Going Against Culture to be a Connected Parent

Have you ever questioned "why" we work, "why" we prioritize clients over family, "why" we miss out on being connected with our kids because of work? 

Like literally, why? 

Is something else more important than you or your loved ones? 

Our conditioning runs so deep we barely blink at these daily decisions we make. We abandoned ourselves and the ones we love most daily.

Yet, this is "normal" it's a system we signed up for, volunteered, spent our own money and years of education to be endoctrined into it. Only to one day wake up and say, is this my life? 

Truly, why did we come here? 

I know many have asked this age old question, but honestly, it wasn't to work, isolate yourself, and miss out on family, friends, and connection.

So why do we allow it to happen?

In this podcast I tell the story of how I was brought to my knees postpartum. 

It wasn't my plan, but it became my journey. 

A journey I'm still on, but have finally reached a clearing of some perspective to put it into words. 

I share this story because it brings up a greater question, what are we doing with our lives? Who constructed this reality? This can't be the reason we came here?

I believe we are in a massive transition in humanity. No longer do these old systems work, we're watching them crumble daily before our eyes. Yet we continue to be slaves to the system, jeopardizing our connections to family, friends, and especially ourselves. 

Is it worth it? 

In my darkest nights of the soul... no.

I realized it's not worth it, I literally couldn't go another day.

I had to find myself again, without my ego, seeking my soul purpose, reconnecting to the original "mother" earth, and each day strived to find just one brief glimmer even if a split second. And slowly, slowly, I could climb myself out.

Now that I have experienced that depth, I can see with clearer eyes. 

A world that no longer makes sense. A world that seems foreign, misfit, misaligned, like a hologram flickering and I'm wondering which one I want to tune into. 

And that's it exactly. 

The hologram, or projection of your own life is what you see... what if you choose to change it? 

What if small adjustments in your own reality starts to open up a world that is of a completely new paradigm? 

Maybe this seemingly small feat will start clearing a new path- new trajectory for your children- so the potential and experience on this earth regains meaning, connection, and joy. 

I hope my story helps stir something in you, to make a change, and transend what's holding you back from living a connected, soul purpose life- espeicially with your kids, family, and yourself.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello, welcome to another episode of the Modern Sage Podcast. I'm Megan McGill, and today we're talking about a topic beyond just the energetics of food, like we were talking about before, and we're diving into a conversation that's been on my mind and on my heart for, I mean, the last couple weeks very strongly, but especially the last six years of my life since becoming a mother, and that is going against culture to be a connected parent. It's something that I never thought about before being a mom. And even becoming a mom, it wasn't necessarily a goal or a standard or anything I was holding myself to. In fact, I was really trying, and I thought that having my own business at the time, I had a business called Simply Seasonal, and we had a cooking show that we produced ourselves just on a YouTube channel, and we had a cookbook we had just come out in 2020 when I had my baby, and a podcast. And it was great. It was so fun and it was growing, and we it this we did it all in one year, and we were we had so much momentum. So I thought, okay, I'm gonna have a baby, and then while my baby naps, I can work, and I'll even on my registry get this really cool little rocker that packs up so I can go to my business partner's house, you know, 45 minutes away in town, and I can work at her house, and the baby will nap, and then you know, we'll still record. I mean, I had no concept of what it really meant, and I thought I'll just take, you know, three months off and then kind of get back working again. You know, that's the luxury of working for yourself, which is true. However, my first child I did not realize never at the time before having her, never wanted to be let down, set down, couldn't nap by herself in a room. I had to be nursing her, and then she would fall asleep and I couldn't move, I could barely sneeze or cough, I couldn't do anything. So I was just sitting in a chair for like years, just nursing, having her nap. And I was like, this, you know, there were days that went by. My husband would wake up at 5:30 in the morning, five o'clock, leave at 5:30, and come back at 7 o'clock at night. And that whole day I would barely be able to get up, go to the bathroom, brush my teeth, let alone make myself food. It was unreal. And then in addition to that, of course, it was 2020. So just add in that chaos on top of it. Of course, isolation is huge in that sleep deprivation was deep. Um, my baby also did not sleep throughout the night. Um, I was just nursing around the clock every two hours, daytime, nighttime. Um, co-sleeping, which I wanted to do so badly. I did it with both of my kids until about seven months, and that's kind of when I hit my breaking point because I could not sleep, um, even when they were sleeping next to me. I just would be in such a shallow sleep, always listening to them breathing, you know, just constantly in that. And so I had to transition them into their own room, which then forced me to do something like sleep training, which I did not want to do, and I do not agree with anything with sleep training. So that was torturous for me because my baby would be crying, I would need to go in. Now I'm like, am I even getting any more sleep from having this whole situation go down and the baby waking up, having to walk downstairs, you know, all this stuff. So, anyway, all the things kind of caught up in motherhood that I was not prepared for. Um, and it was a rude, humbling awakening. And this again, the sleep deprivation and the isolation were the two things that I know drove me into the deepest um postpartum depression and massive anxiety of my life. Um, you know, just to get personal, it got so bad that I was very suicidal. I didn't know what to do. I um let's just say I was in a very dark place. And I also was thinking, well, all these other moms do it, and you know, all these other moms also have to work. I don't have to work, I just get to be home with the baby, right? Thinking that that was the easy route. I also let my husband with the second baby sleep in the guest room so that he could get more sleep because he had the quote unquote real job, and I got to stay home all day. So I would still stay up and do all the things with the baby while he slept so that he could get well rested to go drive into the city and work. Now I just want to like press pause on that story for a minute. One because it's getting me worked up, two, because I just want to see that in perspective of evolution, humanity. Is this what we've been doing forever? Is this what it looks like for any other animal, mammal, to have a baby? Is this how people have done it for thousands of years, hundreds of years, even a hundred years? This has been so recent. It's only been since my grandmother's time that this has started happening, where the the dad was at war and then he came home and then he went into an office. Everyone was leaving the country where they were growing food more properly than ever, and they were being forced to, if they stayed on the farm, to turn it into mass production farming and keep up with all the chemicals and all the things, and then everyone moved into the city, and we were buying microwaveable food and stuff that would feed the world, quote unquote, because that was the mantra since World War II, and it just started, and then women now were alone at home, which they never were alone before. They always had people around. Their husband was just, you know, you you could holler, you could ring the bell, and they could hear you out in the field if you needed them, they could come back. And it wasn't just them. You had a family you were living with, you had neighbors, obviously, you were very close with, a general store that everyone was chatting and hanging out at. I mean, you could even go further, further back than this, and you just know that we've been living in these cultures that are grouped together, and there's not just you know the aunt and the the grandmother taking care of the kids. It's the the friends and the people you're not even related to and their kids. And so when you have children, your older children can go off and play, and they're not even that old, they're like you know, two or three years old, and they can be playing with the five and six and ten-year-old, you know, and so it's taking so much of the burden off the mother when there's multiple kids. And also, of course, there was someone there who'd be cooking dinner, making breakfast, you know, um, for you as the mother who'd just given birth or who has a baby, you know, in her arms, who's breastfeeding, you know, you're awake all night long. A mother would take it for you and be a wet nurse and be able to nurse the baby for you while you're sleeping so that you could get sleep. Like they never let people get so fatigued and depleted. That's just not how society used to work. But the more and more modernized we've become, the more and more isolated we've become, the more and more hands-off of each other's business essentially we've become. And so now all of this falls on the mother number one, the father number two, or the other partner. And even in a healthy dynamic of a two-partnership family with children, it is still not enough. So if it's less than that, then it's it's in it's beyond, it's not enough at all. And at the end of the day, too, I would always be comparing myself to working mothers because my mom was a working mom. So I grew up in a working household, and that's what I knew. Um, and there's a lot of pride that goes into that, right? And society really praises that type of dynamic where you know, you have children, you get straight back to work, full-time working mom, you know, big round of applause. And they do, absolutely. I'm not saying that they don't, they absolutely deserve that. That's incredible. Single parents, same thing. You know, it's like, oh my gosh, plus they're working and they don't have a partner to come home to help split anything with, you know, or help with anything. If they're, you know, yeah, they're just they're doing it all alone. Absolutely incredible. And here I am suffering as much as I am with a husband who makes a good salary, but he's gone all day long, and feeling so isolated and so in like the deepest I've ever been in my entire life, thinking, why can't I handle this? Like, what is wrong with me? Everyone else can do this, and they have a job. And then I started realizing when I would talk to some moms who I would run into and they'd say, Oh, I have a baby the same age. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, that's so cool. And then I'm like, Oh, wait, where are they? Like, where is your baby? I'm here. I I don't even know if I've ever walked away from my baby before, let alone like completely left, you know. Like, where's your baby? And I'm like, wait a second, they're not doing this on their own, they have help, and I'm not saying that that's easy either, right? They could be paying for their help. That's a lot of money, right? But they have help. They could have a mother-in-law or their own mother, grandmother taking care of the baby, right? That's help. All of these things because to be a working parent, you can't do it without help. So I started to slowly kind of wake up to this idea that wait, these people have helped and I actually have zero. That is a huge difference. And I'm not saying that the help for the other, you know, parents was idyllic, you know, they're not excited sometimes or ever maybe to drop their kid off at daycare or you know, have a nanny come over, you know, let's um, or even a family member, because that can get tensions running, you know, that's really hard to create that relationship um all the time, you know. So it's not ideal in any sense, but what I experienced was the I think ultimate isolation. Again, adding in 2020 and 2021, both of the years that I had my babies in human history, obviously, isolation has never been more in intense. So I'm saying all this because this was kind of how I stumbled into parenting the way that I parent. And none of it was by choice. Again, I thought I was gonna go right back to work. I thought I was gonna keep my business going. It's a passion of mine. It's what I'm starting to get back into right now, which is lovely, and I love this podcasting. Um, but yeah, it wasn't, it wasn't what I was expecting. So what it did is it kind of gave me a lot of dark nights of the soul. It really did. It my ego was gone. I had nothing to fall back on. I couldn't say, oh, you know, I'm a holistic health coach and you know, I have a podcast, I, you know, just wrote a cookbook, I, you know, have a cooking show, I work with a business partner. All of that was gone. Overnight was gone. And I kept thinking it would come back, and it never did. And I thought I'd get better and better, and I was just getting worse and worse. And so my business partner, God bless her, she was like, it's okay, we can do whatever, you know, works. And I was like, I think we have to be done. So I think we closed our business in 2022. I think that's when I finally was like, after having two kids, and I'm like, I know this, I don't really see this coming back anytime soon, unfortunately. And so from 20, I remember 2022, pretty much up until now, which is 2026, I've had to make a lot of peace with being a full-time mom, and that's what I call it a full-time mom, because it is, it's a full-time job, and that's what you're doing all the time is being a mom. Whether the kids, and yes, my daughters started going to daycare at two and a half years old, very hard, not easy at all, right? Um, and it was short hours, you know, nine o'clock to one o'clock, and then it got pushed to two o'clock. So nine o'clock to two o'clock. And you know, as it worked out, this school is absolutely lovely. I am so thankful for it. Both of my kids have gone through it. It was a lifesaver. Before that, I needed a nanny. Can you believe a stay-at-home mom needs a nanny? That's what I used to think until I became one. And then I realized, oh my gosh, I have zero help. That's not, and I'm deeper than any other mom that I know. And all these other moms, I think, work, you know, and how am I struggling more than they're struggling? Right. And I was massively sleep deprived through all this. I will just also have to add that in. The sleep deprivation was unlike anything other. I was getting on average two to four hours of sleep for four years. That was it. So that was that's huge. And now my tolerance for sleep is so low that if I'm getting less than four hours of sleep a night, I will have an anxiety attack the next day. Massive debilitating anxiety attack. Because that's all my life was for four years was anxiety attack after another, massive anxiety. I mean, I would just want to run out of the house and never come back, type of anxiety. Um, I didn't know how to handle anything. And so when I get less sleep, which I I do often, my girls wake up a lot and it's hard. My body is so wired for that, I can't go back to sleep. It's very hard anyway. So I needed a nanny, and they were my godsend, and they are the closest people now to us, they're our best friends, we love them so much. And uh again, saved me, but I had to drop my ego around it because my ego was like a nanny, you know, rich people have nannies, you know. The the women that used to be around in Connecticut would go play tennis while their babies were at home, you know, like, oh my gosh, they're so privileged. And now I think, good for them. Good for them. They didn't need to work, that's fine. And they needed a break and they needed to be with their friends, and they needed to go exercise outside. And so, yeah, they went to go play tennis while the you know, nanny was with the kids. Good for them. Like, that's amazing. And then Nanny, guess what? That's her career, that's her job. She needs people to work for, she needs to get paid. So, this is a perfect person to work for. This is a win-win situation. These are not things that we should scoff at and roll our eyes at. This is actually a symbiotic relationship. This actually works, and we should not have shame around that. And that was so hard for me. I worked so hard, I could almost barely tell people that my babies were home with a nanny if they saw me somewhere or we were talking, or people just knew. It was really, really hard. Um, anyway, so that's a whole huge explanation of how I ended up where I am, not on purpose, but totally on accident, brought to my knees and humbled by what it means to be a parent who wants to be very involved with her kids, wants to co-sleep even when it's insanely hard. And no, I don't co-sleep anymore. I really wish I could. I still can't, even when my kids wake up in the middle of the night. I try so hard, I'm awake the whole time. I can't. Um, you know, so uh, and then I want to be really involved with them. I want to be there, I want to make all their food, I want to be there at pickup, I want to be there at drop-off, I want to be there for every single activity that they're doing. And I also need my own space. So they go to school and I'm able to now do this podcast. I have time and space to clean the house and get things organized. I I really do enjoy having a tidy house, things put away, um, you know, groceries and everything in the in the in the sorry, what am I trying to say, refrigerator, you know, all of it. Like I I actually when I can't do that, I my anxiety's high, my head's spinning, I feel not grounded, right? So there is actually for me something to the fact that being at home works, even though at the exact same time I want to be full-time working. So I always find myself in these pickles where I want to be a hands-on full-time mom and I want to be a full-time working entrepreneur. Those don't go hand in hand. There's many women that juggle those, and I'm gonna call it juggling because it's not even balancing, because they always become unbalanced. No matter what you do in our modern world, there is no equilibrium of balance constantly. It is always juggling, you're always feeling like one thing is being let down while you're doing the other thing, and vice versa. So, um, yeah, again, it was making peace with that. And so, like, it's this social pressure that was creating so much distress in my life, and I feel that is true of everyone around the world right now in a modern society. We are pressured in this social way to have these performance jobs, to get money, to work your entire life, either in a small box or in a big box, or in a big, beautiful box with a private plane. Whatever box you work in, you are working in a system that is spending your entire life doing that, to then just retire when your kids, the hardest part of your life, have been born, raised, and out of the house, then you're alone again as an empty nester, and then you retire, and now you have all the time in the world. And I bet at that point, which is why so many people I think at that point want to have grandkids, because it's like you almost want to relive that child experience that you missed out on being a full-time working parent. And I'm not doing any of this to shame that at all, because I respect it so much, and there is no choice a lot of times, and most times there's just not. But what I do just want to point out is that this whole system that we have all signed up for, we have all agreed to it. We have. We went to school, then we probably went to college, then we probably got our master's degree, then maybe we got our doctorate, and then we got we worked internships, and you know, so-and-so connected you with a great job, and then you worked really long hours, and then you kept working, and then you climbed the ladder, and this all sounds so incredible, right? But anytime we're doing this, we don't even realize we have a ceiling over us. I don't care if you're a man or woman, there's a ceiling over you, there's salary caps, there's only so many promotions you can go to the top. But who's the top of the top? Who's above that top, right? Those are usually the entrepreneurs, those are usually the people who have actually circumnavigated the system. Those are the people who thought outside of the box, and those are the people who own those things. I'm not saying that everyone needs to be an entrepreneur, but I'm just saying that there's we don't realize how much constraint we have around our lives, and yes, we have signed up for it. Because at the end of the day, in any culture around the world that's ancient and more traditional, the culture supports you. And in this world, it does not. There is no culture to support you. You need to, you know, run with the wolves or you die. That's kind of how it goes, right? You try to swim upstream as an entrepreneur, and it's incredibly difficult. And sometimes you're like, maybe I just turn around and swim downstream and just get a regular job like everyone else. That is just the reality of how we function. There's so much energy put into this system that we are all abiding by that now, all of a sudden, we're missing out on the whole reason we came to this earth. Like we came here to experience earth. We came here to be outside and just marvel at the plants and the flowers and smell the aromas and all of the things, have our feet on the ground, you know, making a fire at the end of every single day, crackling and sitting around it and laughing and chatting and you know, talking about the things that were hard or the things that you accomplished that you're proud of. That doesn't exist, and we've allowed it to not exist. And I think we've reached a tipping point. I know we have. It's been very apparent for a while that we have. I think 2008 was well, there's like every time the market crashes, it's showing us this system is broken and it always has been. It's a house of cards, and I think we know that, we've heard that, you know, there's books on it, you know, everything. But like, literally think about it. It truly is. That is not how we've evolved. That's not why we came here. I'm not saying that you can't have a job and it isn't a purpose driven. And job for you because they can be absolutely. We have a society that funk works through money. Yes, we need to earn money, right? But the way in which we do that, it's a humbling experience to realize actually, everything that I've invested my life in doesn't actually matter. And what matters is X, Y, and Z. That was one thing that kept coming up over and over and over again over six years. Was I worked my whole life to go to school, get a degree, go get other certifications, and you know, become start start my own business to then become a mom and go, I never learned one thing about this. And here, this is my full-time job, and I don't know anything. Like that's unbelievable. And so talk about an ego blow. Like, there is no ego to stand on with that. That is just humbling, you know, for me in particular. I know a lot of women also being a mother is their calling, and they feel so fulfilled, and I am so thankful for that because that is like how it should be, and not it should be, but just the reason that we're not more like that is because we've been so conditioned to be essentially mini men, right? My whole life I wanted to be a boy. I just thought life was easier if you were a boy or a man, and I was in the military. I thought I could be just as fast, just as strong, or stronger than men. And I proved myself that I could. I had um the record for females for pull-ups, but it was at the Naval Academy, it was 10 or 12, and that also was above most average of the men that what men could do at the time, but it was a record for women. Um I learned Marine Corps mixed martial arts, if you can believe it or not. This feels like a lifetime away. And I choked out this guy he had to tap out, who was his name was Sir Charles. He what you imagine his name to be, he was huge, large, six foot five, I don't know, I don't even know weight, probably closer to 300 pounds, like just muscle, huge guy. And me, I made him tap about tap tap out, right? I did everything I could to prove that I could be just like a man because I thought that was the golden standard. Because women feel so degraded in society, like we're not anything, right? And if you can't keep up with men, then you are nothing until I had a baby, and then my mind exploded, and I went, wait, what? And I was like, not only did I grow this baby, which was incredible, but I birthed it. Like, what? Okay, no, men cannot do that. I love men, absolutely. I'm not trying to put you down. All I am saying, I am trying to raise women up to the level that they deserve to be. I cannot believe women freaking create life on earth. They create life on earth. That is why about 3,000 years ago, 4,000 years ago, the entire earth was a matriarchy. There was a complete shift in collective consciousness around that time where it shifted to a patriarchy. That's where we see more wars, more division, all of this stuff. It was very physical, very binary, you know, good, bad, this, that, you know, right, wrong, um, all of that. And so you see that transition happen through history. And I think that's exactly where we are right now. We're transitioning out of that into the next paradigm. And I think a lot of that is going back to the power of the feminine because we have separated ourselves from it so much and put our power into someone else's hands so much that we have forgotten the earth, the original mother. We have forgotten ourselves, we have forgotten our families, we've forgotten everything, everything that is that is genuine and deep and feminine. We have forgotten, even women. We have forgotten how to be women. And I think this plays 100% into infertility and the difficulties that women are having. Yes, I agree, environmental absolutely plays into it. Toxins, injections, all the things. Absolutely. But truly to the core, I think it's an energetic imbalance that we have not embraced femininity in the most healthy, balanced way, just as much as I think masculinity has not been embraced in the most genuine, balanced way either. We have been so thrown out to the wolves, essentially, that we have forgotten that connection back to ourselves as both men and women. And so we've become imbalanced and we have families that fall apart and break apart and cannot make it through this. And I don't think that has anything to do with the relationship itself. And if we have found ourselves in unhealthy relationships, that's due to this same problem as well, because we haven't been true and genuine and grounded in ourselves, both men and women. So we find ourselves maybe in relationships that are unhealthy and that don't work or don't last or can't, you know, stand stress or the test of time. And I'm also not saying that relationships should stand the test of time either. I'm just saying that any of the catastrophes that happen all have to do with this root core of instability and unsustainability of how society has been structured. So kind of going back to that concept where I think that we have all opted in to play this game. We've all opted in to suppress ourselves, to fit into a certain box, to work, work, work, right? We had to earn our way to get that degree, to then say that we have a cool job, like, oh yes, you know, I work in finance, or oh yes, you know, like you want to have the title. Like that's amazing. And yes, it does. It shows, like, sure, you put in a lot of work, or you maybe you did just know the right person at the right time. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. That's incredible. That's how the world works. Amazing. But we don't realize that we're keeping ourselves with the lid on. Like there's a lid on a box. A box is a box. There's sides, bottom, and a top. Like there's no getting out of it unless you force yourself out of it. And you can either do that intentionally or I've stumbled into it myself. And it was multiple years of dark nights of the soul, of dissolving this box that I've put myself in of who I think I am. And trust me, I'm still there. I'm not saying that I've like completely surpassed it and I'm levitating above it. Look at me. No, I have so much work to do around it, so much work around blocks, around money and what I deserve to earn in my own right, right? Doing something that I love. And this is where I think the future is. We're still gonna be earning money, right? That's still how this earth is working, probably for a while longer. Um, but even if it is to exchange something, you know, like more of a bartering system, like my value, what is my value that I can then provide for my family, right? So all of these blocks that you have around that are so apparent when you start to kind of look at it, and something that I think takes almost a lifetime to undo. And hopefully you're gonna pass things on to your children, but which I need to tell myself all the time, but hopefully we can start bringing that awareness to our children so that they can start to grow in a way that maybe we weren't presented with as kids, um, so that they can be up leveled into the next paradigm that's coming, right? And so, like for my children, I'm not worried at all about them going to college. We don't have a college fund, we just have a fund and they can do whatever they want with that. What I want them to do with it, which is me saying that, I'm sure they're not gonna do it when it comes to that. No, but I really I want them to take that money and go travel. I want them to travel, I want them to go work in a coffee shop, you know, just make some money, go live, go experience the earth. And then, and if you're passionate about something or you start to get curious, pursue it. Yes, I think, you know, getting certificates and things like that where you kind of dive into these little topics here and there that interest you are very valuable. You know, I don't think degrees are anything, you know. I mean, okay, that's a big statement. But I'm I'm saying that when it doesn't, it's not helpful to you, you know, when it's like, oh, I have this degree and I don't use it, it's that kind of thing I'm talking about. I'm not saying like if you're really passionate about a certain thing and you go get a degree in it, that's incredible, you know. Um, but I'm just saying on the whole, so I don't see them going to a traditional college. If they choose to do so, great. Um, but I I just see a different future ahead for them. They're also learning Spanish right now because I feel that human connection is gonna become the most important thing in our world, especially with the advent right now in our current era of AI, that's just normal for them now. Even right now, it's normal for them. It's becoming normal for us. And it's been out for like a blip, right? So, so that I think is gonna get us more and more burnt out on the isolation factor, on is that real or is that not real? You know, because we've already done that. We've this is a matrix that we're living in. It's a it's a holographic concept that we all have structured and agreed to see. We agree to see the earth the way that we're seeing it right now. So, like the more that you can change your own body, the more you can change your own reality in your own space, that is when the outside will also start to shift. It's like a spider web. You know, you just like pull one end of the spider web, the whole spider web starts to shift, right? Might seem really complicated, but just one little string out of place shifts the entire thing, right? So every step that you take to really look in and say, am what I is what I'm doing right now bringing me peace, joy, happiness, love, community, time with my family. Am I compromising that for my, you know, on behalf of my family? Am I not around them? Am I not listening to my child while she's talking to me because I'm on my phone? For who? Someone more important than my own child? Right? Like it's a it's a humbling experience. And I'm not saying there's an easy answer or there's a right answer or there's an easy way out. I think it's our job in this time to question this. Because the more we question this, the more we create opportunities for our children in their future to have a more balanced life. If we don't question and we keep going down the rabbit hole and we're on the rat reel, like whatever, it just keeps going and going and going, and we allow it and we're just on the treadmill always saying, This is how it is, this is great, da-da-da-da. If that's where you're at, that's fine. But if you have a problem with any aspect of that and you continue to allow it to happen, you are just gonna proliferate that for the next generations. The more we stop and question and say, why is it that we're doing this? Do I really need to be doing this right now? Is there a better way? Can I make my life, even with keeping things the same, slightly different? What can I do today or this weekend that is bringing more of what my ideal life is and bringing that into my life right now? You know, and that's something that I did a couple years ago. My husband started working from home. And I was like, why are we here in the hot summers of Houston that are so hard for me? Like, why are we here if you work from home, you work remote? Like, let's get out of here. So we did the last two summers for two months. We leave, we go somewhere, and then we come back. And it's like, you know, it's lovely. I had to do so much work in myself to even get myself to entertain that thought, let alone pursue that thought, let alone find an Airbnb and book it for two months, let alone parting with that much money that seems frivolous and not financially wise to just go spend that money for two months when you could be investing that or saving that, or you know, you shouldn't be spending money that, you know, whatever. The whole story, any story you have in your mind, I had it. I had to unpack that so much because I was just in this place of depth and darkness I could not get out of. And I said to myself, what if you know things didn't end right for me and I wasn't here anymore, and my children said, Wow, if only my mom was able to spend, you know, twenty thousand dollars and leave for the summer and then come back, she could maybe still be here.

SPEAKER_01 35:37

Like that was a that was a massive awakening for me of like wow, this is real.

SPEAKER_00 35:49

Like, we can't keep doing what we're doing to ourselves if it's compromising on our soul and on our happiness and the whole purpose of being here. And I was like, the reason I'm doing this is because I need to be out in nature, and where I live, that's hard to do, especially when it's hot. But I need big nature. I grew up in California, I need big nature. Get me in big nature, so I did, and you know what? It was so healing.

SPEAKER_01 36:18

I just needed that. I went for hikes with my girls, I went in the ocean, it was so healing, and I'm just saying this because I hope that anyone who's resonating with this finds. I'm really sorry, finds hope or inspiration from this. Because I have to say, since doing that, my relationship and my husband and I like are doing so much better than ever. Our relationship got stronger out of it, my relationship with my kids got stronger. I was able to just enjoy being a mom and enjoy like just my beautiful children who just are incredible. And I had the space to do that, you know, and again, and I'm not saying that everyone has the ability to do this or you know, anything, but if there's something this weekend that you can do, if there's something today that you can do, you know, and I'm a lot of this stuff, you know, other than of course leaving, you know, for time, but we were hiking, we were going in the ocean, you know, like those things are essentially free because nature is free. And so if you can just get yourself into nature, at least for me, that was so healing. You know, looking up at the stars in a sky that was clearer than where I live was breathtaking. I forgot that stars twinkled. Like it was amazing. So I don't know, I guess the point of this um this podcast today was just to kind of bring up where we're at. Um I think we're at a tipping point, and I think again, it's our job to start questioning why we do the things that we do in society. Bring in little by little community, getting ourselves into community around people, um, getting ourselves into nature, yes, yes, yes, of course. Um, and just finding these little glimmers, these little glimmers that can get you there. Those are the only things that got me to that point were glimmers. Because trust me, even to get to that point of like, oh, maybe I could go somewhere for the summer, that didn't happen overnight.

SPEAKER_00 38:49

That was after about a solid year of just I would work with my therapist and she would say, find the glimmers. Even if you don't connect to it, just notice that you noticed it. And that's what I did.

SPEAKER_01 39:05

I started noticing just something that was cool, you know, or coincidental or really pretty, you know, whatever it was, or just comfortable or cozy or yummy, you know, these feelings and these emotions, tapping into them. And I think that's one of the biggest things is we are disconnected from our emotions.

SPEAKER_00 39:30

Um, we suppress them, which is how we've allowed this to go on as long as we have, because we we suppress our needs and our feelings, which is our emotions, and we teach our children to do the same, and it just keeps getting passed down generation to generation, you know, stiff upper lip, that's the way that it is, you know, life's a four-letter word, like you know, work is a four-letter word. It's just like it's hard, right? And so we we pass that mantra on over and over and over again. And I think every generation kind of gets weaker and weaker from that mantra. Um, that's been my experience. And so my experience is this is my moment to change it. I don't know how, but if I just start shifting it within myself, then I I know it has a greater impact.

SPEAKER_01 40:26

So I think I'm gonna leave it there. This had a little bit of a different uh direction than I was intending. Um, but and I cry on my first podcast.

SPEAKER_00 40:37

Um, so thank you for hanging in there with me. Um and being a space where I could be vulnerable. So thank you so much for that. Um, yeah, I again thank you enough for being here. So if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with anyone that you know, any friends, family, mothers who might be going through the same thing, friends and anyone who's going through the same thing. Um and if it made you think about things differently than you ever have, that's super cool too. And if I totally resonated with you and you're like, oh my gosh, thank you. You are expanding me to understand that I could ask for more or ask for something different. Um it helps. It helps a lot, a lot. So thank you so much for joining me on the Moderate Sage podcast, and I will see you next time.