The Best and Worst Day of My Life

I am going to finally talk about this. I'm going to talk about one of the best and worst days of my life. So most of you know that I have a background as a therapist. And as a therapist I found myself to go back a little bit farther. I decided that I wanted to get my master's degree in counseling. And that was because I used to be an emt. And I dropped somebody off at the emergency room and I was kind of a part of the worst day of their lives. And then all of a sudden there was just nothing. I never knew the outcome. And so I figured as a therapist, at least I could help individuals with whatever it was after they got out of the hospital. Now I'm not quite sure if those two things completely and totally translate. There's Guinness for all of you who are like, where's the most beautiful part of this partnership? But to fast forward into. After I got my master's degree, I decided that the most impact that I could make being in Tucson was that I would work with Child Protective Services. Now at the time we didn't have any children. I was married to Steve and. But we didn't have any kids of our own. And when, at least at the time when I was working in Child Protective Services, what would happen is you would get a phone call and it could be. You had it on call phone. So it could be anytime that I. Any pretty much anywhere from the border of Mexico all the way up to depending on resources. We would even go above Phoenix sometimes and take custody of the child and then take the child to either a group home or a foster home and then go to the court and get a temporary order of custody, etc. Etc. Etc. A bunch of boring details. Now the non boring details is that I was in the process of. It was 2 o' clock in the morning, 2:30 when I got this call. I went to a motto Amato, Arizona and picked up this little boy from a house that his mom was using drugs and his dad was part of a gang. And I had this little boy in the back of my car and I was supposed to take him to a group home. And the sun was just coming up. And I want you to imagine there's two freeways. You don't have to imagine it. There were two freeways. But since you weren't there, imagine this with me. So there's two freeways and one goes to your house and one goes to the group home. Now this is something that I had done over probably close to a hundred times to be Honest with you. And so it's not like this was my first time doing it. It's not like it was my 25th time doing it. But I can tell you, as a human, it doesn't get any easier. Something in my head snapped, and I remember it like four something in the morning after doing all this driving and going and getting this kid and seeing the environment that he was in. And I'm not judging any parents because I. I truly believe that most parents are trying to do the best they can with the environment that they have. But I ended up on the phone with my husband in tears. And I said, I'm going to bring this kid to our house. I'm bringing him home. And my husband was like, you're going to lose your license, you're going to lose your job. That's kidnapping. And in my head, my logic head understood all of that. However, my emotions at that point had just taken over. And I was tired and I was burnt out, and I was tired of not feeling fulfilled by the work I was doing. Because for every one child that I felt like I made an impact on, I knew that my caseload had about 84 other kids that I thought needed me. And that was a lot. And so at that point, burnout completely and totally kicked in. And I just said, you know what? I'm going to do what I can right now with what I have in order to help this child. Because the reality in my head was that if I dropped him off the group home, then the chances of him being assaulted, the chances of him going and being a part of a gang like his dad were going to exponentially increase. And I just didn't want that for his future. So my loving, patient husband told me to drop him off and come home and take a shower. Because you had a certain amount of grace, period, period, in order to go and get this temporary order of custody. And so I did that. And by the time I did that, just something as simple as a shower, I realized that sacrificing my license and my job and all of that for that one kid would have been 100 worth it. But if I could not, but. And if I could figure out a way to have a bigger impact, figure out a way to impact the system, then I would be able to make, truly make the world a better place, not just for that one kid. Because the reality of me actually being able to keep him and raise him and all of those kinds of things was so far gone. It wasn't actually a reality. It was just me being Very, very, very tired and very emotional because it's never a fun situation when you're going into somebody's home to take their child and the police are involved, etc. So the reason that I'm sharing all of this with you is that when you're talking about what you do as work and the value that you bring to the world, so many of us have so much overlap in between those things. I know a lot of people who have more put more value and credence in the letters after their name than they do in the letters before their title. And if I say that again, it would be like saying the fact that I'm an LPC and I have a master's degree is more important than Bunny. And when I transitioned to being an entrepreneur, I spent so much time and worked with a coach for so long to figure out what to call myself. And at the end of the day, what's on my business card is Bunny. But it's taken so much work, and it's probably taken a lot of work for you to try to figure out that work life balance doesn't exist. How much work and how much of myself and how much of my value I was pouring into these children's lives would have taken me weeks of recovery time in between each and every case, which is why so many social workers burnout. And the reality is, is that I could just have made the choice to become numb. I could be like one of those unicorns that ends up putting in 20 something years at social services and is still an empathetic and incredible human being. Or I could have been one of the statistics of people in social services that don't last eight months. And so being able to really show up and figure out what work life alignment meant for me, and knowing that as an EMT and as a therapist and as a social worker, I had all of these desires to make a difference in somebody's life, but also that I had my own life and my own energy to figure that out. That is a process. And if I'm being honest with you, I've invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in trying to figure out what that magic pill was. I bought every course, invested with every coach, trying to figure out what that core, what that magic pill is. And I'm here to tell you that there's no magic pill. I'm here to tell you that it takes time to get to know yourself again because chances are you might have forgotten who you are in the process of doing what you do. And when I invited you in the world and my tribe to this work life alignment challenge that starts next Monday. I mean it starts Monday. We have a pre game on Sunday. It starts on Monday. The idea that a lot of messages that I received back is, well, I can't do that for five days straight. If you don't have an hour or less for yourself for five days straight, there's you really need, please sit back and think about that. An hour. That's one Netflix show, that's one binge watching of you got to put it in the comments. I don't know what the Star Wars TV show is right now with like the baby Yoda thing, so please let me know. An hour. I think I spend an hour cuddling with Guinness. Yes, there he is. And I'm not going to sacrifice that because that's my everything. However, an hour, even if it's just 45 minutes, even if you just give yourself 45 minutes, if you look on your phone right now, if I hacked in and did your digital well being app on your phone, I guarantee you're spending 45 minutes just on social media. And so if you're giving yourself that next week in aligning your work and life, how much better will you feel than watching an hour of the Crown each day? And it's going to take sacrifice. I guarantee you it's going to take sacrifice. But don't be at the place that I was where I was borderline going to steal a child. Not that I was thinking that way. My thought process was skewed by the fact that I was pouring from an empty cup. I was trying to make a difference. But the way that I was trying to make a difference wasn't making an impact. Let me say that again for you because it really, it's something that I need to hear. The way that you're trying to make a difference sometimes if you don't have it in line with your purpose and your passion and you don't have the foundations of self care and self alignment and hi, my name is Bunny. And that relationship with yourself will not make an impact no matter how much social media marketing you throw at it, no matter how many emails you throw out there. And so if next week any of this has resonated with you, if you have any questions about it and you're still like, yes, Bunny, I just can't ask yourself, if I said I can, what would that look like? And it's as simple as clicking the link in my bio and saying yes to you. I will be there with bells on and bows on and so much energy and passion for you because I've cleared five hours more than that. I think I. I am over 50 hours in creating what I've created for you, and I'm bringing it for you. I'm not bringing it for me. It's free. It's completely free. I'm bringing it for you because people took the time to invest in me so that I wasn't at a place where I was trying to take kids and save the world. By doing that, I was able to take a step back and say, okay, what are my gifts and what can I bring to this world without sacrificing my sanity, my family, my license, my livelihood? And I want you to ask those same difficult questions and come up with the same and be offered in a safe space. The tools that I used from my coaching from. And I'm not talking about from my coaching with my clients, I'm talking about my own coaching. So you want to unzip the innards of me and get vulnerable. I'm going to give everything that I possibly can next week to you as well as tools. So whether you're a learner by listening, you're a learner by doing, you're a learner by worksheets, whatever it is, you're going to have a group and a tribe there. We're going to cap it so that it's a smaller, intimate group because I want to be able to actually build a relationship and not just be a face on a screen. So let me know what you need. Click on the link in the bio so that I can save your seat. And I know that you're there. And that's just accountability for you. The reality is you can click on that link in the bio and register and never show up. That's not going to impact my life. But it will. I guarantee you it's going to impact yours. And so show up. It will impact your life. Just you showing up, even if I just sang you the Big Bird song, I don't know if there's a Big Bird song every day next week. By you taking the act to clear that time on your calendar and say yes to yourself is going to make a huge impact. How do I know this? Because I've done it. I had all of the reasons in the book to say, I can't. I'm busy. I have a caseload of 84 kids. I can't quit my job. I can't start a company. I had so many can'ts. We probably could have filled the United States with my cants. And they're all in a landfill somewhere. They're biodegradable. That's the good news about my cants. And now it's. The one question that was proposed to me by my coach was, okay, I understand, I get it. You can't. But if you could, what would that look like? So that's what I'm going to leave you with. If you could join me next week, if you could find an hour out of your day to play along with this work life challenge, what would be the results? What would be the return on investment? What would be the outcome? I really hope that you say, here's how I can, and I'll be there, Bunny. And if there's anything that I can do between now and then support you, please let me know. If not, I, on Super Bowl Sunday of all days, am going to be kicking this off. Yes, I see the irony. If I can find a football and safely kick a football for you, I will. But the odds are very low that either of those are going to happen. I can most likely find a football, but the odds of me kicking it safely, not. Not so high. The odds of me being able to provide you with tools that impact your work and your life and are transformational in a week, much higher the odds that I can do it like a fairy godmother without you doing the work, zero to none. So I truly hope, truly, truly, truly hope that you show up. And I'm looking forward to seeing you there, and I'm looking forward to spending the week with you. And above all, thank you. Thank you for making the world a better place. Thank you for showing up and just listening to this. And thank you for the possibility of being able to be here and not be in jail because of that one phone call that I made to my amazing husband who was like, so, let's just take a moment and breathe. And that's exactly what we're going to do next week, is we're going to take a moment, we're going to breathe, we're going to do some analysis. I'm going to reintroduce you to yourself, reintroduce you to your calendar and the simple ways that you can use your calendar to work for you. And we're just going to deepen this relationship with each other and with yourself. So I'm looking forward to it. Bye, Starfish.