One of the main themes of my adult life has been learning to release my strangle hold on what I am "meant to do" when it is clear the thing is not meant for me right now. In summary- learning to have some trust and patience! My still small voice (aka my intuition) has been repeating the same message over and over again for years-"nothing meant for you will pass you by." In 2024 I am taking the aligned action to listen to that voice more clearly. This episode is also an invitation to you. An invitation to embark on your own self-discovery, growth, and manifestation journey. What's waiting for you just on the other side?
One of the main themes of my adult life has been learning to release my strangle hold on what I am "meant to do" when it is clear the thing is not meant for me right now. In summary- learning to have some trust and patience! My still small voice (aka my intuition) has been repeating the same message over and over again for years-"nothing meant for you will pass you by." In 2024 I am taking the aligned action to listen to that voice more clearly. This episode is also an invitation to you. An invitation to embark on your own self-discovery, growth, and manifestation journey. What's waiting for you just on the other side?
Welcome to the Awakened Anesthetist Podcast, the first podcast to highlight the CAA experience. I'm your host, mary Jean, and I've been a certified anesthesiologist assistant for close to two decades. Throughout my journey and struggles, I've searched for guidance that includes my unique perspective as a CAA. At one of my lowest points, I decided to turn my passion for storytelling and my belief that the CAA profession is uniquely able to create a life by design into a podcast. If you are a practicing CAA, current AA student or someone who hopes to be one, I encourage you to stick around and experience the power of being in a community filled with voices who sound like yours, sharing experiences you never believed possible. I know you will find yourself here at the Awakened Anesthetist Podcast. Welcome in. Hello all my Awakened Anesthetist listeners. This is your host, mary Jean, and welcome to this very spur of the moment, unplanned, potentially unedited We'll see how it sounds at the end, bonus part four, let's say into my self-discovery journey and really the next steps for me in 2024 and what my relationship, I guess my personal relationships as well as my relationship with the podcast and just the moving forward of this passion and this professional development journey that I've been on that overlaps with the podcast and my home life. So I'm sitting down about 30 minutes before I'm set to record another process interview and I got up early this morning. This is one of my days off and I've been doing some manifestation work with To Be Magnetic. You likely have heard one of the promos or the ads that I put in for that manifestation work and if you've already tuned me out, that's okay. This message is maybe not for everyone, but part of my self-discovery journey has been doing a lot of inner child work and healing. There's been themes of that through part one, part two and part three of my self-discovery journey that I've already released on this podcast. But really saying out loud and being matter of fact that I've been doing a lot of inner child work and manifestation work to reimagine what's possible in my life, which often and for me and through this To Be Magnetic work involves healing a lot of who I used to be and the pain and the shame and the programming that I picked up from childhood through adolescence and then how that informed the decisions I made. You know I'm still figuring that all out and I've mentioned before that my husband and I had entered into marriage counseling, probably in let's see, this is November. I'm recording. We probably have been doing it for a month and a half, so maybe late September we started and it's been really, really helpful to identify that area. The thing we're struggling with is moving into the next level of our relationship. Our youngest child just entered kindergarten, which really is a closing of a chapter of the baby years and what it took for us to get through those baby years as I was working as a CAA full-time for many of those years and he was really the work-at-home, stay-at-home parent, largely responsible for all of the child rearing and caregiving and then how that more and shifted after I went part-time and our relationship really became a very needs-based relationship. It became very much like a business partnership and we jokingly say that we could likely rule the world. We could open any business that we want. We work really, really well together. But in late September of 2023, we realized that we weren't meeting each other's full needs an emotional connection, an intimate connection, really that relationship that's fulfilling on all of the levels and we finally admitted to ourselves that we didn't have that. And because I am the person I am, I, in our relationship, often find myself looking for fixes and for solutions and I love doing that. I like finding outside resources as you can tell if you're on the Awaken Anesthes Community Newsletter List, that's part of who I am is looking for those and sharing resources and making connections. So much about what powers me and drives me is about making connection to myself, to others and to the work I do, and in this particular instance, my husband and I realized we didn't have the connection with each other that we wanted. We weren't living the life that we're really meant to live. We felt, and so we sought help, we sought counseling, and I have been at the end of the year doing a lot of planning and thinking for 2024 and what that brings in terms of personal and professional and family life and CAA life and the podcast and all the things that bring me joy or pain or, you know, struggle or come easy to me, and figuring out where I want to put my time and energy, because I have realized that time is my absolute most precious resource and it's also the thing that can just so easily slip through your fingers if you're not paying attention to where you are putting your time and energy. And so I guess I want to say that I have decided that in 2024, I'm going to go down to doing just one podcast episode release a month. I know that I don't want to give up doing my process episodes and interviews and editing those and creating that story, that CAA story, that really expands what's possible for us. Because while I'm doing that for all of you, it's also doing it for me as a CAA and for me personally and it brings me so much joy and passion and pleasure and I just I know I'm meant to do that. So in 2024, I will be releasing at least one process episode a month. I'm not holding myself to any sort of strict measures. If something else happens or an interview comes my way or like there's something I'm personally seeking answers on and I release more than one, great. But I'm going to commit to at least releasing one process episode a month and saving the time spent doing the other episodes I was doing and the planning and the back end and all the stuff that goes into producing this podcast, really rededicating that time into my husband and I's relationship, which also means a slowing of my professional growth. I've been in the behind the scenes yet again a little bit more. I find this really interesting when other people share their behind the scenes, but I've been building some course content, some curriculum, both for practicing CAAs and for AA students. So a curriculum pertaining to AA wellness and really approaching topics in a different way than I've ever seen done before, again focused on creating connection with yourself and others and your work and approaching these big themes that are important to AA wellness that I don't feel like anyone's approached for us or created any content for us, and I know how deeply important that is to have CAA specific wellness resources, wellness education, wellness guidance that feels authentic to us, not like retrofitted to fit our CAA experience, and also some damn good stuff that no one's done before and that would be really meaningful for our profession and for our growth and for us as humans and individuals. I'm building that and I feel like I have so much value to add to that space. I'm not ashamed to say that, but the reality of building something like that means it would take a lot of my time and energy to produce and to really take it from these ideas and these Google Docs I have forever running on my computer and really packaging it and creating something substantial, and then all of the back end logistics it would go to push it out to people and to sell it and to market it and to deliver it. So a lot of it would be my delivery of the content and I know 2024 is not the year for me to do that. And I only know that in the last probably 48 hours I've just got home from two longer mindfulness retreats. One was focused personally and one was like a healthcare focused professional mindfulness. It was called Mindful Practice and Medicine Retreat and it became a facilitator at their retreat, and so I've just had a lot of dedicated time to think about what's next for me and who I really am and what I really want, which is hard, hard work, and sometimes it's hard to admit what's best for you means saying no to something else that's also good for you or maybe meant for me, but not meant for me right now, and so I just wanted to get on here and authentically share a little bit of my behind the scene process, also to let you know that in 2024, there will be fewer Awakened Anesthes, podcast episodes released, and that's because I am purposely refocusing that time and energy and resource back into my personal relationships, in particular the relationship I have with my husband, whose name is Kevin, because I know that together we can build a life that fulfills us both deeply, and the problem is we have a lot of healing to do personally, and then we have a lot of growth and development to do as a couple, and we have a lot of expansion of what's even possible for us. We just don't even know. We have never seen to believe what's possible because we come from sort of maybe the relationships we've all come from which are broken or imperfect or just not what you want for yourself, and my husband and I have made a really purposeful effort to move beyond that, and we just aren't sure what's beyond that yet, and so I know it's just going to take my time, energy and focus. It's going to take going out there and finding other couples and people who represent what we want. It's going to take a lot of inner work and healing, and all of that means that I'm not going to have enough time or energy to do a lot of other things, and so I feel really good about the decision. I know as soon as I made the decision which was about two hours ago before I'm recording this it had felt like it was brewing in me and I finally just had to turn to it and say, yes, I'm going to pick my husband and that relationship over doing these professional expansion pieces or doing some things that you know. I have other things that I'm sort of doing and juggling in my other aspects of life and just letting those get smaller in 2024 to make this most important relationship after the relationship I have with myself, which I do consider the most important relationship this relationship with my husband is the second most important, and we want something we've never seen before, and so we're just going to go after it in 2024. I don't know how much I'm going to fill people in. I honestly don't know where we'll be or what it's going to look like. Yeah, I just I'm excited about the opportunity because we're both mutually making this decision to turn towards each other and to building a life we've never seen built before in terms of relationship, and that, of course, trickles to everything else we do, and so I have loved doing Awaken In Us's podcast. It is 100% part of my full self-expression. I'm excited to go back and edit or listen to at least this episode I'm recording right now, because I learned so much about myself and who I am and what I want in this world and what I meant to do by going back and listening to myself as like a third person observer during the editing process. It is a wildly educationally fulfilling experience to learn about yourself. If you're ever interested, I guess Podcasting has that effect, and at least has that effect for me. I just have learned so much about who I am by hearing myself, just letting my intuition speak, letting myself start talking on the mic and then going back and listening to it. It's like, oh, that's who I am, that's what makes me tick, that's what I care about, that's what makes me laugh Like, oh, interesting, okay, and so I appreciate you all sort of listening to me here as I lay out some of what's ahead in 2024 and what my focus will be. I will still be producing a podcast every month. I also currently have said yes to doing at least a quad, a 90 minute workshop and lecture. It's again going to be on connection, but it's going to be about connection and substance use disorder and how those two things are linked at least disconnection and substance use disorder, which was an area of focus for me when I was teaching at UMKC, and possibly a couple other projects that I might move forward that are sort of in the direction of my professional curriculum building and sort of this wellness thing that keeps pulling at me to come out from inside of me. I have a couple steps in that direction that I'm going to likely take, but it's not going to be the full blown thing in 2024. And you know, I likely am going to have to keep reining myself in and maybe listening to this episode over and over again to remember that I named my most important thing for 2024. And that is building a relationship with my husband that is so deeply fulfilling for both him and I and creating this new life around that relationship. And I hope that if you listen to this episode that you recognize there's likely a reason why you stuck around and listened, a reason why this episode may be resonated with you and just to allow yourself to take in that you can name what's most important to you and chase that, even if that means letting other good things or things that are meant for you fall into the background, or maybe you say have to say no to them for a little while. Nothing that is meant for you will ever pass you by, but often in this life, in this material world, in our real human existence, we have to make choices that prioritize our time and energy and resources, and that's good. And seeing people do that in real life who seem and look and feel and have like a similar CAI existence as you, that's the type of expansion that I'm looking for myself. And so I just wanted to put this reality out into the world, into the CAI community, because as CAIs, we are so privileged to get to make a lot of our own decisions and we can feel such a sense of value and self-worth and we have a lot of resources financial, educational resources. We have a lot of people around us who are telling us we're a good person and we're doing good things. And not everyone has that position. And I just think, as CAIs, it is a beautiful thing to recognize that you have that and then use that to do more of what's meant for you in this world. And I'm going to do that and so I'm really excited about it and I know it feels right, I know it's what I'm meant to do, and so you may be hearing a little less of me in 2024, but I am still here, still figuring out, still doing the self-discovery work, as it's never really ending and I hope hearing someone else do it makes you feel like you know it's possible for you, or that maybe in your future something in you says I deserve to have a life I've never seen, lived before and I'm going to go get it. So thank you again for listening. I hope you have a wonderful holiday season and let's talk soon.
