About this Episode

This episode is a reflection on the five New Year’s Resolutions that I focused on in 2025—a year that felt less like running and more like crawling, but ultimately changed my life. Instead of pushing harder or chasing achievements, I chose to slow down and invest deeply in myself, even when it meant stepping back from my career, losing income, and spending real time and money on my health.

I share how prioritizing my physical and mental health, working on my marriage, building real friendships, asking for help, and allowing myself more rest and play became the foundation for everything else. These choices weren’t easy or exciting, but they brought me to a place of stability and clarity.

If you’re a Good Girl, Martyr Mom, or recovering perfectionist who feels guilty for slowing down and focusing on you, this episode is an invitation to rethink your New Year plans. Taking care of yourself isn’t falling behind—it’s the foundation that makes everything else possible.

In this episode, you’ll hear

The five intentions I focused on in 2025 that helped me rebuild my health and capacity
Why stepping back from my career and losing income was a necessary part of healing—and why I’m proud of that choice
How prioritizing my physical and mental health improved everything else in my life
The role honest communication played in strenghtening my marriage
What it looked like to build real friendships and ask for support instead of doing everything alone
Why rest, play, and hiring help are essential—not indulgent—parts of sustainable self-care

Resources Mentioned

When you’re ready, here’s how I can help you:

Free 4B Self-Care Framework© Guide: A great way to get started on your self-care journey, this guide provides an easy-to-use framework that makes self-care actually supportive rather than another burden on your to-do list. Get the Guide
Rituals that Replenish: Instant Access Workshop: This DIY 3-hour workshop (1 hour per week) will help you get to know your true wants and needs and will help you develop the habit of practicing one self-care ritual in your daily life. Learn More
The No Longer Last Journey®: Coaching Program: This 12-month program includes monthly coaching & community calls, classes, reflection guides, and weekly self-care reminders to help you overcome obstacles, improve your self-worth, and make self-care a sustainable and supportive part of your life. Learn More

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00]

[00:01:00] Hey everybody. Welcome back to the podcast if you are New here. Hi, my name is Mia Hemstad. I'm a mom of two kids. I am a self-care coach for moms for the last five years, and I am a full-time communications director at the Maternal Mental Health Leadership Alliance. It's a nonprofit that pushes policy. At the federal level to invest in maternal mental health and improve the mental health of moms during pregnancy and postpartum.

If you are returning, welcome back. Thanks for hanging out with me today. It has been a really long time since I posted, so if you're a true fan, you know that last year my sleep issues, which you guys know I talk about all the time, I have post-traumatic stress disorders diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder, and one of the pieces of that is really bad nightmares and just this debilitating fatigue and.

It was taking over my life last year, and so I had to really pull back and that kind of segues into what today's episode is about. We are in a new year. It is now 2026, [00:02:00] and there is a lot of information out there. There is a lot of advice and ideas and what you should do for the new year, and I personally am finding it a bit overwhelming.

I used to be super diehard about New Year's resolutions, major goal achiever. I'm an Enneagram three recovering perfectionist type a energy girl, okay? And I have had to learn the hard way through burnout and literally getting mentally ill, how to approach personal growth in a way that's healthy and not damaging.

Today's episode is for all of you who want to pursue some sort of growth this year, but you're kind of scared. You're scared because you have a tendency to push yourself too hard. You're scared because you have a tendency to feel incredibly ashamed and guilty if you are not perfect with your news resolution and goals.

I am going to be talking a bit about that, but I'm also gonna be talking about the five intentions that I did focus on last year. I call them intentions. Goals, resolutions all the same that I did focus on in 2025 that I [00:03:00] believe have really just I, and I'm in such a good place now, physically, mentally, and emotionally.

I'm so grateful. I feel ready to take on this year. I'm just feeling buzzing with just life and and I know that it's because of these five things that I focused on last year. So hopefully at the end of this episode, you're gonna walk away with some. Concrete ideas of what you can do to kind of craft your resolutions for the year in a way that is helpful to you.

Healthy grounding, and it's gonna be a springboard to set you up for success in the next year. I really feel, you know that saying like, 2025 I crawled or I, you know, it's like I crawled so that I could walk, so that I could run. I really feel like in 2025 I crawled so that now I can walk in 2026 and then hopefully by 2027 I will be running.

And I really feel that way and I'm so excited to just dig into what I focused on to get here. So the first thing that I focused on was my health. My sleep issues have always been bad, but [00:04:00] they were really bad in 2025 and I was feeling very ill. And, um, on top of that, my premenstrual dysphoric disorder was really, really bad.

This is where you get super depressed and anxious and exhausted during. Of your menstrual cycle. So half of every month I was, it was like death. It felt horrible. It was horrible. And then, and I have a whole episode on that, so I can link that for you where I like went, tell you the story of how I went all the way to the UK to see a hormone specialist started at HRT and all those things.

And. Was pursuing management of this because I lived with it, unmanaged for 10 years. And then also cyclical migraines. I get migraines. I used to get migraines twice a month and they were super debilitating. I couldn't take anything for them. I just had to lay on the couch in excruciating pain for a whole day, and that would happen twice a month.

So I had a lot of chronic and debilitating health issues that had really come to a head in 2025. They all were hitting me all at the same time at level 10. And I really needed to slow the heck down, reduce my output and focus on me. So I [00:05:00] really reduced how much I posted on Instagram, how much I posted on YouTube, my podcast, I reduced how much I showed up on Instagram Stories.

I just like really went inward and I had to, like, my health was relying on it and nobody can take care of me but me. Right. I mean, yes, community care, we love all that asking for, we love all that. But there's certain choices like getting my butt on the plane, taking time off work, allocating money to all of this right there.

These are decisions that you have to do as a person. And so I hope that today I am gonna encourage you to invest in yourself in that way this year. So I'm happy to report that now my PMDD is fully managed as well as my migraines. The symptoms of those things I don't experience really, and I haven't had a migraine in months and I am so grateful.

I had to see hormone specialists, multiple gynecologists, try multiple different treatments. S multiple different neurologists, testing blood work, all of the things. And I finally am on a treatment regimen that has managed these symptoms, these debilitating and chronic symptoms that [00:06:00] were literally eating up most of my life and causing me to be bedridden and couch bound.

And. Sick and in pain and I don't experience them anymore. And this just brings so much relief and joy and I'm not like constantly having this anxiety. Those of you with chronic illness know there's this anxiety of like,, am I gonna be hit with this today? Am I gonna make plans? And it's all gonna have to go in the trash because.

I'm gonna be hit with a migraine, or I'm gonna be hit with my PMDD and I'm not gonna be able to handle it. That's part of why I have been unable to since this podcast launch in 2022 to be consistent. Because when you live with chronic illness and it's debilitating, no matter how hard you try or work or plan, you cannot just show up to everything it takes from your life.

And I'm so happy to say that those things are managed now. Sleep. How are we doing with that? I have had, so I started to see a new therapist around the spring of 2025, an EMDR trauma therapist, who also specializes in internal [00:07:00] family systems. So that means the trauma that happens within a family system.

This is a miracle that I found someone in person in Portugal near where I live. Who specializes in this, and it's been so helpful because it checks all of these boxes for me, and there's a lot of evidence and research to support that. EMDR is one of the best models of therapy for people who have PTSD and nightmares.

So I started working with her and my sleeves started getting so much worse because you're opening up all these cans of worms that I hadn't opened. Forever. And so things were really hard for a long time. But then around October, November, I started having major breakthroughs. Breakthroughs where these chronic nightmares, where the same thing would happen over and over and over again, and it was super distressing in one nightmare, like the thing that usually would happen didn't happen.

Things ended not positively, but in like kind of a neutral ish way. And since then I would say my sleep went from being a one out of 10, like one being horrific, terrible. You wake up feeling sick [00:08:00] to now I'm like consistently at a four or a five. And while that still seems like a failing grade for me, that is a miracle.

I can work with five outta 10, I can use a five outta 10 to exercise and shower, which then brings up my energy even more, and then I can use that capacity to do something that excites me, like recording this podcast and that brings up my energy even more. Like I can work with five Outta 10.

And it definitely felt in the first six months of that EMDR weekly, by the way, I just felt like, this is horrible. This is not gonna work. This is terrible. I hate this, and now I'm having breakthroughs. So if you are starting a new form of therapy and it feels overwhelming and you're opening up all your wounds and you're just like, oh my God, I'm bleeding everywhere.

I can't handle this, it gets better. You get over the hump, it gets better. So I have invested so much time. I hope you can hear that. Like the gynecologist, the hormone specialist, the neurologist, the, I went to the hospital multiple times, like for migraine. The EMDR like. Oh, and I [00:09:00] also went to a sleep specialist, you guys, I went to a sleep specialist and I did a like an official like sleep exam where they strapped me up to so many different electrodes and I went to sleep with all this equipment on.

I'm gonna be honest, I think that the equipment was so uncomfortable that I woke up multiple times because my results were like, oh, you wake up a lot throughout the night, and I'm like, I don't really do that. I did that because I, my finger was like the blood circulation was being cut off in my finger because I had a blood pressure monitor on anyway.

It was a very expensive test and working with a sleep specialist was very expensive and I tried so many sleep medications and I told myself, 'cause I've been so scared of going on more sleep meds 'cause I had a bad experience. I was like, this is the year where I'm gonna give it a good shot. I'm really gonna give it a shot.

I'm gonna try the medications and takes time. You gotta like start at a very low dose for two weeks, then you go up a little bit more, then you go up a little more and then you see how it is and you wait six weeks and you, you monitor your symptoms. You see if it gets better. The sleep medications, y'all did not work.

But you know what? I finally feel at peace that I tried it, I tried it, and I did [00:10:00] a sleep exam. And then you were like, yeah, you sleep terribly. Who knows how accurate that specific result is. But like, anyway I blew through my savings in 2025 and the reason why I wanna say that is because I think. Maybe you are also falling in the trap that I was, which was like I kept waiting to have quote, unquote, enough money to invest in my health journey.

I kept waiting, and guess what? The time never came. The time never came. What came was feeling incredibly ill and not myself. And maybe you're thinking, Mia, you moved to Portugal and I thought you were feeling better. Yes, of course you feel better when you're not around. Racism and guns. For sure. But what moving to Portugal did for me was it opened up this my body's ability to show me how sick I was.

Now that I wasn't in survival mode, my body was like, finally we can unstrap all of this tape that we've been using to hold ourselves together and we can finally show you how Ill we are. And it [00:11:00] was bad. Okay? It was bad. And so being in this country where healthcare is affordable, I'm so grateful.

I have private health insurance. I go to private doctors. I don't go to the public health system 'cause I don't pay into that yet. But the private healthcare here, to give you an example, for a family of four, our health insurance premium is like $200 a month. Okay? In the US we were paying 2,300. And that was just for the premium, not for all the visits.

Anyway, I digress. I just feel like I have worked so long and so hard for so many years to get to a place where I could pursue a health journey, and no, I still didn't have quote, unquote enough money because I had to blow through my savings in order to work methodically through all of these issues.

My PMDD, my migraines, my sleep, and committing to EMDR weekly therapy. All of this is a time and money investment and an energy investment. I'm so grateful that I slowed everything down and put a pin in my ambitions and a lot of other career goals in order to take care of myself. And I hope the takeaway you're hearing [00:12:00] here is every single thing that you want in life rises and falls to the level of you, your capacity, your bandwidth, your health.

If you are not doing well. While you can hold everything together for a short amount of time, it will eventually explode. Either what you're working on will explode or your relationships will explode, or you will explode. Like, I love to say that my career might look amazing, but my body will be in shambles.

Or like my motherhood might be like going fantastically and I'm super present, but like then my career's in shambles or I am completely dissociating at the end of the day 'cause I'm burnt out. We get this backwards. We focus on everything external, including motherhood. And we forget that we are the source, we are the energy, we are the thing, the glue that holds it all together.

And so if you don't start with you, you will eventually implode. And I felt that coming in 2025, and I'm so [00:13:00] proud of myself that instead of waiting for myself to implode. And fall apart and get super ill and suicidal again. I went, Nope. I know these warning signs. I've been here before. I've been here before in 2019 and we're not doing it again.

We came to Europe to slow down and to take care of this, and now my body is finally feeling safe enough and stable enough, like external stability, you know, jobs going good. Kids are doing well, like I'm finally stable externally, and my body was like, we can now work on the internal. And I really feel like this alone has given me a foundation that I can now use to build on these other areas of my life that I feel like have had to take a back seat while I've tended to these parts of myself.

The second thing that I focused on was my marriage. My husband and I. Have had so many challenges in our marriage because we used to, we came into a relationship when we were both very [00:14:00] religious and we were operating from these very traditional Christian Catholic gender norms and stereotypes. That really didn't work for us.

It really didn't work for us and it created a lot of harm and resentment between the both of us and amongst a variety of other things that I'm not gonna get into, obviously to respect mine and his privacy. But last year, was it last year or 2024? 2024. We did six months of weekly couple therapy and then we both started going to individual therapy and like all this stuff, basically last year, instead of keeping the peace quote unquote, I pushed myself outta my people pleasing codependent cycles.

And patterns and I push myself to be honest about everything, honest about the things that bother me, honest about the things in the past that have harmed me honest about where I want our relationship to go. Even though that exposed me to what if we can't make it because I am being honest now.[00:15:00]

Of what I need. And what if he doesn't wanna fulfill that need? What if he doesn't wanna do or be what I need in a relationship? And that's the scary thing about being honest, is you kind of wanna just keep the peace, not say anything to keep everything status quo, right? I have kids, this is serious, but not being honest was like choking me.

And I have been married now for 10 years and you get to a point when you need to just be honest with each other. And that's the most loving thing that you can do, is to be honest, and so that was really hard. And things weren't always this perfect like I'm hearing you we're hearing each other, we're resolving it, we're moving forward.

No, it's, it was a messy, painful, difficult year. And I'm really happy to say that we are now on, I don't wanna say on the other side of it, but like we have now come to a place where we know we are really, we know how to work on loving each other and forgiving each other, and like growing as individuals and growing together.

And that [00:16:00] feels really good. Like we have the tools and the understanding and we've hashed out all the hard conversations. And now I feel like we're in the like, practice phase. We're in the practice phase of like, okay. We finally know what's going on with each other and how to be there for each other.

, And it's a beautiful thing. And I'm really glad that I slowed everything down and focused on my marriage because I spend the most time with my husband, than I do with anybody else. I mean, now he's working full time and he's outta the house, so I don't see him as much, but still it's like.

The energy and the dynamic, you share it with your partner. And so like if your relationship with your partner isn't great, it can be very draining. And so I encourage you, if you're going through something similar and you have a itch in your heart to like tell your truth, like I hope that you do that and I hope it that it's safe for you to do that.

The third thing that I worked on, oh my God, I'm so proud of this and I think this should be like one of your New Year's resolutions is friendships. When I first moved here, I was like a hermit. I really was. I was in [00:17:00] therapy. I was starting new medication. I was transitioning to living in a new country. I was trying to stabilize my family, my kids.

I wasn't looking for relationships on top of the fact that I didn't have vocabulary for this at the time, but I knew that I what I know now to be codependency. I had a codependent. Compulsion. Basically what that means is I dive head first into new relationships and I'm over generous and I overgive and I don't have boundaries.

And then I overextend myself and I wanted to address that before I dove into a new relationship. And this year or last year, 2025, I really worked on that in therapy through EMDR because it stems from childhood. You know, I had to over care take for everybody as a child. So I don't know how to exist in a relationship and not over give.

But now I do, because I really unpacked that in therapy last year and I feel so much better. And in tandem with that, though, I was opening myself up to new relationships and falling into codependent patterns and feeling super upset and ashamed of that. But this is [00:18:00] where the learning happens. You can't just learn about things intellectually and talk about it in therapy and be like, yeah, I know now what codependency is and I'm not gonna do it anymore.

No, you know what it is You learn and then you accidentally do it. And then you realize you did it after you did it, and then you have to have compassion for yourself, and you have to sit with the shame and guilt, and then you have to release it because it's ultimately not your fault. This is a reason why this pattern exists, and then you grow.

And so it was messy. It was really, really messy. But now I'm so proud to say that I have a handful of really good friends who I feel like I have healthy dynamics with. There's give and take reciprocity boundaries. Support and love and I started to go on a monthly moms night out. I started to, um, regularly text and send voice notes to friends.

I started to, you know, have video calls with friends. I've started to. , What else have I done? Oh, go on. , Biweekly walks, like every other week I go on a walk. It's like a walk and talk with a friend. It's so awesome. And I will say never do I feel like I [00:19:00] have the time or extra energy to go to dinner.

Half the time I'm finishing a meeting, running home from coworking, changing my clothes, and then running to this dinner with friends. And I'm saying that 'cause I want you to know that like. Nothing magical is gonna happen where you all of a sudden have so much time and energy in your life to dedicate to friendships.

You kind of just have to carve it out and make the time. So for instance, when I walk home from coworking, it's like a 15 minute walk. That's when I listen to voice notes from my friends, send voice notes back. I fitted into my already busy life and over time you end up nurturing such great relationships and friendships.

And this came in super handy this year when some really stressful things were happening with my kids at their school. And I can't go into the details, but when ish hit the fan, I told all of my friends what happened. And typically what I would do when I'm going through a crisis is I would keep it to myself.

[00:20:00] And I would try to solve it myself. And so I really feel like it shows so much growth I've done in therapy last year that the moment this bad thing happened I was vulnerable and I reached out for support and help and told people what was going on and allowed people to help me. And that was incredible.

It healed something in me so deeply to have friends show up for me because my whole life, most of my life. I have always been the friend who is there for everybody, but then when stuff happens for me, they're not there for me. And I know I just said that I typically keep things to myself, but that's because I've had a lot of experiences where I did open up and seek support and help and nobody was there.

So obviously that wounded me and traumatized me and made me just not wanna ever ask for help again. , So I feel like it shows just so much growth and healing. To open up and then receive help and love and support through a hard time. And I think now more than ever, we [00:21:00] need to invest time and energy and love into our friendships and into building community with the right people.

And I know it can be really hard to find the right people. I highly encourage you to put yourself out there and. Just try to align yourself with people who have similar values. You know, you could do something general like going to a dance class or taking a ceramic making class, or you can do something more specific, like looking on Eventbrite for events in your area where people are gathering around a specific topic of interest.

And maybe you're more likely to find someone with similar values because of doing that. Right? So there's a lot of ways to find new friends and. I just think it's important to make sure that it's a regular thing on your calendar. You know, this falls under brilliant self-care in the four B self-care framework.

It's a type of self-care that isn't quantifiable, but makes a massive difference in your emotional wellbeing. So how many times a month are you? Proactively investing in friendships and relationships. So I'm [00:22:00] really proud of the time and effort that I've spent on friendships this year and on becoming a better friend who knows how to have boundaries.

And I feel like it ended up being a miracle and a saving grace for me when she hit the fan and I needed support and people were there. The fourth thing. That I focused on last year was less working, more rest in play. I mean, I already talked about that. I worked a lot less last year at the expense of my business.

And by the way, I really wanna talk about that because there's a lot of business coaches and people in the online world that are like, I rested and then I made like $500,000 I rested. And like my income didn't go down, it went up. And it's because of my proven system. And if you pay me $5 million, I will give you my five step proven system that will enable you to make a million dollars while doing nothing.

Yeah, that didn't happen for me in order to keep my business afloat, my website running right, my domain name, my email, software, all of it. [00:23:00] Okay. There's a lot that goes into running an online business. I had to get a credit card. This is not financial advice. I have great credit. So it was one with like a delayed payment.

I'm not paying interest or anything like that, but I had to create a plan. That involves me losing money because I wasn't actively promoting or working or selling last year, my content and my work and my coaching services. So I had to accept that. Resting more meant losing money. What this means ultimately is that rest costs money.

And I think this is a concept that's really hard to accept because it kind of makes me angry, like, why does rest cost me money? But maybe that's something we have to accept these days. Like we don't really live in villages anymore, where someone can just come by and watch your kids and you can have a break.

And so I had to see rest as an investment, something that's really good for me. From a health perspective and, and everything else. And that work will always be there. And that I am investing in holding onto my business and keeping [00:24:00] it alive. 'cause it matters so much to me and I don't wanna like just stop because of chronic illness.

If I did, I think that would've made me. Hate myself. And I know that sounds terrible, but like when you have chronic illness, it develops a lot of frustration with your body and yourself and your mind. And I didn't wanna do something like quit my business because of my chronic illness. I wanted to allow myself to spend time and money to prioritize my health without sacrificing other things that matter to me.

'cause I, you already, I have already lost a lot because of chronic illness. I didn't wanna lose this. Right? I'm sharing all of this because I think people, again, wanna wait till the perfect time where everything lines up so that resting will cost them the least amount of money or effort, and I'm telling you that you need to make rest consistent.

Regardless of the cost, because if you do that, you won't end up having these like huge needs for like massive amounts of rest because of burnout and things like that. So what [00:25:00] this looked like for me was really working on Saturdays being sacred. And I'm gonna be honest with you, Saturdays being sacred means no work on Saturdays.

I spent a lot of Saturdays last year thinking about work and not really turning my brain off. I would be not working, but just thinking about like how I wish I was working or how I wish I had the energy to work, or I wish I had more days in the week. You know, just like fantasizing slash ruminating slash not healthy.

Okay. And I'm sharing this because I think we think we're just gonna decide to turn our brains off and to rest, and that is, that's just supposed to happen. And in reality, you have conditioned your neurological wiring to be primed for work. For many years since the beginning of me starting my YouTube channel, eight years ago, Saturdays was when I worked.

How else would I have built this? I always worked. I was a stay at home mom for a while and I worked part-time at night, and so weekends were the only time I had, and then now I work [00:26:00] full-time for the last three, four years. And so, weekends were still the only time to build and grow this business. So my brain is very much conditioned to work on the weekend, and so it makes perfect sense that it doesn't wanna shut off. So I am still committed to Saturdays being work free and I am still practicing having grace and compassion for myself when my brain wants to ruminate on work and I try to redirect my focus to something else.

So I have been doing a lot of like reading, listening to music, exercise, walks. Coloring, playing board games with my kids. They're now at ages where they can play board games, and that's super fun. Um, and also house projects, which I know doesn't sound like rest, but I'm using my brain at a computer most of the time.

So when I take time on a Saturday to like dig out the closet and vacuum all the dust bunnies out and like declutter and organize and sort things and go to IKEA and like get the stores that I'm envisioning for the space. [00:27:00] Like I live in a very small apartment. There's four of us in here. Keeping things clean and organized and decluttered is really important.

And I actually find that to be very rejuvenating and I feels, it feels luxurious to me to take the time to do that. It really does. So rest can take a lot of forms. It doesn't just involve lying down. And for me, just lying down just like causes the rumination to keep going. So it's very important for me to stay busy, but staying busy doing things that are enjoyable for me.

So I'm really proud of myself for doing that. And no, it didn't result in things growing tenfold and revenue doubling. It actually resulted in, um, loss. But what I gained personally has been so beautiful and so worth it. So I have zero regrets about that. And then the last thing that I focused on was asking for and hiring help.

So last year I hired someone to clean. And at first it was every other week, but now it's every week, and I am so. Proud of myself for making that happen. I [00:28:00] was a cleaner for five years, so the idea of hiring someone else to clean when I, first of all, I'm very good at cleaning my own space, have my own like preferences and little like things that I wanna do myself, but I had to let go of control for once in my life and let someone else help me.

And guess what? It wasn't always cleaned in the way that I would do it and that I would prefer, and so I had to be. Brave and the people pleaser me is like screaming and crying and, if I noticed something that wasn't done the next time the cleaner would come, I would be like, Hey, um, I wanna show you something really quick before you get started.

And I would point out the thing that I would like her to pay more attention to. Like, oh, like this is a section that I really would love you to wipe down every week and I think you missed it last week. Or like, I need you to move the hamper and vacuum behind it, you know, not just around it. Like little things like that.

And guess what? She was so happy to take the feedback and she takes it and applies it and improves every time I bring it up. And so for all of us, control freaks out there. I love you [00:29:00] so much. When you delegate. Slash hire someone to help you with something. They're not gonna do it perfectly the first time and they're not gonna do it the way you envision the first time.

This is a relationship where you need to be willing to communicate feedback and ask for what you need, and not to internalize this word thing of like, oh my God, I'm such a terrible person. You know the B word, because I am telling this cleaner what to do. The cleaner is grateful to have work, I'm assuming if you're paying them properly and they're happy to make you happy so that it can be an ongoing and healthy and positive long-term relationship and working relationship.

So that has been amazing and because of that, I have been able to. Do joyful activities on Saturday because what I used to do on Saturday was clean all day. And because I have so much chronic pain and problems and injury from when I was a cleaner and I wasn't taking care of my body, when I clean it flares up all of my pain and I will basically spend the [00:30:00] whole rest of the weekend recovering from cleaning my home.

And now after a year of having a cleaner Saturdays are for fun and rest and play, and I am so proud of myself for making that happen now. What else? Oh, when my husband, my husband was a stay at home parent for almost five years, and he went back to work in the late summer of last year in August.

I think that was gonna be a huge transition for our family. You know, that means that there's gonna be stuff that's gonna come onto my plate. Some parenting and house related work. And I knew, one of the things he's responsible for is all the meals or was responsible for all the meals. And so in order to help us with that transition, I hired someone, the same person who cleans for me to come on Sunday afternoons and help us meal prep.

And so for like a couple of months during that transition of basically being a dual working parent household where both parents are working outta the home. [00:31:00] We, I decided to hire help to meal prep so that we only had to heat food at dinner time. And I'm so glad I did because things were really intense during that transition.

And so this is a reminder to you that hiring help doesn't need to be forever, because that was only for a few months and then we got the hang of the transition and now we do not have meal prep services anymore. And I think some people get scared of hiring help. They're like, oh my gosh, I can't possibly pay for that every single week, but maybe it's only for three months.

Or maybe it's only for once a quarter, maybe it's not as frequent. Like there's ways to approach hiring help that doesn't have to completely break the bank. And you'd be surprised, people are grateful to have work, especially in this economy. So don't close yourself off to the idea. Listen, I'm not rolling in the dough either.

Um, But I realized that it's really important that I am not working all the time and cleaning and. My whole weekend and having that help and support has been huge. Having the meal prep support was amazing and it helped us transition with less [00:32:00] stress. And then the other thing I wanted to share under this one was sometimes I ask friends if they could pick my kids up from school.

Like I had several doctor's appointments that were around the same time as school pickup and my husband was at work. And so I would reach out to friends and say, Hey, can you pick up my kids and hold onto them until I can pick them up later? And again, super vulnerable to reach out and ask for help. Ask someone to do me a favor.

And I'm really proud of doing that. And it made a big difference in feeling like I'm cultivating a village and I'm leaning on that village when I need it. And it was super helpful. And then the last thing was childcare help. You know, I. Had a therapy appointment that I really needed, but my husband was unable to be with the kids and they weren't in school that day.

And a friend of mine was offered to watch the kids and she made them lunch and watch them for two hours so that I wouldn't have to miss therapy. And that was. Amazing. You know, that was one of the things that I really did last year that I'm proud of was asking for and hiring help. [00:33:00] And that's it. I, that, those are the five things that I focused on in 2025 that felt a lot like crawling, and it felt messy and it felt hard and it felt slow, but it really set me up for success.

It healed a lot of things in me, a lot of traumas, a lot of pain. It healed so much to invest in those things and to take time for those things. And now I feel like I'm ready to keep going and see where this year takes me. And that reminds me, I was supposed to say this at the beginning of the episode, but I totally forgot the no longer Last Journey coaching program is gonna reopen, but this year it's gonna be a bit different because I'm only.

Opening it up for a certain amount of slots and I have to make sure those slots are filled in order to open the program to everyone. Meaning that I'm not gonna open the program unless we have like a minimum number of people. So there's a wait list and I will link it below, and this is my 12 month coaching program.

This is for people who understand that growth and change takes time. This is for people who. [00:34:00] Have a lot on their plate, so they need a lot of time to experience growth and change. I have run this program for five years, and I am telling you from my professional experience running this program that 12 months is the perfect amount of time for people to learn new information, apply it, make mistakes.

Figure out what works, what doesn't apply the next level of learning, come to coaching, get support and advice from me. Use me as their accountability buddy. It's literally me in your corner for 12 months. And the transformations internally and externally that I have seen from women of all walks of life has been incredible and has only proven to me even more that like this is the format where people who wanna make lasting change.

Can participate in and receive that. So that is a really great opportunity that's gonna be opening up very soon. Enrollment opens for a week and there's like time sensitive bonuses and discounts that happen around that time. And so I highly recommend getting on the wait list if you're curious about it, and [00:35:00] wanna make sure that you can access those bonuses and those discounts during that enrollment week.

And then usually we kick off with the first coaching call of the year, and I believe that's gonna be. I don't know exactly. It might be in March or it might be the beginning of April. I love new year, new me energy, like in a sense. But I also think that winter is a time of rest. So I encourage you to actually spend the next couple of weeks continuing to reflect on how you're doing and like what you want from this year and not to really feel the pressure to go into action mode and implementation mode until the spring.

'cause that's when new life happens and things warm up and we can feel ready, literally like. From a nature biological standpoint to actually pursue things and take action. So don't feel bad if you're still in reflect and hibernate mode, and if you are ready to make some changes. Know that my program is literally opening up right around that springtime marker so that you have that support if you choose to go there.

And then also, I'm gonna be running a special promotion on a [00:36:00] workshop, which is basically my coaching program, but distilled down into a Cliff Notes version. So if you're somebody who's like, I really can't commit to a year long thing right now, but I want to have some tools to implement change in my self-care and how I treat myself, my workshop, which is called Rituals that Replenish.

Is the best next thing for that. And so I will be emailing my community about that with like a special discount code. So make sure that you're on my email list. Make sure that you are on the wait list for the no longer Last Journey coaching program, if those things are of interest and if you are looking for support around your self-care goals.

This. All right, that was all I have for you today. That was a really fun episode to record. I hope it was helpful and I would love to hear if you had any aha moments or insights. You can always DM me on Instagram or drop me a comment below. And thank you so much for spending time with me. Thank you, and I'm so excited for this year, and I hope you are too.

I will see you next time. Take care. Bye.

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