Things That Are Saving Me Right Now

Ali: Hello and welcome back to the Autoimmune Mom Podcast. So today is just me solo again. I promise I do have guests coming. It's been a little scheduling conflict with spring breaks and people just not feeling well right now. ⁓ I live in the Charleston, South Carolina area. The pollen is pollinating hard and the weather is bizarre. It was almost 90 degrees on Sunday and yesterday the feels like temperature was 45. So if you live with an autoimmune disease that might affect you, it certainly affects me. My body is not happy when we have drastic changes in temperature. And ⁓ I've learned how to deal with that, kind of, as much as I can. I've learned to prepare for it. And ⁓ I've also put some steps in place to help me to navigate it. So that's what today's episode is going to be about. We're gonna be talking about the things that I'm doing that are saving me right now. I'm coming out of the winter where I just don't feel well at all. The sun is like my best friend. and I can't live without her and it's really sad when she's gone. I'm really sad when she's gone. That's the best way I can describe it. It's like I just get really sad and I don't feel good at all. I have zero energy and my general baseline is I have to go to bed two hours after the sun goes down. So if the sun is going down at five o'clock at night by seven o'clock I am done. So that's part of the reason why I just don't enjoy the winters. Now the sun is setting later. Last night I didn't fall asleep till 10 o'clock. I mean that is That would be danger zone material for me in January. But here we are in March, the sun is setting later. I have more energy. I spent a week in the sun with my family. That filled my cup so much and here I am. I'm home a week and a half and I just feel so much better. But there are things that I do to help this part of my transition, life transitioning back into when I generally feel better, the summer, and I take things off my plate. And that's what I'm gonna share with you today. How I make all of this a little bit easier, what I've learned over the last 16 years. My kids again are 13, well she'll be 13 next month. in a couple weeks and my oldest is 14. So two girls, ⁓ one does a lot of sports, the other is very academic. She's also volunteering right now with U10 softball and let me get you guys, nothing lights that kid's soul up like helping little kids. She's like a different person. She has a giving... ⁓ and she's really excited to be volunteering. The reason she's not playing golf ball is a whole nother story, but I won't bother you in getting to that. But let's talk a little bit about what I do in the seasons of not feeling my best. Number one is I lower my expectations. I can't do 100 % 100 % of the time. as much as that was my mindset. I don't know if you saw my reel yesterday on any of my socials, but I was going 150%, 150 % of the time. This is even before I had kids. It was just my mentality that I needed to be, I needed to be better than 98 % of population. 99 if I'm being honest like I needed to do things that other people weren't doing and I needed to do them all the time and I could do it all and I would do it all and I ignored all the warning signs and That's where it got me. So again, if you saw my reel yesterday changing expectations, so I Have to make changes. I cannot live the way that I lived that got me in this position Let me say that again we cannot live the lives that we were living that got us into this situation. So that is a very hard struggle, but I had to lower my expectations. And number one, I've said it before, I show up for my family first. I do, if that looks like... Mondays are typically hard for me. We're very busy on the weekends. I do like to do some socialization, so it's more go, go, go, go. This time of year, we're doing yard work, and my daughter's traveling all over the place for soccer, and I'm getting the other one to the softball stuff, and all the mom things. Mondays are tough. Sometimes I got nothing in the tank, and I've actually scheduled in my binder, in my calendar, ⁓ I'm an old school person and I don't like my calendar on my phone. use it, but I like to have paper calendar and I have on Mondays rest Mondays are my rest days. We have some things in the offices on Mondays a lot of Learning I'm in real estate, but my my broker in charge. She does a lot. She's amazing She has a lot of learning things on on Mondays and I get to the ones that I can get to and I have to forgive myself that I can't get to them all so this Monday Especially last week we traveled and we were travel we traveled back from Florida midweek Friday night. We drove an hour and a half to a soccer game came home that night Saturday We did yard work Sunday. My daughter had a game two hours north. So we drove two hours and then she played and they lost and they, I don't know if you kids play club soccer or travel sports or whatever, but. ⁓ You know only on the times when you driving two hours in a day and not spending the night they get there and they play like they just met each other in the parking lot I don't get it, but that's that's a whole other topic. So anyways That was an entire day. We left early ⁓ She wasn't feeling good, but she played okay, and then we didn't get home until about five o'clock and then dinner and The kids wanted to take a little golf cart ride, so we did that I love that my 13 and 14 year olds still want to take golf cart rides for us to get ice cream, so we will do that. I will say yes to that whenever I can. That's one of those things that's like a non-negotiable. I will say yes to my 13 and 14 year olds wanting to get on the golf cart to get ice cream until the day they stop asking. I just love that they still want to do that. Anyways, on Monday I could hardly function. The thoughts creep into my head. I'm now accomplishing nothing. But you know what? I've lowered my expectations. On Mondays, I make my bed every single day. So guess what? I did accomplish something. I made my bed. And I try to do laundry. If all I do in the day is make my bed and do laundry and get my kids to and from school, that's three things I've accomplished. that I have learned is enough. That's enough to feed my soul. It's enough to keep the house moving on the week, during the week. It's enough. where I can rest and I don't beat myself up about having done nothing on Monday. Because Mondays are hard for me. I've learned that and I have to just roll with the punches. I don't know how moms... living with autoimmune disease and juggling multiple children and all the things, working nine to five and sitting down at the desk. Like I'm very grateful to my husband who has a great stable job and you know, he brings home enough money where we can, you know, he can support us, but it's better if I make a little bit more type of thing. So I have a luxury of that. ⁓ I love real estate, I love helping people, it's why I'm doing this podcast. I am a yellow personality in that I just really thrive when I feel like I'm in service to others, similar to my daughter. So real estate's a good fit and I can have flexible time and we're very blessed that, you know, my husband has been gainfully employed every single day of our marriage and we have not had to worry about that, so praise Jesus for that. So... Yes, things that are saving me, number one, lowering my expectations. It's okay that Mondays are my days to do nothing. I've had to come to grips with that. Number two, keeping things simple. ⁓ I just try to simplify everything, especially meals. I hate to cook. This is not a secret. I hate to grocery shop. I hate to cook. I hate to clean. I like my house to be clean and cooking creates chaos and mess and the countertops and the floors and the sink and all of this stuff. I don't find joy in it. I'm not a foodie. don't enjoy. I mean, I really honestly wish that before I had kids someone sat me down and just said, I really want you to be aware that for the next 18 years you are going to have to think about Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack for everybody in your family. Minimum 18 years. Probably more. You are never not gonna have to think about it. And also, three of you will be gluten free and you'll have to add that little special joy to it. So I have... I hate to cook. So we get into food ruts a lot. Tacos all the time, and kids love tacos. Very rarely do all four of us like to eat the same thing. So I am one of these crazy mothers ⁓ that my mother shakes her head about that will... sort of appease everybody. I don't make four different dinners, but I do give an option. If you don't like the main thing, maybe you can have a quick hamburger or a smoothie, protein smoothie. That's it. You get an option where we had no options growing up. And so we just ate whatever was in front of us. So I wish I'm not a perfect parent. And if I could go back and change anything, it would be that. But keeping things simple. a lot of times that's just whatever I have in the fridge goes in the pan and we saute it up. So I love verticella chickens. Don't come at me that they're not healthy. I know they're not. healthy. We do the best we can in the season we're in. Rotisserie chickens, protein pasta, a little pesto or I'll make a Alfredo sauce of some sort with like borson cheese, something like that. Whip that all up. We do a lot of Costco frozen pizzas on Friday nights and I've learned I can't just eat a cheese pizza off every Friday night so we just throw the frozen grain free chicken nuggets things in the toaster oven, toast them up, make a buffalo chicken one. ⁓ It's so good, cook them on the grill. If you're the Costco gluten-free pizzas, cook them on the grill. It's pretty much the same way the box says. like to, it's 10 minutes, I like to turn it every five minutes, or at the five minute mark, just rotate it a little bit so it doesn't get burnt, keep the burners low, it's really, really good. ⁓ What else do we do? We very rarely eat out. A, it's not healthy. Standard American diet is part of the problem. Although we've always been pretty good about it, but we don't eat a standard American diet. We cook the majority of our meals in the house. We do go out to eat if it's at a Mexican place or something like that every now and then, but ⁓ that's part of keeping it simple. A lot of the times we're traveling for soccer, so we're eating on the road, but it's never, ever, ever McDonald's. I mean, we're gluten free. can't do it. The only one that is gluten-free would be Chick-fil-A. I've never eaten there. My kids, one of them doesn't like chicken and the other one is, you know, whatever. We're not just gonna go to Chick-fil-A for one kid. That would be crazy. So a lot of prepping up or thinking ahead. I make protein bites for the roads. We pack snacks. ⁓ I make sandwiches. That stuff can be not keeping things simple, but it is... what we have to do to plan ahead. So lots of rice and meat dishes and things like that. Easy. I know that it's better to have vegetables, mostly protein, little bit of vegetables, a little bit carbohydrates. We all know how to feed our family. That's not the problem. The problem is the time and the... energy level that we have to do it. So, there, one of these days I'm gonna get my husband on this podcast because he really needs to be, what's the word? I'd like him to share his expertise, his opinions on all of this because I do lean heavily on him, especially at dinnertime. He's worked his schedule so he can be home. ⁓ usually by five o'clock he's home. But he goes to work at six a.m. So, you know, he gets his hours and he gets his job done, great. But he's home to do a lot of the dinners. I will, now I'm just honest with him and I tell him by like one or two o'clock, you're on dinner tonight. I have no idea what it's gonna be. I don't have the capacity to think about it. There's no food here. You're gonna have stop at the grocery store and get something quick. And generally on those nights it's ⁓ tacos or... Whatever. Whatever he wants to make. And that's fine. And if that's pizza, then that's pizza. He almost never does that, ⁓ And again, we very rarely order out... ⁓ We just making it work. Could we be more nutritious? ⁓ 100%. ⁓ Could we have more variety? ⁓ 100%. This is not the season of life for us to have variety in our dinners. Unfortunately. And we have picky eaters, so... All of that. ⁓ Taking quiet moments, this is number three. Yes, I take a lot of quiet moments. Sometimes I... Like now the season's changing and I am able to get into the sun, which I've already told you is my best friend and I miss her dearly when she's not around. So I will take my little beach chair and the sun right now in the afternoons is in my front yard and I will sit in my driveway with my phone, my computer, a book. I don't really read so it would be an audible situation and I take 20 minutes to sit in the sun and I don't care if I look like... you know, a redneck hanging out in my driveway. I really don't. I've had to learn that what I need to do to keep my body going is more important than when anybody else thinks about me. What I need to do to keep my body going and feel my best and be healthy is more important than what anybody else thinks about me, inside my house or outside of my house. They might think I'm crazy. I don't care. I walk around my yard barefoot because there's a lot of science behind energy healing and tapping, grounding and being attached to the floor and all that stuff. So I will do that. But I might also have to lie down in my bed for a little while. These are all things I'm sure you all have all done and deal with, but they a lot of times come with guilt. I don't have the guilt about it anymore. I wish I could take guilt and shame out of diseases because I lived with it for a very long time and I'm able to not live with it because I think I'm just a little bit more mature and honestly it's draining, it's vampire energy sucking activities, stress and shame and we can't do it anymore. So I'm being very intentional about taking small quiet moments even if they're five minutes long. ⁓ if I, I know, we all know we should be moving our bodies more. They tell you that, especially with rheumatoid arthritis. It's like, ⁓ you just need to move your body more. I'm having a hard time walking today. ⁓ My knee is killing me, my back hurts, my shoulders are this, that, and this. Sometimes I just take five minutes, 20 minutes to walk around the block and come back. And if that's what I did for the day, then a gold star on me. Check that box. I don't need to wait for the full break. I can't afford to wait till Saturday when I have the day off. three Saturdays from now when my kids are on break and there's no games and everything else I can't I don't have the luxury of waiting for that I need to take the time when I have it just taking little resets where I can that's the self-care that works for me maybe it'll work for you I'd love to hear ⁓ saying no without over explaining ⁓ this makes me laugh because my daughter over explains everything and she's so sweet. She just wants everyone to understand the things the way that she understands them and she wants everyone to know that what she's thinking has a reason behind it. She's very ⁓ cerebral and she wants things to be she wants things to make sense. So if you're saying no a lot more to things you don't owe to anybody an explanation. And if you do want to explain, a little bit of like, I just don't feel well. One, I think one time I had someone was asking me. This was one time in last couple years consistently. Do you want to do this? Do you want to do that? Do you want to do this? And I just had to tell her, I was just saying no, no, no. then finally I said, look, I'm not trying to be rude. It's not personal. I have an autoimmune disease. It makes these things harder. I don't like to say yes and then cancel. So I'm a maybe for everything. she backed off on asking me things, but not 100%. And she was just like, hey, if you're Did you guys want to hang come over we're hanging out that type of thing so I don't over explain anything. I don't get into the Nitty-gritty of what rheumatoid arthritis is I actually never tell anyone what it is I just say I have an autoimmune disease and if they say oh, what is it? Then I say it's rheumatoid arthritis and my grandmother had that oh, I have arthritis in my knee and we all know that story so not over explaining because a honestly Just being honest with somebody and saying like what I said said to her she probably was like ⁓ that makes me feel so much better because you know when someone is constantly saying no to you you're like they don't like me what did I do is something wrong like going down this rabbit hole it's like this is me and really it's not about you it's about them and what they have going on in their life so ⁓ that's where I do I don't over explain I tell people when they need to know It does, it's not anything I lead with. ⁓ Someone, the other day I was texting with someone on my daughter's soccer team and she, I said, ⁓ look, it's past my bedtime, I gotta go. It was probably 9.15. She's like, what time do you go to bed? I said, lady, I'm a 47 year old perimenopausal woman with a raging autoimmune disease. I go to bed two hours after the sun goes down and that's it. and we both laughed. But there's gentle ways of telling people of your situation without making it so heavy. So I just try to use humor in it. That's that has worked for me. I don't know. I like to be funny though. I like when we can laugh at the hard stuff Otherwise, it's just really, really depressing. So I would say say no without over exaggerating. That has been really huge. Levity. I know what we're dealing with is not funny. I'm not saying that. But if we can spin it a little bit and give people a little bit of understanding and not make it so hard on them, that's when people get a little bit weirded out. You know when somebody close to your friend passes away, you don't know what to do, you don't know what to say, you don't know if you're overstepping, you don't know this. you don't know that. Well, people feel that same way I've learned about autoimmune disease. They don't know what to say, they cannot relate, they don't know what the right move is. So if I can bring a little bit of levity to it, like, hey, I'm 47, 46, I'm hormonal, I'm not sleeping, I'm living this life and doing the best I can and you bet your ass my head is lying down in bed by nine o'clock. So. She laughed, I laughed, that was it. Now she knows. She's been put on notice. And guess what? She probably has half the symptoms I do. Not the rheumatoid part, because she's lucky and blessed, but that's okay. ⁓ What else? Let me see. Letting go of guilt, I've already talked about that. Guilt around resting, guilt around screen time your kids are getting, guilt around the house not being perfect. I start realizing that guilt isn't helping anything, it isn't helping anybody, and it just makes everything harder. So, letting go of that. Do it. One small thing just for me. I'm not very good at this, but this is something that I try to implement. And sometimes that one small thing just for me is my Monday rest day. catching up on whatever show on Netflix my husband would never watch. But I have to watch every single CIA thing that was ever written in the history of mankind. But that's, I digress. That's a marriage problem. So anyways, one small thing. You know, even this podcast, if I'm being honest, it's something for me because as I said, I like to be in service of others and that lifts me up and fills my soul. So this is a little weird just talking to a screen, but I do get feedback and I love feedback. So if you like this episode, if you like any of my episodes, please, please feel free to reach out to me. I don't, there will be days where I'll question doing this and I would like to be able to look back and say, no, this helped one person. This message helped one person. And so, I'm trying, I'm trying hard to step out of my box to help other people. ⁓ And that's a little tiny thing for me. It's selfish. We talked about this on one of my episodes. You know, do I want to be a super famous podcaster? That literally scares me to death. I don't like being the center of attention. I don't like people looking at me. It's just so bizarre because what am I doing here? ⁓ But. I've felt called to do this for very long time. So that's one small thing for me that I'm doing that hopefully is benefiting other people. I guess one of the biggest things I try to do now, and this is hard depending on what disease you're living with, but laughing at the chaos. Today I had a sleep score of 82. ⁓ I don't often wear my watch at night. I don't like the way it makes my, I think the EMFs that come off of it bother my wrist joint, so every now and then I do. I have not had a sleep score of 82. I can't remember the last time. ⁓ most of the time it's in the 40s. Sometimes it's in the 30s, sometimes it's in the 50s, but last night, and it's kind of a thing in my house now. We all talk about how, did you sleep last night? Did you sleep last night? And my kids asked me this morning and I showed them my little real thing. Well, it's not a real, but I made this clip and it's my sleep score. And then we did a little dance, all three of us, and we hugged in the kitchen because I slept to an 82. And we laughed. that's like, you know what, that's like a life moment right there. Me, my seventh and eighth grade daughters are dancing and laughing in the kitchen because mom had an 82 sleep score. That's what this is all about. Now... It's kind of crazy and insignificant and whatever. My friends who hear that story won't believe it because I'm not a dancer. But I don't like to celebrate things. I'm very like this. But I do like funny and I do like humor and I do like to see my kids smile. So I try to implement that as much as possible. There are days when I just need to throw a dish at the wall or something like that. I'm not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but. I'm not trying to take everything so seriously all the time. I was for very long time. Everything was, I was, when I was trying to treat myself 100 % holistically, everything was so serious all the time. I was seriously running myself into another ditch trying to live this perfect lifestyle and research and find everything. And I was missing life with my kids, to be honest. I was spending all this time. researching and trying new things and spending all these monies and I don't regret it. I'd do it again. I wouldn't change it. I needed to do that. It was part of my journey. But when I look back, I'm like, geez, I missed a lot of laughter with them that I could have had. And that's part of our story. And it's part of their story too. ⁓ Most of that they probably won't remember because they were so young, but anyway. ⁓ What am I trying to say here? I think for a long time, I just kept waiting to feel better or have more energy or have things to be easier before I let myself enjoy life. And right now I'm learning that I can still find joy even in the seasons that feel hard. doing the best you can in the season you're in, giving yourself the grace to do what your body needs and feels and being okay with that. trying not to get stuck in the rut of my I'm never gonna be feel good again. I'm never gonna feel good again. I'm never gonna feel good again. Like your word, I tell my kids all the time, your words have power, your thoughts have power. You need to flip the script and say, I feel better right now than I did five minutes ago. And maybe that's because I took 10 minutes to lie down on the couch and read my Bible or. put on a podcast or listen to music or write in my journal or whatever it is, we need to flip the script a little bit and start living our lives in a more impactful, meaningful way and stop just waiting for things to get better. Things don't get better unless we work towards them getting better and that for us is hard because for me, my mindset is working towards something means action. Action, action, action, action, action, all the time, all the time, action. And that's probably why I'm in this position. I need to slow down. I need to take the time that my body needs. I need to rest when I need to rest. I need to move when I need to move. I need to pray when I need to pray. And I need to be, honestly find some gratitude in every single day. This resonates with you at all. I'd love for you to share it with another mom who might need to hear it. And don't forget to follow us along on all of our socials. And I appreciate you all being here. Have a blessed day.