COVID Guilt and a Self-Care Break

Serena: Hey Everyone, I’m Serena.

Tina: And I’m Tina and we are the Mental Health Mamas.

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Serena: Welcome to No Need to Explain, we are so glad you’re here.

Tina: First, as always, a quick disclaimer.

Serena: We come to you NOT as mental health professionals or experts in the field, but rather as the parents of kids who struggle with their emotional health.

Tina: If you or someone you love is experiencing a mental health crisis, please seek professional support. You’ll find a variety of resources in our show notes and on our website, NoNeedToExplainPodcast.com.

Serena: It is July of 2021 and this is officially our 34th episode!

Tina: Unbelievable! This is amazing! What started as a little pandemic project; it’s grown in ways we never could have imagined.

Serena: Mmhm. Yeah and we have had some really amazing guests and we have more planned for the future!

Tina: And we’re gonna be taking a little bit of a break, but we’ll talk a little bit more about that in a moment.

Serena: So Tina, I’m curious, in the past year and a half, have you mastered a musical instrument?

Tina: Huh. No. Have you learned a new language?

Serena: Yeah, no. Uhn-uh. Did you use the opportunity to write a book? Tina: Definitely not. Did you clean and organize your entire house?

Serena: Ha! Yeah, that’s funny. So neither of us did any of these things and yet I hear about an overwhelming sense of guilt from people who also have not done all the things.

Tina: Right. There’s this idea floating around out there that we all should have done something life-altering and brilliant during this time.

Serena: Mm-hm. And I just want to say this is in no way meant to shame anyone out there who actually did do something amazing in the past year and a half. If you did any of the things we just named or something else equally impressive, that is awesome and I am totally impressed!

Tina: I am totally impressed as well. Yeah, for sure. For everybody else, and I dare say that this is the majority of the people out there...whatever you did or whatever you didn’t do in the last 18 months, it was enough.

Serena: You are enough. In fact, you are more than enough because you survived a pandemic!

Tina: Yes! You survived a global pandemic! And what if surviving is exactly what we were supposed to do?

Serena: Right. So in the words of Brene Brown, we are writing you a permission slip! You have permission to let go of the guilt and be proud that you survived.

Tina: Mm-hm. OK, so now that that’s out of the way, let’s shift to talking a bit about self-care.

Serena: Yes. So our regular listeners (and as an aside...thank you regular listeners!)

Tina: Yes!

Serena: ...you know that we often focus on self-care and the idea that we always need to start with ourselves in order to be able to take care of others in our lives.

Tina: Yeah. As we said a moment ago, this is our 34th episode and while we planned on dropping episodes every other week, we really got in a groove and ended up dropping an episode every single week. Yay us!

Serena: And now we’re finding that we need to take a bit of a break. We want to continue bringing you great content and amazing guests while also honoring our own need for self-care as well.

Tina: Yes. But don’t worry, we will be back! We will be launching Season 2 starting in September. Between now and then we have a variety of ways you can help us out.

Serena: Again, we are so grateful to all of you out there listening and supporting this podcast. So here are some ways you can help keep our episodes coming:

Tina: Catch up on any episodes you’ve missed! And we ask that you share just one episode with one friend or a lot of friends.

Serena: And if you haven’t already subscribed in Apple Podcasts, please do so and while you’re there leave us a review. You may not know this but every single review helps us to be discovered by more people.

Tina: Right and speaking of subscribing, we want you to join our email list. We promise we do not have time to overwhelm your inbox. One weekly email is all we can send and it’s a great way for you to keep in touch with what we have planned. You can subscribe right on our website and just in case you don’t know, that website is NoNeedtoExplainPodcast.com.

Serena: And as a bit of an incentive for you we want to offer you a free self-care workbook that we’ve created just for you. All you have to do is sign up for our mailing list and we will send you our 25 page printable and fillable self-care workbook.

Tina: So your kids probably have school things they have to do in the summer and this a summer project that is just about you and nobody else. So we could all use more self-care ideas. Take advantage of this. While you’re on our website, we would love for you to send us a message! We would love to know who you all are and hear future ideas for episodes, your thoughts on what we’ve done so far or just send us an email and say hello!

Serena: Also, I don’t think that we can overstate the idea that the past 18 months have been beyond challenging. You’ve heard the ads for BetterHelp on our podcast and maybe you’ve thought about it, but you weren’t quite sure. I want to assure you, do it for you. You deserve to feel good.

Tina: Mmhm. And I have openly shared about how taking good care of myself means engaging actively with therapy and you have also heard that this is a summer of transition for me and we have had kind of a tumultuous, unexpected summer and I am so grateful to my therapist, Mary from BetterHelp.com. She...you know, it is a weekly thing and I love and I’m not sure where I would be without it. So do yourself a favor and sign up at BetterHelp.com.

Serena: You’ll get ten percent off your first month if you go to BetterHelp.com/MentalHealthMamas. That’s Better H-E-L-P dot com slash Mental Health Mamas.

Tina: Awesome. So Serena, for our wrap up of Season 1, send us out.

Serena: OK. This is your gentle reminder to take good care of yourself while also taking care of your people.

Tina: Thanks so much for listening!

Serena: Bye!

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