Hey, how are you? Welcome to the podcast. I’m so glad you’re here. I have had a little bit of a crazy week. I hope your guys’ has been smoother, but I gotta tell you about a couple of things.

This is a last call for the retreat in April in Park City. To be honest, a lot of people have said they’re really, really interested in coming, but they haven’t signed up yet. And so if I don’t get enough people signed up, then I’m gonna have to postpone it. And I understand that It’s hard to decide to get a babysitter.

It’s hard to decide to invest in yourself. I wanna tell you that if you’ve been interested in coming to the retreat, Go in the show notes and click on the link. It will take you to my Eventbrite page. And you can get your spot. You get to pick out your bed, which room you wanna be in and pay there. And I.

Really, really wanna do this ’cause I think it’ll be so fun. The reason I plan this retreat is for you. I know that it’s been a dark and heavy time for a lot of people and I just wanted to do something fun and light. And that is the goal. I want you to come and bring what’s weighing you down and together.

Over a few days of relaxing and enjoying each other and learning and growing together, I am going to show you exactly how to let go of some of that weight. It might be weight from this last year. It might be weight. You’ve been caring for a really long time. I’m gonna teach you the skills you need to let go of it and leave it there at the retreat.

When you go home, you are gonna feel so much better. You’re gonna have new friends. You’re gonna have new tools to manage this crazy human life, and it’s just going to be amazing. So I really encourage you, if you’ve been thinking about it and you’ve just been kind of putting it off and you haven’t decided, for sure, go ahead and sign up and I can’t wait to meet you.

It’s gonna be so fun. Use code. Heck yes. All one word. And you’re gonna get $80 off, so you’ll save $80. I’ll see you there. The other thing I wanted to do was tell you guys that one of my clients just had their rainbow baby. It’s my first baby that’s been born during coaching and I’m just so excited for this cute little baby.

I love helping my pregnancy after lost clients not have to hold their breath for nine months, and I love supporting them. So if you are pregnant after loss or thinking about it, you gotta sign up for a consult call. There’s a link in the show notes. All we do is get together and we’re gonna talk about what’s going on for you, and I’ll show you how I can help you.

You’re gonna leave the call feeling so much more hopeful that you don’t have to just struggle and suffer through the entire pregnancy. All right, let’s dive into today’s topic. What I wanted to talk about today. Is 10 reasons that you are stronger than you think. When you go through something really hard, people are quick to call you strong, and a lot of people hate it because they don’t feel strong and because they don’t identify as a strong person.

Why is this? I want you to think about what you think strong means. You could even do a thought download and let yourself write an entire page without lifting up your pen or stopping about what you think a strong person looks like. For a lot of us, receiving compliments of any kind is hard, but it’s okay to allow yourself to accept them and enjoy them.

It’s not a bad thing. We’ve just somehow gotten the message that we need to be humble and that humility means we can’t think anything good about ourselves. Like when someone on the news pulls three people out of a burning house by themselves and they are called a hero, they never want the label. Like, there’s something wrong with believing you did something incredible, but that’s just not true.

I think another reason we don’t like being called strong is because we know, quote unquote, the truth about ourselves. We break down, we lose our temper. We struggle, we forget things, and we want to give up. We suffer feelings in all kinds of ways, ways. If we were strong, we wouldn’t do that. These people just can’t see what’s true.

If they could, they would never call us strong. But you know what? You are strong and it doesn’t really matter if other people say it a thousand times. You won’t be able to feel strong until you believe it and own it for yourself. Your thoughts, create your feelings. I’m gonna talk you through a quick model here.

If you don’t know what the model is, it’s the main tool I use with my clients to help them see what’s happening in their lives. You can get all the info about models and how to use them. In episode seven called How to Coach Yourself, our Circumstance is a fact In a situation you could choose to put, my friend said, you are so strong.

And that’s a quote, so that’s effect. Then you have a thought about it, and this is where we have many choices, but you just wanna pick one thought, so let’s use, she doesn’t know the real me. How do you feel when you think that probably disconnected? How do you show up in this conversation with your friend when you feel disconnected?

Maybe you mumble something or you ignore that comment, you might say, no, I’m not. Or think it in your head. You feel emotions rise up and you stuff them back down, you resist them, and maybe you get out of the conversation quickly. And what is the result of all of this? You aren’t the real you. Remember, your result is always about you.

When you think people can’t see the real you, you show up as less than you are. You don’t show up as a friend. You wanna be, and it just ends up feeling awkward, and you feel farther away from the people in your life. Can you see that? But it’s not them calling you strong. That creates the problem. Problem.

It’s what you think about it that matters. You create your own result. Can you see that? Think of a time you can remember and put it into your own model with your specifics, or look at people around you and observe them. Sometimes it’s easier to see it in other people. Which is why it’s so important to have a coach when you’re working through problems.

Someone on the outside who is a trained mind ninja can see what you can’t. Here are 10 reasons I want to share that might help you look at yourself a little differently, and when you start thinking different thoughts, you’re gonna start feeling better right away. As with all thoughts, these are optional, but I encourage you to try them on and see how they feel for you.

And these are in no particular order. Number 10, you’re still here. Let’s just be real. For most moms who lose a baby, there are times when you wish you could just be where they are. I’m not talking about wanting to die by suicide. I’m talking about wishing you could go to sleep and wake up with them. I’m talking about feeling like life is too hard and you just don’t want it to be so hard anymore times when heaven sounds way better than earth.

You may feel this way now, or you may remember thinking this way, but you are still here. It takes strength to keep going when grief is heavy and you’re tired. It takes strength to keep going and allow for the fact that you had thoughts like that. And it takes strength to continue healing and creating the life you want even when you miss your baby.

Two little notes here. Those who have lost their battle with mental illness, they’re strong too. And if you are currently having thoughts of ending your life, please talk to someone near you right now. Number nine, you are figuring out your faith. Faith is a lifelong learning process. We think we have it figured out, and then life throws us curve balls and shatters everything like glass on your neighbor’s window.

Strength means you know that it’s going to take effort to put those pieces back together. If you feel like your relationship with deity is broken right now, that’s okay. You’re still strong. If you’ve been able to use your faith to carry you through the hard times and it’s been your rock. Good for you.

It takes strength to rely on that faith and what you believe, and if you’re somewhere in the middle, that’s where you’re gaining strength as you figure out what you believe and what questions you still have to answer. I. Having questions, feeling abandoned or angry does not mean you’re weak. It means you’re a human who has been through something hard.

You are right where you’re supposed to be. Number eight, you still show up. Oh, yes you do. I see you every day showing up online in your jobs, in your homes. Even in the world’s longest year, you are showing up as best you can. You may not feel a hundred percent whole, but you are here and you are making a difference in this world.

Boom. Strength number seven. You help other people. Oh, I could go on and on about this one. I don’t know a single angel mom who doesn’t reach out and help others. When our hearts break, they grow back together bigger than ever. Grief teaches empathy, compassion, and how to support others like no other lesson can.

And it seems to naturally happen that those who have been through the fire, turn around and bring water to ease the suffering of those who come behind them. I don’t care if you started a nonprofit or you have a huge thing going, or you are just a little bit kinder to your living family members. It doesn’t matter if baby loss is your cause or you’re passionate in any other areas, you are helping and you are strong.

I am always in awe of all the humans in this world and what they’re passionate about. I’m so glad there are scientists and doctors who want to develop vaccines and nurses who want to poke people with needles without passing out. This is not my strong suit. There are teachers and mentors and leaders and people who collect carts in grocery store parking lots with a big smile on their face.

There are people who do good every day and never recognize that their drops of service create a never ending wave in the world. That’s you. You are amazing. Number six, you carry your baby. You can’t have all your babies in your arms. But it doesn’t mean you don’t carry them. They are in your heart.

They’re on your mind. You live your life to honor them. Where you go, they go. I think I have to insert an amazing poem here that I know is so near and dear to so many people’s hearts, and it’s by EE Cummings, I Carry your heart with me. I carry it in my heart. I am never without it. Anywhere I go, you go my dear.

And whatever is done by only me is your doing my darling. I fear no fate for you are my fate, my sweet. I want no world for beautiful. You are my world, my true and it’s you. Whatever a moon has always meant and whatever, a sun will always sing is you. Here is the deepest secret nobody knows. Here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud in the sky of the sky of a tree called life, which grows higher than soul can hope, or mine can hide.

And this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart. I carry your heart. I carry it in my heart. Strength number five. You choose what’s most important. Before loss, a lot of us were trapped in busyness and saying yes to everything. And it was exhausting, but we felt like we just had to do it and we had no choice.

We also might have felt a little pride in being able to handle it all, and then grief smacked us in the side of the head and made us slow down. It made us evaluate what was really important. We had to get back to basics because that was all we could handle. This year, a pandemic kind of collectively helped us learn this lesson as well.

Eventually, we tend to lean back towards busyness, but you still have those lessons in your back pocket. You know how to say no. You know your limits. You don’t get caught up in the trivial things Ian Thomas said, and every day the world will drag you by the hand yelling. This is important and this is important, and this is important.

You need to worry about this and this and this. And each day it’s up to you to yank your hand back, put it on your heart and say, no. This is what’s important. That’s strength. And if you feel like you’ve gotten a little lost, come back to your heart. It knows what to do. Number four, you have hope for the future.

Oh my goodness, so much. Hope you keep going. Every day you have big dreams and you’re figuring out how to accomplish them. You are thinking about trying again or thinking about finding peace with what your family looks like. Now. You are passionate about changing the world at every level from your home.

Which I think is so very important to global change, and what’s most powerful is that you have hope for your own future. You wouldn’t be listening to a Life Coach podcast if you didn’t believe in yourself. Having hope is a definition of strong in my book. Even the tiniest glimmer. Number three, you’re figuring out how to make friends with grief.

I know at first this doesn’t sound like a relationship you wanna get into, but I see you figuring this out for yourself and finding ways to make peace with grief instead of despising it. You recognize that grief is just love with nowhere to go, so you take it under your wing. If you’re listening and thinking that this sounds crazy or impossible because you hate grief with a fire of a thousand sons right now, I want you to know that this is one of the most powerful skills I teach my clients every day.

In your relationship with grief affects everything else in your life. So becoming friends with it will change everything. I don’t say that lightly. I mean it, everything. If you and grief have a bad thing going right now, scroll down into the show notes and sign up for a consult call. Bring your relationship status with grief and I’m gonna show you the exact steps to change it from.

It’s complicated to besties quicker than you think. Strength means you’re willing to do the work to get there. Number two, you can compartmentalize. Some people think that using the coping skill of compartmentalizing is a weakness. I hear it a lot about the men in our lives that he compartmentalizes and doesn’t grieve the way we want him to.

We think that our way is better, or you might’ve thought about it yourself, that it’s a bad thing, that you function fine at work or when your kids are awake, but then when it’s quiet or you are home, you sink into grief mode. Ladies, this is not a problem. It’s a superpower. It’s not being fake or putting on a mask.

It’s doing what you need to do and being who you want to be in certain areas of your life, you probably want to be cheery. When you’re teaching a class of kindergartners, you probably don’t wanna cry all day every day in front of your kids. You want to show up less emotional in certain situations. So you put grief in your back pocket and you do the thing, and then when it’s safe and you have the time and space, you take it out again.

You may not even think about it much anymore, and grief stays in your pocket more often than not, but you take it out when you need to. That takes strength. Please stop beating yourself up for doing this. What if you looked at it as just part of the process? Could you allow yourself to believe that you are strong even if you compartmentalize right now?

Number one, you get up every time you want to give up. Oh mama. This is the one that encompasses all of them. Strength doesn’t mean that you never want to quit, that you don’t think about giving up. We all do that. It doesn’t mean you’re weak. You just keep getting back up after you go down. You know, I could insert any number of racing analogies here, but they’re all true.

It really doesn’t matter how many times you fall, it’s that you get up again. Life is supposed to be hard half the time. We are supposed to feel every possible emotion, not just the happy, easy ones. It would be nice if we could, but the victory wouldn’t be so sweet if the race was smooth and easy. It’s the challenges that build our strength, and I see you rising to the challenge.

Repeat after me. I am strong. Own it girl. Feel it in your bones. You are as strong and brave as any hero out there, and there is just no downside to believing it. All right, you guys have a great week. I love you. We’ll talk to you next time.