FREE2JustB
You were born with a program installed. This podcast is the override. Join Theresa Marie, Ambassador of Chi, as she exposes her raw and vulnerable journey of spiritual awakening. She’s living proof that shedding old beliefs and finding your authentic self isn't always easy, but it’s the most powerful thing you'll ever do. It's time to delete the old code, embrace your power, and step on the path to being FREE2JustB!
FREE2JustB
Forgiveness: The Hidden Key to Personal Transformation
What happens when we finally face the painful truths we've been avoiding for decades? Real transformation isn't just possible—it's inevitable once we summon the courage to be honest with ourselves.
Today's episode dives deep into the essential connection between honesty, courage, and genuine self-transformation. Through a powerful real-life story of my husband's journey from bitter estrangement to profound healing, I share how fifty years of unresolved trauma dissolved through one courageous phone call and a willingness to forgive.
For most of our 17-year relationship, my husband carried the weight of childhood abandonment, creating patterns that affected every relationship in his life. Many labeled him harshly—"narcissist," "a-hole," someone who would "never change." Yet I witnessed something remarkable when he finally confronted his pain and reconnected with his 86-year-old mother after thirteen years of silence.
The moment when his mother asked, "Can we just let it all go?" and he whispered, "Mama, I have let it all go," represents the transformative power available to each of us when we choose honesty over comfort. His entire being has shifted—more tender, gentle, and at peace than I've ever known him to be.
This story invites you to consider what unresolved trauma you might be carrying. What relationships remain fractured in your life? What patterns keep repeating despite your best intentions? Remember, we don't strive for perfection—we strive for progress. With courage and radical self-honesty, restoration becomes possible, opening the door to truly being free to just be.
If this episode resonates with you, please hit the like button and share it with someone who might benefit. Subscribe to help me reach my goal of 100 downloads per episode. Your support means everything as we build this community of authentic seekers together.
The process of self-transformation requires honesty to admit where you don't feel well, to admit what you wish were different in your life. And as you move in search of answers to these questions, you begin to develop essential qualities for your self-development. You begin to develop essential qualities for your self-development. You begin to cultivate the courage to start being who you truly are. And that is a quote by Sri Prem Baba, who I was turned on to, sri Prem, by a dear friend named Truth Matters, and truth does matter. As I welcome you back to Free to Just Be, that podcast attempting to empower humanity to courageously step out of old patterns and programs and give a big old hug to new ways of being. And I hope this finds you in the greatest health, with vibrant energy today, because you have chosen to accept full responsibility for your body, mind and soul. Here on Free To Just Be, I, teresa Marie, your traveling ambassador of she, will try to inspire you to truly be who you came here to be, which begins with authenticity and honesty, especially being honest with yourself, and that ushers in freedom and alignment with our highest potential. So won't you join me on this transformative journey to rewrite our narratives and live lives of purpose and passion, and if this content is beginning to resonate with y'all, if it makes you laugh or maybe it puts thoughts in your hopper and they jump around and cause you to think a new way, can you please hit the like button and share it with somebody? My goal in this next month is to reach over 100 downloads each episode, which is such small potatoes. There are other podcasts that get thousands of downloads per episode, but, one by one, each like raises the algorithm up and then more people get to see it because there's a family of people that would resonate with the voice of Teresa Marie and with the concepts in Free To Just Be. So please like this show. Concepts in Free To Just Be so please like this show. And if you would just subscribe to my channel on whatever platform you're listening, thank you, thank you. I appreciate you giving me some of your time and I hope that today I can bring value into yours as well. I'm very appreciative of your patience.
Speaker 1:On Wednesday night, my USB cord well, actually, I didn't discover it was the cord until Thursday morning because I had trouble shot so many different things because I could not get my Scarlett 212 to turn on and that is the interface I need for my microphone. And lo and behold, learning curves are learning curves. And the very last thing to check was my USB cord. Well, we did not have one, so I had to order one and we left for our trip to Kentucky before it arrived on Friday. Thus there was no episodes Thursday and Friday. But we are up and going, baby, and I'm excited to share.
Speaker 1:I want to kind of focus on that quote from Sri Preem Baba talking about self-transformation and requiring honesty with ourselves. You know just like he says when you begin to tune in first to your own body and you begin to understand, wow, I am wound tight right now, my body is so tense, my belly hurts, I've got a slight headache, when all of these things begin to come into your awareness, you begin to understand that whatever it is emotionally has shown up in your body. And then we begin to start saying, well, I don't like the way I'm feeling Like currently. Right now I am entering into 21 days doing Dr Livingood's 21-day challenge. Why is that? Well, because I've known for years that caffeine is not good for somebody with one kidney and one adrenal gland. I know that sugar is not good for a former person that's had cancer twice. Cancer, so they say, feeds on sugar. So these are two areas of my life. And then when I read Dr Livingood's book which is a very easy read, by the way 200 pages and I'm now ready to tackle these last 30 pounds that I've been fluctuating up and down for a good five plus years now and I know I can do it. I've done it before. I've gone into beast mode and I lost that 98 pounds. Good grief. It's almost 20 years ago now already, and I've pretty much kept that off.
Speaker 1:But now that I'm in my 60s, things have changed, and so that is the big question of self-transformation. Are you honest enough to hear your body when our body starts speaking? Often what we do? Well, nowadays, the first thing we do is we go to Google, google, why is my hip hurting? Google, why do I wake up still feeling exhausted? And then the next step in the Western world is we go to the doctors, right? Well, as you begin down this self-development pathway back home to yourself, it's going to require you to be super, super honest, and the reason I want to bring up honesty and courage and self-transformation on an Open your Mind Monday is because I want you to really in a real-time story. It's a true story about my husband. It's a true story about my husband and I want you to understand that, literally, if you become courageous enough to even just begin to be honest with yourself, massive change could happen, massive change. Now I'm going to give you a little bit of background, and some of these stories that I'm going to be sharing going forward in coming weeks are going to lead up to a spinoff of this show or a weekly aspect of the show I'm not sure which yet, and that'll be when I have a special guest with me on a weekly basis.
Speaker 1:But I want to speak to you about courage and self-honesty. You know, my husband and I have known each other for 25 years. We have been together for 17, and we have been married for eight and, as many of you already know, the first five years that I knew him, he was my brother-in-law. Oh yeah, I've already told you and admitted and I am not ashamed of my Jerry Ringer Springer life. It has availed me incredible self-transformation. It has availed me seven beautiful children, it has given me 11 beautiful grandbabies, and my walk with Christ and God and the Divine Mother which, of course, is the earth that we live on has just grown exponentially through the Jerry Ringer Springer.
Speaker 1:But in order to really transform yourself, you have to be willing to admit whatever it is. You know in my case I have coined the phrase a Jerry Springer Ringer life. Maybe you had a life of incredible addiction, or maybe you had a life of self-sabotage or codependency, or the old old story. Right, that's where it begins. First you have to decipher where you're at. So, going back, I want to stay real succinct here because I have a limited amount of time this morning.
Speaker 1:But Many, many people really tagged my husband over the years, tagged him with what A label. And what was that label? Oh, there were many A-hole was the big one, and I used to claim yes, but he's my A-hole. I had one friend, vehemently. In fact, the relationship ended when I went back to him the second time because she screamed and hollered don't you know that he's a narcissist, he's a misogynist and he's never going to change.
Speaker 1:And I've spoke about this many times before on my show about how anybody that talks about narcissism in today's day and age, it's usually an angry person. 98% of the time 99% really it's an angry woman. And the woman looking at you on a YouTube video is saying run, run. You will never change a narcissist, you will never change an a-hole. Run 10, 5 years, 5 days, right. And we've talked ad nauseum about the fact that our very bodies, in the course of 7 years, every cell transforms into newness, right? So change is inevitable and we might as well just face the fact that that's the case. Well, I want to share with you, in the last 10 minutes of this episode, this beautiful transformation that I have had the privilege and honor of witnessing.
Speaker 1:You know, when I left, my husband was an absolute porcupine. Everything triggered him, everything gave a negative, angry response. Everything was about arrogance and my way of the highway. And I finally came to the point after years of, you know, pointing this out, years of trying to work it out, um, and even telling my husband um, you know, if you continue to not look at your shite, because we all have shite folks, we all have a pile and, as my husband and I have talked about many times over the years, there is a pony under that pile. But guess what? Nobody is going to shovel your shite out of the way, nobody is going to address the mess that you have created inside, but you. And that takes a lot of courage. It takes a lot of self-recognition and a lot of acknowledgement of who you are and where you are at the current moment. And then the question is do you want to be that way anymore?
Speaker 1:I first left. Everything just escalated. If I had left for three months prior and it really wasn't a leaving, because as soon as my husband knew where I was at, we saw or spoke to each other every day for three months. So we were basically paying two rents and we were never really apart. So there was nothing solved back then.
Speaker 1:And about six or seven years later, here I was again in the same spot with all this unresolved problem in my marriage and in my home and I felt suffocated, controlled, could never do anything right, and you know, in conversations now on the other side of that, so did my husband. But his initial reaction to my exit was absolute and extreme anger, oh buddy. Anger so vehement and so strong that I had to change my phone number, I had to block him on any social media and I literally had to finally just say I am removing your number from my phone, not just blocking you, I am removing it. And it was pretty bad, and it took him the good part of a year before he began to develop his own routines as a single individual at the home. He began to feel gratitude for everything that I did at the home that he never had participated in, and everything began to shift. Now my husband is a praying man, and he prays all the time, but was not really willing to look hard at himself Until finally, nine ten, almost a year in, he began to recognize that it wasn't the five wives, me being number five, and you know, hey, don't diss my husband, he's my fourth husband.
Speaker 1:Know anybody else in your family that has had multiple marriages. It's unfortunately very common and we're going to discuss why in weeks going forward. Anyway, and one of the things that he seriously began to look at is what I always discussed with him how I had quote unquote daddy issues, because the traumas in my life revolved around not feeling loved, secure or safe with my dad, and my husband had similar issues with his mom, who walked out of his life when he was in kindergarten. He was just five years old and he held onto that he is 59 years old, and he held onto that he is 59 years old, and so for 50 plus years he has held on to that trauma and that unforgiveness. And, in case you were not aware, not aware, unforgiveness unchecked becomes bitterness and vengefulness and just ugliness.
Speaker 1:All right, now I want you to think about the people in your life that you do not want to be around and I want you to, just for a little bit, just think about walking in their shoes. Maybe you know some of their past history, maybe you don't. Now, if you know the histories, it's a little bit easier to understand, maybe, why people are reacting the way they do. But I'm here to say that it is my belief, especially after seeing Roger, my husband, that it is my belief, especially after seeing Roger my husband, change so much that the underlying issue is unresolved trauma, childhood trauma, things that have happened to us, and then we develop all these survival skills and all these ways to cope with that trauma and it follows us into adulthood.
Speaker 1:So my husband, on his own, got the call from one of his sisters, a sister that he hadn't seen in 13 years, not since his dad's funeral, and it was a call about his mom, and I had just asked him the other day, the day before that this call came in. You know, are you going to get a hold of your mom for mom's day? And he pretty much said well, you know, I don't know why, why would I do that? But he was thinking about it. And then the next day, his sister called and said that his mom had a pretty serious fall and had 17 or 18 stitches across her forehead and things were looking pretty grim. And the next day, after all these years now there were several attempts made in the 50 years but the last time he talked to his mom was 13 years ago at his dad's funeral, and he was furious with her, furious.
Speaker 1:So for 13 years, 13 years of yuck was held in my husband's body. And what are we really folks? We're love and light body. And what are we really folks? We're love and light. And it's no wonder that there was a war going on in his heart, in his spirit and in between his ears. Well, he called his mom and spent a good half hour speaking with her on the phone.
Speaker 1:And that afternoon I got a text because at that point we were already texting and we were already talking on the phone and even doing some video chats and I got this very long, like three or four paragraphs of a text which is very unusual for my husband because my husband claims to not be a communicator and and we're going to bust that program wide, wide apart here real soon as well and I couldn't believe this text was talking about how I, you know. He was saying I talked to mama. Now, he never called her mama for years a lot of derogatory terms that I don't want to share but he was saying I talked to mama and she's so strong and I'm so happy that she survived that fall and I told her that I forgave her and I asked her to forgive me for being such a butt all these years. And I'm looking at the text saying who is this? This isn't my husband. And then a couple hours later, our scheduled video chat call came and again now I'm witnessing in real time on this call. I'm seeing his face and his whole continence has changed as he reiterates the whole story to me again about calling his mom and talking to his sister and how much better he felt and it was just amazing.
Speaker 1:Well, the culmination of the story is on Friday we left for Kentucky and we went and visited his sister, patty, and his mama His mama's now in a nursing home because she needs a lot more care than anybody in the family can provide her. She is fully blind. Glaucoma took her vision and she has stability issues and her memory is starting to go as well. So what a blessing to show up and it was a beautiful facility. We were very happy to see that. But the best part was was watching my husband watching his anticipation of seeing his mom, watching his body language as his sister wheeled her into the visiting room. Watching his face, watching her face as she tried to listen intently to the voice because she hadn't seen her son in 13 years, so she was trying to compensate with her hearing and I'm watching all of this in real time and he immediately took her hand and talked about how happy he was to be there. And then, you know, and I took pictures of it all and he went in for a hug and she wrapped her arms around him.
Speaker 1:And then later in the conversation this is the most significant part, y'all that woman, that 86-year-old woman who wheeled in, looking so lost and so sad and so intently listening to her son. As the conversation went on, she looked out towards my husband because she was following our voices and she said you know I have been praying for months and months asking God what I did to make you so mad. Now, just in way of background, there were many, many, many things. Besides the abandonment, besides taking his sisters and leaving him behind, there were many, many other things that affected my husband. But here, at 86, with dementia and or Alzheimer's possibly coming into her world, she just said I can't remember that would make you so mad. And my husband looked at her and I watched him melt and he grabbed her hand with both of his hands now and he leaned in and he said I forgot too, mom. And then she smiled and leaned closer to him and said can we just let it all go then? And he leaned in and whispered in her ear mama, I have let it all go, Everything is all gone, mama. And then they hugged and his mom's face just absolutely lit up and it is gone.
Speaker 1:My husband, from the moment he forgave his mom on that phone call, has been more tender, tender, more gentle, more at peace. The joy in his face, his occasional, you know, because we are never going to be perfect on this 3D plane folks, I hate to tell you, if you're striving for perfection, it's not going to happen, okay, and we don't strive for perfection, we strive for progress, right, and so such incredible progress. We had a great visit. We stayed the night with his sister. Now he has one more sister to see, but she did not want to see him because she just I think it's a matter of pride. She's not doing very well and we'll get to see her the next time because there will be more visits. And it's kind of like what I did with my sisters when I was in Florida I went to Naples and visited my two sisters that I hadn't seen in 13 plus years.
Speaker 1:Restoration is possible. Restoration is possible. Can you open your mind to the possibility that even the worst person in your life maybe that worst person is you, maybe you are the one that all the people around you are calling the a-hole, maybe you're the one with narcissist tendencies, and, believe you me, we are going to dismantle that program of narcissism before it's over. But on an Open your Mind Monday, can you open your mind to the possibility that with a little courage and a little bit of searching, that you can also witness huge changes in who you are? That's what Free To Just Be is here to do, is to bring up possibilities is to show that there are other ways of doing things, because as we share stories like this, the process of self-transformation progresses. But it requires honesty to admit where you aren't doing so well, and that requires a lot of courage, courage to face uncomfortable truths.
Speaker 1:Very true that I never in my wildest dreams I am a believer.
Speaker 1:I've been praying for this man for 25 years. I watched him come radically to Christ. I watched him hold on to his bitterness and still pray and still go to church, but I have never witnessed such a complete and utter transformation as I have with my husband now. It is as if the spirit man that I fell in love with 20 years ago. I loved him as my brother-in-law 25 years ago, but 20 years ago, when we began more than just you know, we were no longer brother and sister-in-law and then we were friends always and then we became more. It's as if he's returned to that spirit man, that gentleness, that kindness, and it's a beautiful, a beautiful transformation to witness. So, as you search for answers to the questions of why don't I feel well and why can you open your mind and your heart today to at least begin cultivating the courage to start investigating, because when you do, you'll get closer and closer to literally being free to just be. I love you, humanity. Have yourself a magnificent Monday, peace out.