Adjusting Expectations for What’s Really Important: Sarah Part 2

Welcome to No Shame in the Home Game, the podcast that cares

about how your house feels, not looks.

I'm Lacey, your co host in support, not necessarily in knowledge,

here with Sarah, your, I'm going to call you co host in knowledge.

Yes.

You are the co host, producer slash tech support, as I referenced you

last week in our private conversation.

yes.

We each have our very defined roles and it's great that we are different

in what we're good at because that's what makes us complete.

And it works awesome.

So this week we're talking to our participant, Sarah.

So participant Sarah, not host Sarah, participant Sarah.

Just, I have to specify that.

Sarah, if you all remember has had some issues with chronic illness.

and in this episode, it's actually really a continuation of our first

conversation with her because host Sarah had already worked with participant

Sarah in her home a little bit.

Yes.

Sarah is a long established client of mine, which we . Talk about in the episode

and she was in a moment of time need.

So we worked one on one to get her where she needed to be in mindset and plans.

And then yes, we recap all of that.

And see what we can share with the audience about her journey.

Yeah, because she was very time bound because her husband

had just had his knee surgery and they were in the thick of it.

And that's what's, that's what is one of the things that's

challenging about my work is prevention is worth a pound of cure.

So when you can implement a lot of these solutions before the proverbial

shit hits the fan, it's awesome.

But so often we don't even know that we need solutions until.

everything goes sideways, and then it's, you're scrambling to do the

bare minimum to survive, which is, we meet people where they are, and yes,

Sarah was definitely in the everything has gone sideways, the shit has hit

the fan, the boat is taking on water,

into the nitty gritty.

we literally talk about how they get their kitty litter to wear litter boxes.

Like it is some details for y'all.

and my life would be probably complete if one listener comments and

says, Oh my gosh, I needed to hear a solution about moving my kitty litter.

It's the granular.

I love the details like this.

It's so fun.

episode two, I feel is the episode for people who want to

get into the weeds of the details.

if that's you, let's jump on in and hear what's going on with Sarah

so when we met up.

I wanted to help you take that burden off of again, that management

of what has to be done and you, I could see you felt overwhelmed . We

got to this two year peak point.

Okay, now Brian, who's usually the physical doer in the

family, is now not the doer.

And then everything was on your plate.

And so we came together and I saw two distinct buckets at first, which was what

are one time things that need to happen?

And what are recurring things that need to happen and within the one time things

we were actually able to identify a couple that was just like, no, we're just putting

those on the back burner indefinitely.

And then, within the 1 time things, we looked exactly at what they were and

were able to identify the solution.

And luckily that came down to a bunch of them was your mom, because your

mom comes down and stays with you.

And she's very much, she's very much a doer.

I think she's, she loves having a to do list,

she does.

Yep, she loved the acts of service is her love language for sure.

which is a match made in heaven.

and while I was there, I helped you with a couple, I helped

you with a couple of them.

We took a couple of them off your plate.

And then we decided to assign the rest of them to your mom.

And I encourage you to ask your mom to come and stay some, an extra day.

To do those one time things and then so then that shifted us on to what are

the recurring things that now are all under your purview that we're not and

I'm just going to run down the list.

Of a few of them that we talked about, we talked about food,

which we already mentioned.

Your husband usually does the cooking.

so we talked about food.

We talked about lawn care trash, which is you have a very this is important.

You have a very steep driveway and the trash barrels are those.

Giant, was it 40 gallon, 40 gallon trash barrel?

Yeah, they're quite large.

they're as tall as your son, or maybe a little shorter.

So they're giant.

So the trash management that your husband used to do, kitty litter, which again,

may not sound like much to some audience members, but You have a physical condition

where you cannot take the kitty litter from the, like the fresh kitty litter

from the first floor to the second floor, and then the old kitty litter back down

from the second floor to the first floor.

You can't do it, your husband can't do it, but it has to be done.

So kitty litter cleaning, which you said some of it you can do,

but I do know there's some days where cleaning, the bending over.

And

there's a couple items that are hard.

yeah, bending.

Handwashing dishes or cleaning toilets.

bending forward I can't do too successfully.

but yeah, everything else is okay ish.

yes, and then along with the food, so food prep, which leads to dishes,

and then that goes under the whole hand washing dishes and the dishwasher.

So those were the categories.

Oh, and laundry.

We also talked about laundry.

So then within that, we.

We looked at what are your pools of resources because we know you're, we

know you're not getting more spoons.

Yeah.

And then you were great too about really being open about

adjusting your expectations.

You came forward with some beautiful food ideas.

And I immediately pushed back and said, that's too much.

Nobody's getting any awards here.

And one of the tools I use a lot is good, better, best.

So we talked about, okay, let's say you, you said you have energy at 11.

Is that correct?

yeah, because we were talking about dinner and by the time dinner rolls around

between kid activities and probably how annoyed I am at the state of the way my

house looks and just generally being out of spoons, yeah, I have nothing to give,

nor do I care if you're hungry or not.

So we tapped into 11 o'clock being a sweet zone of

being able to do some food prep.

And I rained you back on your ambitions.

And we talked about doing just one thing.

And then that one thing, depending on how much energy you then have at the end

of the day, you can scale up a little bit, or you can let the kids scale it up.

So we talked about, you can put chicken breasts in a crock pot.

And just let those cook all day.

And then at the end of the night, you're going to see that chicken breast

like it is, or you could dress it up into some tacos or put it on a salad.

You could do a lot of different things with that.

But if you have no more energy, then just free for all, grab a fork, stick your fork

in the crock pot and take a chicken breast

Yeah.

and that's dinner.

and then we also came up with, and we'll loop back to what you've

implemented and what's worked.

We talked about creating a system for your kids to realize what's

within their power with the food.

Okay.

Mom made these mini quiches.

If you want, you can dress it up with sausage from the freezer, with

salsa, with cheese, that's up to you.

And then doing that with different foods that basically the kids can then have

power within and whatever that meal is.

And lawn care.

We, I encouraged you to lean into your neighbor who you said might be able to

help you and with some of the stuff that's like the perennials and the established

beds, that might just go by the wayside.

oh, one, one key factors we keyed in on your 11 year old is very money motivated.

He is.

Yeah.

You're 13 year old, not so much, but you're 11 year old.

So we really looked at this list of where can we access the power of money

motivation with your 11 year old.

So he is now doing the trash.

Is he still doing that so he can move the trash and then the toilets, which

I'm excited to circle back to, toilets was something that was hard for you to

do because of the bending, but we were hoping to train ever your 11 year old

on the toilets and then the dishwasher.

You already had an established routine with your kids in the dishwasher.

we uncovered they're great at unloading.

Oh my gosh.

And

not so great at the loading.

Yeah, which you would think would go hand in hand.

If I took the glass out of here, then the dirty glass goes back there.

That is not a connection.

There little brains apparently, of the ability to make without

verbal cues and directions.

So a little bit of training with the loading.

And then the other one was the laundry, which we talked about how the one

thing your husband can do is fold.

So as long as you get the laundry to him, he can actually

fold it, which was helpful.

And then just trying to stay on top of getting it washed.

And you said that you would be able to do the towels and sheets, which

I believe your husband used to do.

would always put the sheets on the bed because that's a lot

of bending forward and tugging and we have a king size bed.

So that's harder.

Yeah.

yeah, so I can do everything except our king size bed.

so again, looking at all of the recurring things, it's Where can we adjust

our expectations to surviving six weeks of not having our doer be able to do?

So adjusting expectations, where can we outsource to either somebody who doesn't

live in our home, or your mom who visits your home, where can we outsource?

Where can we temporarily assign to somebody who's in the home,

which is your son with the money?

Where can a little bit of training happen with.

With your kids with cleaning the toilet with, what was the other one cleaning the

toilet and oh, loading the dishwasher.

So we broke it down and how did once we had that conversation, how

did that feel once I laid it all out like that and broke it down?

How did that feel to you?

Oh, it was great.

It felt very freeing.

once I reminded myself To not try to implement everything all at once.

so once I reminded myself that even easy solutions need to be implemented one

at a time, then it was great because I felt like once we kind of hacked one

area, I could go back to our plans and.

Pick up another piece of this is the next area.

So yesterday I went to the grocery store and usually I do grocery pickup,

but I honestly don't even know what is available in grocery stores that is like

pre more pre made, And so I needed to literally just wander the grocery store

and go slowly and look at all the items.

I don't.

Really look at to see oh, they make hummus in individual cups and that will

cut down on dishes and they make right like these little microwaveable breakfast

sausage II things that are already cooked.

And so I just did that.

And that was very helpful.

So I brought all that home.

So this is our tester week to see who likes what that I've purchased and who

doesn't like what, yeah, so that was.

That was a good first step.

And then I also modified just my mental approach to laundry.

so I don't know if anybody else uses these, but I want to make a pitch for

these things called color catchers.

And so you put them in your laundry and it's so You can wash any colors with

any other colors whites with blacks new clothes that have lots of dye

with old clothes you just put one or two in and they literally, they come

out dyed, they come out any color.

So you could mix and match anything.

Instead of doing laundry by person or category, I'll just go into the

bathrooms where everybody puts their stuff on the floor inexplicably,

and I'll gather up what's on the floor because I'll be like, okay.

That's two days of clothes for each kid and a couple towels and I just throw

everything in one load because that will get us through the end of the week, say.

so I, yeah, I don't really stress about laundry categories right now.

It's more just, you need clean things and here's some dirty things and

Yes.

And.

I also wanted to make a note of with all these things that we just covered.

It's you said, taking one area and then moving on.

And it's really identifying which areas are most timely and important.

It's food, we got we have to have food every day.

Okay, so let's focus in on food.

Yes.

And I really encourage you to lean into the frozen section because your kids

are old enough to use the microwave.

Or your air fire.

So let's, so figuring out that food.

And once you can stop thinking about that, okay.

Laundry.

Yes.

We're going to need to wash our stuff every so often.

So figuring out that cleaning a toilet.

as far as on the platform of what's important in life right now with

surviving, honestly, if your toilet doesn't get cleaned, like it's not the end

of the world, it's but you gotta be, you gotta have food in your belly, eventually

you're gonna need to wash some clothes.

So really even just prioritizing which pockets of life need attention first.

And then knowing like the fingers crossed in six weeks, this isn't forever.

Your husband's going to have two functioning legs again.

that's the goal.

Yeah.

And maybe you will have found some things that you carry

on past those six weeks that just make your life easier in general.

I'm sure.

Yeah.

And so tell me, so of the things we talked about, are there any

updates as far as, was your mom able to come and help you with some things?

Have you found some food solutions that were, that are

Yeah, so I was laughing because I learned through nonverbal communication

things she clearly does not want to do.

there was a few things left on the task list that I thought okay,

I'll hire those out or I will.

look to outsource that elsewhere.

And to be fair, extraordinarily unimportant things, that I had just put

on there because they needed to be done.

But I did notice on our neighborhood next door, all the

college kids are coming home.

So there have been a couple posts about college kids who are

interested in doing odd jobs.

So I thought I would.

Think about that and sit with my husband and come up with a list of,

yeah, some odd jobs that college kids might want to be paid for.

yeah, so outsourcing that and like you said, the food thing we

have started, what I'm trying to, I've already blanked on what other

topics we were just talking about.

Oh, did you ever teach your 11 year old how to clean the toilet?

Not that's a, The importance.

Okay.

No, I did not yet.

Oh, the kitty litter.

I don't know if you've had to do this yet.

So when I was there, we were trying to figure out how to get

the kitty litter downstairs.

And I

So I will explain before I get you tell your brilliant suggestion, I will

explain our personal cat delinquents, which is that rather than going in every

two days or every day, whatever, and scooping the litter, it's more just like

a free for all for eight to nine days, and then I just changed the whole thing.

because no matter how much money I offer anyone, no one will take me up on it.

The automatic litter robots are like 700, which just gives me Ajita.

I don't know if I can spend that much money on litter.

so it's moving large amounts of litter from the second floor to the garage, which

you came up with a brilliant solution for.

so gravity naturally is going to want to pull something from the

second floor to the first floor.

And, but it's about getting it down in a controlled fashion.

So kitty litter doesn't get everywhere.

And so I recommended using one of those.

round sleds.

So if you can just get the you can actually tip those if you can just

push that bag of kitty litter because it's in one of those giant kitchen

bags, you can roll that on you and your 11 year old get it onto the sled.

And then you get to the stairs and one person's in back and one person's in

front and you're just controlling the sled down the stairs, and the sled is

holding the kitty litter, and then you can pull that all the way to the garage.

Thank The only problem is then getting that bag of kitty litter into

that 40 gallon trash can, which I would just encourage you to ask your

neighbor because they are young and energetic and they don't have kids,

so they seem, I would guess they have a lot of time on their hands.

And I would just ask them to help get that bag into.

the big trash bin.

Yeah, so it's been working so far.

So

Awesome.

That's so great.

Yeah, gotta love gravity.

And then to food prep.

Oh, have you as far as the dishwasher?

Have you been having to load it?

Or you've been able to get the kids to understand loading?

it's been a free for all between me, my husband, the kids, and my mom.

So they've been unloading it and then loading has just been, yeah, whoever

happens to have the time or energy or kitchen annoyance as to what our

kitchen looks like to get it done.

Kitchen annoyance.

Yeah.

and then so with the lawn care, you haven't really had to do much yet.

Correct?

in, at least on our piece of property, we have a lot of

shade and it's upstate New York.

So yeah, things are only like barely starting to grow.

So I think we're good there.

And like you said, a lot of it's just kicking the can down the road

and not, beautifying our lawn.

Yes, just keeping it just maintaining it from getting you.

Anything irreparable from happening, but yes, you could lean into the

college students or possibly your neighbor to do those two things

and then just letting the rest go,

is there anything, Lacey, have you been listening?

Is there any buckets that I haven't touched back on or anything that

you feel it needs clarifying?

No, but I have two bigger questions.

I don't know if we were going to get into this one.

I, and this is mostly me being curious, but I know it's something that people

struggle with is asking for help.

And so this is something that you are doing with these solutions.

How does that feel for you?

that, I think that feels fine.

I don't think, I am in.

Generally, naturally independent person, so I do just naturally do

things myself, but I don't think I have the shame around asking for help that

our culture has taught women to feel.

I think I'm actually okay in that area.

That is awesome.

and I do wonder how much of that is from you having this chronic illness and

just realizing, okay, if life is, because you are very practical, and it's okay,

if life is going to go on, I've got to just start asking for help with things.

Yeah.

That is wonderful.

I actually had a big aha moment that was came out of talking with Lacey about

a different topic, which was, I had, a very challenging year in my life where

I didn't know how to ask for help.

And I was really reflecting on why didn't I had such lovely people

in my life at that time, amazing people who would have done anything.

And I remember this one day I wanted to cook dinner, but I needed an

onion and I called a friend and I didn't have a car at the time either.

And I asked for an onion, but it took all of my emotional

energy to ask for this onion.

And it's like, why?

And I think there was a great lesson for me just to learn, like you said, Lacey.

There's this shame around asking for help.

And I really learned out of that year how to ask for help and I love giving help.

So why wouldn't I ask for help?

And if, and I think there's also, we can do a whole nother podcast around.

It's like asking for help, giving help.

And how to healthily say if you're not in a position to give help that

somebody has asked for as well, which I think is a whole other skill set,

but no, I think that's great that you, that, yeah, you reach out and

ask for help because it's a lot.

And Lacey, did you have a second question?

Yeah.

So I just want to orient myself time wise.

So you guys talked last week, right?

So we've been, you've been doing these systems now for a little over a week.

How are you feeling now?

I'm just curious of is there a difference between last week and this week?

Are you, I'm curious about how you feel.

How am I feeling?

It has been a particularly busy week kid wise.

so I have put my body through the ringer.

I've had a couple like 16 hour days, which is unprecedented for

me in the sense of not resting in the middle of those types of days.

so I've been, I will say I've been shocked and proud at my physical body

that my physical body has held up.

and I just daily have reminded myself to be patient with our solutions, which

I alluded to before, but to just remind myself that no matter how great solutions

are, you don't implement them all at once.

You just take And maybe you don't even implement any of them permanently, you

just take what needs to happen that day or that week, but I feel very free

that we have all these solutions, even if I only use a certain percentage of

them, I feel very liberated and not trapped because I can just go back to

our list and I can be like, okay, what else, what other ideas did you come up

with that could help out a little bit?

So I don't feel stuck anymore.

that's

awesome.

yeah, and I love that you said that too, because that's one of the things

Lacey and I said in our intro episode of just for people to know there's other.

Options.

There's other choices.

There's other ways to approach something.

There is no one way.

And like you said, it's how do you feel that day?

What's going on that day?

what do you have the energy for?

and yeah, you've, you have had some ringer days.

Can you share the story?

You left me a Marco Polo about trying to put a sock on your husband's foot.

Oh, my gosh.

I think that summarizes how exhausted Sarah has been

mentally, physically, emotionally.

Oh, my gosh.

yeah.

he just had the surgery.

His pain levels absolutely just catastrophic even

with all of the pain meds.

he can't even reach his feet.

you have to keep his legs straight.

They don't even want him walking.

But as I, as lots of parents of school age children know, sometimes

the spring is absolutely insane and it absolutely is for us and even more

so this spring with activities and graduations and all of the things.

And so I had a day where I had volunteered to work the baseball

concession stand for several hours, which is just very physically taxing.

And then I took my son to his baseball game where I was doing the

book and you're up and down a lot.

And then, so just this whole cascade of things happened throughout the day.

And I get home to my husband who's been home alone.

And again, just the nature of literally not being able to move.

You need something every five minutes, can you turn the fan on?

Can you get me a snack?

Can you refill my water bottle?

It's time for my pain pill.

Can you like itch this part of my ankle?

And so we had made it.

1030 at night, which is already just so many light years past my bedtime.

And all he needed before every light in the house would come off was he

just needed me to put his sock on.

That's all he needed.

And, but he has like an ace bandage around his ankle.

And so the sock wouldn't fit and I got it over his toes and my mind and my body,

my actual arms just physically collapsed.

And I just hung my head and I was like, I just need a minute.

I can't get the sock on.

And he was like, no, forget it.

Forget it.

And I said, no.

I just.

I literally, I just I need a minute.

I just need to stare for 30 seconds to harness the energy

to get this goddamn sock on.

Then, and then we actually did end up switching socks to a bigger sock because

it was past what I was able to do.

That, that moment, which you said to me in the Marco Polo, you said, if I

was a crier, I would have been crying.

And it's like that moment of depletion.

And I really, I just identify with the mom journey.

The moms are usually The doers, the thinkers, the managers, the emotional

backstops, the solution for everyone, usually it's not always the same, but that

moment of you, if you had reached the end of your spoons, you had reached, you had

dug as deep as you possibly could have.

And that was your white flag moment.

And.

I just, I feel, because I've had those moments, I'm sure Laci has had those

moments, I'm sure everyone listening has had those moments of just, when the mom

raises the white flag, who's there to mom the mom, like, where, we raise the

white flag, but it's then what, who's even looking at the flag to help you,

that's like my level of compassion, of oh, we get to these points where we just

have nothing left to give, but, We're the ones who are supposed to keep giving and

Yeah.

And it's this whole other layer when your body physically gives out on you.

Like I had pushed all day I had, and I don't even honestly know if I knew

I was pushing myself physically cause nothing hurt and it's still nothing even

hurt in that moment, which is a huge victory, but my arms literally collapsed.

Like they fell on my sides because they just, my arms put up the white flag and.

Yeah, it was just a moment of oh my gosh, I feel like the last two years

of my life just rolled off my back.

Can I give you a kudos though?

Because I think getting the new stock because you couldn't do that other stock

and just saying, screw it and moving on.

That's so emblematic though of

Is it?

yeah, I think it's a great like analogy just for what you need

to do in this situation of Oh, you recognize the moment and you started

and then you're like, screw this.

We're switching paths because it's going to get the job done.

And then I could lay down and I just.

I think there is something beautiful and emblematic about that.

Okay, I think it was even my husband who said forget it, just do the

other sock, go back to the drawing board.

oh my gosh.

Yeah.

Sarah, again, I just, I want to put you in comfy clothes and a quiet mountain.

Pop cabin with puppy dogs, like people to wait on you hand and foot because you

have been doing so much for everyone.

and you touched on it at the beginning, but I feel like we are all

very feeling alone for a multitude of reasons that are so varied and could

share no similarities with my journey.

And, this is such a well treaded topic of discussion, but

social media makes that worse.

Because we're comparing our behind the scenes with other people's highlights.

And I've, I put a pitch on social media not that long ago.

But I mean, I don't have a following.

I just, my friends I know in real life are my followers.

So I was probably giving the pitch to 50 people, but.

I said, Can we please, in addition to the highlights, can we just please be honest

about what we're going through and not violating boundaries and not oversharing

past what you're comfortable with.

but I am a very, I am an overshare for sure I always have been I'm

very direct, I always have been.

However, The thing is, at the root of that, is I just so desperately

want everyone to feel less alone.

it just happened yesterday, I ran into an old friend I hadn't seen since before

the pandemic at the grocery store, and we started talking, and I was just blindly

honest about what we've been through, and she immediately said, I really struggle

with social media, I feel like we're all so lonely, and I said, yeah, this is...

this is why I feel like I'm a little too much for people sometimes, because

I just don't have it in me to keep up the kind of suburban inauthenticity, and

to be fair to everyone else, I actually don't think people are trying to be fake.

I really don't.

I think they maybe just don't know how to be otherwise.

We maybe just don't have models for that.

And so I just want everyone to feel less alone in their struggles, which you

mentioned at the top of the recording.

And yeah, I just, I'm so appreciative that there's content

like this being put in the world.

yeah, that's when people asked me about the origin of my work, it was I

had this beautiful opportunity to see the inside workings of many homes, and

it was overwhelmed busy moms, and I.

And I told you this, you helped me with the foundation of this business.

And I was said, I was very clear that everyone had a zone of genius, but

they assumed everyone else had the same zone of genius, which was not true.

And everyone carried shame around some aspect of home management,

but everyone thought that they were the only ones carrying the shame.

And I was like, Whoa, could we all just agree?

We all have something we do really well.

And we can learn from one another.

And can we all agree we feel like some shame around something?

And if we all just put it out in the open, it might just feel a little bit better.

Because we, yeah, we all feel this like in private.

And it's like, no, I was the one behind everyone's curtains.

And I'm like, no, you're not alone.

Everyone feels that in some area.

Sarah, I was thinking of you on Mother's Day because you had told me

years ago that in reference to something, your husband had the quote, you can

either be happy or you can be surprised.

can't be both.

Yes.

All the time.

And it's such an, I think of that all the time because it's such an eloquent

and succinct way to discuss things.

And so from the moment I started celebrating Mother's Day.

I was just very clear about what I wanted or didn't want, and of course

that changes every single year.

And I just want to encourage other, I don't even want to say other parents,

just other people, to be more, I don't know, open to taking things in your

own hands, not in a burdensome kind of way, but So this Mother's Day,

my husband could not do anything.

I knew that for me, I like writing, and so I save all my kids writings.

That is the most important thing to me.

So I bought this downloadable thing from Etsy that was like a Mother's

Day thing for them to fill out and I just said, I was like, Hey guys, you

know that's what's important to me is writing and the elementary school has

stopped doing like the cute send it home on Mother's Day things because

they're in fifth and eighth grade.

So that doesn't happen anymore.

so I just completely made my Mother's Day thing.

happen and I loved it and I did not in any way feel I was being slightest

because I know what I like and I just would love it if more people could in a

not burdensome but almost a celebratory way, just recognize what you like and

take it into your own hands a little bit.

Yeah.

And that I met, I love that you shared that, which makes me think of Lacey, cause

you put out there on social media, like,

Yeah,

how do I,

I like to set people up for success.

That was something that I learned early in my relationship of Oh, if I have

an expectation, I need to tell them.

Otherwise, then I'm just setting him up for failure.

Cause

Yes.

He doesn't know, then how am I expecting him to do it?

But I also recognized that I didn't want to do too much of the work.

So I'm like, how do I do this?

Because I don't want to be like, here's what I want executed.

I want some of that thought.

Because That is what shows me that you love me is that you

thought about me and you figured out something to do for the day.

So I told my husband, look, I want to feel loved and appreciated.

There are many different ways that you could make me feel loved and appreciated.

There is no one right way.

I'm not, this is not a test.

I'm not looking for an answer.

I just want to feel loved and appreciated.

Whatever you think of to accomplish that awesome, make it happen.

and he was like, fair.

Which shows how far we've come in our relationship because he used to think

that there was like a right answer and I was testing him of you've got to, I've

got to pick the one exact right thing.

And so for me to be able to like, no, we're right here.

I really, whatever it ends up looking and so he did check in a couple

of times of hey, because of these other things that we have going on,

I'm thinking this, does that work?

Yep, that works, I did end up feeling loved and appreciated because I didn't

have to come up with the things.

They made me a card, actually very similar, where my husband asked

him questions and wrote it down.

And it wasn't some elaborate, colorful card.

It's literally a card that is black and white, just my husband

writing what my son said.

And that's perfect.

I loved it because it was from then and I felt appreciated.

And then later in he made me this, big charcuterie board.

And then They, we ate in the living room, which was like a big deal for us.

And my kids thought it was exciting and fun.

So they were energetic and happy.

And so by doing that, it was just a lovely day that I did feel loved and

appreciated that I could show up for.

And that wasn't this huge performative thing.

Cause we're also very thoughtful of why are we doing things?

It's not about the performance.

It's about what we're doing.

And I just, I, at the end of the day, I was like, you.

Nailed it.

maybe if I told somebody, I didn't get a gift, but I didn't care about a gift.

That's not important to me.

I wanted a day where I felt loved and appreciated, and he made that happen.

it is, it was a big learning experience for us, for sure.

Like you said, I think the hidden expectations thing is very dangerous.

and I honestly think Sarah and I have spoken about this a lot, that you go

through life assuming everyone is just maybe one degree left or right of your

own brain, and then you meet people whose brains work so differently from

yours that you're thrown for a minute.

and It's very, like you said, I think it's very helpful to

just give someone parameters.

we do that with birthdays too.

Like I do or don't want a crowd.

I do or don't want to go out.

Like you can figure out all the details, but here's the vibe

of what I'm feeling this year.

I've thought about it.

I've always wanted a surprise party.

And I realized the reason why I wanted a surprise party, I

actually am not a fan of surprises.

I like to know things like, and my husband knows this, so he was kind of a butthead

during it where he would be like, so do you want to know what I have planned?

And I'm like, by saying that now I want to know.

I need to either know nothing or all of it.

There is no in between.

but I think I realized in all this, the reason why I like the idea of a

surprise party is that someone thought and took the initiative for me.

And so I'm like, Oh, that's what I want.

I don't necessarily care about a surprise party.

I care that someone thought and took initiative for me.

That's what I need to communicate.

And honestly, I feel like that's what Sarah does in her business where it's

the difference of this is what I think I want, but let me see what I really want.

Okay.

I feel like she's really helpful at that at Oh yeah, you want to feel peace.

Everybody wants to feel peace.

let's take it down a notch.

Does that mean you want no clutter?

Does that mean you want someone to cook for you?

that could literally mean a million things.

So I know I always joke that Sarah's, a home CEO, but in

reality, she's just a therapist.

That is, disguised as something else.

actually, when I meet with clients, I so often have to

be like, I am not a therapist.

But let's talk about, and then I'll bring something up that I can clearly see as

an underlying issue to whatever we're trying to solve, but yeah, because it

is clearly through this work, it is 50% about the actual tangible stuff, and it's

50% about the emotions we bring to it.

And that we're caring and that we haven't identified around it yet.

We cannot find those solutions without identifying that emotional piece.

And I think that's where you, Sarah, are actually leaps and bounds ahead, is

you are very clear on what your values are with kindness and mental health.

You're very clear about preserving your physical health.

I think you're very far ahead in the game in that regard, where a lot of

people, it's just shining that light on ourselves and really getting clear

on the messages we've been brought up with, or those invisible expectations

from society, and just really being clear on all of those things to move

forward to what feels best for us, because there's no one right answer.

Nope.

Yeah, it's all different.

Yeah, it is.

thank you, Sarah, for sharing your story with us.

Thank you for being vulnerable and open and making time and we will check in with

you in a few weeks to hear about some of these things that we talked about and

hear what we want to hear, not only what worked, but we want to hear what didn't

work or what mind, what mindset shifted, because we only learn from the things

Actually that kind of don't go well, like that's where there's a lot of growth.

We want to get a full check in the good, the bad, the ugly, all of the above.

Yeah.

absolutely.

Yeah.

Thank you so

Alright, yeah, thanks for having me.

I can't wait to check in.

We are at the end of our episode and we'll close out

with a moment of gratitude.

Lacey, would you like to go first with your moment of gratitude?

I would love to, I am having huge gratitude for autonomy today.

and I drove again yesterday and today to do some health related errands and Oh,

to just be able to have that autonomy again of not needing someone else for

me to be able to accomplish something outside of this house is just magical.

I am so thankful for it.

And I could like go on like a 35 minute rant about roads to

like, I think roads are some of the coolest things in the world.

I did.

I had this moment where I'm like, all these people and I are all

trying to get on the highway.

Cause there was.

Two major roads shut down to get on highways, right at the highway, so

everybody had to take a detour, and I'm like, we're all just taking this detour

together, I swear I was not stoned or anything, it's just, , I think roads are

cool and I got to drive on roads today.

I love that.

And anyone listening who can't grasp how monumental that is, I think of,

I'll just think of a quote that Sarah participant shared with me once, which

is you have to remember that somebody's ceiling could be somebody else's floor.

yeah, the fact that you drove, that's your ceiling, and even though somebody

listening that might be their floor, it's yeah, but let's just recognize that's

Lacey's ceiling, and that's awesome, and, yeah, I love how you just went

totally existential there and was like, we're all on this detour together, man.

No road rage whatsoever.

But yeah, I have gone on, a long, tirade about how cool I think

roads are and the concept of roads.

Which, if you think about home management, it's actually very similar of, like,

when you don't notice something, you don't recognize how cool it is.

Like, how cool it is that I, there is a system, there is a network of roads

that I could drive pretty much anywhere in the continental United States.

And join us next week podcast, Laci Loves Roads.

I could talk about it for a while.

No shame in that.

There is No shame.

I, have a friend, I have a friend who, honest to goodness,

loves public transportation.

So much that he volunteers, and he does not have a lot of free time,

he volunteers at a trolley Museum.

That's how much he loves public transportation.

Everybody's got their thing, man.

And if everyone had something in their life that brought them that much joy,

roads, trolleys, can you imagine if everyone just tapped into their joy?

I, see, I want to meet this person now because one of my other things that

I love is listening to people talk about what they love and why they love it.

And so him being so interested in something that he volunteers

at a trolley museum, like this is a person I want to hear from.

it's like, I don't care about sports, but if you get me someone who's , telling me

why they care about sports, it's also why I can get into the Olympics every year.

Cause you hear like the interest stories and how they got into it.

I'm like, yeah, let's do it.

I don't care about the actual game or anything like that.

Tell me why you like it.

Tell me what brings you here.

What about it makes you happy?

That kind of stuff.

Yes, I love that too.

and that actually works perfectly into my moment of gratitude.

Yes, please.

Lacey doesn't know this about me, but I am a bird nerd.

Oh my gosh, Sarah.

I'm a bird nerd.

Are you a bird nerd?

No, I'm the opposite of a bird nerd.

Oh, no, I thought we be friends.

know this is a,

What?

I know it's, it is a very specific, I will love to listen to

you talk about your interest in birds.

I'm sorry.

Every once in a while, Joe's like, look at that hawk.

I'm like, I don't care about that hawk.

We're driving, we're having a conversation.

Stop talking to me about a hawk.

I don't care.

but to use

Laci's words against Laci, you just told me you have no interest in sports, but

you would love to listen to somebody talk about why they love sports.

I, see, and I would love to hear you talk about why you like

birds, but here's the thing that I've noticed about bird ding people.

I think they think other people care more than they do.

Oh yeah, that's very true.

and I, yeah, that's a bird.

Okay.

that's where my...

Interest stops.

Now if you want to tell me about why you like birds and what that

gives you and that kind of thing, but that's not usually what it is.

It's I want to tell you about this bird and I'm like, I

don't care about the birds.

Does that make sense?

That does make sense.

And I'm actually, I am, the point of my moment of gratitude was

not to tell you why I love birds.

It was to tell you how much I love baby turkeys.

Okay, so now I'm back in.

I'm so interested in this.

I

Adult turkeys, I'm the first to admit, they're not beautiful creatures.

Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be the national bird, which

I'm actually glad did not win out because they're not elegant birds.

mean, eagles are kind of badass,

but baby turkeys, oh my god, they're so cute.

And right now is baby turkey season.

And we live in an area where there's lots of wildlife that kind

of comes in and we're part, we're not rural, but we're rural enough.

And what happens is sometimes there'll be two or more female turkeys that will

group up and then they'll have all their baby turkeys together in one big group.

And so when I walk, there's this one house and they get a

pattern, they do a loop every day.

And I just want to say this is already so different

than anything I've ever heard somebody talking about with birds.

this I'm into.

This I'm into.

animals for the most part, especially birds, they'll have a pattern

that they can find food in a certain spot.

They'll come back to that spot around sunrise, around midday, around sunset.

so there's this one yard that has this really big open front yard and

they go about the same time every day.

And there's three mamas.

And I haven't been able to count them all because there are these little tiny floof

balls, but there's probably 12 to 15.

Baby turkeys.

And when I see them, I don't know why I call them turkey lurkeys.

So we'll be driving and I'll just go, my son calls them turkey

lurkeys I don't know why I call them turkey lurkeys, baby turkeys.

Maybe turkeys.

We don't have wild turkeys here.

So you are just blowing my mind.

Yeah.

no, there are no wild.

there must be somewhere in Ohio.

I'm sure there are, but it's not like deer or geese.

Geese are like my nemesis.

I do not like geese.

They scare me.

Chipmunk squirrels, we've got that, but there are not, I

have never seen a wild turkey.

fun story.

Turkeys actually do fly.

Did you know that?

see, that makes them scary.

They don't fly far, and they don't fly elegantly.

They look like every time they fly, they're learning

how to fly for the first time.

See, if I had more birding conversations like this, maybe I would be

same with morning doves.

You morning dove

I do.

I actually, that's another thing that I don't love as a morning dove.

Oh,

We must have one that's like living either on the side

of our house or around our house.

And it is constantly cooing.

And I'm a very audio person.

And it is not like tweets.

It's like an owl, a drunk owl.

That's what it sounds like.

It sounds like a drunk owl, outside my house, all hours of the day.

And I'm just not interested in the sound that it's making, and I would

prefer it to go elsewhere to do that.

I, birds, I didn't realize until we were talking, I have a very

complicated relationship with birds.

I'm with you on the geese, and I'm with you on the morning doves.

I remember Morning Doves aren't the smartest.

I had this place I used to work.

It was at a person's home and there was this gutter where we'd walk

in and out of this door and these Morning Doves kept trying to build

their nest in this gutter, which when it rains, it's going to wash away.

And so they kept trying to break it down so that they would go someplace else.

So they didn't have like little eggs rolling around in their gutters.

And they were just like, oh, you dumb morning doves.

go build a nest, literally.

There were trees everywhere.

They're like literally anywhere else.

So Yeah,

not a big fondness for morning doves, but have you ever heard a catbird?

no, that sounds made up.

I don't know what that

it's just, they just call them catbirds, but those

are really fun to listen to.

Those are, I enjoy when there's a catbird around.

cause it's very entertaining.

It's not annoying.

It's very entertaining.

But I'm not the only one that finds...

More than just, annoying, sound wise.

no.

I think, no, I think

things where I'm like, I'm supposed to appreciate birds chirping.

And I don't mind the chirps.

I don't mind the tweets.

It's the drunk who's that I just cannot stand.

And they waddle around the bird feeder, the base of my bird feeder.

And yeah, when they go to fly, I'm always like, you, how did you all

I've never seen one fly.

I don't even know if I could pick one out of a crowd.

I don't know how they survived this long.

Cause they're, yeah, they're not bright.

No, it's not controversial to not like, it's like ice cream.

You don't have to like every flavor of ice cream.

you don't have like every bird.

Is I think because birds are everywhere, birders

want you to be a part of it.

I'm like, I don't want to be a part of it.

Stop trying to make me a part of it.

Birds are your thing, not my thing.

Tell me about why you like it, Cool.

By the way, baby turkeys, that's a completely different thing.

baby in front of anything.

It's okay, that's a baby animal.

Interested.

But

yeah,

Oh my gosh.

relationship with birth.

Learning a lot about myself today.

I don't know how to end this.

I know.

I know.

thanks for listening.

Thanks for sticking around.

And thank you, Sarah.

Whoo,

Thank you, Lacey.

that went down a path, didn't it?