Just like a heart and trauma, sometimes our self-care needs a jumpstart to learn how to tick again.

Hi, this is Monica Packer, and you're listening to About Progress, where we are about

progress made practical. I have long taught about the deep and practical

importance of leaning into the process when it comes to all things growth. The process is

small wins build over time. A lot of you came to my work on this podcast and have stuck around with it for years

because of the gentle approach I take to what I teach about personal development and more

specifically the great importance of small steps and how taking small steps makes your progress

both more doable and more sustainable over time.

My little saying that I do as a send-off at the end of each episode came from listeners

who told me that listening into the podcast felt like a hug.

But if you have listened to even a few episodes, then you know that that send-off says,

I hope this episode gave you the

hug and kick in the pants you need to grow. And if you hear that, then you may also know that I

try to aim for things to be both gentle and firm. And while I always want you to feel better

than when you came to this podcast, some episodes are more about a kick in the pants.

And today will be that kind of episode. In it, I am going to make a case for the occasional necessity and importance of big steps, especially when it comes to self-care. Self-care that requires time,

time for what we need, and for what we want. This push came for me thanks to my own big step

of taking a solo trip, a trip that forced me into the position of becoming an accidental case study

for this idea that I want to talk about, that we as women occasionally need to go big

when it comes to taking care of ourselves and how doing so acts as a form of radical

reconnection and self-reclamation.

I am already fired up, and I'm going to make the case and share about the case study as well

...