My Story & The Art of Tending: An Introduction

Welcome to the very first episode of "Random Thoughts with Sara!" In this debut episode, I’m excited to share my journey and the inspiration behind this podcast. Join me as I dive into the art of tending to your life—what it means, why it’s important, and how it has shaped my own path. I’ll share personal stories and reflections on the moments that have influenced my growth and the steps I’ve taken to nurture a fulfilling and intentional life. Whether you’re new to the concept or looking for fresh insights, this episode sets the stage for our exploration of living mindfully and purposefully. Tune in and start your journey towards a well-tended life with me!

Transcript

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Welcome I am your host, Sarah Ultrix. I'm thrilled to be here after several years of processing. If you know me, I'm constantly processing. I am excited to share it with the world. It is super simple. And sometimes they get in my own head about how simple it is. Who needs to hear this? Who wants to hear this? As I've talked to my husband and a few friends, I've just realized that it's encouraging to hear how people have processed and healed and walked through life no matter what, whether it's the way we do or not. She's encouraging to hear that we're all in this together. It's a conversation. It's like some little tidbits that I share during these episodes. Might spark something, an idea, or encourage you to be like you're on the right path or keep going or try again. With that being said, I would love to take a minute just to share who I am and how I came about this process. I am a creative and I used to say, I wasn't really sure what I was good at, what I like to do. I just love talking and being around people. Then I started paying attention. I loved creating atmospheres and creating environments and opportunities for people to gather Aesthetically. I was very inspired by alleys and old. Paper and things that, had grit I started putting together spaces with my husband for. Our businesses. I started paying attention to, I was enjoying learning how to style my house and, you know, I just, all the things started coming together. I realized there was a creative and then heard the word stylist for my friend and I was like, oh my gosh. That's what I am. That's what I love. That's what I want to do for the rest of my life. I am a prop stylist. What that means is I help. Clients. Create little vignettes or looks for their products for imagery, for videos, for commercials, whatever that is. I also am an Airbnb stylist. And so I kind of just do that same thing. But in spaces. It's to help them get better images so that they can rent out their places for more it's been a really fun journey. I love doing it. I've taken a few months off. As my husband and I moved our girls cross country from bend Oregon where we loved, but we felt our time there was up. It was time for a new adventure. We moved back home where we grew up in Michigan and we bought a hundred year old home and we've just been kind of tweaking it and creating little areas and making it our own, I am. Married to my best friend. Sean. I met him when I was 14. I fell in love. The second I saw him and I have loved him everyday sense. We have so many fun adventures. We call it layers. We have so many layers in our life, we've lived in four different states together. Have co-pastor to church that we started together. Run non-profits and that we've started and we've created businesses. We owned a donut shop and online businesses and all these fun things. We have three children that we love that are amazing. They're three gorgeous teenagers that have such fun style and spunk and. Personality and all the things. It's just been a fun journey with him and with our girls and, you know, becoming more and more of who I am. I came about this process maybe it started eight years ago. I was in a place F overload. I was so depleted. My bucket was so drained there wasn't a drop left and I needed a pause. And so I stepped away from many things. I stepped away from many, many roles that I played and I just needed a hot minute to myself. And so I went into therapy. And I met with my mentor weekly and I really just started journaling and reading and being by myself, I'm a very outgoing person and I just started taking time to. Settle my soul and figure out what was happening and what I realized during that time. Was. I had never edited my life. Not once. It was always add, add more and more and more adventure, more friends, more. You know, opportunities more. Layers more and more and more. And I was so overloaded and I couldn't figure out what was happening. I thought it was me. I thought I couldn't perform enough. I couldn't. Do enough, I couldn't, you. I just kept pointing at myself and my lack of whatever I was not enough. And what I realized during that time was like, whoa, hold up. Like you have a garden, you have a life, you have a plot of land that is yours and you get to pick what's in it. And just because something has been in, it doesn't mean it's to stay in there or that it needs to stay in there. Take the time. To kind of work my land kind of like a farmer would, and edit and kind of every season kind of reevaluate and tend to myself and do all these things. I pause my whole life to do this. And so I kind of spent the next several years working on. Getting my soil and getting my life back to a place of health. That I would be able to participate in the things around me. I have a disclaimer before I start. I am not a therapist. I am not a professional. These are just ideas that I would love to share their ideas. I've absorbed through books and through journaling and through friends and through mentors and through therapists and paid professionals and all the things. And so that is me just sharing my journey, not from a professional standpoint. I also, I would love to. Say upfront. This has been a messy process and I am sure that I have hurt a lot of people. And I have had to process that on my own and forgive myself for the way that I was in the past. You know, whether I was triggered and block them out because self protection or I didn't have the hard conversation and figure out at the root what was happening. But I want you to know that I think of you and that I hope good for you. And I'm really grateful for the layers that you invested in my life while our past we're crossing and just wanted to. To put that out there before we start. The idea of editing your life? It kind of started when I opened this book that had been sitting on my bookshelf for five years. Called boundaries. It blew me away. Our friend had gifted it to us and I wish I would have opened it earlier, but God totally knows when our heart needs it. And I was very receptive to every single. Idea in this book. It starts with sharing that you have your own garden, your own yard, your own plot of land, your own life. And if you picture it like it's yours and around it, you get to have this beautiful, lovely fence that you get to let people in or out it is up to you. It is up to you in the time of life that you're in. I felt like I was given permission. To choose. I was given permission to have my own. Opinion about how people made me feel, how I felt in seasons. If I wanted more friends or I needed more time by myself or. I was always this extrovert and it was just always more and more and more be around more people when someone was in your life, they're always in your life. the roles that we had stepped into. My husband and I pastoring a church. And owning businesses downtown and living downtown and having friends. It was like our life kept growing and growing and I loved it. But then there really wasn't in my own heart and editing process of like, these people have moved on, we were in different chapters. I still would have this connection to them feeling like I want them to know, I still care about them. I want them to know and make an effort to continue that friendship. Or, I used to work with them on this project and I still want to stay in touch. So as you are in these roles, you grow more and more friends. And it wasn't like in high school where you had a few friends here and there, you know, and you met maybe five more each year. So it was a slow grow. Now these were like, I was meeting hundreds and thousands and, you know, Lots and lots of people every year and it was growing and I wanted to stay connected, but I just didn't know how to do that. And so. This book really impacted me when I saw that. I had permission to stop and pause and listen to my own heart and see where I was at. See what I needed, what kind of friendships I needed at the time. Sometimes we go through life and we need very sensitive friends that are just going to be. There and allow you to be vulnerable Almost offer this protection around you so that you can sort through things. Sometimes you need friends. That are fun. You know, you have toddlers, you have little ones and you just want to go to the park and have fun. While you're doing all the mommy things. And sometimes you have friends that, you want to digest ideas and process and kind of build upon them and have these deep conversations. I mean, you're, you are an evolving person, so. Your friendships will be evolving as well. We will always have friends that are constant. I have a few, I have a handful of friends that will be my besties for life. They came into my life. We don't live in the same state. We don't live in the same area. My people we call, we check in, we have the pulse on each other's life. And connecting is instant. This book also gave me permission to look at my life and see what kind of activities I had. I will talk later on in this podcast about cognitive load, but every activity that we do, every position that we hold, whether that's being a mom, a room, mom, a wife, a neighbor, all these things carry this cognitive load. So you are thinking about. How things are going to happen when they're going to happen. Have you connected, what the tasks are that you need to do to serve in that role, all these things we carry. And so when we look at our life and we, wow, I was looking and I had permission to say, I think I have too much in my yard. Nothing is thriving because everything is. Taking over everything. There is no room for anything. It was just like, All the friends. All the jobs, all the businesses, all the titles, all the fun things, all the positions, you know, all the house, the life, all the things that are natural to us. All are there. And on top of that, there is a whole bunch of other things. So when I started going through this process, I was like, oh, snap. I have not really like. Ask anything to leave my garden i haven't i've just keep having people over i just keep having businesses over i just keep having you filling my yard and my porch and all the things there was no room to grow or breathe Once I fully accepted that I had this permission that I was given this chance to. Create a life that I felt like I could thrive. I was up for the challenge. So the first two things I did was one I created an image of my garden, what that looked like for me, it was the home that we lived in. We had bought this historic home it was so lovely. You walked up to this home and you kind of walked up these stairs and there was these beautiful crepe myrtles, and these bushes that kind of enclosed our yard. So we had grass and then. A few steps up was this huge porch on the front of her house that was covered. And on one side was this lovely place of sit and be our friend that we bought this house from, she had created this. Magical. Like porch. It had these curtains that blew in the wind and it had a day's bed swing that was there and we created this. Seating area around it. And then on the other side was a long table that we have dinners or, you know, I spend time with the girls doing crafts or whatever. There was so much time spent in the yard. There were trees, plants. Time to take a nap. And time to gather with friends. Kind of everything you could think of. That I did in my life. I could do out there. And so. That's, the first thing I tell people is just kinda think about what your garden, what your life could look like, like a beautiful, peaceful place that you could enjoy life. The second thing is make a list. Of all the relationships that you have, all the job titles you have and all the activities that you partake in. And that is like the first step. Of this whole process because you have to know what you have. And so later I'll talk about seasons. And so I view myself now as a farmer, as a gardener that I am. Actively. Gardening and tending to my garden daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, all the things. When I started diving into that, I was like, okay, what does a farmer do? A farmer has lots of activities every season. Like sometimes we think like in the winter, they're just like got nothing because it's dark out and they have nothing. No, actually there are tasks to do. Yes. One is definitely rest, but another is to audit, to audit what worked last year to look back and see what worked and to look forward and plan what you want to plant and have. Winter to me is like where I have everyone start in this process. It's just the time to reflect and to look at and actually take account of what is happening in your life. You have just been given permission that you are in charge. You are the head farmer, the head gardener, of your land. And to take that responsibility seriously will literally change the course of your life forever. You're taking into account all the things and you're actually paying attention. You're intentionally saying, I want to show up for my life the best way I can and I'm ready to learn the things I need to, and that is going to be how to edit, how to prune, how to. Plan how to reflect, how to use this information about how we feel and how our life is going taking the pulse and the temperature and all the things. into consideration and to move forward, whether that's taking things out or adding new things in, If this resonates with you, just draw out. On a piece of paper, your garden, and start listing all the things that you have in it. Whether that's your spouse, your friendships, your children, your family. Start listing, auditing taking into account all the things that you have, any responsibility, and then day two, go back and fill in more stuff of like, okay, I have children and this is what entails. I care for them. I tend with them. I love to have play dates. they go to nursery school and I show up and volunteer once a month. I volunteer at. The church All the things like Christmas is wild because we have lots of parties or I love to throw big birthday parties and, you know, so there's this like all the things with each. Person and. Job title start listing the things that you do. First of all, you're going to be overwhelmed. And then you're going to realize like, oh my gosh, I've been doing. So many things, and I am really good at this. And the fact that I've been doing all these things, let me celebrate it. Speak kind things to yourself. Realize you did it. You survived, you have shown up in these ways. You've blessed, multiple people, your children, your husband, your family, your neighbors in any way, just celebrate the things that you have done. realize moving forward from this day on. You are going to be more fully supported. You are going to have room to grow and to thrive, and you're going to just really be able to be present and enjoy all these things. Then just sit with it. Just keep sitting with it. And as you resonate, get a highlighter. Sometimes I suggest that people highlight, like the things that are not moving. Like they're not moving. My husband is staying in my garden forever. My kids are staying in my garden forever. You know, this ministry is here to stay. I love living where I live and I love being on neighbor. I love mountain climbing. I love working out. I love my summer vacations, whatever it is, highlight the things that are never going to leave and then get another highlighter and say, these are things that I've been doing for a really, really long time. And they no longer serve me. I don't need to be doing them. There's somebody else that I saw that could be really good at I'm going to pass this Baton on to them. So just do that. And then maybe you could have another highlighter of like questionable things. I'm not sure what this looks like. Maybe I take a pause for a little bit and see how that feels. Nothing is permanent. You just get to start like looking at it differently, looking at all the things that you have happening in your garden, because ideal garden is going to have some spacing between things. When someone has a seed, if you look at a seed packet, it says you need this many inches things take up space. They need room to get bigger and to grow and to have more depth than to have roots. If you everything's so crowded, nothing is going to grow properly. I think ultimately we all want to feel healthy and be able to breathe and to actually enjoy our life, not just get through our life, but be present in our life. And so for that to happen, we need some borders. We need a little bit of room for each thing to thrive. I will say for me, I over edited definitely for the first year I did this, I over edit it. I took out so many things and I transplanted so many things and I probably was way more aggressive with this process than I should have been. But it's literally what I needed. And, I always leave a little extra room because I want to have flexibility to add things. I literally could talk about this all day long. So I am going to stop right now. I have lots more episodes coming. I am going to dive into each season and how to work your land during that season, the job responsibilities and how to. I fully lean into it, the tools that you can use. And on top of that, I will just be here being a voice of encouragement. I'll be your cheerleader. This is a process as a farmer and as a gardener, you do it every single year, every season, single season, you show up, but it gets easier because now you have these tools you have experienced, you say, Hey, last year I over edited last year, I didn't plant enough this year. I planted too much. Hey, I didn't like that. Cilantro. I want something different the season. I mean, you're constantly. Evolving, and it is so much fun. But with these tools, I promise you, you will thrive. You will feel lighter. You'll feel supported. You'll feel like you are listening to yourself. You're actually in alignment with who God's called you to be who you feel like you were meant to be. Thank you so much for being a part of this and for listening. Please feel free to reach out. If you have any questions, I'd love to hear what tidbits resonated with you and how you are. Beginning to edit your life. I would love to see the scratch paper, where you are drawing out your garden and you're listing all the things I'd love to hear your overwhelm of how much you've actually been doing. I'd love to see your highlighter is, and how you're going about seeing what staying and what's going. It's just really exciting and I'm so thankful to be on this journey with you. So thank you so much. And I look forward to next time.