A Quick Life Update And What To Expect For September

Whew! The emotions are high and my bandwidth is low. Just popping in a little late this week to update you on how our first college drop-off went and what to expect for the month of September here at the table. 

Lots is happening. I appreciate your patience as we gear up for a new season.

Email me all your words: hello@joyabad.com

Transcript

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Hello friends, welcome to the mentors table. My name is Joy and I am the mentor here at this table. Usually we spend our time going over a lesson or some of the subjects from the chapters in the book that I'm writing about surrender. But today we're going to break from our normal format and just take a moment and get caught up on my life. I thought for those of you who are listening who know me personally that you would appreciate a quick life update and a quick explanation about why we are off schedule right now from what my normal rhythm is. But first, as always, we want to start with a moment of silence to quiet our hearts, quiet our minds. So if you could take a deep breath in through your nose and release it slowly. We open our ears to hear what you have for us. We release all the cares and the to-do list items and the relationship issues and all that we're holding so tightly in this weing, our shoulders down and causing that tightening in our necks. We just release it to you now. Take another deep breath in and release it slowly. First and foremost, I am getting closer and closer to being able to self-publish my book, and it is very exciting and a little stressful and overwhelming right now because even though I thought that I was super close, I just spent four hours working on getting it formatted to be able to share with some advanced readers for some feedback. So this is all taking a little bit longer than I expected, but I am excited to get it into your hands. I can tell you this in the next few weeks, I'm going to be opening up an opportunity for you to join my book launch team. It's going to be very simple, require very little from you, but would really, really help my book get launched and into the hands of those who need it. And it would take very little time on your part. So if you want to be part of my book launch team, you can email me hello at joyabod.com and let me know you want to be part of the team, and I'm going to be sending more details out about that in the coming weeks. Also, my big big update, and the reason that the schedule is a little wonky, meaning we did not get out our second August episode on time, is because I have officially dropped my daughter off at college. This is our first daughter to go to college. This is our oldest daughter, so this is the first opportunity all the way around. And I just wanted to share a little bit with you. I know many of you have been praying for us and you've been kind of following along on our journey. So just to let you know how it went, I gotta say that I felt some emotions preparing and getting ready, but it did not really feel real until we were there. And at first it was super emotional, but the way that my daughter's drop-off was set up was that she was actually doing an orientation, the freshman orientation, the days that everybody else was moving into campus, which meant that she actually moved in a day early and was able to get set up and her room was set up, and then the next day began a couple of days of orientation. On top of that, they offered a parent and family orientation on those same days that she was in freshman orientation. So basically, what happened is that we dropped our daughter off. We set her room up, we found that it was much easier to contain all of her stuff than we had anticipated. All of the Amazon lists that were on Instagram and then cross-checking those with real life experiences really paid off. We had the things that we needed and we didn't have a bunch of leftovers. Anyways, we got her all set up and then we were able to take her out for dinner that night. It was our traditional Saturday night, so we always I mean, you can set your watch by it, do pizza and movie night with our family on Saturday nights. My daughter had actually shared in the last couple of weeks that her favorite family tradition was pizza and movie night. And honestly, I think we started it when she was a baby. We have literally been doing it every week for every year that she's been alive. We personally love sourdough bread and have this sourdough pizza crust that if you have a sourdough starter, you need this recipe. It's so easy and it makes your pizza so good. Anyways, because it was a Saturday and we were out of town, we decided to try and do a modified pizza movie night, and we went to the movies while we were there, and then we were gonna get pizza afterwards. Now, if you have moved a kid into college, you know that nothing really goes as planned, and so schedules were crazy. We ate lunch super late, then by the time it was we were ready to eat dinner, nobody was hungry. It was a little bit chaotic at that point, but we did our best. We got to the movies, and so and we ate really, really overpriced snacks from the theater, so there's that, anyways, and then Sunday and Monday were orientation for both of us, and I gotta say, this was actually one of the best ways I think to drop your kid off because you move them in, and then you have a couple of days where you're still in town, you're on campus, but you're both doing different things. She was going to her orientation classes, and I was, and we were going to ours. Um, she was eating with the new friends that she was making, and we were trying out restaurants, but then we were able to intersect and do different random meals together, not all of them, but a couple of them. And we were able to kind of compare notes as well as meet her roommate because her roommate moved in a different day, anyways. It was it was like a series of letting go moments because we would leave her on campus, but we wouldn't go very far, and then we would check back in, you know, and then we would not see her for a few hours, and then we'd be able to see her and take care of something. And so we watched as she was meeting new people and making new friends and all the things, and just really enjoyed her campus life, and then we were getting to hear from like the dean of students and finding out that this university was really so much of our family's frequency, for lack of a better word, that we just felt more and more confident the more that we heard from students and faculty, the more we realized our daughter is in the perfect place for her. This is a great fit, they have very similar values to us, they care about our kids, they are watching out for them, they are also encouraging their independence, and they have done this many times before. So they know the balance to hold or the tension to manage in giving them independence and then encouraging them, hey, you gotta get this done, you know. Anyway, needless to say, by the time that we said goodbye, goodbye, and drove home, we had already kind of established a confidence that this was the right and the best thing, and so we could leave with confidence knowing that she was gonna be well taken care of. Now I gotta say that last goodbye, there were definitely tears. Um getting teary just thinking about it. But then we got home and honestly, the next 24 hours at home was way harder than the actual goodbye on campus because it was walking around and seeing all these things that reminded us of her, but then she wasn't here. Now I gotta say, I know, and I'm holding this intention. I know that she's in the best place for her. I know that this is the right and necessary and best transition for her. I know it's gonna be hard for her, and I know it's gonna be hard for us, but I also know it's good, and I know that this is a a rite of passage and this is a step into adulthood. So all of these things are good, and I still feel you know, sadness that I'm holding on to and um and processing through. Honestly, walking around that first day felt a lot like this grief that I'm very familiar with. For those of you who don't know, I lost my best friend five years ago. This year, actually, five years ago, just a few days before we took my daughter to school. And so that memory, and then I lost my dad unexpectedly just a couple of years ago. Both of those were such big waves of grief and experiences with grief that the feelings very similar to that that came from and I know it's not a total loss, but it's a loss and it's a change in our home right now because we're adjusting from being a family of five to being a family of four. And those feelings of sadness and remembering you know things that are so precious to us, all of that felt very familiar. I keep singing in my head. Um I don't even know who sings it. When you guys hear this, you're gonna be like, of course it's maybe the Beatles. I don't know. Anyways, but instead of hello darkness, my old friend, I've been singing hello grief, my old friend. You know, it's just something that is familiar. And because it's familiar, it's not scary, it's not drowning me. It's just something that's familiar. Okay, I've been here before, I know what to do, I know it gets better, I know we keep walking forward, I know that's gonna come in waves, I know that triggers are gonna be unexpected, and I also know that life keeps moving forward and this is a good thing. So it wasn't scary, just familiar. But anyways, um that kind of brings us up to speed. The following days I like to say that I feel like I'm you know, like when you have a throbbing toe, if you don't touch the toe and if you don't really like mess with it at all, then you almost forget that it's hurt. But as soon as you brush it against something so little, not even like something that would make it hurt if you were, you know, brushing it against a door or something. If it weren't throbbing, you would barely notice it, but because it's throbbing, it screams out in pain, and it's just a lot more painful. That's how I feel like my soul is. If everything is going just right and nobody brushes up against me, and everybody is taking care of me, and everybody is happy and things are going along just fine. I almost forget about the grief. But then just the littlest thing, I had a really frustrating encounter on the phone with customer service regarding some money things, and it was a silly thing, and I really feel like overall, you know, God's my provider, and it's gonna be fine. But I just found that my ability to regulate, my ability to be able to approach it rationally, my ability to handle myself well in the moment just seemed to like fly out the window. I was like, oh man, I I'm okay until the littlest thing brushes up against me, and then I'm like, oh, there it is, there's that grief. I still got a little ways to go before things are going to feel quote unquote normal, and my capacity or my bandwidth is gonna go back to what was a more normal level. So for now I am saying that I have a throbbing soul and I'm okay. And there's and I wake up and I feel fine, and then there's other times that I wake up and I feel sad, or I walk around the house and I'm smiling, or I walk around the house and I see something that reminds me of my daughter, and I feel some tears, or something doesn't go my way, and I feel tears a lot. So, anyways, those are some just real vulnerable real life updates. We for a hot second teased an idea of bringing on an exchange student, and we literally would have had this exchange student flying in from another country the day that we got back, which if you remember, I just said were the hardest 24 hours out of this whole ordeal, and I am so thankful. I know it's the grace of God that that did not work out, but I have been in the moments that I do have some bandwidth, finishing up my book, like I was telling you, and then also my other two daughters are in high school and elementary school, and they start in just a few days, and so we are quickly approaching another transition, a pretty significant one going from summer to school schedules. In addition to the month of September, is a big birthday month for our family. Out of the five people in our family, three of them have birthdays in September. So that's a lot of cake, that's a lot of presents. We just spent a lot of money getting my daughter launched to college. That's a lot, and so those are the things that are coming up. I've got family coming to visit and some friends coming to visit, and I keep telling people, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm I'm good. I mean, September's the big month, but I'll resurface in October, and then I remember all the things that we have in October, and then my birthday is at the beginning of November, and I'm like, yeah, I'll resurface at the beginning of November. And then my sister reminded me, yeah, and then it's Thanksgiving and Christmas. So, like, are you sure you're gonna resurface then? Point taken. Anyways, it is a big season, but I am looking forward to the girl starting school back up again because of the routine that comes with it. So I really want to be intentional in setting our routine. All of that to say, September is kind of the end of our season for the podcast, and then October is when we start back up again with a new season. And as of right now, I'm just going to give myself permission to not finish perfectly. I would really like to get a couple of good episodes out in September, but there is a chance that things are gonna be a little off for the next few weeks while we get back into that new established rhythm, and I, you know, get a little bit farther along in my grief journey as well as doing some of the important things for this book. So stay tuned. I'll have more to share with you. I love podcasting and I love teaching, and I'm looking forward to being able to come to you out of the abundance in my life, and right now we're not quite in abundance, so I just need a little bit of time to rest. So I just wanted you guys to know what was going on, and I would love to hear from you. Right now, I'm kind of in my dreaming and planning and vision casting stage for the next season of the pod. And so if you have any ideas, if you have episodes that really stuck out to you that you would like to hear more about information about that, if there was something that we haven't covered and that you would like me to cover in the coming months, or something that we haven't done at all, please email me hello at joyabod.com. If you don't already, can you make sure to follow the podcast and leave a review? Guys, I don't have any reviews, and it really helps the algorithm as we're getting ready to launch this book. I really would love to get the word out about this, and so doing something as simple as leaving a review on wherever you listen to the podcast is a huge help to me, and I would really appreciate it. So if you could leave a review and then if you have any feedback, email it to me, hello at joyabod.com, and I will be talking to you again real soon.