Does the cost of personal investment deter you from reaching out for the help you need? Kendra, a former client, was once in your same shoes. Struggling with postpartum depression and navigating the complex dynamics of her stepfamily, she reached out for coaching despite her initial skepticism and concerns about the fees. Kendra's candid revelations about her journey offer insight into the profound impact and value of coaching, making it a session worth needing a front-row seat!
Overcoming postpartum depression and the trials of step parenting, Kendra shares how coaching equipped her with practical tools and actionable insights. From turning negative thoughts into positive outcomes to strengthening her resilience, she paints a promising picture of how thought work can be a catalyst for improved mood and riding joy in motherhood, even step-mothering! She further emphasizes how the benefits of coaching radiated beyond herself, as reflected in her husband's coaching transformation as well.
Registration is now open for "HER NEXT STEP" TM . My brand new FREE course all about managing depression beyond medication and therapy ( so you can finally fall in love with motherhood! )
REGISTER HERE NOW!
interested in SHIFT? Want a free call with EMYLEE? Grab a spot for a free call here
Find more information and Free resources HERE:
https://hernextstep.limitlessfemalecoaching.com/landing-page-her-next-step
Have a question about the program or something you want answered on the podcast? Come chat with me on instagram!
@Limitlessfemale
Does the cost of personal investment deter you from reaching out for the help you need? Kendra, a former client, was once in your same shoes. Struggling with postpartum depression and navigating the complex dynamics of her stepfamily, she reached out for coaching despite her initial skepticism and concerns about the fees. Kendra's candid revelations about her journey offer insight into the profound impact and value of coaching, making it a session worth needing a front-row seat!
Overcoming postpartum depression and the trials of step parenting, Kendra shares how coaching equipped her with practical tools and actionable insights. From turning negative thoughts into positive outcomes to strengthening her resilience, she paints a promising picture of how thought work can be a catalyst for improved mood and riding joy in motherhood, even step-mothering! She further emphasizes how the benefits of coaching radiated beyond herself, as reflected in her husband's coaching transformation as well.
Registration is now open for "HER NEXT STEP" TM . My brand new FREE course all about managing depression beyond medication and therapy ( so you can finally fall in love with motherhood! )
REGISTER HERE NOW!
interested in SHIFT? Want a free call with EMYLEE? Grab a spot for a free call here
Find more information and Free resources HERE:
https://hernextstep.limitlessfemalecoaching.com/landing-page-her-next-step
Have a question about the program or something you want answered on the podcast? Come chat with me on instagram!
@Limitlessfemale
Hi, I'm Emily with the Limitless Female podcast. You were listening to episode 116, a testimonial step parenting and postpartum depression. Woman welcome. If you're a mama who is feeling all the feels of motherhood the ups and downs of hormones and maybe even depression then you are in the right place. Limitless Female is your confident inner voice, helping you master your mood and create the epic life that calls you. My goal is to show you just how enough you are, so you can show up limitless in your own life. Let's get started. Hey everybody, Welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited to have you guys here today. So fun hanging out with you Today.
Speaker 1:I am really pleased to bring you a conversation I had with one of my previous clients who just kept coming back and then I got to coach her husband and so I got to sit down with her and hear kind of some of her wins, how her life has changed because of coaching. It was really interesting to hear, like what pushed her over the edge, why she finally made the decision and how quickly she felt comfortable that she had made the right decision for her and what led her up to coaching, because she had done other things before that that had helped some that she had just needed this next step beyond that, and that's what she found in coaching with me. I love Kendra because she is so vulnerable. She came to me kind of skeptical, but also very open and willing to share what was on her mind. And sometimes I wonder if I'm tougher than I think I've heard many people say. Emily doesn't sugarcoat things, she tells you how it is. I'm like, am I intense? I mean, I feel like I'm just, you know, a squishy teddy bear. Maybe I'm not. Anyways, I'm really excited for you guys to hear this conversation. It's a short testimonial, but it's really Kendra's experience, how she changed and I'm sure that a lot of you will relate to her experience coming out of postpartum depression but not being able to really escape it, the whole that had on her after having a baby and then pairing that with being a step parent, which is a whole another challenge in it of itself. I'm really glad that she was willing to share this with you guys so that you can also see yourself in her story, which is just the most connective thing we have. Right, we can feel empathy and compassion for ourselves.
Speaker 1:So, without further ado, here is my conversation with Kendra about her coaching experience. Okay, I have Kendra here with me. Kendra was one of my clients for actually a pretty long time. We coached together for maybe I want to say 18 months, maybe At least yeah, at least yeah. And then I got to coach your husband, which was really neat. So I thought you'd be a great person to have on here to kind of help people see if we can help people relate to you a little bit. I'm sure a lot of people can relate to you. So tell everybody a little bit about yourself. Maybe they can see themselves in you.
Speaker 2:Okay, so, um, well, I guess this story starts when I got remarried and me and my husband we've been married for nine years but we um, it's like his mind and our family. He had two teenagers when we got married, and, and then a younger boy I had one, so we had four together and I, um, my, my job was forcing me to go full time, so I quit my job so I could, so we could take care of these kids. Now, that's, I went from one to four and then we had um, we had one more, so we added, so then we had a total of five and um, so then I had new baby. We had just tons of bad situations with the step kids and their mom, and it was just really, really hard and really difficult. And so after I had the baby, um, there there were some big incidents that happened, um and I had the baby, and then just, you know, like postpartum depression, but then it just didn't leave and I tried a whole bunch of different things.
Speaker 2:I've tried, you know, medication and and hormone replacement and and counseling and the whole bunch of different things and, um, you know they they helped a little bit, um, with coaching I, or not coaching, with. With counseling, I would get really frustrated because I would go and just vent for an hour and then it felt good to vent, but I really didn't feel like I got any like anything concrete like this is going to help me, you know, and I'm like I can go pay for, or I mean I can just go vent to a friend for free. Why am I, why am I taking this time of spending this money for counseling? Um, because it was just wasn't. I mean, it's not that it wasn't working at all, it just wasn't doing what I wanted it to.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, you were looking for attraction and moving forward and tools, and it was providing you one thing, but you wanted something else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, um yeah.
Speaker 1:And I. You found me on Google, right.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, facebook actually just just searching out depression groups. Um, you know, I, I, I thought that I needed like a step family specific counselor. Um, but what I found with your coaching is that it didn't really matter. In counseling that does, but in coaching it didn't really matter because everything that I learned um could be in any, any part of my life. I could use it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So, even though I wasn't like we weren't coach well, we weren't coaching narrowly on your situations, but the the tools I was giving you you were able to use in any situation.
Speaker 2:For sure, yeah, I used it in my marriage, I used it with um, my step family, I used it with my kids, with my and with depression also.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, that's amazing. So tell me what intrigued you about coaching before you had been coached? Why did you keep looking into it after you had, you know, learned about coaching?
Speaker 2:I stalked you for quite a while.
Speaker 1:I didn't know this. What's a while I?
Speaker 2:don't remember, I don't remember Probably at least a few months, um, uh, but you know it, it's not covered by insurance, so that was a big hold back. But, um, what I, what I learned about that was it was totally worth the investment and I ended up going back to multiple times because it was worth it, even even during COVID, when you know, my husband lost his job and that was really hard and we're like, well, we don't have the money, we can't afford it, but then again, we can't afford not to.
Speaker 1:Why do you say that? Why can't you afford not to?
Speaker 2:Uh, just like emotionally, like we were going down, just like, uh, the spiraling down, you know, and so we weren't going to be able to move forward through this because we were just so, just emotionally, not, not there. That makes sense. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I've been. A lot of people are like, yes, amen, sister, like they feel exactly the same way as you do. So, yes, that totally makes sense. So tell me then, what? What puts you guys over the edge at the beginning, before you coached with me, and you were like it's expensive, it's not covered by insurance, why did you guys decide to try it?
Speaker 2:probably desperation.
Speaker 1:Yes, Okay. How long do you think it took you to be like okay, yeah, that was the right choice.
Speaker 2:Oh, probably instantly, because I came away like I didn't cry in your sessions, I didn't have to bring the tissues, which was nice, and I heard what I needed to hear. Emily doesn't sugarcoat things. She tells me what you need to hear and she's not afraid to tell you that, and so that's good and just giving me homework and things that I could actually use in my toolbox in life. Like you know, it took me a while to learn, because, just because it takes a while, yes, and we're still learning, but I have noticed that, you know, the more that I coached with you and the more that I learned this, the more I'm able to do it on my own.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's the goal. Right, like I always wanted you to like graduate from coaching, I wanted you to have the tools to do it on your own. You know and people, you know. I still have a coach, so it's okay to have a coach forever. But also, you know, I want I'm not always there and I want you to have the tools to you know, have a difficult conversation, you know, and not have to wait for a coaching session, which hopefully that's what you got from coaching with me.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and that's another difference between a counselor too is like if I really needed you, you were just a text away like what do I do in this situation? And that was awesome. An example of how it implemented in my life in a big way. My stepdaughter got married last summer and she went through the temple with her husband and her future mother-in-law asked to be her escort and my first thought was I've been in her life longer, you know. I deserve to have this experience with her.
Speaker 2:I deserve to be there and do this with her. And you know, I kind of caught myself and wait, I can spiral in these thoughts. So then how do I want to feel today, how do I want to experience today, and you know, and then I was like okay. So then my thoughts changed to how great it is she has a mother-in-law that wants to do this and how great, you know, she has another good example in her life. And if I couldn't have the relationship I wanted with my stepdaughter, maybe she can have that relationship with her future mother-in-law. And so it totally like changed the whole feeling and I was just grateful to be there with her in the session and sit by her. And you know, it was just a really sweet experience and it could have I could have totally ruined that with my thoughts.
Speaker 1:Like ruined your own experience of it. Yeah, I like chills because I feel like that those particular thoughts did not come to my mind, of like how grateful it is, like how amazing that she has a mother-in-law that loves the temple, that loves her, that wants to be in her life, like those are hard thoughts to find in a situation like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I definitely wouldn't have gone that direction if I hadn't gone through the coaching.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but like what an amazing. You really created such a cool result for yourself because, instead of distancing yourself from her, you were able to draw closer to her because you were in the temple, you were loving her, you were loving the experience like I'm just super impressed. What a neat experience. I'm like a proud mama right now. Awesome. Okay, so we'll finish up, but just tell me any other results, just things that changed for you, things you noticed are different about you, things that changed in your life as a result of coaching.
Speaker 2:Well, it's not like I don't have depression or you know hard times or get frustrated, but it's not that I'm like down in bed and can't do anything. My cycle was in bed for a day and all I could do was play games on my phone. That's all I could do, you know. I mean like and just like, make sure the kids were fed. And then second day, you know, maybe I turn on a podcast or something and a lot of hiding in the closet. That doesn't happen anymore, you know. I just you know I get down, but I'm able to work through it so much faster.
Speaker 1:Which is the goal, because, even though I like to think that, yes, I can heal my depression, I like that because I like that thought right, but the truth is, whether it's depression or something else, we're all going to have things that keep popping up and making, you know, life feels very hard, but the goal, I think, is to lean into that so we can get through it quicker, you know, so we can just feel horrible for an hour, so that we can then be like okay, like back at it. I think that's the goal, and not really to erase all the negative emotion, but to be able to. I hope that you can see, hopefully, that this conversation helped you remember how far you've come. That would be, like my favorite thing about doing this is that you would see how far you've come, because really that's incredible, it's a huge change for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. Yeah, definitely. We've still got chaos. It's always chaos and I'm always just surviving, but yeah, I feel the same way.
Speaker 1:A lot of people. They knew me. They'd be like wait, you want to help me because my life is crazy also. But the calm is in here, right, like it looks crazy on you, but there's a little bit of calm inside of me. So the last question I want to ask you is your husband got coaching from me. What results did you see from him from, like, a wife's perspective? Or like even what results changed for you with him learning the tools?
Speaker 2:He was definitely more Definitely like it was really nice for me because he understood where I was coming from, so that was really nice. And I mean he had more of a situational depression and so that was really scary but he, you know, he was able to pull out of it.
Speaker 1:And I have to add that I think it was like a full force, it wasn't just me. We had lots of people coming from all angles to help you spend, which I thought was really cool, and that's why I've never like really put down any other kind of um. That's what I'm looking for. Profession Right. Sometimes it's like let's come from all angles and I have a lot of clients that I'm like make sure you're seeing your family practice doctor or you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he had a counselor that was amazing, and he also had a psychiatrist and you, so he learned lots of tools from all of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I love it. Thank you so much for sharing. You're amazing. I'm so proud of you. It was so fun to connect and we'll talk soon, for sure.
Speaker 2:Okay, thank you, emily, my chair.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, isn't she awesome. I love her. If you guys related to Kendra at all, or looking for your next step to heal your depression, you've got to scroll below and click on my new free mini course, her next step, where I talk all about the tools I use to manage my depression, beyond what medication and therapy alone offered me. All right, you guys will talk soon. Bye, bye.
Speaker 1:If you have questions about anything you've learned here on the podcast or want to help with something going on in your own life, hop on a free coaching call with me. In just 30 minutes you'll have real tools for your unique situation. Go to limitlessfemalecoachingcom, forward slash workwithme, or you can find a link in the show notes below. Spots are limited, so grab one before you miss it. You, you, you, you. Okay, I have Kendra here with me. Kendra was one of my clients for actually a pretty long time. We coach together for maybe I want to say 18 months, maybe At least, yeah, least, yeah, and then I got to coach your husband, which was really neat. So I thought you'd be a great person to have on here to kind of help people. See if we can help people relate to you a little bit, I'm sure a lot of people can relate to you. So tell everybody a little bit about yourself. Maybe they can see themselves in you.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, I guess this story starts when I got remarried and me and my husband we've been married for nine years but we it's his mind and our family. He had two teenagers when we got married and and then a younger boy I had one, so we had four together and I my job was forcing me to go full time, so I quit my job so I could, so we could take care of these kids. Now I went from one to four and then we had one more, so then we had a total of five. So then I had new baby. We had just tons of bad situations with the step kids and their mom and it was just really really hard and really difficult. And so after I had the baby there were some big incidences that happened and I had the baby and then just like postpartum depression, but then it just didn't leave and I tried a whole bunch of different things.
Speaker 2:I've tried medication and hormone replacement and counseling and the whole bunch of different things and they helped a little bit. With coaching I or not coaching. With counseling I would get really frustrated because I would go and just vent for an hour and then it felt good to vent but I really didn't feel like I got anything concrete like this is gonna help me and I'm like I can go pay for or I mean I can just go vent to a friend for free. Why am I taking this time of spending this money for counseling? Cause it was just wasn't. I mean, it's not that it wasn't working at all, it just wasn't doing what I wanted it to.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, you were looking for attraction and moving forward and tools, and it was providing you one thing, but you wanted something else.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, yeah, and you found me on Google, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have Facebook actually and just searching out depression groups. You know I thought that I needed like a step family specific counselor, but what I found with your coaching is that it didn't really matter. In counseling it does, but in coaching it didn't really matter because everything that I learned could be in any part of my life. I could use it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So, even though I wasn't like we weren't coaching well, we weren't coaching narrowly on your situations, but the tools I was giving you you were able to use in any situation.
Speaker 2:For sure. Yeah, I used it in my marriage, I used it with my step family, I used it with my kids, with my and with depression also.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, that's amazing. So tell me what intrigued you about coaching before you had been coached. Why did you keep looking into it after you had learned about coaching?
Speaker 2:I stalked you for quite a while.
Speaker 1:I didn't know this. What's a while I love you.
Speaker 2:I don't remember, probably at least a few months, but you know it's not covered by insurance, so that was a big hold back. But what I learned about that was it was totally worth the investment and I ended up going back to multiple times Because it was worth it, even during COVID, when you know my husband lost his job and that was really hard and we're like, well, we don't have the money, we can't afford it, but then again we can't afford not to why do you say that.
Speaker 1:Why can't you afford not to?
Speaker 2:Just like emotionally, like we were going through the same thing and we weren't going down, just like a the spiraling down, you know, and so we weren't going to be able to move forward through this because we were just so, just emotionally, not not there. That makes sense. Yeah, of course.
Speaker 1:I've been. A lot of people are like, yes, amen, sister, like they feel exactly the same way as you do and they're like, oh yes, that totally makes sense. So tell me then what? What puts you guys over the edge at the beginning, before you approached with me and you were like it's expensive, it's not covered by insurance, why did you guys decide?
Speaker 2:to try it. Probably desperation.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah. Do you think it took you to be like okay, yeah, I'm not sure if I was the right choice.
Speaker 2:Oh, probably instantly, because I came away like I didn't cry in your sessions. I you know I didn't have to bring the tissues, which was nice, and I heard what I needed to hear. Emily doesn't sugarcoat things. She tells me what you need to hear and she's not afraid to tell you that, and so that's good and, you know, just giving me homework and things that I could actually use in my toolbox in life. Like you know, it took me a while to learn, because, just because it takes a while and we're still learning, but I have noticed that, you know, the more that I coached with you and the more that I learned this, the more I'm able to do it on my own.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's the goal. Right, like I always wanted you to like graduate from coaching, I wanted you to have the tools to do it on your own. You know and people you know. I still have a coach, so it's okay to have a coach forever. But also, you know, I want I'm not always there and I want you to have the tools to you know, have a difficult conversation, you know, and not have to wait for a coaching session, which hopefully that's what you got from coaching with me.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and that's another difference between a counselor too is like if I really needed you, you were just a text away like what do I do in this situation? And that was awesome, an example of how it implemented in my life in a big way. My stepdaughter got married last summer and she went through the temple with her husband and her future mother-in-law asked to be her escort and my first thought was I've been in her life longer. You know, I deserve to have this experience with her, I deserve to be there and do this with her. And you know, I kind of caught myself and way I can spiral in these thoughts.
Speaker 2:So then how do I want to feel today, how do I want to experience today? And you know, and then I was like, okay, so then my thoughts changed to how great it is she has a mother-in-law that wants to do this and how great, you know, she has another good example in her life. And if I couldn't have the relationship I wanted with my stepdaughter, maybe she can have that relationship with with her future mother-in-law. And so it totally like changed the whole feeling and I was just grateful to be there with her in the session and sit by her. And you know it was just a really sweet experience and it could have I could have totally ruined that with with my thoughts.
Speaker 1:Like your own experience of it. Yeah, I like chills because I feel like that those particular thoughts did not come to my mind of like how grateful it is, like how amazing that she has a mother-in-law that loves the temple, that loves her, that wants to be in her life. Like those are hard thoughts to find in a situation like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I definitely wouldn't have gone that direction if I hadn't gone through the coaching.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah. But like what an amazing. You really created such a cool result for yourself because, instead of distancing yourself from her, you were able to draw closer to her because you were in the temple, you were loving her, you were loving the experience. Like I'm just super impressed, what a neat experience, like a proud mama right now I'm really proud of her, awesome. Okay, so we'll finish up, but just tell me any other results, just things that changed for you, things you noticed are different about you. What is it changed in your life as a result of coaching?
Speaker 2:Well, it's not like I don't have depression or you know hard times or get frustrated, but it's not that I'm like down in bed and can't do anything. My cycle was in bed for a day and all I could do was play games on my phone. That's all I could do, you know. I mean like and just like, make sure the kids were fed. And then second day, you know, maybe I'd turn on a podcast or something and a lot of hiding in the closet. That doesn't happen anymore, you know. I just you know I get down, but I'm able to work through it so much faster.
Speaker 1:Which is the goal, because, even though I like to think that, yes, I can heal my depression, I like that because I like that thought right, but the truth is, whether it's depression or something else, we're all going to have things that keep popping up and making, you know, life feels very hard, but the goal, I think, is to lean into that so we can get through it quicker, you know, so we can just feel horrible for an hour, so that we can then be like okay, like back at it. I think that's the goal, and not really to erase all the negative emotion, but to be able I hope that you can see, hopefully, that this conversation helped you remember how far you've come. That would be, like my favorite thing about doing this is that you would see how far you've come, because really that's incredible, it's a huge change for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. Yeah, definitely, we still got chaos. It's always chaos and I'm always just surviving, but yeah.
Speaker 1:I feel the same way. People. If they knew me, they'd be like wait, you want to help me because my life is crazy also, but the calm is in here, right, Like it looks crazy on you, but there's a little bit of calm inside of me. So the last question I want to ask you is your husband got coaching from me. What results did you see from him from, like, a wife's perspective? Or like even what results changed for you with him learning the tools?
Speaker 2:He was definitely, more definitely like it was really nice for me because he understood where I was coming from. So that was really nice. And I mean he had more of a situational depression and so that was really scary, but he was able to pull out of it.
Speaker 1:And I have to add that I think it was like a full force. It wasn't just me. We had lots of people coming from all angles to help your husband, which I thought was really cool, and that's why I never like really put down any other kind of um. That's what I'm looking for. Profession Right. Sometimes it's like let's come from all angles and I have a lot of clients that I'm like make sure you're seeing your family practice doctor or yeah, he had a counselor that was amazing and he also had a psychiatrist and you, so he learned lots of tools from all of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it. Thank you so much for sharing. You're amazing. I'm so proud of you. It was so fun to connect and we'll talk soon, for sure.
Speaker 2:Okay, thank you, emily, my chair oh.
Speaker 1:Great, all right Bye.