127. When It All Goes Up in Flames: Grief, Gratitude & Rebuilding in Midlife

Have you ever had a week that flipped your world upside down—and somehow also cracked you open in the most meaningful way?

In this raw and unfiltered episode, I’m sharing something deeply personal: the fire that struck my wellness center last week and the emotional rollercoaster that followed. But more importantly, I’m opening up about the real-life practices—the ones I talk about every week—that are helping me stay grounded and present during an incredibly difficult time.

If you’re navigating your own season of upheaval, grief, or just trying to hold it all together, this episode is for you.

In this episode:

• The emotional aftermath of losing my clinic to fire—and what’s helping me move through it
• Why I made the bold decision to step away from acupuncture (at least for now)
• How real rest (not just more coffee) is getting me through
• What movement looks like when you're grieving and exhausted
• The unexpected power of connection—and why it’s your secret healing superpower
• How regulating your nervous system really works in crisis moments
• An invitation to rebuild your life with more intention, honesty, and compassion

Connect with me, Dr. Sara Poldmae:

Website: https://risingwomanproject.com

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/drsarapoldmae

Transcript

Sara Poldmae: 0:01

Sarah, welcome to menopause. Rise and thrive. I am Dr Sarah pulled May, and this podcast is your go to guide for navigating perimenopause and menopause. If you are feeling a little overwhelmed, trust me, you are in great company each week, I'll bring you expert advice, raw, honest conversations and simple tips to help you stay grounded and maybe even find some humor in the process. Let's rise, thrive and tackle this wild ride together. Hey, friends, it's Dr Sarah here again. Welcome to menopause. Rise and thrive. And today's episode is, well, it's going in a slightly different direction. It's certainly not an episode that I planned on recording this past week was not in my bingo cards. So if you've been following along at all on any of my social media, whether it is at Dr Sarah pull may or at meadowhill Wellness on Instagram, you may have seen that my main Wellness Center, the first center that I started 20 years ago, I had a fire. Everyone's safe, thankfully, but it's been a real whirlwind. This past week has been a lot, and I have been through a state of shock, and then I've had moments where I've just started crying. I've had a lot of people reaching out to me, which is amazing, and there's just been a lot between logistics, insurance calls, all the emotions. But anyway, it's been a lot. It's been it's been hard, and I have had deep moments of gratitude that nobody was hurt, and deep moments of gratitude for the people that have shown up for me in this past week, but it's still been hard. There's been a lot of grief mixed with gratitude and hope, but then there's also been moments of pure exhaustion. There have been moments where I feel like I'm just stumbling around like an idiot, not getting much done. But what I really want to share today isn't necessarily about the fire itself. It's how the practices that I've taught to both myself and to women just like you over the years have really been coming to the forefront and helping me to get through this time without burning out this season of my life, and maybe if yours, too, has been about letting go of doing everything midlife brings a kind of honesty, doesn't it? I mean, we just start to say we can't keep running on empty. We can't keep trying to hold everything together and take care of everyone but ourselves. And there has been a lot of that realization this week that I have gotten better at really kind of refining what I need to do in each and every moment. Because I knew a great example is I've been cooking my dog's food. My dog got sick about a month ago. He had gained a lot of weight. He's better now, as far as I can tell, but in the midst of that, I decided to start cooking homemade dog food for him. So we were away on vacation when the fire happened. We were visiting my daughter down in Georgia, partying with her sorority sisters, definitely not getting the sleep I'm used to getting. And I remember being at the airport, think thinking, thank goodness I can just get back to my own routine. You know that feeling when you've traveled and had an amazing weekend or amazing week, and you just are thinking to yourself at the airport, I'm sure some of you have before, wow, I just can't wait to get home and just get back on a schedule, because the schedule really, really helps me. Sure it helps a lot of you. Well, at the airport, I got the call about the fire, and I had no idea the extent of the damage between the smoke and the water, so I took it with grace, and I have to say, the first couple days of dealing with the fire was in a state of shock. But I think something that has helped me along the way is the deep knowing that even if you don't take care of your to do list, it's going to be okay. And I've realized that over the past couple of years, like it's okay to let go for a little while, it's okay to say no. And when the fire happened, I kind of realized, even though I was in a state of shock, that I had two choices. And I think this realization actually didn't come until that Wednesday of this week. So three days into the fire, i. I knew I had two choices. I could either keep pushing overwork myself and spiral into burnout, or I could practice what I preach. You know, I've been doing this podcast for over two years now, and I preach slowing down. I preach Mind Body practices. Preach all of that, and I do a lot of it, and I've been proud of myself at the ways that I've grown through the past seven or so years of perimenopause. But with this confrontation of this fire, you know, I take on a lot, and I would say most of the time, I feel pretty good about, you know, biting off what I can chew and that kind of thing. But I knew with the fire that I had to make some decisions, some really big decisions, and I made one really big decision this week that feels very much in alignment. It's scary and a little bit nerve wracking, but it's something I knew that I needed for myself. The biggest decision was I decided to take a sabbatical from in person acupuncture treatments, I have been treating less and less over the years, especially this last year, I think I only have about 12 hours of clinic work a week where I'm seeing acupuncture patients hands on. The rest of the time I'm Functional Medicine. I'm practicing solely in the midlife women's space with functional medicine, I have a new concierge program that I just launched, that I have talked about recently on the podcast. So I decided to step away completely from in person acupuncture, and I did that for a few reasons. My team of acupuncturists that I have practicing in both of my clinics, we are now having to move the entire practice from two clinics to one. So clearly, there's not going to be as much space. There's not as many treatment rooms. And rather than take away shifts and have to cut people's hours, I wanted to keep everybody employed. So by taking a break, not only do I give myself break, but also my practitioners will, you know, their lives won't be as disrupted as they could be. So I did that to help other people, but also to serve myself, because if I didn't, I knew I'd be trying to do it all right as a business owner, I thought, sure I could, you know, run the business, rebuild the clinic, support my team, navigate the insurance chaos. And by the way, insurance companies are my least favorite business right now. It's a whole nother show. And still, I still felt like, oh, man, maybe I can just show up for every patient with a full heart. And, you know, just kind of turn off the whole fire noise and everything else that's going on. But when I was making the decision, I realized I just couldn't, I couldn't, not without something breaking. And I'm pretty sure it would have been myself, but I knew that walking into each treatment room, I wouldn't have the same passion wouldn't have the energy, and that's not fair to my patients. So I had my staff send a heartfelt email that I crafted one night, I think it was Wednesday night, and said, I just can't do it. You know, I need to focus on my functional medicine practice that I've been building. I need to focus on getting the Annapolis clinic back up and running, and I need to focus on myself right now, because this has been a huge loss. 20 years have been poured into this clinic. We had to take every single piece of furniture, every piece of paper, everything out of that clinic to get it restored, and that's a lot. So again, I'm bringing this up in the podcast, not just just tell my sob story, but to tell you that my practices that I talk about on this podcast, I mean it. I mean that these work and that they can help keep you sane when you're struggling, whether it's chronically struggling for years in perimenopause, or whether it's an acute struggle, like a loss of a business or, God forbid, a loss of a loved one. So leaning into these foundational health tools has been huge for me. So I want to talk to you just a little bit about the few of them that I've been leaning into the heaviest and the first one is sleep. Sleep has never been my strong suit, but has always been my lifeline. Not perfect sleep. I'm not saying that I've mastered sleep, but real, restorative sleep, and doing anything I can to get sleep, and it's been challenging this week, because I have woken up in the middle of the night a few times, you know, with the doom and gloom scenario, which is real this time. Usually, if I wake up in the middle of the night, it's, it's things that aren't so pressing. But this has been like, you know, what else do I need to add to the list? What else do I need to tell my office manager? How am I going to call the insurance company tomorrow, that kind of stuff. But I've been really, even though. So ideally, I would be waking up at six o'clock to conquer the world and really get everything cleaned up. I've been allowing myself to sleep in because I know that if I get proper sleep, I'll get more done in less hours than if I wake up super early after waking up in the middle of the night. And I just know that that's something I need to lean in on. And midlife women especially, I think we underestimate how much sleep influences every aspect of our life, our mood, our hormones, our cravings, our patients, even our ability to stay hopeful. One night that I had a terrible night's sleep, I think it's when the shock of everything really wore off, and I really realized the extent of everything that night. It was either Wednesday or Thursday night. I got a terrible night's sleep, and, man, I was a wreck the next day, crying more, just really, kind of, yeah, really struggling, so protecting my sleep has been the biggest thing that I've leaned into in all of this. And then second, really just trying to move my body. I have not been able to go do solid core, which I love, or any weight lifting, which I also love, since the fire happened, and even for about five days before, because I was traveling, what I'm trying to do is just move my body in small ways. So spending more time outside with my puppy, throwing a ball, moving my body, just doing what I can to stay active. Because movement doesn't have to necessarily look like exercise. It's a way to remind the body that we're safe and that we're still here and that we can move forward one step at a time, so I've been really just kind of giving myself grace in that my movement may look different right now under these extremely stressful times, but I'm still moving my body. And then third, it's one that I'm leaning into now that some of the dust is starting to settle. I mean, there's still a lot to do, but connection this has been huge. So any of you that that follow me on Instagram, I share a lot about how I can help others, and I I don't share as much about my personal life. I think as some of the other influencers out there, my personal Facebook page is filled with little tidbits or cutesy things about my dogs and stuff, but I don't often get super vulnerable in the social media space. It doesn't always feel natural to me to do so, but I did a few days ago post on my personal Facebook page about the fire and how I was really struggling. I instinct. I think just who I am as a person, I can tend to isolate when things go wrong and handle it myself. You know, I'm a strong woman. I can get through this, but connection is medicine, and I've said that before on this podcast, I think that the texts that I've received, the private messages I've received, the hugs that I have received, I even had a woman that I only have met briefly over zoom to discuss working on a project, a business project. I even had a woman drop off fresh juices to my staff. I had a good friend drop off some treats from a local bakery. I wasn't even there to receive the treats because it was at my other clinic, and I was still dealing with the muck of the fire. But these touch points of connection and people reaching out to me have probably been, and I'm choking up a little bit these, these points of connection have really gotten me through and have meant so much. I can't even tell you how many people have reached out, and people I didn't even think would reach out in the ways that they did. It's been amazing, and these points of connection have helped more than the restorative sleep and more than moving my body.

Unknown: 14:08

They weren't necessarily in my control in the moment, but I'm hoping that it was something that I've done or shown up in the world that has made people show up for me,

Sara Poldmae: 14:22

and I've been thinking a lot about how much we've lost this in modern life, in the daily life. I think when tragedy hits, people do come together in connection, but with the way connection has been so we've been so polarized and, you know, ugly towards one another in certain ways. This, this connection I felt, has really brought me hope. So if you're listening right now and you feel stretched, then please take some time for yourself. Please reach out to someone who. Don't isolate, don't wait for the perfect moment or the perfect words. Just reach out to people, because it really means so much, you know, take time to send loving words to people, because you it can help you more than you know, and it's going to help the other person on the other side. Okay, so that was emotional. It's probably the most emotional I've ever been in a public setting. Onto the next thing, which is really important as well, your nervous system. So the one other thing that's really helped keep me grounded through all this has been regulating my nervous system. So every morning, before I do anything else, I take some time to do some breathing exercises. It's not about controlling my thoughts, but it's just about giving my body permission to exhale, and sometimes I'll add a stretch, or put a hand on my heart and just, you know, give myself some love and say to myself, you're safe. You're doing your best. Just really a small practice in the morning and then a couple times during the day has been enough to change the tone of each day, and really helped guide me through. There were two days this week that I was able to lay down for about 25 minutes and do a yoga nidra. Absolutely love the practice of no yoga, Nidra or non sleep, deep rest. That has been a real blessing as well, because rather than taking a nap, it's a way to so it's as effective as napping, but you don't have the grogginess afterwards. It's been a way for me to kind of escape for a little while and then come back with the strength to, you know, help carry me through the rest of the day and do the things I need to do. So as I'm rebuilding, both literally and figuratively, I'm seeing this season of my life or this, this tragedy that's hit as an invitation to rebuild something even more intentional. There are some changes that will happen with the Annapolis clinic once it's rebuilt, and I will let you all know as soon as they become official. But I'm also going to step back into practice, personally a little bit differently, so I've taken the sabbatical from the acupuncture practice at least through the end of the year, and when things settle down a little bit. I actually have it on my calendar for the week after next, whether the universe provides that space for me or not. I'm going to take a little bit of time to take a really close look at how I'm going to step back into practice, both when the clinic reopens and then at the beginning of the year, because I want to make sure that everything that I do is with intention, that I don't just get carried along through the days, and that can happen so easily with the roles that we play. So here's my invitation to you, if you've been thinking about getting support, this is such a powerful time to do it. In midlife, there's so many things that are going on, and I'm so passionate about helping women coach them, not not only through helping to deal with things like gut health, hormones, stress and sleep, but also just coaching women, wherever they are at into living their lives intentionally. I have a beautiful life, and this fire is just it sucks. I'm not gonna lie. It really sucks. This isn't a time for positive vibes only. It really sucks. Thank God everyone's safe. Thank God it could have been so much worse, but it still sucks, and so in that, I've taken the time to reshape a few things, and I've also marked in my calendar to take more time to create an even more beautiful life, and I invite you to do the same. So I'm going to be working largely from home for at least another four to six weeks while the clinic is getting back reopened. There is no space for me at my satellite Clinic, and I'm really hoping that you take this time to join me for a one on one midlife coaching session online. These are one to one sessions where we can focus on your unique midlife transition, your stress, your hormones, your energy, your boundaries, and how to truly care for yourself in this next chapter. And I want to be honest by booking a session for. Yourself. You're not only supporting yourself, but you're also helping me to rebuild mental health wellness. You're helping me keep my mission alive to support women through midlife with compassion, with humor and practical tools that actually work. And I would love that. I would love that help. So if you're listening to this thinking, wow, that's me. I'm running on fumes, I'm tired and I'm ready to feel better, please don't wait. Reach out, book your session and help me to rebuild, and I'll help you to rebuild. And what a fabulous exchange of energy. You can find the link in the show notes to book and again, midlife isn't about starting over. It's just about showing up a little bit differently and with more honesty, more compassion and less apology. So wherever you are right now, take a deep breath and take an even longer exhale. You are doing better than you think. Thank you for being with me today, and truly, thank you for being a part of this community, for listening, for supporting not just me but all of the women out there we're trying to help to rise and thrive. I'll see you next time you.