Transcript:


Welcome to the Follow Your Gut podcast. I'm your host, Juniper. 
The other morning I was sitting on the couch next to Ty and he leaned forward to grab this little meditation book off the coffee table. Have you seen these? the brand is Keep It Simple and they're just daily meditations. They have them for all different people, men, women, they, them, all different life stages for pregnancy, for postpartum, for the busy woman, for I mean, there's hundreds of different options. They're just, you know, it's a three hundred and sixty five page book and there's these daily meditations. So he opens it up and he reads the daily meditation aloud.

Something you need to know for this story to make sense is Ty is a recovering addict. He went to treatment twenty years ago and has been sober since. The therapist that did his intervention twenty years ago, they still talk every single week. And so Ty's sobriety is still very much part of his everyday and little gestures like this meditation book being on the coffee table. It's a way that his sobriety is acknowledged and part of the culture of our home. 

We speak of sobriety very openly because I think a lot of us are raised in homes where using drugs and alcohol is shameful and it's not talked about and you don't learn that it could be a problem. I mean, we're all told that it's bad, right? But you don't really understand the depths of of what it can become until you're lost in it. And so for our family it is very important that we speak very openly. So Ty picks up this book and he reads the headline to himself and he's like, Juni, this one's gonna hit home for you. And he started reading it out loud. And he's right, it hit deep, so deep that I wanna read it to you.

It may seem that so many people want our time and our love. Parents say we don't call often enough. Children demand our time. Our partners say we're gone too much. When we feel off balance by all these people, we need to stop and rest. We need to remember how lonely we were when we were using. No one wanted our time and love then. Now we're important to others again.

You can handle all this by giving people what they need and ask for within reason, not what you think they need, which may be way too much.

Maybe you need to learn to love others while still taking care of yourself. 
There's a prayer for the day. Higher power, help me put my time and energy to best use today. Help me find the balance I need between work, play, loving others, and self-care. 

Then the action for the day is when I feel I have to give too much today, I'll stop and ask my higher power for guidance.

Hmm, as women and mothers, this resonates so deeply. We carry and juggle so much every single day. Beyond motherhood, we are partners. We are children ourselves. We carry so many responsibilities. Even our homes.

Our homes demand so much of us. And when you are mothering and caring for a child who is struggling with symptoms or you yourself have been experiencing symptoms, all of this is heightened, the demand and the weight of all of it. 

The part I love so much is of this medication is where it says you can handle all of this by giving people what they need and ask for, not what you think they need, which may be way too much.

I hope this touches your heart as deeply as it does mine. Because what a beautiful perspective shift for us to remember that the reason we are in such high demand is because we are loved. Because we are the center of our family. 

And how beautiful it is to be so needed and what a gift it is to be in such high demand because it could be the opposite. You could have no one, you could not be needed.

So I'm gonna hold this meditation near and dear. And when I find myself in those moments of overwhelm, and when you find yourself in those times where it feels like you have nothing left to give.

And there's a whole line of people waiting with big expectations and big needs of you. I invite you to remember this perspective. What a gift it is to be needed.