Episode 7 Introducing Alison and How The Oxygen Mask Effect Came to Be

Welcome to today's episode of The Oxygen Mask Effect. I'm Alison Swerdloff, your host and wanted to introduce myself. Not all of you know who I am or how The Oxygen Mask effect came about. And I wanted to explain, explain that introduce myself. Let you know why I am doing this program and why I feel it's important. As I mentioned, my name is Alison Swerdloff. I am a recovering people pleaser, as I like to say, and I have I have a number of years ago, I realized something wasn't right in my life.

To backup, I was raised by a single mother for my teen years after my parents divorced when I was about 11 or 12 years old. And we lived in a couple of different places. We moved back to live near family when I was 12. I started school in Brooklyn, New York, and basically lived in New York most of my life. I met my husband at the age of 20, married him at 22. And this is just background. Happily married, but things happened that might not have been the way I would have liked. But six years later, we had our first child. My children, just so you know, are two of the most important things in my life. But it wasn't, I mean, parenthood is never the easiest. But it was also a little more challenging because my daughter at the age of a year old developed multiple food allergies. So I spent a lot of time learning how to take care of her, how to take care of her allergies, how to help her live a normal life even with them. Over the years. She thinks goodness has outgrown them. But in second grade was diagnosed with ADHD, which can be a challenge for anybody in any family. So I had to learn all about ADHD and how to deal and how to handle it, how to help her through it and how to advocate for her. At five years after my daughter was born, I had my son, he developed bronchiolitis at four months old he was a preemie. So he his lungs weren't fully developed, he was diagnosed with bronchiolitis at four months old. By the time he was 16 months, he was already diagnosed with asthma. So being a premie, he had a little bit of issues growing up to begin with less than a year old was diagnosed with a potentially life threatening peanut allergy. He was on the highest potential possible level to the point that the allergist said we will never be putting a protein near his mouth. He will only get tested via blood tests. And with his blood tests, he was always in the very highly allergic category, not a potential not even a potential for doing a challenge test. Fast forward, I was the parent who did it all. I stayed working locally, instead of working in the city where I could have been earning more, and in supporting helping out more with the family financially. But my husband said one of us needs to be local and close by just in case the kids need us. So I'm the one who did it. I worked full time. I was the one who got the kids ready for school. I was there when they got home or they went to an after school program or at some point we had a babysitter. But I was the one who did all of their sports activities. I did all of their community activities, doctor's appointments. I was the caregiver. I was the mother who did it all. I was the parent that the doctors knew. And we had experienced a lot of things in our lives. I and you know, unfortunately, two of my brothers-in-law passed away. The first one when my daughter was in fourth grade, second one a year and a half later, a year and a half after that my father passed away in December of 2008, two months before my daughter's Bat Mitzvah in March of 2009. My grandmother passed away in December of 2009. And my mother, after being diagnosed with lung, liver cancer, and metastasized to the brain, after 20 months, passed away in December of 2010. So needless to say, December is a tough month.

Now, a couple months after my mother passed away, and I'm not saying for any other reason, but to explain who I am and why I'm doing what I'm doing. A couple of months after my mother passed away, in February of 2011, I woke up one day and said, something's not right. I don't know who I am. I'm not happy. I don't know what's going on. I need to figure out who I am and where I fit in. And I said this to my husband. I started researching, I started looking at things. I started going to book groups and crafting groups because I'm a crafter and I'm an avid book reader. I couldn't figure out who I was. They didn't really help. I needed to find a place I belonged. I needed to find my tribe. But I also realized during this time, I started doing a journey of self discovery. And it's still ongoing 10 years later. But through this journey, I realized, up until now, I had been what everybody else wanted me to be. I was a wife, I was a mother. I was a caregiver. As my grandparents were getting older, we a bunch of us split it, you know, shifted my mother, my uncles, my cousin, my sister and I we all were caregivers to our, to our grandparents. With my sister and brother in law was a caregiver to my mother. I was also a caregiver to both of my children with between the life threatening food allergies, the asthma, the ADHD. And at the end of 2012, my son was also diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. So my husband and I were dealing with that, as well. So my life centered around my family centered around my community. I was part of the school PTA, I was a class parent for both of my children. I was the one who took them who went to all of their school activities. I did all of their school meetings. I was the intermediary if there was an issue, I was the advocate for their health and everything for my son's peanut allergies and asthma. And for him to get the care he needed in school, for him to get the speech therapy, for my daughter to get the support she needed with her ADHD, so the teachers understood what she needed. I was also part of my synagogue board, I was involved with that I was PTA president for the synagogue, on multiple committees and was very active. I was involved in that. I was also a scout leader for both of my children. That's eight years of scout leading for two children over the course of time. And at one point there was even an overlap. I was doing both of them at the same time. So this is who I was, but I realized something was missing. Because I was doing for everybody and my health suffered. I was diagnosed with severe high blood pressure, at least 15 years ago, actually, yeah, probably about 15 years ago, maybe a little bit more and was told basically, tell your husband and children that if your blood pressure doesn't go down, you could die. That was the severity of my blood pressure. And as I said, I was working full time, I was taking care of the kids, taking care of the house.

And my husband was starting to be a little bit verbally abusive, and a little bit emotionally abusive. And I'm not going to say he's totally at fault. But when I brought it up to him, he wasn't able to fully ease out of it. He thought about it when he was thinking about it, it was fine. But within a couple of months he would revert back. He would make negative comments behind my back or in front of me to family and friends. He argued before he thought and then afterwards would backtrack and say well, maybe this, but I would ask a question automatically I would get shot down. So it was challenging. It became got to a point that I didn't know where I was anymore, where I fit in. I spent over a year finding my tribe. Getting out of the house. I met a group of people with similar interests, similar thought processes. And I realized this is where I fit in, because they didn't know me, as a wife, as a mother, as a community leader, as a this as of that, they got to know me, they got to know the real Alison. And I realized, that's where I fit in. Because I started being invited to people's houses. I started being invited out to dinner. When my kids were younger, I wasn't able to go out with the other mothers. I didn't have the closeness of the friendships with the other parents that other mothers and families did. Because my husband didn't want me going out. He didn't want me paying for a babysitter, for even an hour, so I could go out with the other girls, I was invited out. There were school events that I wanted to attend. But if he couldn't get home early enough, I wasn't able to because I couldn't pay for a babysitter. I might have had closer connections, I might have been closer with some of the mothers. I might not have needed to look outside. But I wasn't feeling like I fit in. Because I didn't have the connections, I wasn't able to go out socially with people as much. So finding people who were my tribe was great. It made my life a lot easier because I had people who liked me and wanted to spend time with me.

If I there was a point, probably about seven years ago, maybe six, maybe eight years ago that my daughter common good mom, you have a better social life than I do. And I think she was a senior in high school at the time. You know, it's like when your high school senior is telling you, you have a better social life than she does,there's a little issue there. But for the first time in my life, I was having a social life. So I realized I needed to find who I was. Once I found who I was, I realized who I didn't want to be anymore. And during that time I ended up about a year and a half later, unfortunately, just about the time my son was diagnosed with his chronic health issues. My husband and I decided to separate. We ended up living together for another year almost, because at that point, we were just before Hurricane Sandy. And we're dealing with my son's health issues. I hadn't really separated at that point, we were still living together, we were just starting to discuss that. Hurricane Sandy had arrived, literally two days after my son's diagnosis, official diagnosis. And we were on Long Island, so we got hit pretty bad, to the point that we had over five feet of water in our basement for over, for almost a week. And we were dealing with my son's new diagnosis, not sure how to handle it, not sure how to take care of him or what we needed to do. And he was sick, he really couldn't do anything. And I had recently lost my job. I had lost my job about a year before, you know, so there was a lot going on. I was trying to start a business at that point. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong business. And I realized I needed to spend time with him. So I could I took care of the house. So I was still handling a lot of things for the house, even though I knew I wasn't going to be living in it. Um, I was still the primary caregiver, especially since I was not working. I mean, I was trying to build a business but I wasn't working. So I was still the primary caregiver for my children. I was there for them, drove them to and from wherever we were living to school, when school reopened, and we rebuilt the house. And that's when the separation really hit. And we started working through this and created the Separation Agreement. But most of my life was around the kids. And even though yes, I had a social life, I was finally having a life of my own. But I still did everything for them. And I was still figuring out who I was. And that's never gonna end. They're still my children. They always will be. They're young adults now. And I realized a lot of other women don't know who they are, especially women. I'm not saying men to, but especially women. We are the caregivers. We are the people pleasers. Everybody asks you to do this, you do that, you get involved in community activities. It's yes, yes, yes. But how many times have you wanted to say no. And part of my learning process was learning to say no. And realizing, saying no. Excuse me, saying no isn't That's selfish. Saying no to somebody else or to something else that doesn't serve is saying yes to myself. And I realized, women in general, in particular, are taught, don't make waves don't cause problems being meek. I was meek in my marriage for over 20 years. After my separation, so many people who knew me before, said, You are a different person. It's like you've become the person you're supposed to be, but you weren't able to be. And you know what? That's huge. When people who knew me say that. They knew me in my marriage, they knew me for 20/15 years in my marriage. And they're telling me that I became the person I should be or should have been. But I was living in his shadow, I was letting him control everything I did. Not living my life. In the end of 2017, I realized I needed to help others. So I started taking coaching trainings, I've become a certified virtual coach through Eben Pagan training, or coaching. And I also earned my certification as a Canfield Success Trainer of the Success Principles. So I was certified through Jack Canfield, the creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul. And I'm going to tell you, his training is amazing. In 2018, I started figuring out trying to figure out how I can help other people. It has been a long haul. I've tried doing things over the years. And in the last year, The Oxygen Mask Effect was born. I'm not going to take credit for the name, I didn't name it, somebody in one of my coaching groups did, but I'm glad she did, because it's perfect. Basically, I realized, I want to help others learn to create self care habits. What is self care, it's not selfish, it's doing for you before you do for others. You can't take care of yourself if you have an empty cup. So my goal is to help you get there. And I'm about total wellness. So we'll have conversations with people in so many different areas of interest. But it all revolves around taking care of you. When I say total wellness, I mean emotional, physical, health, body, spiritual and sexual wellness. So total wellness, it's not just taking care of one aspect. It's not just saying no, although believe me thing, saying no, it's so empowering. But it's realizing you are an amazing person. You are top priority, you are most important. We say yes to so many other people. We should be starting to say yes to ourselves and no to so many other aspects. Someone asks you to join a committee? Is it a committee that really serves you? Is it something that will benefit you, or just take energy from you and benefit somebody else? Saying no is not selfish? Saying yes to something that doesn't serve you is. Through The Oxygen Mask fEfect podcast, through my facebook group, The Oxygen Mask Effect, through my coaching program, also called The Oxygen Mask Effect. I want to help other women learn and realize saying nose not selfish. Self care is top priority. Learn to create your own self care habits. That's where you're going to thrive. Untill you set up the habits that work best for you. And self care is not universal. But I do for self care is not the same of what you do for self care. It is very personal. And together we'll figure out what your personal self care routine and self care habits are. I'm looking forward to speaking with everybody more. I hope this helps you figure out who I am and learn who I am and why I'm doing this why The Oxygen Mask Effect podcast has come out. And I look forward to seeing you and speaking with you on the next podcast. Stay tuned for more wonderful interviews, you'll interview uh, you'll hear the full interviews with the people that you've seen that you've already heard from, as well as a lot of new interviews as well. I have some great people lined up and I'm looking forward to sharing them with you. Over the course of time I will also be interspersing more just of me about different topics. You can follow me at the oxygen mask effect dot comm, website due to come up to be published shortly, you can follow me on Facebook or join my group the oxygen mask effect on Facebook, I am on Instagram, I'm on all social media. Also sign up for my free workshop September 18. I am doing a free self care workshop for two hours, feel free to sign up. I will be posting the link in the show notes. And I am looking forward to seeing you on the next episode.

I hope you've enjoyed this episode of The Oxygen Mask Effect. I hope you've learned some tips and tricks on creating your own self care habits and routines. And for more information, follow me on the oxygen mask effect dot com. Subscribe to my channel, review the episodes and I look forward to seeing them reach out to me and join my facebook group, The Oxygen Mask Effect or reach out to me on Facebook at Alison Swerdloff and on Instagram at Alison Swerdloff. Also, feel free to find out to contact me for more information about my free self care workshop. I look forward to speaking with you soon.