Crissy Fishbane hit her breaking point in a carport, sitting in her car crying before she could bring herself to walk through her own front door. She had done everything right: earned her master’s degree, landed her dream job teaching high school psychology, planned to put in her 30 years. But four years in, the job she had built her identity around was breaking her. Walking the Camino de Santiago, a 500-mile pilgrimage across northern Spain, would become the path she took out of that breaking point and into something she hadn’t been able to plan for.
Fishbane’s story is one that will resonate with anyone who has ever felt the gap between the life they imagined and the one they are actually living. For anyone who has white-knuckled their way through a career that no longer fits, or found themselves unable to sleep because they can’t see the next step, her experience offers something useful. Her question was what happens to your sense of self when you do.
Teaching Was the Plan Until It Wasn’t
Fishbane had always gravitated toward teaching. She earned her master’s in teaching at NC State and landed a position teaching psychology, a subject she loved because, as she put it, “what high school kid doesn’t love the idea of learning more about themselves or their friendships or their relationships?”
But the profession asked more than it gave back. “I had a stack of 13 or 14 IEPs” on the first day of her fourth year, she said, referring to the individual education plans that documented student accommodations. One document alone ran 34 pages. She was managing 90 students across periods, arriving at 5:30 in the morning, getting home at 7 at night, spending weekends grading, and carrying the weight of potential litigation when a parent relationship turned adversarial.
“I had a knot in my stomach every Sunday night,” Fishbane said. “It’s a beautiful job, but it’s really thankless. And the amount that we put on our teachers and for the amount that we pay them, especially in North Carolina, is laughable.”
Her husband Noah noticed. One evening, when she had pulled into the carport and couldn’t stop crying, he came outside and said something simple: “It doesn’t have to be like this.”
A Friend’s Grief Became an Invitation
Fishbane might have stayed stuck if it hadn’t been for a colleague who had just lost her mother to breast cancer. That colleague, grieving and ready to step away from teaching herself, wanted to walk the Camino de Santiago: partly to honor her mother, who had done a portion of the route with her years before. She asked Fishbane to come along for two weeks.
“I travel lover that I am,” Fishbane said, “and also wanting to be there for and support my friend in this very emotional journey she was about to take, I was like, well, hey, I will go with you.”
It was Noah who pushed further. Standing beside her in that carport, still wiping away tears, he suggested she quit her job and walk the entire route, all 500 miles, roughly two months of walking 15 to 20 miles a day across northern Spain. “I made that decision right there in the car, tears streaming down my face,” she said. “Yeah, that’s what I want to do.”
She and her two companions flew to the Pyrenees the following summer. They carried everything they owned on their backs: two shirts, two pairs of shorts, two pairs of underwear, their boots, their sandals. They slept in albergues, on the floors of cathedrals, in monasteries, in bunk rooms packed with hundreds of strangers. They got bedbugs. And, at her friend’s request, Fishbane left her phone at home with Noah.
“I would go to a cafe, an internet cafe, like once a week,” she said, “and log on to Facebook and just say, hey, I’m here. I’m alive. I’m doing okay. There was no music, there were no podcasts. Just walking with other people we met on the way, or walking by myself.”
Crissy’s Wheat Field Moment
The internal struggle that Fishbane carried into the Camino wasn’t just about burnout recovery. It was about identity. “I am a person that very much identifies with my job and my career,” she said. “That’s a big part of who I am and how I present to the world. And who am I going to be if I’m not a teacher?”
She couldn’t sleep. She woke up in cold sweats. And she walked, without music or distraction, for hours at a time.
Then one afternoon, alone in a wheat field somewhere in northern Spain, it broke open.
“The sun is beating down on me,” she said. “The wheat’s just gently blowing in the wind. It’s blue skies. And I’m just walking by myself. And there was just this moment where these words came to me out of nowhere. But I felt it deep inside. I felt it deep in my bones. Accept what is.”
It wasn’t an idea she had read somewhere. It was a knowing. “It was simply this idea that there is so much outside of my control and I’m trying to manipulate and figure it all out and have all the answers and make everything look just so, because that’s what society says it should be,” she said. “And it was this moment of realizing that is all stuff that I have no right trying to manipulate or control, because I can’t. It’s not about me. It’s just what is. So I need to accept that and I need to focus on what I can control, which is this moment right in front of me.”
Stone asked Fishbane whether the person who walked into that wheat field had always been someone who tried to manage and control the outcomes around her. “Oh, Amy, was it ever a pattern? Yes. If you wanted to describe me as a child, it would be someone who worried a lot and tried to manage all the things for all the people around her to make everyone else happy and to keep everything just so,” Fishbane said.
When she got home, Noah told her she was different. He couldn’t quite name it. “It’s not like you went from being type A to type B. I’m still type A,” she said. “But there’s just something different about you. There’s this kind of peace.”
Practicing the Lessons After The Vacation has Ended
Ten years later, Fishbane is quick to say the lesson didn’t become permanent. “Over time, you do lose it,” she said. “The emails come in and all the requests and the busyness of digital living and the world that we live in, and your attention gets pulled in a million different directions.”
But the wheat field never fully fades. “It has to be a choice. It has to be a practice,” she said.
In daily life, that practice looks like this: when stress or frustration rises, she moves faster now toward acceptance and toward gratitude. “I’m going to take it out and put it out there, because it’s not mine, and I’m going to focus on what is mine,” she said. “In that moment, I feel gratitude for the light flickering through the tree leaves. I feel gratitude for my family. I feel gratitude for the roof over my head and that hot cup of coffee in the morning.”
She also found that sharing the story matters. Running Her Plus Health Collective, a community and resource hub for moms, she has spent seven years talking with hundreds of women. What she keeps finding is that overwhelm, loneliness, and the question of what am I even doing with my life are not private problems. “Without fail, I understand that we are all suffering through the same things,” she said. “And I have seen over the past seven years that sharing our stories is so powerful. There is this beautiful moment that happens where you’re like, oh, I’m not alone. And it’s healing.”
The carport tears, the wheat field, the two months without a phone form a through line about what it costs to keep forcing a life that doesn’t fit, and what becomes possible when you stop trying to control the outcome. Walking the Camino didn’t hand Fishbane a new career plan. It gave her something quieter and more durable: the ability to take the next step without needing to see all the ones that follow.
This article was inspired by an interview with Crissy Fishbane and Amy Stone on The Art of Imperfect Adulting podcast. https://imperfect-adulting.captivate.fm/listen or https://www.youtube.com/@imperfectadulting To hear more compelling conversations like this one and receive special offers from our guests directly to your inbox, join our email community today.
Travel: Interview Transcript Crissy Fishbane with Amy Stone | The Art of Imperfect Adulting | June 2026
Amy Stone [00:00:00]:
You’re listening to the Art of Imperfect Adulting. I’m your host, Amy Stone. Here I share stories from real people
Speaker B [00:00:07]:
navigating the adventure that I call adulting.
Amy Stone [00:00:10]:
Are you ready? Me too. Let’s do this. Hello, friends. My guest today is Crissy Fishbane, and we are going to talk about a time when she took a chance and did a really physical challenge that helped her move through a transition point in her life. Crissy, are you ready to have a fun chat with me today?
Crissy Fishbane [00:00:35]:
Absolutely. I’m looking forward to it.
Amy Stone [00:00:38]:
All right, I begin all of my conversations with the same two questions. What part of the world do you call home?
Crissy Fishbane [00:00:47]:
I live in Raleigh, North Carolina, in the United States.
Amy Stone [00:00:51]:
Fantastic. What’s something you love about living in Raleigh, North Carolina?
Crissy Fishbane [00:00:58]:
I really love having the Four Seasons. I went to college in Florida, and I really missed having the season. So being back somewhere where we have the Four Seasons is really nice. And Raleigh is really awesome because it’s the capital and it has a lot of the big city vibes, but there’s still a little bit of this small, small city charm to it that I really enjoy.
Amy Stone [00:01:19]:
Very nice. What part of Florida were you in for school? Northern, Central or south?
Crissy Fishbane [00:01:25]:
Well, I went to the University of South Florida, which is not south at all. It’s in Tampa, so somewhat central area.
Amy Stone [00:01:34]:
That is a really funny thing about Florida. I’m in Miami. You probably didn’t know that, but that is one of the things that’s super funny about. I mean, I think all regions have this, right? But people. South Florida can refer to everything from, you know, Tampa on down to Key West. And so people will say that. They’ll say, where are the people in South Florida? I’m like, me. And they’re like, yeah, we’re in St. Pete. And I’m like, I’m so much further south than. Yeah, I’m so. I’m like. I’m like, yes, yes, yes. And also. But University of Southern Florida or South Florida, that is absolutely a perfect example of that. All right, very good. So today we’re gonna talk about a time in your life when you made a decision to tackle a pretty big physical challenge as a tool to help you through a life transition. Yeah. So the physical challenge we’re talking about, we call walking the Camino, and we’re gonna get into that. But first, I wanna talk a little bit about. You were a high school teacher, I think. And so my first question is, how long did you work as a teacher?
Crissy Fishbane [00:02:37]:
I was a high school psychology teacher. I had gotten My master’s in teaching here at NC State. And I always loved high school. I knew I wanted to teach high school, and I had taught for four years. I thought I was going to be teaching forever. I thought teaching was going to be my lifetime career. I was going to put in my 30 years, retire, do the whole shebang, you know, and it wasn’t turning out the way I had thought it would. It wasn’t. I loved the students, but I did not love the bureaucracy and the red tape that is involved in so much of our education system here in the US and it was disheartening and a little bit disillusioning for me. And I. Yeah, I. I hit a point where I. Every day I pulled in, we have a carport in my house, and I pull in the carport and I would just sit there and I would cry. I would get out a cry before I would go in the house. And at one point, my husband came out and he was just like, it really doesn’t have to be this way. It doesn’t have to be this hard and awful, you know?
Amy Stone [00:03:47]:
Yeah.
Speaker B [00:03:48]:
So.
Amy Stone [00:03:49]:
So you had been a teacher for four years, and when you pulled the plug. Okay, had you. Let’s talk a little bit about, like, how you got there. First of all, I just want to put a pin in it. I don’t think that they had psychology in my high school curriculum. I don’t. I, like, I don’t think of that. I think of that as like a higher ed course. Was that your. Like, did you know that that was going to be a high school course? Like, does that you. Is that something new?
Crissy Fishbane [00:04:14]:
No, I. So I have my master’s in teaching for social studies, and I. I did teach in here and there, but psychology was always what appealed to me. It was always my passion. And what high school kid doesn’t love the idea of learning more about themselves or their friendships or their relationships or how they interact with other people and just understanding who they are? I mean, that’s what we do as teenagers and adolescents. Right. So the kids loved the class. And there’s an honors level and an AP level in the Wake county area where I was teaching. So I actually student taught for the year prior to when I started teaching. And I somehow managed to get a job student teaching psychology, which was very, very rare. And then I found a job teaching, and I did teach some other classes. I taught history and U.S. history, world history. And the school I taught at also offered sociology and just some really cool options. So I agree with you. I Didn’t have it and I would have loved it.
Amy Stone [00:05:17]:
Yeah, I think it’s very co.
Crissy Fishbane [00:05:18]:
Cool.
Amy Stone [00:05:19]:
I think that’s very cool. So you got a master’s in education. Had you always wanted to be a teacher? Were you a kid that when you were young, saw yourself, sat in the classroom and saw yourself at the front
Crissy Fishbane [00:05:31]:
of the classroom often? It was not the only job that I had thought I wanted. There were other things. I definitely had lots of ideas floating around in my head, but I often came back to teaching. And it’s funny, with what I do now, there’s still a component of teaching to it. So when I look throughout my life and the trajectory gets taken, I can see how each step has influenced the next step and how each role I’ve had plays a role in what I do now and who I am now. Which is kind of cool when you look back over the trajectory of your life to see that.
Amy Stone [00:06:05]:
I agree. And I think that, and this is a question, but it’s like phrased as a statement, so maybe it’s not a good question. We’ll see. I think that’s easier to see looking back than when we’re kids and the adolescents in high school because I think from my experience and also watching my kids and step kids go through it, there’s such a small amount of knowledge about the professions that are actually available. So is that, do you agree with that? Like it’s like easier to see in the rear view kind of analysis?
Crissy Fishbane [00:06:38]:
Well, absolutely. And especially if you look at the education system today, it’s still really geared around how things used to be. And there’s like what I do now, I run my own business. It’s a mom community. I never could have imagined as an adolescent that hey, one day I’ll start a mom group. You know, it’s just not something you think of. But in this world with technology and social media and there are jobs that we can’t even fathom that our youth of now will have at their, their fingertips. So yes, it’s, it’s really hard. It’s impossible to really have the full spectrum.
Amy Stone [00:07:17]:
It’s like if you had told me that some people, you know, like the idea of being a YouTuber or a content creator, I mean, it didn’t even exist, right? It didn’t exist. There’s no way to even. And I think one of the mind bending things about the human experiences is that maybe there are some people, but for most of us we never know what’s coming. Right. It’s like there’s no way to know what that thing is out there. All right, so you talked a little bit about this, but let’s go a little deeper. What were some of the things that were driving you away from the profession of teaching? I’ve interviewed several people who’ve left teaching and notably almost everybody I know who’s ever worked as a teacher is out of the profession. So you mentioned the bureaucracy and you told that story about sitting in the carport and really being beaten down. Tell us a little bit more about how you were feeling that made you take this decision.
Crissy Fishbane [00:08:14]:
Yeah, I, I, as I said, I loved, I still love my students. I think teenagers are such a cool age. You can have these incredible conversations with them and they just want to explore who they are and the world around them. And I loved that aspect of it and I still do. I miss that. But there was so much to what was asked of me that I didn’t ever really see a way to blossom and grow beyond where I was currently at. And I mentioned the red tape and the bureaucracy. So I was a fourth year teacher and the caseload. I remember an IEP is an individual education plan, which is where if there’s testing help that a student needs or special accommodations that are needed in the classroom. And I remember you get the stack of all these IEPs on the first day and I walked in and I had a stack of 13 or 14 IEPs. One of the IEPs was 34 pages, 34 pages of accommodations for this one child. And obviously I want to help and accommodate every child in any way that I can, but at the same time, how does one person do that? How, how can I make all of these accommodations for this one child and keep all of that in my head and still make all my lesson plans and then keep and monitor the 31 other students in my classroom for that one period? Because I have 90 students at any given time because it’s high school. And that’s how, you know, you have the, so it, it was very overwhelming in the amount that was asked of teachers that I felt was asked of me. And you know, I had this one year where I was told there was this, this child and the parents were kind of not happy with certain things within the school system and that I, you know, needed to keep track of everything for legal purposes. And I am a 20 something year old teacher and I, I have this fear now of a lawsuit coming down and I, I, I had a knot in my stomach every Sunday night, every morning before I went in, I showed up to work at 5:30am I was getting home. At 7pm I was spending my weekends grading. And it’s, it’s a beautiful job, but it’s really thankless. And the amount that we put on our teachers and for the amount that we pay them, especially in North Carolina, is laughable.
Amy Stone [00:11:00]:
So hypothetically, this is an imaginary situation and there’s no penalty and nobody’s ever going to hold you to it. But if the salary had been, say, like $300,000 a year, do you think you would have been more motivated to stay? Because, I mean, it does sound like an enormous workload.
Crissy Fishbane [00:11:25]:
Possibly. As a teacher with a secondary master’s degree, I was making less than I was when I worked as a front end, front of house manager at a restaurant in Tampa. In college, I made more working at a restaurant in college than I did as a teacher. So possibly, yeah.
Amy Stone [00:11:46]:
All right.
Crissy Fishbane [00:11:47]:
In hindsight, yeah, just in hindsight, doing what I do now and knowing how much I love the freedom and the different things in my life now, the answer would be no. But at the time, perhaps I was
Amy Stone [00:11:58]:
just curious because, you know, there is that trade off. It’s like we can, we as humans, not we as, like you and me as individuals, but we can do things that are hard and uncomfortable. And if there’s, if we need to. Right. If it’s absolutely necessary. And then if there’s, there’s like big motivation, like, you know, it’s like, I will, you know, like, I hope that the people who clean public toilets are very well paid, you know, because that sounds. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So I think that that’s really. So then I have one random question. If you remember, do you remember whether or not the iep, that very long, complicated IEP that felt like it was really. Or. Or maybe they were two separate things, or the relationship with the parents and the student, that felt like it was really high stakes. Were those educational restrictions, like special things, or were they stuff like allergies and health and, you know, personality?
Crissy Fishbane [00:12:50]:
They were educational accommodations. So it was around how I teach and the extra help they get and the extra time they get and who they can sit next to and.
Amy Stone [00:13:01]:
Yeah, okay, I do have. So I got feedback on the show and somebody was like, they were like, don’t take the, don’t take the attention away from your guests by telling personal stories. But I do have one of the four kids that went through our family when they were in, I think, second grade. The teacher kept sending me a thing. She was a talker. I’m a talker. I Talk for a living. I’ve never been surprised when the report came back. That’s like, the kids are talking in class and the teacher report came back, or maybe it’s an email, and was like, she’s talking in class and I’d like your permission to move them. And I was like, yes, absolutely. And you don’t have to ask me any permission for this. I know she’s a talker. Do what you think is right. And we went through several rounds of this in a very good natured way. And eventually she was like, ah, this is the teacher. She was like, she’s still doing this. And I was like, listen, we’ve been through this. Through this. If you let her sit next to her friends, she is going to talk. Like, don’t. You don’t need to email me until you, like, put her, you know, surround her with the people she doesn’t like and see what happens. Anyway, that is my. I’m off track. All right, So I, yeah, crying at the end of the day, not wanting to go to work, fearing for litigation when it’s not, you know, when it’s a job that’s based on nurturing and education. That all sounds like a really clear, really clear line in the sand and reason to leave you leave the job. And you described this time of your life in the pitch you gave me as a period of deep uncertainty. I’m pretty sure that most people in the audience can think of a time when they have felt a period of deep uncertainty. But I also will say that I think there’s not a great. We don’t do a great job of preparing each other for it, if it’s possible to do that at all. Anyway, so when and how do you get the idea to walk the Camino?
Crissy Fishbane [00:14:49]:
So I was actually very good friends with a colleague of mine who taught at the same school as me, and she had lost her mom to breast cancer that year. And while she was away from the school helping her mom, I had stepped in and helped her in her classroom. So I guess that’s an added layer, too. I was managing my classroom plus a colleague’s classroom to some degree. So burnout was definitely imminent, I think. But she was incredibly grateful. And she was leaving teaching for a year after her mom passed away to travel the world. And part of what she wanted to do was walk the Camino de Santiago. It was something she had talked about and done a portion of with her mom, and she wanted to go and do the whole thing. And I travel lover that I am, and also Wanting to be there for and support my friend in this very emotional journey that she’s about to take was like, well, hey, I will go with you. And I was originally just going to do two weeks of the Camino with her. So the Camino de Santiago, for anyone that does not know, I was going
Amy Stone [00:15:58]:
to say, make sure that everybody knows what it is.
Crissy Fishbane [00:16:01]:
So it is a 500 mile pilgrimage or walk across northern Spain. So we, we would start in southern France in the Pyrenees mountains, and you walk about 15 to 20 miles a day, and you walk across Spain until you get to the. The very end. And. And it’s your pilgrimage. And some people do it in small chunks and some people only do a portion of it, but I was in the carport crying in my car about something else that had happened or had been asked of me or just that I couldn’t bear this anymore. And my husband came out and said, it doesn’t have to be like this. And he knew that I was going on the Camino for two weeks and that I would probably talk about not having done the whole Camino for the rest of my life. And he was like, why don’t you quit your job and do the whole Camino? Which would take about two months. And so, first of all, what an enormous place of privilege to. To be in that space where my partner says that and you know that we’re both open to that. But I said, okay, I made that decision right there in the car, tears streaming down my face, like, yeah, that’s what I want to do. And I saved up money. I mean, I saved up money. And it was me and my colleague, my friend that I worked with and one of her friends. And that summer we flew out to France and began our journey there.
Amy Stone [00:17:35]:
Very cool. All right, so that answers a lot of my questions that you had about how you discovered the Camino de Santiago. I was wondering from the start of this conversation whether you had done it solo or where your husband was, because this is our first conversation. So when you were talking about your husband in the carport, I was like, so did he go? What was going on? So, but you did this with. So your co worker had already planned to take a leave of absence. And what time of year was this? How much was the gap between when you were in the carport and when and the end of the school year?
Crissy Fishbane [00:18:12]:
I don’t remember that detail. It was. It was several months because I. I started. I started saving money and we took some time to plan. We had to take some time to train because it is. You’re carrying a backpack all day, you’re walking 20 miles. So we started training, so it was a good chunk of time. Eight, nine months maybe.
Amy Stone [00:18:33]:
Okay. And then. All right, so. Yeah, well, the most it could be right would be like 10 months, because that would be like the whole school year. So it has to be right because it was all one school. The. I mean, that’s my. That’s my mental math in my head. All right, so. Very good. So I appreciate you taking the time to update the audience about the Camino de Santiago. I have known about the Camino for I feel like my whole life. I’ve known many people who’ve done it. I’ve done interviews with people who’ve done it. I haven’t walked it myself. I thought that everybody knew what it was. But within the last two years, I actually had a conversation with my in laws who have managed to go all the way through eight decades of life and they had no idea what it was. We have somebody in the family that was fundraising for it and they were like, what is this? And I was like, how have you lived on the planet and not known this? They did not. So that’s. I appreciate you taking the time to do this. Some people do the Camino as part of a religious pilgrimage. So I’m going to go ahead and bring that up and ask you if you identify as Catholic and if any part of this was a faith based journey for you or anybody in the group.
Crissy Fishbane [00:19:40]:
I was raised Catholic. I wouldn’t say I necessarily identify as Catholic. Now. I. Nobody in our group was going as a religious pilgrimage, but it was very spiritual.
Amy Stone [00:19:54]:
Right?
Crissy Fishbane [00:19:54]:
It was, again, it was this idea of connecting with her mom for the friend that I went with. For me, there was a lot of soul searching and trying to figure out who I am and what I want to do with my life and where I’m supposed to be. So there, there was definitely an element of the soul searching piece of it.
Amy Stone [00:20:14]:
Yeah. Going in the name of somebody who is recently deceased in is one of the more common ways that I’ve heard of people doing that as solo pilgrimages. For people in the audience who are listening, people do tours that include like a small portion of the Camino. So if you’re listening to this and thinking, I would love a seven day version of it, there are versions that are not 500, all 500 miles. And if you want, if you’re an endurance person, you want to do the whole thing. I know a couple of people who did it on bike and then you can do the whole thing. And it doesn’t take three to four months.
Crissy Fishbane [00:20:53]:
Well, and they also have opportunities. Like, we carried everything that.
Amy Stone [00:20:57]:
Yes.
Crissy Fishbane [00:20:58]:
Like, I had two shirts, two pairs of shorts, two pairs of underwear, my boots, my flip flops, and everything was on my backpack. And that’s all I had. Some people travel and, like, there will be a bus that will meet them, and they’ll take their backpack. So you can walk more free, and you don’t. You’re not carrying all your stuff, and it’ll be waiting for you at the next town. And, you know, you kind of have everything planned in advance. We did not do it that way. We were all broke teachers, so that had just left our job.
Amy Stone [00:21:25]:
Hotels, though, were you staying or were you camping?
Crissy Fishbane [00:21:28]:
We did not do camping, but we also did not do the fancy hotels. We. We would stay in the albergues, which would be like, the one time we slept on the. Yeah, like the thinnest little cot. We slept on the floor of a cathedral on this tiny little. And there was just rows and rows of us. We slept in bunk beds in just a room with hundreds of beds. We’ve slept in monasteries. So it was very cool experience. We did get bedbugs, which was an awful experience.
Amy Stone [00:21:55]:
Does not sound like a cool experience. That part of it.
Crissy Fishbane [00:21:56]:
No, The. The blisters. I also. One of the things that my friend really wanted was she did not want any technology, so we left our phone behind. I did not have. I did not. I was not in contact with Noah, my husband.
Amy Stone [00:22:13]:
I.
Crissy Fishbane [00:22:14]:
For. For two months, I would go to, like, a cafe. Internet cafe. I couldn’t find the name. An Internet cafe. Like, once a week on. Log on to Facebook and just say, hey, I’m here. I’m alive. I’m doing okay. And I. So no way to talk to him. There was no music. There were no podcasts. It, like, just walking with other people that we met on. On the way. It’s called the way. There would be other people. Or there were days where I would just walk. Walk by myself. We didn’t walk together all the time. That’s a lot of time to spend with the same people. So there was a lot of times where we would kind of split apart. We would always meet up at lunch or in the next town. And, you know, but there was a lot of time just by yourself. And it was very powerful. It was very powerful.
Amy Stone [00:22:57]:
All right, that is. That is. That’s two enormous goals. That’s two. Did you. Okay, so a detailed question. Where did you Leave your phone. Did you leave it in the States?
Crissy Fishbane [00:23:09]:
I did. I left it with Noah.
Amy Stone [00:23:10]:
Okay, so you. Okay. All right. As opposed to like there was like some secret lockbox at the, like a locker at the airport or something. Okay, that. Very, very cool. All right. So I’ve done several conversations with people about just personally and also on the show about the Camino. There’s not actually enough time, and I mean, it could be hours. We could have like a series of hour long interviews to talk about the entire thing. Cause you did the whole thing. But you have talked a teeny tiny bit about the fact that this was very transformative experience. And part of that is that you were unable to plan for the things that were going to happen. So I’d love it if you could think of something specific from this experience that represents that challenge of being unable to plan ahead and manage all the things. And we can talk about that.
Speaker B [00:24:06]:
Hmm.
Crissy Fishbane [00:24:10]:
This is good.
Amy Stone [00:24:11]:
This is.
Crissy Fishbane [00:24:11]:
Might be the wrong answer, but what immediately popped to mind is it’s actually about a different trip that I went on to. Prior to the Camino, Noah and I went backpacking through Central America for six months. And in our third month, we were in Costa Rica and we were living in a little shack on the beach. And we had gone out for dinner one night. He had just asked me to marry him five days before this. So I had the engagement ring and I had said yes. So happy. And we come home from dinner one night to the house that we’re staying in, and I put out my hand and the door is just gone. There’s no door. Someone had broken into our house and they had taken everything. They had gotten my backpack with all my credit cards, my wallet, my passport, my laptop, my phone with three months of photos. They had gotten my purse that had the engagement ring that he had just given me five days before because it was too big and I didn’t want to wear it around town. So we’re three months into this trip and we’re literally standing in a foreign country with $4 to our name. I have no passport, so technically I’m in this country illegally now. And no idea what to do, no idea what the next step is. Do we go home? Nobody at that point would have judged us for going home. Right. That would have made an okay decision. But I realized in that moment, if I went home, I was letting somebody else decide my story. I was letting somebody else’s actions decide what the ending of my story was going to look like. And I wasn’t okay with that. I had dreamed of backpacking. I. It was what I wanted to do after college. Travel is just something I love, and it was important to me. I wasn’t going home after only three months. So we took our $40, we split one lunch. We got one lunch plate and split. Split it between the two of us and one dinner plate and split it between the two of us every day as we trekked across Costa Rica to get to San Jose because I needed to get to the embassy to get a new passport. We would sleep in. We would go to a hostel each night and he would book a bed. So it would be like a bottom bunk bed, a twin size bunk. And I would sneak in the hostel later that night and climb into the twin bed with him. Like I was sneaking because we didn’t have enough money to buy two beds at the hostel. And we made our way across and two weeks later, I had my passport and we were on our way to Nicaragua and we kept going. So it was just kind of this belief and this, this idea that, you know, what bad things are going to happen. I don’t have control over them, but I do get to decide what action I take from here. I get to decide how my story is going to end and if I let my story get told by someone else’s actions.
Amy Stone [00:27:19]:
Very cool. So I learned a lot about you in that story and also about Noah, who I’ve never met, because that is to decide to hold on to an engagement ring and a backpack for a couple months before you ask the question. That’s a bold decision. That’s a bold decision. You know, it could be a little hole could have worn its way through the backpack, you know, I mean, that’s a bold decision. I gotta say that. All right, so. And the other thing that came out in that story is that this, this part of the adventure and being outside. So like walking the Camino and this type of adventure travel is part of your fabric of being. So the pull to do the Camino, but the Camino, it’s you solo with your girlfriends. And so it is a slightly different thing because navigating problems and unexpected circumstances and changes and just like getting lost is different when you’re with somebody else and when you’re by yourself. So the reason I was thinking about that. So like, this. Is there a part of the Camino where you were transformed? Because you mentioned this, it was like giving up and understanding that you can’t control the circumstances. Was there a part of the Camino where you felt that happening, where you were by yourself? Yes.
Crissy Fishbane [00:28:39]:
And this. This is because I think in your.
Amy Stone [00:28:43]:
I think in your intake form, you mentioned that it was like they were all. Because it’s such a long trip, there were probably a lot of little things. So it can be a small thing. Yeah.
Crissy Fishbane [00:28:51]:
No, this. This was a transformative moment. And I remember I had been walking by myself for days and. Sorry, for hours, not days. I was walking by myself for hours. And I finally. No, months and months. Yes. I was in a wheat field. I remember it very clearly. And I again, didn’t have music, didn’t have a podcast. And the sun is beating down on me. The wheat’s just gently blowing in the wind. It’s blue skies. And I’m just walking by myself. I have for days, I have been grappling with, what do I do when I get back home? I’m not going back to teaching. I am a person that very much identifies with my job and my career. That’s a big part of who I am and how I present to the world. And who am I going to be if I’m not a teacher? What am I? And it was struggling. I couldn’t sleep at night. I would wake up in a cold sweat because I’m not used to not knowing the next 10 steps. And I remember walking, the sun just beating down on me. And there was just this moment where these words came to me out of nowhere. But I felt it deep inside. I felt it deep in my bones. Except what is. And I have tried to live by those words ever since. And it wasn’t this. This. I’ve heard these words, and they just transformed everything. It was just this deep inner knowing. I knew deep inside exactly what those words meant. And it was simply this idea that there is so much outside of my control and I’m trying to manipulate and figure it all out and have all the answers and make everything look just so, because that’s what society says it should be. Or I have this vision in my head of what it should be. And it was this moment of realizing that is all this stuff that I have no right trying to manipulate or control, because I can’t. It’s not about me. It’s just what is. So I need to accept that and I need to focus on what I can control, which is this moment right in front of me. That’s it. One step in front of the other, walking along this wheat field, meeting cool people from Australia and learning about what they eat Vegemite sandwiches and just focusing on what is in front of me. And on What I can do in this moment and recognizing the important things in my life, like the relationship that I have with people, that was another thing that. Just accept what is. Focus on the people in your life and just be in the moment. And I would say that was probably the biggest transformational moment for me on the Camino.
Amy Stone [00:31:35]:
I love that it stuck with you. Including the scene like the wind and the wheat field and the light. And one of the things that I think. And I bet you you studied this in school. Have you ever, like, did you study the whole thing about, like, engaging both sides of your brain when you walk? Like, what our mind does when we walk? Like, that’s like, the thing. Which is why, you know, anytime anybody is experiencing, like, they want to do, like, reduce stress, people are always like, go outside for a walk in nature. And the part that’s not always written is, and please leave your music, you know, on your nightstand. Not because anybody’s against music or anything, but that it’s the whole thing about, like, engaging with all. Letting your brain and your eyes and your ears engage with what’s around you and balance and all those things. Anyway, I’m off track. I’m off track. Okay. So there is a precept in coaching and some other things like that, that sometimes how a person does one thing can be seen in how they do a lot of different things in their life, Right? So that’s like, the ways in that if you make a change in the way you do one thing, sometimes it makes that ripple effect through other parts of your life. So then the question is, as a part of the Camino experience, you are getting a lot of practice every day of this, not being able to control all the things that are happening on the Camino. The weather, the people you run into, your blisters. So then now with this, when you look back on earlier versions of you, can you see that that earlier version of you might have been trying to exert control all over the place and creating, you know, was it a pattern or is it. No.
Crissy Fishbane [00:33:11]:
Oh, Amy, was it ever a pattern? Yes. If you wanted to describe me as a child, it would be someone who worried a lot and tried to manage all the things for all the people around her to make everyone else happy and to keep everything just so. And that. That was kind of a core part of. Of who I was. And it was. It’s cool. When I got back from the Camino, Noah said to me, you’re different.
Amy Stone [00:33:46]:
He.
Crissy Fishbane [00:33:46]:
He was like, I can’t put my finger on it. It’s not like you went from being type A to type B. I’m still type A, you know, but there’s. There’s just something different about you. There’s this kind of peace. And I will say, as with any other epiphany or transformation I’ve had, I think we all have them all the time, you know, to varying degrees. But over time, you do lose it. Over time, you know, the. The emails come in and all the requests and the busyness of digital living and the world that we live in, and your attention gets pulled in a million different directions, and it becomes hard to keep those lessons that we’ve learned in mind. It has to be a choice. It has to be a practice. And I have definitely found over the years since doing the Camino that I fall out of practice. But it’s always there. It’s always in the back of my mind, and I try to pull it back up and put it back into practice again in some way.
Amy Stone [00:34:46]:
How many years has it been since you did the Camino walk?
Crissy Fishbane [00:34:49]:
As I was talking, I was like, she’s gonna ask me that, and I need to.
Amy Stone [00:34:53]:
I need to do the math in my head. Yeah, I know, right? You can do a range, like five years.
Crissy Fishbane [00:35:04]:
Oh, it’s been. Actually, it was on the Camino, I decided to have. Try to have a child. My daughter is eight and a half. It was about 10 years ago. Thank you for saying that. I was like, I know there’s something in there that will.
Amy Stone [00:35:17]:
There’s a marker. It’s so hard to do that in an interview setting when we’re recording. It’s the craziest thing. Like, things that you know and you really, really know. Sometimes during an interview, it’s like, how. What is the number? You know, So I have a lot.
Crissy Fishbane [00:35:30]:
But also time is just like, yeah, warp speed for me now. I don’t even know. I don’t even know what decade we’re in. It’s like, what? I don’t know.
Amy Stone [00:35:40]:
Hopefully that’s a blessing. All right, so give us an example of how this has changed your lived experience day to day. Now, like, what is an example? Because I can see, like, so people, you can be type A and also be very aware of the. What’s in my zone of control and what’s not. And you can be very goal oriented. Sometimes these things get mixed up. Right? Because, you know, like, so. So give us an example of how some of the ways or a way that your life has changed from this transformational experience.
Crissy Fishbane [00:36:15]:
I would say that I still Experience moments of extreme stress or emotional pain or frustration. We’re human. That’s the human condition. We. We all have that experience. I would say that I am now quicker to go to that place of acceptance and finding gratitude for the present moment. And I know it can be a little social psychology, you know, leaning into gratitude, but it also works when we feel that. That feeling of gratitude, it can lift you out of some really dark places. And it’s not that I don’t feel those dark places. Of course I do. I’ve just gotten much better and practiced at. Okay, you know what? This is not something I can control. This is not something that’s in my window here that I should be trying to manipulate or own in some way. I’m going to take it out and I’m going to put it out there, because it’s not mine, and I’m going to focus on what is mine. And in that moment, I feel that gratitude. I feel gratitude for the light flickering through the tree leaves. I feel gratitude for my family. I feel gratitude for the roof over my head and that hot cup of coffee in the morning and those little things that I do have control over in that moment.
Amy Stone [00:37:35]:
I love that. I’m so thankful for you sharing that. Okay, so then, what would you say is your motivation for why you want to share this personal story of transformation with others? Because there’s always a choice. The reason behind this question is there’s always a choice to have the experience and then just be like, ah, yay me, and never share it with anybody.
Crissy Fishbane [00:37:59]:
Yeah.
Speaker B [00:38:00]:
Yeah.
Crissy Fishbane [00:38:01]:
No, thank you for asking that. That’s a. Actually, you ask very cool questions, Amy. I did just want to say that, too. I would say that what I do now, I. I have a community of moms. And over the past seven years, I have talked to hundreds of moms, hundreds of women, and without fail, I understand that we are all suffering through the same things. We are all struggling with these feelings of overwhelm, this feeling of loneliness, this feeling of not enoughness, and what am I doing with my life? These aren’t problems that are confined to me or to you or to one person. It’s the human condition. We are all accepting, experiencing that. And I have seen over the past seven years, as I’ve run my business and met all of these women, that sharing our stories is so powerful, not only for the person sharing the story, but for the people hearing it. There is. There is this beautiful moment that happens where you’re like, oh, I’m not alone. There is this beautiful moment where you just realize, I’m not alone in my experience. And it’s healing. It’s. It’s healing. And I think that’s where I come from in this, wanting to share my stories, all of them. I’m open to sharing a lot of them with. With people because I think they’re healing for me and the listener, hopefully.
Amy Stone [00:39:29]:
No, I. I love that it’s part of the mission of the show because I think that where we are in the human timeline, it’s a crazy place to be because there’s no. You can sort of speak a question into existence for information like, how do I X, Y, Z. And, you know, there’s no lack of information. But it’s almost harder than ever before to find lessons of lived experience because we are working from home. There are not as many community experiences. There’s not as many communities that are intergenerational. And so I think that it’s as important as it ever has been. So I appreciate you answering it that way. All right, so we are going to wrap this up in a second. First, I’m going to give you a chance to talk directly about what you do. You’ve mentioned it a couple times, but I’m going to give you a chance to speak it directly. You are no longer a high school teacher. You have founded something that you call hopefully I get this right. Is it her plus Health Collective? Can you tell us what it is and who you serve?
Crissy Fishbane [00:40:26]:
Yeah. So her plus Health Collective is a supportive community and resource hub for moms. Basically, when I had my child, I had severe postpartum anxiety, and I realized I don’t know how to make friends. I don’t know how to build the village that we say all moms need. And I met my business partner who had children who were a few, you know, a few years older, but she was still experiencing the same thing. And we communicated with all these moms, and we realized, you know what, we are all feeling very lonely and very overwhelmed. And so much of what you just said actually correlates to what we do and what we believe. We believe that how we approach mothering and the family is very broken in our society today. And it’s because we don’t have villages like we did in generations past where there was an intergenerational connection where there was moms from all different age brackets helping and supporting one another. And we have this strong nuclear family now. But because our society is so transient and we move everywhere, it’s really hard to build that network that supports not just the child and the family, but the mother, the mother needs it too. So we have a support.
Amy Stone [00:41:42]:
There’s that saying, which is the book, which is it takes a village to raise a child. And there’s another version of it that’s a little longer that says something like, and it takes a. A world to raise a mom or a community to raise a mom or to support a mom. There’s a longer.
Crissy Fishbane [00:41:58]:
I’m mangling.
Amy Stone [00:41:58]:
It’s. Somebody can let us know about it. But it’s like, it is so interesting because the emphasis is always on supporting the child. And not just for moms, but for any caregivers anywhere. There’s a very modern problem that there’s not a lot of support for caregivers of children of specialty needs, with children of any caregiver anywhere. It’s like a very isolating, lonely experience.
Crissy Fishbane [00:42:23]:
Absolutely, I agree wholeheartedly. And that’s a core part of why we wanted to create the mom community. So we have 10 social events a month for the moms in our community. And then we also have an expert directory because part of the overwhelm was going to Dr. Google not knowing who to trust. This expert says this, but this expert says that. And who do I trust? Who do I believe? So we have a directory of vetted experts and a library of expert content. We publish free new content every week to our website that comes from pelvic floor, pts, nutritionists, therapists, counselors, coaches, anyone that has been vetted and is a part of our directory and our network, our village. And it’s just an amazing community that we’ve developed over the years and it’s been really, really awesome to see. And there’s a lot of resources available for anyone. They can check it out on our website.
Amy Stone [00:43:16]:
Very cool. So you’re based in Raleigh, but is the community all online?
Crissy Fishbane [00:43:21]:
So our in person community is only in the triangle. Although we are moving into the idea of having chapters across the the U.S. that being said, we do have resources available for anybody anywhere on the website.
Amy Stone [00:43:35]:
Very cool. So I would call that a hybrid community. You’ve got online and then in person for the people. I think that’s, I mean, I think that’s what we’re all interested in now, like, so it’s very, very cool. All right, so that is wonderful. Sorry I interrupted you with my little thing about the village, but I had. I. Sometimes things leap out on me.
Crissy Fishbane [00:43:50]:
I loved it.
Amy Stone [00:43:51]:
Oh, very good. All right, so you have two things that we’re sharing with the audience today. You are the host of a podcast called Mama Needs a Moment. And I’ll put the link to the show in that. In the show notes and description. It’s in Spotify and in all the places. And you have an email newsletter that people can opt into. And I’ll put the link to that in the show notes and the description as well. I always do like to shout out to the people who are listening and watching. The easiest way to get the links to anything that comes up in the show is to subscribe to the imperfect adulting email community, which I actually call the Village. Not that there’s any, like, through lines here, but then it just shows up in your email box and you can click on it and take advantage of it. It’s a great newsletter.
Speaker B [00:44:31]:
People will love it.
Amy Stone [00:44:32]:
All right, thank you very much, Crissy, for sharing all that stuff with us. Are you ready for the final three questions?
Crissy Fishbane [00:44:39]:
All right, bring it on.
Amy Stone [00:44:40]:
Very good. This is the first time I’m doing this, but I have little slides that I made to, like, spice up the visual part of this. Here we go. What generational description matches you? Silent Generation, Baby Boomer, Gen X, Millennial, Gen Z.
Crissy Fishbane [00:44:56]:
So I consider myself an elder millennial. I believe they actually came out with a.
Amy Stone [00:45:01]:
The Zennial name.
Crissy Fishbane [00:45:03]:
Yeah, I identify as that.
Amy Stone [00:45:06]:
So when you take the online quizzes, which, you know, you don’t have to admit that you take them. When you take the online quizzes for, like, all the millennials do this, do they feel like they don’t fit?
Crissy Fishbane [00:45:18]:
Some of them do not fit. Some of them do not. Yeah, for sure.
Amy Stone [00:45:22]:
Fair enough. Fair enough. All right, very good. Share something entertaining with us. A good movie, a fun book that you read or listened to a TV show. Something entertaining that you think people in the audience will enjoy. Hmm.
Speaker B [00:45:38]:
I.
Crissy Fishbane [00:45:38]:
Okay, so I have recently fallen in love with the genre of books. Romantasy.
Amy Stone [00:45:44]:
I’m there with you. Love it.
Crissy Fishbane [00:45:46]:
Okay. I avoided it for a long time. I always felt guilty if I was reading books for fun. And I’ve recently just fallen in love with reading for fun again. And Romantasy is what kind of pulled me in. I loved the Fourth Wing series, and I’m currently reading the Sarah J. Maas books.
Amy Stone [00:46:04]:
Oh, the Acotar.
Crissy Fishbane [00:46:05]:
A Court of Thorns and Roses.
Amy Stone [00:46:10]:
Thorns and Roses. So, yeah, so they’re good. They’re. They’re. They’re good. That is so much fun. All right. That I’m. I. Yes. Enjoy them. Enjoy them. Are you reading them or are you doing the audiobooks?
Crissy Fishbane [00:46:23]:
I. I like having a book in My I’m especially for fiction. I just like the book and read it.
Amy Stone [00:46:28]:
Yeah, very paper Book or Kindle Paper?
Crissy Fishbane [00:46:31]:
Yeah. Gotta feel it.
Amy Stone [00:46:32]:
Very, very cool. Okay, third and final. Here we go. When you travel by airplane, I didn’t know that you were an avid traveler when I wrote this. Are you a person who plans ahead and brings your snacks from home or are you a person who shows up to the airport empty handed and pays the premium to stock up for snacks at the world’s most expensive store in the airport?
Crissy Fishbane [00:46:52]:
Well, my chain or my answer has changed since becoming a mother. I used to be the person who. I’m not a big snacker. I just want a real meal. So I showed up empty handed and I would go find the restaurant. Now that I have a child, I do pack all the snacks. We eat the snacks but I still stop by the restaurant for a hot meal.
Amy Stone [00:47:11]:
There you go. That’s a plan. All right, that’s it. Crissy for Spain. Thank you so much for being a wonderful guest today on the show.
Crissy Fishbane [00:47:21]:
Thank you, Amy.
Speaker B [00:47:23]:
Thank you for joining me today.
Amy Stone [00:47:25]:
I hope you enjoyed the show.
Speaker B [00:47:28]:
Before I go, I want to encourage you to become a bigger part of the conversation. Please subscribe wherever you’re listening or watching the show. That helps my stats. A request from the bottom of my indie creator heart is to please tell your friends about the show. That is the real way new people discover it. If you feel motivated, I would love it if you rated the show or wrote a review on whatever platform you are using. Please be sure to head over to ImperfectAdulting.com and sign up for the email community. I call this the Village. You’ll get some free stuff right away and you’ll begin to get the weekly emails that I send. This includes the links for special offers from any guests on the show and cool stuff I put together for the community. There’s a lot more going on than just this show and the only way to find out is to get the emails. Plus, you’re busy. You don’t have time or desire to follow every single tidbit on social media. And you don’t have to because I’m happy to send it to you if
Amy Stone [00:48:29]:
you have a story you’d like to
Speaker B [00:48:31]:
share with the audience. I have an open application for guests. Guess where you’ll find it. That’s right. On the website and in the emails. And that’s a wrap for this episode until next time. Remember that the journey is the destination. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that, not me. Well, until just now, I did. Just say it. But what I want you to hear today is that if your adulting journey isn’t going the way you expected, that just may not mean you’re lost. It may mean that you’re just on your way. And now the fine print the Art of Imperfect Adulting podcast and streaming video show is a copyrighted work created and produced by Amy Stone, and Amy says so. The music was written and produced by Todd Thompson at Dharma Bomb Studios. All rights are reserved. Anything expressed on this show is offered as entertainment, and the views of the guests may not always represent the ideas and viewpoints of the host. That’s me. Amy Stone does not intend to hold myself herself out to provide professional advice or recommendations of any kind. In the end, you and you alone need to make those kinds of decisions based on your personal and individual situation, needs, circumstances and comfort level. Yeah, it’s a little weird for me to talk about myself in the third person, but you get the idea. This is Amy Stone signing off.