To put that into perspective, our youngest child in the house is 15 years old right now. This was just three years ago. So we would have been starting over from diapers in a 12, 13 year age gap for the kid. We pretty much decided rather quickly that that was not a good idea for us, especially because we were pretty much in just a few years on the cusp of being empty nesters and just being able to move about, you know, however we please. So that that just wasn't something that was gonna work. And so I would always joke, you know, they can just, they can come in and just gut gut me, take everything, just take it all. I don't need it. Just because I was I was tired of having periods. Like, I'm not having kids anymore. I why do I need a period? This is this is trash. Like, I really don't want to do this. And so when that happened, it was just kind of like it's always been a joke, but now this is potentially reality. Like, what do you want to do? And he's like, What do you mean? What do I want to do? This is you, this is your body. This is you have to have surgery, you have to have your innerts pulled out, like you have to recover. You are the one who's never going to be able to have kids again. Don't ask me, ask you. And I love that about him, but he knows that I can't make a decision like that without him. So ultimately, it was just like do what's gonna be best for you to be safe long term. And so we elected to have the total hysterectomy. And I thought that afterward I would have, you know, that crush feeling that some people have, where I really can't have kids anymore. Like that's the end. I I have no womb anymore. And I I thought it was going to be very, very devastating for me because I had heard that it can be very, very devastating for some people. It was not. It was quite the opposite. Like the healing part of it sucked a little bit. Um, and surprisingly enough, it was not the surgery areas that hurt the worst. It was the shoulders, my shoulder blades. I couldn't lift my arms, I couldn't move. It was so terrible for weeks. I was in so much pain in my arms. And it was because um the surgery took much longer than expected. They were gonna try to do it laparoscopically, um, but the tumor was just so big. The tumor ended up being the size of a football in my uterus. It was so big that that didn't work. So, in short, I had a C-section basically. And that meant I was laying on the table like this, like with my arms stretched out for hours. But when I healed from that, that was it was so freeing. Like I started throwing things away that I was never gonna need again because I didn't have a uterus. Um there was no potentially to oops get pregnant because I don't have a uterus. And so I'm saying all that to say, yeah, that was such the unexpected life change because you just you're not in the mindset of somebody is about to say, we potentially need to take your uterus and some more of your pieces out. Like you're just you're just not. And when you hear it, it's a very serious thing. Like all major surgeries are dangerous, right? There's a chance of death with pretty much all of them. And so this is a huge life change, and it's very finite. There is no coming back from I ripped all your pieces out. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I think I want to have another kid, like to carry another kid. Like you done, girl. But the pivot, the pivot is what carried me. I could have fallen into a depression. I could have regretted my my decision, I could have carried the weight of all of that in a much different way than I did. But I chose to pivot and see the bright side and look toward the future, and that's a choice that we can't all make, but we can all try to make, you know. Um, so I just I wanted to encourage people today. I wanted to encourage you on tonight, hallelujah, to embrace the pivot, navigating unexpected life changes. It's not easy. But fighting the life change versus trying to find your footing in the pivot is what makes or breaks a person. I am not a motion motivational speaker, so I don't feel like I'm trying to sound like one, and I'm not, I would never dismiss people's feelings and emotions and unexpected life changes. I am a big advocate, and I tell my husband this all the time. Like, um, you know, when we have disagreements and stuff, and the both of us are feeling some kind of way, feel how you need to feel. Just don't stay there. And I think that has carried me, that mindset has carried me in more than one way. When you lose somebody, feel how you need to feel, but don't stay there. Like slide down a wall, fall out on the floor if you have to. But get up from that wall at some point. Get off the floor at some point. When you lose your job, feel how you need to feel. Mourn the loss of that job, the friends that you might not have anymore from that job, um, the stability that that job brought your life. Absolutely feel how you need to feel. But pivot and don't stay there. Look for the future. Look for the opportunity that that has now brought you to do something else or to do something that you've always wanted to do. And if I could leave anything with you guys today, it would be embrace a pivot. Don't let yourself stay in a place that is going to keep you from where you're meant to be just because things changed and you weren't prepared. Things change all the time and we're not prepared. But if you can learn to pivot, I think you will end on your feet. That's all I got. I hope you guys enjoyed the show. I hope you catch up on the previous episodes, and I hope to see you next week. Bye.