Covid- the infection and the pandemic hoopla exposes your weaknesses:
Physically- shows the state of your health- if you can recover
Mentally- how you are able to lean into resilience or if you’re easily manipulated
Spiritually- where your trust lies and who you actually worship- media, politics, or the One true God
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Transcription
This is episode two of season three of the Crying in My Cheesecake podcast. And I am Danielle your host. Thank you so much for being here. It’s 2022. And we’re still talking about COVID aren’t we. I don’t know about you, but I thought we’d be done with this in 2020. And then I was like, oh, okay, well, 2021 will be the year we’re done yet, it’s 2022 and we’re still dealing with the dreaded, this vid.
I think it’s time to realize COVID isn’t going anywhere and it’s time for us to accept it for what it is and move on. For me, the COVID stuff is just frustrating. It seems like my whole life it’s been one world thing after another, some good things and some bad, but all bring out emotions. And the thing is, instead of bringing everyone closer COVID has torn families, friends and communities apart. Whether from lockdowns, isolation, social distancing, or the politics connected to every bit of this pandemic. We are just not who we once were. Here in the Midwest here in Midwest America in 2022, we are experiencing inflation. So high, that at the grocery store last week. I actually had to start planning my meal, or I realized I had to start planning my meals ahead again. Yeah, I should probably have been planning my meals properly with a budget and I just didn’t need to, before I was able to last minute, tell my husband, Hey, stop, pick up XYZ at the grocery. And not think anything of it, or just say, let’s go out to eat on a whim but the prices are skyrocketing so much that last week. At the grocery store, some teenagers were working at the grocery and they noticed that there was some milk that we that we bought and they had noticed, had gone up.
I’m sorry, but as teenagers, most of us had our heads up, our rear ends and wouldn’t have even noticed. But it must be bad enough that teenagers are noticing. Gas prices are a dollar to $2 higher than they were just a few short years ago. And I’m having to think about whether it’s worth it or not to leave the house more than I already have more than I already have to, to run errands or take kids to places for their activities. So I usually just put my mental health on the back burner and just stay home and work myself into the ground.
It reminds me when I was in college and a certain politician was in the white house and I felt let down. I had such high hopes for this person and really, really wanted him to do well. What happened though, was I had to choose between gas, money and food sometimes, sometimes I had to miss a college class because I couldn’t afford to drive to school and then drive home and then go back to campus later that day.
So sometimes I’d end up on campus all day long, simply because I could only afford to go to campus once. It was the same as it is now though, my mental health suffered because I stayed home too much. And with not much interaction from others and no excitement of maybe just heading to a park or a mall, or to walk around and clear my head.
That’s the first thing that COVID exposes our mental health and what it takes for us to have solid mental health. I learned during the pandemic that my mental health is something I need to protect at all costs. I’ve learned what works and what doesn’t work. For me I cannot not head to nature.
I have to work out. I have to go to church. I have to schedule fun. You see, I’m not a fun person. It’s the truth. I’m not a fun person. Like I don’t just get a wild hair at my rear end and say, let’s go have fun. No, that’s, that’s actually not who I am and I can voice that I need to get away, but I can’t define the fun I need to have.
So I literally schedule fun into my monthly and weekly routine, so I can decompress from the seriousness that I’m always, and I’m just a very serious person in general. Which is why I’m so glad I have the husband I do, because he literally will just knock me off my pedestal and he’ll knock me out of the seriousness and actually make me genuinely laugh. And I appreciate that my kids do the same thing, so just really grateful for that.
My job has taken a toll on me during this time. As a nutritional therapy practitioner, I’m taking in a lot of people’s junk that they air I’m a safe place for them, for that, for that purpose. I’m pouring out and listening to their issues and looking at what they tell me. Plus the data I’ve collected and putting a puzzle together all day long thinking analytically nonstop, and always looking for missing pieces is exhausting mentally sometimes.
I’m thriving in my job. But I also realize if I don’t take care of my mental health, my clients are going to suffer as well. I noticed that my children’s mental health, like I would have known. I honestly don’t think that my parents’ generation ever thought about children’s mental health let alone their own. I don’t think they think about their own usually anyway, but I noticed my kids’ mental health and I noticed when they get agitated and whiny and annoying and pestering me.
That it’s time for them to have some mental health time too. I’ve learned to drop what I’m doing. And do what I need not what I quote unquote, should be doing. The next thing COVID exposes is the quality of your strength of your relationships. Just a few years ago, I could not stand my husband. I truly could not be in the same house with him for more than a day and a half.
To max. I mean, if I knew that the next day he was going to work, I was happy. It was fine. I could, I could make it through. I couldn’t stand to hear him breathe, he stunk, he ignored me, he complained, he was so deep in the pit of his own depressions and addictions that I was literally raising three kids alone. And his very presence was a reminder that I was so alone and lonely, even inside my marriage.
Fast forward to COVID lockdowns and he was just over two years sober at that time. And I realized. I actually liked my husband. I enjoy the slow pace. The family games, the board games we played, it offered us time to truly reconnect with a sober and faithful husband and dad. I learned who I learned who I was a priority to and who I wasn’t during COVID.
And that hurt, the people that should be there for me, be little me, put me down, hurt me, called me names. Cursed in my face with fingers in my face. I learned who my tribe or my people, who they really were. I prayed since I was probably around 20 for a brother to love me well. I have a biological brother and our relationship is strained and has been strained for almost two decades.
It’s not getting any better. But I’ve come to accept it for what it is, and thus prayed for a brother. And God answered me. With three brothers who lead me, guide me, and push me. They protect me, they hold me accountable, they encourage me. They’re the most family like people I’ve had in most of my life.
In that I got a sister too. I really don’t know what sisterhood is. I only grew up with a brother, but. I have a sister who is literally just days younger than me. She thinks like me, she knows what I need when I don’t even know it.
So many blessings, right? I learned that my children are definitely my priority. I do anything to spend time with them, to make sure that they know without a doubt that they are known, valued and loved. Covid exposes your physical weaknesses. When the pandemic started we thought it was this thing, killing elderly people because of their age, and then we realize it’s not just their ages because with it’s people with preexisting conditions, and one of those conditions, that’s a root cause of many of the high risk conditions is the BMI. We know that the BMI charts aren’t perfect, but we do know that a healthy BMI versus an unhealthy BMI. And what happens with that? I’ve learned that COVID attacks the liver. If you have obesity, you’re likely dealing with blood sugar imbalance. Which means you have hormonal imbalances, which means your thyroid is probably going to be affected by COVID. Your menstrual cycle will be affected. Your digestion will be effected in so much more. Even if you’re not obese, but overweight, or even at a healthy weight. And the health of the liver still matters.
You see, I, I see. And I’ve witnessed so many thin and fit people headed to the ER, due to COVID complications. And these people are the ones you’d never think would have had it so bad. But they do. Why? Well it’s because COVID exposes your liver’s health. You see, I’d go down fighting saying your liver is what actually keeps you alive.
Not your heart, brain, or lungs. If your liver isn’t working your heart, lungs and brain won’t work. In fact, if you lose your liver, you’ll die. Why else did God create an organ that you can lop off half of it and it grow back, no other organ grows back. Think about that a minute. The liver’s in charge of over 500 different tasks in your body. The heart, pump blood. The lungs, put oxygen in the blood. The brain is responsible for a lot too, but it isn’t quite the 500 different tasks and it’s, and they aren’t required necessarily to keep you alive. The kidneys, filter waste and toxins from the body. The reproductive system, create life. You get the picture here.
I do have a COVID protocol to follow inside my private network. My private network is owned by me, has a ton of helpful information, always updating things and always growing this platform works similar to Facebook and you can post all your questions and things inside the activity, feed wall, and get support.
That coed protocol is a way for you to manage COVID once you get it and really support your body’s needs. If you ever want to learn how to support your blood sugar better and thus your liver better, I’m your gal. You can work with me. One-to-one in my foundational holistic wellness package. This is a six month package where you can choose the level of accessibility to me.
But we take a clinical look at your body’s cellular and organ functions and go from there for your specific needs. I’ll link down below in the show notes, my private network link and the link to work one-to-one with me. If you’re someone who simply just needs to drop some weight as your first place of starting your wellness journey, because we know a high BMI is linked to COVID deaths and other diseases of civilization, you can schedule a free console.
We can get you and meet an assistant started today on that journey. You know, the thing is, I know someone will say it, health is expensive, and I’ll counter and say, sickness is even more expensive. Spending how much money on prescription medications each month for reversible diseases like diabetes is expensive and it’s painful.
It’s painful and it causes so much regret and frustration and anger within a family. Spending how much money on hospital stays is how expensive? Deductibles or how expensive? Death due to reversible diseases? It costs memories and years and impact. You know, COVID also exposes the strength of our belief systems.
These last two years when churches shut down, because that’s what was recommended by the CDC. And most of the churches went online. It really caused a lot of people to choose, to just stay away from church when. Once the doors opened again, they figured, oh, it’s church online and I’m at home in my PJ’s.
Well, that’s a great, that’s a great way to be connected to your home church sermon series. It online. It does not take the place of gathering together to worship. We don’t have to go to a building, yet, we get to go to a safe building where we can worship freely together. When we worship, we gathered together for encouragement spring on in the way we should go. We get to be with family of fellow believers. We get to belong. We get community. We get to be reminded we’re not alone as the time draws near and near to end times when things are getting harder and harder.
I think we forget that we get to do. We get to gather. And some of us go for the instant gratification, the checkbox of church online, and there is a huge difference. Covid exposes your creativity.
I made bread like everyone else, I made that whipped coffee thing that made me have a caffeine buzz like no other. Covid allowed me to be creative with how to spend my extra time instead of just sitting on my bum worried. I shut the news off and had fun sewing and crafting and playing games going outside to make memories.
COVID is here to stay. No vaccine, no passport, nothing is going to eradicate this virus. We had no control over it. COVID truly exposes your weaknesses in every area of your life. What area of life do you need to start working on first?
