Structuring Chaotic Minds

Balancing Professional Ambitions and Family: A Journey Towards Mental Wellness and Self-Care

• Melissa Franklin • Season 3 • Episode 2

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Have you ever felt torn between your professional responsibilities and your personal life? Join me, Melissa Franklin, on Structuring Chaotic Minds as I open up about my journey from a leadership role in education to prioritizing my family and mental wellness. Learn about the emotional and physical toll of trying to balance it all, especially in the wake of my grandfather's passing. I candidly share how my relentless dedication to my students came at the cost of precious time with my children, eventually leading to a complete mental breakdown and severe health complications, including a debilitating bout with COVID. These life-altering experiences forced me to reassess my priorities and embrace the necessity of being present for my family.

In the next segment, we focus on the imperative of self-care and mental wellness. Discover how letting go of certain responsibilities can open doors to new and better opportunities. It's crucial to acknowledge that it’s okay not to do everything and to seek support when needed. I highlight valuable resources available at structuringchaoticminds.com and structureinnovations.com, where you can connect with coaches or mentors to assist with mental wellness and life balance. Join me for an episode dedicated to breaking the stigma around mental wellness and underscoring the importance of personal well-being for a healthier, more balanced life.


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Speaker 1:

Hey everyone, welcome back to Structuring Chaotic Minds. I'm Melissa, and today I want to share something incredibly personal. This episode isn't about career moves or personal growth. It's about what happens when the role that defines you starts to take more from you than it gives. It's about the struggle to balance my role in education with the deep needs of my family. To balance my role in education with the deep needs of my family, all while trying to protect my mental wellness. Ultimately, that struggle led me to walk away from the path I had dedicated my life to for so many years. For years, my passion was helping children find opportunities for a future through education. I gave everything I had my time, energy and even my health to ensure the success of students I worked with. But at a certain point I had to face the difficult truth In order to provide for my own children's future, I needed to step back and focus on just them. Let me be clear the hardest part of this wasn't realizing I needed to make a change. The hardest part was figuring out how to let go of a role that had defined me for so long. How do I stop being the person everyone relies on when you've spent years sacrificing everything for others. Today, I'll take you through a journey and difficult choices that I had to make along the way.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Structuring Chaotic Minds, a show focused on balancing mental wellness and life. If you're just like me, then you likely enjoy crushing your goals, but it's also possible that right now you're struggling with anxiety, being overwhelmed or balancing life due to mental health. I'm here to help. I'm your host, melissa Franklin. I'm a leadership and personal development coach on a mission to amplify the fellow voices about our situations, share critical information and knowledge with our family and friends and, at the same time, help remove the social BS about mental wellness and mindsets.

Speaker 1:

The weight of leadership. Whenever I started in leadership, it was everything I thought I wanted. We were pushing towards an A-rated school. I was so deeply invested in helping students succeed, but behind the scenes, my personal life was starting to crack under the weight of the responsibilities that I had. My grandfather had passed away and the loss hit me a lot harder than I would have ever expected. I was grieving, but I didn't have the space or the time to properly process it because I was so busy being the person that others needed for me to be at work.

Speaker 1:

I think it's important to clarify something here, though my kids attended the same school that I worked at, so it's not like I wasn't present in their life, but even though we were in the same place physically, emotionally I was always somewhere else. My focus was on other people's children. I was making sure other families had what they needed, while sacrificing my own family's well-being in the process. I felt guilty, but I justified it to myself by saying I'm doing this for their future. I justified it to myself by saying I'm doing this for their future.

Speaker 1:

I thought if I just kept pushing and if I just kept working harder, everything would eventually fall into place, but the truth is, I was so stretched thin that there was nothing left for my own children at the end of the day. They saw me every day, but they didn't really have me, Not in the way that they really deserved. I tried to balance it all, but let's be honest, there's no perfect balance. When you're giving so much to one area of your life, something else has to give, and for me it was time with my children and, eventually, my health. I was physically present, but emotionally. I was physically present, but emotionally I was completely drained, mental breakdown and health struggles. Looking back, I should have recognized the warning signs earlier. But when you're in the thick of it and you tell yourself you can handle it, you just keep going. You think if you just push a little bit harder, things will eventually work themselves out. But in my case they didn't. The stress built up so much that my body actually gave out.

Speaker 1:

After my grandfather passed away, I experienced a complete breakdown Mentally. It was like my body had said enough and my nervous system actually started to shut down and for the first time I couldn't keep going and it was so terrifying. It wasn't just about mental exhaustion, it was physical too. I was dealing with chronic fatigue, headaches and constant tension. My body couldn't handle the pressure anymore. It was a wake-up call because I didn't fully listen before, even though I knew I was reaching my limit. I was always pushing for more. I had responsibilities, I had stuff to keep up with. I couldn't just stop. I don't know what anybody was asking of me.

Speaker 1:

And that mindset landed me in the hospital again when I contracted COVID. For 21 days I had a fever of 103 or more and I was in and out of the hospital trying to recover. But my body had been so worn down that every day actually felt like a battle at that point. Those days were some of the darkest of my life and I understand what a lot of people have gone through who really did struggle with COVID. I've never felt so physically weak and mentally drained at the same time. I wasn't sure if I was going to make it through.

Speaker 1:

And I was lying there sick for the first time and I wasn't thinking about my job or school, I was just thinking about my children. I was thinking about how, for so many years, I had put others others first, and how now, when they needed me, I couldn't even be there for them. I had spent years sacrificing for others in my head, because it was a financial exchange to be able to provide for my own. I worked late nights, took on extra shifts. I worked late nights, took on extra shifts, I did summer school, I did extra tutoring. I even did private tutoring outside of school just to ensure that my kids had a future that I really did want to provide for them.

Speaker 1:

But at that moment I realized I hadn't been present in a way that mattered the most the loss of my best friend. As if things couldn't get any worse, a month after battling COVID, I actually lost my best friend. She had COVID with me, so it was even more heartbreaking because we had recovered together and then to lose her was just one of the deepest pains I've ever had to deal with. She was someone who had walked with me through the hardest times in my life. She understood my mental health struggles and the things I had faced because she had lived through them to herself. We shared highs and lows of what bipolar disorder really meant for us, and we had been each other's lifeline for some of our darkest moments. Losing her felt like I was losing a part of myself. It was a devastation that I truly wasn't prepared for. She was the one person who, I guess you can say, was understanding what I was going through, and without her I felt completely alone. I felt like this last thread was what I was holding it all together and it just snapped.

Speaker 1:

It was in this moment that everything I was holding on to my role, my responsibilities, my identity as an educator it just all became even heavier than I had ever imagined. The hardest part I still didn't know how to leave. I didn't know who I was without that job. I had spent so many years building my identity around, being a leader, an educator, a servant, and there for the children that I didn't know what else to do. It was as though, leaving that role, I was losing a version of myself that I knew and I didn't know anything else, shifting away from education.

Speaker 1:

At this point, I had no choice but to step back. My health was failing critically and my family was suffering. I had lost my ability to hold it all together. I knew I couldn't continue in a way that I had been before, but walking away was not going to be easy. I felt as though I was giving up on the passion I had built my life around, and helping children find opportunities for a better future was something I was always going to be invested in. But here's the truth I couldn't be that person anymore. I had to start thinking about my own children's future in a different way. I had spent so many years taking on extra work to be able to fund my household. I was a single parent and I decided that every decision I made was making sure my children had a comfortable future that I really, truly wanted for them, and more than I had ever known. But now I had to make sure that I could be there for them in a way that they needed me, and it wasn't just financially, but now it was emotional and physical. So I shifted my focus to structure innovations. I realized that I could still help people grow and develop, but I needed to do it on my own terms. I needed to create something that allowed me to be present for my family while still pursuing my passion.

Speaker 1:

Letting go of the school system and the role I had known for so long wasn't just about a career change. It was about finding a new way to live that worked for me and my children. The struggle of letting go, letting go of my role as an educator wasn't just a career decision. It was a personal one. My passion had always been in helping children find opportunities for their future, but the reality was that I needed to ensure my own children had those same opportunities, and in order to continue to do that, I had to let go of a version of myself that I was always pushing, always sacrificing and always putting others first. It was one of the hardest things I ever had to do, but it was so very necessary. Stepping away didn't mean that I had to give up my passion. It just meant that I was going to have to find new ways of expressing it. I still coach, I still develop others, but I do it in a way that allows me to now be present for my family.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes the hardest thing is letting go of the role that no longer fits us, but doing so opens up a space for something even more meaningful and sustainable. Final thoughts this journey has been about so much more than stepping away from a role. It's been about figuring out who I am. Outside of leadership, outside of being an educator for others, it's about making the hard choices to prioritize my family and my own wellness. If there's anything I've learned through all of this, it's that sometimes the hardest decision is the one that sets you free.

Speaker 1:

Letting go doesn't mean giving up. It means creating a space for something new, something better. Take care of yourselves and remember you don't have to do it all. I'll see you next time. Thank you so much for joining me for today's episode. To catch up on the rest of the season, visit structureandchaoticmindscom or take a quick browse on your current app to see which episodes resonate with you. If you struggle with your own mental wellness or even just balancing life, we have a team of individuals at our site who can help? You can visit structureinnovationscom and find a coach or mentor fit for you. Thank you for joining me once again, melissa Franklin, on this episode of Structuring Chaotic Minds. Stay structured and smiling.