Today we’d like to introduce you to Kelsey Rowell.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Kelsey. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I started my journey as a Nurse seven years ago. I knew that whatever I did in my lifetime, I wanted it to be meaningful. I wanted to be able to give back in a way that made me feel good. While I was in nursing school, I played little side gigs at coffee shops with my guitar and sang. I loved performing. I’d spend much of my nights during the week split between studying for nursing school and learning covers to new songs that I could play at my gigs. Many of my classmates probably thought I was going against the Nursing School bible by playing music at night instead of studying, but I couldn’t help. It was a creative outlet that gave me life. Looking back, I realize the creative that I was, but at the time I had to be focused and get that degree.
When I finally became a Registered Nurse, I started to learn a lot about the real world. The student loans started coming in. I had to work on holidays now. And I realized slowly that my life sorta-kinda was at the Mercy of my job. I didn’t like that, but at the time I didn’t have much of a choice. It was also a harsh reality that the “professional nursing world” wasn’t that professional. What I mean by that is that I was up close and personal with a lot of difficult personalities. I have always been an optimistic person with a love for fun and people, so whenever I encountered what I like to call a “Toxic Terry”, it was always hard for me. I just wanted people to be positive and support one another and not tear another down. Nursing was already hard enough on its own, and adding in difficult & toxic personalities made it more challenging.
Because of my first year of experience as a Nurse, I decided to start a blog talking about common things that nurses dealt with daily. Most of it was about how to manage anxiety and navigate the real world when not everyone is kind all of the time. I blogged about anything and everything and my work began to resonate with nurses all over the world. In 2016, I was featured on the Dr. Oz show for competition. When everyone else was submitting videos about all of their accolades and reasons why they should be chosen to be a Nurse for his show, I decided to take my guitar back out and write a song about why Dr. Oz should choose me. I’ll never forget the day I got the call back from the producer. I sang my way onto the Dr. Oz show to share my creative talent and love for nursing on that stage with the whole world. That whole experience revealed to me what I wanted to start doing with my career and life – living it taking chances and living it to the fullest!
Today I run an online digital nursing blog and business creating courses and content to help nurses create a life and career that they love! Over the past few years, it became so important to me to have emotional, creative, and financial freedom in my life. I wanted to teach other nurses how to take control of their careers and do the same whether that be finding a job that was more fitting for THEIR life or launching a side business along with their full time gig! There’s this stigma in our profession that to be a “real” nurse, you must be working in a hospital and exhausting yourself. I wanted to show nurses how to use their license to create a career with physical and emotional freedom. One with healthy boundaries and one that brought them joy! That’s exactly what I do today on Whole Life Nurse and it’s a passion that I absolutely LOVE!
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Oh wow. No, not at all. I hit a point about three years ago where I realized that struggling and setbacks are just part of the process. Before, they made me doubt myself and want to quit. Every hateful comment. Every piece of criticism. Shoot, in nursing school, I had a professor tell me I should consider changing my major. Back then, I didn’t have the emotional resilience that I have today. I just was hard headed and didn’t like her, so I worked hard to prove her wrong.
Today, I’m a nurse turned entrepreneur. They don’t teach you business skills in nursing school, let’s just put it that way. I’m disorganized. I’m scattered. I hate taxes. I look around and see how this person is doing things this way and that person is doing things that way.
I’ve launched courses that have flopped. I’ve worked hard on content that I thought would go viral and it didn’t. I’ve done in person meet ups that no one showed up to. I’ve just consistently put myself out there and I’ve done it enough to where if it flops, I’m used to it. But I’ve noticed the more I’ve flopped, the more I’ve learned. And moving forward, you’re not starting over, you’re starting with the experience of last time. That’s the difference maker. It’s just constant building on top of that until you develop and emotional resilience that makes you unstoppable. Struggle, rejection, and set back just becomes a part of the game. You just keep moving until you get the answer you need or the results you want. Yes…. It certainly hurt, but it was an opportunity. An opportunity to ask myself “what went wrong?” and “how can I do it better or differently next time?”
Please tell us about your work.
The whole Life Nurse is a not-so-normal nursing platform. I don’t teach nurses how to survive nursing school. I don’t teach them education and skills in regards to patient care. I teach them life skills. I teach them how to navigate toxic cultures, how to make more money as a nurse, and basically how to get creative with their career and create a life that they love! I don’t believe you should just be one type of nurse, I believe you need to be the nurse that YOU were uniquely created to be! One with only gifts and talents that YOU have. Nurses need to learn to do what is healthy and right for them and not pay attention to the opinions and judgements of others. Every nurse needs to implement healthy nurse boundaries.
There are too many nurses out there in jobs right now who are there because either someone guilted them into taking that job so their “skills will be stronger” or they are afraid to leave because they think they will be viewed as less of a nurse if they choose to do something outside of the bedside. It is my goal to normalize that it is OKAY and right to create a career and life that is healthy and right for YOU!
All of my content is geared towards normalizing that you are a real nurse no matter HOW you choose to use your license and that EVERY nurse’s role is just as important as another’s regardless of where they work! We need to learn that the opinions of others who aren’t living our lives don’t matter.
I am most proud of all of the nurses who have chosen to take a stand for their physical and emotional well-being by implementing boundaries, negotiating, and pursuing positions that were healthier for their life!
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
Success is being able to make enough income that gives me a life where I am emotionally free. Emotional freedom to me looks like more time with my family, being able to give freely to others, not being bound to a corporate job or the demands of someone above me, and being able to use my creative gifts, knowledge, and talents to help others acquire similar freedom!
Contact Info:
- Website: wholelifenurse.com
- Phone: 5612810048
- Email: kelsey@wholelifenurse.com
- Instagram: @wholelifenurse
- Facebook: facebook.com/wholelifenurse
- Twitter: whole life nurse
Image Credit:
Christina Bingham
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