Encore Career Entrepreneur! How Ever Did I Get Here?

So, How Ever Did I Get Here?

Now, there's a question! You see all I ever wanted was to be was a nurse (since age 4 when I had my appendix taken out and played “Nursing School” down the hall from my room in Pediatrics) and a mother (of 5, according to my Mom).

I'm a very lucky girl, you see, because both of those dreams came true. However, I didn't exactly take the “fast track” to fulfillment of my dreams. It was more like a long, winding detour that got me there in the end. Oh well, you know what they say, “It's not the destination. It's the journey that matters.” I got to the destination, but through a very interestingly detoured journey. And now, at 59, I'm on to another entirely new and exciting adventure besides. No sitting around and mulling over what “used to be” for me. Too much yet ahead of me to enjoy.

For tonight, suffice it to say that by age 24, I was a mother, before age 29 I was a nurse, and before age 54, I was “functionally speaking” a “mother of 5”! Oh, once upon a time, I was “in a family way” five times. But I have one single son carried full term and born healthy. And now he has a family of his own. In fact, he and his wife have made me a grandmother one and a half times. I have a beautiful granddaughter, Violet, who will be welcoming a new baby brother this summer.

My “other 4 children,” you ask?  They're George's and I'm hardly old enough to be their mother (whom they lost 17 years ago), but I love him and I love them because they're his and he loves them. So, in my heart, I have the five children that I always wanted ever since my mother can remember. Oh, and they have (between them all) given George eight grandchildren, and I get to share them too! Pretty awesome, right?

So, back to the “How Ever Did I Get Here?” part of the story. By the age of 29, I was a nurse and a newly single parent. Right there a lot of choices went away and a lot of little detours came my way. Enter thirty years of Cardiovascular Nursing, my passion. I started in surgical nursing, graduated my way through Intermediate Care (a “step down” unit) to Critical Care (mixed ICU and CCU), and discovered that it was really Cardiovascular Nursing that I most loved. And so, that is what I did for most of my adult life while mostly single handedly raising my son. My grandmother, a retired nurse by then, would have “stood on her head and spit wooden nickels” to help me finish nursing school so that I would “always be able to take care of” myself and my son. Fast forward 30 wonderful years doing something that I loved and that gave me a tremendous sense of meaning and purpose.

Then, almost a year ago, I wound up in the ER of the same hospital where I worked with a pretty awful left sided headache, feeling like I had ground glass in my left eyelids, and wondering if I was having some kind of stroke. You know how nurses know too much and so, whatever is going on is “probably the worst possible thing”? Well, I guess I was thinking that a stroke was the worst possible thing and was pretty relieved when the ER doctor said I had Shingles. Because how bad could that be? It sure beats having a stroke, right?

Except that I had no idea how terrible Shingles actually could be, and that Shingles could turn into permanent nerve damage, or that you could lose your sight, or your hearing, or your balance, and that the pain could go on for years! I used to say to my manager, “God forbid I leave here and get hit by a bus!” because I was the only nurse in the whole health care system taking care of our Pacemaker patients. But I never, ever, even once, thought something like Shingles would be the end of my nursing career. Surprise, surprise!

Well, now almost a year later, I can honestly look back at that tragedy and see how God has helped me to turn it around into a triumph. It is even clear how all those years of one on one teaching and coaching sessions, how all those small group talks, and the intermittent management positions with staff meetings to run, and responsibility for hiring and training, will serve me going forward. Now I can see how directly, and indirectly, transferable those skills are to other areas. And now I can do it with lifestyle freedom like I never dared to dream of before.

No longer do I have to leave the home I love, and the man that I love, and spend most of my waking time “making a living” only to come home tired and having what little is left of me to offer at home . Now I can make a LIFE instead! And I can make a life (and a living) from home if I want, or I can take it on the road if I need to. THAT is lifestyle freedom. Now I can give the better part of my day to my “real life” as I used to call it when leaving work.

Completely providentially I found the perfect vehicle for someone like me, or for anyone who has moved on in their life, whether by choice or by events completely outside of their choosing, to achieve lifestyle freedom and financial stability.

Curious? Intrigued? I stumbled onto this “secret treasure” last summer and am having the time of my life at it now. The only thing better than finding it for myself is having the chance to share this secret with other people who find themselves, like I did, staring down a very different path before them than they ever would have imagined.

(CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT MY SECRET)!

Talk soon,

Katie Munch

PS  If you (CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT MY SECRET)!, and decide you'd like to be a part of it, please let me know so that I can help you get started. I've been there and it helps to have help!