Trauma & Work: How Trauma Can Follow You To Work

Hello and welcome to Intuition Awakening.

My name is Janine and this is my podcast.

I wanted to come on today to talk a little bit about trauma and the workplace,

Trauma and jobs,

Trauma and keeping jobs,

Finding jobs,

What it's like to work with PTSD,

And what I'm finding works really well for me right now.

So if you know anything about me,

You know that I started my business during the pandemic.

I became a Reiki healer full-time in the pandemic,

But there's a lot of pieces of my story that I tend to not share or tend to gloss over,

And I think I'm really starting to come to terms with the way that I work and wanting to share my entire story of what my life is like right now,

Knowing that it's okay.

Knowing that it's all right to have part-time jobs,

Even though I'm an entrepreneur.

Knowing that it's all right to be exploring these different paths in my life while building my business and that my business is still a success,

Even though I'm doing other jobs.

It feels very strange and I think a lot of that goes back to being a child and my parents really didn't want the entrepreneur lifestyle for me.

I grew up on a small Saskatchewan farm and we got by.

My parents either had their own businesses,

My mom was a hairdresser who owned her own shop when she was 21 and became a full-time stay-at-home mom when she had us kids,

And my dad hauled oil and farmed and was away a lot for work.

He was rarely at home when I was a child.

So both my parents,

Before me and my brother were even born,

Had started saving for their child's education funds,

Like they knew they wanted us to have the opportunity to go to university and college,

Like they didn't.

So both my brother and I graduated,

My brother is an engineer,

I graduated with my human resources degree,

And I think everyone was really excited for us,

But I found after a couple of years of trying to fit myself into a mold at work that this was not the path for me.

I wanted to be my own boss,

I wanted to have that lifestyle that I had growing up,

Something so small and insignificant to some people,

But to me,

Whenever I was in an office,

One of my top priorities when looking at jobs was to have an office with a window.

I just wanted to see the passage of time throughout the day.

I just wanted to know that time existed and that life existed outside those four walls and got to see the sunrise and the sunset in the wintertime,

Especially when it gets so dark so fast,

You know,

Knowing just what was happening outside.

Was it snowing like they were saying on the radio?

Was it raining?

Was it sunny outside?

I would try to take as many breaks as I could to get outdoors because that was my life growing up on a farm.

I was outside all the time,

Unless I was in school,

I was outside helping around the farm.

So when I was in a corporate job,

I found that really tough.

That was really tough,

Not being able just to breathe fresh air,

And I don't think I realized how much that was bothering me until I started my own business,

Until I could take the breaks that I needed to go outside,

To sit,

To rest.

And I won't lie,

Being a business owner has been very strange as well.

And I had a coach that described it to me perfectly when I was starting my business.

They said,

We are our business.

So if you have trauma,

That's going to show up in your business.

And it's been absolutely true.

My trauma responses ran my business for the first few months,

Just not really being confident in myself,

Not at a conscious level.

Consciously I know I'm a badass,

I can do a lot of different things,

And I'm really proud of myself for having that belief and that pride.

It's taken me many years to get to.

But subconsciously,

There's always that little part of me that's questioning,

That inner child that says,

Is this okay?

Am I not supposed to be working Monday to Friday at a nine to five regular kind of job?

You know,

Am I not supposed to be working 40 hours a week on a strict schedule and having two days off?

To work a very erratic schedule has been very strange for me,

And at times,

Really triggering.

Because there was this perception growing up of what I needed,

Of what was acceptable in a workplace or a job or your career one day.

You know,

We always grew up with the,

Don't be a starving artist,

You know,

It's great that you like to draw,

But that's not going to be your career path.

Or that's great that you want to be a marine biologist,

But you know,

That's so many years of university.

Are you sure you want to do that?

You know,

Make sure it's what you want to do.

There was a lot of pressure to have it all figured out.

I remember being in grade 10 and 12 and doing these kind of aptitude tests and basically it came back that I could do any job.

And I thought,

Well,

This didn't really help narrow it down at all.

There's six different categories I coordinated with and could work in.

Now as I get older,

That makes a lot of sense.

There's the saying that goes,

The jack of all trades,

But the master of none.

But the full saying is something along the lines of a jack of all trades,

A master of none is sometimes better than a master of one.

And I like that because the full saying isn't knocking those people,

Isn't looking down upon the people that try many different things.

Like you kind of think when you first hear it,

It's actually saying the jack of all trades is often better than the master of one trade.

The person that only knows one thing maybe doesn't have the resiliency or the perseverance or the capacity outside of that one thing.

So when I was going to university,

I was really trying to fit myself into a mold thinking I love business,

It's what I want to do,

I could help people,

I was just trying to project so far into the future because I was so uncomfortable and anxious all through college and just longing for the day I was going to be done and in a corporate kind of career.

I thought that was going to be the epitome of what I wanted.

I wanted a management job and an office and having my own computer space and just imagining what it might be.

But I was really struggling a lot with my anxiety and I tried to join a lot of different activities to stay active.

I tried Tai Chi,

I remember going for about six weeks so I learned the first you know maybe 20 poses or so out of the whole routine and I didn't go back and I kept not going back and I'd start something and I'd end it and I'd start something or I'd only take one season of it and it was really frustrating to me that I would start an activity and my family would ask well how is it going and I'd always have to say well I left and I really didn't understand why and I started to do this with jobs after university as well.

Anytime I got triggered and I didn't know how to deal,

I quit,

I left my job.

I was so triggered and yes some of those workplaces I was sexually harassed,

Even threatened and sexually assaulted like there was a lot of weird stuff that happened and so some of them it was totally fine just not to go back ever again because my health and safety was on the line.

But a lot of jobs I feel like I had been very reactive and quit well before my time was done and put myself into some financially kind of tenuable positions because I didn't have a job lined up yet but I thought I'll make it work,

I'll make it work,

I'll make it work and I think that was just a motto of mine that kind of fake it till you make it.

You know one of these days it's going to make sense,

Somehow it's going to make sense,

This will eventually feel good,

I'll get used to it and there was so much convincing that was happening inside of me and a lot of that I think was my inner child trying to find safety,

Trying to find somewhere she belonged,

Somewhere that felt like home and for me I grew up on a lot of chaos growing up.

My dad was gone or we were farming like 24 hours of the day when you're a farmer and especially around harvest and seeding time you go when the weather is good,

You're just you're on.

You don't stop,

You don't take a break,

You maybe get a couple hours of sleep but if the crop is good and it's dry still at 1 a.

M.

You're in the combine still until it gets too tough to combine and it's going to cause more issues and then you stop but if the weather is good you go.

So I remember being that 12,

13 year old 1 a.

M.

Sitting in a tractor with a magazine,

You know teen pop magazine,

Just flipping through it trying to keep myself awake because my dad was going to need me to come back around the field and pick up a load of grain and then I could go to bed.

I could take it back to the yard,

Roll the tarp over it and I could go to bed and he would finish it.

So I was very used to this erratic,

Chaotic lifestyle but my parents didn't want that for us.

So I think there's kind of a two-fold thing that was starting to happen.

My inner child was so used to the chaos that it felt comfortable,

Hello trauma response,

But also there is a piece of me that did just genuinely enjoy being outdoors.

I liked having meals in the field and getting to drive to town for parts or just the difference in day-to-day life,

The two days were never the same.

Two days of weather were never the same.

You were always calculating and planning.

There was a lot of brain work involved in farming,

You know,

Knowing the crops are rotating and how much fertilizer do we need?

When do we need this?

When do we need that?

There is a lot of logic and just planning involved in it.

So there was these pieces that I love,

Conjuncted with the fact that my inner child was like,

Okay,

There's a specific path I have to follow.

I have to go to university and I have to get a full-time job one day.

So when I was laid off in September of 2020,

It was a few months into the pandemic and I thought,

Well,

I've survived this far.

There had been so many layoffs initially in March of 2020,

When the pandemic first really started here in my province and things were closing down.

Like March 16th,

Public health orders started to come out in 2020 and a lot of us got to work from home.

Thankfully,

I worked for a company at the time that provided,

You just took your laptop and that you could take your desk chair home.

They really tried to help their employees get set up at home and they had these contingency plans in place anyway.

We were an IT company.

It was really easy for us just to transition to a home environment for most of us.

I mean,

One of my coworkers had two children under the age of three at home.

So every meeting they were screaming and crying in the background because they lived in an 800 square foot little condo space.

There wasn't really an office door.

He could just go close to get away from the noise.

So sometimes we,

You know,

Zoom called from the balcony with him because he was just trying to find some quiet time.

So for some people it worked,

For some people it didn't.

But so far until September of 2020,

I had kind of started to survive these layoffs that were happening in masses all around us.

And I felt really grateful,

But I also knew eventually there were going to be so few employees that when the fewer employees you have,

The fewer HR folks you need as well.

It was working in payroll at the time.

When you have fewer people to pay,

You also need fewer people to administer that payroll.

And I was the newest person in the door.

So when I got my layoff notice,

It shouldn't have surprised me,

But it did.

It just wasn't something I was expecting then.

I know we had laid off a lot of employees,

But there hadn't been any talk of job loss in our department.

So I was kind of the first one to get that news.

And I don't know if anybody else did or not,

But I was the first one to go and I was quite shocked.

I just bought a house like that was crappy timing,

But I also know there's no time.

There's no right time to have kids.

There's no right time to buy a house.

I knew that was a chance and a possibility that I might be laid off,

But I was going to have employment insurance and my mortgage company did have a way that I could defer some payments if I needed to.

So I kind of thought I had it planned out.

And on top of that,

When I got laid off,

I had 10 coaching calls assigned to me or given to me from my company as part of like my exit agreement,

My termination agreement.

I got to work with a coach for 10 calls to help me plan my next steps and potentially help me find a new job and interviewing skills,

You know,

Just as a coach would,

A career coach helped me get to that next stage of life.

And it was really nice.

It was really,

Really great to have that time because during the time that I was so focused and trying to stay so focused in human resources and I need to go back to a full time day job,

My intuition was going crazy.

My body was going crazy.

I loved having so much space and time.

I enjoyed thinking about my business,

Thinking about what I wanted to do.

There was suddenly this spark in me that said,

Well,

What about your business?

You've been wanting to do this for a while.

Maybe this is that sign you needed.

And of course,

As trauma does,

I immediately shoved down that instinct and said,

You need to survive.

You need to go get a full time job.

On top of that,

I had my family also saying,

How the hell are you going to get through this?

You just bought a house.

So there was a lot of pressure internally and externally to make sure I did it right and,

You know,

Get my feet back under me.

But I went through those 10 coaching calls and by call number nine,

I finally said,

You know what?

I got to be honest with you.

My coach's name was Steven at the time I said,

Steven,

I don't really know if I want to go back to human resources.

And I thought,

Oh,

God,

Here we go.

He's going to be so mad or like,

Oh,

Why am I saying this?

And he said,

Oh,

OK,

What do you want to do?

And I said,

Well,

I actually have this idea for a business and I've kind of been working on it for two years because I'd started doing Oracle card readings and learning about Reiki and been doing some business planning,

But never really had taken that full step yet to be full time.

And he said,

Oh,

Why don't you do that?

And immediately all these fears that I had were just put to ease.

It was that permission my inner child needed to say,

Hey,

Someone else is saying,

Why not that?

You're brilliant.

You're smart.

You're capable.

You have this background in business to begin with.

You have a passion for this.

You'd be so good at this.

So why not give it a try?

It was the first time that that inner child felt like,

Oh,

Maybe we can do this.

I have permission now.

Yes,

Permission.

I can do this.

And so I did.

I even went as far as posting it on LinkedIn to say I officially retired from my HR career and why I was doing it,

You know,

To start my business.

And of course,

I felt like such a fool two months later in December of 2020 when I made zero income from my business.

Two months in and I had made zero dollars.

But in November,

I made $172.

So I thought there's a proof of concept here.

I made over $100 in my first month.

So maybe I could do this.

And thankfully by then,

I had a bit of an Instagram page built.

I had a bit of a Facebook page and a website started and some meditations created.

So I wasn't completely starting from scratch.

I did have a few things and a few people that knew me from health and wellness expos and kind of a community in the city here that knew of me and what I was doing,

What I liked.

So I found more and more platforms to become a part of.

And when I joined Insight Timer in December of 2020,

That's when it took off.

And luckily,

I had 100 followers and then 200 followers and 300 followers.

And I started to,

You know,

Have people asking,

Do you see people one on one and what else do you do?

Or what else do you teach?

What else could you teach?

I'd be interested in this topic.

And I fell in love with what I was doing for the first time in so long,

Even though I was trying desperately to figure out money and there was so much financial stress in the background.

I was happy.

I was healthy.

I hadn't caught COVID yet.

I still haven't.

As I record this in May of 2022,

I was just feeling so much better versus working at a corporate job,

Being tired and exhausted and always moody and feeling so incapable and like I wasn't doing it right or never fulfilling someone's expectations properly.

I was being my own boss and I liked it.

I thought,

Ah,

This is something I could build for the next 40 to 60 years of my life.

You know,

Being in my mid twenties,

I could do this all the way to retirement,

You know,

And now as I'm closer to 30,

I'm like,

Yeah,

I could do this all the way to retirement because there's no physical limitations to energy work.

You know,

There's no physical lifting requirements other than maybe a massage table,

But I don't use one anymore.

There's not too many restrictions when it comes to being a healer.

So maybe by the time I'm that old,

I'll be just such a wise little sage sitting on top of a mountain somewhere teaching a class.

I have no idea.

But it felt like for the first time ever that I had this long-term prospect at a job,

That my trauma was not just going to boot me out of it and like make me stop.

But the flip side of this conversation is then that I was stuck in my job,

My new business with my trauma responses.

So as I was being triggered around money,

As I was being triggered around what it meant to be doing this full time and why I wasn't succeeding yet,

And I needed to succeed,

I needed to do better.

It was a crazy ride in 2020 and 2021.

My first official calendar year,

January 2021 to December 2021,

I made $20,

000 in my business.

And coming from a $70,

000 a year manager job that I had had four or five years prior,

I felt like this is successful,

This is good,

But it didn't cover my bases.

Like overall,

I made just about $30,

000.

And that was terrifying to live off of for an entire year.

I thankfully have not really been in that position since I was 16,

17,

But I was still living with my mom at the time.

So I wasn't used to trying to make do with this amount of money.

Trying to figure it out and trying to figure out what my taxes were going to look like now as a self-employed person and 10% of my income needed to be paid to CPP and how much tax was I going to owe?

I knew it was in the lowest tax bracket,

But still,

What was I going to owe?

Thankfully it all worked out,

I ended up receiving a refund.

It was scary to go through that entire year of triggers.

And when it ended up pushing me into part-time work was I had done so well for about eight or nine months in a row.

Every month was a steady increase.

I was capping about $3,

000 a month,

Like really feeling comfortable,

Feeling like I was flowing in money.

I was able to diverse in payments.

I felt like I had a little extra.

And then August hit in 2021.

And I barely made anything that month.

Suddenly I made only $1,

400 and I had my mortgage payments to make again,

Which themselves were $1,

300.

I thought,

I have no money for groceries.

So I'll be very vulnerable right now.

There were some days definitely where I just had broth in the fridge,

Broth and an apple.

And I'll never forget that day staring at that fridge going,

Holy shit,

This is how other people live.

And recognizing my privilege that I had lived with for so many years,

Recognizing the abundance I had lived with for so many years,

And then just grieving the loss,

Feeling like I had lost or lost out,

Like it was gone,

Like it wasn't coming back.

There's a lot of stories in my head about what that fridge meant,

What that amount of food meant.

And as something I've explored more recently,

I noticed I have a lot of triggers around food and hunger.

So the time it was all just trauma response.

I wasn't able to tease out the pieces of it,

But there was not only the financial stress of just not being able to go to the grocery store whenever I wanted to.

That was something I thankfully had been very blessed to say I hadn't had to deal with yet in my life.

And there was just this underlying,

What am I going to do?

So that was when my mom and some other people in my life started saying,

Could you go get a part time job?

Like,

You're so stressed about this.

What about part time work?

My first instinct was to throw up.

I thought that meant my business was a failure.

If I needed to take on extra work,

That must mean I suck at what I'm doing,

Right?

I'm not a good healer.

I'm not a good entrepreneur.

My business isn't going to be successful.

What the heck am I going to do?

And it was tough kind of making that choice to start looking.

But I did.

I started applying for a bunch of different places.

And the reason I had not really looked before was during my journey with that outplacement coach and while I was still pondering whether I was going to go back to human resources and trying so hard to apply everywhere for HR work and really shoving down that instinct to start a business,

I was experiencing a lot of difficulty finding references.

Now here in Canada,

We need three references in a lot of places.

One is allowed to be a character reference.

So like a family member,

A friend,

Or like a mentor,

Someone you've worked with maybe at a sports organization or like someone like you're active with in sports or something.

So a character reference.

But the other two,

For sure,

Some companies are a little more picky and need more.

Some companies don't care about references.

That's my personal preference as well.

I don't think references tell us much.

I could go into a whole rant about my experience in recruitment and references.

People only pick the references they know are going to give them a good reference.

It's kind of a scam.

It's kind of weird.

I don't understand the point of references.

But I was having a difficult time finding them because the people I used to work with had either been laid off themselves during the pandemic.

I couldn't get a hold of them because they weren't working in the office.

There was a couple that I tried to contact that had retired because they were of that age and instead of going through the process of trying to keep their job or be laid off,

They chose to retire during the pandemic.

I couldn't find anybody to be a reference for me and that looked really bad.

It cost me a couple jobs knowing that I only had one reference and not three or four.

I couldn't provide references for my previous employer as well,

The one that had laid me off because they had a policy against it.

And that was a company-wide,

Global-wide policy they have in this very large company that they do not provide references,

Which I tried to directly tell them is influencing my ability to find work,

But they didn't care.

That was their policy,

Which I believe in it.

I mean,

Don't give references if,

You know,

I understand the legalities of,

There's always that someone that will say,

You defamed me,

You,

You know,

Besmirched my name,

You know,

You gave me a bad reference,

I'm going to sue you.

So it's much easier for companies just to not do references at all.

But some places were still needing them and I couldn't provide them.

So when I was looking for these part-time jobs,

I needed something that I could do independently.

And so what I started to look into was Uber Eats and Skip the Dishes and DoorDash and like local food delivery companies.

And I got on with Uber Eats,

DoorDash and Skip were,

They had a wait list for drivers in my area,

Whereas Uber Eats hired me on the spot and I started.

And when the first order came up on my phone for $4,

I'm like,

I don't understand how this works.

$4 to go deliver food,

It's going to cost me $4 in gas to go get it and take it to someone's house 10 kilometers away.

So I got very good,

Very fast at trying to navigate the gig economy and the gig jobs and trying to take orders that made sense.

If the restaurant was by my house,

Thankfully I live actually quite on a good road.

I'd never,

I didn't think about it when I bought the house,

But I'm in quite a central location to all the major roads here in the city.

And I really enjoy the,

The access it gives me to driving anywhere within 10 or 15 minutes.

Like my city's quite small,

So it's a,

It's nice when you're on the right road.

And I was able to do some of these orders and then the tips came in after.

So it's different than DoorDash or Skip to my understanding where they see the tip right away.

Uber Eats,

The tip is added after.

So I started doing things like adding little sticky notes to my Uber Eats orders to say,

Have a great day or wishing you an awesome Friday or,

You know,

It's Monday.

Garfield didn't like Mondays either and like tried to be creative and people liked them and left little notes or,

I think it helped with the tips,

Even if it was just $2 instead of $0.

Like,

I think it got someone thinking that,

You know,

That might be kind of fun to,

To,

You know,

Leave her a tip.

It seemed like she was nice.

And I had a lot of fun driving around.

I really honestly did.

It was the first time since March of 2020 I've been able to leave my house on a regular basis again.

Otherwise I've been working from home.

So it did fulfill that need to get out of the house,

Which was great.

And secondly,

I got to see people.

I got to see all different kinds of houses,

All different neighborhoods of the city.

I got to see some really crazy things at McDonald on Doodney and Albert street,

Because that's a very weird area of town.

It had some interesting experiences there,

But I knew over the long run that this wasn't maybe the best paying thing.

So when I started to hear about Instacart,

Um,

Like a grocery delivery service here in the city,

I thought,

Well,

I could apply there too and compare the two.

So with Uber eats,

I was doing more driving and less standing around.

So I was putting a lot of kilometers on my vehicles.

I would just drive,

Pick up and drive again with Instacart.

You drive,

Park your car,

Go shop for an hour in the grocery store,

Finding all these different items,

And then you drive again.

So I was putting on less kilometers on my car,

But it was physically more demanding.

So part of me really enjoyed that because I was starting to get some of the physicality back.

I noticed I started to lose weight.

Um,

I was sleeping better.

My mental health was better on the days that I exercise.

I hate to admit it because my depression in me is like,

I don't want to exercise.

I want to stay on the couch,

But exercise really does make a difference in my life mentally.

I notice it on the days when I'm not exercising much.

And so with Instacart,

I was able to walk,

You know,

10,

000 steps some days if it was a busy day or a busy Saturday,

I was doing 12 orders a day and that was a really great income boost.

I started to learn like,

Hey,

I can make $10 a day.

I can make $20 a day.

Well,

What if I did three orders a day?

And I just started to let myself explore what if I could bring in more income and I was really still sad or a little disappointed and dealing with some feelings of grief and those triggers that were coming up that my business wasn't good enough.

But I still had some income coming in.

I had so many people following me,

Coming to my classes,

Giving me these amazing compliments.

So the validation and the affirmation from my business is amazing.

My inner child loves that so much.

The feedback,

People just saying,

I love what you do,

Even listening to this podcast.

I'm like,

Ooh,

Someone's going to listen to it.

My inner child is super happy about it.

The financial part of it though,

Sometimes I have to remind myself it's okay to make offers.

It's okay to sell to people.

It's okay to tell people what I do and not just offer and offer and offer and give and give and give.

So I was trying to navigate this.

How do I expand my business?

What do I expand in my business?

Can I expand my business dealing with all of the fear that was arising in me,

But also loving this new kind of way of life.

But I was really ashamed to tell anybody.

It was really a shame to tell clients like,

Sorry,

I can't take,

You know,

A call at that time because I'm going to,

You know,

That's my busy day for orders.

I felt so guilty and just kind of gross that I needed part-time income.

And really,

I can honestly say until about this morning,

Which is why I'm making this podcast today.

I got this really incredibly intuitive guidance and just gut feeling really until the last couple of days,

I've still felt pretty ashamed of the part-time jobs that I have.

And it's been,

I think,

Because in my mind,

There is this way that life is supposed to be,

A way that life is supposed to look,

And my life don't look like that.

It just plain doesn't,

Which is weird and it's tough.

But I also find,

What if I just let myself live my life like this?

What if I like this?

What if this is okay?

And I'll explain a little bit more about what got me to that stage.

So another part-time job that I took on because I found Instacart was quite unstable.

Some days,

If the weather is nice,

There won't be more than seven orders in the city.

It's crazy.

And there'll be $7 for an order.

And that is with the tip or people just say no tip and you're like,

Well,

I'm not going for an order if there's no tip.

When I'm doing those gig type jobs like Uber Eats and Instacart,

I tried to make sure I was earning $20 an hour.

I was like,

If this is going to be worth it,

I'm picking the orders that are going to make me a good part-time wage because I have to take gas off of that.

I have to take my own taxes and my own kilometers.

I have to,

Like,

I'm an independent contractor,

So I need to at least make $20 an hour if I'm going to go out the door.

Some days I let that slide because I needed the cash for gas and things and you could instantly cash out.

So you did an order,

You got paid,

It was fantastic.

But sometimes if the weather was nice,

No one needed an order.

The days it stormed were the busiest days I've ever driven and I have a car and I don't mind being outside in minus 40 weather,

But there were a lot of days I froze my ass off.

It was not much fun.

So I thought this is so erratic,

I can't plan with this.

What else could I be looking at that would be a little more stable?

And this voice from the past came into my head,

A friend that had once said,

We're always looking for good drivers.

And I thought a couple of years ago when she had told me that we were at a meditation night,

I remember talking about our respective jobs and she said,

If you're looking for part-time work,

But I said,

Hun,

I'm working full-time,

Why are you telling me this?

Like,

I'm not looking for part-time work.

Well,

We always need good drivers at our school bus company.

And I thought,

Well,

That was the weirdest conversation ever.

I'm literally working full-time.

Why is she talking to me about this?

It stuck in my head for three to four years and I remembered her saying it and I seen a billboard that advertised Drive For Us,

It's a school bus driving company here in the city,

And that they were offering a $1,

500 signing bonus.

And I'm like,

You know what?

The worst I can do is apply.

I got an interview,

No references required.

They hired me right on the spot during the interview and I said,

Oh my God,

This actually happened.

I did it.

So bus driving was very strange to get used to.

I was driving anywhere from 10 to 25 kids on a bus every day in a 44-foot school bus in a city.

And I have experience with farm equipment and really felt comfortable driving,

But it was so hard to manage the kids and driving in traffic.

I'm much better at it now.

It's been a really great thing and I love it.

I love it.

I love getting to see the kids in the morning.

And if I can just be that one person in the day that shows them that kindness and love or that someone saw them,

Every morning I try to greet my students by name,

First name that I know it.

And they're like,

How do you know me?

I'm like,

I know all my kids.

You guys are my kids.

It's just amazing to get to pour that love that I have.

And I don't have my own kids yet,

But to get to pour that into some kids on the bus is so nice.

And of course there's days too.

Some people think that driving kids to school every day must just be a nightmare job from hell.

And there are days,

There are days,

I will definitely say that there are days when the kids have had enough.

They're tired.

They're cranky.

They've had a bad day.

They've had stuff going on at home or they're being teased on the bus,

Or they just don't want to sit still.

Some of them I'm 99% positive have ADHD and probably mental illnesses and things that they're not diagnosed with or traumas themselves.

But my own experience with being a kid and remembering what it was like and having grown up on a school bus,

Going to and from my farm every day myself and the farm driving experience and getting to raise all my little cousins.

My dad came from a family of 12,

So I had a lot of cousins around me growing up.

I feel like it's boosted my confidence so much in myself that one day I'm going to be,

I'm going to be a good parent.

I can do this.

I can,

I can be a parent one day.

There was always this fear in my teenage self,

Like,

Oh my God,

Am I going to be any good as a parent one day?

So I'm sure many of us go through,

But it's,

It's boosted my ability to that confidence within me to say,

I can do this.

So then you get the little pictures every few weeks with best bus driver ever.

And you know,

Hey bus driver,

What's your favorite color?

And the first few weeks and months,

They were pretty quiet,

But they've started to get to know me.

They know that I'm a safe person.

They know that they can ask me questions and come talk to me.

And it's blown my mind,

The things that I've been able to learn from the kids and the things that have helped heal my trauma from being around them.

One of the hardest things I had to learn about being a bus driver,

But also being around kids was setting the boundaries was saying no to things and setting an expectation so that they knew what Janine expects as the bus driver.

And when that rule is broken,

This is the consequence.

And I found that I've been really,

Really great at communicating those things,

But I expected the silent treatment from those kids.

I expected them to completely tune me out and hate me for three days after I set a boundary and to just be mad or to cry or to,

You know,

Just basically shun me for a few days because I was going to be the not cool bus driver anymore.

You know,

The angry bus driver,

The mean bus driver.

And the craziest thing happened for anyone with kids.

You might already know this,

But for anyone like me,

I was really just surprised.

My inner child was like,

Wait a second.

This is backwards to what I grew up with.

When I grew up and someone set a boundary or yelled,

It was usually broken the next day or there was no consistency.

So I usually was pushed away from my parents or I went and played by myself and did my own thing or just kept quiet.

Like I didn't really have much respect for adults because I didn't know what was expected of me.

Like I had no idea what my parents wanted me to do growing up.

It was very erratic.

So when I set these boundaries with the kids and then to notice their behavior of have a good night.

Thanks for driving us.

Have a good day.

I'll see you tomorrow.

You know,

Thanks bus driver.

My bus driver,

Can we play the music tomorrow?

I'm like,

Wait,

They're not only talking to me and engaging me.

They're being more respectful today.

They're wishing me a good day.

I just pulled the bus over and I sternly talked at them for three minutes and I gave them a consequence.

We sat there for three minutes as I gave them a lecture,

Like what is happening?

And my best friend said,

You know what you mean?

They're looking for someone to set boundaries.

They're looking for someone to set the expectations because they don't have that experience yet.

So that means a lot to them.

When you step up and fulfill that as the adult,

They know then that you are taking care of things and they feel the pressures off.

And she's a single mom to two kids and I just thought,

Oh,

Okay,

This is making sense.

But my inner child still is dumbfounded.

I still shake.

I visibly shake when I'm talking to the kids.

I really have to control my voice just to make sure that they know like I'm stable.

I'm calm.

My body's freaking out right now.

Just ignore that.

So I've gotten better at it,

But those trauma triggers from my childhood come through in workplaces like this and I'm sure maybe you're nodding along to going,

Yeah,

I've had similar times where I've been in my boss's office crying.

That has absolutely been me more than once.

I do not like it.

I don't like that that's happened,

But it definitely has happened more than once.

I've just left shaking offices or shaking after a meeting or feeling sick and nauseous and tired and trauma follows us into the workplace.

So whenever a boss would say,

You know,

People have to leave that crap at home,

I would just shake my head and I'm like,

They are a person.

You cannot expect them to be a robot.

People will never be able to leave their stuff at home and if they do,

That's not healthy.

That's not healthy to be numb and compartmentalizing because those intrusive thoughts are going to come up during the day and especially I worked at a lot of manufacturing facilities.

People are going to get hurt.

They're going to remember that intrusive thought about finances or their marriage in the middle of the day when you've yelled at them to stop being so distracted and they're going to pinch their finger.

They're going to catch their finger in something.

They're going to put their foot in the wrong space.

They're going to slip on something.

It's not safe to bottle up your emotions,

Especially at work.

It's going to come out somehow.

So we might as well be feeling them and we might as well be understanding them and trying to help ourselves through it and not treating them with so much judgment because yeah,

They come out in these ways.

So I've learned a lot from driving the kids and one more little story to share about part-time work because it's changed yet again and this is where a part of me thinks that probably for the rest of my life,

Even with my business succeeding,

Even with my business thriving,

I don't know if I'd want to give up the bus driving job and right now I'm delivering newspapers as well.

It was the craziest synchronicity.

I was just talking to my mom that the bus driving job was starting to fulfill a certain income requirement for me every month.

My business was contributing,

But I would still like,

Because during the pandemic I got behind,

I think like all of us did or many,

Many of us did.

I got behind on bills,

On payments,

On just life,

On savings,

On anything.

I'm just catching up.

It feels like a big year of catching up because I took on these part-time jobs and have this kind of sustainable secondary income that I can now a lot to those bills and paying things back.

So when I was talking to my mom,

I said,

Man,

A thousand extra dollars a month would be great and I'm going to get there.

So we're going to figure this out and on her coffee table in her living room was a newspaper.

And I said,

Well,

What the heck?

I'm going to pick up the newspaper,

Flipped it over in gold lettering,

Earn up to an extra thousand dollars a month with us.

I thought,

Okay,

Well,

If that's not a synchronicity,

Literally,

As I was talking about it in shining gold letters on the back of this newspaper,

Staring at me 12 inches away from my face,

Earn up to an extra thousand dollars a month.

So I called and applied and now I'm delivering leader post papers as well.

And that's to replace the Instacart income.

When the weather got nice in the springtime,

Poof,

There went all the orders again.

I thought this is not a sustainable part-time job.

We also went plastic bag free here in the city.

And that was a blow to us as Instacart drivers.

They wanted us to pay for bags or,

You know,

Buy and purchase baskets and things ourselves to deliver these groceries to people's houses.

And I said,

That's not fair.

As an employer who's already paying us below Saskatchewan's minimum wage,

Because you're a US company,

You can do whatever you want.

You're relying on tips and now you're going to charge us $34 for four bags?

Like what is going on?

And there,

I mentioned this in January,

I messaged and said,

Hey,

What's the plan for Regina,

Saskatchewan?

We're going plastic bag free.

What are we going to use to deliver groceries?

So some drivers by the sounds of it would just purchase the reusable bags,

But we weren't really allowed to add stuff to customers orders.

So I ended up sourcing boxes from a friend who worked for Canada Post and just had hundreds and hundreds of boxes in my house at any time.

And I tried to use cardboard boxes because I couldn't afford to buy bags for my customers to deliver their groceries.

And Instacart was like,

Well,

It's not really our problem.

I'm like,

Yes,

Yes it is.

So I was quickly becoming fed up with especially the physicality of lifting three cases of water bottles up a three story apartment that does not have an elevator.

I don't think people really take liberty with the delivery drivers.

I think it's enough that someone goes in shops for my groceries.

I don't expect them to like bring them to my door and unpack them for me unless of course you have mobility issues or there's a lot of people that use the app and the service that are disabled or have children,

You know,

And they're just dealing with a newborn baby and you know,

Lots of people ordering formula.

And I picked up things for a lot of parents that always made me pretty happy.

I picked up Christmas gifts one time for a family and delivered them to their house about nine at night.

And they met me outside while the kids were sleeping and help them like shuffle the,

Like the big kitchen set,

You know,

For like the,

You know,

Those kitchen sets at Walmart and things you can get for your kids,

Like little culinary sets and the big monster truck toys into the house.

And they put them under blankets before the kids woke up and those were some fun memories.

But overall it was,

It was very physical to lift a lot of groceries all day and to not be doing it for sustainable income or to know when I was doing orders.

I was just constantly on the app watching for an order to come in.

It was first come first serve.

So it was really hard to like set boundaries with myself to be like,

You need to put the phone down and go to bed or you need to put the phone down and wake up.

Like he put the phone down and just eat some dinner.

I was always on the app watching for orders.

So this paper delivery job,

Um,

It in itself has some drawbacks.

Delivery has to be done before 7am,

Which means my route,

Because I wanted to earn that extra thousand dollars a month,

Um,

Right now is two hours and 10 minutes long.

I can get it down to about two hours once I remember where all the houses are,

I'm getting faster at it,

But that means I have to be up at three 30 to start waking up to make sure that I eat some breakfast of some sort,

Get a water bottle ready to get in my car to go pick up the newspapers,

To get to my first stop,

Complete my route.

And then I usually allow myself some time to come home if I need a nap before,

Cause I go pick up the kids right after,

Then I got to go do bus driving and I do not want to be fatigued.

So I come home,

Do a bit of a reset,

Especially cause I've been walking for two hours and in Canada right now it's like plus five outside.

It's cold or tomorrow is going to be pouring rain.

So that's going to be interesting.

I'll be walking in the rain with newspapers for two hours.

I don't know how I'm going to do that yet,

But we'll figure it out.

And they're not covered in plastic bags.

If that's the first thing that comes in your mind,

I don't have those plastic bags.

I'm going to carry an umbrella,

I guess,

In my rain jacket and we'll figure it out.

So I don't like waking up at three 30,

But by about four,

I'm like,

Oh,

This is so nice outside.

And by about five,

I'm like,

Oh,

Look at the pretty sunset.

And by about six,

I've seen probably two cats and two dogs and gotten to say hi to a couple people and I get to drive around,

Do whatever I want first thing in the morning because no one else is awake yet.

And it's just kind of nice.

So I clocked my kilometers.

I walk about seven kilometers on my route.

The route covers about 30 kilometers across a few neighborhoods because not everybody gets papers anymore.

So this is like a local newspaper that only a few people subscribe to.

So I'm delivering for two neighborhoods and that was kind of weird at first.

I was like,

Oh man,

Kids have paper routes.

Janine,

What are you doing?

You have a paper route?

No,

You couldn't just be a child anymore and have a paper route very well.

These houses are miles apart,

You know,

Or blocks and blocks apart.

To walk the entire route,

You'd take an entire day.

So you do have to drive to some of these locations and then you can park it and walk to five or six houses.

But for the most part,

They're pretty one house per block.

Three houses there,

Two houses there,

One house in the Crescent.

So you have to drive around and do it.

So it's,

Yeah,

It's still a lot of movement.

It does help my mental health and it's also less lifting than Instacart was.

So that's what I'm up to right now is doing that first thing in the morning,

Coming home,

Having a bit of a break and a reset,

Going to pick up my kiddos or doing whatever other school routes and coverages I'm doing for other people.

So sometimes I'll pick up a couple of schools of kids depending on their start time,

Just based on who's,

Who needs a sick day or who booked vacation time,

Stuff like that.

We can help each other out.

And then I come home and have time to myself for several hours.

I get to just make dinner,

Watch TV,

Record a podcast.

That's what I'm doing right now.

I just got home and recording a podcast.

I get to see my clients in that time,

Go get groceries,

Do whatever I need to do.

And then I get to go pick up the kids after school,

Come home,

Get ready for bed and do it again.

And then Sundays right now are my kind of official full day off and Saturdays are mostly a day off.

So not only has the structure kind of helped my ADHD and the need for,

The need for a bit of structure in my brain with the PTSD and my depression and anxiety,

You know,

Setting my own schedule all the time as an entrepreneur is really hard.

So having someone else to kind of give me some guidelines or structure of this needs to be done by 7am and these kids need to be dropped off at the school by this time.

That really does help.

It just gives me kind of a frame for the day,

Something I wake up and know what I'm going to do a little bit.

So it just makes me more comfortable.

And it gives me a sustainable,

Good income that's much better than just minimum wage here in the province that even though,

Yes,

I have a degree and I could be earning 70 grand at a business manager position somewhere and hating it.

This is still a really good part-time income,

Very blessed to have found these couple of positions that pay a livable wage,

They do.

And I still get to run my business and do what I want to do in my business.

And eventually my hope is that I could cut back on one of these part-time jobs.

I don't know which one I'd give up though,

But I don't know.

I'm not sure because I like the physicality of walking so much,

But I also really would miss the kids.

So it's starting to dawn on me that this might be my life for a while.

And why is that a bad thing?

Why is that a bad thing?

For anyone else who's an entrepreneur like me,

You might have heard a lot when you were starting your journey that you needed to quit your day job in order to really be full-time in your business.

Don't have a backup plan.

Don't have a plan B.

If you have a plan B,

You'll always fail.

You'll always be going back when it gets scary or tough.

You won't take steps forward.

And I want to call BS on that.

I know my coach said,

Janine,

The people that can say that have savings accounts.

They have money.

They're not financially worried.

And now I know that's a blanket statement.

That's probably not true for everyone.

But yes,

The people that say quit your day job,

Don't have a backup plan.

That's what I did.

I thought that I would have enough to last me until my business was successful.

Not really thinking that it might take three to five years for it to be successful,

But like I can do this in 12 months.

If I put my focus on this,

It's just going to get better and better every month.

I'm never going to have any hiccups.

I was focused,

Put everything in one basket.

And for me,

That didn't make me feel safe.

I don't want to even say that it didn't work.

That's probably not the right way to put it.

If I'd had a spouse that could have supported me through that,

Or we could have,

You know,

Shared expenses,

Or they could have,

You know,

Taken on the brunt of things with their manager type position or,

You know,

Nine to five jobs that they could have,

You know,

Had that stability to help.

And I could,

You know,

Help with payments as well and just focus on my business.

Sure.

Maybe I could have done it.

Maybe I could have stayed away from part-time work,

But in my business as well,

I see clients one-on-one or I teach classes,

But there still is,

I don't typically do 40 hours a week in my business.

That was never how I wanted it to be.

Anyway.

I don't want to do 40 hours of content creation every week,

I'll be burnt out.

And energy healing too,

It's an hour or two here and there.

And then I take time to rest.

I always give myself an hour buffer in between appointments and all of that's been really helpful for my mental and physical health.

But then yeah,

There's a lot of space and time that I do have time to do other things.

So one day I'd love for that time to be filled with like activities and volunteering and,

You know,

Hosting events and,

You know,

Traveling.

But for now,

I also really enjoy that I get to do part-time work and it fulfills me and it makes me feel safe.

Another great question that my coach asked me once was,

How much would you need in your account,

In your bank account to feel safe today?

And the number actually really surprised me.

It was only $400.

And I said,

$400 makes me feel like I could pay a bunch of different bills if I needed to,

Even just partial payments.

I could do a lot of different things with $400.

And she said,

Okay,

So what are you going to work on that could help you get that money in your account more often?

So it's just kind of sitting there for you.

That could be your savings goal is $400,

Not 10,

000.

Of course,

We all want,

You know,

This gigantic retirement savings plan.

But $400 makes you feel safe when it comes to trauma or mental illness,

Or entrepreneurship in general.

That safety allows our creativity to be so much more open.

We get to expand and explore.

And I noticed working these part-time jobs,

All these other ideas are coming to my mind.

All these other things are in my focus and awareness.

I'm sleeping well at night.

I'm not as stressed.

It's getting better week by week.

Some months are still hard.

Some weeks are still hard.

I have to juggle some things or balance it out and prioritize.

And I wish I could just do it all.

But overall,

Compared to not having any income or really looking at my finances going,

I have like a third of the income I need this month.

This is so much easier to deal with.

So much easier to manage one bill versus all of them,

Or so much easier to,

You know,

Rearrange one appointment versus all of them.

It's been very helpful.

So yeah,

That's part of the reason why I wanted to share my story today.

I don't talk about it a lot.

And I thought,

What is shameful?

What is shameful about talking about building safety for myself?

Building my business and absolutely my business is going to be a huge part of my income.

Even this year is like,

It's going to be better than last year.

And the next year,

What's it going to look like?

And that starts to make me excited.

I start to get happy about that.

But just knowing that my business was never meant to like,

Income wasn't my number one goal with my business.

I mean,

It is and it isn't.

It's not the like spiritual priority.

It needs to be a contributor to my income.

It needs to be a contributor to that safety and like freedom in my life that I want and desire and why I wanted to leave HR in the first place was to really have more freedom over my pay and what I was going to earn too.

I hated when someone else told me what I was worth.

So for me,

Getting to determine what I'm worth and what I want to get paid is both terrifying and really freeing.

So as an entrepreneur,

I get to decide these things.

And like I said,

It's both really scary,

But really freeing.

That safety within me gets to be fulfilled in whatever way that it needs to be.

In whatever way that comes.

And that's so cool.

That's so amazing that I get to determine how I make money.

And for some people,

Maybe that's not your path and that feels really,

Really weird and that doesn't feel right for you.

But for me,

It felt very good to be able to say,

I get to determine what I'm going to do today.

I get to determine how much sleep I get.

I get to determine how much extra work I do today.

That's to me is abundance.

And abundance has also come through healing and being around these kids and walking so much and helping my mental health,

Helping my physical health.

Just being around other people,

Getting to know new people,

Something about people that work with kids.

They're,

They're very kind people,

90% of them.

There's always those couple,

But most of the people at this company I work for are just splendid.

We use words like you're doing so great love or look at you go and oh no,

You're doing so great.

And thank you guys so much for helping out.

This has been amazing.

It's been awesome today.

Thanks to the bus drivers.

And it's just incredible to hear like such upbeat,

Loving words at a company like I didn't even know that was possible.

And it gives me a lot of hope one day when I have employees and when my business grows so big that I get to hire people to help me.

Now I get to have all these examples of what it gets to look like.

So this has been one of my longest podcast episodes yet and one of my longest recordings yet.

So thank you so,

So much for listening and enjoying.

I'd love to know if you've taken on part time work for yourself,

If you've ever tried to reprioritize and manage and balance budgets and finances and how you're doing now,

How you've built that safety and stability for yourself.

Or if you're also in a boat of I don't know what to do and yeah,

I'm still building that for myself.

Ask yourself some of the questions we talked about today,

Like what number would you need in your bank account to feel safe?

How can you find work or expand in the games in the areas you're playing in right now?

So like your current employment or things that you're doing,

How could you expand that to make that money that you want to feel safe?

Make that a priority to have that amount in your bank account to feel safe.

Notice how much creativity and freedom it opens up for you.

Trauma follows us into jobs.

It does.

It does.

For anyone that says we just leave it at home and put our emotions on a shelf and forget about it.

We're lying to ourselves.

We really are.

We are humans.

We are complex.

We have feelings.

We have needs.

And I hope today has been just an example of what that can look like,

As well as how you can really start fulfilling these needs,

Even in unconventional,

Weird or unanticipated ways.

There's a lot you can do today to build that,

That life that you want.

And I say that very gently because I know and have been in those spaces where it felt impossible.

And I never would have thought that I'd be here now,

Living with all these different income streams and opportunities in my life and things that I've built.

I didn't know this was possible.

So holding that hope for yourself as well,

I'm sending you so much love.

I hope that you've enjoyed today's episode.

Thanks so much for letting me share vulnerably and listening to my story.

Much love.

I will see you in the next episode,

My friends.