145. A Human-Centric Hodgepodge with Rebecca Undem

Well, hey friends, it's Rebecca, the host of this program, and I'm coming to you today a little bit weary and kind of work-worn in my heart. It's been a little longer than our typical cadence for releasing episodes there's just been kind of a lot that's happened in not just my work life, but my personal life. And then there was famously this election cycle. I don't typically bring a lot in the way of politics to the door, the front door of this podcast, but I think truly right now I would be a little, maybe even remiss if I didn't address or at least call out some of the things that have been that I feel like I've been seeing and hearing, or, and/or the things that just kind of, as soon as they hit my brain, they hit my heart and I, they hit everything kind of sideways. And then I feel kind of spinny and kind of despairing. I mean, this is really strong, like that's a strong word, but I, I think there's just, there's a lot to kind of cope with and wrestle with right now. And the emotions and the inner worlds that every single one of us has often don't feel safe to express outside of ourselves, not just in small places or small communities, but I think just in general. And so this today is kind of a— I was trying to think of the best analogy. It's a, it's a hodgepodge for sure. Maybe a little bit of potpourri or like a smorgasbord. I like was giggling to myself. I'm like, I don't really know which of those— hodgepodge is for sure, right? It's gonna be a little bit eclectic, a little bit— I wouldn't say it's not that it's not kind of cycling around or topically it's focused around contextually just kind of stuff that has been hitting me sideways. And then also with me, it's always like, okay, what's either a reframe or what's a tactic or a tool or a tip or a trick or something that I can actually do to move through that? In fact, though, one of the things I'm going to share, it's completely less about that. So This is actually just some of the mental and emotional challenges that I've, that I've been, that I've been feeling both as a business owner. I'm also, you know, I also run this nonprofit. I'm still presently in the public sector in the way of, uh, economic development locally. Some of these things are changing in the coming year in 2025. And then with that comes all this extra stuff. And then yeah, just like the water that I'm swimming in, it feels less certain and less comforting than it did even a handful of months ago. And so because I am just a human just like you, and I always want to bring truth to the forefront, and I have such a passion and deep hope for people in the way of mental well-being, emotional processing, emotional literacy, emotional regulation. I just think it's like the— it's one of the key pieces pieces of human development that often is missing. And, and it's not something that companies take on a lot of times, right? Unless we can bucket it under this broad heading of leadership, like, means something more to be a leader using these things than just a human using them. I'm never going to approach it this way, that, that way. I'm always going to say, but okay, as a person involved, then the emotional and kind of mental aspects of of who that person is, how humans work, it matters. I've done a lot of speaking. I did a lot of speaking engagements, different things the month of October, and there were just a number of things that I experienced. And so I wanted to share some of those things just as reflections, or truly some of this is my own coping mechanisms, which I've kind of always promised you all. I'll bring you my therapy. I pay for it. And so if it can help you, yay, let's pay it forward, right? So, okay, there's gonna be no particular order. This is not like a tight top 10 ways to move through pain, or, you know, there's, there's no tidy bucket around this at all. It's just kind of like I said, the hodgepodge that I have felt like I've seen. So the first thing I wanna talk about, let's call it facade maybe, or myth of having it all together and what that looks like, both from a person, maybe, maybe that you might be trying to present that you have all your shit together, or maybe you're a person looking at another person and saying to yourself, holy, like, why can't I be like that? Like, she seems to have her shit together. So the first thing I just want to say about this is that I think, again, it bears repeating that no one ever actually has all their shit together. At best, we might get to a place where certain aspects of our life seem to be going okay, or, you know, like, go moving along in a way that there's not massive problems or challenges, or the feeling of, like, coasting. At best, parts of your life might feel like that. It's really quite rare that you're actually firing on all cylinders all at the same time. It actually is quite rare. And, and this is actually why I don't really believe in the concept of work-life balance. I just think balance is a silly— kind of a silly word to use to describe it. I think harmony is important. I actually— I had this beautiful, long, and challenging conversation with a friend of mine that owns a business in a neighboring community. I'd gone over to her shop for, for something completely unrelated, and I just asked her how she really is. And she started telling me about some of the challenges that she was facing I am very much in the middle of this situation as I'm in my— I'll just share it. I just turned 44, so I'm in my early 40s. And what's coming up from that, I guess, is that my parents, thankfully, they're still alive. But as they start to wade into health challenges or concerns and then you're still raising your kids, it really is just— there's just a lot to that, right? And so she was expressing some of those things. She's got some health concerns going on with one of her parents. And then we started talking about the challenge of running a business in a small community. And again, not to— I'm not giving away— it's not about who she is, but it's just, it was the fact that she's sharing these things. And so I just started affirming and, you know, basically listening, right? And nodding along. And then I would share, I would share equal things or things that, you know, like, well, this is what it looks like for me. And just letting her know, like, Damn, you've got a lot on your plate. And if you're in any way beating yourself up, like, I think there's this weird thing that happens when we take something on. And I think some of it is societal pressure, and I think some of it is internal pressure where we say things to ourselves like, well, you didn't have to do this. And so almost like you made your bed and I'll lay in it. I'm just going to tell you, like, I hate that. I hate that frame on this. Like, because for her, she started her business because she wanted that kind of a business in her town, which by the way is again, like I've said this over the years now that I've been in this work, like that's to me one of the best reasons to start a business is because it actually will fuel something and it'll serve a need for yourself. This idea that it needs to be like wholly researched by the market, if you're gonna be the one doing it, at a minimum, it should bring you joy and it should be something that you're really excited about. So, but that doesn't mean that just because you do that, And even if it's like going well, air quotes, it doesn't mean that you're not going to have serious challenges. And then the idea that the answer is, well, like, suck it up, buttercup, you, you chose it. I just think that's shitty. Can I just say, can I just say that? I just don't think, I just don't think that's all that sensitive. I don't like if you're getting that from the outside. And then the problem is that we tend to say that to ourselves, but like, I chose this, so I need to suck it up and deal with it. Okay. Yes. And it's okay sometimes if the very thing you love is also the thing that's draining you. And then, then it sometimes does just require kind of looking at all of, all of the things that you're, that you have to give yourself to. And I say have to because like I, I just described, I'm in the middle of this situation where I love being a mother and I have to care for my children. It's not, I don't get to opt like in and out of that. That's not how this works really. Same with my parents. I love my parents. I'm so thankful truly to be next to them, near them, so I can help them. And that just doesn't mean like, oh, okay. Bottom line is this. When you're struggling, I think one of the most damaging things that we can do to each other is to say, well, it could always be worse. I literally, I got a magnet from a woman in town who clearly must get my sense of humor. I'm referred to as Becky by locals. That's kind of, that's what I was. That was my name when I was young. There's a whole story to how I became Rebecca. It doesn't really matter. She comes in one day and she's like, I saw this and I thought of you. And now it's on the fridge in our space here. It says, to say that it could have been worse. Yeah, well, you know what, Becky? It could have been a hell of a lot better. It's, like, super funny. I think it's just recognizing that I understand the sentiment of that. It's like to count your blessings and be thankful. But I think going there too fast It actually strips us of the value of learning to sit with discomfort. And I would say that that's a, a huge therapeutic lesson and value that I've learned in the last year. I don't know if you guys like listening to this, if you're Enneagram people. I don't know the tool super, super well, but I am an Enneagram 7. And so there are some— I question, by the way, and maybe if any of you listening to this are like, I'm an Enneagram expert, great. Then you can reach out to me and tell me the answer to this. Because one of the things that those, these kinds of personality profiling types, whether it's DiSC or Myers-Briggs or Enneagram, there's lots of options. What they tend to do is say like, when you're your best, this is what you look like. When you're at your worst, this is what you look like. But I question if there's like a healed and unhealed perspective of these things because as a 7, what I, what it typically means that I will do is pursue, pursue joy and the things that bring me happiness. I like depth and I like nuance and I like wanna chase the things down that fire kind of both dopamine maybe and adrenaline in my body, right? So I'm actually probably in a lot of ways quite wired to avoid discomfort and pain. The other morning I, I saw this TikTok where this therapist was saying, and again, it's TikTok, guys. Like, I'm being honest about it. I'm, I'm not saying I seek therapeutic advice on TikTok, but sometimes they hit. This therapist was talking about the fact that if we wanna develop any superpower as a person, that where we can like truly sustain or withstand absolutely anything, it's that it's learning how to sit with discomfort. Like the second you feel discomfort, don't run. Or like that metaphorical change the channel or change the subject depending on what, like the source of the pain, right? What is the equivalent of running away and just fighting that urge? I think that's a really important thing. And I think when we're thinking not only about ourselves and sitting with our own pain, what does it really look like to sit with other people in their pain? Because that statement of just, well, it could always be worse, and just be thankful you're fill in the blank, that in a moment of somebody sharing anything that is vulnerable or emotionally kind of exposed, that is not a helpful thing to hear. So when my friend said to me a couple weeks later, we were at an event together and I gave her a hug and I was leaving, and she said, I want to thank you for that, that time, um, and that conversation. She said, I never ever would have guessed that you had anything like that going on in your life because she said you always just seem to have it so together. And I said to her, I'm like, well, here's the deal. I have learned not how to— it's not even putting on a facade, it's recognizing. Because here's the other thing, there's vulnerability to a point of damage. And I don't go on social media, for example, and blast out every single personal thing I'm struggling with because the public is not the right audience for that. It is really, really important that every single one of us have a person, at least one. I'm, I'm super, super fortunate to have more than one person that I can really— I can show up completely. My favorite phrase to describe this is psychologically safe. Psychologically meaning my heart and my mind and my soul kind of can be— I can bare it all to a person. I've got more than one of those people in my life. That's like an incredible blessing. And I know that when she said that, I was like, okay, well, we're going to talk about that because I think, A, you don't have to give the impression that you have it all together. If anybody says that to you, it doesn't make you a fake or a phony as long as you actually are willing to sit a bit. With your pain and with your discomfort. I also, by the way, like the other thing that's been happening lately, I just, I happen to be supporting a lot of people in my life right now, friends, and by a lot, it's more than one. Okay. Which is a lot where as soon as they show up for with me, I'm there for them and I'm talking like fully there for them. And so some of these things are just things that are coming up in these conversations and they're universal pains. And I know that to be true. So I wanna, I wanna suggest an actual idea right now. If you're dealing with any of this pain or discomfort and you're, so it might be because of choices you've made. Maybe you've made some truly poor choices and there's fallout to that and you're struggling to kind of move past or move through it. Maybe relationally somebody has really, really hurt you. And you're struggling to move past it or move through it. Anything, especially— and it doesn't even have to be a human. So here's the cool thing, right? Like, anything that has caused you pain, anything you're grieving, if it's a person, if it's a job, if it's a home, if it's a business, like, all sorts of things happen to us that cause emotional pain. And so one of the things that I've been suggesting and I've been doing for myself in some of these ways is taking a little bit of time to write letters. So my one friend, there's circumstances around his loss of his home. I'm not gonna get into the details of that cuz it doesn't matter. But he, through truly no fault of his own, he, and he loved his home and he was like, I haven't. And he actually said to me like, I haven't cried about this yet. Like, I feel such grief and I just don't know how to unlock the tears. And I said, well, what if you wrote a letter to your, to your home? And like articulate talking to it as if it's a human, right? What, what do you miss about it? What do you love about it? What are your fears about it now that it's not in your hands and it's in somebody else's, in this person's hands that you don't trust at all? Like writing letters either. And also I think too, writing letters to ourselves at the time of, let's say, especially making mistakes or at the time of accepting something that wasn't good enough for you, or at a time when maybe your boundaries were crossed, right? Going back and just writing a letter to that version of yourself, it can be so healing and so powerful. And, and that's a way to sit in your discomfort because I think, like, I actually have a sign in our, in one of the bathrooms in our building here that says, feel your feels. And I think that that's just like a, a really intangible, I mean, it's cutesy, right? Like, feel your feels. I, that's what I want. I want people to do that. But I think sometimes practically we don't know how. Because we really are wired and societally, I think we're pressured to like pivot out of it. Count your blessings, count what's going well for you, right? Instead of just how do I actually honor the pain and the discomfort of whether it's sadness or grief or loneliness or shame or guilt. Like if there are things we've done that we're not proud of, right? Like how do we, how do we move through that? So that's kind of the first thing that's been coming up a lot. So this is going to sound like the antithesis of everything I just said. Don't care. Going to add the context. Hopefully it'll make sense. I do think there's incredible value in when, when and if you're ever at a moment where you're assessing what to do next or you're assessing if you should keep all the things on your plate that you currently have, or if you want to call them spinning plates in the air, like are these the plates I want to keep spinning? Is that something I want to keep doing? I think a really awesome context or question to ask yourself is just, does this bring me joy? Like Marie Kondo, this stuff in your, in your world, that was like her big question that she asked. What— from a decluttering perspective, I think it is really important that we assess our obligations I just said that, like, my kids— I don't get to opt in and out of my kids. Like, so I don't get to say, do my kids bring me joy? And be like, oh, 100% of the time, yes. So I'm gonna keep them. I'm gonna keep them because they're my children. And my kids, of course, do bring me joy. But I'm not gonna lie, kids bring a tremendous amount of torment and pain sometimes too. Not just mine, all of ours. This is the thing. But I think whether it's joy or it's simply having fun I met with a nonprofit leader yesterday, and she was telling me how burnt out the board is. Everybody is. And she actually, she just said that one of the oldest board members, like, kind of tenure-wise in this group, made the comment at their last board meeting like, this used to be so much fun. And I said, well, wow, like, that's telling. And why wouldn't that be the goal? So I think sometimes things get heavy, things get hard, and then they get complicated and you can't kind of like see your way out or through it. It could simply be a matter of saying, what could we do to make this more fun? What could we do today, tomorrow to make this more joyful? Because yeah, you're not— I really don't want people to avoid pain and discomfort and seek joy only. Sometimes I think too, on the flip side, we could maybe seek joy a little more easily. The other thing, and I, again, I've got these like notes down. These are the, these are the loosest notes I've ever had. So I hope you enjoy me just randomly talking to you like this. A few things that I've been seeing lately is that I find concerning from a, just from a societal perspective is just the staggering amounts of antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications, the staggering amount of mental health drugs or medications that are being prescribed now. I am not an anti-drug human. I'm not an anti-medication person at all, at all, at all. And I want that to be really clear. I also am not a therapist, so I'm going to make sure we say these things. But I've been wondering so much about kind of going back to this first point of like being able to sit with discomfort and pain. I wonder sometimes if we have like actually not properly normalized pain as a part of the human experience. And so the second we feel it, of course we want to avoid it. Of course, we want to pretend it's not there or just get rid of it. And I'm wondering how much of what we're doing to, quote unquote, manage our shitty feelings, the kind of the yucky feelings, is actually to numb them or avoid them. And then— and that's not just like straight up medications. There's drugs and alcohol. There's— I mean, there's a lot of things people do to numb out just letting themselves feel things. Again, as an, as an Enneagram 7, it's, it is, it's a really hard thing to do to kind of honor those feelings. But I do, I think this is a really, I think this is really important part of being human and being better is being willing to do that. One of the things I've realized lately, I just sent this to my friend yesterday. I literally sent him a text that said, um, I'm so happy we exist at the same time. So I just— this is like a tiny little tip kind of related to 1 and 2. For sure, if you've got a person in your life that you can show up completely open and vulnerable with, like I described, when you get done listening to this podcast, please send them a note. Send them a note and tell them that you're happy you exist with them at the same time. Like, the universe knew what it was doing. It put us here at exactly the same time and place, and that's That's pretty damn cool. Take a moment and thank them for being a person with you. And another thing, again, there's no rhyme or reason to these thoughts. Again, they've literally come through all of the experiences that I've been having lately where I just kind of smile and go, wow, okay, that's a lesson. One of the things I've been doing, so I got a— I am still an Android user. Go ahead and take me to task on it. Don't care. Not saying never. I'm not saying I'll never become an Apple user. I just like my Android. Okay. Is that my 44 showing? Don't care. Okay. I got myself an Android watch and one of the things that's built into it is a deep breathing app. And at any point I can just hit the face of it and it's got like the lotus flower that it like opens up and it's, it's like a breathing activity, right? It opens up for a count of, you know, I don't even know. I just follow it. So I'm not sure. You could look up the perfect number of seconds you're supposed to inhale, hold it, and then exhale. I've been doing that more. And what I want to remind you of is that you're obviously breathing because you're still here. There's real value in slowing down and actually deep breathing. One of the things that it does is it focuses. It actually takes your brain and makes it focus on the present. That's the other thing I'll say too. Like, stay in the moment, be present. When people say that, I'm like, oh my word, like, stop saying that to me. I don't know what that means and I don't know how to do that. Right? Because I am seriously either like basically perseverating on something that happened before, or I'm usually quite fixated on what's to come. I'm not an overly present person. I try to be, but there again, there's the try. Breathing is one of the ways to do that. Because literally you're focusing on your breath. It's the only thing you're thinking about and it's very present. So I would highly encourage you to do that. Like I said, I've got a, I've got a watch that will kind of guide me through that. That's 20 cycles of it, which is, is pretty cool. But there's all sorts of different, there's like the box technique is one. You can look all these things up, but just find one and maybe once a day take a minute and, and do that cuz it really is one of the quickest ways to get back into the moment. Okay, I was reminded of my favorite Brené Brown book during this election cycle, and maybe I'll be tipping my hand here a bit. You'll be able to see or maybe hear from my heart what— which way I voted. I— it's not really about that to me. It is actually to me more about the aftermath of this and just the the general weight and heaviness on society that I feel. I've always been a big feeler. Famously, as a child, I was told I was a drama queen, right? I was too sensitive. I was too much. Like, those are labels that I was given. And now I'm just kind of like, yeah, no, I don't really think those are it. I am a lot. I'll admit that. But I'm not too much for the people that are for me. So this had hit me when I first read it. It was one of my favorite things I actually ever took in when it comes to people. And I feel like what's happening related to, to this election stuff is that there's just this general idea of a lot of othering. And othering happens when we apply, or it can happen when we apply language to like an entire group of people. Like we either apply a label or we apply a characteristic or we apply an adjective to describe them. We say us and them. That's another kind of tip that maybe we're othering. And in the book— so I didn't tell you the book yet, sorry— Brené Brown, my favorite book. She's written a lot of books. I haven't read some of her newer ones, but my favorite was actually— it was Braving the Wilderness. One of her chapters, and legitimately, she wrote it when she wrote it. I can't remember the year she wrote it either. Again, we can quote these things. We'll have it in the show notes. But when she wrote this, she brought in a political context even, even then. It must have been post-2016 though, because Trump is mentioned, which is fascinating, right? Since we find ourselves today back in Trump's part of the dialogue. One of the chapters is called People Are Hard to Hate Close Up. Well, we're just going to get into it. I think that the truth is that is why I have felt such a shift in a lot of the ways that I think and feel about people in particular. Over the past handful of years is because I've been moving in a lot closer to all sorts of different people. My, my work and my travel has, has given me the gift of kind of an opening up of my social circles. And man, have I met some just absolutely incredible people, all different walks of life, all different backgrounds, all different belief systems. All different, everything. And I really do believe that opening up of my social circle is what has made me feel like there's just so much unfounded hatred. And because again, her, her advice is get closer. So That's challenging. That's a challenging thing to do. Our knee-jerk reaction and what I feel like I'm even seeing pretty broadly is the desire when we feel this kind of tension. And this is on both sides, I would say both sides of especially like the political aisle as we talk about the post-election fallout. I feel like the desire is to take 10 steps back, block them if it's a social media connection. And move away from people, isolate ourselves from people, and then furthermore, like, hunker down with the ones that we agree with. And I think that's a natural— it's a natural reaction. And I think it's the wrong move. There's a caveat to this, and I want to be clear about this. We need to remember that there's kind of spheres of influence, and the closer to the center and the, like, the nest— I always call it the nest, like the inner circle, right? If you've got concentric circles, right? The people that are closest to you— talked about it at the beginning— if you've got like a person that you, that you feel psychologically safe with, when you disagree with that person, sometimes it's our family members. Sometimes our family members aren't in our inner circle, and that's, that's hard, and it's okay. We're talking about the people, right? The people that you know you can turn to when you disagree with those people. Move in. I would say go one ring out and you've got the people you would consider friends. Like maybe sometimes they move out a circle because they're more topical in nature or like contextual in nature. Like maybe they're friends that you play, I don't know, pickleball with, or they're, they're like my book club friends, right? Move in even with those people right now. The further out we go, I would say maybe acquaintances. So where I see this happening a lot, by the way, so social media, I'm not necessarily saying if you're friends with someone, quote unquote, on social media, I'm not necessarily saying you need to move in with those people. And by move in, I mean closer. We're not moving in with anybody, by the way. I'm not talking about communal living here. That's a whole different topic for probably not a different day. I don't know that I'm ever gonna be supporting that, except I do sometimes when I think about my very favorite people, by the way, the inner circle people, I absolutely think about what it would feel like to just live with them. We would take such good care of each other. Dang, that's not what I'm talking about though. It's, it's really thinking about, okay, because I, I don't know if you guys have seen this, I'm sure you have, but I think that there's a lot of people that have actually lost, they've lost ground in their friendships, in their family connections because of this election. It's a really wild time when I don't know that I've ever felt quite this. It's been so hard to watch and kind of see and sit. This has been super discomforting and hard for me to just watch people that I care about move through this in a way where they're just demonizing each other. And right now it's because there are camps of people like we truly don't understand each other. We don't understand the motivations. We don't understand the desires.. And all I will say is that sometimes it's worth the effort. And with— because it depends on how close they are, right? If it's friends, if it's family and, and you really want to maintain a relationship with them, then this is where this advice lands. Otherwise, if they're, if they're like way out there social connections, you can do whatever the heck you want. It's fine. But please just don't be an asshole. I don't know why that's so hard. I guess I just felt like I needed to say it. But what would it look like to ask them out to coffee? Get your eyeballs on each other and ask some questions about where they're coming from. There is such value in that. And I think, I think actually this is partially why too we all feel lonelier and more isolated than we ever have, because we technically have more connection to people because of social media and the internet. But because we have that, we have done less intentional sitting across from one another and actually getting to know each other. Like, I'm just gonna share this random example. We were out to dinner in our little town and we're sitting there. It was me and my husband and 2 of our 3 kids. And all of a sudden there's a person standing at the end of our table and I look up and my brain, it took me a couple of seconds to like recognize who this person was. It was one of my high school classmates. I haven't actually laid eyes on him in person I think for like 15 years, probably. No kidding. Like, it hasn't been since we graduated, but 10-year reunion maybe was the last time, something like that, right? And there he is standing there, and then I like went, oh my gosh, and then I hugged him. And then we've exchanged just a couple of messages since that. I was like, it's a weird situation to feel like, like I still am connected to you when I'm really not. And so I think Sometimes too, we need, we need to do the hard thing. And the hard thing is inviting somebody to coffee or a drink or whatever and having the one-on-one time with them and asking them questions. I would just encourage you, I guess, if you're feeling like you have actual hate or disdain in your heart for somebody real in your life, not a whole group of people, because that's the danger. That's the danger that's happening right now. Like all the Republicans think all the Democrats are losers and vice versa. And she, she, Brené Brown calls that out in her book in this chapter. So if you haven't read this book, and by the way too, I, I don't have like a talking point on this, but her, the second, the next chapter after this people are hard to hate close-up move in is calling bullshit on, or the, the role of bullshit in society and like how to call it out and speak to it. It's really powerful because again, there— and that's most of the rhetoric that we see, like even our friends and family, you know, like the people that are just like blasting their opinions on social media. You could actually qualify a lot of it as bullshit. So this book came back up for me in just such a real and present way. And I think especially in small communities, we have this job to do. I actually have shared this as advice for anybody that feels like they're going toe-to-toe with Maybe it's a city council person. Maybe it's a board member. Like, you're in a position where you have to try to get a board member to agree with you. I see this in, like, church councils. Like, it's humans. I don't know if you guys knew this, but humans human everywhere. Like, whatever your problem is in one context, you're going to carry that challenge into the next context. And that's why I believe so wholeheartedly in not only therapy, but in people, like, actually taking some active role in improving some of these things, because improved skill sets also follow you everywhere. Okay, there's plenty to fear right now. I mean, at any given time, there is plenty to be afraid of. I simply want to remind you that fear is a really shitty motivator. Very rarely do we make really good decisions when we do it from a place of fear. I've said this before, said it publicly. I've said it actually at every, every event I spoke at in the month of October. I said this. At some point. You can be mostly full of hope. You can be a really hopeful person and still have a little bit of fear, and you're gonna be a-okay. You actually can't be mostly afraid and expect a tiny dash of hope to get you there. You've gotta pick one or the other, and hope is not a shitty motivator. Fear actually is. Hey, my very last thing. And this is a really winding and weird conversation. I guess this is me just showing up and saying, like, it's kind of hard to be human right now, and here's how I'm trying to cope. I think one of— and again, I'm seeing this. This isn't just for me. This is for some of these people that are really having some difficult things come up in their lives, and we're trying to just walk each other home. I think grace for yourself is a, a really, really important thing to learn how to extend, for one, and then anchor down into when you're having a really hard time. Because again, I, I'm in a, in a space— I live in the Midwest, I come from a farm family where like there wasn't a lot of time ever allowed to just struggle, like, and to feel shitty about anything. It was like, we really— I really come from the culture, the background of just like, quick, don't cry over spilt milk would be one of the things that I remember hearing. Put your big girl panties on was absolutely something I heard. And kind of just like, we got shit to do. Don't sit around and whine and wallow in it. And Okay, yes, I get that. I do. And I think it's extremely dismissive of pain. And pain can teach us things. And if we can sit with it, the thing is, what I can tell you is like a whole lot of pain, emotional turmoil, you can avoid it and bury it, set it aside, push it aside. It doesn't go away. It doesn't go away. It ends up becoming— a lot of times it ends up manifesting physically. And that's what I think is super fascinating too. The more people learn about the wholeness of their bodies and how emotions and thoughts play into what physically happens in ourselves. Like, it's a really fascinating little journey. Giving ourselves grace is a really hard thing to do, and we extend it to others so easily. And so I, again, I— we could get into the topic of religion. That's not for this podcast. All I will say is that I don't feel much like a lot of organized religions really want us to be thinking about how to love ourselves. Like, that's— it's complicated. I'm not going to get into it right now. All I want to say is I think it's valuable when you're really struggling. If you are a person that can't show yourself grace and kindness for those feelings, then we should imagine ourselves as the person we love the most. So oftentimes, if you're a parent, it's what would you tell your daughter if you're a woman? Or if you're a man and you're struggling and you say, what would you tell your son if your son came to you and expressed everything that you're feeling inside of you? What would you say? And then just finding a way to say that to yourself. And, and also, I just I think this is important too. I think all this is important. I think this is, this is about being human. If you're doing something that is helping you cope, we're talking about drugs, right? We're talking about medications. Medications are not the same as turning straight up to alcohol. Okay, let me just like, alcohol or illegal substances, it's not necessarily numbing. It sometimes is a bridge. Okay, this is the example. My friend, I have this friend, we were talking about the fact that sleep can be really elusive when we're very, very stressed out. And for the past couple of months, me, I have turned to— actually, I take Benadryl every single night. I'll have moments where I'm like, okay, like, I feel like my stress levels feel fairly balanced, like, I'm just— I'm not going to take it tonight. And then I wake up at 1:00 in the morning and I'm up till 4:00 in the morning, and then I'm like, oh, that's right. Like, this isn't the time. And so I think what I want to remind you too is that it's okay if some of the things you're doing to kind of nurture yourself or take care of yourself aren't things that you want to do long term, but you're choosing them in the short term as a bridge. I really have met a lot of people when it comes to anti-anxieties and antidepressants. They'll say that to me, like, I don't want to be on it. I don't want to be be on it forever. And I always just say, well, who— we're not talking about forever, we're talking about a bridge. Maybe you're saying no to something in your life temporarily because you need more space or you're feeling too full, you know, like you're overwhelmed. You can make choices to show yourself some grace and alleviate some stress, and it doesn't have to be forever, it just needs to be for now. And the biggest thing, everybody, You, you sweet soul listening to this, maybe you're on a walk, maybe you're in your car. I don't know where you consume this podcast from, but you don't owe anybody an explanation to why you're making the choices you make either. But you absolutely owe it to yourself. I heard this thing the other day that I thought was really powerful, and I really think— I actually believe this is true. And again, maybe people will take me to task on this. I guess go ahead, then we'll have coffee and I can better ask questions to understand your point of view. But the idea of that, like, we're born, it seems like we're given to our parents to nurture. Like, our parents, then we're born to our families. We don't have any choice in that matter, right? Who they are or how they deal with us. And it seems like the expectation of our health and well-being is on them. What if at some point each of us realized that, that, that task actually belongs to us? Very clearly when you're a baby and you're helpless and you can't do anything about it, like you're gonna have to depend on somebody. But at some point we are actually our own caretakers. We are actually our own nurturers. We are the ones that have to give ourselves the things that we need. And there's a lot of power in that.. And so I just wanna remind you, um, whether you're feeling like me and you're feeling like, why does everything feel so heavy and kind of hard right now? Or, or maybe, and again, I'll say this too, you don't have to feel guilty if you're soaring when it feels like a lot of people around you are struggling. I think COVID was an interesting example of that where collectively we were all going through this thing, but we were not experiencing it the same way at all. And I talked to a lot of people that felt like they got closer to their families. Life came into some sort of perspective, and it was just kind of this, this deep, meaningful pause. And they felt like they benefited from that time, but they didn't feel safe to say that because so many people struggled. People lost people, you know, it was an awful time for a lot. Again, let's just make room for everybody's experience in it. Can't— why can't we do that? And what's— my God, what's the harm if we do? I just think especially in small communities where there are less people around us to begin with, what I kind of have become aware of through this woman that I've invited on my podcast, by the way, and I hope she says yes and comes on because it was a really powerful writing workshop that I took with her. Um, she made, she made the assertion that one of the things that makes growing up in a small town kind of challenging at times is there's just the stories about people are more limited because there's just less people. So they're not always as varied and you don't see as many kind of broader perspectives as you might if you were in a bigger community. And I think that's just true. So, but smaller towns, everything that we're talking about, everything that I've shared today, these are things that we can activate quickly and without a lot of extra effort. And I made up a new acronym at one of the events that I was at recently, and I said, uh, WWJD. Now, again, I don't want my religious friends to come after me for this because obviously very famously it's What Would Jesus Do, right? When it comes to how to handle and deal with and love other people, sometimes the question actually needs to just be, what would a human do? Jesus was famously human too. So like, again, don't take me to task on that. But I think sometimes that we forget that every single person around us is just a human, and most of the time we're doing the best that we can. So to every single one of you listening to this, I hope that you know that your community needs you. And we don't just need some polished— I don't need you to be something other than you're actually not. I don't need you to be just like some model citizen, like whatever that even means, like a facade of yourself. I don't, we don't, I don't need a guarded version of you. I don't need a masked up version of you. We need who you actually are. We need your specific one. Like, actually, could you ever think about the fact that you are literally the only human that can offer the exact perspective that you have? I mean, at a minimum, that should make us feel— I feel a couple things when I think about that. I guess I feel kind of in awe of the fact that that's true. It's kind of simultaneously like, holy, I'm really special. And yep, I'm not really special at all because that's everybody. But I think anytime we feel this, this nudge that we maybe don't belong or that we're not right or that we should be doing better or any of that, I hope that you'll— I hope that you've written some of these things down and actually do them. Any sort of journaling exercise is so valuable to get it out of yourself. And I would say, especially for those of you, if you don't yet— you haven't yet cultivated a friend that can be a listening ear for that. I'm a verbal processor, quite clearly. I've talked to you for a good amount of time here. This is how I, this is how I heal. I verbally process things. Some people don't need that, but you got to get it out of yourself. And so writing can be a really healing and kind of therapeutic way to approach some of this stuff if, if talking isn't your, isn't your jam. But we need you. We need you in your, we need you in your respective community And we need you to show up. And I'm not just talking about— I'm not talking about like volunteering, although that's cool too, like get involved with the stuff you care about. But we need you. We need you. We need the wholeness and fullness of you. And I just— I continue— I will continue to encourage communities to make room for everybody. And right now it doesn't feel like that's the case. And I hope collectively that we can keep keep pushing forward. Damn, I'm happy to, to, to have all of you and, and to have a place where I can process some of these things. And I hope that it's helpful. Um, these are just the things that have come up in actual conversations I'm having with real humans. Look at us out— oh, we're all out here doing the very best that we can. And I am here in my little town absolutely cheering you on. And so until next time, I just encourage you to keep doing the best that you can with what you have, right where you're at. We'll see you next time.