Butterflies and Bravery

Meth And Me

May 20, 2021 Whisper and Jemima Season 1 Episode 2
Butterflies and Bravery
Meth And Me
Show Notes Transcript

Trigger warning
In this episode Jemima bares it all and talks about some of her previous vices, focusing on her meth addiction. She holds nothing back as she takes you down the long dark road she walked. You'll be on the edge of your seat as we delve into the world of drug addiction. Find out how Jemima got clean without attending meetings or having a religious epiphany, and how she managed to stay that way. Sometimes there's not a why, there's not a way, there's just holding on.

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Hello and welcome to butterflies and bravery. This is episode two and we are thrilled that everyone has come back to join us here now. Super thrilled. , butterflies in bravery is a podcast that. Puts a spotlight on survivors voices and tells their stories of survivor hood of their success and everything in between.

 Today, for our  second episode, we are actually going to be interviewing one of the house

 

 

  Jeremiah and I whisper   

we've been best friends for more than 30 years. And so we definitely do know each other quite well, but even, so there is amazing stories to be told. And I know that today for our interview, we actually are going to talk a little bit more with Jamaima about some extremely extra ordinary accomplishments that she has made in her life.

She's an absolute warrior, an absolute star, a superhero, especially , in overcoming. , when you come from a difficult background, when you've struggled with setback after setback, after setback, it's very easy to want to numb the pain. Or even sometimes none the awareness with different things.

And we know that addiction in any form is not uncommon  and, , day to day life we have,  , people have addictions to food.  To cigarettes.  To, , alcohol drugs, or even sometimes something as simple as, , shoe shopping.

And  if something has become a difficulty in your life, as an addiction, it's really difficult to know where to turn or what to do, or even if there is hope to turn your life around. I know that there's lots of times in my own struggles  , there were days where you were wondering, am I ever going to get out of this?

. Or is this the life that I'm going to be leading until I die? Yeah. But Jemima has an amazing story that she has agreed to get extremely vulnerable and open and honest and to tell, and it's a beautiful story of victory and overcoming. So we'll get right into it to my mama. Yeah. , it's funny.

I have all of those addictions that you mentioned or should I say I have had the queen of quits. , that is exceptional and true, except I think maybe you might not have had the shoe shopping. Right. , I had a point where I bought a lot from the thrift store. , it was an easy way to satisfy my need for something I actually ended up with.

A lot of shoes that I probably never worn. There's probably 10 or 20 that I never worn. I just like, Oh, they're $2. Well, who can pass that up? They're naturalizes. I'm taking them. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's, I didn't realize that you had that too,   , it's at thrift store , it's kind of a nice place to indulge that , addiction.

It's a fun place. Oh yeah. My daughter and I go all the time, we get sacks and sacks of clothes and then take them back and get more ways to support the community. There you go.

it all goes to charity and it fulfills our shopping addiction at the same time. Yeah. That's a proactive and supportive way to,  help  would that need, as you said,  you faced some things that were actually potentially very serious and potentially very harmful.

Yes. Not in the shoe shopping, ,  after leaving the cult, it was actually quite a while after I left. Because when I first left, I was just really focused on surviving and I had a small child. I was a single mother. , my main focus was how do I do this? And I got to get by, I've got to figure this out.

So I just went through the motions and put all of my emotional baggage into the closet. I had a closet that was very, very full of suitcases, lots of suitcases. And bags and whatever else I could stuff my problems into. And I just sort of put them away and carried on with my life and all was well until my whole entire world crumbled fell apart.

I actually had a pill addiction before I had a meth addiction. The Pella addiction I started because I was in pain. , yeah. You struggle with fibromyalgia. Yes. I struggle with that and arthritis and scoliosis and , all that boring stuff.  I originally started taking the pain pills to help me be able to work cause I was a waitress and you know, you gotta be peppy and happy, not all like, okay, my foot hurts, give me your money.

Sure. It turned into a very, very severe addiction where I was taking lethal doses , of whatever I could find. Percocet, Vicodin, morphine all of that  oxycodone, , whatever I could get my hands on. So I decided, okay, I got to quit. This, this is too much. So I quit. And then at that time, when I had just quit that addiction, I started to have a lot of tragedy in my life.

, , how long  were you  off the pills before you ended up getting , into meth? Cause a bunch of stuff happened. I know, right? Yes.  It was only three or four months in between. I really jumped from one to the next quickly. Yeah. That is,  still significant.

, . When,  you struggle with addiction, that's a significant time , to be clean, to be sober. That's true. Well, , , I wouldn't say I was clean during that time. During that time, my focus was alcohol. I was drinking at as soon as I woke up in the morning, I had fireball in the freezer and I'd hit that shot.

, go to my therapy.

She'd be like, you smell like alcohol and Oh, it's probably from yesterday and I can spare clothes. , I was literally in the middle of a mental breakdown because within just a few months, I lost my well paying job that I had had for five years. One of my close friends, young friends died from stomach cancer.

I was in a car accident. My mother was diagnosed with cancer. My brother went to prison.

 My husband became disabled in a work accident.

 And my daughter was a victim of second degree child molestation.

My step son went to jail   my power and water was shut off because I couldn't

   pay the bills. And then finally we were evicted from our home.

 That was a lot to go through that one. It's a lot. , just to honor this space of acknowledging  how much that was to deal with all at once.  Sometimes it's easy to still beat ourselves up for the things that we had to do to survive  our emotional trauma.

 Please know   that was a lot that you were dealing with. After all of those things happen to me, literally within six months basically everything I had pushed into that closet just fell out. And  I was in therapy. So naturally I was having to talk about my childhood.

That was difficult.  I was molested by my stepfather at the age of seven, and then I went and told my second grade class all about it with my grandmother as my teacher. And then after being in the call tide, I had a lot of bad experiences that we'll be talking about more in depth later. All of that pretty much just came tumbling out on me and  I literally had a complete mental break.

Yeah.  I couldn't speak a lot of the time. Yeah. I thought about killing myself every day and I even got so messed up in my psyche that I had decided that  my husband and daughter couldn't live without me, that I should probably just kill them too.

Yeah. It sounds so silly now. Okay. Right. , but when you're a year in a place like that and where you're, when your heart and your mind is breaking , you're not going to have a lot of rationale anyways.  It's understandable anyone that has been there understands that for sure.

Yeah. , I had the plan to just, quietly turn on a propane tank while everybody was sleeping. And I figured we could have just saw quietly die in our sleep. And that would be like really , easy and painless. But the night I was going to do it, my daughter stayed at her friend's house.

And then I confessed to one of my close friends. But actually we'll be interviewing , on our podcast. I confessed to her that I had had this plan and they committed me. I was only committed overnight because being in that sort of situation really triggered  my time that I had spent in the institutions in the.

 Children of God and the call that we grew up in. I couldn't progress at all in there. And , they saw that and understood that.  They released me under very strict supervision of my husband and my friend.  

 After being evicted, we were forced to move quickly to another city with cheaper housing. I didn't know anybody in town and a few days later, We went down to the thrift store and we're checking everything about, and then the door opened and a girl walked in and I was like, , I think I know her.

And the lady at the cash register said her name. And I was like, Whoa, I've only ever heard one person with that name. And sure enough, it was her. It was a girl that I had worked with at the casino where I was employed for many years, that I had lost my job at.  I was so excited to see somebody that I knew.

And a few days later I actually called her to find out if she had any marijuana for sale. It was legal in Washington.  I wanted to  , get some of that. And  I went over there and she opened like the sort of tackle box type of thing. And then I saw her bags of weed and there was some little bags with.

Sort of like a white crystally looking substance. And I was like, Ooh, what's that? She's like, Oh, it's meth. You want to try it? And I was like, Oh yeah, sure. Why not? I've heard somebody in the other room. , no, no, don't let her do it. She's going to get addicted. Don't let her do it. But I was kind of like, whatever, shut up.

I want you, so she put some of the crystals into a little meth pipe, let the box and turned it into liquid. And that was my first experience with smoking meth. , it made me feel fantastic. It made me feel super happy and like, I didn't have a care in the world.  My whole face felt all cool. And like a cool breeze was all over my body. I don't know how to explain it, but it was like a total sense of euphoria. And all I could think about after that was, I just wanted that feeling back.

     It was that, feeling that I had searched so long for

but it wasn't long before I was addicted. I. I told myself I could control it. And I would just have a little every day, make myself feel better, have more energy because one of the things with fibromyalgia is the extreme fatigue, but most of my jobs have been physical jobs, waitressing, cooking, things like that.

 I really needed a little more pep. I had to work, I had to pay the bills. My husband was disabled.  , I had to support my family. at first it was fine. I just smoked a little, made me feel good.  It sort of did what antidepressants weren't doing for me. It gave me that sense of euphoria and feeling on top of the world and , like I could really just do anything and be anywhere 

  You know what they say about tweakers? They're always busy, but never getting anything done. Okay. Sort of what started to happen with me. And I started smoking more and more. When you smoke math, that original feeling of euphoria only lasts for about 30 minutes, but you're still technically high for eight to 10 hours after that.

But after that initial 30 minutes, you want to smoke yet because you want that  feeling back it's, kind of a feeling it's almost like you're on a roller coaster. , your stomach gets all sort of butterfly, ye and your body just feels sort of light almost like you're,  lifted up above the earth or something.

 It's very hard to , explain or describe the feeling, but. It's very intense and  it's chasing that little dragon. It's always there and you think you're going to catch it, but you never catch it. You're just always chasing that high. So I was effectively overdosing myself constantly cause I was smoking like every hour or less.

All the time I started having little black specks coming out of the pores on my fingers and it felt like bugs were coming out of my skin. I started  picking my arms. I got to the point where I was smoking a Teener is what we called it, which is 1.8 grams. And that's a lot, way too much for one person.

I was smoking it and four days, three days I sat in the doctor's office one day and picked every single dog hair off of my sweater. I  ended up developing Murcia. , what's a, it's a staphylococcus. Okay. It's,  something that  gets in your body if you have an infection and usually in the tropics, which is where I got it in Thailand.

Yeah. Yeah. I had that in Cleveland as well. Then it  lives in your body and it can just basically reappear at any time.  If you get  a large infectious sore  , your body will just be like, Oh, Hey staphylococcus, here we come. And you'll just start exhibiting. So I literally had sores all over my arms and hands.

My boss cut my hours at work because I was a cook. You know, I couldn't be in there with Murcia cooking for people. Oh, wow. I was smoking in the bathroom at work. I think everybody knew I still denied it and lied and said, no, what are you talking about? I don't do drugs.

I literally lied to everybody about it. I even went so far as to smoke in a courthouse bathroom. That's so embarrassing now. Yeah.  You're so brave to be  , telling us this story. Now, many people talk about this, , I know how,  secret have you kept it? Because I didn't even know this. And I think it's probably one of the only times you've ever kept anything from me  cause  we embarrass ourselves in front of each other all the time.

Right. , , I can imagine just like , that's a lot of shame to have to be dealing with, which compounds the issues you're already dealing with. , it's such a difficult place to be.  , I can hardly imagine how difficult it was.

Thank you. I was terrible. I don't even know how I survived that. Now. Looking back I'm like, how did I do this?

I called myself the foil queen because Oh my.  I'd always just smoke off a piece of foil with a straw, which obviously is very bad for you. Lighting aluminum, foil. Great idea.

I fought with my husband all the time. My daughter knew that I was doing it.  , I was so high. , I had it in my makeup bag, my stash, and I left it in the bathroom and she found it. . She hit it, which is fantastic.

 At that time, I, I literally . Lost my shit. , Oh, I was telling them that it didn't belong to me and that the mafia was going to come after us and get it. And that I owed all this money for it. And I was just holding it for someone. And I  made up all these crazy insane stories.

I got ripped off a lot. Several times I bought things, bought pot sacks that were, you know, really bad because what are you going to do? Go tell the cops that somebody shorted you on your way.

Yeah. It definitely puts you in a very vulnerable position for sure. It does. , I lied to everyone I cared about and I almost ruined my entire life.

 how long, where were you? , a little over a year. Okay. A little over a year then. My biological father called me and said that he had a house in Idaho that he wanted to give me  an old,  house that had belonged to my grandparents with a beautiful piece of property that I had loved when I was a child.

It was my happy place because I had gone there to visit a couple of times and I felt safe there. we  went over there and checked it out, did a scouting trip. And  we decided that. We should move because otherwise my marriage was going to end and I don't even know what would have happened after that, but it would not have been good.

Yeah.  At this time,  , when, when your dad offered you a place in Idaho, , was your, husband aware at the time , of your addiction? Oh, yes. Okay.  at this point he did know. . Yes, we fought all the time.  , we literally almost got divorced. He doesn't like drugs. He did not agree at all with it.  , I tried to hide all of these things from him. Right. Plus I was a horrible person.  Math really takes over your mind. It,  makes you angry. It makes you do things that you would never do. If you are not high, it makes you think so differently than your normal thinking.

, it's almost like,  alcohol,  the first thing that goes is your judgment. Yeah. It's pretty much the same thing. That's the first thing that goes is your judgment.  All of a sudden, all of these horrible, terrible things that you would never think of, or dream of doing all of a sudden, you're like, you know what?

I'm okay with that. I'll go. Although suck someone off for a bag.  , it's not that bad as 20 minutes, I'll be high for a few days. You start reasoning yourself into stupid and horrible things that you would just never do.  We all moved to Idaho. The day we moved was the last day that I used. Wow.

Was that a decision that you made to just like that's the last day I'm going to use? Yeah, yeah. Yes.   Jeez, I wasn't planning on, I cry this much now. Wow.

   , you're being so vulnerable here. , I know that it's always appreciated to hear someone be willing to, , drop their walls and tell us the  hardest toughest parts of their story. But what a powerful intention, , you made this huge move, you left behind everything that, you know, , , just from,, , being friends with you, I know , how much you loved the Northwest and you were there for years and years and years.

So it wasn't a complete uprooting and a complete, just walking away from everything that you knew.  Not only was that extremely brave, but then on top of that, you put out that powerful intention of starting over for yourself as well.  , and breaking this addiction  that had taken control of your life.

I mean, that's so powerful. Yes. It was not easy. , but was that the last, , you never took it again after that never you really went  complete cold Turkey  , yep. I'm a cold Turkey Goa. That's how I quit. The only thing I didn't quit cold Turkey. Was 

Pills and cigarettes, the cigarettes. I slowly weaned myself off, , by  decreasing one every week  until I was just down to one. And then one day I was like, , what's the point of smoking one a day. So I just completely quit. And then with the pills. I had tens of boxes that I bought from my dealer.

It's really not enough to get you off when I was literally taking  60 milligrams of  Percocet at a time, which is just so fucking ridiculous. Fake about it. Yes. I was literally taking lethal doses. At one point accidentally, , someone gave me Kilana pin instead of Percocet. And at that point I was taking five perc tens, so 50 milligrams.

So I took five Colonna pins. I literally should have died. I,  actually know a guy that took two and had two beers and died. I drank a lot of alcohol that night and I can't even tell you what happened because I don't remember, but I was completely off my rocker and it's an absolute, total miracle that I woke up.

I didn't even know until  much later that Klonapin is what I had had instead of Percocet. Yeah. Somebody told me , Oh, she gave you her son's pills because they look the same and stupid me. Usually I would always look them up. But in that day I was like, well, she's a trusted person that I had gotten them from lots of times, so no need to check top of it in my mouth.

And later on, I find out I literally should have died. It's an absolute miracle that I didn't.

Yeah, , yeah.  With the math, I just,  decided right then and there that I was done and that I wasn't going to live that life anymore.

 Okay. It was hard. The first few weeks I had terrible withdrawals. I was extremely tired. I had to sleep every day for several more hours than normal. I had a lot of mental withdrawals to I dream every single night that I was finding my stash and I was just about to smoke and then I wake up. Oh, wow.

It was really a lot of mental withdrawals with meth  with pills. It was terrible physical withdrawals,  , body shakes and nausea and diarrhea and  chills and cold sweats and, Oh, horrible, terrible. Like I literally gonna die feeling physically. And then with meth, it was  mostly  up in my head.

Okay. . And then the tiredness. Okay. My family was the best support system , I could have had my husband had quit drinking cold Turkey many years ago before we got married. He saw himself becoming like his father who was an alcoholic and he decided to quit.  I knew that he was going to be a great support for me, which he was.

I knew I had to stay away from it for my family. I do. There was no way to rebuild my life if meth was part of it. Yeah.

And that was March 10th, 2014. Wow.

I'll never forget that day. Yeah.    So  you just celebrated your years. Six, seven, seven, seventh. Yeah. That's amazing.  Do you ever find yourself sometimes. Missing the highs that you got on it or do you look back and see it in such a view of like, it was , none of the good that you felt on it was worth the pain that it brought you  ,  That's more like it,  I realized that life is enough and yeah, but it's worth choosing. . It's worth choosing to love yourself enough, not to put that poison in your body. Yeah. , it's worth choosing to love your family enough to stop using. Yeah, absolutely.  definitely don't ever minimize  just how brave that choice was,  , because  , we've come from a lot of difficulties. We have a lot of past traumas  , and  like many people we're on  a journey of healing. Which means that there are times where  the pain of the past and the, pain of things that have transpired, , crops up. , it's not a small thing. It's not a small bravery to face the world, carrying the pain that you do. , it's a very brave thing. , , it's easy to condemn someone for , using illicit drugs  , there's so many people out there that think. Well, just don't do it, , as if that  a simple thing, but  ,  , what your story tells , is , the kind of pain that people don't want to face head on because , it's too much.

It's  overwhelming. It's  difficult. , that is where, , some of this, what they call self-medication, which is a really simplistic way to,  talk about  , the things that sometimes people deal with,  these different addictions or the   different things that people turn to , for solace, for comfort,  , or actually simply just to erase, , whatever's going on.

Inside of them. , it's a phenomenally brave thing that you've done.  I think you're just absolutely amazing. , and to be able to come out and say, Hey, this happened to me because of, , these things, but I can stand here today and say that I fought through it and it was worth it,  ?

 And that's huge.  I think that can give so many people hope and  a touchdown to say, , there is hope through this through whatever that you might be faced with. Absolutely. Yeah.  Because I'm sure that when you are in it, when you were in the darkest times  , during that specific,  time of when you were on meth, I'm sure you had most of your days probably wondering how you were going to get through it.

Oh yeah. , or if there was even going to be another,  option for you anymore.  I know some of the things I've gone through, I definitely had many, many, many conversations with myself saying like, , is there even another option in life for me? Right.

Exactly. You get to that point. Yeah.  I think  the bottom line is really the hanging on of absolutely. Yup.  That's not easy. That never will be, but it's worth it every day. It's worth it. You have to choose every day. . Every day.

, you'll have days where just making that choices is really, really difficult. Yeah. And you'll have days where that's the only thing you can do is literally  say, okay, I'm just this one more day, one more day,  ? Yeah, exactly. I'll do it tomorrow.

I have said that to myself, way more times than I care to admit. Right. . And yet  here we are. Yep. Lots of tomorrows after so many tomorrows and tomorrows and where we're in a place. , honestly, . Living lives that I would have never imagined. I know you would have never imagined living,  out some of our dreams.

 , even  this, our project together, this podcast is,   a form of this in some way has just been a dream of ours , for years.  , we're like , , we have to talk about these stories. We have to tell people ,  that no matter what it's worth it to hang on and that our better days, , no matter how long it takes you to get there, there are better days.

Exactly. The star never lasts forever.  Remember, there's always blue sky. You might not be able to see it, but that doesn't mean that it's not there. That's right. You just have to remember that the clouds will eventually clear and you will see the sun  , and it's worth it. It's worth it.

. Oh my gosh. I am just in awe of you as usual. , I imagine that there's not too many people that serious drug addiction has not touched their lives in some way, whether it's someone that they know or a family member or whatever it is , it's something that my family is facing, has faced and is facing.

 There are times I'm sure that anyone that has been faced with it or touch with it in any way  has wondered, , is there another side to this  can we come out on the other end? I think that  your story can  give that. Hope of yes, there is, ? Yes, you can, come out for sure. Even you've had a lot of other things or other trauma in your life, , , you feel like it's too much. A lot of times I feel like it's too much, like why do I have to deal with all of these things, but,  you kind of just have to keep on swimming, just keep swimming, just keep 

 

 

.  I think the other thing that I'm taking away from this as well is just the reminder that you don't necessarily always have to look for that.  , quote unquote reason I'm living, , or reason , I'm doing this.  I know it's very important  in many ways, , and then sometime, , , the thing that pulls you through is that reason I'm doing this because of this, I'm doing this because of that.

And the why as people call it  , the why, why are you doing this? But sometimes  you can't even get to that point. , you can be so far under, , and I know I've,  had , those times where you're so far under,  you can't even actually focus on those, there is an apply for it.

, , and like you said, maybe  , I'll do it tomorrow. And sometimes , there is going to be a point where things might,  get that difficult where it is just. Holding on for one more day and , there's not a why, there's not a way there's just holding on  fucking white knuckles.

Right. , there's going to be a lot of white knuckles,  , sometimes when  you have to get through things, but yeah, you are a conqueror, you are a warrior queen, for sure. It's funny because , I feel so weak. Goodness. Yes, of course, , I've been talking to a couple of different people about this in the last few months , in a class that I'm in.

 I think that's sometimes what we interpret in our minds, , as weakness, or we see ourselves as weak as actually just our vulnerableness  , our ability to  be open and  authentic and  true because guess what?  Human beings disaster, , we're human.

 That's the whole point of being human. It's  that quote unquote weakness. I don't want to label it as a weakness, but,  being human is being that messy.  , , living is messy. , we're messy. We have messy lives.  Messy emotions.  Messy days and that's not weakness.

That's,  just being human , and to be able to stand in that and say, You know what , I'm being honest about this. I'm being open about this. I'm being vulnerable about this and I'm being authentic in this.  That's bravery, , that's not weakness, that's bravery. , week is the last thing that I would ever think of you as,  don't tell yourself that you feel that way though, is it .

, , it's easy to experience that  self-doubt that's there. Right.  Look at yourself through other people's eyes and , you'll see the beauty and the light and the power that's within you.  When I look at you, that's what I see.

And I know that there's going to be so many people listening to this , that's all they're going to hear. Is your bravery, your strength, your fortitude, . I could keep on going adjectives

if has drastically improved. I've been at the same job now for it'll be seven years in September. . My husband and I were able to buy a house and I'm  at a place in my life that I honestly never thought I would be at. I'm not,  rolling in the dough by any means my house payments less than some people's car payments, 

, but better . Then getting evicted and having my power and water turned off and being a drug addict. . And it's, better than you imagined. And,  bringing it back to, , the whole point and message behind butterflies and bravery is that, , it's not the dollar amount that's in your bank account that, defines your success.

Your success is that you're here, you're thriving in your own way.  And, , that's success. You've made it,  , Yeah. And from this point, like the only thing that comes now is just something better.  , you made the cake, you baked it and now , anything more than that is icing and sprinkles and a Cherrier too.

It better be sugar-free cake. Right. That's true. . That's right. All the good stuff . There you go. Oh, thank you so much for your storage in my mind. I loved it. Thank you. .

That's a rough one. That's all. Yeah, , of course. , it was rough we're living it. I'm sure. . It was it's actually weird when I look back, I don't even know how, , I think, like, how did I do it?  , what did I tell myself? And , I don't even know. I seriously  everyday,  like, okay, I just got to keep going.

I just got to keep going. I just got to keep going.  , I don't know why  a lot of , my motivation was my child. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.  , providing for her, making sure that her needs were met,  sometimes when you're in that dark place, all you can really do is just survive. , but you can thrive again after you've survived.

It's kind of like, , the plants that come back  every year.  They literally  die every year and they're  totally gone. You don't see anything there at all. And then next spring, boom, big old, beautiful flowers come popping up out of there. Perennials.

 They come back every year. Yeah . Perennials, you only plant them once. Yes.  Andy annuals live for one growing season die off.  , you are a perennial. 

, tears make my heart crazy. . They release endorphins. I definitely feel a lot better. Now they do is such a powerful, powerful healing,  , response  this isn't, , across the board, but it's often  females that,  , have a closer,   touch to, , those healing tools , and that's .

I believe why we cry a lot more often?  We know  the healing power of tears,  ? Oh yeah, absolutely , I was ashamed of crying so easily for a long time, but I've come to terms with the fact that it's actually not a weakness. It's a strength that I can be vulnerable because if anybody  just comes out to me, he was like, dude, my dog died.

 I'll just start crying. They could  be like I had a little baby eight chicks and one died. I'll probably start crying. It's this year is , just flow freely from me,  I'm coming to see it as a strength, not a weakness. , , you have to change our perspective on things sometimes.

And  look at it from another view, , like the blind men and the elephant, , if you touch the tail, you're going to think it's a rope. If you touch the sides, , Oh dude, it's a wall. He could touch his big legs. Like, no, it's a troll.  , so many things that life is.

 You just have to turn around and look at it from another side sometimes. 

 I always think of  the quote,  , I don't remember who said it, but The quote that says the cure for anything, assault, water, sweat, tears, or the salty sea. Ah, that's a good one. I liked that, right? Yeah. That's actually pretty accurate. That's pretty accurate, but really for me, it's sweat tears or the river stay going up.

 You beautiful butterfly. You  next episode We will get to hear some of my story. Yeah. You get to get vulnerable. Yeah. , next episode, come back. Jemima will be interviewing me. Tell us about, give us a little  

Uh, Smith.

 . , I'm probably going to talk  about the experiences that I've had with loss and,  , muddling through  that,  . That's fantastic because that's really something that everybody, every human being at some point in their life, Unless they, I suppose, die as an infant, they wouldn't, but they're going to experience loss at some point.

, I have a badge in it, like,  the girl scout badges, like I have a badge  . I think that would be, a good thing to talk about and,  fantastic. Tell a little bit about how I, muddled through.

Right. I'm still here. So I did make it she's here. Fuck. Yes.

 And don't forget about our survivors summit. This is a free seven day online event that will be packed full of wonderful information centered around self-love and self-care and learning to be kind to ourselves. Something I learned that really helped me was  be as kind to yourself as you would do your best friend, give yourself   the same care that you would give.

To your best friend if they were in your situation.   Don't forget to  join us for this online event. There will be daily meditations and all sorts of exciting stuff.  

 You can find the link on our website@wwwdotbutterfliesandbravery.com. Or you can find us in Facebook events. It's survivor summit.

 . that is the end of our episode. , stay brave. And remember, every butterfly was once a caterpillar.