Episode 5 • The Things That Stop Us: Real life
Raising littles. Working a full-time job. Losing a loved one. Being a caregiver.
Real life situations and experiences can knock our creative and entrepreneurial pursuits off track - for months, years, and even decades. In this episode, Amanda explores how unexpected external life circumstances can create immense “opportunities for personal growth” (AKA: sh*tshows) and how these situations often stop us from showing up in our businesses and creative pursuits. These circumstances aren’t bad - they’re simply real life. With three bits of wisdom she’s gained over the years, she reminds us that if we can be gentle with ourselves as we move through real life situations, our businesses will thank us for it in the long term. Then, we can trust that we will once again have the capacity to create and show up to serve our people with even more depth and wisdom.
TIME: 23:46
*Episode includes swearing.
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Hello and welcome back to the podcast. You won't get these minutes back, dot, dot, dot, but they may change your life forever. We will see today on the show we are talking about we. I, I'm, it's just me, but it's like I'm talking with you. So that's why I say we, so thank you for being here. Today. We are talking about the things that stop us from being seen, the things that stop us from being seen.
And by that I mean the things that stop us from being, from putting our work out there as business owners or entrepreneurs or creators. By putting our work out there, our thoughts the things that we wanna share. So whether that's online, on social media, through email newsletters, through podcasts, whatever those creative modes and, and mediums are the things that stop us from doing that.
Now, one of the number one things that my clients say that they struggle with is being seen of putting their work and their content out there. And so I thought I would dive deep in the next few three, four episodes and talk about these things just to shed some light on them to provide support for you if you are, are going through any of this, or to put in your back pocket for the times that you do, you do experience this stuff.
And if you are a creative machine right now. That's amazing. Can I hire you? Just kidding. Just not kidding. But yeah, I just wanna be real about the shit that we face as business owners and entrepreneurs when it comes to creation and being seen. So the thing that I'm talking about today is real life.
How real life stops us from. From being seen. And so what I mean by that is a number of of examples like that could be. Raising babies, toddlers, like the littles, like that season of life is so fucking intense. And while I don't have my own biological children, I am a really good observer of those people around me, the moms and dads around me, who are in it, who are in that season of life.
And what I see is that a lot of my friends and family members are entrepreneurs and business owners. And what I see is that. They feel so fucking guilty because they know that they need to be spending so much time with their little ones. But they also want to have a creative outlet, a outlet, work outlet for them too, as a human.
So that struggle is always, is always, always there. Other life circumstances may include, you know, growing and growing a business. Like if you have a business that is very practical, that you have to work 40, 50, 60. 80 hours a weekend. Oh, there's the stutter. I haven't had the stutter for quite some time.
That's a lie. Just yesterday. But still the stutter. But if you have a business right that you are focusing on, it doesn't leave a lot of time for creative space to put content out there that type of stuff, unless you're doing that in your job, which is cool. But yeah, or if you have a regular job, like, if you're working for somebody else and you want to put stuff out there, but you are just exhausted at the end of the day.
Other life circumstances, other real life things could be the loss of a loved one and moving through grief and everything that that entails on the very practical side. And, but then also on the mental, emotional physical side of things. It's. It's daunting. And the last thing that we want to do in those situations is just be creative.
You know healing is, is required. I just think of the time that my niece passed away, like 20 years ago, 2005 ish. And. And everything that that entailed, you know, other life circumstances include being a, a caregiver for our loved ones. So if you are like me or maybe in your late thirties and.
And even if you're not, there's always these moments where we have to take care of our loved ones. And I see a lot of my friends now whose parents are getting older and they are taking care of them. Or those who are sick. You know, it's, it's, there's a lot. Life. We cannot get to the age of 40. I would say more probably earlier than that, without life fucking punching us in the face, you know?
And it's, it's draining and it's exhausting and it's overwhelming, whatever these life situations are. And as much as we love, we love really big parts of them. Parts of them are, are just are a lot. And so I want to just simply show up today and say, It's okay if you are a business owner and entrepreneur and you are hustling and you were trying to grow your business, but life smacks you.
You're not alone in that. You are not alone in that, and you might be really in it right now. And if you are, I am. I am sorry. I'm sorry because I know what it's like to be in the flow and just going along and you're doing your thing, and then to just be hit, hit upside the head with a circumstance that you did not anticipate.
And even if you did anticipate it, it's still not what you expected. For me, back in 2018, I was, 2018. 2019 was an amazing couple years for me. I think it was probably an amazing couple years for a lot of people. Sorry, I just had to wipe my nose. I have allergies right now, so it's probably not the best time to record a podcast episode and you know, but we just keep going, right?
I'm not gonna stop my allergies. So hopefully you don't hear my sniffles too badly, and if you do, I apologize and I hope you still love me.
In 2018, 2019. I was, I was loving life. Business was amazing. So at that point it was not Alcheme, it was Grounded Goodness. And I had gone on a province-wide road trip. I had hosted like 15 events with amazing women around our province. Had done a bunch of media stuff, wrote a book, like there were so many good, amazing, creative things that were happening.
And I was showing up and, and helping people and like helping them use their voice. And it was just so cool. I just loved it. And I was like, naively. I was like, this is gonna last forever. Yeah, I made it. Woo woo.
Pause for dramatic effect. Because you know, you know, and I wish you would've been in my back pocket back then to gimme a little, like, Hey, heads up. It's not gonna last forever. Enjoy it while it does. Fuck. It was so frustrating because what happened? And I would not change it for the world, and this is what all the moms say.
I would not change it for the world. I love my kids, but holy motherfucking shit. So what happened was, I met, I met a guy.
I met him in the fall of 2018. It was amazing. That first year was just so fun and light and so good for my heart in terms of like, healing from my divorce that happened a few years earlier. It was, it was incredible. Anyway, that could be a whole other podcast episode or book or something, but I was really, I was loving life.
I was, my business was going great. Our relationship was going great and I was just like, holy look. This is this is really, really cool. The fall of 2019, my partner received full custody, sorry, sole custody of his four sons. He received sole custody of his four sons. There had been some custody things happening.
And that was the final decision. October. In October of 2019, he had two days to get his shit together to make sure that the house was ready for the kids you know, enroll in school. Like all of these minor details that really added up. And it was sheer chaos. And he was pumped. He was in shock. I think everybody involved was in shock.
But yeah, so we were a year into our relationship and at that point I was not ready to walk away from the relationship. I did have a moment where I was like, do I want to be a stepmom? But that thought really only lasted for 10 seconds because I was like, Nope, I can do this. I can, I can be a stepmom, I can show up.
And so I, I did well, I, I chose to stay in that moment and, I, I was quite naive. Not gonna lie, I think any parent before they start parenting is somewhat naive, probably. But I, I had the thought, I, I remember having this very clear thought, very clear question of like, okay, well, like what do good moms do?
What do good moms do? And I looked to the past, like with my mom, What she has done and continues to do for her daughters. Looked around at, at my sisters, at my good friends, at people who are doing, in my opinion, really good jobs of raising humans. And I said, okay, the one key thing here is that they give and give and give.
Like, they just give, they give with their full hearts, their full, like everything. And they give, okay, cool. I can do that. So that's what I did. I gave and gave and gave and gave and gave. And the first while was great. Everybody was like, okay. But after a year and a half, two years in, I was burnt out. I couldn't actually do it anymore.
And I realized that I needed to set some strong boundaries on what I needed because if I couldn't continue to provide it, I wasn't good to anybody. Right? So I needed to take care of myself, and it was a really, really hard lesson to learn. Holy fuck. Such a difficult lesson to learn. But I learned it, and I can now say that three and a half years later, That we are all in a much better space.
I am in a much better space. Because while it's a continual struggle for me to take care of myself, I am taking better care of myself. Now I'm talking about this instance that, because this is very much an an external thing that happened that I had no control over, but that I also choose to stay in it, I, I made a conscious choice to stay in it.
That being said, it took me away from my business. It took me away from growing Alchemy in such deep ways that, not that I had bitterness or resentment, that's not it. It wasn't that I was angry at the situation for that. It was more like it was an opportunity for me to beat myself up in those three and a half years.
The amount of times that I had the thought I am not doing enough, like what the fuck, what is wrong with me? Why can't I simply show up and like, put my work out there and like get, get my offerings out there and do those, those things. Why? What is wrong with me? I, I ugh it so often, and then it is just been the last while where I have realized that that season, that situation in my life was there for me.
It wasn't there for my business because, hmm. I just, I couldn't do it. I couldn't be, be present and be Amanda and be there for Grounded Goodness, which is now Alcheme. But the guilt that I felt was immense. And so I've learned a few things along the way from counselors and healers and coaches, and I just wanna share them with you.
The one, there's three, there's three things that I've heard. One of them is we can’t always be in the spring and summer for our businesses. We can't always be, you know, seeing like the immense growth and the blossoming she sees that sounds you know, and the fruits of our labor, we cannot continually be in that season.
So in 2018, 2020, 2019, I was in that season, I was like, yeah, live's amazing. Like, woo, sunlight, sunshine, vitamin D. Yeah. My feet on the ground. Fuck yeah. Mm mm mm I didn't realize that fall and winter was coming and the fall/winter for my business was this deep under going underground, hide in a cave and not being seen and not being present and, you know, visible.
But I didn't, I didn't realize that. So that's one tidbit that we can't always just be in the spring and summer, and that's okay because the fall and winter actually provides these spaces and states for ourselves and our businesses. Where we can rest, where we can come home to ourselves. The other another tidbit that.
Yeah, like, did your body just relax as like I said that because my body relaxed, I'm like, all right, it's not about all about the hustle and the go, go, go. It's really about the going along with the natural like flow of things, right? So, yeah, and maybe you know this, but this is like, it was just like a beautiful reminder that I got and yeah.
Okay. I just took some like Advil, cold sinus for this, all these allergies, and so I think it's hitting and I'm like, okay, what's happening? Woo. Okay. The second thing that I, I, one of my coaches told me was that, When we are in these intense stages of life or seasons of life or whatever you want to call it, that we are in sheer survival mode.
And oftentimes we lose access to our prefrontal cortex, which is where our creativity comes in. So we are, we are not living our brains physiologically are not in that state. When we are in survival mode. When we're in survival mode, it's our amygdala that's like really taking control because it's a boat.
Fight flight free survival, you know? And so we can beat ourselves, ourselves up as much as we want about not accessing our creative states and our flow and our putting stuff out there. But we actually fucking can't. Our brains actually can't. So it's like, oh, this makes so much more sense as to why I couldn't access those like creative states for the last few years, because.
My brain just wouldn't let me because my brain was focused on surviving. Now there's so many side notes and segues that I could take on what that actually looked like for me. I will talk about this in, in talk about this in another episode about being harassed. But anyway, so that brain distinction was very cool and very eye-opening for me.
The third thing is that my VA Courtney just said, and she said, if you put this program out there, this offering out there and do it like you can, you could hustle and you could do it, but will you be able to show up in the way that you wanna show up to serve your clients? And I was like shit. No.
Because what's gonna come through is my exhaustion. My tiredness. Because right now, so I had a few months of like produce, produce, produce, like getting the Alcheme website launched, getting this podcast, launched, all of these things. And then I kinda hit a wall. I was like, Ooh, I can't, I can't quite, can't quite do it.
I can't access those creative states right now. But I wanted to offer this Mastermind collective type thing. And she's like, but I was like, I, I, it's not feeling very smooth. And she's like, she asked me that question, can you show up in the way that you wanna show up to serve your clients? Like, fuck no.
She was right. And that was the, the decision maker. I was like, okay, we're gonna shift this to the fall. So those are a few things that I've heard that, that when I remember, I'm like, oh yeah, it's okay. It's okay to be human and to be creating. It's not like we are like these states of consciousness where we can just like, continually create or you know, like we have human bodies, we have human experiences and that's terrifying and like exhausting and also like the most fucking beautiful thing, you know, because when we were in those states where we have to take care of people or raise littles it is in those.
Situations, seasons of life where we learn the most about ourselves. That's what I think anyway. Where we learn new traits, where we learn new skills. And so before I sign off, there's a few things, a few extra things I want to say. Be gentle with yourself if you are moving through a state where there's all these real life things happening and they are stopping you from creating or putting your work out there.
Just please be gentle with yourself. I was not gentle with myself and I would continually beat myself up for not doing enough or not being enough. But that was just a distraction from sinking into the moment of what do I actually need? What does Amanda the human need in this moment? You know? So if you can be gentle with yourself, you'll, you'll be doing better than I did.
Also, These seasons are points where we're not necessarily creating and putting ourselves out there. They are for us, and what I mean by that is that they they provide hilariously, they will provide content and creative flow down the road. You'll be able to pull. Instances or stories from the thing, the phase that you are in, and be like, holy shit, here it is so clearly, and you'll be able to present those stories in a way that serve your people.
So this is not like some, like, you know, people are like, oh, it's, it's all life is content, life is content, and blah, blah, blah. And yeah, that's true. I guess, yeah, that's true. Life is content. So while you may not be putting your work out there right now, You will down the road. And these, these situations will provide rich, rich, rich content down the road.
And these situations that you move through will actually be able to, they'll help you connect with your clients and customers on a deeper level. When they go through similar situations and while the details won't be the same, the themes may be right. So there's that. Also these situations and falls and winters of our, of our lives for our businesses, they they make us better humans.
So even if we don't really feel like it at the time, we're like, fuck you. If somebody had told me two years ago this, this situation's gonna make you a better human, I'd be like, like underneath. Deep down I'd be like, yeah, okay fine. But like, fuck you cause that's not what I need right now. So if you wanna yell, fuck you at me, you can do that.
But they make us better human. So for me, the, the last three and a half years have taught me immense amounts of resilience. They have taught me, it's taught me how to set boundaries and maintain boundaries. And then you go like, slide down the slippery slope of not having boundaries again, but then you like, oh yeah, I can do this.
And then you set your boundaries again. There's so many things that we learn in these intense. Periods of our lives that that we, that will serve us, that will serve us, and ultimately the people that we serve down the road. So those skills and traits are huge. Don't discount what you are learning and, and soaking up right now.
And lastly, these periods give us time. They give us time for our friends, for our family, and for ourselves, the most important people in our lives. And so, yeah, there's the guilt of like not showing up or not putting stuff out there. The online world is just a simple segment of, of our world. We spend the majority of our time in with humans, with other humans in, in real life interactions, you know, so whether that's with your family at the end of the day with your coworkers with clients, these, these face-to-face, whether it's, maybe it's on Zoom, but whatever.
These interactions with other humans and that is a gift that I think down the road we will really wish we would've paid more attention to, especially with technology advancing the way it is and all of it, right? Which is like, ugh, whatever. Let's, let's not talk about that today. But these, it's a gift the last few and a half year, like three and a half years with me and my partner and his sons.
We're a gift. It's, it's still a little difficult to say, but they were, it was a gift and that I learned so much about them and about me and our family dynamic, and it was really, really, really fucking cool. And I know now that I can do difficult things. I can do difficult things and I can move through them.
And my hope is that you also understand that. That the distraction of I need to be online, I need to be seen, I need to be visible, is simply that it's, it is a distraction. At the end of the day, when we're 80 or 90 or a hundred, the things that are gonna matter are our connections with our people, our real life people.
I hope that this episode has served you in that it's reminded you to be gentle with yourself and while yes, you may be in the spring or summer season of your business, if you are not, if you are in the fall in the winter, just know that it is okay that spring and summer will come again, but that there is also immense amounts of beauty and fall and winter.
I love you so much. Thank you so much for listening. If you have any comments I don't remember if you can leave a comment. I don't think you can. Just, I love you. Signing off!
