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Have you ever noticed that after a week of pushing through the grind, the moment you
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finally let go on the weekend, a migraine is there to meet you?
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It feels like a cruel irony.
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The very rest you earned is the one thing your body seems to reject.
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Welcome to Migraine Heroes, a podcast for people living with chronic migraines with
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years of pain, misunderstanding and lack of answers.
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I'm Diane Ducam, I've helped more than a thousand people reduce the burden of migraines
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and feel more in control.
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My mission in life?
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To help a million people.
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Each episode brings you grounded insight into what your body might be asking for and what
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Just to keep you fully supported, this podcast is educational.
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For diagnosis or medication, always work with your doctor.
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Now take a breath and let's dive in.
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In this episode, you will learn the physiological phenomenon of let-down migraines and why sudden
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relaxation can impact your nervous system, the Eastern perspective on why a sudden shift
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from doing to being can cause energy to flare upwards, and a simple strategy to bridge the
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gap between your work week and your weekend to avoid those let-down migraines.
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Someone in our community recently asked for a podcast on the weekend migraine.
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It stopped me in my tracks because it's such a big unspoken topic.
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So not the most common migraine pattern, but for those who live it, one of the most frustrating
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And it doesn't stop at weekends, it often shows up on holidays, long-awaited breaks,
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the first day after a sprint, that moment when rest finally arrives, and is immediately
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You push through the week, you hold it together, you manage your deadlines, people, noise,
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screens, responsibilities, you tell yourself, just make it to the weekend.
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And then you get there, you exhale, your shoulder drops, you sleep in, linger in your bed, maybe
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say yes to a glass of wine, maybe, maybe, a later night, maybe, a slower morning, for
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sure, and that's when it hits, a pounding head, nausea, light sensitivity, the cruel
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timing of a migraine that seems to say, now.
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In western medicine, this is often called a let-down migraine. And the name alone can
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feel a bit dismissive, I don't know how you feel about it, as if it's all in your head,
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as if relaxing somehow caused this, as if you failed at resting properly.
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Another can plant a quiet doubt, like, is it psychological, am I doing this to myself?
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Should I be able to control this?
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And here's the important part, you're not doing this on purpose. This isn't weakness,
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or lack of resilience, or an inability to relax the right way. What's happening is
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very real, very physical, even if the trigger is tied to a change in stress.
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Your nervous system, hormones, blood vessels, and energy reserves have been running in high
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alert mode all week. And when the pressure suddenly drops, the body doesn't always transition
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For some migraine brains, that shift itself is the trigger.
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So what makes the weekend and holiday migraines so emotionally loaded, they don't just take
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away time, they take away the reward, the rest you earned, the moments you were looking
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forward to. And over time, that can create anxiety around rest itself, will I pay for
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So if you've ever felt angry, or confused, or guilty, or even betrayed by your own body
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when a migraine arrives exactly when life slows down, you're not imagining it, and you're
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And no, it's not just in your head. The
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research suggests that this isn't about rest being the problem.
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It's not that your body can't handle relaxation, or that you've done something wrong by finally
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What matters far more is the change, and more precisely the speed at which that change
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happens inside of your body.
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So during a busy work week, many people with migraines live in a state of sustained sympathetic
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activation. Your nervous systems fight or flight mode.
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You're alert, you're braced, you're vigilant, cortisol and adrenaline are circulating at
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higher levels, helping you meet deadlines, manage pressure, and keep going even when
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And these hormones don't just affect your mood, they regulate your blood vessels, they
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regulate inflammation, they regulate blood sugar, digestion, and how your brain processes
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In very real terms, they're holding your system together.
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Then the weekend arrives.
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The alarm clock is off, the emails stop, the pressure lifts, the noise goes. And when that
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stress suddenly drops, cortisol levels can fall quickly as well.
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Research has shown that this rapid decline, not stress itself, can be a powerful migraine
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trigger for some people.
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The nervous system, which has been running at high speed all week, doesn't always downshift
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Instead, it stumbles.
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Think of it like a car travelling at 90mph that suddenly slams into a wall of slowdown.
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Even if slowing down is the goal, an abrupt deceleration can be jarring. So the system
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struggles with the loss of momentum.
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And for a migraine-prone brain, that instability can tip things into pain, nausea, light sensitivity,
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or cognitive fog, or any other forms of migraine that you might be experiencing.
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This is why it's so important to name something that often gets missed.
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Stress-related migraines don't always come from stress increasing.
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For some people, migraines flare when life ramps up. For others, they appear when life
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These are two completely opposite patterns, yet both labelled stress-induced.
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That distinction matters.
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Because our brains are actually wired to crave homeostasis, so a sense of steadiness, predictability
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Migraine brains crave this even more. And yet weekends are often when we unknowingly
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disrupt that balance the most, even when we're doing things that feel healthy or well-deserved.
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We sleep in an extra hour or two, our circadian rhythms shift, morning light hits our eyes
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later, we delay our first tea or coffee, or skip it altogether. Meals happen at different
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times, but time drifts.
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None of these changes are inherently bad.
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In fact, they're often associated with rest, pleasure, recovery.
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But for a migraine-prone nervous system, change itself, even good change, can be interpreted
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Migraine brains tend to be highly sensitive to fluctuations, they notice what other brains
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So when routine loosens, the system doesn't always read it as relief, it reads it as uncertainty.
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A study published in Neurology highlighted something particularly striking.
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The decline in stress was a more potent migraine trigger than stress itself.
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In other words, it's not always the pressure that tips the system into migraine, it's
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the release of that pressure.
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This is where the concept of central sensitization becomes important.
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When cortisol is high, it acts like a protective shield, dampening pain signals, narrowing
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blood vessels, muting sensory input.
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When that shield suddenly drops, the brain can become hyper-reactive.
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Sounds feel louder, light feels harsher, blood vessels respond more dramatically.
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Signals that were ignored all week suddenly rush in at once.
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So if your migraines arrive on Saturday morning, or the first day of your holiday, it's not
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because you relaxed wrong, it's because your nervous system has been compensating sometimes
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hierarchically for days or weeks.
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And when the compensatory mechanisms switch off too quickly, the brain struggles to recalibrate.
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This understanding itself can be profoundly relieving.
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It reframes the weakened migraine not as a failure to cope, but as a nervous system that
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is exquisitely sensitive to rhythm, timing, and transition.
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And once we see that way, the question shifts from why does rest make me sick, to how can
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I help my body transition into rest more gently.
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And that shift alone can change everything.
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From the perspective of Traditional Chinese Medicine, we look at this through the lens of yin and
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yang, and the movement of qi, or vital energy.
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And so during your work week, you are operating in a state of extreme yang.
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Yang is the activity, the heat, the upward movement, and the fire.
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You're pushing, you're achieving, you're doing.
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And when you suddenly stop on a weekend, the body attempts to transition into yin, the
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state of rest, coolness, and stillness.
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However, if you've been pushing too hard for too long, your yin might be too weak to
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anchor that yang energy.
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In Traditional Chinese Medicine, we see that when the activity stops abruptly, the yang energy
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has nowhere to go.
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Because its nature is to rise, it flares up upward towards the head.
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This is often described as a rising of liver yang.
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It's like a pot of boiling water, where you've suddenly put a lid on it,
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the pressure builds and escapes at the highest point.
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Now, it's a deficient migraine family, in my jargon.
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In a Western culture, an excess is an excess, but in the East, an excess can come from a
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And it's a weird concept for Western brains, but that's really what's happening.
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In Eastern traditions, the goal is never to swing from one extreme to another.
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Health is not found in pushing harder, or collapsing completely, but in continuity, in rhythm.
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This is often described as the middle way, a steady flow, rather than sharp peaks or sudden
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So, from this perspective, a weakened migraine isn't a punishment for resting.
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Its information is the body signalling the gap that the gap between your Friday intensity
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and your Saturday stillness is simply too wide.
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One moment you're feeling mobilized, alert, driven, output focused, and the next everything
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stops for a sensitive system that contrast could be jarring.
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Eastern medicine would say that the body struggles not with effort, or with rest, but
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with abrupt transitions.
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When movement suddenly gives way to stillness, when yang collapses into yin too quickly,
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the internal systems don't have time to adjust, energy stagnates, flow is interrupted.
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What should feel restorative instead feels destabilizing.
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So the message of a weakened migraine is not do not rest, it's how you rest.
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The body is asking for a gentler slope, not a cliff, a gradual unwinding rather than an
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off switch, a soft landing rather than a sudden drop.
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This might look like easing out the week instead of crashing into the weekend, keeping some
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anchors of routine, letting the nervous system downshift in stages, honoring rest without
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shocking the system that has been holding everything together.
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And so, seen in this way, the weakened migraine becomes less of an enemy and more of a messenger.
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Not telling you to stay in motion forever, but reminding you that your body thrives when
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intensity and rest are woven together, not slammed apart.
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So as a single advice, to help bridge this gap, try the weekend transition.
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Instead of sleeping insignificantly or changing your entire routine the moment the weekend
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hits, keep your wake-up time within 30 minutes of your weekday alarm. And
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so by maintaining that consistent rhythm and introducing rest gradually, perhaps a
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short 20-minute walk or a light stretching on a Saturday morning, you signal to your nervous
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system that it's safe to downshift slowly rather than crashing into the weekend.
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Now it seems that the person in the community who asked for this episode, it seems, I can't
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anticipate, but from her sentence, it seems she's working in a school.
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And you might wonder, how do I apply such an advice to a school environment where the
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noise and all of the activity is concentrated on the week?
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Well, you could have a little bit of self-preparation on the weekend for exams and tests and things
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that you have to prepare and the yin time after school every day.
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A special moment, a special reward, personal time in between school and home to restore
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every day of the week by introducing your weekend into your week.
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That's something I do personally as Migrant Heroes is I work every single day of the
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I know it sounds dreadful, maybe. I love it personally.
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Every day I move, every day I take care of the children and every day I work and I find
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a lot more balance, a lot more peace with it. Because if on a Monday I'm hit by a dentist
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for my daughter, I'm not frustrated, etc. Because I know all of the rest is under control.
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And I've earned the time of my children also when they were at a birthday party or a special
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activity on the weekend.
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So something to think about.
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And remember, every small step you take moves you closer to freedom. You are powerful, you
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are resilient, and you are no longer alone.
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Keep rising, Migrant Hero.
