Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Stitcher
Dear Listeners
I’ve been avoiding this episode, but I owe it to you and to myself to stop proceeding as if my last published episode ended with a semi-colon; to be continued. If it’s possible to place a podcasting period at the end of a body of work, then that’s what I need to do now.
I didn’t know that my last published episode would in fact be my last episode, but now I need to face the facts and acknowledge that the creative muse that kept me going for seven years and over a hundred episodes… well, sometime in the spring of 2020, she, my internal creative muse… she packed her bags and moved out of my creative soul. At first, I thought she was just taking a little break, you know, catch her breath and then come on back for more. But the longer she’s been gone, the more I need to face the reality that she’s not coming back. At least not in the same way that she stayed with me before.
I’ve thought a lot about what’s happened, why I stopped podcasting. I want to share with you what’s happened as best as I understand it.
I stopped podcasting at first because the start of the pandemic was overwhelming and scary. I needed to focus a lot of energy towards my family and the emotional health of my then 18 year old daughter whose senior year of high school had completely gone sideways. And I also needed to focus a lot of energy towards helping reinvent Southern Oregon Bariatric Center, which was originally designed to be a program that was very hands-on, very human interactive. That was part of our strength, but in the face of a global pandemic, all of a sudden our strength became a vulnerability and a liability to our patients, but we couldn’t just let the program die, so we had to reinvent it and reinvent it very quickly.
And then spring turned to summer and the murder of George Floyd and the resulting social unrest gutted me and left me feeling like I needed to listen a whole lot more and talk significantly less.
Then as summer ended, my husband and I had to agree with our younger daughter, that it was in fact in her best interest to still go off to college, many states away from us, even though there was a pandemic happening and at that point, no vaccinations.
Then, days after returning from dropping our daughter off at college, I did ugly cry when I said goodbye, I’m not going to lie to you, my husband ruptured his Achilles tendon in a freak little accident and needed to have surgery.
And then on top of it all, as if 2020 wasn’t hard enough already, the worst day of my life and thousands of others occurred on September 8th, 2020, when an urban wildfire called the Alameda fire ravaged my sweet little town of Talent, Oregon, and the next town just north of us. In less than 24 hours, over 2,500 homes and businesses were utterly destroyed.
My husband and I, we were lucky, incredibly lucky. Our home of 17 years against all odds was not destroyed. Even though the structures on the west and south sides of our property were reduced to molten ash. It’s hard to put my complex feelings about the Alameda fire into words. I will just tell you that I have been living within the duality of both gut-wrenching grief for the total destruction all around us, and profound gratitude that we still have our home to return to each and every day.
And life has gone on. But in fact, it hasn’t gone on for everyone, over 700,000 deaths later (and many more around the world), we are still in the midst of this pandemic and sadly to our own detriment, in the USA we continue to be divided over the essential questions on how best to get on the other side of it.
I have felt a little and sometimes a lot lost amidst all of this, the events of the past year and a half have left me feeling exhausted and heartbroken. And when living in these types of feelings, my inclination is to speak less, not more, to listen, to be quiet. So that’s what I’ve been doing.
I’ve not wanted to say goodbye to you, but neither have I had the ability to pick up the microphone and start recording podcasts again. So I’ve been in this limbo waiting for the muse to return, but she hasn’t, therefore it’s time I acknowledge that although creating the Weight Loss Surgery Podcast has been wonderful and amazing and an honor, it is a creative endeavor that has run its course.
I will keep the episodes up because they remain relevant and offer important educational content that I believe still helps people. But it’s time I put a period at the end of this body of work.
Thank you for all your love and support over all these years and never forget, I will always believe in you.
In kindness, Reeger
{ 0 comments… add one now }