Nursing Uncharted Ep. 102 - Embracing Change and Moving Forward

In this solo episode, Ann wraps up 2025 by looking back on a year filled with growth, change, and plenty of new experiences. Her word for the year, "embrace," set the tone for everything she did—good, bad, or in between. From going back to her favorite travel nursing assignment to making new friends and tackling the ups and downs of adulting, Ann shares what she learned along the way. This episode is all about finding the good, holding onto meaningful connections, and focusing on the little wins. 

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We Discuss

00:00 - Looking Back and Picking a Word 
02:40 - Trips, Memories, and Happy Moments 
06:05 - Going Back to a Favorite Assignment 
11:00 - Travel Nursing: Lonely but Rewarding
13:08 - Working Holidays as a Nurse 
17:15 - Podcasting as Therapy 
22:20 - Focusing on the Good Stuff 
25:05 - Making Friends and Embracing Adulting
27:54 - Wrapping Up and Looking Ahead 

About the Host:

Ann is a NICU travel nurse and the voice behind Nursing Uncharted. With more than six years on the road, she brings real stories and straight talk to nurses everywhere. Ann loves connecting with the nursing community and sharing both the highs and the challenges of the job. 

Transcript:

00:00:00.200 — 00:21:15.720 · Speaker 1
Happy holidays everyone, and welcome back to the last episode of 2025. This is always an episode that I look forward to because I get to reflect on not only my journey this year, but just reflect even on all the episodes that were recorded with all the guests and just kind of wrap it up and, you know, set the tone for what's to come next year.

So again, I'm your host and and I can't believe that I am wrapping up my second season with Nursing Uncharted. So 2025 kicking off. I started the year out with picking a word and using that word to set my intentions. You know, just kind of any anything that came into my life, I remembered what word I was going to live by, and that came to light.

And I found out about that at the end of last year from my producer. And she was like, what's your word of the year? And I'm like, I don't even know what that is. But I thought about it. and to be honest, it might have actually been her word that she used, but I just felt like it really sat well with me. And that word was embrace, if you remember.

So I really lived my life. My journey in 2025 was embracing everything that happened and the people that came into my life, that things that happened in my life good, bad, ugly, whatever it was, I was going to embrace them. And, you know, we always think back, oh my gosh, the year flew by or gosh, this was like a terrible year.

But I, I was sitting preparing for this episode thinking about like what what I want to say, what do I want to do? And I found myself scrolling through my phone and looking at pictures and everything I did this year. And some of the memories I have seemed like they were years ago. Like, for example, I went on a ski trip.

Ski trip? I say that with air quotes because I didn't ski, I didn't snowboard. I actually went with my wake surfing crew because that's something I don't know if I've ever shared that with with you guys, but I love wake surfing. It's my fun sport hobby that I do. I'm not a very athletic person, but that's something that I just really enjoy.

And every year this group of people from San Diego and the surrounding area, they go on a ski trip to Big Bear. So I got invited this year and I was really excited. And I've learned to snowboard. It's just not my jam. I don't like being cold. I don't like getting hurt. So, you know, I just went and hung out in a beautiful cabin on the woods with some amazing people.

Some of these people I never met before, because the group that I have that goes wake surfing, there's usually six of us at a time on a boat. So you see certain people like repetitively. But then there's some people that you just never line up your weekends with or like, you know, they just come maybe once, once a month or something, and I just never had met them.

But I was in a house with like 14 people and, you know, I only knew about half of them. So. And it's just crazy. The reason I'm telling this story is because I didn't realize this happened in 2025. I feel like this happened so long ago. So I actually made a list when preparing for this, this recording and the list was everything that I did.

And it's all the pictures that we have in our phone. And, you know, it was kind of fun. And, you know this, I guess I'll go back and tell this part of it beforehand because it all makes sense. But I am currently, as you can see, the backdrop, if you watch these episodes, is a different backdrop. I am on a travel assignment currently, and I actually came back to my favorite travel assignment that I've done in the past, over now, over six years of travel nursing.

And I actually got a phone call. I didn't even submit to this job. I got a phone call from one of the managers and asks, you know, hey, we still have your resume. You know, we enjoyed having you. Would this be something you'd want to come back to? And I thought, you know what? This is the best way to embrace, use my word, embrace this opportunity and come back to my favorite assignment.

And it's. I'm so excited to be here. A lot has changed. The hospital has changed. Nursing has changed. Acuity have changed. The patient populations. Everything's so different because it felt like again, time. I just have no sense of time. The last time I was here was 2022. So that's going to be it was the early early spring of 2022.

And that'll be four years of being since I was there last. And just seeing all the new and exciting things that have changed at this hospital. They have a new unit and, you know, I go. I go back and my first day, like getting the tour of the new unit and just, you know, taking another walk through of the, of the hospital because the other girls I started with, it was one of the girls have never had never been here before.

And I ran into people and I thought, oh yeah, I'll remember a couple. I reached out to a few that, you know, I'm still friends with and told them I was coming back, but the amount of people that remembered me and were excited to have me back was the most fulfilling feeling I have had in a long time. You know, travel nursing can be lonely, and I think for me, I like doing this alone.

All of my life changes over this past year, year and a half, I've really had to do this for myself and do the journey of life for myself. And I find myself alone a lot of the time, and it can be very lonely. Being alone can be lonely and to to just feel loved on my first day of Orient re-orientation to the hospital, and my preceptors were people that, like, volunteered to preset me because they remembered me from last time and it was just so fulfilling.

And it reminded me that as lonely and isolating as travel nursing can be, when you take these assignments to places that you've never been or you know you're traveling 3000 miles from home and you don't know a single soul, you still find comfort in someone there or multiple people there. And it was just a really good way to end the year.

It was a reminder of why I do what I do. It was a reminder of, you know, when I'm feeling lonely, there are people that remember you. There are people that, you know, even now, they're like, you taught me so much when I was here. And just seeing them now, like they were like baby nurses and now they have four years under their belt is pretty exciting.

And it's it's really cool to see, and it's something that you really can't experience unless you go the travel nursing route. You know, you you in in your home hospitals, people come and go. But it's so cool just to go back and see these people that were in your life for a short amount of time, sometimes 13 weeks, sometimes almost a year in my case.

But you know, you just see the growth and you just it's it's just it's fulfilling and there's no better time of the year for that than the end of the year. We we talk about, you know, the end of the year is really stressful. You know, it's the most exciting time because you have all the holidays, you have New Years, you know, you celebrate and set your intentions for the year to come.

But it's a lot of stress. It's a lot of time either with your family, there's a lot of travel, or it's time that unfortunately, you spend apart from your family because you're working. And as nurses, we have to work the holidays. You know, it's not a 9 to 5. It's a 24 hour 365. So there are days that we have to work that we'd rather spend with our families, our loved ones, our friends.

But we can't because there are people that rely on us. And I know I did. I don't want to repeat myself constantly. But I said this, I think in my end of year episode last year and that that episode, if I when I tell people I host this podcast and I try to, you know, network and tell people and get people to listen because I do think that we have some people come on here that really give solid advice and people feeling stuck in their career.

I do think that there's a lot to gain from these episodes and these guests and the people we meet, people that I meet. But, you know, I, I said in that episode and getting back to what I was saying, that's the episode I tell everyone to, to watch because I had a family come on. That has been with me from my very first year in the NICU to now them being my friends and that passion and that love and that just reminder of why I do what I do.

That episode is such a special episode to me, and I touched on that, that we are in, we are working in the hospital. We don't want to be there. You know, we don't want to spend Christmas in the in the NICU or, you know, any holiday you celebrate, you know, that's important to you. You don't want to spend that in the hospital.

But I find the opposite. I find joy in that because I I'm single. I don't have kids. So Christmas to me isn't doesn't mean the same as Christmas with a brand new family where it's their first Christmas spending together. So if I can work that day so they can have off. I've lived my nursing life like that. But on the opposite end of that, the patient's perspective, that patient doesn't want to be there.

And especially with what I do, spending the first Christmas of maybe your first child in the NICU, in the hospital getting the worst news ever. And in that episode from last year, that baby was born on Christmas. They didn't know the outcome of what beautiful Callie was going to be. You know, that is the most terrifying day, and that's supposed to be the most special day.

And on Christmas, there was just so many factors that contribute to that that, you know, you have to you have to just take yourself out of it sometimes and realize why we do what we do. And we're there for the patients, the ones that don't want to be there, the families that travel to come in to see their loved one in the hospital over the holidays.

It's tough. It's tough. But we do it. And, you know, I think, I think and I don't want to give too much away for my intentions for the the new year. You have to tune into that episode in the next two weeks to hear to hear that. But that's something I really want to focus on is, you know, we really touched heavily on mental health this year, but I want to dive into that a little bit deeper and talk about, you know, what can we do for ourselves because we give so much.

And, you know, I'm excited for for those episodes to come and to meet the people that I'm going to meet in 2026. You know, that's something that I look forward to. I never thought that I would be here hosting this podcast. I didn't see myself ever being in a position where this would be an opportunity. This opportunity landed on my lap, I embraced it and I went with it.

And it has helped me in so many ways. I just had this conversation last night. I went to dinner with a friend, and we were just talking about me having to record today and just their perspective of it without me having to say those words. They were like, this must be kind of therapeutic to you, because I said I was doing a solo episode, and this year has been so jam packed with guests.

I haven't done a solo episode, so I get nervous when I'm just sitting here talking to myself, hoping that I don't sound like a complete idiot. And what I'm saying makes sense. But you know, they said how how healing that must be for you with, like, what you've gone through this year and what you've gone through in your career to sit and talk to yourself, but to sit and talk with other people and just share your story and hope that someone listening, take something from that and learns from that.

You know, I think, I think I mentioned it getting into this we this year for everyone, there are good days and bad days, horrible days, exciting days. There's every emotion that you experience throughout the year. I mean, it happens. We're not going to have every single perfect day, even if we wrap up our end of the year in one sentence and people say, this was the best year of my life, great, I love that.

I'm waiting for a year. Real. I say this is the best year of my life. But there are troubles and turmoils that come with life and come with work and stressors and everything, and having an outlet to do this. I'm very, very thankful for. And I think the listeners, I think the feedback I get from this, I'm excited that people want to come on and be guests.

You know that that brings me joy and that fills my cup back up because we we give a lot. So it's it's therapy for me. It's healing. And I enjoy this so much. And I'm just so excited for it to continue and to start a new season with you guys. Something funny I was thinking about, I like I said, I made a list when I was reflecting and these this list I went to my phone, I went to January 2025, and I scrolled through my photos and to see what I could to see what I could find.

And one of the first things, and this was kind of at the end of last year into the new year, but I actually flew to Dallas to visit Amazon's headquarters, and I got to meet so many people. I was almost like starstruck in a way, because I would see them in meetings or, you know, watch them on social media or hear their names.

And then I was putting a face to the to that person. And it was this like overwhelming experience. And it was just so cool. And to see that that's where I started 2025. It really propelled me to look through the photos and look through the happy times. Because we take photos when we're happy, we don't take photos when we're sad.

So you tend to like forget maybe like the bad times and the bad days, looking through your photos because you want to capture these fun, funny, exciting moments once in a lifetime opportunities. And it just it it makes it better. Like I was thinking, oh my gosh, 2025 was so rough. You know, I like it was it was difficult.

There's so many changes. But then I started listing those changes and looking at the pictures and I realized I had fun. I had a lot of fun. I went to Dallas twice, which was so cool. My brother lives there. You know, I got to film in the studio with one of my really good friends on an episode randomly, and just all of these crazy, amazing opportunities that landed on my lap because I embraced them.

I lived by the word and the intention I set for myself. So I think the purpose of this episode, for me and for you guys to maybe get something out of that, is if you make up your mind on a good day, you're having a great day and you're like, you know what? I'm motivated. I'm going to head into this new year with this positivity and this word to embrace what comes my way.

I did it even when I was having a bad day. I embraced the bad and tried to find the good. I have met some amazing people. I have changed friends. I've lost some friends. I've made new friends. I've learned why. Maybe there are certain people in my life for a season, not a lifetime. And then I really feel I've gained some amazing people in my life that are projecting me in the way that I'm supposed to go, and that's exciting.

And, you know, the the one friend that I'm referencing, like right now in the top of my head is I met her so organically, I met her at a gym on a treadmill. Like you. Okay, cool. You know, there there's a bit of an age difference between us, but it seemed like that didn't even matter. We just really bonded over trauma like it was the beginning of the year.

You know, she went through some, some difficult times months before I went through some. We cried at the gym together. We got to know each other. We slowly developed a relationship. And now that person is the person that on my bad days, I can shoot her a text and be like, what do I do? And she gives me the most wholesome, amazing advice.

And it's because I went to the gym. I went out of my comfort zone when I was having bad days. I pushed myself to still do something that I knew would fill my cup back up. And I met an amazing person. And those are things that I want to reflect on. I don't want to reflect on the the crap that happened. These people that treat you bad, the jobs that didn't work out.

You know, the lies that someone tells you. Whatever you're going through in your life, you know, focus on these positive things. And honestly, I learned that from scrolling through my phone photos because again, we capture the positive moments. We don't capture the bad. And, you know, that's it's just a gentle reminder of, you know, let's let's stay positive in this world.

That is maybe not what we want it to be, or it's, you know, everybody's in a little bit of turmoil. And those are just reminders, little things that can keep us happy and keep us motivated to just get through the next day. And that goes along with the mental health that we did this year. You know, we we all have our struggles.

I think that the guests that I had on here gave some amazing advice, and I really hope that that has brought some tips, tricks, motivation to to you guys, to the listeners of this, something exciting that happened. And it's funny because when I wrote this down, I was like, oh, this is this is kind of embarrassing, but I wrote on here that I sold my car, moved into a bigger place, and I had to budget for the first time.

And that is such an adult thing that at 38 years old, I should have known this before, but it's a time I obviously was doing it subconsciously, but it's something that I was able to actually say in my head, like, say out loud, this is what I'm doing, and this is why I made the decisions that I did. So, you know, you guys, you guys see it along with me.

My backdrop changes. I moved into a different place, very close to where I lived before. But, you know, just these funny adult, normal things that, you know, are just a reminder that it's like, hey, I did something, you know, I embraced this opportunity. Who knows if it's gonna work out? You know, budgeting is not fun.

But here I am. And you know, I'm going to go into 2026 and see see what happens. Another highlight from this year was Travel Con. And I really hope you guys looked at the pictures on Aman's Instagram. We had so much fun, so much fun. I'm so grateful for that opportunity. It's something that since being in the travel world, people have talked about and it's in Vegas.

So you're like, yes, like you're going to go party in Vegas. I actually didn't even go to any of the parties, and I still had an amazing time. So, you know that that's a huge highlight for my 2025 experience. And that's thanks to Am. And it's thanks to this podcast again, like this opportunity that I embraced has really brought so many positive things into my life.

And again, that's just stressing the importance of setting the tone for yourself, for what you want for the year to come. So I'll stop talking about myself. I'll stop talking about all the fun and amazing things I did, but I just hope it's a reminder to everyone that even though maybe six months out of the year were bad, there were still positives that that happened.

And, you know, it's it's really difficult around the holidays because we, we we set these high, high hopes for what the holiday season is. You know, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves. And I just I just want us to know it's just another day. It's just another season and we can get through it. And we even if it's even if we have to work, even if we have to sacrifice our time, our work family makes it good for us.

And that's something I always look forward to. The gift exchange that works at work. The Secret Santa is the parties, the potlucks that we're not supposed to have because, you know, Covid kind of took that from us, but we still do it anyway because it brings us joy, it fills our cup and it gets us through the holiday season.

So I'm so excited for 2026. Please, please, please tune in to that episode because I am going to set the tone of what to expect, and I am ready to start taking names for my new guests in the year 2026 with Nursing Uncharted. Happy holidays everyone and thank you for always being with me along with my journey.

00:21:21.720 — 00:21:44.360 · Speaker 1
Thank you for tuning in to Nursing Uncharted. You can learn more about this episode and our show on our website at AMN healthcare. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend and subscribe to our show on your favorite podcast platform. You can also find show updates and nursing opportunities on our Instagram at Omniverse.

Special thanks to Aman Healthcare for making this show possible.