This weekend I cleaned my back patio.
That probably sounds like the most underwhelming thing I could open a newsletter with. But stay with me.
When Nick and I moved in, I had this whole vision for the back patio. String lights. A little seating area. Somewhere cute to sit with a coffee in the morning or a drinky drank at night. The kind of space you actually want to be in.
And then two months later, life had other plans.
I won't go deep into the whole story today — that's its own newsletter, trust me — but the short version is this: what followed was three major surgeries in eighteen months, and the last three years of my life have been marked by a kind of physical suffering that most people around me had no idea was even happening. Unrelated rogue staples found inside my ovaries. A supposedly minor procedure that ended with me bleeding for two hours straight, being rushed to the ER, and passing out in the vestibule — concussion and all — while my doctors shrugged. Ferritin iron levels at a 7 while being told everything was normal. Stage 4 adrenal fatigue dismissed as "above their pay grade."
And through all of it, I kept showing up. Nobody knew.
When you feel like absolute dog shit every single day, you stop caring about string lights.
· · ·
I'd look out at that patio and see failure. The overgrown stuff. The things piling up. The version of the space I had wanted it to be versus what it actually was. And instead of doing something about it, I'd just feel worse — guilty for letting it go, too depleted and in pain to fix it, and then aggravated all over again that it still looked the way it looked.
Round and round.
I've been watching this show called Filthy Fortunes lately — and if you haven't seen it, the premise is that they go into hoarders' homes, sell off a massive amount of their belongings, clear out the junk, and then do a full deep clean of the house. And what gets me every single time is the moment the person walks back in.
The relief on their faces.
Like someone physically lifted something off their shoulders. Like they can breathe for the first time in years. Because here's the thing — they couldn't see it from the inside. When you're living inside the chaos, it just becomes the air you breathe. You stop registering what it's doing to you.
But the environment was always reflecting something. It always is.
· · ·
This weekend, for the first time in a long time, I woke up and felt good. Genuinely, physically good. And something in me just said — today's the day.
It was hot. I did not care.
I got out there and I cleaned that patio. Not perfectly. Not the string lights, not the full vision I had three years ago. But clean. Refreshed. Something I could look at and actually feel proud of.
And standing there afterward, I thought — this is the thing nobody talks about.
We want people to change their lives, clean up their habits, take better care of themselves and their spaces. But if someone is physically depleted, mentally running on fumes, and has been white-knuckling their way through every single day just to appear functional — they don't have the bandwidth to care about the patio.
You don't want to fix what's around you when you can't fix how you feel inside.
The environment isn't the problem. It's the symptom.
And when you finally start to feel better — really better — the desire to take pride in your life comes back on its own. You don't have to force it. You want it.
That's what getting well actually looks like.
· · ·
Here's what I *do* know: I know what it feels like to trudge through mud every single day. To be your own advocate in a medical system that keeps telling you you're fine. To feel invisible in your suffering because you're too proud — or too conditioned — to let anyone see you struggle.
And I know what it feels like to get to the other side.
If you're in the mud right now, I want you to know — the patio isn't the problem. You aren't the problem. And when you're ready to start feeling like yourself again, I'd love to talk.
👉 Book a call here — let's figure out how we can work together.
· · ·
This Week's Practice: The One Small Thing
You don't need to overhaul your space. You need one corner.
- Look around your home and find the spot that bothers you most — the one you avoid looking at or feel a little sink in your chest when you see it.
- Set a timer for 20 minutes. That's it. Not a project, just 20 minutes.
- Notice how you feel when the timer goes off — not just about the space, but about yourself.
The point isn't a clean house. The point is the moment you realize you're someone who does the thing anyway.
🎧 This Week on the Hustle Rebels Podcast
If you missed last week's episode, I sat down with Dr. Shruti Punjabi — urban planner and applied social scientist — to talk about something that doesn't get named nearly enough: the invisible labor that high-achieving women carry every single day.
If you've ever felt exhausted by work that nobody acknowledges, guilty for taking a vacation while everything around you is on fire, or like you're buried under expectations that were never even yours to begin with — this one's for you.
We get into why your brain gets valued at work but your full identity doesn't, how cognitive overload and invisible labor are colliding in real time, and what it actually looks like to redefine success on your own terms instead of the ones that were handed to you.
Shruti's lens on burnout isn't theoretical. It's lived. And this conversation reflects that.
Watch on Youtube:
🎧 Listen here: [Why High-Achieving Women Burn Out (It’s Not Work, It’s This)]
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Until next week — keep turning inward. The answers you've been chasing might already be there.
- Renae
Wayward Wellness Coaching
Hustle Rebels Podcast
