What 24 Hours Brought Into Focus

Just this week, I spent 24 hours in the hospital for observation and testing. I want to begin by saying that I am okay. What I was experiencing turned out to be medication-related symptoms that closely mimic how heart attack symptoms can present in women. Thankfully, my heart is working well and doing exactly what it should.

Still, the experience offered a powerful reminder of so much of the work I do with clients.

As a former first responder and trainer, I know the signs. I am well aware that the symptoms I was having are ones women are often told not to ignore. I have often been the person who has firmly encouraged other women to seek immediate care when they described similar experiences.

And yet, there I was, sitting in my car, pausing. Wondering. Weighing whether I really needed to go in.

I am, like many of you, a tough woman. I have navigated significant hardship in my life. I know how to push through discomfort. I have been a lifelong fawner due to complex trauma in my life. In a nutshell, although it is more nuanced than this, I have prioritized others’ needs over my own.

In that moment, though, I had to slow down and listen. I had to trust my inner knowing. These sensations were not imagined. They were not “nothing.” They were real signals from my body asking to be taken seriously.

I could hear the familiar inner voices: You can push through, you are fine, just get some sleep. Those voices have served me in the past. They are part of how I have survived and shown up through hard things.

And yet, I have been intentionally cultivating a different voice within me. A quieter but steadier one. A voice that honors what I need in the moment and allows me to put myself first without guilt or justification.

I calmly called my partner and shared my plan. He was deeply supportive and immediately agreed that getting checked out was the right choice. There was no minimizing, no second-guessing. Just steady presence and care.

That moment mattered. Not because it turned out to be a cardiac event, but because I listened. I trusted my body. I chose responsiveness over resilience for the sake of pushing through.

Then came another moment of choice.

The physician gently offered an option. He recommended that I stay overnight for observation and complete a full cardiac workup in the morning so I could move into the holidays with greater peace of mind. I paused. I asked for a moment. I stepped away to the restroom, checked in with myself, and noticed that I still didn’t feel well.

So I agreed.

Once again, in that moment, I chose myself.

The next day brought a different kind of challenge. As the reality of my exhaustion and hospitalization settled in, it became clear that the plans we had made to celebrate my mom’s 82nd birthday no longer made sense.

This was a tender decision. My mom lives in my hometown in a memory care facility. While my heart wanted to hold tightly to the plan, I knew there was no real need to do so for her sake. Time and dates no longer carry meaning in the same way they once did.

Letting go was for me.

So, once again, I chose my recovery. I made the calls. I canceled the plans with my mom and with friends. I allowed rest to take priority over expectation.

None of these choices were dramatic. They were quiet. Intentional. And deeply self honoring.

They reminded me that putting yourself first does not have to be loud or forceful. Sometimes it simply looks like listening, adjusting, and allowing yourself the care you so freely offer others.

At times like this, I find it helpful to imagine I am offering guidance to a dear friend in the same situation. What would I tell her to do? What reassurance would I offer? And what, if anything, is holding me back from extending that same care to myself?

I am deeply aware of how fortunate I am. I have excellent health insurance, and while I was in the hospital, I was met with attentive, respectful, and genuinely honoring care. My partner was able to express his love and care for me, too. I am so grateful.

The world continued on outside, and inside the hospital, I was tucked away, given rare space to simply rest and be.

Especially for women, choosing to put ourselves first is not always easy. And yet, it is a choice. Many of the people I work with share that they are experiencing health challenges rooted in chronic imbalance, burnout, exhaustion, and the constant pull of competing demands from work and life.

We are living in an era where everything feels urgent, where nearly every request arrives with the intensity of a four alarm fire. And still, we get to decide. We get to choose whether we are constantly responding to others’ emergencies, or whether we pause long enough to tend to our own.

That choice matters more than we often allow ourselves to believe.

What is it that you need at this moment? What permission do you need to choose yourself? 

Thank you for pausing to read this. May you care for yourself as you would a loved one in your life. 

Here is a small gift for you… One of my favorite poems. 

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

P.S. If the word “fawning” landed for you or you are curious about it, I recommend Dr. Ingrid Clayton’s book Fawning. It is a life-changer. I have recently had the opportunity to meet her, and she is mighty.