Cydnie Jocelyn

I was deep in postpartum with two boys fifteen months apart, knee deep in the medical, barely alive.

I had a plan with my first. What I got was an emergency c-section, a week in the NICU, rehospitalization at two months. For months we undressed him to skin and a diaper and laid him on a cold bathroom floor in winter, trying to wake him enough to eat.

Six months later I was pregnant again.

Emergency rooms. Hospitalizations. EEGs. MRIs. Two boys and no answers.

Then my first born choked and went out in an ambulance. That is what finally moved genetics, and they connected us to the only place in the country that specializes in the rare genetic disorder our boys have.

Then our second son had it too. Somewhere in all the specialists, an image showed he had already had a stroke. Nobody could tell us when.

Answers made it heavier. PT, OT, feeding therapy.

And every one of those years I worked. From hospital rooms. Nurses in and out all day, me on a laptop after they left.

I hid in the mother's room pumping because it was the only door I could close. The ventilation carried everything. So I sat in there with the machine running and listened to a grown man tell HR I was the problem.

That was my one silent place.

Then I said yes to a solo trip. No work, no children, no hospital monitors beeping. Until a work text came to my personal phone telling me I didn't have a choice.

After three years of working from hospital rooms. That was the sentence.

That was the day I came up for air. I chose my family.

Fifteen months later. Hosted a retreat in Costa Rica with thirteen women. Built a branding company. Got our boys into a third system after two would not listen. Got baptized.

Six weeks ago my husband had a stroke at 36. He is home because we knew from our boys what the signs were.

That same week, a retreat to Greece fourteen months out, sold out in forty-eight hours. I sat in a hospital and watched God do both at once.

I am not writing this for sympathy.

I am writing it for the woman still in postpartum who has not come up for air. I see you. I feel you.

You are more than the story you are in right now. Nobody gets to tear you down. Let's rebuild you.

Three medical systems in three and a half years. Two sons with the same gene mutation. A husband who had a stroke at 36 and is home because we knew what we were looking for.

That is where I learned this. Not a course.

Yes, you.

I know what your Tuesday looks like because it was mine.

You reread the email before you send it. You already know which coworker will repeat it wrong. You've got an appointment Thursday you haven't told work about because you don't want to be the woman with the excuse again. You did the school forms at 11pm. You cannot remember the last time somebody asked what you needed and waited for the answer.

That was me fourteen months ago. Two boys in and out of the hospital, a man at work telling people I was the problem, and I was so far gone I thought he might be right.

Then I booked a flight two weeks out, by myself, to a country I'd never been to, with a company I'd never met.

I wasn't ready. Nothing had calmed down. My life did not open a window and invite me.

I went anyway. That is the only difference between me now and me a year before.

You don't need it to get easier first. It won't.

Which one was your Tuesday? Tell me the number.

1 - rereading the email
2 - the coworker who repeats it wrong
3 - the appointment you haven't mentioned
4 - school forms at 11pm

And if you thought of a friend while reading this, send it to her. She's having the same Tuesday.

What I see first...

People think I look at logos. I look at the gap between what someone says out loud and what they actually built.

Nothing dramatic here. Just information.

More Than a Footnote is October 8-11 at a private log cabin on Big Sauk Lake in Sauk Centre. Fourteen spots.

Early bird pricing ends September 1:
Shared Queen $470
Shared King $500
Twin $550

That covers your room, all meals, and everything we do together.

Payment plans are available. I'd rather you come on a plan than not come at all.

Link below if you want the details. https://f.mtr.cool/misersehem

We have made rest into something you earn.

Finish the list, clear the inbox, get everyone settled, then you are allowed to stop.

Except the list does not finish. So you never stop. You just get quieter about how tired you are.

Here is what it actually costs. You stop being able to hear yourself. Not dramatically. Slowly. Until someone asks what you want and you genuinely do not know.

Rest is not the reward for the work. It is the condition that makes you any good at it.

You don't need another vacation. You need to come back to yourself.

There's a difference. A vacation interrupts your life and hands it right back the moment you're home. This is meant to change the way you carry it.

For eight days on Crete, everything is built for that. Meals made fresh and with intention, the kind of eating that's kept this island healthy for generations. A quiet village fifteen minutes from the sea. Ancient trails, slow mornings, real conversation. An intimate group, not a crowd.

I chose every piece of this on purpose. Not because it photographs well because it does something to you. You slow down enough to hear what you've been too busy to listen to. And you come home different.

August 13–20, 2027. Douliana, Crete.

Join the waitlist today, everything is at the link. cydniejocelyn.com/greece-retreat

I had been going for months before I met Brandis and I had known Brandis two weeks when I got in my truck on the way to church, a song came on, and it broke me open.

I was sobbing. And in the middle of it I knew two things: I needed to get baptized, and I needed to find Brandis.

Two weeks. I barely knew her. But my mind, my body and my soul were all saying the same thing, and none of them were asking my opinion.

So I found her, crying, and told her.

She screamed.

Not gently. Not carefully. She was just so excited she could not hold it in, and standing there, still crying, I knew I had found the right person.

A few weeks later both of them were standing in the water with me. Annie, who brought me somewhere I did not know I was being called to be. And Brandis, who never once asked me why, or whether I was sure. She just walked me through it.

That is the whole thing I wanted to build. A room where a woman can say the thing she does not know how to say yet, and somebody just walks her through it.

So when I knew I wanted to host a retreat for Christian women, she is who I went to and it turned out she was already writing a women's study.

We put the two together. That is what More Than a Footnote is.

October 8 through 11. A private log cabin on Big Sauk Lake. Three nights. Fourteen women. Five women of Scripture, and the part where you stop reading past your own name.

If you have been the one holding everything together and nobody has asked you what you need in a long time, that is who this is for.

Early bird pricing holds until September 1. Details are in the link.