Quiet Confessions: My Story Part 2 - Unlocked

Due to a break for health and recovery, I'm bringing you the full, uncut version of a popular bonus episode. This episode, originally titled My Story Part 2, was first released in its entirety exclusively to Patreon subscribers in 2024, with a bite-sized snippet available during Season 3 of Quiet Connection. I'm offering the full deep dive now to check in with you.

I’m sharing the traumatic medical crisis that compounded my severe PMADs, including postpartum anxiety, depression, PTSD, and OCD. After enduring multiple mental health hospitalizations, I began experiencing unexplained physical symptoms like rapid, alarming weight gain and chronic pain. The episode details the terrifying moment an MRI revealed a mass on my pituitary gland that was hemorrhaging into my brain.

I recount my time in neuro ICU, the relief when the tumor eventually bled itself to death, and the lasting impact of becoming chronically ill and disabled. Ultimately, I reflect on the duality of my experience and affirm my commitment to the PMAD community. This is a powerful look at finding joy and strength in the fundamental philosophy of the "both and". I am sick a lot of the time and I can also find joy in things. 

🗝️Key Takeaways

• Initial PMAD Diagnoses: Chelsea's PMAD journey included depression (after their first child, Lily ), and extreme challenges after their second (Avery, born in June 2022), including a severe postpartum hemorrhage and three mental health inpatient hospitalizations. Diagnoses included postpartum anxiety, depression, PTSD, and OCD.
• Unexplained Physical Symptoms: Prior to the new diagnosis, Chelsea struggled with debilitating, unexplained symptoms, including gaining over a hundred pounds in less than a year , chronic pain , severe swelling, and loss of their period. They were often dismissed by doctors.
• The Pituitary Crisis: A horrible, rapidly worsening headache led to an ER visit where an MRI revealed a mass on the pituitary gland that was hemorrhaging into their brain. They were rushed to neuro ICU.
• Medical Trauma and Treatment: The crisis led to a hospital stay and immediate treatment with high-dose IV steroids. The pituitary gland, which controls vital hormone production, wasn't working due to the bleeding.
• Resolution and Aftermath: The tumor eventually "bled itself to death" and was no longer visible on an MRI. However, the pituitary gland was irreparably damaged , leaving Chelsea chronically ill and managing fluctuating hormone levels, extreme fatigue, body temperature dysregulation, and heat sensitivity.
• Finding Their Place in the PMAD Community: Chelsea concluded that while the tumor likely amplified their PMAD symptoms, they still experienced PMADs and affirms they belong in the community.
• The Both/And Philosophy: Their philosophy for coping with chronic illness and mental health is the "both and" : they are sick a lot of the time and they can find joy ; they are on necessary medications and those medications allow them to care for their kids ; they experience PTSD and they are surviving. 

🔊 Sound Bites

• "I literally filled two gallon sized Ziploc bags with all of the medications that they prescribed me..."
• "I gained over a hundred pounds in less than a year... and it really changed everything about my health."
• "I was crying and hobbling out of that ER... The next day it was still, it was just as bad if not worse."
• "Neurology came back to tell me that I had a mass on my pituitary gland and it was bleeding into my brain."
• "The tumor literally bled itself to death."
• "Now I fall into the chronically ill category, which is fun. Let's put that on top of everything."
• "I may have had the tumor all along... but, I still experienced perinatal mood an

This episode discusses topics that may be triggering for some individuals. Please check the show notes for more information and be mindful of your own mental health and comfort levels.

Visit our Patreon to help support our mission to normalize the conversation and end the stigma surrounding PMADs!

Transcript

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Chelsea Myers (00:01)
Hey, welcome to another episode of Quiet Confessions. Due to some health challenges and recovery time, this week's episode is actually the full version of a bonus episode I recorded back in September of 2024.

It was originally titled My Story Part 2 and a bite-sized version was released in Season 3 of the podcast. There have since been more updates and I'll summarize them briefly, but I'm giving you this full episode as my little way of saying, hey, I can't record this week, but I still want to check in with you. When I recorded this, there were still a lot of unknowns.

And today there are still a lot of unknowns, but to build upon what this episode will share with you, I am still on a journey with my health, my pituitary gland and everything that goes along with it. In the last week alone, I have found out that there has been some regrowth of the tumor on my pituitary gland and we are monitoring it and nothing is emergent as of yet.

I am still disabled and chronically ill, and I'm still on a medication journey. Lots of things are up in the air, and lots of questions are left unanswered. But I'm making progress every day, and just like I said then, I'll say it again now. It's both and. Things can be hard, and I can find the glimmers.

So I hope you enjoy this episode that's a little bit longer than 30 minutes or less. And hopefully I will be able to record and be back with you next week.

Chelsea (01:55)
Hey, welcome to a solo session of Quiet Connection, a podcast dedicated to ending the stigma around postpartum mental health. I am Chelsea, and this is a episode that has been requested by some followers, by a few of my guests, and one that I've been meaning to do for a while, but...

have kind of just not found the time. So I find myself with a very rare opportunity to have the playroom and most of the house to myself. So I thought, what better time than now to take you on my journey, my story part two, because some things have changed you guys. I'm saying a lot, but

So my story part two. When I left you last in season one, I was super fresh into this and I'm still pretty fresh into this, although I've been doing it for I've been doing this podcasting thing for over a year now. I have recorded with upwards of it's close to 100 right now.

with more to go and I still am figuring it out and I'm still learning it and I'm still processing my own stuff and new stuff has come up. So I think when I left you last, I know I was with my friends Ashley and Emily, doing this one on my own, but we had just sort of talked about my story with

having PMADS with my first, Lily. That was mostly depression and then the extreme perinatal mental health challenges that I went through after I had my second, Avery, in June of 2022, which included a postpartum hemorrhage at home that was pretty severe and ended up hospitalizing me.

for a surgery and blood transfusions and all of that fun stuff. And I touched briefly on, I had three mental health inpatient hospitalizations for what was then diagnosed as postpartum anxiety, depression, PTSD and OCD. Psychosis was on the table at one of those facilities. It was ultimately decided that

I was leaning more towards the OCD side of things, which I've now found out my previously diagnosed generalized anxiety disorder has very likely been OCD for most of my life and it makes a lot of things make sense. But that's kind of where we left it last time. And things have changed. Things have been...

Things have evolved. So since I last spoke to you guys directly, with just me and my friends, I was struggling a lot with the medications that I had been put on and off and on and off. I literally filled two gallon sized Ziploc bags.

with all of the medications that they prescribed me and then switched me from and on and off and try again and this that and the other thing I have two gallon size ziplock bags full of all of those pill bottles which I finally got rid of I didn't do it myself but I had my husband take them in and at the pharmacy and get rid of them safely but they are no longer in my house that was a letting go thing

I struggled with symptoms that I just couldn't explain or understand. Even after becoming much more stable mentally, I was still, I was gaining weight. And before we even get into this, this has absolutely nothing to do with body size or shape or any of that and everything to do with

not understanding why it was happening and it was restricting my life. But I was gaining weight at a very alarming rate and it didn't matter what I did. I could go for walks every day. I could not go for walks every day. I could change my diet. I was doing all of the things and I just

gaining weight. I gained over a hundred pounds in less than a year and I will say I do not own a scale and when I go to the doctor's office I ask them specifically not to tell me my weight because I struggled with disordered eating as a teen and I just don't want to know the number. I don't want to know what it is because

I don't want that to be my motivation to make unhealthy choices for myself. So, but I do know that I put on over a hundred pounds in a 12 month span, less than that. ⁓ and it really changed everything about my health, the way that I, like, I couldn't move freely. It was very difficult for me to get up and down. was having like,

pain, chronic pain in areas of my body that I'd never experienced it before. Everything was really puffy. My hands were huge and swollen and my arms were swollen and just like everything and no everyone was just like, ⁓ I also had, I stopped getting a period and

Anyone who owns a uterus will tell you when you talk to your doctor, they'll be like, well, you just need to lose weight. You just need to lose weight, drink more water, sleep better at night. I couldn't do those things. I wasn't sleeping. was, I was waking up sweating. I could not lose weight no matter what I did. I was drinking electrolyte water like it was my job.

Yeah, it just was, it was pretty awful. I just, couldn't, I wasn't used to it. Things that used to be comforting to me were no longer comforting to me because like I couldn't fit in my favorite spot on the couch. None of my clothes fit and I kept having to buy bigger sizes with money that I didn't have.

So I'm going to Goodwill, which is great. Love Goodwill. But I just kept getting bigger and I couldn't understand it. And it was making me really depressed because I just didn't, I'd gone through so much mentally and now I'm looking in the mirror and I don't even recognize myself. And I don't recognize how I feel along with

all of the other things. I started having gallbladder attacks. I had to call 911 because I thought I was having a heart attack. It happened several times. I was getting, I had issues with my liver. All kinds of stuff was happening and no one was giving me answers. I actually went in to see my PCP about not having periods and

They sent me to, I don't really know what they're classified as, but they're who I saw when I was pregnant. And they do just like women's reproductive health stuff, mostly pregnancy. And I talked to them and they were like, okay, well, we can put you on birth control. And I immediately was like, absolutely not. Birth control wrecks havoc on my mental health.

And I'm, it's, it's never been good for me. ⁓ and they just kept saying over and over again, well, you have to have a period, you have to have a period. I'm like, why? I know plenty of people who don't have periods. Anyway, they put me on HRT to stimulate a period. I almost said pregnancy. Not that. ⁓

And that was awful. It made me sick. It made me really, really, really angry and moody. And I had the most horrendous premenstrual symptoms because I also have PMDD. So before any of this, have PMDD. So not only was I experiencing like cramping and stomach issues,

to the point where like, couldn't get up, but I'm also like, I'm depressed and I'm crying all the time and I'm angry. And it was miserable, but I got a period and it was a horrible, horrible, heavy period, which triggered my PTSD from my hemorrhage. So that was cool. ⁓ but it was terrible and it didn't solve the problem. I didn't get another period after that. ⁓ very shortly after that, I had surgery to have my gallbladder removed. ⁓

And these are all like little like bits and pieces and people are like, okay, this is going to help and this is going to help this and this is going to help that. nothing was really helping. I did make a decision when I got my gallbladder removed is something that I had thought about for years and just decided this would be the best time to do it. But I switched to a pescatarian diet. None of this is for any ethical reasons other than

I don't really like a lot of meat to begin with. So I was like, well, to be gentle on my body, and to sort of transition into a healthier eating, like lifestyle for me, I now's a good time. So I switched to, I have not had meat since March. had my procedure in March. ⁓ it is currently September, but yeah, that was an easy transition for me in terms of switching my diet.

Geez, I can't clear my throat today.

And I still, I wasn't doing well at all. And then...

Excuse me. Great, I'll have to edit that out. Mark Clip.

And then I woke up one day. it was, it was March, it was March 12th or March 11th. ⁓ and I had to get my oldest on the bus and I had to get my youngest up and out of bed and I had a horrible headache and it would not get better. I, it continuously.

and rapidly got worse and worse and worse, which triggered me because that was a big symptom around the time of my postpartum hemorrhage. But it was so horrible. I couldn't move. Getting up and down would send surges of literally the worst pain I've ever experienced, worse than childbirth.

And I had to have my husband come home and he drove me to our local hospital and dropped me off because we still had the one year old, my youngest, she's two now, but, and he left me there because we didn't have a choice. And I waited and, and when they called me, I was like, I don't think I can walk.

So they came and got me in a wheelchair and I came in and I just started crying uncontrollably. Told them what was going on. They got me into a room. I could go into every little minute detail. Not gonna do that. But what I'm gonna say is I won't be going to that hospital ever again unless it's for something very, very simple. I...

I'm alone in a room. They're pumping me full of all different kinds of pain medications and anti -nausea medications. They did initially do a CT scan of my head. They did not use contrast. They didn't see anything. So all day, I was there all day, pumping me full of just things that I did not want.

in my system and they weren't helping. And also, I don't know how many times I hit the call button because I just wasn't okay. Nobody showed up. I thought my call button was broken. And at one point I was like, I don't know if I was shouting or what, but to the point where the people in the room next to me were like, we'll go get someone.

And there will be people that ask, well, like, were they super busy? Were they super slammed? No. It was a very quiet day in that ER. I just wasn't being attended to. And I'd gone through so much of that and not been listened to through my whole PMADS journey that this was so triggering. Eventually my mom came and sat with me and she sort of

tried to be my advocate, but they were like, there's, I mean, there's nothing else we can really do. And they sent me home and I was still in so much pain that I...

Ahem.

I was crying, I was crying and hobbling out of that ER. Same thing when I got home. And I don't think I slept that night. I don't really know. But I do know that the next day it was still, it was just as bad if not worse. And

I called my doctor again and they told me to go to UVM. UVM in Vermont is the big state hospital. So I did that and I got there. They were very, very accommodating to my needs. This was at night, so my mom and my stepdad came over.

while the girls were in bed. And they were kind of just like waiting until we would come back. But I got there, I was not okay, but I advocated for myself and I was like, listen, I have medical PTSD and medical trauma. The last hospital I was at, this is what happened. This is what I'm experiencing. Also, I do not want Benzos. I have a history.

with benzos not in abusing benzos in any way but that it's I please don't prescribe that for me at all and they were so receptive

And very gentle with me. ⁓ they didn't immediately start pumping me full of pain medicines. did like magnesium and something else. And they ordered a CT with, with contrast, which was different than what I'd had at the other hospital. At this point, it's like 1130, 12 o 'clock middle of the night. ⁓ and I hear that.

someone from the neurology team is gonna come talk to me. Panic, obviously.

Someone from neurology came to talk to me and just said, we're going to order an MRI. We need a clearer picture of what we're looking at. And so we didn't know at that point, but obviously didn't think it was good. So my poor parents are sitting here at my house and we didn't text them or anything because we didn't, we, we were so panicked and we didn't want them.

to be in the same state that we were in. wanted them to sleep because we certainly weren't sleeping. I got my MRI, I think at like four o 'clock in the morning. So again, another night, no sleep in an ER. Got the MRI with contrast and neurology came back to tell me that I had a mass on my pituitary gland and it was bleeding into my brain.

⁓ it was hemorrhaging into my brain and anyone who has been in a situation like that will know like time stops. my husband and I are just looking at each other and they're like, we, we're going to have someone more senior on the team come talk to you. So we're left alone with this information for a little while.

Obviously my mind, our minds both immediately go to cancer. Cancer is all over my family. And it's also a big part of my personal life. Like I volunteer at a pediatric oncology camp. so like, it's just something I...

I know about not from experiencing it firsthand, but from watching family members go through it, very close family members, losing family members, losing friends, working with campers, losing campers anyway. So I look at my husband and I'm like, okay, listen, it's going to be okay. I was like, we have connections. was like, my mom, well, my mom is, she actually

is the program director or a program director at this pediatric oncology camp. And I was like, my mom will make sure that we get the best oncologists and she'll connect us with all the right people and I'm going to be okay. My husband and I both not knowing if that was going to be true or not. But I just kind of was like, it's fine. It's fine. It's going to be fine. It's going to be fine.

And we're waiting and waiting and waiting. And I honestly can't tell you what time it was, the wee hours, but someone from neurology comes to tell me I'm being transferred to neuro ICU.

So we did, we finally reached out to my mom and just let her know what was going on. ⁓ cause at that point we had a little bit more of a definitive answer. ⁓ and so, yeah, so I'm rushed up to neuro ICU. This is all so reminiscent of my postpartum hemorrhage. And so I'm not doing great. ⁓

And I'm still in so much pain because my brain is actively bleeding. My nurse in neuro ICU was phenomenal. ICU is unique in that you are literally attended to all the time. You have cameras on you on top of all of your monitors. Your nurse comes in way more frequently than this, but like they have to come in every hour and

just take vitals and I have all kinds of teams coming to talk to me. have neurosurgery coming to talk to me. I have endocrinology coming to talk to me. I have neuroophthalmology coming to talk to me. I'm immediately put on high dose IV steroids because apparently that's what you have to do in this particular situation. Talking about whether I'm gonna have surgery imminently and it's

all so much. It's so much and I'm barely digesting any of it.

Yeah, I, and I'm still in pain. I spent a little over 24 hours in neuro ICU when my team, I guess, decided they were not going to do immediate surgery. I am still actively bleeding, but

on it. I can't tell. I don't remember what the reasoning behind it was. But it was explained to me that the tumor in my pituitary gland is not uncommon in people, in birthing people. It usually will hemorrhage shortly after childbirth. They can't tell me when I got it and they don't know why it's hemorrhaging now. But it's not, while it's

uncommon. It's not wildly uncommon. And from whatever they were seeing, because I had to get another MRI that day, they didn't think emergent surgery was necessary. So I was moved to the general neurosurge floor, where I spent the better part of a week, which was super traumatic in and of itself.

Hi.

I even know how deep I want to get into this, but like the room I was in was not conducive to any sort of rest or healing. my roommate, absolutely nothing to do with this person whatsoever. Not their fault. What they were going through was beyond their control, but it made it very, very difficult for me to get any kind of sleep, ⁓ or rest. ⁓ I'll say this person wasn't,

They weren't in their right mind at the time. ⁓ and so they, they felt that they were in danger a lot of the time. So there was a lot of commotion in my room at all hours of the day and night. ⁓ so that experience was not great. my partner was there every day. My in -laws and my mom and my stepdad really stepped up with the kids. ⁓ but yeah, I had.

The nurses, we love nurses, we love nurses. The nurses gave me so much more information and so much more just compassion than any of the doctors that I saw. The whole time I was there, I was having to give...

like urine samples and blood samples on, I think first it was every three hours and then it moved to every six hours. But it got to the point, because they literally come in the middle of the night, the phlebotomists, it's just what they do. And it got to the point where I would just like have my sleep mask on and I'd just stick my arm out and be like, go ahead. Bruises all over my arms from being stuck so many times and it was awful.

But after, like I said, the better part of a week, they...

They let me go home. I was still on steroids. They were trying to wean me off the steroids. I was no longer on IV steroids. I was taking oral steroids. And they said, okay, we're going to send you home. You are still bleeding. So here's a list of restrictions. was ridiculous, like not ridiculous in the sense of, it was just a lot. I couldn't be alone.

I couldn't drive, I couldn't lift, I essentially was like on bed rest because I'm still, at this point, I'm still bleeding into my brain, just not as severely as I was. So think of like the initial part as like the waterfall or like the dam breaking. And at this point, it's kind of more of like a stream or a trickle.

So I'm sent home and I'm told like, yep, you're still going to experience headaches, but they shouldn't be as severe. You're at risk for seizures. You're at risk for like, you have any of the things to look out for seizures, even like small twitches, vision changes, pain increasing, any of those things, like you come straight back. But I couldn't be alone.

and they were weaning me off of the steroids. They weaned, their weaning process was so fast and I got incredibly sick. Part of the reason you're on the steroids, guess I should have explained this at first. Your pituitary gland controls your hormone production for all of the hormones that

are needed to live. And mine wasn't working because it had a tumor on it that was bleeding. So the steroids were helping with that with like cortisol levels and other things. They weaned me off of them way too fast and I got incredibly sick again. So they immediately put me back on them. Spoiler alert, I'm still on them.

And like I said, this was March and it is now September.

Anyway, I'm at home. I had to basically be babysat. I couldn't take care of my kids. Again, if you listened to my first episode, like my episode, that's an incredible trigger for me. All I wanted to do was take care of my kids and I couldn't because I was so ill mentally and physically. this, the PTSD and the flashbacks.

hard as hell. And I was in the middle of recording episodes for the podcast and I had hit a really good stride and I was meeting really cool people and I had to like halt all of that. I couldn't look at screens. So my husband helped me in reaching out to people. Everybody was amazingly understanding. Paused the podcast and got babysit for months.

And then as I don't even remember exactly when it was, it was sometime around June, either the beginning of June or the middle of June, I got another MRI. And at that point, there was no longer any sign of the tumor. So it literally bled itself to death. ⁓ but my pituitary gland was damaged. ⁓ the extent of that damage

We don't know and we're still trying to figure out. But at that point, a lot of my restrictions were lifted. I was able to drive again because I wasn't at risk for having a seizure. I was actually able to fly at the end of June to visit my husband's family in another state. But I'm still not making the hormones that I'm supposed to be making.

and I'm sick. I've now entered, I mean, I was sick all the time before, but now it was becoming like even more unpredictable and it was different things and it's all hormone related. But now I fall into the chronically ill category, which is fun. Let's put that on top of everything.

So I have issues with regulating my body temperature. have extreme hot flashes and I never know when I'm going to get them. I have bowel issues and I never know when that's going to happen. I extreme fatigue, super extreme heat sensitivity, just a general feeling of like getting hit by a tr like when you have the flu, like I never know.

if I'm going to feel like that. And I don't mean that like, I don't know if I'm going to wake up like that. Sometimes it's like that, or sometimes it hits me in the middle of the day. ⁓ because my hormones are so out of whack. ⁓ but I mean, that's jumping around a lot, but that's still where I am right now. I'm still on steroids. I'm still getting blood work done. I'm currently, I have to get blood work done this week to test.

my thyroid levels because I'm having issues with my thyroid.

But yeah, and I'm developing all of these new things. I've so, in terms of like the reason I brought up the weight thing is because one of the symptoms of this tumor is water retention and rapid weight gain. And once the tumor was gone, I started sort of noticing I wasn't so puffy anymore and.

my body has changed. I'm still absolutely not, ⁓ in the type of body that I had prior to all of this. But again, it, that it's not about what it looks like. It's about like, I can now put my socks on by myself and I can go up and down stairs most of the time without completely losing my breath.

And I can get up and down off the couch without rolling around. so things have shifted and changed in multiple ways since, since the last scan. I will be continued to be monitored by neuro. I think I have another MRI in like three months to see.

what my pituitary glands looks like and to see if there is any regrowth. Endocrinology is following me, although lately they haven't been the greatest communicators because I'm really not in a great place health -wise. It's really affecting my daily living, but I'm doing my best to advocate for myself.

But yeah, where, and so I went through this whole like shift, like, well, do I even like, do I even qualify? Do I like belong in the PMAd community or was this, this tumor all along? And what I've sort of come to for myself is like, I may have had the tumor all along and that could be why I was as sick as I was and

why because it can absolutely affect your mental health and your physical health. But I, I still experienced perinatal mood and anxiety disorders. If I had the tumor then, which I really think I did, it probably amplified everything and made things way worse than they would have been under different circumstances. ⁓ so that's been like a

it was a weird sort of thing for me to try and navigate. Like, do I still fit in this community? And I believe that I do. whether I fit or not, this community that I've created is really for the people who are sharing their stories.

And yeah, so where am I right now? ⁓ I just got out of therapy and we just talked about this, but like my life is a series of, not a series of, but like it's both and, ⁓ it's not a, but it's both and, so I am sick a lot of the time and

I can also find joy in things. I am on a lot of medications that I'm not comfortable being on. And those medications allow me to get up and take care of my kids most days. I am experiencing PTSD and flashbacks like crazy. And I'm surviving. And I'm using my coping skills.

⁓ so life is, I mean, life is always crazy. Life is pretty crazy right now. Luckily, I have an incredibly supportive husband and family who are there for me through all of this. No questions asked. ⁓ I am back to, I finished season three a while ago. I've been recorded. I've got season four.

done, not edited, but recorded. And I still have over 45 people who have booked with me. My 2024 calendar is full. It's full. I've just had to open up my 2025 calendar and that blows my mind. I will never be able to express my gratitude for the people who decide to share their stories with me.

I truly believe that every person that I meet through Quiet Connection comes to me at the exact moment that they're supposed to. Because my job is to help them share their story. It's not about me, but as I'm taking it in, little pieces of me are being validated or little pieces of me are being healed. And when we end the recording, I usually will be like,

⁓ it's like this huge sigh and I'm like, thank you. Like you have no idea and you couldn't know this, but you just totally like, you just totally healed a little part of me that, that needed to hear what you said. so yeah, I just, I don't know. I don't know. It's crazy. It's a crazy ride. One that I'm still very dedicated to, but also mindful of my health.

Hiccup.

My health and my mental health are my main priority. I am on disability. I'm not able to work, ⁓ due to compounding things. ⁓ so Quiet Connection is not a job for me. I don't make any money from Quiet Connection from the podcast. And that's not what it's about. I make my schedule myself, keeping in mind that my physical and mental health

can change on a moment's notice and being confident enough to advocate for myself to tell a guest when that's true and when I can't, when I need to reschedule or when I need to or if I can't put out content or whatever. don't know. I'm, I don't understand the whole content creation and algorithm thing, but, ⁓ I'm putting myself and my family first because above everything else,

And throughout this whole over two years now, the only thing that I care about is my family and my kids. And I can say that with my whole chest. I really, truly, do not have the time or the energy to put into anybody's opinions, anybody's like,

just hate, I guess? I don't know. I've run into that a couple of times, but...

I am using my spoons to focus on the things that fill me, fulfill me, fill my cup, if you want to use that term. And as a people pleaser in my healing phase, it's been very difficult for me to say no or to advocate for myself or to stand up for myself. And it's getting easier.

because it has to be. So I'm getting better at saying no, I'm getting better at asking for understanding, I'm getting better at setting boundaries. But that's where I'm at right now. I don't think I missed anything, probably did. But yeah, I'm meeting incredible people from all over the world, helping them share their stories and

feeling just more confident in being me and also realizing that Quiet Connection is not me. I am me. I am Chelsea. Quiet Connection is something that I'm doing to create a community for people who need one and for people who don't feel heard or seen or validated because that's where I was. so, yeah.

That's not quite the episode that you guys are used to. You did a lot of listening to just me and if you're still here, I appreciate it. But yeah, maybe there'll be a part three at some point. Ben and I, my husband and I will very likely do another episode at some point just for another like partner's perspective because our relationship has really shifted a lot through this whole thing and not in a negative way, but.

It's changed. It's changed us for sure. But yeah, so there's your Chelsea My Story part two. Again, head on over to Patreon and help support me and my mission because every little bit helps. And I absolutely love if you do the third tier, I love making the stickers and sending the mail. I love snail mail. It's my favorite thing ever.

And please make sure if you are so inclined to subscribe on Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get podcasts, please leave a review or a rating. A, it helps boost my visibility and B, it really genuinely gives me feedback on how I can better be serving this community. So yeah, I'll do my little spiel, I guess.

If you want to follow along with us on Quiet Connection, you can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and threads at Quiet Connection Podcast. You can check us out. Check out my website, quietconnectionpodcast .com. Or if you want to share your story, you can email me at quietconnectionppmh at gmail .com. And thanks for being on this journey with me.

And always remember, you are not alone. I see you.