Julie Soul: [00:00:00] Hi everyone and welcome to the creative homeschool podcast. This is a really special day for me. It is two years after I almost died now I am still here and I also still have my leg and I wanted to tell you three lessons that I've learned from these two years from the incident itself to how I've basically changed and how you can bring them to your homeschool and to yourself.
So the first thing is to tell you what happened. Because this is kind of an important frame of reference for you to have so a couple of years ago I was coming back from a vacation and I was taking a shower and suddenly I couldn't move my leg I couldn't really feel my leg very much and my leg was starting to turn purple.
I Barely made it out of the shower This was in the height of kovat back when the hospitals were full. There really wasn't any space and we didn't really know what was happening, but my husband called the [00:01:00] ambulance and I don't live in an area where it's hard to get to for an ambulance, but it took a while for the ambulance to get here.
Kind of a little bit too long. And I was losing consciousness and I got a ambulance ride. I don't remember a lot. other than, you know, crying and being in pain. I remember them giving me something. I remember a couple of questions. I remember something warm and then I woke up. I woke up in the ICU and it turns out that I had a blood clot that stretched up my entire leg and basically was on its way to killing me.
Now, I don't need anyone to, feel sorry for me or anything, but , clearly when something this major happens, , changes your life and you can choose to have it change your life in a bad way, , or in a good one. And one of the things that, , you should know now is the last two years I've spent learning how to walk [00:02:00] again, learning how to move and still getting up off of the floor is really difficult without me being able to pull up.
But you know what? , there are three things that I have really, really taken with me and I wanted to share them with you and I wanted to record this today for that reason. The first is small steps. Big results. When I first started and I got out of the hospital, I had a walker. I could barely move. I could barely lift my leg into the bed or out and my kids actually gave me the task.
I know that you give your kids tasks. When it comes to things like reading or doing complicated math or learning a language, they often see this gigantic task in front of them. And one of the gigantic tasks I had was to walk from my house all the way down to our cul de sac. And our cul de sac is, [00:03:00] I'd say, about eight or nine houses down.
This seemed like an eternity. And the first challenge I had was just to get down my driveway. Now the lip in my driveway is only about this big, so you can imagine if that was difficult, the nine houses down would definitely be a challenge. But my kids actually taught me this lesson because they measured my progress every single day.
They would take me on a walk at least once a day and we would walk to the next thing. Now that next thing, because kids are awesome and they don't measure in feet or miles as much as we want to, they measure by things like the next mailbox, the next driveway, the next tree. , that's where the squirrel usually hangs out.
And so that's what we did. And I worked on getting all the way down to the cul de sac with my walker and back. And then I had a crutch and I had to use [00:04:00] that same thing. It's those small steps that have really made a huge difference. I went to physical therapy. I now have a trainer. My trainer works with me and sometimes I feel like there's no progress at all.
But one of the things that I want to tell you is we really overestimate what we can get done in a certain day. Have you ever made a homeschool schedule where you don't get to everything and you seem to have this idea that you're going to get through all 16 subjects and you're also going to have times for a nature walk, you're going to have time for the art, you're going to have time to, , go out and meet with friends, but you also have, three classes and math and language arts and your kids don't wake up until 10 30.
Yeah. We can really overestimate what we can get done in a day, but we really underestimate what we can [00:05:00] accomplish in a single year. And I'm sitting here two years later and I'm able to walk on a treadmill. I'm able to go hiking. And frankly, that all seemed completely impossible two years ago. I really wondered if that would ever happen.
So remember, small steps lead to such a big result. , the second thing is in your homeschool life happens. I did not expect this to happen. I did not expect to just suddenly be in the hospital for almost two weeks and I just suddenly disappeared. I mean, there wasn't a warning and whether it's a cold that you see coming or something like this, that's a life changing event.
The loss of a pet or another loved one. These things happen and we beat ourselves up because we feel like we have to continue with homeschooling in the same exact way [00:06:00] as we always have. And I know that depending on what state you're in, there's different rules, regulations, things you have to do. But.
There's also things that you can do. You can turn on a nature documentary because chances are you might have been skipping out on watching those nature documentaries that you've always wanted to watch anyway. So now's the time. Screen time's okay. You can read to your kids from bed. That's what I did. I found educational games.
And I also outsourced. I was not afraid to call for help. I was not afraid to ask people to help get the groceries. I was not afraid to ask people, hey, can you do this one thing with my kids? Homeschooling, when life happens, might look different, but it's okay because kids catch up. And if you've ever tried to learn something new, like TikTok or [00:07:00] any social media app or any game, or you've seen kids learn games, you know that kids pick up things really quickly, and so do we.
And if there's a couple of months where you're taking it off because you're focusing on getting better yourself, They're going to catch up and it's going to be okay because life happens. The third thing is a mindset. , this is so important and one of the most overlooked and underappreciated things, but our mind is powerful.
And one of the things I did not expect to handle in the last two years was battling myself. I did not expect that I was even battling myself. And if you had told me I was, I probably would have thought you were lying to me. But I started realizing that before I started going down the stairs every morning, I was already telling myself it was going to be hard.
So that means as soon as my front foot hit that stop, [00:08:00] I had already told myself a story that this was going to be hard to do. Now if I've told myself that story and I've gotten on the stairs, what do you think's going to happen? It is hard. So where in your life have you chosen to tell yourself a story before it even happens?
To, you know, go to a new homeschool group to playdate and tell yourself that this is hard. Why don't you try telling yourself the opposite? Have I gone to a playdate before? Yes. Have I made a friend before? Yes. And see what happens. This is the kind of mindset that we try so hard to To give to our kids.
We want them to be resilient. We want them to have a good mindset in, , solving challenges. We don't want them to come to the table for math and to say, Math is hard. I stink at math. Before they've even started. Because they don't know. And we don't [00:09:00] know. And I started noticing that even more.
Because one of the things that I still struggle with is getting up off the floor. I have to pull up. And sometimes. I try to tell myself, Oh, this will be okay. And I get up or I try to get up and it doesn't work very well, such as when I was doing goat yoga and I was stuck in the grass and there was a flood coming and I couldn't actually get up without, , several people helping me up.
But sometimes I don't try to get up because I think it's going to be hard already. And like the other day, two days ago, when I suddenly noticed. I can get up now, maybe not often, but I never used to be able to before and I wouldn't have known if I kept telling myself that story. And the other day I jumped.
I didn't think I could jump. Why would someone like me with what happened with my leg being so [00:10:00] weak, be able to jump? I had already told myself a story that people like me with what happened can't jump. So I didn't try. So, these are the three things that I've learned the past two years, and I really hope one resonates with you.
This is stuff we can take into ourselves as homeschooling parents. It's stuff that we can take into our homeschools. It's stuff that we can teach our kids. So remember, small steps, big results. Life happens. And don't ever underestimate the power of your brain and your mindset. Okay everyone, I hope that this has been helpful.
Please let me know. Send me a DM. , send us an email. We'd love to hear from you. Leave us a review. We would love to get this into the hands of more homeschooling parents who can use this kind of help. And every single review means so much. Okay everyone, until next time. Bye.
