Lukewarm Love Ep2: Nursing Love Language #1 - Initiative

Lukewarm Love: how NOT to love a nurse (Part 2 of 6)

This week we’re talking about the first Nurse Love Language: Initiative. Or, in less clinical terms: "please stop making me carry the entire mental load of the known universe by myself."

If you’ve ever felt more exhausted after someone offered to “help,” this episode is probably going to hit a nerve.

We get into the invisible labor nurses carry every day: tracking everything, anticipating problems before they happen, managing emotional tone, remembering details nobody else notices, and functioning like a human air traffic control tower while pretending we’re totally fine.

We talk about:

•  cognitive overload in nursing 
•  executive functioning exhaustion 
•  hypervigilance and nervous system burnout 
•  why “just tell me what you need” can feel so draining 
•  what initiative actually looks like in relationships, teams, and daily life 
•  the difference between shared responsibility and silently managing everyone around you 

We also dig into weaponized incompetence, over-functioning, and why so many nurses end up becoming the default holder of literally everything both at work and at home.

And before anybody spirals: this episode is not about expecting mind reading or perfection from the people around you. It’s about shared awareness.

It’s about what happens psychologically when somebody notices, participates, and shows up without needing to be managed through every step. If that sentence alone made your nervous system exhale a little… mmm
yeah. You’re probably in the right place.

As always, we end with Coffee, Crystals, and Divination because apparently emotional revelations pair beautifully with caffeine and shiny rocks. Who knew?

If this episode resonates, please share it with somebody who carries too much quietly. Text me using the link at the top of the show notes. Seriously. I read them.

You can also send a Fan Voicemail directly through the show notes and tell me:

•  when someone truly showed initiative for you 
•  when they didn’t 
•  or what carrying the mental load feels like in your life 

Your stories are becoming part of this conversation, and honestly, hearing from all of you has been one of the best parts of this series.

Listen, share, tag me, stitch it, scream into the void responsibly.

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Transcript

Welcome And Series Setup

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hi my loves, welcome back to the Ritual Nurse Podcast. I am your host, Reva, and also welcome back to Lukewarm Love, How Not to Love a Nurse. So, this is our current mini series that we're doing. So, last episode, we cracked open the foundation for this entire series, kind of laid it out, laid out the purpose of it. It's a little bit interesting in terms of the love languages of how to love a nurse. We talked about the difference between support that sounds good and support that actually changes your experience. We talked about the fact that a lot of nurses are walking around feeling deeply unsupported while simultaneously being surrounded by people who technically mean very well. Hopefully, that first episode made you actually stop and kind of go, oh shit. Okay, that's good. That means we're getting somewhere. Because now we get to talk about the first actual nurse love language. And that first language is initiative. Or in plain English, please stop making me carry the entire mental load of the known universe.

Initiative As A Nurse Love Language

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Must say it's a pretty good definition. There is a very specific kind of exhaustion that nurses carry. And I don't think people outside of nursing fully understand it because from the outside, it just looks like we're really good at multitasking really serious things. And no, babe, that's not multitasking. It's kind of like running a gajillion tabs in your brain simultaneously. A couple of them are on fire, one or two of them are making weird noises. We're trying to keep an eye on because we're pretty sure that's going to be a problem in about 20 minutes. Somewhere you think you might be hungry and you're not really sure where you left your thing. Trying to figure it out, trying to figure out where you are. And it's always a juggling act. Somehow, while all of that's happening, still, when someone walks up to you and says, Hey, what can I do to help? Immediately, instead of feeling relief, your nervous system gets more tired. Because now you have to stop and think. What can safely be delegated? What requires follow-up? What can this person do without me needing to explain it for 10 minutes first? Will it actually get done correctly? Will I have to redo it later? Will explaining this take more energy than just doing it myself? And suddenly what was supposed to be support just becomes another task. So that's what we're talking about today, because initiative is not just quote unquote helping. It's helping in a way that reduces cognitive labor instead of increasing it. Nurses feel that difference instantly. You know the coworker who quietly notices your hands are full and grabs the call light before you even look up or notice. The one who sees a room spiraling jumps in without needing a full verbal briefing and a laminated instruction manual, just kind of jumps right in and knows what they're doing. The one who restocks the thing because they noticed it was empty instead of leaving it for the next person. You remember those people forever because the amount of stress that is offloaded when something like that happens is actually tangible. They helped your brain breathe for a second. And I really want to pause here for a minute because this is really important. When we talk about initiative, we're not talking about expecting the people around us to magically predict every need we have at all times. That's not realistic, that's not healthy, and honestly, a lot of people are struggling too. Everything from executive functioning issues, stress, ADHD, burnout, depression, cognitive overload. People are human. Nurses are human. Everybody's nervous systems are getting cooked right now in one way or another. So this isn't about creating a standard where nobody ever communicates. Communication matters. What we're talking about is something different. We're talking about a shared awareness, the difference between everything is your responsibility unless you specifically ask otherwise, and I am actively paying attention to the environment and participating in maintaining it with you. And this is a completely different nervous system experience. It's also a completely different lived experience as well. Because when we talk about moving through our environment, as nurses, we are hyper-vigilant in the environment around us. And what we do, we do, we practice to the top of our license. We practice throughout the scope of our practice. So if something needs to be done and we're aware of it in the environment, we do it because you have the knowledge, you have the ability, you don't need to wait for someone to prompt you, to explain it to you, to cajole you, to outline it for you, to make a list, to make a note. By the time you get through all that nonsense, it would have been far less stress for you to just do it yourself. So situational awareness, environmental awareness is a huge thing. And there's this kind of shift that happens when you have high performing people that sometimes it's due to others being just as cognitively overloaded. Sometimes it's due to weaponized incompetence, which we'll get to later. But people will offload the executive functioning onto the high performer and kind of shut off

Why “What Can I Do?” Drains

SPEAKER_01 5:30

that environmental or situational awareness because the other person always has it. The other person's always a step ahead, already initiated it, already almost done with it, or is delegating and directing, still offloading all of that mental workload and telling people what to do and telling people how to do it or what order to do it in. Again, initiating, initiation. Because initiative tells your brain, I'm not alone in managing this when it's not you initiating it, if that makes sense. If you think about how you move through your shift and how you move through the area around you, if you're one of the high-functioning people, you're delegating, you're leading, you're directing, you're on top of it. If you're one of the people who's always being delegated to, or, you know, always helping out someone who, you know, your teammates, you know, can you do this? Can you do that? Can you help me with this? You guys may function together really well as a team, but cognitively, that working load or that initiative load, you actually don't carry a lot of a stress in the environment because you're not the one that's having to do it. So humans regulate through shared effort, through cooperation, through knowing that someone else is also watching the horizon with you. Our constant hypervigilance goes down exponentially when we have other people being vigilant with us. Like we no longer need to have the hyper part of it. We can just have functional awareness instead of the hyper part of it. This kind of regulation through shared effort matters psychologically more than people realize, especially for nurses, because our nervous systems are constantly handling that onslaught of secondary exposure to trauma, emotional volatility, stress, cognitive overload, all of that. And nurses really spend entire shifts kind of scanning for danger, anticipating needs, preventing problems, catching tiny changes before they become disasters. Our nervous system becomes trained to stay hyper alert all the time. So when someone else notices something before we have to say it out loud, when someone else initiates support, participation, care, responsibility, action, our nervous system feels it immediately. And it's not because we're lazy or they're lazy. It's not because we expect perfection. There's no such thing. It's because your brain finally has tangible evidence that it's not carrying the entire environmental and situational awareness all by itself. That feeling, that feeling creates safety. And safety is wildly important. And we need to learn how to do this for each other. In addition to learning how to communicate it about it, about it in our environment in order to effectively have this kind of shared situational awareness. Initiative is relational. It's not just why isn't anyone showing up for me? It's also where can I participate in ways that reduce someone else's burden without overextending myself? Sometimes initiative is really tiny. Like I said, refilling or restocking the thing. I'm one of those people, especially on the floor. If I take the last of something, I restock it. If I notice that there's very few left, I figure out where the rest of them are. Just because that's what you should be doing. Like when you go to get something, when you go to get a supplier, you need something and it's not there, and it takes you another 15, 20 minutes to hunt it down and find it, or nobody bothered to fill out a par requesting more of them. When it takes like five minutes, maybe to do that, it's beyond frustrating. You know, answering the text, checking in first, handling the small tasks instead of stepping over it and just shrugging it off as in, you know, that's a problem for not me, or that's a problem for later me. Well, somebody else might have to interact with that before later you gets off their ass and gets around to doing it. And we're not responsible for everybody, but we just interacted with that thing. So, yes, you know, we should be paying attention to it. But shared effort really changes the emotional climate of relationships and teams. And honestly, I'd be willing to say that a lot of people have never experienced that consistently. And then when they finally do experience that, it provokes a pretty intense emotional reaction sometimes. And it's really kind of a shared exhale. It's kind of like trauma

Shared Vigilance Lowers Stress

SPEAKER_01 10:40

bonding, but healthy. The healthy version of trauma bonding, because we all know trauma bonding is not psychologically healthy, no matter how amazing it feels. But that's really kind of the perspective on initiative. And this isn't a this isn't a perspective of just one side of the coin. It's a perspective of both. Nurses are really good at see one, do one, learn one, teach one. Nurses are really good at at doing both of those things, at being the person that does it and being the person that learns from it. And the same thing goes with initiative. In terms of learning how to communicate about initiative, sometimes it has to be really straightforward, especially if you're around people that have no situational awareness or are just constantly offloading it onto someone else, or quote unquote, that's for a later me to worry about.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

It needs to be stated not necessarily in in such a manner that it's, you know, that it feels like an attack.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

That's not communication. You know, if there's if you have a lot of frustration surrounding this issue, you probably should talk it over with your therapist first before you have conversations with your team or people in your environment about it, just to make sure that communication is the focused and not just venting emotions or venting frustration. But being able to say, hey, as a team, we need to, you know, we need to share the responsibility of situational awareness. And we really need to be consistently pitching in where we're where we're at. It's not, you know, you need to go around and you need to do X, Y, Z task list items for everybody. Nobody should be carrying that burden of extra stress in addition to their own. That's not fair, that's not real, that's not a thing. But again, if you're the person sitting there and you're, you know, taking a few minutes to scroll through TikTok and a call light goes off, and your teammate has been run ragged over this patient and their family member or that code or trying to straighten out an antibiotic issue, answer the call light. Don't just sit there. And it's kind of one of those things that because of the stress and the cognitive overload, I think we're seeing a little bit more of the not my patient, not my problem. And that's awful. Is the other person's patience your responsibility? No. That it's not technically. It's not your responsibility. Do you work as a team with people? When the shit hits the fan for you, are you looking around for why aren't people helping me? Well, if that's the case, then you need to get off your ass and help other people also. Then typical to nursing fashion, I mean, I'm not pulling any punches and talking about this stuff with you guys. It's really kind of a wake-up call if you're somebody that realizes, hey, I'm always the one being, you know, asked to help out, or I'm always the one, you know, asking for a million directions before I do something instead of taking initiative or realizing, you know, people around me never ask me for help. People around me never ask me to do stuff. Maybe because asking you to do stuff is actually more work than you helping them. Or you could be the person that's doing everything and not asking for help and not communicating about anything because you are hyper-vigilant and running everything. So it there's a lot of self-introspection and sitting with oneself. Journaling in this respect would be really good, you know. I think sitting down and taking a really hard look at how you ask for help, how you help others, literally, like honestly, not with any sense of judgment or not with any sense of, you know, shame or embarrassment or anything like that, but actually sitting down and look at when I do help somebody, do I do it right or do I half-ass it? When I do, you know, see the thing that needs to be refilled, do I actually refill it or do I not? Do I call for a med refill for something that's we have, you know, the last few doses in there and it doesn't look like anyone sent a message to pharmacy? Do I just walk by call lights even though I can see that my team member is at their wit's end or almost in tears? Am I run ragged during a shift and haven't asked anyone for help at all? And I'm just doing it myself, and I'm also resentful of just doing it myself at the same time, having not communicated anything, having not asked for help, et cetera, et cetera. So there's there's a lot of introspection here that's needed to kind of sit down and figure out which side of the coin, and and nobody's gonna be one side or the other. Everybody's gonna be both halves of the coin, you know. But introspection is really important to figuring out how this love language applies to you and where your communication needs to center around it in terms of hey, you guys know how to do this job. You're licensed, you work on this floor, you work with these patients. There's no reason anybody should have to explain to you how to do these things. Like jump in and do it. You don't need somebody to tell you how you don't if you're gonna do it, do it right. Don't have asset. They shouldn't have to be constantly worried that you're gonna do a shitty job and they have to redo it anyways, which just wasted more time than if they just did it themselves. And at the same time, if nobody knows that you need help, nobody can help you. So, you know, there's there's two sides to the coin there. And I I really encourage some journaling and some introspection about it to see where you lie, where this hits you, where this feels most significant, which parts of me talking made you mad at me. Like, where did I piss you off? Because that might be an indicator. So I want us to take a deep breath and pause because of course it's our dance break. I want you to roll your shoulders, stretch your neck. I want you to relax your face for a second, because I know some of you are listening to this with your face clenched up like a gargoyle right now. Like relax your jaw.

Dance Break And Quick Reset

SPEAKER_01 17:47

Bestie, drop the shoulders, relax your hands, roll your shoulders a bit. If you have to head back to the floor, I hope you have the most amazing shift ever. If you don't, and you're gonna hang out with us for a little bit, hydrate, go refill your water, have a snack, take your meds if you haven't taken your meds yet.

SPEAKER_02 18:05

And then we're gonna go to the back of the back.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

Okay, let's get back to it. One of the things I think that nursing does to people over time is it turns us into hyper-vigilant systems managers. We

Invisible Labor And Gap Filling

SPEAKER_01 19:26

stop doing and completing jobs and tasks, and we add to that tracking everything. Who's unstable, who's overwhelmed, which family member is escalating, what doctor hasn't called back, what coworkers drowning but pretending they're fine, what supplies are running low, where's lab, where's radiology, what's about to go wrong before it even goes wrong, how many admits are hitting the floor, who's slated for discharge, was that a trauma call overhead? I think that patient's gonna rapid, who called a code? Because we are really good at this, it it stops looking like work to a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00 20:12

It becomes invisible labor, really. And the problem is invisible labor still costs the same amount of energy. It's a lot of energy.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

And if you're constantly the person that's carrying the awareness and carrying the planning, carrying the anticipating, eventually your nervous system starts acting like it's being chased like by a bear all the time. It's constantly in fight or flight mode, and you are constantly hyper-vigilant. There's no true like off state. Your brain is always scanning all the frequencies are open. And that's a lot of why the just tell me what you need can land so badly for people like us. And I need, I really need people to hear me clearly when I say this. There's absolutely a place for communication. Communication has to happen. No one's expecting mind reading. But there's a difference between healthy communication and outsourcing all awareness to one person. And that's the line that we're focusing on today. Weaponized incompetence lives exactly right here. And like before anybody gets defensive, let me say this again. It's not always malicious, okay? Sometimes it's conditioning, sometimes it's avoidance, sometimes it's learned dependency. Sometimes it's people genuinely never being taught to notice things because someone else has already always done it for them. It still impacts you though, okay? Two things can be true at once. It still drains you, it still leaves you carrying the full executive functioning load while someone else gets credit for trying, quote unquote. And nurses are especially vulnerable to falling into this dynamic because we are trained to compensate. We compensate for staffing issues, we compensate for poor communication, we compensate for bad systems, for difficult personalities, we compensate for gaps before they become visible. We are professional. Gap fillers. So when someone underfunctions, we automatically overfunction to stabilize the environment. And after a while, you don't even realize you're doing it anymore. You've just kind of become the default holder, the default stabilizer stance for everything. And then the worst part happens. You start believing that that's just who you are. You're the responsible one, the organized one, the strong one, the one who just handles things, however you want to phrase it. And I mean, listen, baby, you are those things. Hi, eldest daughter and granddaughters. Pot calling kettle black out there. But that doesn't mean you have to carry the entire cognitive burden of every environment that you exist in. And this follows us home so fucking hard. Because suddenly it's not that you're managing patients, it's the house, the appointments, the emotional tones of relationships, the groceries,

How The Mental Load Follows Home

SPEAKER_01 22:54

the schedule, mental inventories of everything everyone needs all the time. People around you may genuinely think that they're helping. But if you still have to notice it, plan it, delegate it, remind them, follow up, and redo it if it's not done right afterwards, then there's a problem. Your brain still logged it as your responsibility, and your nervous system still logged it as your responsibility. And that's where a lot of the fatigue comes in. It's not because you're weak and it's not because you're bad at balancing. It's not because you need to wake up at 4 a.m. and journal harder under a full moon. You're cognitively overloaded, point blank, constantly. The really painful part is that a lot of nurses stop asking for initiative entirely because they've been disappointed so many times. You just keep lowering your expectations. That's how we facilitate weaponized incompetence. That's how people have learned helplessness. That's how people have learned dependence because we facilitate it. You stop wanting help because it feels emotionally easier to just carry it yourself than risk being frustrated again. And that right there, that's the part that breaks my heart because people were never meant to function like isolated emergency management systems for everybody around them. We're communal creatures. We regulate socially, we survive through cooperation. Our nervous systems are not asking for luxury. We're just asking for partnership. So, what does initiative actually look like? Well, it looks like somebody noticing. It looks like somebody paying attention, it looks like somebody learning what the needs are instead of needing them re-explained every single time. It looks like people developing

What Initiative Looks Like In Practice

SPEAKER_01 24:36

observational awareness instead of waiting to be managed. And yes, this absolutely applies at work and at home because initiative sounds like I saw that that needed to be done, so I did it. And not did it half-assed so that I'm not asked to do it again or out of frustration, but I just did it. Chances are, where you work and where you live, you know how things are done. And steadily the response of, well, just tell me what you need. Why don't you just make a list? If you would just make a list, I would help out. No. And before anyone listening panics and thinks, oh my God, I'm the problem. Relax. This isn't about perfection. Nobody notices everything all the time. It's kind of why there's a partnership thing built in there and kind of why communication has to be front and center. Because no human being notices all the things all the time. That's why a bunch of us noticing the things at the same time is what's necessary. So it's about developing awareness intentionally instead of just relying on a person to carry it for everybody, even if that's what you're doing subconsciously, or even if that's what the people are doing around you subconsciously. Like I said, I've said it a couple times so far. This isn't about maliciousness. This isn't about conscious, you know. I guess, I mean, if you have relationships with narcissists, okay, it might be, but that's a whole different problem. For the most part, I would say most people, most of the time, are well-intentioned, especially the ones around you that care about you and love you. So a lot of this stuff is just subconscious patterns and communication that are learned from our childhood patterns, learned from watching whatever parental systems we had growing up or lack thereof. And, you know, workplace culture. If you are in a toxic workplace culture, if there's a lot of bullying, if there is a lack of transparency and communication, if there's a lack of support, these things are learned, you know, kind of subconscious patterns that are happening. So I don't want anybody panicking, thinking like, oh my God, I am 100% of the problem and everything is bad. No, this is not about perfection. Perfection doesn't even exist. That's not a thing. It's not real. But again, this is this is really about developing awareness, situational and observational awareness intentionally and in a partnership. So that it's most of the people situationally aware of most of the things most of the time. Invariably, someone else is going to be situationally aware of something that you're not, and we get the gaps covered, we get the holes covered. For my fellow over functioners listening right now, eldest daughter, eldest granddaughter, type C, hypervigilance out there. Hello, hi. It's

Let People Help Without Perfection

SPEAKER_01 27:37

also me. You have to let people show initiative when they try. Yes, ma'am, I know. I hear you. I know. You gotta let people try. Just like you didn't do things perfectly. We don't do things perfectly. No other humans are going to. And your feeling of frustration is more from the stress of cognitive load than it is it's not done perfectly. Because let's be honest, we don't do it perfectly. No one has ever done anything perfectly. That doesn't exist. So we got to be really careful how we frame our frustration. Being frustrated with somebody for weaponized incompetence, meaning you know they knew how to do the thing and they just half-assed it, is different than right now. I'm super frustrated, and I would have done this nitpicky thing this exact way. When truthfully, there's probably 15 different ways that we could have done it. And the point is that it's done, it's done right, maybe slightly different than you would have done it yesterday, but we're feeling frustrated and stressed. So what's come out is this wasn't done exactly this way when the truth of the matter is we also might not have done it exactly that way. So there's a difference there. And we need to be careful of that because that's not fair communication. And that sets up systems around us to shy away from being situationally aware or initiating things. Okay. Nobody is gonna do the thing exactly the way that you would do the thing in that moment. News flash, you're not even going to do the thing the way you do the thing every single time because we just don't. Okay. We have 17 backup systems. We've got a color-coded mental filing cabinet that is usually fueled entirely by trauma and caffeine. The more stressed and frustrated we get, the more we tighten down on this false perception of there's one single lifeline available to do things instead of focusing on reality, which is is it actually accomplished and is it actually done fully?

SPEAKER_00 30:04

Or honestly, is it not?

SPEAKER_01 30:07

The person knows better, and it's obvious that they half-assed it, that they didn't, you know, put any thought required into it, or were doing it under duress. So that there's reality there. It's kind of hard to see it when you're really frustrated and speaking from a place of stress. But again, that's where a lot of our self-awareness and our emotional regulation techniques come in to help us be able to regulate ourselves before we have allow that perspective and conversation about the situation. But I get it. I get it. I thousand, a thousand percent get it, okay? But if someone is genuinely trying to show up and they're not creating more work for you in the process, you gotta loosen your grip a little bit. Not because they're gonna do it perfectly. That doesn't exist. We, you, me, us don't do it perfectly. Ever. Okay. It's not a thing that exists, it's not a metric we meet, and it's not a metric someone else is going to. But if they're really showing up, if they're actually getting the work done, and you didn't have to do a whole bunch of extra mental or emotional workload and getting them to that point, then they're actually showing up for you. And yet we we gotta, we gotta relinquish it a little bit there and validate that that's what is happening.

SPEAKER_00 31:42

Because it helps us just as much as they deserve the validation.

SPEAKER_01 31:46

We deserve to not carry everything alone, but if we don't fucking let go of it, no one else can help. So this week I want you to notice some things. It's not just, you know, who helps you? It's not just about that, but who's noticing what, who's

Notice Your Patterns And The Why

SPEAKER_01 32:04

anticipating, who's reducing the cognitive load instead of adding to it. I also want you to notice where do you immediately jump in and overfunction before anyone has had the chance to step forward? Where do you feel the pressure valve hitting peak pressure and just tamp it down tighter, not asking for help, not communicating? I want you to be aware of these things. I want you to be aware of, and and you're innately going to be able to feel this now that we're talking about it, of where you're looking at a situation and you just walk away from it. And I don't, this is not for a guilt thing. I want you to think with caring about yourself, why? Is it because you have nothing left? Is it because of depression, overwhelm, lack of executive functioning, dopamine, being afraid of the response? Like, I want you to, I don't want you to look at the fact that it's happening, that you're not doing a thing. I want you to look at the why part of it. Because again, we're we have to sit in these spaces without judgment in order to get any kind of clarity. Because the instant those walls go up, communication stops, and we lose clarity. We lose the ability to be introspective. I want you to just be curious. That's the key. I want you to be curious about why. I want you to be curious about what's happening. Okay. That awareness alone actually changes our approach to things. This real initiative feels like you didn't make me carry the mental load. And if you've experienced that from people in your environment before, you know tangibly why it matters so much. Like right now, your nervous system, when I said that, your nervous system, remembering when that's happened, had that internal kind of sigh, that internal kind of exhale. And it's really important. All right, my loves. Coffee, crystals, and divination time. Let's see what it's gonna hit us with this time because I know in our last episode that was, of course, spot

Coffee Talk And Crystal Pull

SPEAKER_01 34:24

on and very poignant. Let's look at our crystals first. I went to a new coffee shop today because I wanted to work on my traveler's notebook and fill it in from a little road trip that we just took.

SPEAKER_00 34:41

I almost it wasn't midnight coffee roasters. Now I have to remember the name of it.

SPEAKER_01 34:53

Everywhere they had a slogan of like, just do the thing, and it really kind of cracked me up looking at it because I have a particular phrase that is well known to myself and my best friends, and it's move and do. It was actually on my office door as a director of nursing, and it was kind of like my executive philosophy just move and do. Damn it. Um, so that's what I paid attention to at the coffee shop, and now I don't remember the actual name of it. It's a brand new coffee shop that just opened in the area, and I got a purple haze latte, which is kind of like a lavender latte. And theirs, they did exceptionally well. The coffee flavor was immaculate, and the hints of lavender weren't fake, like somebody added perfume or essential oil to your coffee. It just had the essence of lavender, kind of a hint of sweetness with the cream and uh the classic, like simple syrup.

SPEAKER_00 36:04

And it was amazing. Absolutely amazing.

SPEAKER_01 36:06

And of course, I got it iced. I think this summer I'm definitely gonna try to focus on finding more coffee shops to frequent that are local, even if they're smaller chain kind of varieties, just not the larger chain varieties. Because the franchise, you know, the owners of the franchises here are local people for the smaller coffee shops, but I think I think that would be, yeah. I think that would be a really fun focus this summer is to find really good local coffee shops, not just for journaling, but just to enjoy the ambiance and kind of local atmosphere in the coffee shop. Whoa. Alrighty. So we have two. Ha ha ha. Energize and enlighten. I love it. Orange calcite and lapis lazule. So orange calcite. Gosh, this is gorgeous. It looks like a torch with the orange calcite as the flame. And it says motivation, confidence, and in inspiration. I swear. It says enough with the excuses. This card is here with a fiery torch of orange calcite to light a fire under your butt. Orange calcite fuels your drive and confidence and ignites a spark of inspiration that you could really use right now. So use this torch to illuminate your path to empowerment and originality. It's time to leave procrastination in the dust and make things happen. I think these cards get a kick out of being used for this podcast because every single time that we have drawn from them for this podcast, it has been snarky and so damn on point. All right. So enlighten, which was the second one, is lapis lazuli, and it's self-awareness, wisdom, and clarity. Like the flickering glow of the lapis lazuli candles, which is what the image is. It's a candle abra of three candles. Allow your intuition to illuminate your path. Embrace the energy of lapis lazuli as you delve deep within to cover, uncover the truths that lie dormant. Trust your instincts and follow the cosmic candlelit path with an open heart and a clear mind, knowing that true wisdom comes within. So dang, if that's not a perfect summation of what we just went over. The no excuses and light a fire under your ass. And also calling for self-introspection and awareness and some journaling and some shadow work and the enlighten card. Dang. Okay, so get get some lapis and some orange calcite on you for the next two weeks. Because those are spot on. Let's see what our our tarot and divination has for us for the next two weeks. As always, you guys, if tarot reading, divination, not your thing, doesn't have to be. That doesn't, they don't have to be, okay, well, there's one that they don't have to be taken in that context. These are great words, phrases, aspects, perspectives, ideas, single-word prompts, even for journaling, or manifestation. So take what works for you and leave the rest. Take it in what manner suits you. Okay. So the first one, Caribbean calcite. And Chalcedoni is the second one. So the Ten of Wands and the Queen of Pentacles.

Tarot Themes For The Next Two Weeks

SPEAKER_01 39:56

On our trip this past weekend, we went to a crystal shop that had some of the most beautiful Larimar and Caribbean calcite. Oh, so stunning. Absolutely stunning. I love the colors of these two cards: the muted blues and the white and the lovely light kind of tan beige. Caribbean calcite has all three of those in it, and Calcedoni has the white and the crystal and the blue. Just stunning.

SPEAKER_00 40:30

All right, so Ten of Wands. Let's see where we're at here. The Ten of Wands brings up aspects of feeling burdened, overloaded, hard work.

SPEAKER_01 40:51

Caribbean calcite is grounding, it brings tranquility and emotional healing. You may be overextending yourself when this card appears, but it is a warning that the burden of carrying all these wands is weighing you down. This could be a good time to slow down, to lighten your load, and find balance in your responsibilities. Be sure to prioritize and practice self-care every now and then.

SPEAKER_00 41:20

Good heavens. Good heavens. The Queen of Pentacles is the second one.

SPEAKER_01 41:30

And this is the Chalcedony. And the Queen of Pentacles is practical, nurturing, and dependable. Chalcedony is nurturing, growth, peace. This card represents a nurturing person who has a loving, supportive, gentle energy and is financially independent. When this card shows up, you may be called to channel this energy. Focus on creating a balanced and peaceful life while sharing abundance with those around you. So this queen card is really kind of a great queen state to have in your mind to manifest towards while you do this introspective shadow work and looking at how you need people to show up in your environment, how you need to show up for others, and clarity and inspiration in okay, what kind of communication gets me there? What kind of lines of communication are going to create that environment so that this queen state is something that can be manifested and brought forth to emulate. This definitely speaks heavily to protecting your peace. And also the peace that comes from being and working and living in an environment that is healing and what happens when those needs are met. And that abundance is really kind of overflowing. Because when your nervous system is at peace, you really do feel you you really it's like you feel on a whole nother level. You really do feel like you have an ability to share that peace, to share that tranquility. You feel like you're sitting in the abundance of that nurturing and that peace and that quiet non-fight or flight nervous state. That peaceful, healing, passive nervous system condition that allows you to rest, allows you to rejuvenate, allows you to express that abundance. So again, a thousand percent irrelevant. I don't know what to tell you. I think they like their job. I think they really do. So before we close, I really kind of want you. To sit with this question. A few questions, actually. Where in your life have you become the automatic carrier of everything? What would it look like

Closing Questions And Share Your Story

SPEAKER_01 44:10

if the people around you started showing initiative instead of waiting for instructions? And maybe even a harder question is what would it feel like to believe that having and creating that shared environment of situational and observational awareness is something that you deserve. You're not too much, you're not high maintenance, your nervous system is responding normally to carrying an abnormal amount of responsibility for a really long time. And again, my loves, as we said in the first episode of this mini-series, we were kind of trained into this, and we can definitely train out of it. I want to hear from you guys. Use the fan voicemail feature, use the link at the top of the show notes, and anonymously text me. Comment on socials. When was the time somebody showed initiative for you? When when what did it feel like when you had a moment realizing that people weren't showing initiative? Where were times that you showed initiative for other people? Moments that you stepped up and did the thing. Those stories really matter. Sharing them really matters. It it adds more to the cultural awareness of what this is and how much it impacts us as nurses. Those stories matter. Okay. And I promise you that someone else listening is going to hear themselves in your story. The more honest that we get about this, the less alone we feel in it. So until next time, I love your faces.