05 - Choosing Yourself Without Guilt

💛 Boundaries, burnout, and brave self-care

When you’re a medical mum, your time, your energy, and your heart are pulled in every direction. And somewhere along the way, your own needs quietly fall to the bottom of the list.

In this episode, I share how I went from people-pleasing and second-guessing every decision, to finally choosing myself - and learning to do it without guilt. From small steps like taking a walk alone, to the much bigger shifts like saying no to appointments or events that no longer served us, this journey has been one of reclaiming my energy and setting boundaries that honour me and my children.

You’ll hear stories from the early days of our diagnosis, the emotional weight of judgement (real or imagined), and the powerful mindset shift that came from asking: Where am I saying yes when I really mean no?

If you’ve been running on empty, constantly showing up for everyone but yourself - this is your gentle reminder that choosing you is not selfish. It’s survival. And it’s brave.

🎧 Plus, I share a journal prompt to help you get really honest about where your energy might be leaking right now.

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Transcript

Hello my lovelies and welcome. My name is Leah and I am the founder of Bravely Together. This is my six-part mini-series for mums who are navigating the most unimaginable thing any parent can face. 

Having a child with a life-limiting condition or complex medical needs or any additional needs really that just require that extra level of care from us as mums. So today's episode is going to be all about me and what I mean by that is I'm going to be talking about how this journey has really taught me to think about myself and what I need and putting myself first without feeling that guilt and without feeling like I'm being selfish. So I've always probably been a bit of a people pleaser. 

Even if I think back to like my younger days before children, I was always somebody who would be pretty laid back. I'd go with the flow. I wasn't fussed. 

If my friends wanted to go and eat at this restaurant that was fine by me. I'd go and eat at that restaurant. I wasn't going to kick up a fuss and say no I want to go somewhere else. 

I'm quite happy to keep the peace. I didn't really have falling out with friends. I was very often the person that people would come and speak to if they had problems of their own or they were having difficulties with maybe somebody else in the workplace.

And it's quite funny really because then the other person would then come and speak to me so I'd get both sides of the story. But people always knew they could trust that I would never repeat anything that was said. Everything that was said to me was in confidence. 

And I think that's kind of what's really helped me in this coaching space that I've always had this natural ability to make people feel comfortable opening up to me and being really honest with what they want to truly say from the heart and not feel like they're being judged. So when we first started on this journey when my children were still waiting for a diagnosis but we knew things were definitely pretty serious and we started to have some professionals involved, different health professionals and life just started kind of ramping up. Things got a bit crazy and I always remember we had a health visitor but she was like a specialist health visitor. 

She was a bit more senior and did more complex cases shall we say. And I remember her saying to me keep one day for yourself. Life is going to get crazy. 

You are going to get no end of appointments coming through. People are going to be ringing you all the time. There's going to be lots of meetings. 

There's going to be lots of panel discussions about your family. People are going to be ringing you all the time. And it was ridiculous. 

My phone was constantly ringing. Like when I'd be around my friends or my family they just couldn't believe the amount of times my phone would ring even just in the space of an hour or two or spending time with them. And so that wasn't easy. 

I thought yeah that's fine I can keep one day a week free of appointments. That's a lot easier said than done as I'm sure you're aware. Appointments just come flying through the door or pinging on your phone these days and you kind of have to take what you're given because these appointments are few and far between especially if you are being sent to Great Ormond Street. 

You're just grateful to have the opportunity to be seen by these specialists. So trying to keep one day free wasn't really working. And this journey with protecting my energy and doing what was right for me in that moment definitely went through ebbs and flows of it working very well and me noticing the benefits from that. 

And then also moments of not being in control at all. Things spiralling and me recognising very quickly that it was affecting me in every area of my life. I think when you're a mum you take on that responsibility to do everything and that's what we want to do as as mums. 

We just want to be there for everybody. We want to make sure everything's sorted that nobody else has to worry and quite frankly when you're thrown into the world of being a medical mum that obviously intensifies. And especially if you have children that are not affected by the condition. 

There's a huge amount of guilt of giving your child that's unwell all this time and energy and attention and then not giving that same level of time and energy to your unaffected child. Now this isn't something that I personally had to deal with because of I'm sure if you've listened to the past few podcasts you'll know and understand why because of how our story worked out. But it's definitely something that I have discussed with other mums a lot and just something to be really mindful of because that can also bring up a whole lot of guilt.

So I had to find ways of protecting my energy and doing things that were right for me in that moment because things change all the time and that started off being really small things. Silly things like if I did have a nurse or a carer in the house taking that time to go into my bedroom, go and have a bath, taking myself out for a walk. I always felt guilty for leaving my daughter even though there was somebody there more than qualified to look after her and the whole point of it was to give me some respite. 

And as I mentioned before there was a time when I tried to start going to the gym. I knew I wanted to start taking care of myself because my own health had been massively impacted by all the stress that had obviously suddenly been put on us and I was so terrified that people, whoever these people are, would see me out at the gym and judge me. Judge me for being away from my daughter. 

How could I possibly leave my dying daughter to come and work out at the gym on my own? How selfish of me is that? And that's the way my brain would work. Even if I wanted to go meet a friend for lunch I'd be terrified that somebody would recognise me and be like how can she be out with friends laughing with everything that she's got going on? And I know a lot of the time these can just be thoughts that people can't help but think. They'll just kind of naturally automatically drop into their mind and they might not even act on them. 

They probably wouldn't even say anything. Most people probably wouldn't even think it but that's just how my brain was working. And so I just wanted to explain and really emphasise to you how important it is to choose you, to put yourself first and for you to know that that's not selfish and that you should absolutely not feel guilty for that. 

I saw a really great video the other day and it was a psychologist explaining how as mums we need to learn how to pour from our cup in equal measures. Now what I mean by that is imagine you have a cup that represents you and it's full. I mean I don't know about you but I'm my cup is ever completely full but let's just say for this circumstance your cup is full and then you have four empty cups in front of you. 

One represents your relationships, one represents your health, one represents your work and one represents your child or your children. Now you've only got that one full cup. You can't pour everything into just one of those other cups. 

It needs to be spread out evenly or in a way that suits you best and also remembering to leave yourself something in your cup. Hello my lovelies. I just want to take a moment to say if you're listening and this is resonating and you feel like this is a space that you need to be a part of then please know that you don't have to do this alone. 

That's why I created Bravely Together, a private space just for us medical mums. A place where you can feel held, heard and honestly just human. No judgement, no pressure, just gentle tools, lived experience and real support from someone who gets it because I've lived it too. 

If you feel like you're carrying everything and don't know where to put it down this is your place. Come and join us at bravelytogether.co.uk or just click the link in the show notes. I would love to welcome you in. 

All right let's get back to the episode. Now when you see this it's a really great representation of you truly understanding that you can't give everybody your full cup. It's just not possible and there's no shame in that.

As mums we do a really bloody good job of keeping everything together, holding everything together, knowing when the kids need to take certain things into school, knowing when the doctor's appointments are coming up, knowing when we need to ring and change an appointment. We're really good at that but we're not super women and we can't do it all with a full cup. Another huge key lesson that I learned and that I always teach to everybody that comes into the space and works with me is boundaries. 

So many of us just have no boundaries in place and it just leaks our energy all the time and so I very quickly learned that having boundaries in place was something that was essential really to to my well-being and it was difficult at first. I would definitely suggest that you maybe start off small but it would be things like certain people, being around certain people, friends would drain my energy whereas other friends and other people would fill my cup back up. So if I knew that I was due to spend time with somebody that I knew was going to just drain my energy further then I had to know that it was okay for me to just say do you know what it's not a good day for me today I'm gonna have to cancel and not feel guilt for that because I was protecting my energy and my energy was so important because it's not just for me it was for me to be able to care for my children. 

Other things that I had to learn to get boundaries with were environments that I put myself and my children in. We would be invited to things, events, things that were maybe going on at the children's hospice or maybe with a charity that had supported us maybe it was just friends inviting us to a birthday party and if those people had supported you and helped you along the way you feel this obligation to to give back and that's completely natural and completely normal. However we are living in exceptional circumstances when we have a child that is so unwell and is life limited and if you feel like you should go somewhere or you should be doing something that's normally a really great red flag with the fact that you shouldn't do it.

If you feel an obligation to do something and it's not sitting right with you then don't do it just don't do it I give you my permission just don't do it and the weight you will feel lift from your shoulders when you make a decision not only because you don't now have to do that thing you didn't want to do but you'll feel empowered by making that decision by using your voice and owning your life and what you want to do with your life. Now I know that can sound quite dramatic in terms of whether or not you go along to a birthday party but it's when we start making them small changes and start using our voice in those small scenarios that we're able to use them in a bigger sense. Now this really helped me when we kind of progressed further with our diagnosis in terms of treatments in terms of medications in terms of appointments that I felt weren't necessary because I felt like we got to a point where we would be having all these appointments and they would be very repetitive and not of any huge benefit to my daughter in that moment or to my boys in that moment and I had to really learn to start saying no thank you we're good we don't need that right now and even to this day I still have those core skills now to protect my energy and my boys. 

We get offered appointments at Great Ormond Street, we get offered appointments up in Manchester and we get invited to events that are sometimes a very very long drive away and I have to make that decision as to whether it's of the best interests of me and my family at that time and weigh up the pros and cons of what that's going to bring to us as a family or to my boys in regards to how they're living their lives now and there can still sometimes be this sense of oh but should we just go should we just get on with it and do the thing but I'm telling you now as soon as you make that decision of no that's not right for us we're not going and you feel that sense of empowerment it's really quite addictive I would say and then you'll notice that it starts spilling out into other areas of your life and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that because when we protect our own energy it really really ripples out into as I just said all different aspects of your life and you will really start to notice that as time goes on. So maybe just have a think about what fills your cup up maybe make a list it can be big things or small things maybe you could book yourself a massage something extravagant like a full body massage or maybe you could just have 20 minutes having a cup of tea in peace and not being disturbed maybe even reading a book what I really really want you to start doing is being conscious of where you are leaking your energy now I know a big one for me and I'm calling you out it's probably a big one for you because we're all guilty for doing this is thinking I'm just going to sit down and scroll on my phone I've had a day I'm going to treat myself to scroll on my phone I'm going to doom scroll I'm not going to feel guilty for it that is fine but it's not going to bring anything positive to you it's going to hit you with really quick dopamine hits and then leave you hanging afterwards so maybe if you could just set a timer maybe just allow yourself to I find myself now I will I start scrolling without even realising that I'm doing it so I get it it's super addictive it's the way it's been designed that's just how it is however now once I get to video three that I'm scrolling I catch myself and I realise what am I doing this is of no benefit to me I and I just switch off come out of it all together turn it off so I would love for you just a little journal prompt for you here really to write down I'll give you the journal prompt where in my life am I saying yes when I could act when I actually mean no and really think about that journal on it just write down whatever comes to mind and it will probably surprise you with what comes up so I'm going to wrap it up here and I just want you to remember this choosing yourself is not selfish boundaries are a brave act of love for you and for your child so if anything I've talked about today resonates with you then please send me a maybe you haven't maybe you have your own insights to share I would love to hear them you can now leave me a voice note using speak vibe and I'd love to hear your feedback and any questions you have about what I've discussed today and I know that this can feel this space can feel quite lonely and isolating so please know that you are absolutely not alone I have created a space called bravely together and you can find us on instagram or the link in the show notes you can follow me over on instagram come and have a chat with me in the dms I love speaking with you all thank you so much for being here and I'll speak to you all soon