10. From Crisis to Clarity with Sharon Ferons

Moments of crisis can feel like everything is falling apart, but they can also become a turning point that changes how you live and the choices you make for yourself.

In this episode, Robina is joined by Sharon Ferons, who shares her personal experience navigating a significant life crisis and the impact it had on her identity, her perspective, and the way she moved through the world. She opens up about what it looked like to be in uncertainty while still showing up for her responsibilities.

Sharon reflects on how that season forced her to slow down, reassess what truly mattered, and begin creating clarity from a place that felt more grounded and intentional. This conversation highlights how moments of disruption can lead to deeper self awareness, stronger boundaries, and a more regulated way of living and working.

In this episode, they share:

• How crisis can shift your identity and perspective
• The role of slowing down in finding clarity
• What it looks like to move through uncertainty while staying aligned
• How challenges can create space for deeper self awareness
• Building a more grounded and intentional way of living and working

Connect with Sharon:

• Email: ferens63@yahoo.ca

Connect with Robina:

• Website: https://routeofhealing.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/routeofhealing/
• Personalized Hormone Balance Reset Quiz: https://quiz.tryinteract.com/#/698b478d8ecf7e3441a4c914

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, guys, and welcome to this episode of the Regulated CEO. I'm so excited to share this story with you because I really wanted to take a different perspective and a different take on how nervous system dysregulation and how not listening to your body can really impact you. And so I wanted to share Sharon, who is someone that I've known for probably around four to five years now, is a lifelong learner and educator of 33 years with teaching experience. She's worked with students from grades one all the way through eight, including the past nine years teaching grade eight. She's a proud mother to Cameron and Molly and takes great pride in watching them build their lives with grit and integrity and seeing the kind of people they have become. Sharon is also a wife to Stephen, whose steady love and support has been a constant through every phase of their life together. Following a medical crisis three years ago, Sharon was given a second chance at life, an experience that really reshaped her perspective and deepened her commitment to living fully and intentionally. She is now pursuing her lifelong dream of becoming an interior designer, embracing new challenges, developing new skills, and discovering new dimensions of herself along the way. Sharon, I am so happy that you're here. Me too.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Stay the good.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

So give people a little bit of background of who you are, like what shaped you as the person you are.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

I would say being the eldest in my family of three girls and being a child of a single mother, and coming to Canada with my sisters and my mom, and having the immigrant experience here, those would be the cornerstones.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Can you share a little bit about what that experience was like? And you don't have to go into full detail, but I really want people to understand that our experiences, especially before the age of seven, how they really shape the way that we are in the world.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

I can recognize the effect and the importance those years have. We came to Canada, my mom and my two sisters, when I was six, my sisters were five and three. We were escaping a dangerous situation with my father. Our first years here were precarious and entirely dependent on my mom's courage and resourcefulness and just decision that she made that we were gonna survive here. As the oldest child, even though I was still a child, I felt very much that I needed help, that whatever I could do to keep us going and to enable us to be okay, to survive, to be successful here, I needed to do. I was never specifically told I had to do anything. I just felt that responsibility. And that took the form of looking after my sisters and being much more mature, more adult, less willing to be a child, more responsible. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

Yeah. It almost like forced you into the role of being an adult at a very young age.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

It definitely did, for sure. Yeah. Like what I thought was normal, I didn't realize wasn't normal till I was around people who were my age. And I never felt that I fit in. I always felt so much older. The things they used to talk about I couldn't relate to.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

So tell me a little bit about what kind of characteristics do you feel like that made you embody at such a young age, and then how those characteristics showed up for you in your later years.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

I learned very quickly that aside from being responsible, I didn't think my feelings mattered. I thought they were inconvenient, and I thought that I had a job to do, which was to be strong and to support my sisters and to help my mom keep us going. These were not expectations that were explicitly given to me. These were things that I internalized.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

It's almost like you see that your mother needed support and you literally just stepped in and said, okay, how can I alleviate some of the stress on her? I know your story very well. And so I can kind of interject a little bit, but I know that it really puts you in a position where you became the person that took care of a lot of things, even though you weren't asked. So I want you to kind of fast forward a little bit and let's talk about your career. Let's talk about the life that you built as an educator and how this kind of translated into your life.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

First of all, I still believe that's one of the best things that ever happened to me was being an educator. It taught me so much, but it gave me so much in terms of my self-worth, in terms of just actual abilities. I was able to use so many of the abilities I naturally had. So I appreciated it very much. But in terms of how my early life affected that, I would say, you know, as an educator, I continued that role. I took everything on. I went to bat for all my students. I did a lot of extracurricular in my school. You know, I coached teams, I wrote plays and put music scripts together. I did a lot of like curriculum-focused leadership roles. And because I wanted to, but also because something in me said, wow, people aren't stepping up. Somebody needs to step up. It better be you. I don't know why I felt that was on my shoulders. I know a lot of times in in many work environments, especially in schools, because so much of the labor in schools is unpaid labor. Everything that's extracurricular is done out of the goodwill and the wishes of a teacher wishing to contribute. A lot of times people do not step up to do those things. And I would feel so, so embarrassed, like, why aren't people stepping up? Somebody needs to do this stuff. And so I would always pick me out to it.

SPEAKER_00 6:02

Do you think that some of that was like a way to be seen? Maybe.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

Maybe, yeah. I am also a person who likes to learn. I like to know new things. So some of those things were also beneficial, I thought, for myself. I wasn't interested in pursuing a career as a an administrator or principal or anything like that. I just wanted it for myself. But sometimes my friends would be like, Sharon, what are you doing? Like I was our union rep, I was our math lead, I was our literacy lead, I was our DEI lead. I coached cross-country, I also ran the speeches. I was like, that's a lot.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

It's a lot. So as you're talking about a lot, at what point did you kind of notice? Because when I met you, you were at a standstill in your life. There was a lot of things happening, you know, as a woman going through shifts in hormones, your son was moving out. There was a lot of things happened. At what point did you sort of know that you were up against capacity? Meaning your life was really full. There were a lot of balls that you were juggling. But at what point did you notice that you're in overflow?

SPEAKER_01 7:12

I think I felt stuck. I just felt had this feeling of being stuck. But I also had this feeling of what comes next? These roles of being a teacher, of being a mother, it's a transition time. So what comes next? If I'm not needed, what is my role? It forced me to look at all the things I had not been doing for myself. It's like, well, you're not needed here. You're not needed in a hands-on capacity for your son. Working at the pace that I was working at at school was not healthy. Like I couldn't manage it. I was getting older and I was getting tired and I wasn't bouncing back. That transition point in your life as a woman, when you realize, what do I want? What do I need? What's healthy for me? But I never actually articulated those things. I just kept pushing, kept going. When my son moved out, that was a very difficult time for me in the sense of, I mean, you as a parent, you want that. You want to see your child successful and building their lives. And that I definitely had that feeling. But it was such a sense of loss and grief to me that I didn't know how to navigate it. And that's when I first met you and we started working together. It really forced me to start questioning a lot of the things I had thought about myself, the things I had thought about my roles, the things I had thought about what I had to do in order to contribute if I didn't have all these responsibilities of being a mother, but also being a mother who worked. It was really a fork in the road for me.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

And I think that this is such an important topic that so many women don't talk about. They don't talk about the grieving. They don't talk about the depression that it can set us into because we're really not prepared for, even though we want to launch our kids, we're not prepared for that what's next conversation. Or even though we know, okay, maybe this is the time for me to really start to take care of myself, we really don't know how to do that.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

No, we don't. We're just like, oh, okay. I threw myself immediately into degree program, which I did part-time at night in interior design, which I actually loved and which I was enjoying. But I would work all day, take a nap, and then eat something, and then work again from about 6 30 to 7 to midnight. And I couldn't manage that after a while. But a lot of that was also just running from my feelings, not wanting to stop and take stock and see where I was, or feel the feelings, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Yeah. And so tell me a little bit about what you were feeling during this time in your body, because I know you were going through some health issues. You hadn't hit that major health crisis yet. But tell me a little bit about some of the health things that were showing up for you in your body.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

I mean, it's kind of embarrassing to say this, but for so many decades, I just didn't pay attention to anything, any of the signals my body was sending me. I really didn't. Well, one thing was I was not eating much. I wasn't actually eating well, but I was gaining weight. I was tired a lot. I have been a poor sleeper most of my life, but my sleep really deteriorated at this point. Those are the main things. But if I'm honest, I'd have to say I really didn't listen very much to the signals in my body.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Was anything manifesting in your psyche? So when we're talking about the anxiety piece and how the depression kind of set in, tell me a little bit about that. Those things were definitely there.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

The depression was definitely there. Just the sense of grief of this phase of my life, and you know, how do you go on? Like people tell you, specifically in terms of children, there's so much lead up to having a child. You know, there's the what to expect when you're expecting, there's the medical, there's the child psychology, there's the raising a child. But there really should be a lot more focus on how to transition out of that role, out of that role of being a hands-on parent of your child live in your house and then them not be living in your house, and you being somebody on the sidelines. I know different people manage this transition differently, but for me, it was excruciating. I did not know how to manage it. I was severely depressed. I guess if I think about it, and I think you had said this to me too when we were working together, it's that feeling of being abandoned as a child, and I felt like it came back. I think it really manifested itself then. And then there was the anxiety around what would my role be in my children's lives going forward now as a person approaching retirement. All of those things as your life transitions from one phase of busy, busy, busy with young kids and a career to the next phase. And we don't live in a society that values age. You know, we don't live in a society that values experience, I think. Maybe it's changing, but you can get sucked into that negativity of thinking that this is not a good time when actually, actually it's a time when you're coming into your power. If you're lucky enough, like I've been lucky enough to have some time to think about what I want and what I feel, it's really a powerful time. But that hasn't been an easy understanding to get to.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Let's delve into a little bit of what happened to force you into that, because it's really powerful to hear the words and to hear you come out on the other side. But witnessing you and seeing you go through this depression, go through the anxiety, recognizing that there is this abandonment wound and all the things, but yet you still did the same thing. So you were still going to school, taking on all the roles, you were managing the money, you were doing the finances, you were taking care of the kids, you were doing all of those things simultaneously. And then tell me what happened that shifted everything.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

So I've always been a person who pushes hard in terms of my daily schedule, my daily life, my career. I've always felt like if I'm not being productive, I'm failing. That is such a trap. So how that manifested for me was I began to feel much more fatigued. I began to lose weight, and I began to find the days really difficult to get through. This was about three years ago now, be almost three years in November. I'd had a respiratory infection. I assumed that the feelings I was having was down to this respiratory infection. And I was still going to school. I was struggling, but I would go and then I would feel bad, and then I'd take a day off here and still not wanting to properly investigate. And then one day my principal came up to me and said, I was in the class. She said, I really want you to go home. She goes, I can see you're not well. You know, as a teacher, you don't leave your class and you were always worried about plans. She goes, I got it, go home. So I went home and I was off for a few days and I was planning to go to the doctor. And I was really unwell. I couldn't drink enough. I couldn't sleep. I was kind of delirious. I remember going to the grocery store, and this was the day before everything happened, but I drove to the grocery store and I bought a giant liter size bottle of orange juice that Longos makes fresh orange juice, they squeeze it. I drank the whole bottle in the store. Now, if you know me, I don't drink juice. I'm not actually a person who buys a lot of any kinds of drinks. And then I was really out of it, and I was leaving the store with more bottles of juice and whatever. And the woman at the cashier came to her, Your purse. I was so out of it, I left my purse and I just walked away. Actually, I really probably shouldn't have been driving. I got home and my daughter was home, is lives with us, and she said, Mommy, you have got to go to the doctor tomorrow. So I said, Yeah, I'm I'm gonna go. The next morning she came in to check on me. My husband had already gone to work. I was not responding very well, and she said, Mom, are you going to the doctor? And I was like, Yes, I'm going. She goes, No. And at that point, she said, I don't see you getting down the stairs. I'm calling an ambulance. So anyway, lots of things happened. I was taken by ambulance to the hospital. I don't remember much of it, but I'll speed this story up a little bit. I was in DKA, which is diabetic ketoacidosis. I did not know I was diabetic. My blood sugar, if anybody knows about blood sugar, was at 59. Normal blood sugars between like, you know, fours to sixes. And if you're diabetic, it can be a little bit higher. So had I left it, or had my daughter not been there, I would not be here. There was maybe another hour, a couple hours or so before that would have been the point of no return. But I found out I was diabetic in the ER. And then they admitted me to ICU, and then I was in the hospital for five days, and you know, I had several procedures, and part of that I don't remember. And then I came home. And really, it's not something that I should have survived, which is why I say I had a second chance. And subsequently, I was home, I've been off work, and I've had the gift and the luxury of focusing on myself, my health, my psyche, all of those things. I've also since subsequently found out that I'm not a type 2 diabetic, I'm a type 1 diabetic. So that was more news. And that news was also that was a little bit traumatic because when I first found out I was diabetic, I was like, okay, you know, I worked with a nutritionist, and I was like, many people, if they take it very seriously, can reverse or greatly improve their A1C, their blood sugar, their health, everything. And I was on a mission and I did really well, but my doctors weren't sure that that was the case, and they were waiting to test me to see what type of diabetes I had. And sure enough, last year it was diagnosed as type one. So does that fundamentally change things? Yes, because I'm always going to have this, but that's something that's out of my hands. I can't reverse this. There's a level of acceptance that comes with this. But there's also a level of peace because it's like it's not that when you have an autoimmune disease, something's out of your control and you accept it. You can't work harder, be more productive, be better. You have to do all the things you have to do to keep yourself healthy, but you also have to fundamentally accept that this condition exists. And it explains so many things about why it's hard to control my blood sugar, why even when I eat well, sometimes it's not explainable as to why it's high or why it's low. So yeah, I've had a lot of time to sit with my thoughts, my feelings, to look back on my life. And so many shifts have come to me and so many understandings about how as a woman, I didn't acknowledge the signals my body was sending me. I didn't pay attention to the way I was feeling. My thought was always, keep going, one foot in front of the other, one foot in front of the other, keep going. You'll be fine.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

But I think what's really important here is there's no shame in that. It's like, oh wow, I saw the signs many years ago. But now it's the awareness of like, okay, I see what my body is saying to me. So now that you have this shift that's happened, because there has been quite an awareness in you. Let's talk a little bit about how you manage yourself now versus before. So, for example, we talk about the anxiety and we talk about how debilitating sometimes the anxiety was. I know that there were times where you couldn't get in a car and drive your car. I know that there were times where the thoughts just became so big that you couldn't change your direction or you couldn't get up and move. So I want you to think about that for a second and describe the shift that happened with you and then how you're managing even the thoughts that you have now versus before.

SPEAKER_01 19:20

A lot of the shifts happen because number one, I had support. I had support to point me in the directions to examine my thoughts. And number two, I had support from people like you. I had support from my nutritionists, I had support from family and friends, but I also had the time to implement so many of these modalities of healing. Like I've worked with you for a few years, we've done different things, and each of those things we've done have contributed and added to my understanding.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

Yeah, it's like that subsequent step, right? Like I always talk about it's not the one thing that's going to change the way your body feels safe. It's those little incremental things that teach the body over time that it is safe.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

Yes. It's a toolbox of things that you have access to. When you're struggling in the beginning, your ways of coping with anxiety or depression are often just limited to what you've been told externally. Oh, well, you know, just pull yourself up or winners never quit or whatever, all the the cliche.

SPEAKER_00 20:26

Going, like, you know, you gotta keep hustling, keep going, like all the things.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

All of that is like actually just nonsense. It only builds guilt and pressure and hustle and and eventually your body breaks down. It's not a healthy way as opposed to when you're actually asking yourself, what do I need? What does my body need? What do I need to thrive? How can I be in alignment as opposed to just pushing and struggling?

SPEAKER_00 20:51

Yeah. And so how do you implement these changes into your day-to-day? I know thankfully, you were forced into, I think it's long-term disability that you're on and you're really focusing on managing your health. But what are the things that you're doing now on a day-to-day to really implement to manage your blood sugar, manage, you know, your mind, manage all the things with your health in general. And how are you moving forward? I know you're still pursuing your degree here.

SPEAKER_01 21:20

Right. So this time, and it's embarrassing to say, I'll start with the most basic. I never ate properly the majority of my life. And by not eating properly, I don't mean I was eating in excess. I wasn't eating. I was the last person I nurtured. So my family, yes. But for me, and as a teacher, and anybody who's a teacher knows you don't have proper breaks. Either have duty or you're running or you're prepping for the next thing. I lived for years, like having coffee in the morning and then nothing till maybe late afternoon, and then eating too much or the wrong things like quick carbs, whatever. So the most fundamental level, um I am taking care of myself in terms of my nutrition. And that involves a change in my day because I have to number one make time to prep my food and number two, sit down and eat my food. When I'm pushing and working and hustling so hard, I used to say to myself, you don't have time to sit down and eat that. What can you eat fast? Like you don't have time to sit down and eat a whole plate of salad or vegetables or whatever. Like that's gonna take too long. Now I'm like, that thinking is so wrong. At the core of everything, along with sleep and exercise, but nutrition is number one in taking care of yourself. So that's a huge shift, which for some people might seem like obvious, but for me wasn't. It's not just the actual logistics of that. It's the psychological switch that comes with food's important and you need to make the time to prep it and eat it in whatever way it looks like for you. So that's number one. Number two is I've always loved to move into exercise. And having this time off, I guess enforced time, has been also such a gift because I can exercise whenever I want. Once I was more fully recovered out of the crisis stage of my diagnosis and I learned how to manage exercise, I'm still learning how to manage my blood sugar with exercise because that's a whole other story. But I'm so grateful to be able to have the time to go and go for a walk. I have an amazing gym close by that has fantastic classes. I'm also a yoga instructor. So I'm not teaching yoga right now, but I have access to great yoga instructors. Like I'm so blessed to have that. That does a huge amount for my mental wellness as well. And then I also have people like you and other people in my corner. All of the things that we said earlier, all of the things I've learned from you. Like I use devices that you've helped me with, the BrainTap, which is creative visualization and relaxation program with a device, pranayama, breathing, breath work helps a lot. Meditating, talk therapy. In the beginning, when I was diagnosed, I did go for group therapy. I was highly resistant because I didn't think that I should be there. I was like, I do not belong here. And I was the poster child for that group, you know, and I got so much out of it. And mostly I think the biggest thing is in a setting like that, you realize there's so many other people who struggle with different things, but we're so alike in the things that we struggle with, but we struggle alone and we don't need to. So it's been like a very multi-pronged approach to taking care of myself. And I still don't have it all figured out. I still struggle with some of these things, like a lot of these things, like the anxiety and the depression. The differences I have an awareness of those thoughts coming in. The differences I have, a toolbox of things to help me. There's nothing wrong with a traditional medical approach, but you have so much more success when you have a variety of tools, a variety of approaches, different modalities to help you.

SPEAKER_00 25:06

And I think the really important thing is it's like the test to all of it is like when something does happen, because I always say, like, we're meant to be stressed as human beings. Our body is to go into fight or flight. We're meant to be stressed, but we're also meant to know to go back into that rest and restoration, which so many of us have really pushed that barometer so far that we don't even know how to come back anymore. But the true test, you face something else that was stressful after that. And how did you deal with that? And you don't even have to go into detail about it, but walk people through a little bit about how the awareness came from the previous stuff that you had been through and knowing everything that you know about your blood sugar, knowing everything that you know about your health, be knowing everything you know about how your mind really does affect your body, knowing everything that you know about the energetics of you. How did you kind of work through that?

SPEAKER_01 26:01

I have some more health struggles and issues to go through relating to my thyroid. At present, I'm waiting for results of tests. Old me prior to all of this, would have not been able to handle the ambiguity and the feeling of being in limbo and not knowing what my diagnosis is going to be. But the awarenesses that I've gained, the help that I've had, have taught me to put things in their appropriate boxes or levels of importance. It's not that whatever's gonna happen isn't important. It's not that I'm not assuming that I'm gonna be fine. But I kind of am assuming I'm gonna be fine. I'm assuming that whatever happens, I'm gonna manage it and deal with it. And I couldn't get to that point before. Before I could only see you're well or you're dying.

SPEAKER_02 26:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

You know. Now I see no. And going immediately into a spiral of being afraid and not living contributes more to your general health and your general outcomes. The things that I've learned aren't just lip service. Like I try to apply them, I try to use different techniques, whether it's CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, or whether it's somatic releases through yoga, through pranayama, through brain tap. And sometimes I just watch like really dumb shows that make me laugh, like, because that's what I want. And I do the things that bring me joy. Like I'm a creative person. I am working on my interior design designation. I guess it's a distraction, but it's not a distraction. It's like, no, life is still going on. You don't have to go to the place of worrying about what's going to be your future and this potential diagnosis that's coming up.

SPEAKER_00 27:55

I think it's really interesting because you really face death in order to gain life. That's one of the things that so many people don't do is that we don't savor the moment because we take for granted that tomorrow's gonna be here. And then when we're not able to face that reality or we're in a fork in the road where it shows us different, you know, most people I always say don't change until they have to change. Again, I will say, like the body will give you signs, and if you don't listen, it's gonna make you listen. And unfortunately, you know, that was what happened to you, and that's what happens to so many of us, myself included. But it also enabled me to come out on the other side and say, if I can do this, so can you.

SPEAKER_01 28:36

Yeah. And there is another side to come out of. I really feel like, and I've been having this feeling so much recently in the last week of this is it, this is your one life. So, what experiences do you want to have? How do you want to experience this? Knowing that you can't control everything. So, what can you control?

SPEAKER_00 28:55

So I want to catapult you into like you as an interior designer starting. How are you gonna set up your life? How are you gonna set up everything around yourself to support yourself this time around?

SPEAKER_01 29:09

Such an interesting question. Because as I'm going through these courses, I'm on a part of my course which is focusing on the technical aspects and business aspects of it. I found myself avoiding, not to a great degree, but kind of avoiding doing certain things or pushing myself to do certain things and not wanting to. And I was like, the old me would have just had the anxiety and just kept going, or had the anxiety and said negative things to myself. But the new me is like, huh, there's that pattern again where you are afraid of being successful. There's that pattern coming up again of you putting obstacles in your own way. You can do this, and you can do this on your terms, not to the point where you become ill or burnt out or endanger your health. You can do this on your terms. It's the awareness in the ship. So as I build this, this will be as long as it's aligned with my best interest and my family's best interest and my health, my time, my energy, which doesn't mean I don't want to give it my all, but it's not from a place of scarcity because that's what we push and we get into that.

SPEAKER_00 30:24

So we are higher achievers because we have been taught that that is the way to get things done. You and I have very similar backgrounds where we've been told that we're lazy if we're not doing things, even if we're tired. Like the belief system is there's always something to do. So don't let anyone see you not doing something. But that becomes an anthem for our life. And then when we try to slow it down, it feels like hard. We feel guilty. We feel like there's no reason why we should stop doing things, no matter how exhausted we are or what health issue we have going on. You had a respiratory infection and yet you're still at school. And that's because it's that responsible feeling that we have. This is my job. I'm responsible to my work, I'm responsible to my family. So all those things. So what's really interesting and what's coming up is even though we have all those narratives, there's a time and a place where we can actually sit down, just like you did, and actually recognize wow, this is a belief system that I have, but it's not my belief system. It's something I, you know, inherited. So is it in alignment with the future that I want or is it not? And then if it's not, then what is a belief system that's in an alignment with what I'm creating for myself? And that's exactly what you did.

SPEAKER_01 31:42

Yeah. Coming to that point of understanding our awareness. You've taken a lot. This is three years into this healing process of examining the things I think and the things I say to myself and go, wait a minute, is that actually true? Will you need to kill yourself to justify spending the money taking this course? No, no. So good.

SPEAKER_00 32:02

Well, I am so grateful that you came on today. And I know there are so many women that can learn from your story, not just about your experience, but more so about what are we doing to ourselves to create that success? And you literally said, I know that if I wasn't always productive, that I wasn't successful. And so really changing that narrative around. So, what would be a piece of advice that you would give another woman? So it could be an entrepreneur, it could be a mother. What would a piece of advice be that you would give them now that you have that hindsight to really help them move forward in their life?

SPEAKER_01 32:39

I don't know if this is profound enough, but you have to check in with yourself. It is profound. You have to really see where you're at, not just physically, because your body's gonna smash that through when you don't pay attention. Well before it gets to the physical, you have to start saying to yourself, Am I happy? Am I too tired? Am I burnt out? Because intrinsically we know what we need and want. We just don't give it to ourselves. You have to look at yourself first and you have to say, wait a minute, is this how I want to live my one precious life? Is everything serving me? And oftentimes most things are good in our lives. Doesn't mean you need a gigantic change, but we need to start living for ourselves. I mean, just because we're women, it doesn't mean that our whole life is about sacrifice and burnout and abandonment of ourselves. You have to see how you are doing. And we're not encouraged to do that. You know, we're encouraged to put everybody else first. And I know women know this. I know women know this, but I just feel now that since I've been through these health issues and various things over these years, I was like, wow, you were just living on autopilot, not even on autopilot. You were just so insulated from everything, from your feelings, from your body and everything. And disconnected. Disconnected. Yeah. You have to get into yourself. And I don't know what that takes for some people. I think that's the biggest thing. You know what you want. You know inside what you need, whether it's rest, whether it's stimulation, whether it's company, whether it's love, whether it's whatever it is. You just aren't willing to go there and say, I can give myself that. Yeah, or I can start working towards that.

SPEAKER_00 34:24

And I think that's so important because we're all taught to really think with our heads. And it's really about tapping into your heart and asking yourself, what do you really need? Because that is where the answer is. And that's how we come back into our body because our analytical mind is really all that monkey brain, right? So it's tapping into that. Your story is going to be so inspirational for so many women. So I'm so grateful for you, Sharon. And I'm so proud of how far you've come and how you continue to defeat the odds. I'm just so proud of you.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

Well, Rabina, it's a pleasure. And I have you to thank for a lot of my progress and success. I'll say it on here.

SPEAKER_00 35:03

It was all you. All right. Well, thank you guys for joining us for this episode of the Regulated CEO. I hope you enjoyed it, and we will see you next time.