195 \\ You Know That Queasy Feeling You Get In The Pit of Your Stomach, Stepmom? Here's What To Do About It (Bonus Drop)
Have you ever received one of those voice messages that leave you with a sinking feeling in your stomach? You missed the call, but you've got the voicemail. As you press play to listen to the message, the color drains from your face. You feel queasy, and you imagine the worst? Those calls don't just happen from a difficult ex or a family member delivering life altering news.
They happen in the day to day on a sliding scale of not so dramatic to highly dramatic. Not that long ago, Bill and I were traveling, and whenever we're traveling, well, let's face it, usually, most of the time, my phone is on do not disturb, and I miss tons of calls. So, nothing out of the ordinary occurred to me when I saw I had missed some calls and had some voice messages.
But there was one that was unusual. I pressed play and began to feel queasy. It was the doc leaving a message to express concerns over her patient's dramatic weight loss. She was talking about our beloved Rex. Are you an OG and know who Rexy is? Or are you new to the empowerment party for Stepmamas? Rex is our ginormous golden retriever and he's been in our blend about a few months before Bill and I got married.
What does a golden retriever's veterinarian call have to do with being a stepmom?
Well, it turns out we can learn a lot from a dog's life. I'll share exactly what I mean on today's bonus drop episode number 195. I know it's Tuesday. Hello, sweet woman on today's bonus release of the empowered stepmom podcast. I'll encourage you to take back your power and your joy in your relationships and at home.
If you are catching this before 6 p. m. Central, well, you probably need to register by 5 50 p. m. Central. You can learn more about how to take your power back in tonight's special Ask Jen Anything. Head on over to www.stepfamilypodcast.com/AskJenAnything to register for our call tonight. Last night, we had another Ask Me Anything session, and it was a blast.
And, well, we did shed a few tears as we shared the heart of the hurt of integrating families. That's not abnormal. So if you're coming tonight, bring your journals. And maybe some tissues too. Hey there, I'm Jen, Certified Professional Life Coach, Golden Retriever Mama, and Founder of the Empowered Stepmom Academy.
Thank you so much for putting me in your earbuds today. Welcome to the show. My mission is for you to understand your power and authority as a woman of God. God tells you to rule Stepmama. God says take dominion on the earth. And the first step to taking back your power is to understand the authority you have already been given by the creator of the world.
I'll remind you on this podcast that your influence equals power. I'll guide you on how to practice beliefs that empower you in your stepmom role and beyond. And sweet woman, your mindset is key. You'll learn to let go of labels, embrace God's best, and you'll understand those step family roadblocks and pitfalls so you can prepare for them.
You'll also understand your core beliefs, what makes you uniquely you and we'll be iron sharpening iron together. If you're tired of experiencing the queasy feeling in your belly, loneliness, exhaustion, and burnout from the rejection in your own home, I can help. I'm looking for 12 disciples, 12 fast action takers to be exact, who are ready for more.
Not just as a stepmom, but in their whole journey as a woman after God's own heart. If that's you, if you are ready to take back your power fast, You will find powerful solutions that work inside the Empowered Stepmom Academy. Are you ready to stand tall and reclaim dominion in your own home? Good, because I am definitely here for it with you.
Head on over to www.stepfamilypodcast./Academy to take the first step. The first cohort begins October 26. That's two days from release day, from the bonus release day. This opportunity to be a founding member, well, it's kind of obvious, right? It only happens once. So go get the deets and the lowest price ever on joining the Academy.
I'll be sure to bring my golden Rexy to some of the calls. All right, let's get started with today's episode number 195 of the Empowered Stepmom Podcast.
All right, it's time to share what was in that voicemail that made me so queasy. Well, the vet, she shared her concerns about the dramatic weight loss of Rex. Now, I, it's probably good if I backed up a little bit here and said that when we first got Rex, he fit in my two hands. He was that teeny tiny as how, however old they need to be when they can come six weeks, seven weeks, whatever it is.
We got Rex. He was our second dog and we got Stella, his big sister, just a couple of weeks before he came. She was a chocolate lab. And chocolate labs at about the same age or a couple weeks older, there are a lot bigger than a golden retriever. Now it turns out that it did not stay that way. In fact, Rex ballooned to 120 pounds, not quite a hundred.
I think 117. Let me not exaggerate here. So about 117 pounds. And that's a lot for a golden retriever. When Rex is about 5 years old, I don't remember his weight at 5 years old. I just know he hit 117, okay? That does have something to do with the owners, by the way. Because we fed him well, evidently. But he had an injury to his leg and he developed arthritis in his left rear leg.
So that necessitated the need for some medicine. So we were going every month to give this dog a shot in his left leg. To help him with the arthritis and the doc said, you know, if he lost a little bit of weight, it wouldn't be so stressful on him and on his leg. And we're, we said, yeah, yeah, yeah, we know, we know, we'll work on it.
We will work on it. Well, we didn't really do a great job for a couple of years. Then things shifted. We did our own journey with food and we incorporated organic foods and non GMOs into our own diets and we experienced such change and such energy boosts when we understood that food is medicine.
Remember that voicemail I shared that made me queasy in my stomach? Well, six months before I received that message, we had taken recs. To the vet and she shared, listen, you guys have been coming, paying 50, 60 bucks a pop each month for this medicine for his arthritis, and that's all good. But what would really help him is if you took care of his weight.
He's 117, and really, he probably ought to be around 90 pounds. Now, that's a lot of weight. 117 minus 90 is 27 pounds. I don't know what your weight is right now, but when I think about my body frame and I think about 27 pounds, I think that's a lot of weight to lose. Yet, we heard the And we had experienced the trouble that Rex was having.
I mean, he just wasn't moving as much anymore and he wasn't playing with his sister as much anymore either. So it was time to make a change. So that's what we did. We made a change to his diet. We drew a line in the sand and said, we are going to make a change because Rex certainly wasn't going to do it on his own.
I don't know if you have a golden retriever or if you know of a golden retriever, but they will eat whatever it is that you have out for them to eat because that's just what they do. And they. do it quite well. It's really quite impressive how much food they can put away. So we knew we needed to take responsibility because Rex certainly wasn't going to drop 27 pounds on his own.
That voicemail where our vet said, you need to call me because Rex has lost so much weight. And I'm really concerned. I think we ought to do tests. Maybe there's something. Really, really wrong with him. And we were on edge already because we had just lost Stella. Stella had passed away due to cancer and it moved fast.
So we were concerned. And then I thought, wait, wait, wait, wait, let's think about this for a minute. We have been working with Rex, and we had been managing what his intake was, and we had been steadfast about walking him every single day and taking him out for another time of play during the day. We were focused on Getting Rex to a healthy weight and that's really what it was.
So the feeling of queasiness in my stomach, I was able to work through that as I realized, wait a minute, I don't need to jump to worst case scenario here. I need to go back and think about the facts. What's going on? What has been going on? What has led us to 24
7 and she is not. Well, mostly 24 7, except when we go on vacation and we leave him behind, which is not that often, actually. He usually goes with us, as I think about it. But the vet, she didn't have all the facts. We had more information than she did, so when we went and picked Rex up and had a conversation with her, we let her know what we had done.
And she said, it's time to stop now. You need to give your dog some more food. He's good because he had gotten down to 82 pounds. And I want to tell you, he looked dang good. He was svelte. I think he's gained a little bit of a back now, but not anywhere close to being over 90 lbs, which is really great for him because his arthritis isn't bothering him.
Here's the point. Rex could not do it on his own. And as stepmoms in the trenches, when we first enter into this arena of blending families, We can't do it on our own. If you're a stepmom, you know that loneliness and isolation is one of your big pain points. You feel as though there's nowhere to turn, but there's no one who understands the challenges that you are facing.
And you don't know where to go to get help. That's why so many women join this community, because they understand after listening to the podcast or joining inside the Facebook group, That this is a community of women who do things differently. We seek God's word. We apply his word to our stepmom journey, and we work together.
We are the iron that sharpens iron so that we can move forward. What makes this so important? Well, tonight there is the Ask Me Anything. Again, if you're listening to this before 6 p. m. central. I encourage you to join us, to register and join us. If you are catching this afterwards, it's totally cool. Maybe you're catching it before the Academy starts on October 26th.
Join the Academy. Get answers, just like there was an end point for Rex where he had achieved his goal. There is an end point for you. This isn't endless talk therapy. This isn't endless counseling where you revisit all of these things that happened in the past to be able to figure out your future.
That's not what coaching is. Coaching is empowerment. Coaching is saying, I am willing to work on my mindset. I am willing to focus on the stewardship responsibility that God has given me to move forward. I want the pain to stop. I want to understand the reason why it is that I'm experiencing the pain.
And I want to have a game plan to end the pain fast. I want to know how to be influential in my own home. I want to better understand what it means to take dominion in my home. Things are so much out of my control, Jen. I don't know what to do. I get it. It's because you've lost a bunch of control, but that does not mean that you have lost influence.
The real answers lie in understanding how to use your influence, not to get what you want, although that's definitely a byproduct, but use your influence for the glory of God. Because when we are glorifying God, when we are doing things aligned with the fruit of the spirit, when we are exercising self control, we are glorifying God and we will foster the environment that we long to create in our blended families.
Are you interested in that? I bet you are interested in that. Just as so many of the reviewers have shared, I wish this podcast was here when I was going through blending. Well, the podcast is here now and the resources for you to blend beautifully together. This is a stepmom focused mastermind. It's six months inside of the Academy.
And I promise you, if you commit to doing the work, your life will change. on over to www.stepfamilypodcast.com/academy . And enroll as one of the founding members and not just save big, but begin your future right now. There is so much goodness that God has in store for you. You simply must do the work.
And just as Rex needed his owners to follow the guidelines, if you will, to understand what it took for him to get to a healthy weight. I'll be inside the Academy to help you learn what it's going to take for you to get your power back inside your own home. And I promise it'll happen fast. It will not be this elongated thing.
Your confidence will skyrocket quickly. Your boldness will escalate. Your courageousness will be lioness. So if you're interested in that, head on over to stepfamilypodcast. com / Academy. Hey, thanks for joining me on this special episode. This Tuesday drop, it's a Tuesday drop of encouragement to get you to say yes to you because your future is too important to do nothing.
God did not design you to stay stuck. Join the Academy and let's get started. All right. God bless you. Stepmama. I will catch you on Thursday.
