
The Ritual Nurse
Join our journey where nurses learn to heal themselves first, combining holistic rituals with practical strategies to thrive in their demanding careers. We mix that with stories and humor in first of its kind short form, perfect for nurses busy schedules. Each episode has our favorite coffee and crystals segment that everyone raves about. Curl up with your cat, or pop an earbud in during a ten minute break, and during the commute - this podcast is exactly what you need.
TLDR: This podcast offers short, impactful episodes filled with transformative tools, real-life stories, and a touch of magic to help nurses reclaim their well-being.
The Ritual Nurse
When Nurses Feel Like They Have Nothing Left to Give: aka the "oh f*$K I'm running on empty" episode
TXT us your feedback!! <3 your fayce!
Burnout is an all-too-familiar foe for many nurses, but what if humor helps you breathe? Is your overstimulated self fighting for your life right now? Pop an earbud, I'm here for it.
Join me, Riva, your Ritual Nurse, as I share my personal journey of navigating nurse burnout while managing ADHD, and uncover the invaluable role humor plays in overcoming the daily grind. We'll explore the relentless exhaustion nurses face both at work and home, and how humor can lighten the load and foster a sense of camaraderie among colleagues and friends.
Stress is more than a feeling; it alters your neurochemistry, impacting your ability to bounce back. I reflect on my own experiences, likening moments of respite in the nutrition room (LOL) to "peanut butter, graham crackers, and milk" breaks that recharge the soul. Discover the science behind stress relief and learn how identifying your own simple rituals can offer much-needed relief from the unyielding demands of nursing. By sharing your stories, we can create a community of support and resilience.
The chaos of healthcare work requires quick resets tailored for those of us who struggle with executive functioning, especially those with ADHD. From box breathing to savoring a snack, I offer practical strategies for regaining balance. With a touch of humor, we delve into the necessity of self-care, emotional release, and embracing personal rituals that sustain us. Whether you're facing the overwhelm of current events or the challenges of everyday nursing, you'll find comfort and connection in this heartfelt conversation.
Link to tell me your stories!!! https://tcth.org/the-ritual-nurse-podcast/
Hey! Make sure you subscribe to stay connected. Love a nurse? Who doesn't! Share with all the nurses you know. The more we reach, the more we help. We feel like no one deserves center stage focus more than nurses and our mission is to reach the millions of superstars out there. We'd love to hear your stories, your adventures, your wins, and especially your needs and questions! Email us at hello@ritualnurse (dot) com. Also, you can send us fan mail! Use the link at the beginning of the show notes. Resources, classes, blogs, and podcast info can be found on our home site at TCTH.org. The Ritual Nurse Podcast is part of The Code Team educational platform.
Love your FAYCES!
Welcome to the Ritual Nurse, where healing meets humor, science and a touch of magic. Hello, welcome back to the Ritual Nurse Podcast. This is Reva, your Ritual Nurse, and this is oh man, episode six, I think. So this is really kind of the episode all about when nurses feel like they have nothing left to give. Aka the oh fuck, I'm running on fumes episode. Aka the oh fuck, I'm running on fumes episode. I am overwhelmed. Folks, besties, besties.
Speaker 1:It is 1922, on a Tuesday evening, and this podcast publishes at 8 am in the morning. Now, normally I'm usually a few episodes ahead. There's been a lot going on and I am not a few episodes ahead. I have to be in the hospital at 0615 tomorrow morning. So, yeah, what am I doing? What am I doing?
Speaker 1:I have ADHD and what I'm doing is that overwhelmed, overwhelmed burnout, last minute thing that we do when you are struggling to find the dopamine to get the stuff done that you want to do, that you actually love doing, that you get enjoyment from, and you're so frustrated because you just can't find the dopamine to do it. What does this have to do with nursing? Pretty much everything. I'm going to talk to you guys like you're literally sitting right here next to me, because most of the nurses that I know and run into are neurodivergent in one form or another. Most of us just are. I don't know if it's the career that draws us in, but this is going to be a real, raw and honest conversation about what it feels like to be drowning in everything happening in the world and in the workplace and maybe in your personal life, and what the hell to do about it that doesn't make you more overwhelmed just contemplating it. That's one of the problems that we get into. It's kind of like a cycle. We get overwhelmed and we fish around for a way out of it. We look for something to give us dopamine for inspiration, for, you know, even self-help things or tips, or, you know, to get us over the slump or to pull us out of being overwhelmed or tired or burned out. And you sit there staring at it and trying to contemplate it, because just the thought of trying to do it, of trying to understand it and comprehend it and put it to work, is overwhelming. So this episode isn't going to be overwhelming. We're going to just talk about what it's like right now in real life. I mean, what do we do, you know, when we have nothing left to give, when we're staring down another shift, another crisis, another day of exhaustion and we feel like we're about to collapse, like let's talk about that. We're gonna have to inject this with humor because I feel like that's what a lot of us do.
Speaker 1:People's therapists might want to chime in in the comment about what kind of trauma response that is, but I personally have been running on coffee and vibes of one form or another and sheer spite for about two weeks. I want to say at least just feeling like somebody turned the treadmill on just fast enough that I'm worried my next step won't be fast enough. Kind of catch. Kind of catch the feeling that I'm, that I'm putting out there. So I don't know.
Speaker 1:I mean, when we look at what we do, when we're burned out, I guess there is a difference in how we handle things at work as nurses and how we handle things personally at home. I mean, for some of us it might not be different, but I think for a lot of us it is. And I think at work we tend to put our scrubs on, straighten our stuff and march out to the floor. You know, get our get report, get our priorities together and keep going and I think at home we expend any possible energy and dopamine and spoons that we have doing that at work. By the time that we get home I feel like we have doing that at work.
Speaker 1:By the time that we get home I feel like we have a really serious deficit, like we borrowed from the energy and the dopamine that we would have had in reserve for when you get off shift or when you have to handle, you know, adulting and all of that other BS that's happening outside of work, that by the time we're done with our shift we're actually in debt. We're at a negative starting point compared to where we would have and that really puts us as nurses in a bind because we have to turn around and do it all over again. Most of us are nurturing and responsibility carriers and business handlers outside of our nursing shifts, just like we are at work. So the burden and not burden, like that's really kind of the wrong way to phrase it but the load, the weight bearing load that we have, may change contextually slightly, but the pressure I don't think does for a lot of us. So if we're starting off at a deficit and we are heading into what is supposed to be a semi-productive and then restful point in time and we're already at a deficit. Heading into that, I feel like it puts us in a spot where we can't be productive and then that kicks us into a point where we can't be productive and then that kicks us into a point, a point where we can't actually rest, we can't actually recuperate, we can't actually let down.
Speaker 1:And I'm going to I've talked about this with with many of my nursing best friends, and they're not just nursing best friends, they're actually life best friends. I think many of us are also in that same boat. We're our best friends and they're not just nursing best friends, they're actually life best friends. I think many of us are also in that same boat where our best friends happen to be nurses. And the burnout and the cycle of burnout for us and I'm not talking about the global burnout in terms of the buzzwords and stuff that are used on social media I mean real raw, personal. If I have to answer that call light one more time, it's I'm going to crash out. And it's not because we don't love our job, it's not because we're not trained. It's literally because the level of dopamine that we're functioning with is making normal requests and normal bids on our energy and time feel so monumentally overwhelming that our response to them is also exponentially out of balance with what it normally would be. Instead of responding at a one, we respond at a 10 or a negative 10, as it were.
Speaker 1:But in talking about this with my friends, one of the things that we all kind of have in common is we have a thing that we do during shift. It varies per nurse and you'll have to excuse me, my throat is a little bit raspy. I got over being sick last week. I don't know if it was audible on the podcast last week. That was filmed a little bit prior to last week, so I don't think it was. But there's a thing that we do during shift and for every nurse it differs. And for me some of the most stressful times in nursing had a lot to do with, contextually, how experienced I was in nursing, the field of nursing and the environment that I worked in, the work culture that I worked in. In fact, the work culture that I worked in was more stressful than the type of nursing that I was doing and more stressful than the fact that I was a newer nurse doing that type of nursing. So the work culture that you work in can actually affect you far more profoundly than the stress of the actual job duties that you're doing.
Speaker 1:But one of the things that myself and another friend of mine used to do besides cry in the supply closet which I think we've all had those moments but we used to sit in the patient kitchen, or the nutrition room as it was called, and eat like two packs of graham crackers with, you know, the little tub of peanut butter. If you worked at a really posh hospital, you actually had the little jiff tub. If you didn't, it had like a white label and it was just kind of like pasty, kind of generic peanut butter. However, that on some graham crackers with the little carton of milk for some reason, was just it, just it hit it. Just it was everything that we needed.
Speaker 1:And we would sit there and invariably could have been the glucose, could have been the carbohydrates you know a little bit of sugar rush, who knows but invariably we would just start laughing, the kind of laughter that you're laughing way harder than than what was funny or not even funny, like like you would just start laughing almost kind of maniacally, like really hard laughing, and then the other person would start laughing and because they were laughing, then kind of maniacally, like really hard laughing, and then the other person would start laughing and because they were laughing, then you would laugh and it was almost kind of like a physical release of tension and emotion in laughter and I think the act of laughing itself generated dopamine. We got a sugar boost and some protein and washed it down with, you know, milk from the patient kitchen, the nutrition room, whatever yours is called. Then we would go back out to the floor and face the rest of the shift, the rest of our shifts for that week or our mandatory overtime which our facility had at the time and it just it allowed us to survive. This is, oh my gosh, this is 10,. This is a decade ago.
Speaker 1:11 years ago later, I find myself in a completely different era of nursing, balancing completely different things, and I still need my graham cracker, peanut butter and milk moment. I still need that moment, hiding away for a minute in the nutrition room, scarfing down peanut butter, graham crackers and a little bit of milk and a healthy dose of laughter, aka tension relief of some kind. I still find myself needing that moment. So I don't think that it is solely contextually, like just linked to that environment or the ICU or anything like that. I think we all have a story or a moment or a memory from times in our nursing life that held a lot of stress could be even right now and we were facing burnout on a daily basis. So that's the other weird thing about burnout.
Speaker 1:People talk about burnout and they use it as a buzzword constantly and over the years that I've been researching it, burnout, when you read it in research and the literature and you read it in social media and people put it all over advertising campaigns and stuff you know as a buzzword for media conversion and things like that, it becomes anesthetized and intrinsic, inherent meaning to our profession and our culture. But these words just slowly lose their depth and importance with the amount of times that we are besieged by them on social media. And when it comes to burnout, people have this idea that burnout is this condition that you get, like chronic bronchitis or walking pneumonia or something, and burnout, yes, it can be chronic, but it's more so acute episodes of just an absolute negative functional level of the neurochemicals that you need for your executive functioning to even flip the switch, to even even have a flicker of power happening up there and and driving your choices and your actions and what you're doing. Your executive function is just. Function is just, it's just unplugged.
Speaker 1:And burnout is acute and episodic as our neurochemicals fluctuate up and down and you really can effectively combat it almost the same way that you would combat a mineral deficiency or a vitamin deficiency. That doesn't have to do with a congenital component or a physiological component, it just has to do with access, absorption, bioavailability, things like that. When it comes to burnout, it's the same thing. That graham cracker, peanut butter and milk moment is your combat, that's your moment. And whatever moment you have in your memory when I started talking about our peanut butter, graham cracker and milk moment, whatever made you start chuckling, whatever made your you grown and remember like, oh, back to the back, to the horror of it, that's your moment. That got you through. Horror of it, that's your moment. That got you through and that's the moment that you need to recreate to get through it now. I think right now, chips and salsa and, you know, a crispy diet Coke is my moment. I don't even know. Yeah, for for the haters, I definitely. I know we're.
Speaker 1:We're nurses, we're supposed to talk about hydration and hand hygiene and updating your whiteboards, and I we also know as nurses that we're the last people to hydrate. We usually we sure we always update our whiteboards. Of course we do. And hand hygiene, yes, that's something that we actually don't mess around with. But hydration, we're lucky if we listen to our own advice. Really, we're lucky if we listen to our own advice.
Speaker 1:But I got to tell you, when you compare your peanut butter, honey and milk moment to what you're facing right now or maybe maybe those moments are right now right now Maybe that's not a distant memory for you. Maybe you're a new grad, maybe you're not a new grad but a newer nurse, or maybe you're a nurse that's moved into a different field and you're facing stress that you've never felt before. Maybe you're preparing to leave the field or advance in the field or change something about where you are as a nurse, professionally, and the amount of stress that you feel is profound. Right now I am finishing advanced coursework, I am almost done with my doctorate and I'm also working full time, and everything else that's going on in the world right now is legitimately overwhelming. And so this kind of stress and this kind of balancing act, while vastly different from what I was looking at 10 years ago, still impacts me in much the same way, and I'm still looking for that peanut butter, honey and milk moment. Even if it's chips and salsa and a crispy diet Coke, it's still generating the same thing. Don't sell yourself short. If those are your moments, then cling to them, implement them as often as you can in order to replicate that same sense of tension relief and dopamine rejuvenation, to get you through it, to lift your chin, to straighten your shoulders, to allow you to take those next steps forward.
Speaker 1:We are at the midpoint of the podcast at the moment and on this break, I really want you guys to think about what is your peanut butter, honey and milk moment? I know I can't be the only one no, seriously, for the peanut butter, honey and milk thing. I know I can't be the only nurse I mean, I wasn't at our hospital, that was a thing that many of us actually did and I know that a couple of my friends, specifically one of the ones I'm talking about listens to the podcast and she's either going to text me or she's just going to laugh out loud when she hears it. But think about what your moment is. If you go to tcthorg and you click on the tab for the Ritual Nurse Podcast, there is a QR code. When you scan that QR code, I've put up a form for people to submit their stories. If you want to be on the podcast, there's tons of options there in terms of being anonymous. You know what you want to share, what you don't want to share, if you want a response, if you want to give feedback, everything is right there on the form and it's accessible with the QR code.
Speaker 1:But I want to hear what your moment is. I want to hear what your moment is because I guarantee that you are not alone. I guarantee Now there may be some of you that hear what I'm saying and are incredulous, like what the hell? What the fuck is a peanut butter, honey and milk moment? You know what, bestie, I'm so loving for you that you don't know and you haven't had one yet. I love that.
Speaker 1:However, take notes because if you're a nurse, chances are chances are statistically very high that you're going to run into situations or work contexts as a professional nurse or changes in nursing that you're going to find your moment. So take notes because I I really think that that while, yes, also sharing a laugh, that we can learn from each other. And maybe some of the moments you send in are going to be my next one. You know, maybe it's not going to be chips and salsa and a crispy diet Coke. Maybe it's not going to be peanut butter, honey and milk in the nutrition room, you know, oh dark 30 in the morning while you're just trying to survive. Maybe it's not going to be those. Maybe it's going to be something that you guys sent in. But I want to know, I want to hear from you. So scan that QR code. It'll be posted on socials, it's on the website. Scan that QR code and let me know. And if you are on the break right now, if you are heading back to your shift, my goodness, may it be so smooth, may you have the best orders, May it just be absolutely lovely, and we'll see you on the next part of the episode, when you're done, on your next break or on your way home, if you're going to stick around. The short little musical break is just there for you guys to know to hit pause and get a cup of coffee stretch.
Speaker 1:When we come back, we're going to talk about a little bit of science. That kind of explains why we do what we do a little bit. You know I'm always a science girl. This always has to do with science because I know you guys all want to know the information. And then we're going to do like some super fast resets. Like I said, there's nothing in this episode of this podcast that's going to be overwhelming or challenging to implement, because right now, bestie, I can't. So listen to a little bit of music and we'll be right back, alrighty. Thank you so much for unpausing and coming back to the podcast.
Speaker 1:So when we talk about the science, of what is going on when we have our peanut butter honey or peanut butter honey, peanut butter, graham cracker and milk moments in the nutrition room at oh dark, 30 of your shift, while you're literally just trying to survive, like you're, you are fighting for your life to just get through that shift and survive. To just get through that shift and survive, what is going on? Like what is going on with us neurologically and physically in our bodies, that this kind of stress is causing almost kind of a hard reset or a blackout when it comes to our executive functioning. And it all has to do with our neurochemicals, it has to do with our stress response. It has to do with the uptick and how fast we are absorbing our neurochemicals and the lower rate at which we are putting out the neurochemicals that we need and we end up with pretty much no gas in the tank.
Speaker 1:Now there's a lot of neurodivergent people out there whose brains function very similar to that. They have a high rate of uptake when it comes of absorption when it comes to their neurotransmitters. Adhd is one of those and, like I was talking about at the beginning of the podcast, you guys, I sat here for like two and a half hours staring at my microphone. I love doing this. You guys have no idea how much I love making this podcast and to know that I'm sitting here in a spot where I have absolutely everything I need to do, something that I genuinely love doing and I couldn't hit record to save my life at the moment.
Speaker 1:That blackout when it comes to executive functioning has a lot to do with how my brain is handling my neurochemicals and the level of neurochemicals that my brain is producing and maintaining, and when we're faced with repetitive stressful situations and crises and levels of responsibility at the same time, a lot of us have that same, similar response you burn out. You have literally no fuel in the tank when it comes to neurotransmitters and neurochemicals to actually power that executive functioning through. So it's not that you don't want to, it's not that you're lazy, it's not that you're doing something wrong or that you're not functional or you can't get your shit together. You just don't have anything in the tank at the moment. And that's why that peanut butter, graham cracker and milk moment works, all that laughter, that sense of camaraderie, the boost from the sugar, the glucose. That's why that little five minute moment works, because it replenishes the gas in the tank and your executive functioning can turn back on and you can actually make the physical movements of the feet moving to the door, back to the floor to take care of your patients and continue on with your shift there. It's very real, it's physiological, it's not in your head, you're not imagining it, it's very real.
Speaker 1:And it's not just at work. You know, like I said, sometimes when we burn out at work and then we go to head home, we're heading home and adulting is still there. I didn't sign up for this. I don't know, I don't know who did, but it's garbage and I don't. It's negative one out of 10. Do I suggest it? But the adulting is still there and so you have responsibilities, you have timelines and you also have to get rest in so that you can actually get up and try to do this whole thing all over again. And when you leave shift and you've been burned out on a shift, you're you're going into this next segment of lifing in a deficit, basically. So you're starting off with even less than you had to begin with, which was probably low If you're at the point where you've burned out during your shift. So what are some really quick resets and I mean quick, like when we're talking about overwhelm?
Speaker 1:This has got to be like a five minute thing I can do that does not require hardly any dopamine or executive functioning or even like operable mouth, words moving, and there's a couple things to look at, so one of them is called the five minute rule. If you have only five minutes, what can you do to take care of yourself? Okay, and and instantly, you're going to kind of feel like a little bit of a pushback, a little bit of a mental block, kind of like, because your body is expecting like oh man, there's, this is like low dopamine reward and I don't have any dopamine to begin with. I can't do it. I'm talking so simple, box breathing. Take a step outside, stretch. Eat peanut butter, graham crackers and drink a carton of milk. Chug some ice water. Chug some sweet tea. Listen to five minutes of your favorite beats, your favorite tunes, and kind of get into it for a minute. If you only have five minutes of your favorite beats, your favorite tunes, and kind of get into it for a minute, if you only have five minutes, what can you do to take care of yourself? Just you and only you, five minutes.
Speaker 1:The next one is the, the what would you tell a friend trick. Okay, so if your friend was saying to you pretty much what I said to you this entire podcast, what are you going to tell your friend? What is the immediate advice that you give your friend? And you know you do it because we all do it for each other. So the last time your friend came to you and they were in the exact same boat that you're in right now or that you're thinking about, what did you tell them? What was the first? What did you tell them, besides commiserating with them? What did you tell them? What was your advice to them to pull out of it, to be able to handle it and face the rest of the shift or whatever it is that they need to face. What would you tell a friend? That's the second one. The third one is the bare minimum.
Speaker 1:Okay, if you can't do everything, what's one thing you can do? Just one. What's one thing you can do, especially focused on just taking care of yourself. Today Could be brushing your teeth, brushing your hair, filling your water bottle, drinking water, sitting down for five minutes, shutting off social media because it's making you insane. The bare minimum. If you can't get to everything, what is one thing you can do to take care of yourself, and it's important that you note that it's take care of yourself, and it's important that you, that you note that it's taking care of yourself. Okay, I'm not talking about what's one thing you can do to get a chore off the list. You need dopamine to do that stuff and, in order to get dopamine, to put some gas in the tank so your executive functioning can function. Doing something to take care of yourself is how you generate that. So the bare minimum is, if you can't do everything, all the things, all the you know the steps, the skills, the, even the stuff that I listed in the other podcasts, because some of that is multi-step. So if you can't do all that stuff, what's one thing that you can do to take care of yourself One? What's one thing that you can do to take care of yourself One?
Speaker 1:And you know, sometimes my version of self-care and taking care of myself was actually having a good cry in the supply closet. It's like you know, I remember one year the flu pandemic oh my gosh, the flu epidemic was really bad in our area and I was still somewhat of a newer nurse and we were running out of body bags like weekly. And I remember going into the supply closet and I couldn't find any and I just the sheer overwhelm of the amount of deaths like that we had witnessed this was years before COVID and just just the factual reality of like I've run out of body bags again, that we just restocked these like three days ago and it just I remember, think I remember resolutely turning around and getting ready to walk out and then I thought to myself I can't and I stopped and I let the emotions build and I, I re, I knew I could feel them building, I knew I'm going to burst into tears. And I, I actually gave myself permission to do it. So offstage, not anywhere near parents or parents not anywhere near patient families. So offstage, not anywhere near parents or parents not anywhere near patient families. None of that, nobody could see me. And I, I allowed myself, I gave myself that grace, I gave myself the space to do that. And you know there's a lot of memes and a lot of dark humor jokes about nurses crying in the supply closet. But sometimes that, sometimes giving yourself the space to express that emotion, is that bare minimum of self-care moment so that you can unload that level and just kind of rebalance and stabilize yourself. It could also be cramming two packs of graham crackers and peanut butter in your face and washing it down with a carton of milk and then laughing so hard you think you're going to aspirate. They both may work. So those three super easy, fast things you can do at any point in time.
Speaker 1:So this week, um, for our coffee crystals, coffee divination section, my drink of the week Isn't a bougie coffee tea, fancy kind of drink, it is an iced, crispy diet Coke. All about it, all about it this week. That's what it is for the haters. I love that for you, love that for you. It is what it is. If you are also enjoying your crispy diet Coke. Diet Dr Pepper, full octane Dr Pepper, bless you Like. If that's your drink this week, more power to you. I raise a glass and yes, absolutely that. A crispy diet Coke is my drink of choice this week. Um, diet Pepsi. It's just, it's gotta be crispy and there has to be just the right amount of ice. The one I'm looking at right now, because I spent so much time sitting here in nothing though, like with no dopamine in my brain, is actually watered down, so now I have to go get a new one.
Speaker 1:But we're also going to pull the crystal of the week. I know, I know this episode has been definitely more of a sit down and we're laughing in the break room kind of vibe than my more professional bestie. Let me give you some tips and tricks and education, but I always tell you at the start of the podcast in the history of the podcast, this is authentic and, depending on the week and what's going on, you may get this version of me, you may get the polished speaker that does seminars and publishes coursework, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. They're all me, and they're all authentic and they're all focused on the same thing, which is connecting the over 5 million plus nurses that are out there and creating community and teaching you how to heal yourself. And creating community and teaching you how to heal yourself, and if you guys, being able to get a good laugh out of my stories or me, does that for you this week, please, please, have at it. I love it. The more polished version of me may or may not be back next week. We shall see. Right now, though, we're going to see what our crystal is for this week and see what, see what's there, see what the deck has to tell us. This is absolutely still my favorite section of the podcast.
Speaker 1:I've gotten some feedback that I should do some one-off episodes that are just me reading, and I, you know I'm here for it. I'm so here for it. So, rose quartz I want its admiration. This, actually, I think, is going to be perfection, because rose quartz is so significant when it comes to healing, and I think for this one, rose Quartz and admiration is self-love, deep inner healing and infinite peace. Oh, mirror, mirror on the wall. It is time to listen to Rose Quartz's wake up call. This card is your reminder to prioritize and nurture the most important relationship in your life, the one you have with yourself.
Speaker 1:I'm sure you've heard that comparison is the thief of joy. So ditch that game of comparison. Your true worth ain't reflected in those likes and followers through a screen. It's reflected in the mirror. Take a moment to put down the phone, gaze into the mirror and appreciate the unique masterpiece that's reflected in the mirror. Take a moment to put down the phone, gaze into the mirror and appreciate the unique masterpiece that's staring back at you. Your story, your journey, your vibe that's the real deal, not those filtered facades. Loving yourself isn't vanity. So let Rose Korth guide you towards loving yourself unconditionally and unapologetically.
Speaker 1:And I really, if you guys, maybe I'll put a poll up on some of the show notes there are actual polls on there and maybe I'll put a poll up this week on social media asking about whether you guys agree with the feedback or not. If I should do just like a one-off or like a special edition episodes where I'm just doing reads and talking about, you know, current nursing trends, maybe I'll do it with some guests. I do have some special guests that are coming up that are phenomenal. Not all of the guests on the podcast are nurses, because I believe that all of us in the provision of health care can learn from each other and teach each other and support each other and form community. My main purpose and focus is healing nurses, but the way to do that is to incorporate as much as I can, and here we have a card flying out at us is to incorporate as much as I can from all of our colleagues and other professions. To incorporate as much as I can from all of our colleagues and other professions. So we got a very interesting card come flying out for this week.
Speaker 1:Now don't panic when you hear it. A lot of people panic when they hear it and it's death, it's obsidian, and death signifies endings, change and release, while obsidian is grounding, protection and transformation. So out with the old and in with the new. Don't freak out. The death card is actually the end of a phase or a cycle that's no longer serving you. Release past attachments so you can focus on what's ahead of you. This fits in so perfectly with our crystal prescription for this week and the focus on the mirror and self-love. It fits in so perfectly.
Speaker 1:So grab your crystals and your crispy diet coke or crispy Dr Pepper, whatever it is for you, and don't get overwhelmed. Don't get overwhelmed with everything flying around If you can only do the bare minimum, if you only have five minutes. Even thinking from the perspective of what would you tell your bestie if they came to you and said this is where I'm at, I've got nothing. What are you going to say to them? And right now you know if you're running on fumes, you're not alone. You're not failing, by no means are you. You are a human being doing their best, and that is more than enough. So I want you guys to focus on those three simple things that I said. I want you to go scan that QR code on the website or look for it on socials. It'll be posted.
Speaker 1:I want to hear your peanut butter, graham cracker and milk moment. I do. I don't care how outrageous it is. I can keep it anonymous. I cannot keep it anonymous. You can give yourself a cool name, whatever you want, but I want to hear about your moment because I guarantee that when I share them on the next podcast, somebody listening to it is going to, is going to get something out of it, is going to be able to use it. It's going to save their shift. You never, you never know who you're going to impact. You never know how important your stories are going to be and currently we're in like 70 cities around the world and we've only been.
Speaker 1:This podcast has only been running for about four and a half weeks, so we are reaching nurses all around the world and I want to hear your stories. Scan the QR code and tell me give me the tea. I need to know what you were doing in the nutrition room. If it's X rated, I may or may not read it, but that's it, besties. Um, I really want you to take care of yourselves. You can do this. I know that today.
Speaker 1:I know that this time period, it feels overwhelming, even if you're not in the United States, but you're watching the United States. You might be just as overwhelmed as we are, but I promise this episode. This episode is it. Find your peanut butter, graham cracker and milk moment and take care of yourself, and I love your faces. This is your ritual. Nurse Reva, thanks for tuning in to the Ritual Nurse Podcast. You can find us wherever you listen to podcasts, so don't forget to subscribe and stay connected For all our social links, free education classes, blogs and podcast notes. With resources head over to tcthorg. Until next time, love your faces.