Latest / All The Light She Found / The Power of Showing Up (Even When Your Couch is Whispering Sweet Nothings)
Transcript
- Epidsode 3 new updated version: Hello, my friends. Welcome to episode three of All the Lights She Found. I'm your host, Kelly McGurk, and I am so glad to be here, and I have some good stuff to talk about today. So I hope this finds you just loving your life, loving yourself, but if not, maybe this will make you feel a little better. Today we're going to talk about something that happened that kind of was a moment for me that was super... gosh, I would say super hard but very transitional. And I don't want to make this all about me. I'm hoping that this will help you in some way. When everything in your life, I don't want to say falls apart, but when life really kicks you in the butt, you know, and something really hard and unexpected goes on, it could be a lot of different things. But for me, was having my husband die. I knew it was coming. and it wasn't shocking by any means and I had thought about it for a long time before it happened because he was sick for a really long time. But it felt like everything around me had fallen apart. I felt this fear of like, how am I going to do this on my own? And it wasn't just losing Mike. Like my parents had both died in the couple of years prior to Mike dying and they were very young and they were like my frontline. And then Mike was my frontline. I was like, holy smokes. Who's gonna help me hold myself together? Who's gonna walk through life with me? was really hard for And beneath all of that loss, there was this really kind of scaring realization to me is that no one was coming to save me. Now I be clear, I was definitely not alone. my daughter and son-in-law and my family and my friends. I mean, I had a community that legit wrapped their arms around me in ways that I'll never forget. My brother walked me through all of that day by day, listening to me every single day if he had to without getting bored. Well, he might've been bored, but he sure didn't tell me that. I had amazing friends and like, I just had people that were constantly showing up, my uncle, and there was just people that just kept showing up and kept showing up and my best friend. So this isn't a story about having no one. So I'm not, I hope that's not how this is coming across. But what it was was that I realized that no one could heal for me. No one could rebuild my confidence for me. It was a lot of things. Like it was this crazy overwhelming period of just what do I do next? And was the first time in my life, well, not the first time, but first time in a long time where every decision was mine. There was no one to consult. There was no one to really consider. It was really mine. And then somewhere in the middle of all of that grief, it hit me. The person that I was waiting for was actually me. That realization was kind of heartbreaking. And somehow it was also the most freeing thing that I ever realized. because I was the one that I'd been waiting for and I didn't have to wait anymore. Like I actually could save myself. in that, I just wanna talk about like what that means and not to be in some weird psycho babble at all. It meant like, I guess I didn't ever have to be alone and make those big decisions by myself. just in general, like it felt a little bit overwhelming. Like, do I wanna work anymore? Do I not? Do I wanna keep this house? Do I wanna move? Do I wanna travel? Do I need to go do some eat, pray, love? Like, good Lord, it just felt like I had so many options and it felt overwhelming. So what I did was I took a time out in my own life and I really just took a lot of time for myself. And I know that's not a luxury that everybody has the opportunity to do. So I recognize that when I'm saying this, that having this time was really a gift for me to reboot myself. But this whole episode is not. about that. What it's really about is I had to learn to trust myself and I had to learn that consistency on showing up for me was what I really needed to begin to gain confidence that I could walk into the next chapter. So a really small, well, it hasn't turned out to be really small, but one of the things that I did was I decided to change the way that I was living my life, health-wise. And I did a huge shift and I hired this trainer about a year ago and it was life changing. And I don't mean it in a way that's like, hey, I'm gonna get some six pack. abs, like, come on, let's be real. If you guys know me, let's just settle down there. That's not what it was about. And it wasn't because I was trying to become a different person that I wanted to fit in different clothes. It's really that I needed proof that I could count on myself because in all of the years before, and if you know me, I have had a gym membership every day of the last 25 years. And I don't really want to talk about the days that I actually went. Okay. Like I just had a membership though. I guess that felt good. So I don't want you to think that showing up for myself that all of a sudden it was amazing. No, I didn't have amazing days because I went to the gym. There were plenty of mornings where I got up, went to the gym, came back home, put my pajamas back on, literally climbed into bed and stayed there the rest of the day watching TV. Sometimes I cried all day. Sometimes I would just sit in the quiet. And sometimes grief won the whole dad gum day, you guys. Sometimes it was just, man. But one thing grief didn't win during this whole season was my morning routine. And I actually kept that promise to myself that I would go. And I went every morning like four days a week. And I met with my trainer and it was just like, even if in my hardest days, when I did that, even if I came home and put the pajamas back on, I knew that I had shown up for myself in some way. And that was just so healing to me. I want you to know that when I say I might have come home from my pajamas back on, I say that to say that we don't have to have a perfect day, To be proud of something. rest of day might crop the bed, you know? But when you actually consistently show up for yourself in any way, I mean, I'm just giving you the example, mine was the gym. But I mean, it all counts. It doesn't matter what your little thing is. But what I noticed about myself was that something interesting started to happen. I started to notice that because I could do that hard thing, I was like really motivated to try the next hard thing. And when I say hard, I don't mean like, know, some of you been working out every day for 30 years and you're like, yeah, that's not that hard, but hard for me, okay? Doing things that were more uncomfortable for me. And like when I started doing the gym, then I felt more confident to do the next little thing. And so it kind of just gave me a little bit of confidence to just be brave. it's not that my life got easier. It's just little things like, okay, this is such a weird one, but I am terrified of the dentist. And to the point that I had to take Halcyon pills before appointments, the kind where you can't even remember you were there. Okay. And I've done that for years. But then when Mike died, I didn't have anybody to drive me there. I mean, again, let me say, I got people and if they're listening, they're like, girl, I would have taken you and I know you would have. But I didn't want my daughter or my son-in-law or my friends to have to take off work because I was scared of the dentist. So it's so little, but I actually decided to go and try without the medication. Now I have to tell you guys something funny. My dentist office, cracked me up because they've known me for years and they know that I have to take medication. And so when I came in and I didn't, they're like, wait, what? But they were so supportive and amazing. I was so scared though. My hands were like sweating so bad. Did I think about canceling? Heck yeah, about 200 times, but I did it. It sucked. Like I hated every minute. I still do not like going to the dentist, but I did it. And I walked out and I was like, girl, you did that. Like you did that and I had to go to like three other appointments with them over the last year and I've shown up every time without canceling and I've never the med. And again, do I love it? No, but like to be honest, I kind of feel like a little bit of a badass, you know? So I don't know. It's just, I walked out of those appointments. and realize something important is that healing doesn't happen because of one giant life-changing moment. It happens because of all the little ways that I started to go, okay, just be brave. Like you don't have to do what you've always done. Like you can do things differently. You can go to the gym, you can go to the dentist, you can make the phone call you've been avoiding. You can figure out how to do things that are hard. You can walk into a party by yourself. You know, don't have to have a plus one at your party. I've survived holiday that was super hard. None of these things are life-changing, but together they become something way bigger. And it's like, okay, I can really do hard things. I think that we spend so much of our lives chasing confidence. We think the confidence comes first, but it doesn't actually. Confidence is earned. Confidence is you showing yourself every time you keep a promise to yourself. Your brain collects another receipt. Hey, I did that. I survived that. I kept my word. I can trust myself. My favorite realization from this whole grief journey so far is every time I did one hard thing, I know this sounds so crazy, but I borrowed courage from that hard thing or that experience to try the next hard thing. The gym gave me the courage to do the dentist. The dentist gave me the courage to do my next challenge and the next challenge gave me the courage to jump back into my life, right? The courage isn't one huge leap for me, it's just been a cumulative effect. So, I don't know, I feel pretty dang good now and it's not because of one thing, it's because of doing the hard things that are hard to me and your hard will probably look much different and have a lot of different titles to it, but I think you get it. It's that had always been really great at keeping promises to everybody else. If my kid needed me, I was there. If my clients needed me, I was there. If a friend calls in need, I'd be there. But I would tell myself something like, hey, I'm going to start this whole plan on Monday. And then if I didn't, I had a lot of reasons why I couldn't. as I've reflected on my life, the easiest person to disappoint was myself. I did not like to disappoint other people, but myself, it kind of became something in my brain where I was like, yeah, we'll do this. have ADHD. And way that shows up is I always have grand ideas and grand plans. And anybody who's listening who knows me knows my gosh, I've had a business idea or a trip I've thinking about or Everything I go all in, if I'm going to start a hobby, I'm going to buy everything to get that thing started and I'll probably like it for about two days, I'm honest. But I have a lot of product. I just became someone was okay with starting and quitting. That was just me, if it was something for myself. And so I guess along the way, I just stopped believing that I could show up consistently in different ways. And I feel like... that if you're listening and you're like, my God, yeah, I do that a lot. I big intention lists or big to-do lists and I just don't follow through. And it's like a running joke with people who love me. They know. And everybody in my life has been so happy for me and proud of me. how I have literally just charged into this new chapter and they can see that I'm different, I'm happy, I'm confident. So I just wanted to share that because if there's things in your life, your hard things, just know you can do it. had listened to so many podcasts or reels where... People shared things like this and I'd be like, oh, that's so inspirational, but yeah, that's not me. And this time it actually is me that I'm actually consistent and I showed up for myself. And I gotta tell you, it really does make you feel kind of like a rock star in your own world. Just to me, I'm not saying I'm a rock star out there, but I'm telling you for me, it's felt like it. So I think it's more about, we don't need to change our entire life or a 17 step morning routine. I'm not one of those toxic positivity or let's push ourselves harder. It's like one thing. Maybe it's a walk. Maybe it's drinking more water. Maybe it's scheduling a therapy appointment. Or a doctor's appointment. Or maybe it's just simply keeping one promise to yourself. But I bet if you do a little bit of thinking about how you show up in your life, I bet that... you'll see that you tend to show up for people more than yourself. And I think that's just something a lot of us do. So looking back, it's not the gym that changed my life. I think it just introduced me to a part of myself where I realized she can do that. She can show up. So if you're wondering, if you're kind of in a stuck place or you're in a hard spot or you're in a season of maybe a little bit you're disoriented or you're struggling with who you are, what you want next, or maybe you're on your way to a new chapter and it feels overwhelming, I think realize that you can become the person that you want to be if you finally choose yourself. And maybe the answer you find is the same one I found, is that the person you've been waiting on has been there the whole time. We just lost her for a few minutes. So, I don't know. I think that maybe you might just be waiting for one small promise, one ordinary day, one tiny act of courage to remind you that you're capable. And so maybe that's where the light is this week, And maybe it's just in literally doing one little thing and keeping one little promise to yourself. I think where I've always gone wrong is it had to be all or nothing. You know, I'm gonna do it all. And then of course I wouldn't do any of it. So I hope for you you find something and you start really believing in the fact that you can do whatever it is you wanna do. And I'm here for it. And you know, there's a whole hype squad over here just waiting to cheer you on. So this week, I hope a little piece of light that you find is maybe something little that you do just for you. And maybe you give yourself a little pat on the back and just say, hey, we did that. Good job. So I'm going to leave you with... I got this, you got this, take a baby step and look for the light. I'm Kelly and this is all the light she found.