When Rest Isn't Enough: My Health Wake-Up Call

Have you ever felt like you're doing everything right but something still feels wrong? That's exactly where I found myself recently. I was prioritising rest, setting boundaries and practicing all the self-care principles I teach, yet my body was still shutting down.

This episode takes you on my unexpected journey from severe exhaustion to emergency hospitalisation after discovering critically low iron levels and internal bleeding requiring surgery. I'm sharing this vulnerable story not for sympathy, but because it highlights a crucial truth: sometimes our bodies need more than just rest, they need medical intervention. When persistent exhaustion, dizziness or other symptoms linger despite your best efforts at self-care, professional medical assessment becomes essential.

My health crisis also exposed how our family system had become unsustainably dependent on me. Coming home from hospital to household chaos wasn't about my husband's efforts (he was doing his best) but about the realization that I'd been carrying too much for too long. This experience has become a catalyst for teaching my children greater awareness beyond themselves and building their capacity to contribute meaningfully to our family. By carrying everything ourselves, we often unknowingly prevent our children from developing crucial life skills and awareness.

Whether you're feeling overwhelmed with family responsibilities or ignoring your body's signals that something isn't right, this episode offers permission to stop carrying it all. Don't wait for a health crisis to restructure your family responsibilities or get those blood tests done. Remember that true self-care sometimes means asking for help, delegating responsibilities to your children (even young ones) and trusting medical professionals when your intuition says something isn't right.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Beyond Organised
• 1:39 When Rest Isn't Enough
• 4:51 Hospital Visit and Family Chaos
• 6:56 Teaching Kids to Recognise Needs
• 10:31 Permission to Stop Carrying It All
• 12:30 Episode Wrap and Resources

Transcript

Mel: 0:18

Welcome to Beyond Organised, the podcast that helps you simplify your life and amplify your purpose. I'm Mel Schenker, life coach, speaker, founder of She's Organised, but, more importantly, a wife and mum of four little kids. If you've ever felt overwhelmed, like you're constantly juggling everything but never quite catching up, this is the place for you. Here we go beyond just the tidying up and creating systems. We're talking about real-life strategies that bring order to your life, but also we talk about the things beyond the organizing, the things that really matter, like your parenting relationships and so much more. So grab your coffee and let's dive in.

Mel: 0:59

I'll be honest, I wasn't planning to release an episode. This week. I have been incredibly unwell and yesterday, as of recording this, I actually ended up in hospital. I have got surgery planned for Tuesday, so the day after this comes out and I'm still feeling pretty weak and wanted to share something, though, that's been sitting on my heart. I'm not recording this because I feel the pressure to show up and you know I have to get an episode out every week, like with how sick I've been. I'm pretty sure I could have had a week off, but I wanted to walk through exactly sort of what's been happening and hopefully it can be a bit of a reminder for you. So, again, it's going to be a bit of a short one again this week and, I think, an important one, though, to maybe just put away in the back of your mind in case something like this comes up in your future. So today we're talking a bit about.

Mel: 2:02

You know what happens when rest just isn't enough, when you've been doing all the things you know, saying no, slowing down, taking care of yourself, but something just still feels off. So last week I shared an episode on the importance of rest, and I still believe that is really important. Rest isn't lazy. It is absolutely essential to our overall productivity cycle. It's what keeps us going, really. But over the past few months I have been prioritizing it. I've been going slower, I've been saying no more, I've been letting things slide that don't need to be actioned straight away.

Mel: 2:43

But even with all of that, I wasn't getting any better. So I was completely exhausted, dizzy, breathless, high-headed, even after doing the most basic things. So I went and got some blood tests done and the results were well confronting, but also not surprising once I knew what it was. So my iron is critically low, like almost no iron in my body at all. So I'm severely anemic and on top of that I've got some internal bleeding somewhere. So that's what the surgery on Tuesday is for.

Mel: 3:19

Now I'm not sharing any of this for sympathy. I am okay and I believe that it can all be fixable and I will be back on my feet in no time. And I've also got good support around me, including Family Next Door, which is great. But I am sharing this because I know how easy it is to push aside those niggling feelings that we're already doing everything that we can. So sometimes you're doing everything that you should be, you're resting, you're looking after yourself, you're setting the boundaries, you're doing all the things that I even teach on and I was practicing what I preach. But even then your body can still cry out for help, and that's when you do need to take it a bit further. So if at any point you end up feeling off and you can't quite explain why, just get those blood tests done. So yes, depending where you are in the world, it can cost a bit of money and all of that. But being armed with the knowledge of what's going on inside you is so much more important. You know I talk about self-care. And self-care isn't just an airy-fairy I'm saying this to look good kind of thing it's about proactively checking in on your body and getting the information you need to actually take care of yourself.

Mel: 4:40

So, as of recording this Sunday night, you know I'll take you back a little bit to yesterday just to let you in a little bit on my life, and hopefully it's not too embarrassing. So you know, after hours and hours of vomiting and I ended up fainting, honestly, honestly thought I was dying my husband called an ambulance and I ended up in an emergency, and it was a long day and I did get an iron infusion, which I had planned for Tuesday as well, but I got that earlier, which is good. But when I came home it was pretty confronting. The house was in chaos. So, you know, apart from the very stark visuals in front of me, there was something else that hit me, and it's not just that I've been unwell, it's that I've been holding too much for too long.

Mel: 5:42

Now I really want to be clear here, though this is not about blaming my husband. He's doing his best, caring for the kids. He even cleaned and he's trying to hold things together, but lately my kids are going crazy, making mess quicker than they can clean. So it made me realize something, though that the way our family's been running has relied on me too heavily, and now that I'm out of action a bit, it is exposing this need for change. So, you know, I've always been the one to handle the cleaning and the organizing and the mental load, and I'm quite happy to do that, though I like things being my way.

Mel: 6:23

So I need to actually learn to let go a little and, to you know, let my kids step up and do a bit more too. That it's not just about getting it done quickly, getting it done my way. It is actually about getting it done my way. It is actually about teaching them that by me carrying the full load, no one else has the capacity to grow. So it's teaching them how to do their bit in the household and eventually, their capacity is going to learn to grow too.

Mel: 6:59

Because, yes, we have set things, we have what we call money, meals, and they do their little chores throughout the week and they get paid on a Sunday night and all that kind of stuff, but the truth is, just doing the few things on their list really isn't enough. If I'm unwell and I'm out of action. They actually need to recognize that and learn what more they can do. That's appropriate for their age. And they know that I'm sick, they know that I'm unwell, but they still haven't even thought of anything but themselves, which I get is typical for a lot of kids. But it is good for them to start learning how to recognize when people need help, and it starts in the home. I do believe that. So I've had them doing some basic cleaning and putting their shoes away and all that kind of stuff today and, yeah, there were a bit of complaints, but it's hopefully making them realize that I've been doing a lot of this stuff and it's a lot for one person to take on.

Mel: 8:03

So, if anything, this is just waking me up to realizing I actually need to train my kids to step up and actually recognize what's going on around them a little bit more, not just be so self-absorbed with things. Look, they're good kids, but I'm not training them as well as what I could be, and this has been a bit of a wake-up call for that. So you know, it's still something that I'm learning, and even with self-care, that was the final pillar for me. So I talk about the five pillars of organizing, and that was sort of that last one for me that really helped form the overall structure that I've got, because it's one that I ignored for way too long. I just did everything myself and just pushed through and power on, and that's kind of what made me snap in the end, and so I really have been well. I feel I've been a lot more proactive with it and prioritizing it a lot more.

Mel: 9:06

But, as I said, rest is not always enough. So it is important that if something feels off, even when you're doing all the right things, get curious about it, check your blood, ask questions. Don't wait for your body to force you to stop. And I even knew all of that stuff. That's why I was resting, because I know that if you push your body too hard, it's going to make you stop anyway. I knew all that stuff and yet I still ended up in this position by me pushing through and thinking I was just feeling this way because of how much I have going on in my life with kids and business and so on. It still nearly was the end of me.

Mel: 9:51

So it is time to start making some shifts and I encourage you to not wait for burnout or a complete health crisis, to restructure your family routines, teach your kids, stretch their capacity and rebalance the load now, before you're in this situation, because the truth is we're never meant to do this all alone, and nor should we have to. We are allowed to ask for help, even from our kids, even if they're little, there is stuff that they can learn. Even if it's just awareness, that's a big thing. So, anyway, that's it from me today, a shorter one. I'll keep you posted on socials with how things are going and how I go from surgery on Tuesday, but I want to thank you for letting me show up here, sort of in an imperfect way, again this week.

Mel: 10:50

I do enjoy doing this podcast and I have got some more guests lined up for future weeks which I'm really excited to share with you. We'll get back on, but for me, this podcast is about sharing my journey as well and the things that I'm learning along the way. So you're not going to get some perfect, polished piece that I walked through 10 years ago. You're going to get the stuff that I'm walking through and learning right now. And yeah, it is pretty vulnerable for me because you know, as a coach and that you know I'm helping mums, I'm helping women with a lot of these things in life and there's still that little part of me that's like I still haven't quite got this right. But I think that also is what makes me good at what I do, because I'm still in it and I'm still learning and growing and it's fresh and I know that I can help with the things that I'm learning. So I'm kind of putting my vulnerability and all of that you know, all aside and just getting it out there in the hopes that it can help you in being able to recognize signs when needed, but also to get on the front foot and get your family to start tightening them up a little bit more and helping them become a bit more aware, because you just don't even realize as moms how much we take on just with the little things, until you're kind of taken out of the picture.

Mel: 12:11

So anyway, I hope that this episode spoke to you and if you've got questions or anything you want me to go through, just please submit them. The details are in the description and you know. If anything else, if you needed permission to just stop carrying it all, let this be it. If you loved this episode, don't forget to hit subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. And if you want to continue the conversation, you can connect with me on Instagram at @shes. organised. Or, for some free resources, head over to beyondorganised. com toolkit. Remember, organising is a tool to live the purposeful life beyond it. See you next time.