78: From Illness to Wellness with Integrative Nurse Coaching: Linda Coogan BSN, NC-BC, MSHA, FACHE

From Illness to Wellness with Integrative Nurse Coaching: Linda Coogan BSN, NC-BC, MSHA, FACHE Transcript

Nicole Vienneau  00:00

Welcome, everyone, to the Integrative Nurse Coaches in ACTION! podcast. My name is Nicole Vienneau. I am your host, and I’m also a Board Certified Integrative Nurse Coach. And today I’m coming to you all the way from the White Mountains in Arizona. 

I’m trying to get out of the heat, because right now it’s summer in Tucson, Arizona, and it’s temperatures are in the 110s and it’s hot. So I’m in the mountains this week, and I’m excited to be here. So today we have a guest who is writing her first book. She’s semi retired, she’s going back to school to get her doctorate in whole health leadership. 

And she has been a Nurse for many years, for over 30 years. And I wanted to have her on the podcast, because I’ve known her for many years. And at the Integrative Nurse Coach Symposium in Miami, we connected, reconnected there, and it just makes sense to have her on the podcast today. So we welcome Linda Coogan, aka Nurse Linda Kay. Welcome, Linda.

Linda Coogan  01:14

Hi! How are you? Glad to be here!

Nicole Vienneau  01:19

It’s great to be here with you. And I know it’s hot where you’re at too.

Linda Coogan  01:24

Oh, yes, I’m in Alabama, and it’s hitting the 100 degrees now as well here. So, good for you for being in the mountains.

Nicole Vienneau  01:36

Yes, it’s nice in the mountains. Ah. So we love to take a little trip down history lane and learn a little bit about you, Linda, about your history and why you decided to become a Nurse.

Linda Coogan  01:49

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Well, I actually decided to become a Nurse back in the 1980s. Just a little further back and my history— I was the first person in my family history, on both my mom’s and my dad’s side, to graduate from high school, much less go to college. And my dad, he was an inspiration for me, and really inspired me to go forward. 

And when I graduated from high school back in the 70s, he was like, well, you know, you either need to learn to type or be a teacher, because that’s the only thing that women can do, and or be a Nurse. And I wasn’t sure what I was going to do at that point in time, but I knew that I was going to go back to college. And I got married at a very young age. 

I was actually 18, right out of high school, got married, and my first husband, the father of my two sons, he developed juvenile onset diabetes. And I was like, you know what, I want to know how the body works and what we can do for him and how to take care of him. So that’s when I decided I wanted to… I was going to go to Nursing school. 

I really wanted to be a doctor, but I was like, you know, I tell people I was… we were so poor that we were “po”, we couldn’t afford the letter R. My dad was a… he was a police officer for the city of Birmingham, and my mom was a stay at home mom with seven kids. 

So, you know, I just didn’t think that was something that was I capable, I was able to do something like that. But I could go to Nursing school, and I even was going to go to, like, a two year college to get my degree. And the supervisor there, counselor, she said, no, no, no, you know, because I graduated from high school in my honor society, she said, you need to go… 

UAB is right here, University of Alabama, Birmingham, right here in town. This is where I grew up, and you need to go there. We’re going to apply there. You’re going to go there. And so that’s what I did. I went to the BSN program at UAB. And then when I graduated, I actually was honored. 

Me and 12 other Nurses were chosen to help staff at the UAB hospital, University Hospital here that’s connected with UAB, to staff a unit, a cardiac care unit, that was then doing a new thing called stents. Cardiac stents. They had just started doing angioplasties, and they were starting to do stents, and they had some studies and that sort of thing. 

And they took 12 of us, chose 12 of us to go into that program and staff that unit, and they they put us through training. We were from some of the best, it was a great opportunity. So I started out as a cardiac intensive care Nurse in the program, and absolutely loved it. 

Before I graduated, I thought I wanted to— because I love kids— I wanted to be a pediatric Nurse, I thought, until I did my clinicals and kids were dying, and I was like, I don’t… I just can’t handle that. So that’s when I started looking at, you know, I wasn’t really sure where I was going to go to, just general Nursing practice, and then I was excited to be a part of this program. 

So early on in my career, when I was working in the cardiac intensive care unit, there were a couple of Nurses… we made some mistakes that now Nurses, they’re part of the patient safety standards and goals that we have that you don’t do them. But whenever a mistake was made, it was like, I can remember a doctor coming down on me— you harmed that patient with what you did. 

And it was my Nurse manager, who was amazing, that came to my rescue. I literally got in the corner of the room in a ball and was like, I can’t do this. If I’m going to harm patients lives with a little, tiny mistake that I made, maybe this is not for me. 

And she really encouraged me, and she made that doctor come back and apologize to me for the way that he had treated me. But that experience, and the experience that a lot of the other Nurses that were with working with me, went through, grew me to become more interested in quality and patient safety. 

So I went into Nurse leadership and healthcare quality and did my studies, began studying on how we could get to the root cause of issues and improve the quality and safety in healthcare. So then we moved to a small town called Clanton, Alabama, and I… 

But I had been married for like, nine years, and my husband and I were trying to have children, and we went through infertility, and I had my two boys, Matthew, which means a gift from God, because he was my gift from God. And then Joshua came two years later. 

And we moved to the small town with the two boys, and I got a job as the chief Nursing officer at a little small hospital, you know. In the small hospitals, you wear a ton of hats. So I was like the person responsible for quality infection control, even the medical records department, and case management. 

We were doing case management before there was such a thing with a social worker and the Nurses in this small hospital. And that was in the 90s that I was there, and I learned everything about running a hospital, because you I did everything, you know, including turning over bedrooms. 

Everybody does everything in the smaller hospitals. And we had a Joint Commission survey, and I was responsible for infection control at that time, and the Joint Commission surveyor said to me, you don’t know what you’re doing, do you? You know. And I started crying. I was like, oh, I’m doing the best I can. 

And I said to myself: one day, I’m going to be a Joint Commission surveyor, and I’m going to treat the Nurses better than this, and I’m going to go out there and I’m going to help improve the quality and safety, not to try and tell somebody what they were doing wrong. So I, you know, I went to work in several other… couple of other hospitals in quality. 

I started… I got more training. I became Lean Six Sigma certified in healthcare quality, and all of those things became very important. And then years later, I went through a divorce from my first husband, and he also later died in a car accident. 

But I married my now husband, and he brought a son to our marriage, and so we were raising three boys, teenagers at the same time. And when the boys got old enough, I went to work for the Joint Commission. I was a Nurse surveyor with the Joint Commission for a few years, and absolutely loving, loving it. 

I tell people, when I was going around with the surveyors, we were a true team. It’s the first time that I had experienced a true team working together to improve the healthcare. The physician, the Nurse, the administrator, the engineer— we were all on the same team, and we were working together. 

When we went into a hospital, we truly had the opinion of going in to help them to see where they needed to make improvements to improve the safety and quality of care for those patients. I’ve had so many people— and still today, when I tell people I worked for Joint Commission, as a Joint Commission surveyor— to say to me that they… 

What? Why? You’re the person we’re afraid of. Why do you want to do that? And I tell them all the time, the majority of the people who are doing this, they’re doing it because they want to make a difference in healthcare and improve the quality and safety of care that we’re giving. And you just need to look at it with from that perspective. It’s not going in to catch you doing something wrong, and it’s really for that reason.

Nicole Vienneau  11:39

So you’ve had such a vast history here. You know, starting Nursing school at a very young age, exciting that you were part of a new generation for your family, that you could be the first one to graduate from a university, no less, and get your Bachelor’s of Science in Nursing at a young age. 

And had a wonderful life, really curious about how the body worked, especially when your husband was diagnosed with type one diabetes, and working through that. Had some of the first experiences with stents, which is now something like everybody knows about, but you were in a new realm. 

So I can imagine that that would have set you up to make some errors, because it was a new avenue of Nursing, right, a new way of doing things. And some of the experiences you had when those errors happened, were not very kind, which made you then say, okay, now I want to help and support Nurses and support hospitals in a way that is really elevating them, instead of making them feel like they were less than. 

So, then you became a JCAHO. A JCAHO, we’re all like, oh my gosh. A surveyor. But then you took it to a different level, right? I mean, you took it to a level where, yes, we want to come in, we want to support these hospitals. We want to help elevate them, not make them feel less than. Yes, and so along the way, you had a few children, and sounds like you had more experiences. So what else has happened for you? 

Linda Coogan  13:33

Well, also, when I was serving as a quality director at one of the hospitals that I was working at, my boss, who was the chief operating officer for the health system, said, you need to go get your master’s degree in administration. He said, because you’re really good at this. 

So I did go back to UAB, and I got my master’s degree in healthcare administration, and had really been able to utilize that. I utilized that with the surveyor as well. So in 2012, Matthew, my oldest, had been out of college. The boys went to college. They went to University of Alabama and rolled on. 

And Matthew, he got his degree in sustainability in the environment, so there was a lot of looking at the environment and holistic approaches to healthcare. We had, as a family, my now husband, Danny, and his son, David, that he brought to the marriage, who is also my son, you know. 

But he’s always been very bringing in healthier options into the home. And you know, we don’t need to be drinking these sodas, and we quit drinking sodas for him and that sort of thing. So we had delved a little bit in the nutrition part. And Joshua, in 2012, he was 22 years old, and had just gotten out of school and had started his first career, his first job, he was working for the local cable company. 

And he was the quality inspector, and I was like, you go, son, you’re working in quality just like me! This is great. This is wonderful. And Danny, my husband and I, I was surveying a hospital in New York, and he had never been to New York, so we planned to go. 

We went up early the weekend before so that we could do a little New York trip before Monday morning, the survey team walked in and surprised the hospital. So we left on a Thursday before I was going to go with the survey team into the hospital in New York, and my son, Joshua, was at home. 

He was living back at home with us, and he had had two of his friends over that were spending the night. And my home was broken into, and all three young men were murdered. Joshua was murdered with a single gunshot wound to his head as he lay sleeping in the home. 

And it was Matthew was driving my niece and his cousin to California. She was moving to California, and they were, I think, probably around the other side of Texas or Arizona, when he got the news, or Joshua’s girlfriend called and said, the police are at your house and they’re saying somebody’s been killed. 

And so Matthew called me and said, mom, police are at the house, and they’re saying somebody’s been killed, and you need to call the police department. I called, and they said, you know, they had to verify who I was, and then they said somebody was going to call me back. They couldn’t tell me anything. 

That somebody was going to call me back. In the meantime, I like, called my sisters and stuff, because they were saying it was all over the news that the police were at the house and all of this. And so they called me back, and I can remember I was sitting on the bed, and my husband was there with me in the hotel room, and the officer on the phone, he started with, Mrs. Coogan, I hate to have to tell you this over the phone… 

And I threw the phone down and started screaming to the top of my lungs. And my husband had to get the phone and talk to them, and they were the ones that told him that Joshua had been murdered. And my husband went down to the lobby and told them what was going on, because he was afraid that they were going to think that he was harming me because I was screaming so loud. 

But you being a Nurse, you know what those words mean. I’ve said it so many times going in to tell people that their family members, they’ve lost, not survived. We did everything we could. Or I hate to have to tell you this. But to say I hate to have to tell you this on the phone, I knew what the next words were going to be out of his mouth, and I didn’t want to hear it. 

I just threw the phone and screamed. And it was one of the… I told my husband has to call one of the other surveyors. I had the names of the other surveyors. There was another Nurse surveyor there that was the lead surveyor for that team, and he called her. I had never met her before, and I don’t even remember her name. 

I wish I could. You know, hopefully one day she’ll hear something, because I want to tell her how much I appreciate. Because she came and she… I was in shock, and she was… you know, comforted me, and she comforted my husband, and she helped us get a flight home and all of those things, and just was exactly what I needed there, and what we both needed at that time. 

She stayed with us and everything, and I never have seen her since, and I don’t even remember her name, but she was wonderful. I was so glad that the rest of that survey team was there at that time to be there with us. So I never went back to the Joint Commission after that. We went through the trial of the murderer. 

It took two years for us to actually go to court, and went through so much, and I joined a group called VOCAL: victims of crime and leniency. And it was just on the news, I just heard it yesterday, that Miriam Sheehan, Miriam Sheehan, the lady that started VOCAL here in Alabama, getting victims rights in the trials and that sort of thing, she passed away last week. 

But it was… it’s a group of other victims that are there for the victims going through the trial, and I learned so much about the court system when I was going through all of that. And the murderer was found guilty of five counts of capital murder. 

You get one count for every person that you kill, and he killed three people, and you get one count for committing murder during a robbery, and you get one count for killing two or more people at the same time. And he would have gotten the death penalty, but— and this had never been done before— but we agreed to life without parole, and he gave up all rights to appeal. 

And we had learned that if you, if they… if he got the death penalty, it immediately would have gone to appeals, on appeals, and we would have been going back to trial again and again and again and again. And when he gave up his rights to appeal, and that he would never be able to get parole and life in prison, I just said, thank you, God. 

I am a woman of faith, and I have a very strong faith. And so we agreed to that, and I actually was able to tell… the young man that did this, his mother, actually, when he was bragging to a friend that he had killed some guys, she actually is the one that told the police. And I was like, I don’t know what I would do if the tables were turned, if that was my son. 

So I actually was able to go up to her in the courtroom and say, thank you for doing the right thing. And she turned to me and said, thank you for sparing my son’s life. So that was huge. It was huge, and that whole process was a life changing event for all of us. 

And Matthew and I— Matthew had become a teacher, and he taught a lot about organic farming and sustainability and ways that taught youth, troubled youth, survival skills and that sort of thing. And he and I… he said, Mom, there’s this social and emotional learning program that is great for kids. 

And I saw Goldie Hawn on the Today Show, she had put together a program for yoga, meditation and social and emotional learning for the kids. And so we started a nonprofit where we took the social emotional learning into the schools, because we felt like if this person did this, maybe if he had some of these skills, maybe, just maybe, he would not have made the decision to murder all three boys. 

I just have to breathe for a minute.

Nicole Vienneau  23:42

I was just gonna say, Linda, can we take a pause for a moment for you, for Joshua, for all those who have lost someone. Yeah. Thank you for sharing your story, too.

Linda Coogan  23:59

So that’s important, because it’s what led me to Nurse coaching. I had gone to work for a children’s hospital, local children’s hospital, and it was right next to UAB School of Nursing, where I had gone to school. And I had had a lot of alumni events that I was invited to, but I had never gone to any. 

I don’t know why. I just never had. And one day I got an invitation, and I was at work, and it was going to happen at lunchtime that day. There was this lady who was a Nightingale scholar. Her name was Barbara Dossey, and she was speaking at the UAB School of Nursing that day. 

And I thought, this sounds interesting. And she was talking about this program that they had put together for Nurse coaches, Nurse coaching, and what it was, and it was based off of Florence Nightingale’s letters. And I was like, I want to hear more about this. So I went over and Barbie, as we know her, she did the talk. 

And I was like, wow, that program sounds exactly like what I am looking for and what, you know, ways I’ve wanted to practice Nursing forever, and how we can help so many people on their wellness journeys and stuff. But there’s no way I can afford that. And I was going… the next cohort was going to be in Union, Washington, which is in the upper Northeast of the United States, and I’m in the lower southeast of the United States. 

So I just went home and looked into it, and was looking at all of these things, and I got a phone call from a friend who had gone through the master’s program, Master’s in healthcare administration program with me, and she had started a new job at a hospital system in Tacoma, Washington, which is about an hour from Union, which is where Harmony Hill is. 

And they needed someone to come in and help them get prepared for Joint Commission. And I had been away from Joint Commission for over two years, and you have to have been away for two years before you can consult with others. And she asked me to come up and do some consulting with them. 

And I went in September, and the first cohort for the INCA program that I was… it was in 2016 that I graduated. But it was… I forget the number of the cohort that I’m in with the INCA program. But it was happening. They were meeting on site in September, and this was in June that she asked me to come. 

And we had planned for me to come up in September, and she was gonna, they were gonna pay for me to go out there and everything. And I was like, you know what? I think the good Lord is telling me I need to just sign up for this program, and then I’m going to figure out how I’m going to pay for it afterwards. 

And I did, and I went out, and I did a week of consulting with the hospital, and then I went to Harmony Hill, which was the most amazing experience of my life. And getting to know all of these other Nurses that are like-minded, that have been seeking the same path that I have, I was just like, this is beautiful. 

This is absolutely what I needed. It was beautiful. And then when I got home, they called me from that organization and asked me to sign a contract to be their Joint Commission consultant, and it was going to pay me enough money to be able to go through the program and not have to worry. It just worked out perfectly. 

And so I was like, I know that’s where I need to go. And oh my goodness, at the time that I started the program, I was on like 14 different medications. I was in and out of the hospital, you know, with all of the stress and everything that had gone through, that I’d gone through, that had happened in my life. 

I had been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroid, celiac disease, rheumatoid arthritis, all of the autoimmune diseases, and then I was taking medicine. And then the medicine I was taking was causing side effects that I had to take other meds for. And, you know, antidepressants, all of these things that I was taking during that time, and in and out of the hospital, and asthma is another thing. 

You know, I had a pulmonologist, a cardiologist, a internal medicine, a rheumatologist, like every kind of doctor in the world. And going through this program… and, you know, we coach each other, and I had the support of these Nurses when we were together, there and away from, online with each other— it was so healing for me. 

I also went and I learned about Tai Chi for health, which is a program that was designed by a physician, Dr Paul Lam, and he took the Tai Chi program and actually modified it so that it improves your… it’s been proven that Harvard Medical School actually supports it, and the CDC and the areas on aging, to decrease arthritis pain, improve movements, and all of those things. 

I learned… I became a Tai Chi instructor. It was very helpful for me, and I was teaching some of my cohort Nurses some of the Tai Chi moves, but it’s just like yoga with the breathing, learning how to breathe, how to calm, how to meditate. 

And I went through some Seminary where I learned about contemplative prayer, and I was like contemplative prayer and mindfulness meditation, awareness practices, are all the same thing. So here we are in 2024, and I don’t take any meds at all. I’ve been taking my thyroid med, and I’ve been able to wean off a bit just recently, and I’m doing really well with that. 

So all of this is because of taking these lifestyle practices and Integrative Nurse Coaching and the more holistic approach to health, body, mind, spirit, all the dimensions of health, and taking them in and having the support of like minded Nurses and individuals through this. 

Now, two years ago, in 2021, Matthew, who had started the nonprofit, and actually took the nonprofit and ran with it, and then we were able to reach so many kids, I told him… like, I put my life savings and everything into this nonprofit, and so many kids were… I said, if we could just get one kid to say that this made a difference. 

And when I was in Washington, in Tacoma, Matthew sent me a text with a letter from a sixth grade girl, and that letter said that she was actually thinking that her life was of no value, and she was thanking us for teaching her that she could do anything she wanted to, and how valuable her life was. 

And I told Matthew, I said, that is worth a million dollars. That one child writing that letter. When I got home, my desk was covered with letters from kids saying similar things. It’s really… the teachers, the children, and you know, other people have been impacted, and they put together social justice programs, and it’s just been wonderful impact. 

And now I’m working with a friend of mine here in family wellness advocacy, where we’re working for advocating health and wellness in the communities and the schools and that sort of thing. But two years ago, Matthew was in a car accident and he lost his life. He was 33 years old, and Matthew and Joshua are the two boys that I gave life to, that came from my body. 

I still have David, my stepson, and he is married, and they have a granddaughter for me and my husband, Danny. But yeah, so my first husband actually had lost his leg from diabetes, and he had a reaction with the diabetes and had a car accident and died from that a few years back, well, before Joshua was murdered. 

And then Joshua was murdered, and then Matthew died in a car accident. So, all of them are gone. And I am so thankful that I have this Nurse coaching program, these more lifestyle practices, all these people that are like-minded surrounding me, and what I’ve been able to do is to recognize the beauty of what I’m thankful for. I didn’t think I could have children. 

We tried for nine years, and God gave me two amazing young men, and both of those boys impacted so many lives in the time that they were here. Joshua for 22 years, Matthew for 33 years. And I thank God for every moment that we had with them. And that’s what keeps me going. 

And I know that God kept me alive for a reason. And I want to encourage anyone who is interested in Nurse coaching, who is a Nurse, who is out there, who’s getting started in Nurse coaching, and you’re like, what am I going to do with this? No matter where you’re working, no matter where you are, you can use these skills in your own life. 

You know, when I sat for the certification exam, you know, Nicole, the majority of the questions are on self-care. You have to put the oxygen on yourself and take care of yourself first before you can take care of others. And then I just got accepted into the first ever Doctorate of Whole Health Leadership Program, and I’m going to do my fellowship in integrative medicine. 

And it’s another opportunity, just like when I got out of Nursing school, to be a part of a new program going forward and helping to change the way that we practice healthcare, and I’m so excited to be a part of this and to be doing this in my latter years. I’m 63 years old. I’ll be 65 when I get my doctorate. 

I am so excited to have this opportunity to do here, and I want to encourage all the Nurses and Nurse coaches out there to join… we can’t… none of us can do it alone. Join these forces, and let’s do it together. 

I did want to say too, Nicole, I met recently a Nurse who, she and her friend who does some nutritional work, they were teaching a cooking class for a local farmer, and she was like, you know, I’m looking for a way to take these more holistic practices and ways of health and teaching nutrition and that sort of thing, and the Nursing career just doesn’t allow me to do that. 

It doesn’t condone that. And I was like, oh, yes, it does! There’s this beautiful program, yes, do that! And I started telling her about Nurse coaching. And so I’m excited to start connecting her. So all of you out there, connect your friends, let them know, and take these skills wherever you’re practicing. It’s needed. It’s needed. Let’s do this together. Let’s go change the way we practice healthcare and wellness together.

Nicole Vienneau  37:39

So many people out there could really benefit from learning different tools and skills. And you know, there’s no better way to show up in the world than to do things that bring you joy and can support you. Support me. I’m thinking to myself, you know, I didn’t know at the time how much it could support me and how I show up in the world and help heal me in different ways. And it sounds like it has helped you in so many ways as well.

Linda Coogan  38:12

Yes, yes, yeah. It’s helped me in so many ways, so many ways. I’m so thankful for this opportunity. And it’s helped so many others. I mean, there’s this lady now, Jacquie Fazekas, with Bama Wellness Advocacy, she actually had a heart attack and didn’t… and they coded her. And she was in corporate America, and she now runs a health food store and wants to reach out to communities and help them to learn how to be well. 

I’m actually wearing a shirt that says, join the wellness movement. And she is encouraging peer wellness groups in the schools, and the students want this. They love it. They love this opportunity to learn more healthy practices and then bring their peers along and to do it together. So it’s a beautiful thing.

Nicole Vienneau  39:15

Did you tell us the name of your nonprofit? 

Linda Coogan  39:18

Well, the nonprofit that Matthew and I started is AlaQuest Collaborative for Education, or it’s acealabama.org, and they are focusing more now on the social justice programs and doing a lot of great work with that. And Bama Wellness Advocacy is the nonprofit that I’m working with, with Jacquie, to drive this wellness movement going forward.

Nicole Vienneau  39:50

You’re doing such great work out there, Linda, such great work.

Linda Coogan  39:56

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for that. You know, in the grieving process, the best way to… and you never get over it. You have to go through it. And there’s… I’m in the process of writing, like you said, my first book, and it’ll be called The Impact Statements about my impact statement with Joshua. 

But I’m going to talk about… I’m also talking about the grief process and how Elizabeth Kubler Ross’s Stages of Grief don’t go in a linear fashion. It’s actually a slippery slope, you know, that you slide back and forth on. 

But getting on that, to that reinvesting in life part, is something that it takes time to get to, and you are going to go back through all of those things, and grasping to what you can do, how you can help others, is the best thing that you can do to get back out there. 

You know, why are you still here? That’s my question. Why am I still here on this earth? And I’ve got so much to give, and if I can give that back to others and help others, then that’s how, and that’s why this doctorate in whole health leadership and helping to lead that is so attractive to me as well.

Nicole Vienneau  41:24

Yeah, and you said you’ll be 65 when you graduate. We are never, ever, ever, ever too old to do things we want to do. Ever.

Linda Coogan  41:37

That’s right!

Nicole Vienneau  41:40

Right, right, and I see that also age and wisdom. I mean, how much wisdom and all of the things that you’ve been through and shared with with other people. I mean, all of that wisdom has come with you, and now you can, like you say, use that to help other people and invest in others and support others and uplift others. And that helps with the grief, the grieving, your grieving process.

Linda Coogan  42:09

Yes, yes, it’s, you know, that self-care thing, you know, like the stewardess tells you, you have to put the oxygen on yourself first, because if you don’t, both of you are gonna die. But you know, reaching out to help others is really kind of a selfish thing that I’m doing. It’s so healing for me. 

Nicole Vienneau  42:31

It doesn’t sound selfish to me. Win, win. Everybody’s winning, so it’s all good.

Linda Coogan  42:38

Absolutely. Yes.

Nicole Vienneau  42:41

So in our last few moments together, I love to ask a question, and my favorite question is, is what is on your heart? What is on your heart right now that you would like to share with our listeners?

Linda Coogan  42:55

Oh, wow, yeah, it’s absolutely this is we can make a difference. There’s this movement to improve more wellness, more lifestyle approaches. And our body was designed to heal itself, if we can only learn to listen to it. And to be able to go out there and help one another and make a difference. 

And no matter where you are, I know I said this before, but I really want to say this, if you’re in the hospital, if you’re in a physician’s office of your own practice, if you’re a stay at home mom who has a Nursing degree, or a father, or something in your church, or something in your community, or in your whatever, wherever you are, interacting with people and using these mindfulness awareness practices— you know, awareness practice is bringing to your conscious awareness what is going on— you can make a difference every day. 

And so I just really want to encourage everyone to remember that and not think that you have to build your own practice and you have to go out and do something special. Just everyday interactions with folks and showing them. Take care of yourself first. 

They’re going to see, just like with me coming off all these meds and everything, they’re going to see that you’re healthier and how it’s impacted you, and they’re going to want to do the same, know how, what you did, how you got there, and being able to do that.

Nicole Vienneau  44:51

So true. Yeah, when we’re showing up differently, people want to know how, how did we do that? Yeah. It takes work, yes, and learning and growing and being exposed and some vulnerability and relearning and all of that, and yet, in the end, we’re better for it. Yes, yes. Well, so Linda, how can we find you when we’re looking for you to connect? 

Linda Coogan  45:17

Yeah, so I have a website: nurselindakay.com. And I’m just getting it rejuvenated and up and running. And then alaquest.net, same thing with that, I’m working on those. But my email is lcoogan@alaquest.net. And AlaQuest is… we’re from Alabama, and we’re on a quest. That’s where the name came from.

Nicole Vienneau  45:48

I love that so much, yes. Well, thank you so much for being with us today, and for sharing your heart with us, and for sharing your light, some of your life stories with us, and just welcoming us into your life.

Linda Coogan  46:07

Thank you, Nicole, thank you so much for having me, and I’m so glad we reconnected at that INCA conference, yeah.

Nicole Vienneau  46:14

Me too! And I’ll be excited when your book comes out, and definitely keep us in the loop on that. And we wish you all the best.

Linda Coogan  46:23

Yes, yes, you too. Thank you very much. Have a beautiful day.