49. Missing Person

Here we explore anything and everything that might support us on the journey to mental wellness , from hope to grief , possibilities to challenges , joy to heartache . Nothing is off limits . Let's reflect on our lives and discover ways to heal and grow together . I'm so glad you're here with me . Oh , my goodness , it's been a while , friends , almost six months .

I am really happy to be back here with you . If you are a new listener , welcome . I'm glad that you are here and look forward to learning more about you . If you listen at all in season one , welcome back .

I've missed you all quite a bit , but for reasons I still don't completely understand myself , I went into hiding and I think I'm coming out of hiding now . I don't really know . Before we move forward , I have decided that this does not need to be a weekly podcast .

I will podcast when I'm able , which I'm hoping is at least a couple of times a month , maybe more , maybe less and I'll upload the episode whenever I feel like it . In season one I tried to upload every Tuesday and that's not necessarily working with my life right now , so I will upload when I'm able . Where to start ? I've been hiding . I've six months .

I have frequently and purposely isolated myself from my friends and my family , which includes my husband , paul . I have been in bed . I've been in bed . I have been sad and lonely and depressed . I have been sad and lonely and depressed and I have not reached out and I have not been available to those who have reached out to me .

I stopped going to therapy , although by the time you listen to this , I will have already gone back . I have stopped doing things that bring me joy , including podcasting . It first started , I think I think it first started in late July or early August 2024 .

I was doing a couple of out-of-town choreography gigs back-to-back , which is something I can't really do with my ME CFS , and if you'd like to learn more about my health , go ahead and listen to season one , episode 20 .

So it was the second day of the second back-to-back choreography gig and I was too sick to get out of bed , to go to work , to go to camp , and it's happened pretty often that I'm unable to get out of bed . I'm just , I have no energy due to my ME-CFS .

So this happens kind of a lot , but it's never happened in a situation when I'm working out of town , so I missed an entire day of camp . I was the choreographer for this camp . I also was the camp director , so I'm supposed to be there to oversee everything and I just I couldn't do it .

Shout out to the peeps that took them for the team and covered for me . I will never forget it . I know you love to give unique gifts and my husband , paul , and I have just the solution for you Introducing the Pretty Great Merch Company . And I have just the solution for you Introducing the Pretty Great Merch Company .

Paul and I have an online store and we're selling merch . That's pretty great , if I do say so myself . We've got t-shirts , sweatshirts , hats , bags , shower curtains , mugs , stickers so much great stuff Unique designs , quality gear and goods that let you stand out . Let our Pretty Great Merch show off your style .

Check us out on Instagram and Facebook at the Pretty Great Merch Co . Or check out the link in the show notes of this episode . So that was a Tuesday Literally slept all day . The next day I woke up and I still wasn't feeling well , but I was feeling well enough to go to camp .

And I get out of bed and I just I'm not walking very well this particular morning and luckily I had brought a walking stick that my father-in-law had made for me Really cool . I don't know what wood it's made out of , but it's a super cool walking stick that my father-in-law had made for me Really cool .

I don't know what wood it's made out of , it's a super cool walking stick that he made for me . And I had it in the back of my car . And so I used the cane that day . Well , maybe like only the first half of the day , but I used the cane that day to teach and that was a very humbling experience .

I realized that people use canes all of the time , but this was the first time that I had let other people see me like this , let other people see me use a walking cane like as an actual cane . When I got home from these two back-to-back gigs , I well , first I crashed and second I went out and I bought a couple of canes .

So now I have , like this , super sassy , cute , sparkly fancy cane Should I ever need a sparkly fancy cane and I have like just like a regular fold up black one and I think I've only used the black one once since August . I don't use it very often , but I do need to have it around .

So when I came back from the two back to back gigs , I had like two days off and then I had to start another choreography gig , which wasn't I don't know that I would call it an out of town gig , but it was 35 to 40 minutes away and they had already started rehearsals .

I was coming in late because I had been at these other gigs and I got through the first week of rehearsal and the second week I just crashed and I started being like . I started saying I'm so sorry I can't come in today and I felt horrible and I quit .

I quit the gig halfway through , which I absolutely needed to do for myself , but felt and still sort of feels horrible . Luckily they they had an incredible choreographer that was already in the show and so he took over and he did an incredible job and this is , I'm going to say , late August . I decided to apply for disability .

It was something that was sort of on my radar for a year or two , but honestly , I just thought I'm not sick enough to to get disability or to use disability . I don't want to be looked at as like one of those people that you know messes with the system , who's not really sick enough but just wants their paycheck .

And I finally realized that I had quit five choreography jobs in two years , which is absolutely not how I want to be running my business . I feel like I've burned some bridges and although all of the jobs that I've quit , they've known that it's due to health reasons , I still feel horrible .

And when I realized that I had missed that much work in two years , I was like I need to apply for disability and I'll do a whole nother podcast probably about how disability works .

But you can only make a certain level of income to qualify for disability and my part-time job at Alive and Kickin you can hear all about them in season one my part-time job at Alive and Kickin would have me making too much money to qualify for disability money to qualify for disability .

So I put in my month notice and I told the cast on the first day of rehearsal and my plan was to be there for the next three weeks , four weeks to finish out my contract and instead I got incredibly sick and never went back . I never went back .

Luckily that was another organization that was really kind with me , but I never went back , which made me feel even more horrible . It turns out I had mono at the time , one of the issues with my ME-CFS . I don't even really understand how it happens , but I cycle in and out of mono . So but I'm not . This is just interesting side fact .

I'm not contagious unless I have a fever . But I didn't have a fever then . I just couldn't get out of bed anyway . So I sort of , you know , gave my notice at the beginning of September and then I never got to go back because I was sick , which means that I lost that community instantly . Instantly they were gone .

These are people that part of my job with them was communicating with them multiple times a week . So to go from communicating with them multiple times a week to nothing was really devastating to me and , to be fair , I didn't really reach out to anybody either . But they didn't reach out to me and I was just down , really , really down .

And in the meantime I got my application in for disability and I was told I already have a lawyer . It's not necessary for me to have a lawyer at this point in my process , but I do already have a lawyer , which is great because she's been able to give me some advice .

She said that it's going to take at least a year at least a year for me to get approved for disability benefits , which is heartbreaking . But also I really appreciated her honesty with me , which means that I can only make the cap just changed at the new year , but I can only make like $1,500 , $1,600 a month .

So we are primarily living off of my husband's salary . My husband , paul , is a freelance musician . He's an excellent , excellent percussionist . But freelance work is challenging . You don't always know when you're going to be working and you don't always know when you're going to get paid .

So to have him be the sole breadwinner in our family right now is incredibly challenging . And you know , back a few months ago I thought like , oh , is he going to leave me ? And honestly , I didn't .

I didn't really think that he would leave me , but I thought that he would start to resent me and if you know Paul , of course he's not ever going to do that , but that was , that was definitely a fear of mine . I dislike not working .

I enjoy work and I do have some things that have been going on , some choreography stuff that has happened during the fall and is coming up . So I do have some work , but I'm barely bringing in any money .

I'm barely bringing in any money and I realized that I've been measuring my success , my personal success , by my productivity and my ability to make or not make money , which is probably another podcast .

But it was a horrible August through , well , november , just on my end , trying to get used to this new life and trying to focus on all of the things that I can do . I've really started loving , loving , loving acrylic abstract paintings , so I've been doing that anyway . So things weren't good .

I I also didn't feel like I was able to pick myself up and dust myself off , and that's something that I can do a lot of times but I just oh , snowball's saying hi , if you you need to listen to I don't know what episode . It was all about Snowball , our dog , she's the best and she's barking and that's all there is to it .

So things were pretty bad , very , very , very dark , dark time . I struggle with depression and anxiety and I'm just learning about my ADHD right now and having a couple of chronic illnesses just has been kicking my ass . Do you love reading as much as I do ? Then you will love Bookshop .

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Goodness has been kicking my ass . And then and then on November 27th which , in 2024 was the day before Thanksgiving , my husband Paul's dad died unexpectedly . We're still not entirely sure exactly what happened .

I'm not sure that we will ever know exactly what happened , but he went from standing to falling face first on the ground in their house on a hardwood floor , and he got a head injury , and we are pretty sure he died upon impact . We think he possibly had a heart attack and that's what caused him to fall , or a stroke or something , but we're not sure .

Now this is a Wednesday and Paul's grandmother has not been doing well for a while . She's in respite care . She's 96 , 97 . I can't remember .

She's an incredible woman , but she has not been doing well and , to be honest with you , we've been waiting for the call that she was going to pass and the Friday before Archie passed , paul and I and his dad , archie and his mom , sally , all met at Grandma Helen's care facility and just hung out with her for like 20-30 minutes .

She was doing great , it was so fun to be there .

And then the four of us decided to go out to lunch , which isn't something that's happened for a while just the four of us . So we went to this cute little greasy spoon in Colby , wisconsin , and Archie looked so good .

He had like this purple flannel on and he's got this long , long beard that looks like Santa Claus , and he had a stormy chromer hat on and he had just gotten dentures .

So he looked great and I said , archie , you look so handsome today , handsome today , which is I've never said that to him before because I don't know , do you tell your father-in-law that he looks handsome ? But I'm glad I did . And he said , thank you . He had been in some poor health the year prior fall of 2023 .

He was in and out of the VA hospital here in Minneapolis with some heart issues and that Friday that we had seen him and I said you look handsome , handsome . I can't say handsome , handsome , handsome . It's easy for you to say Handsome , thank you .

I got a call from the va this morning and they said everything's looking good , we're , we're feeling like you know , you're good , you're better , you're healthier and you know , let us know if you need anything . Otherwise , you know , this can be , this can be . The end of this care plan is how I understood what he said .

So from Friday to Wednesday he dies , you know , five days . Um , yeah , so on top of a really , really shitty time , archie dies , which just was not on the radar . I was in bed . It was about 10 o'clock in the morning , I was getting ready to , you know , get up for the day and Paul rushed upstairs . I heard him talking on the phone .

I just , by the way , I heard his voice . I knew he was talking to his mom , but I didn't know anything bad had happened . And he just he came upstairs , he kind of ran to the bed and he said I've got bad news . He said , um , dad was standing in the hallway and somehow he fell down and he's dead . And somehow he fell down and he's dead .

And I was then and I still am completely shocked . We packed our bags immediately . We got the dog all packed up and we went to his mom's house and in the meantime Paul's two siblings also came . One lives in Phoenix and another one lives like three hours away .

So we were all together for like five or six nights , which was very nice that we could be together . But so strange . But something happened to me . I mean nothing happened . What I mean is like , figuratively , something happened while we were at the house . So we were all together . Figuratively , something happened while we were at the house .

We were all together . I just thought I'm so tired of the way that I've been living and I want to live better .

I want to live better Because I don't know how much longer I have on this earth and part of the issue for me personally is that with my ME-CFS , I'm not really supposed to push myself I'm not supposed to , or what I think the question is for me right now is how do I push myself to move forward when I'm not supposed to push myself at all ?

How do I push myself to move forward , to move ahead to live the life I want to lead , when I'm not supposed to push myself at all ? And I don't know the answer to that ?

I will say that , even though January was also a shit show and like 19 years long , it was also a better month for me because I spent some time thinking about what are the things that I love . That's how I got into painting . I got to spend a lot of time with Paul because we got COVID for the very first time .

But how do I and you know , this is the million dollar question for everybody , right Like , how do I live the life that I want to live ? How do I live free , freely For me ? How can I be my most creative self ? And then , how do I make money off of that so that we're not broke ? That was a lot .

That was a lot to come back into after six months , but I appreciate you sticking with me and loving me . Even when I was missing , I truly felt like I was missing . I can't find myself , I don't recognize myself at all , and now I'm in a different spot , a different spot , and it's so much better here .

Different spot , a different spot , and it's so much better here . Hey , if you are interested in being a guest , will you reach out ? Will you let me know ?

I'm looking for people that are willing and open to sharing a personal story or stories of hardship , of tough times , of how things weren't going the way that you had planned at all and how did you , or how are you healing and growing through that . I would love to chat with you about that . You can find me on social .

I'm on Instagram and Facebook , at Nikki Krumminga Hill , which is N-I-C-K-I-E podcast

. At gmailcom , if you'd like to support my work , I've already . We already had a couple of commercials thrown in here today , so you can support me those ways . You can buy my book , which is called Things I'm Thinking About A Daughter's Thoughts on the Loss of Her Mom . That is linked in the show notes here .

You could buy me a coffee , which is also shared in the link excuse me , which is also linked in the show notes . Here you can share my work . You could say hey , I just heard this podcast the other day . You could go back and listen to season one . Really , all of that really , really , really helps independent freelance artists like me .

So great to talk to you today . I'll be back soon . Super duper love you and , as always , thanks for healing and growing with me . Bye , this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal , health or professional advice . I am not responsible for any losses , damages or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast .

This podcast is not intended to replace professional medical advice .