Hey, welcome. Welcome back to the podcast. I took a little break, but I am back and I have so much to tell you about. Okay. What is coming up you guys? I have made the cutest card deck. Ever for you, if you’re not familiar with card decks, it’s like affirmation cards or you know how you just scroll Instagram and see inspirational quotes and you screenshot them.

Or if you’re like me, you screenshot them and save them, but you never really look at them again. Well, I’ve made a deck of cards with all my. Best thoughts for you, and I’ve taken a lot of them from my podcast, things that I’ve been teaching you and the subjects we’ve talked about, and I’ve made them into the cutest card deck, Kaylee, from Every Mama’s Heart, if you’re not on Instagram following her, you have to.

It’s at every Mama’s Heart. She’s an amazing digital artist, and I asked her if she would help me make the backgrounds for these cards, and they are so pretty. You’re gonna love them. So I’ve got these cards coming. They are at the printers. They’re getting me my proof. I will let you know as soon as they are available to buy, but just be planning on that to treat yourself to an amazing deck of cards for life after loss.

Um, and. I am taking clients now for fall. I know that summer is crazy and it’s kind of that time of year where we start getting back into a schedule and that’s what I’m doing. I am setting up my schedule for fall. So if you’ve been thinking about coaching, You have to sign up for a consult call. All we do on the consult call is you come in, you tell me where you’re at.

We talk about what’s going on and what’s, what you’re struggling with, what’s going well, and then just decide if you’re a good fit for coaching. I wanna work with people who are ready to dive in, who know that there is more out there. Your life does not have to be less than. Because your baby or babies died.

Okay? You get to have everything you want, and I know what you want most is your baby. I can’t bring your baby back, but I can help you in your life no matter where you are. So get your spot for fall. I do three month packages by Christmas. You could be like a whole new person. It’s so, so good. Let’s. Do this.

All right, and I have to tell you, I have great plans for the podcast. The next few episodes, I’m going to do a little series on reentry and why I’m doing this. Number one, I’m reentering podcasting right now after a little break, but I see people every day who are struggling. As we’ve come out of this pandemic, we all kind of wished that we could take off the masks and we wished we could be with people, and we wished we could go back to our quote unquote normal lives.

But there’s so much fear. About going back to normal and there’s still so much unknown. And so I’m gonna talk about the fear of reentry today and what to do with that. Now, it could be reentry into life after Covid, O V I D, or it could be reentry into like your social circles, going back out with friends, um, being with family when you feel like you’re different.

It could be going back to church again. Maybe because of Covid or maybe because you’ve been struggling in your faith or because you just had a loss, you might not have been to church. And that can be something we’re reentering and figuring out. It could be reentering, trying to conceive and deciding if you’re gonna have another baby, it could be going back to college, or you know, going back to work.

There’s so many places where we reenter. After loss and it can be scary. So I wanna help you today. What we are really, really afraid of when we do any of these things is how we’re going to feel now. What we think we’re afraid of is what people are gonna say to us or what’s gonna happen, or not knowing the outcome of what’s gonna happen when we reenter these places.

Not knowing how we’ll react, we think it’s all of this list of things, but really what we’re afraid of is how we will feel. And it can be a little bit complicated because I. We usually have at least two things going on, maybe more. But often we have two main things going on. So the first thing we have going on is the part where we are wanting to do the thing.

We might even be excited to get back into a schedule, or we really want another baby, and it sounds pretty exciting and we hope it will make us feel better because. We’ll have what we want, right? We’ll have more money, we’ll have more connection with our friends. We’ll have a cute baby to play with, et cetera.

But almost immediately what our brain does is look out for trouble. So it often offers us some worst case scenarios that we should definitely be afraid of according to our brain. We feel stuck immediately because we aren’t sure which way things will go, and we kind of think these are our only options.

This is what I call all or nothing thinking, and it is so important to notice when it happens because it will really hold you back from all the beautiful things this life has to offer. So again, notice. The thing we want and then the thing we are afraid of, and it seems like they can’t ever be together.

How do you move forward when you feel this fear of reentry? Always. My first step is to love yourself. Right in the middle of it. Most lost moms have a story that constantly runs in their head about how fragile everything is and how you’ve been on the wrong side of statistics and. Things are just harder in life after loss, and it’s okay that you believe all of that.

Now, if you coach with me, we’re gonna look at that story and see if it’s serving you, so you can let go and be free to change it if you want to. But that’s next level that we can’t get here on the podcast. But like I said, you can always sign up for a free consult in the show notes. Have you seen those videos where there’s a dog on the side of a freeway and people are trying to help it, but it’s so freaked out.

It just keeps running away and it’s so hard to watch, and you just wanna tell the dog to trust the people. Go to the people they wanna help you. You’ve been through trauma, and sometimes that’s also a factor. You’re kind of like that little dog, but no one blames the dog. We all understand that it doesn’t think straight when it’s terrified.

We love the dog and we root for it to get back to safety, and then to get to a home where it becomes loving and calm and trusting and happy again. So just like that puppy, you need to love you right where you are. It is such a powerful thing to do. Once you’re loving your life and your nervous system is a little bit calmed down, you are ready to look at the way you are thinking.

We go to church every Sunday. I have since I was a child. Unless you’re like actively vomiting or something, you just go to church. Even on vacation, even if we stayed up all night for graduation the night before, we still went to church, I had Lauren, our daughter, who was stillborn on a Thursday. We buried her on a Saturday and the next Sunday, not that Sunday right after, but the next Sunday.

So what is that like nine, 10 days later? We were gonna go to church. I remember wanting to be there because of how much I love the people in our congregation, and I wanted the comfort that the gospel brings. But I was also afraid, and what I was most afraid of was crying. I knew if people hugged me or looked at us with those sad eyes, I would just burst into tears.

I would end up in the hallway with a handful of tissues or be in the bathroom the whole time. So this is where you might be right now with whatever you’re reentering after covid or after loss or after a break, like going back to school, after being home with your family. What you wanna do is recognize those seemingly conflicting thoughts and desires that you have.

Notice that your desires are there for a reason. I think it’s so important to listen to your heart when it tells you the things it wants. Then notice the fears. What are you really afraid of? Make a list. Look at it, run out. The worst thing that could happen and how you would feel if it did. This exercise is powerful for a couple of reasons.

First, it lets your brain go all the way to the end of this scary story. We often shut these kind of thoughts down and we don’t allow for it to complete itself. So we don’t, it’s like we stop the movie in the middle and we’re stuck in the unknown, and we don’t know what happens to the hero, right? And the unknown is the worst.

And your brain hates the unknown. So when you give it an answer, it’s gonna be so helpful. Now, of course, you are making all of this up and you have no idea how things are gonna turn out, but as long as you are aware of that, then it’s totally fine to do this. You’re gonna get a lot of leverage over the fear by exposing what you are afraid of and then just looking at it, shine a light on it.

The other reason this is so important and helpful is because you can really see what emotion is driving your stories. When I thought about going to church, I had a lot of different feelings, and like I said, I was mostly afraid of crying or being sad, but I wanted to be there more than I was afraid. So I went maybe because it was just part of my identity or because it was a habit, or because I love going to church.

Guess what? I did cry and I did spend most of the time in the hall and my friends, they cried with me. And it’s honestly one of the strongest memories I have of that foggy grief time in my life is standing in the hall. Hugging and crying with my friends. If I would’ve stayed home, I would’ve missed out, and I would’ve spent all week ruminating on that decision again and again and again.

That’s not fun you guys, but I see you doing it to yourself all the time. The uncomfortable of staying stuck is so much worse than just doing the thing. Make a decision. Coming up soon in the podcast, I have a guest on, and we’re gonna be talking about keeping your kids home from school this fall or sending them back.

And it’s so interesting how we, like I said, we want this pandemic to end, but then when it’s time to send our kids back to a German, German school or whatever, it can be really scary. Will we get sick? Will it be serious? What about the variants? What if the vaccine doesn’t work? What if kids can get the vaccine?

And then there’s side effects. What if it’s my child who gets the side effects or gets sick? It’s paralyzing so many people right now. This fear of reentry is real, but we can’t know the future. We never could. We just believed that we could predict what was coming, but we were wrong. Just like we can’t know the outcome of a pregnancy.

We used to think we could, but now we know that two pink lines don’t always mean a living baby. What we can control is ourselves. If we are just making up the future, why not make up one that we like? One where the best happens? One where we believe in ourselves and in our own capacity. A future where we let God or the universe or our own heart guide us to exactly where we were always supposed to be.

You see, people who are listening to this podcast in the future are probably just smiling a little bit right now, remembering this crazy time when we didn’t know what was coming next with Covid. That future person knows what happens and would most likely tell you that everything is going to be okay.

Tap into future you. What would she tell you to do? What would she tell you to stop worrying about? What do you want her life to look like? I want future me to thank me for doing this scary thing, for making decisions and for moving forward. Reentering places and new phases of life doesn’t have to be scary.

You just have to be onto what your brain is doing and keep moving forward. Take action. You might fail, you might cry. You might not get exactly what you wanted, but that my friends, is what we call living life. You can’t mess this up. Just be brave enough to open up and see what happens next. I think it’s going to be good.

Alright, you guys, that’s what I have for you this week. I’m so happy to be back and I can’t wait for you guys to learn more and grow more with me. Thank you for letting me be your. Coach for life after baby loss. I love you and I’ll see you next time.