091 – Post-Election Self-Care

Sarah Tacy [00:00:00]:
Did you know our decision making and ability to connect with others, including our kids, is influenced by the state of our nervous system? When our nervous system feels well resourced, we are more likely to make heart based decisions instead of falling into protective trauma patterning. We will be more likely to connect with loved ones in creative and generative ways because we’ve met the hard emotions in ourselves first. And please hear what I’m saying too is that we can then meet our kids in their wide range of emotions in more fun and generative ways when we have resource ourselves to meet ourselves in these places as well. After feeling like I nearly disappeared postpartum, nervous system resourcing brought me back to life to fully experience joy, build meaningful relationships, strengthen my marriage, and embrace vulnerability. I would love to invite you and or someone you love to resource, a 4 month program designed for women who have navigated matrescence, that transformative threshold of caring for tiny humans, a threshold that can bring immense joy, but also make it challenging to recognize your own existence, let alone your preferences. My dream is to help us become well resourced, alive mothers, because this is the basis of familial and generational healing, but also because feeling embodied and alive is our birthright. The program starts January 6th. But I want to offer this opportunity to you before the holiday season, so you can invest in yourself first. When you sign up by Black Friday, you’ll save $270 The early bird price being 693. Check the link for more details. It would be a total honor to meet you in this journey. Hello. Welcome. I’m Sara Tacy, and this is Threshold Moments, a podcast where guests and I share stories about the process of updating into truer versions of ourselves. The path is unknown, and the pull feels real. Together, we share our grief, laughter, love, and life saving tools. Join us.

Sarah Tacy [00:02:31]:
Hello, threshold moments, friends, family, dear listeners, beloveds. It’s November 6th at this current moment and you’re clearly listening after this. The podcast will air in just under a week. And I just wanna say, like that’s what I wanna say. I wanna say that trauma physiology is when we feel helpless. And so when we are in a situation that feels bad, being able to find nuance and find a sense of empowerment is so important. So we get to feel bad.

Sarah Tacy [00:03:30]:
If that’s how you feel, you might be elated. But we get to feel bad and we get to feel sad and we get to feel mad. In our society, we’re often taught to suppress those feelings. Or maybe we only know how to take them out verbally, to verbally fight another about feeling different than how you feel, to bash people, to get some of that anger out. I found this morning that I did not so awesome with parenting. I had a child who this is this is related, so you can stay with me here. I had a child who really wanted French toast and we really didn’t have time. And maybe I really just didn’t have the capacity.

Sarah Tacy [00:04:20]:
And so we had already heated up waffles and the toaster, and we had cereal or there was an option for eggs or fruit, but this one just wanted the French toast, which was not going to be made. And the tantrum, the big feelings went on and on and on. And not just like in a little silo, but kind of coming at me. And I, at some point said, Hey, there are bigger things going on in the world than you not being able to get your French toast. Instead, you have 20 other options. This is not the biggest deal in the world, and I do not have the capacity to hold space for it right now. And as it was coming out, I knew this was not my best parenting. Also, I understand.

Sarah Tacy [00:05:20]:
I don’t wanna stand for perfectionism here, but I felt it so clearly. I felt so devastated and so sad. I felt so worried for so many women who no longer or maybe already don’t have access to the reproductive rights that will change their lives in ways that they don’t have choice over. And it was so clear to me that although I had so much work to do today, that actually the best thing that I could do and what I’m here to say for you even is if there are any means possible to take care of your body, to have a healthy fight outlet, which may look like throwing rocks or a pillow fight with your friend or with the couch or going for a run or moving weights today, I did a project outside that I’ve been looking at for 3 years. And again, I have newsletters to write. I have business inquiries that are waiting in my email, these podcasts that I’m here to ready to record. And I took 4 hours, and I said, you know what? Instead of a sick day, I need a wellness day. Instead of saying, you know, the thought of like, I don’t have time for this, I have this, this and this.

Sarah Tacy [00:06:55]:
Nobody has time to take care of your body. We have to move on. What if I was sick? What if I had the flu? What if I had walking pneumonia and I had no choice but not to do the work? And so I put a pause on the podcast and I put a pause on my newsletter and I put a pause on my business inquiries and I went out and I pulled so many weeds. There’s this area of trees that I see make a circle. And I’ve been thinking of years of making this into a prayer circle and pulling the weeds. And then I put down cardboard and paper bags over the whole area to help suppress the weeds. And then I put stones that we had at our wedding that had everybody’s name on it. And on the other side, they wrote a prayer for us.

Sarah Tacy [00:07:43]:
And I put one of those rocks on every single cardboard or paper bag that I had laid down over the area that I had weeded inside of the circle of trees. And then I covered it back up with leaves. And I felt like every single one of those rocks reminded me of somebody who loves us. It reminded me of all the prayers that come our way. And at a time where patriarchy feels so overpowering, there’s something to me about working with the earth and making prayer circles and doing rituals. And why do I share this? There’s this part of me that’s like every podcast should have a subject and it should go from a to z and there should be a learning point or it would be an interview and people would be able to see exactly how they relate to it. And this one is just to say, we react and respond to people always as a reflection of the state of our nervous system. We make decisions in our life as a reflection of the state of our nervous system.

Sarah Tacy [00:08:55]:
Our ability to bridge perspectives, to connect with people who don’t see, as we see, to soften hearts, to meet heart to heart is a reflection of our nervous system. So my little wish for you here is to prioritize any tiny bit of self care that is possible. Walk in the woods, pet your animal, hug your friend, give someone a call or shoot them a text, Move your body. What I found this morning when I woke up feeling so sad was like, Oh, I don’t have the energy to move my body. But I remembered the small doable pieces. So I thought, what if I do a Peloton where it’s a recovery ride? And what if I give myself so much permission to not care if I land in the top third or better? What if I’m in the end or at the end? And so I just started moving my legs. Small double steps or helping to resource our nervous system when we feel bad, when we feel overwhelmed. It’s like getting a life raft when you’ve been thrown in the ocean and there are sharks surrounding you.

Sarah Tacy [00:10:30]:
You could just feel your feelings as the sharks are surrounding you and say, I just wanna feel my feelings. Don’t bypass me. Don’t make me bypass them. The life raft, which might be a breathing technique, it may be getting on the bike or going for a walk, gives our body a little bit of a sense of safety. And once we’re on that life raft, hopefully with a metal bottom and we’re doing the exercises, which would almost be like inflating the life raft, I can go like, oh shoot, I’m in the ocean. There are sharks around me. And wow, that was really scary. And now I’m going to feel my feelings.

Sarah Tacy [00:11:20]:
And so the point is that when we resource our body, we don’t have to bypass the sadness that we might feel. We don’t have to bypass the anger. We do want to resource ourselves so that we don’t drown in it. I gave examples of things that might almost be like letting off steam. So if you think of a tea kettle on a fire and you have a pillow fight or you go for a walk or you do a breath practice or you move your body, it sometimes can be like you’re opening up the top of the lid and you’re letting off steam, but maybe the kettle is still on the fire. All the things that we do would put us in a better place to make better decisions like, oh, the fire is still on. How are we gonna turn off the fire? Or, oh, we have to leave the fire on. That’s actually not our choice.

Sarah Tacy [00:12:23]:
They’re not letting us make that decision, but we can move the pot. Right? Once we’re more well resourced, we can see what the issue is that made us feel the way that we are feeling. And we can see if there’s any choice we have, even if it’s tiny within it. The three directions map, which you may not be familiar with here, it is on another podcast that we can link in the notes. There’s this idea that as we get activated, we can have things that soothe and distract us. And again, that might be the breath practice. That might be the walk in the woods. That might be punching a pillow or screaming into a pillow or dancing and letting the energy move through you, whether it’s rage or sensuality or sadness or joy that we emote.

Sarah Tacy [00:13:14]:
Right? Emotions that we give the energy a place to go. So that can take the activation back down. And as we build our capacity with these soothing skills, we also start to build more capacity towards things called the condition. Conditions for pause, conditions for choice, conditions for presence, conditions for boundary repair, things where we say, okay, the tea kettle is no longer screaming. Now, what boundaries am I going to adjust? Now what choices am I going to make? Now what presence do I hold? Now what eye contact can I make? Now how do I find a win win situation? So today, the day after the election for me is actually a little bit more about that soothing. That soothing just enough so that I can really be with what feels off to me, what I care about. And actually for the listeners, just a little, little insight into my feelings is that I did not see perfection on the other side either. I did not see beautiful democracy on either side, But I can as I pause and I feel into how my body would have felt if one candidate had one over the other, one was like some relief.

Sarah Tacy [00:14:54]:
And okay. We can make progress from here. We can look at the democratic things that feel like are often without as much choice as we sometimes pretend we have. And on the other side, I notice there’s fear and I could say fear of the unknown, but fear of things that just happened last time. And so fear and anger, anger in particular, would tell us what we hold dear to our heart. Fear is what we hold dear and are afraid we’re going to lose. Anger is sometimes that we felt that we have had a boundary violation of that thing that we hold dear to our heart. If I could end with a little prayer.

Sarah Tacy [00:15:44]:
May we find safety and trust in our bodies before waiting for the outside world to give it to us. May we find our sovereignty and grow the skills for interdependence and community. May we find a way to build bridges from heart to heart. May we know that our regulation and let me just say that does not mean being calm. That means being in a body where you can pause, being in a body where you have choice. And that choice could be that you are going to turn music on and rage, but you have choice that you could stop at any point. So when I have the prayer for regulation, the prayer is that I’m in a body where I can find the smallest doable piece of choice. Whether it is fast, whether it is medium, whether it looks slow and calm, may we find it within.

Sarah Tacy [00:17:02]:
And I know for me that when I am able to do that, that my daughter feels safer. My daughter feels like she has more choice. I know that I am more likely to be able to take risks and more likely to say the things that I really feel, but it starts with me and the inside of me and stepping out. Prayers and blessings for anybody who can find stability in a world that is constantly changing. Thank you for tuning in. It’s been such a pleasure. If you’re looking for added support, I’m offering a program that’s totally free called 21 days of untapped support. It’s pretty awesome.

Sarah Tacy [00:17:57]:
It’s very easy. It’s very helpful. You can find it at sarahtacey.com. And if you love this episode, please subscribe and like. Apparently, it’s wildly useful. So we could just explore what happens when you scroll down to the bottom. Subscribe, rate, maybe say a thing or 2. If you’re not feeling it, don’t do it.

Sarah Tacy [00:18:19]:
It’s totally fine. I look forward to gathering with you again. Thank you so much. Are you ready to build capacity for stress, joy, and vitality? Go from foggy to focused? Break free from anxiety and apathy? Your nervous system plays a crucial role in your relationship and decision making. By learning to resource your nervous system, you can make heart centered choices, respond to challenges with ease and grace, build stronger, more fulfilling relationships. If you’re interested, I invite you to join our 4 month resourced program. It’s for women who have been through matrescence, that threshold of mothering tiny humans, and come experience the transformative power of a well resourced nervous system. It begins January 6th.

Sarah Tacy [00:19:19]:
You’ll learn practical tools to calm, awaken, and support your body, connect with your emotions, cultivate deeper, more authentic relationships, and create generative and regulating practices that you can do with your kids. Don’t wait. Invest in yourself today before the holidays. The price is 6.90 $3 which is a $270 discount through Black Friday. Join now, if this speaks to your heart, if this speaks to your deepest desires of what you want to move into in this next phase of your life.