Everything at Once

Some mornings you wake up feeling like you're on another level of alive. Some mornings the ceiling feels low. Often both happen before lunch.

This episode isn't a sad one. It's a disorienting one, because the fear and the euphoria aren't taking turns...they're simultaneous. That's the vertigo. And it turns out the vertigo is where the interesting stuff lives.

Episode five is about what it actually feels like to be at the beginning of something real. The specific joys that have surprised you. The pattern you've noticed between belief and fear. The people who've gone quiet, and the ones who show up differently than you expected. The grief that's still there...just not the loudest thing anymore.

Everything at once. Mid-air.

I want to hear from you. The highs and the lows and the bizarre thing that made you inexplicably happy this week. Find me on Instagram @shejumpedanyway or send an email to shejumpedanyway@gmail.com. With your permission, I'd love to bring your voice into this show. Because this was never meant to be just my story. And this podcast was never meant to be just mine...I made it for you.

She Jumped Anyway is a podcast for all women in all the ways women exist - however you came to yourself. If you've ever stood at the edge of a life that no longer fits, this is for you. New episodes weekly. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and wherever you listen.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Before we begin, I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands in which this podcast is created and shared. I pay my respects to elders, past and present, and I recognize the enduring strength, wisdom, and resilience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. May we come together today and listen with curiosity, courage, and with deep respect as we share stories with one another. Something something landed last week and that made me feel genuinely and embarrassingly good about my life right now. And I've decided today I'm leading with that because if I don't, if I wait until more of the fear settles, that's not giving the full picture. And that's just a different kind of editing. Hi, I'm Belinda Hendrickson. This is episode five of She Jumped Anyway. And you know, even as I'm I'm thinking about the last couple of weeks, not only do I feel like I could cry, um, because I can I can already feel that coming and my voice is changing, but I've got goosebumps, right? Um there is something just so uh incredible about having total autonomy over your calendar. Being able to choose uh the choose your own professional development and what what opportunities you want to go after. You know, I've been attending different webinars uh over the last couple weeks, and so many of those have just left me feeling so phenomenally inspired. It's taken me into directions that I didn't even imagine. You know, because I've said before and keep in mind these are happy tears, okay? Like this this is this is my joy. Yes, I'm a crier, happy or sad. I I had no idea when I made this decision to jump. I had no idea, honestly, other than I knew that I loved my job and I knew that I needed to register a business, but I didn't actually know what it was that I was going to do. And I think that's probably one of the most phenomenally exciting things to have come out of this is just to see how my path is coming to be. And I'm just the gratitude that I have for that is not something that I can easily describe, it's just such a a phenomenal place to be in. Yeah, I feel like I'm leaning into some of my own experiences personally and professionally, and just using that as my inspiration, and I love making decisions that are so aligned with who I am, what my values are, what I stand for, and most of all my integrity. Uh, it just that is a that is a different place to to live from when you are aligned with what you're doing. You know, I've spoken so much about having my identity wrapped up in uh being in the service of others, and uh, and or my worth is wrapped up in being in the service of others, and and then my identity, you know, sort of getting so immeshed in my work, in my professional life. And I'm still navigating that. I'm still trying to understand where I sit and what is what is healthy, uh, what is yeah, I'm I'm still trying to find that balance. I think for me at the moment, I'm so excited to work. I I don't I I want to work every second of the day. I feel so excited by what I'm doing. You know, and I say that today, right? Like because I'm having a great day, I'm having a good day. Um, today's day 18, I think, in the scheme of things. I it would be remiss of me to not talk about, you know, my bad days, and I am still having plenty of those, and I feel like I oscillate between the two uh rapidly, and the one thing that often takes me away from believing in where I am and in what I'm doing and in who I am, even is that's where the tension comes in. The second I stop believing, the second I start questioning, that's where it gets it gets really uncomfortable You know, there are days where I have to really sit in that space and I have to Yeah, literally just hold on Some days it's it's some days it's really rough and then other days it's me tripping moon beams across the lounge room You know it's funny uh I've talked about the relationships across the episodes, you know, those that sort of come and they go, and and the ones that you don't expect to go go, and the ones that you expected, you know, would fall away remain. And that's something that that's something that I didn't anticipate either. Like I I may have gone into this sort of almost thinking of what it would look like, and one of the previous episodes I spoke about how I removed myself from my social circles as a more of a wisdom of what I had learnt from my first jump, and I've been reflecting on that for the last little while and just thinking while that is absolutely accurate, I am also mindful that what I tend to do when I'm struggling to process things is that I will go within and I remove myself regardless, uh, and I'm I don't typically ask for help. I fear I I have a I have a fear of being a burden. I think because I do genuinely like to look at life quite positively, I worry about imposing my negative thoughts on other people. And I have certainly felt like in this, you know, in this instance with this jump, that the more I spoke about what was going on for me and how I was feeling, I couldn't resolve it with the people that I was sharing that information with. And whether that was because they were too close to the work side of things, or they were too close to me personally, I think was what made it really difficult for me to move out of that space or move beyond that mindset. So while I actually I stand by the fact that you know, removing myself from those social circles was a good thing, or it was something that I needed just to do for that time. I still really needed a community, I needed people. You know, I'm I can already see that in the 18 days since this jump I'm I'm not I'm not the same person. You know, some days it's a feeling of absolute fear other days it's the best thing that's ever happened to me. Both are so part of where I am right now, part of this process. I think, you know, a bit of what I was talking about at the beginning. I have these disproportionate uh feelings of freedom. There was one day, you know, because it it really is breaking that um the routine, that pattern that was so ingrained in us, you know, the Monday to Friday. I'd uh I'd worked over the weekend. This is sort of back towards the beginning of this jump. I'd been working over the weekend and I was pretty tired. And I said to my husband, I'm gonna have to take tomorrow off because I'm exhausted, and tomorrow being Monday. And I remember I, you know, I got up and I had a shower and I did my makeup, I did all the normal things that I would typically do for a work day, even though I had told myself I was having the day off. And because I think it's yeah, finding finding how does this actually work? How does this work? Because I'm making a decision here that isn't typically one that I I get to make, unless of course I'm putting in leave. I took the day off, and then I thought, you know what? I think I'm I'm I'm gonna edit a podcast. And I think that was the very first podcast that I I edited for this series, and I remember just thinking, this is wild. I I just have this freedom to decide what I do and when I do it. Um I still trying to wrap my mind around that. You know this process is really about holding all of it all at once. You've got the grieving aspect and feeling exhilarated, feeling absolutely terrified, and then feeling so unbelievably capable. I feel really clear on the why I'm here. I'm still feeling a little murky on the how, but I'm doing it anyway. And my story, this story, it's not a sad story. It's a brave one, yes, absolutely. It's a brave one. And on my good days, it is genuinely some of the funnest time I've ever had in my life. Up until now I have been the only voice, and that has been deliberate. But I really want that to change for the next episode. Not because I think others will have the answers, but because I know that there are women out there because I've spoken to you. There are others out there and they're in the air right now too. So I invite you to share your highs and your lows and all of the bizarre things that have made you inexplicitly happy. Now you can drop me a message on Instagram. I would really love to hear from you, and I would love to bring your stories to life. This podcast was never meant to be just about me. This podcast was never just meant to be just mine. This podcast is for you. I'm B. And this is She Jumped Anyway.