My Biggest Regret While Healing My Son, and How You Can Avoid It | 196

Welcome back to Follow Your Gut. I'm your host Juniper. In today's episode, we are creating an internal shift of where we are putting our focus. Because culturally, we have all been conditioned to be so hyper-focused on the end goal that we're missing the point of all of it. We're missing where the magic actually happens. We're missing the whole point of life, really.

Whether this is raising our children or healing our own bodies or we can break it down into smaller things. We can break it down into making dinner. You know, making dinner is about the meal that's on the table. So much so that we're not even pausing. We're not even slowing down to find joy in the process of making that meal. 

And when it comes to your healing, the real transformation that happens here when you follow the ōNLē method, when you rebalance, it's not just about ending with a body that's free of symptoms. That's almost just one of the bonuses that happens. The real transformations are what happen in the in between from day zero to day 64 or 128 or however many days it takes for your body or for your child's body to heal. It's not about that end line. It's not just about being symptom free, that's not the definition of healing. At least in my in my book, that is not the goal. The goal is to learn how to actually embody being the mother of a healthy, thriving child, being a woman who is so present and so mindful and so cognizant of her daily life thoughts and habits and actions and it's who you become in this journey. It is not just about being symptom free.

When we go into things, whether it's again making dinner Or maybe you've decided that you want to run a marathon.

What happens in your brain if you are only attached to the outcome? You are attaching your identity to you are at the end.

And you're not allowing yourself to evolve, to expand, to grow into the person that you were always meant to be along the journey.

This is why you have met people in your life who it looks like they have it all they've got it all they have the family they have the house they have what looks like the perfect life but they are so deeply unhappy if you're only focused on the outcome, that goalpost keeps moving and you are never going to experience true happiness. You are never going to feel satisfied. You are never going to get, I'm saying this in quotes, there, because your focus is in the wrong place. The focus is never the outcome.

But we are conditioned this way from a very, very young age. I mean, how many people in the last month have asked you your child, what do you want to be when you grow up? If you think back to yourself as a child, at least for me, when I was growing up, the conversation was what are you gonna be when you grow up? What are you gonna be when you grow up? Grow up, grow up, grow up. not how are you gonna enjoy this day as a kid?

We are there's actually a lot of science in this. Our brains love leaping ahead and trying to control what we think is going to be the outcome. Our we find a lot of safety in that. And it's an intentional practice to back way off, to slow way down and allow ourselves to be right here, right now. To ask ourselves, who do I actually want to be in this moment? How do I actually want to show up in the process of healing my child? In the process of healing myself. How do I want to think? What habits do I want to embody?

You get to make the choice of how do I want to feel right now? How do I want to think about this situation? How am I going to choose to direct my focus today. And when we back way off like this, when we come into the moment right now and we make those, they're almost very micro decisions.

You are going to be so much happier and so much more proud and so like you cannot fail. Your outcome will far exceed anything you can imagine right now if you shift your focus. If you bring your focus to where you are right now, and you focus on how do you want to think about this? How do you want to feel in this moment? How do you want to nurture your child right now?

And every day is not gonna be perfect, and you're not gonna remember this every single day, and that's okay. This journey is not about being perfect, it's about allowing yourself to expand and become the next version of you in the journey. That's the whole point of all of this.

We are given these really hard, really challenging experiences. I want to use my son's experience as an example. For the first, I'm gonna say the first two years of him being sick, my only focus was the outcome. I have to heal him. I'm going to lose him if I don't figure this out. I have to heal him. I have to heal him. it it makes me emotional going back to that time because I missed those two years. I don't have memories of those two years. I not only had my son, but I had my daughter who's three years older, and I have a complete gap in my memory of her between the ages of three and five, of my son from zero to two, because I was so hyper focused on the outcome.

I forgot to show up. I didn't I didn't have the support in my life. I didn't have this podcast. I didn't have someone who had been through it to show up and say, Juni, you've got to slow down. You have to embrace this moment right now because in 10 years from now, you would pay any amount of money to be able to go back and hold your baby.

Even if he's covered in a rash, even if he's vomiting curdled milk every three minutes, even if you're not sleeping, you would pay anything to go back and experience that time again.

And so I want to gift this to you right now. I wanna remind you that no matter how hard life is right now, what if you just trust it that it's gonna be okay? That in ten years from now, life is gonna be so different.

And if you don't slow down to embrace it for exactly how it is, love your child, don't wish that they were different. Love yourself, don't wish that you were different. Time keeps going and things do change and everything is going to be different.

Today I invite you to look around you and see what is good. I promise you, there is so much good around you. Even in the pain, even in the struggle, in the heartache, in the sleeplessness, there is so much that you can find that is good around you right now.

And the more consistently you do this, the more you are embracing where you are right now. The more you're, the less you're resisting what is, the more beautiful the outcome is actually gonna be. And the sooner it's gonna come to you. I'm gonna say that again: the more you embrace where you are, and the more gratitude you can find for this journey that you're on, no matter how hard it is.

The happier you are going to be with the outcome. You cannot control the outcome. You can choose to control your thoughts. You can choose to go on a walk and regulate yourself so that you can go back home and be a grounded mother that can see past your child's rash, that can see past your child's pain and suffering and you can actually see the essence of who they are and embrace them for that. You can do the same for yourself. You can go home. You can look through your acne. You can look through the scars. You can look through the pain, the autoimmune condition that is so painful. You can look through it and you can see the essence of who you are. And embrace you today exactly as you are. 

Choose to focus your attention on what makes you happy today, on what lights your soul up today. You can choose to make your journey different than mine was. Maybe you've already lost months. Maybe you have this gap in memory like I'm talking about. Maybe you feel like you lost years of your child's life or years of your own life because you've been so hyper focused on the outcome.

I'm embracing you in the biggest hug because that's the biggest heartache of my life. It's not that my child was sick. It's not that he had all these symptoms. My biggest heartache is that I missed that period of time in his life because I was so hyper focused on the outcome. It's that I missed those really tender years of my daughter's life that I literally don't have a single memory of her. I missed two years of my marriage. I lost two years of myself. And I didn't even know, I didn't even have the awareness that I could I didn't I didn't even have permission. Not that I I'd need maybe I did need permission to just be right there. To just love my son for who he was, who he is, to detach all of the symptoms that I was seeing in him from who he was. Symptoms are not who you are, symptoms are not who your child is.

From my journey, what I now know is that all of those symptoms, as hard as this is to hear when you are in the depths of it, all of those symptoms were the biggest gift of my son's life, of the biggest gift of my life.

It was when my son was a year and a half. I had an internal shift. We had a big dynamic shift in our family. We moved into an airstream. We started traveling full time because I was really unwell at home. I I was not doing okay. My mental health, my emotional health was really, really fragile and I didn't like the mother that I was being. And my husband was a traveling salesman at the time and I said, I can't be at home alone anymore. We need to come with you. And so we started traveling and I unintentionally my internal focus shifted a little bit. I started having more fun. I started going on walks. I started living life in a way that felt really good in my body.

It wasn't on purpose, it wasn't a conscious choice. But what I see now is no matter what life you are living, no matter where you are, you can make this shift. You can choose that, you know what, I know that my child is really uncomfortable today, whether we're at home or out at a mountain lake my child is gonna be uncomfortable. Getting ready to go to that mountain lake is gonna take a little bit of effort, but I'm gonna go I'm gonna choose to go to that lake because we're gonna create experiences, we're gonna create memories, we're gonna start working on shifting our focus from, you know, sometimes when you're at home and you just stay at home and you've created this story that you can't leave the house because symptoms are so consuming, because you don't feel good, or your child doesn't feel good, or because the car ride is so hard. And all of that is very, very valid, but we trap ourselves and when we trap ourselves in that environment.

I mean, I didn't leave my house. I feel like for a year and a half because I was I was so consumed in my son's symptoms when you don't leave that environment, of course you're hyper focused, you're hyper fixated on the symptoms. You're monitoring it f minute to minute, like, my God, what did I eat different? Why is it flaring right now? What happened here? What's happening here? And you don't allow yourself any breathing room to actually see what's happening over a a timeline, right? Instead of minute by minute, day to day. 

So I'm giving you full permission to get the hell out of the environment that is consuming you. Choose to go to the mountain lake. It doesn't matter how hard it is to get there, because it's the getting there that's the point, right?

Turn on silly music. How can you find joy in the getting to the lake? And then once you're at the lake, how can you just like be consumed in the experience of it? Jump in the lake. Maybe that's something that you don't normally do. Maybe you're not the woman that gets her hair wet. Go get your hair wet. See if you can dive down to the bottom.

See how long you can hold your breath. See if you can do a handstand. Be fun. Allow yourself to just be free. And it's not a forced thing. It's a permission. It's a letting go. The more you do this, the more expansive your journey is going to be. And the more beautiful the outcome is because it's not what happens at the end. It's not just that symptoms are gone. It's that you have relearned how to find joy in your day-to-day life. You have learned how to be the mom of any kind of child, of the child that isn't sleeping, of the child who is sleeping, of the child who's having a really hard day, and the child who is having a wonderful day. Because I'll tell you, even when the symptoms are gone, because the symptoms will go away, if you keep trusting in the process, your child, you, yourself, the symptoms are gonna go away.

And even when they do, you're gonna have hard days. And your child is gonna keep growing. And I'm telling you this from where I am right now. My children are seven, nine, twelve, and fifteen. And in many ways, they need my older two, they need me more now emotionally than ever before. And because I finally broke free from being outcome focused and I am so deeply present and in my life and in my own moment to moment regulation and self-love and focus on finding joy in my life. I am equipped to show up for them with so much capacity and so much grace and so much love and I can hold space for their hard times without having to fix it because nothing is outcome focused.

Now I want to share with you how rebalancing makes all of this a lot more easeful. I think a big shift that happened, yes, my family moved into an airstream and we started traveling. But the other shift that happened for me is I was rebalancing myself because I was breastfeeding my son. So I was rebalancing myself to support his healing. And I experienced a lot of internal healing myself. My as my gut started healing, my gut brain connection became a lot clearer. And I started sleeping better.

That's the whole thing.

Our personal definition of success, of the outcome, it can't be based on anything externally. These shifts that I felt, these were internal shifts. This was me suddenly having the ability to not even think about finding joy, but just having fun. Just like I I remember moments of like, my gosh.

This is so different. I'm act I'm just like coloring with my daughter and I'm so in it that I didn't even recognize that that was a different thing that I was doing than a couple months previous when I I didn't have the time to just sit down and color. If there is a peaceful moment, I was researching how the heck to heal my son or what was causing this symptom or causing this flare.

As my body moved more and more into balance, I stopped having to find my own self-worth, my own safety in vigilantly researching and vigilantly trying to figure every single thing out that I was just naturally more and more in my life. This is one of the biggest reasons I always recommend mothers rebalance alongside their children.

You might not see any reason to prioritize your gut or your healing because your child's symptoms are so much louder. But I promise you, it's not about just seeing skin transform or just sleep changing or just constipation becoming normal stools.

It's about who you become in the process. And there isn't anyone in this world that wouldn't benefit from rebalancing, that wouldn't benefit from their gut brain connection becoming clear, from inflammation fading, from supporting your liver in functioning better, from clearing bad overgrowths from your body so that your good microbiome has more space to grow and thrive.

If you are needing support in learning what Rebalance Kit is designed for you or for your child or for your partner, I have my brand new starting place quiz for you. I'll have it linked in the show notes.

One last thing I started to say earlier in the episode that I want to make sure is said is that ten years later, my son's twelve now. We fully healed his body when he was two and a half. So ten years later, I can now very much see that we were given this experience to build resiliency, to learn how to independently heal our family, to become very different versions of ourselves, exactly who we are meant to be. my son wouldn't be who he is, If we didn't go through that, I wouldn't be who I am if we hadn't been given that experience. My entire family, we would not be where we are in life had we not been given that really, really hard experience. This is true for you. This is true for every single woman who has ever come into my life and ōNLē. You are being given whatever you are going through, not so that you can get to the outcome.

So that you become who you are always meant to be in the journey. Nothing is ever about the outcome, it is about the process.