Pivotal People
Join us in conversations with inspiring people doing amazing things. Their insights and experiences help motivate all of us to find our purpose that fits with our abilities, gifts and life situation. Get a "behind the scenes" look at successful people making a difference in the world and benefit from their advice for the rest of us. Our guests include authors, artists, leaders, coaches, pastors, business people and speakers.
Pivotal People
You Are More Than Your Past: Caroline Beidler on Healing the Family Tree
Caroline Beidler shares her deeply personal journey through trauma recovery and explains how unhealed wounds can travel through generations. She offers practical tools for becoming a "cycle breaker" and healing family patterns before they affect our children.
• One in five women have experienced sexual assault in childhood, and 60% of people have experienced at least one adverse childhood experience
• Trauma can be passed down through generations both behaviorally and potentially at a genetic level
• Our individual trauma responses differ based on our unique backgrounds and prior experiences
• Small, consistent actions like 15-minute morning devotionals can make significant differences in our healing
• Movement, connecting with others, and establishing healthy boundaries are essential aspects of trauma recovery
• Self-worth is foundational to healing—recognizing we are worthy of kindness, respect, and healthy relationships
• Bringing struggles "into the light" through trusted relationships helps break cycles of isolation and shame
Find Caroline at carolinebeidler.com, follow her on Instagram, and subscribe to her newsletter "Circle of Chairs" on Substack. Her book "You Are Not Your Trauma: Uproot Unhealthy Patterns, Heal the Family Tree" is available now.
Order Stephanie's new book Imagine More: Do What You Love, Discover Your Potential
Learn more at StephanieNelson.com
Follow us on Instagram @stephanie_nelson_cm
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I'd like to welcome Caroline Beidler to the Pivotal People podcast and I'm super excited for you to meet her because, as I just told her before we started recording, I've read her new book. She has another book, but I've read her new book and I feel like I know her so well and I like her so much and you will too. We're going to get into it. Let me tell you about Caroline from her bio, but then we'll have her tell us about her.
Speaker 1:Caroline is a recovery advocate, author of another book called Downstairs Church Finding Hope in the Grit of Addiction and Trauma Recovery. She's the founder of the recovery storytelling platform, Circle of Chairs, and she has 20 years in leadership within social work and ministry and she's a correspondent for several other publications and she's a host of the annual International Women's Day Global Recovery Event and a consultant with other groups. She lives in eastern Tennessee. She wrote this book with her mother, which is a really special story. Her book is called you Are Not your Trauma.
Speaker 1:Uproot Unhealthy Patterns, heal the Family Tree. So I'll tell you what. I picked up this book and I thought well, you know, I don't have any traumatic experiences, but I certainly want to read this book because Caroline's coming on and it was super eye-opening. Unfortunately, we all probably have unrecognized traumas that might be small T's or might be big T's that could be impacting our daily life, or we might have loved ones who are experiencing something that we want to be helpful to. So listen to Caroline, because I think she can really help guide all of us to having a healthier life today. So welcome Caroline, thanks for being here.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much, Stephanie. I really am looking forward to our conversation today.
Speaker 1:Well, tell us a little bit about yourself. We know your professional credentials, but tell us about yourself and kind of what led you to the idea of writing this book.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, it's always an interesting question because it's like, well, how far back do I go? And when I talk to folks and kind of ask them to tell me their story, if they start in like the hospital room when they were born, I'm just like, oh no, we're in for a very long intro here and bio, kind of like historical context. I'm not going to do that. But you know, I think, why I'm here. I really feel moved and called to share my story vocally and visibly. So other folks, specifically women, who've experienced things like trauma and all of its various forms, like you shared, you've experienced things like addiction, challenges with mental health know that they're not alone and know that it's okay to bring those things into the light.
Speaker 2:I found early on in my life like I was the opposite of that. I was very much, you know, isolating, hiding, not feeling like I could come out of the very dark place that I was in because of what I had experienced and that was so hard. It was such a hard place to live in, it was so lonely and I think my own struggles just kept snowballing because I wasn't able to, at that time, talk about what had happened to me and talk about even how I was feeling on a day-to-day basis, or even really having coping skills with how to deal with life as someone who had experienced significant trauma. So I've been on that side of things and now on the other side and it's not perfect. Certainly, I still have struggles, like everyone. We'll have trouble in this world, we all do.
Speaker 2:But now I live a life that is transparent and open and vulnerable, because I know it's in that place, when we're honest about what we've experienced, that we can truly heal and not, you know, not heal as in like, you know self-help we're going to find this self-actualization or happiness but heal as in like. We can fully become part of a community, we can become part of our churches and and really live. I heard this recently living awake. You know we can be a part of our own lives in a way that will help us be there for other people. So, you know, I grew up in a small town and now I live in a small town and I, you know, have two beautiful kiddos and a wonderful husband, and I get to write books today, so that's pretty amazing and you're impacting a lot of people's lives.
Speaker 1:I'd like to go through. I took notes on your book and highlighted like crazy and, I'll be honest, this book was such a fun read. Okay, why is it a fun read? You're talking about trauma. Because, Caroline, you were honest and funny and made me feel like hey, you know well. First you look at the statistics. You said that one in five women have experienced sexual assault in their childhood. 60% of people have had at least one adverse childhood experience. That's an ACE, and the goal of books like yours and the goal of your profession is how can we, as adults, make sure that adverse childhood experience doesn't turn into an adverse adult experience? So I'm trying to break. What a new concept that you talked about in the book that I really want to spend some time on is this concept of healing. You talk about tools, you talk about boundaries, you talk about protective factors. So let's start out. There was a word and I can't remember it. It starts with an E. First of all, talk about intergenerational trauma, to educate all of us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that is a concept and you may be talking about epigenetics, that was one of the words for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I'm not a neuroscientist or geneticist or biologist, I'm a social worker, and so that was kind of a newer concept for me. But along with that too intergenerational trauma you mentioned earlier my mother and I felt moved to write this book together. As I was moving through my own recovery journey in my early 20s, I started to recognize how similar of paths my mother and I were walking and had walked, not only what we had experienced, but also some of the things that we both struggled with, and it was really, I mean, almost eerie the way that our struggles mirrored each other. So, with mental health challenges, with challenges around food, with challenges with relationships, and so, you know, I started to dig into this concept a little bit more. And what I found with the research you know, going back to and I talk about this in the book Holocaust survivors, you know, horrific tragedy, unimaginable. You know, I've never experienced anything like it, it's just just horrible who had experienced the Holocaust. It was undeniable that the experience that their ancestors had had through that was impacting generations several generations removed from folks who were there during that time. And so, you know, there's been a lot more research around epigenetics and I'm.
Speaker 2:You know I have a lot of really smart friends that can talk more intelligently about that concept, but I wanted to talk, wanted to talk in kind of simple terms about how what we experience, what they're finding now, can change the genetic makeup of our bodies, not just what we've experienced, what our parents have experienced. So my mom in the book talks about some of the trauma she went through. So even before I had been sexually assaulted and I talk about that in the book what my mother had experienced, it lives in my body. You know it's a part of who I am, certainly all the amazing things about my mom and there are so many of those. But also we pass down to our loved ones and our kiddos. You know some of those really hard things and so it sounds pretty bleak, but I know that God doesn't want us to stay in that place. You know, and God has given us through his word and obviously through so many different ways. You know ways that we can heal and we can interrupt that cycle. And so you know I was so moved to write this book because I started recognizing some of those things.
Speaker 2:My mom and I were having conversations and then also, as my kids I have. They're going to be seven year old twins, but at the time, you know, when we started writing, they were three, four. I would look in their eyes and it just broke my heart open this, this thought of I do not want to pass on any more of this to my children, like I want this to end with me. I've heard the term, and I love this cycle breaker. I want to be a cycle breaker. And how can I do that? And so that led me on this path of researching from that social work perspective, mental health perspective. How can we do that practically and how has God given us the tools to be able to do that? To be cycle breakers?
Speaker 1:That's exactly what we're talking about today, the whole idea of healing and understanding boundaries, respecting ourselves, protective factors. We'll talk about that. But just to add on to what struck me about your book, this epigenetics am I pronouncing it correctly? This concept, just to say you know, holocaust survivors was a good example. In the 1960s, a psychiatrist identified that children of Holocaust survivors had significantly increased emotional difficulties. Now I am going to guess that their parents actually didn't talk about the Holocaust. Okay, so I don't know that. So this genetic alteration the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors had a 300% increased incident of being referred for emotional disturbances in school. Okay, so I think that's pretty significant. But the hopeful thing was that this was not. The scientists were saying this is not a permanent alteration of your genes, as DNA might be, but this could be healed physically. So not just behaviorally, but physically, as a cycle breaker. You could physically change this genetic pattern in our families.
Speaker 1:And I'd like to spend a little bit of time, caroline, on the concept of trauma Because, as I said when I picked up the book, I'm like you know, I am not one of the five women who was sexually assaulted as a child. So I'm thinking that that's what we're talking about. But then you listed and defined trauma a little more broadly, because trauma, you know, let's face it is a source of shame. It happens to you and yet we feel ashamed of it. We don't talk about it because you know, you see, that your friends maybe have a perfect home and maybe crazy things are going on at your home and you don't want them to know. Could you talk a little bit about trauma, how you define it and how people you know can view it from your perspective?
Speaker 2:You know it's such an important thing to bring up, because I think when we hear the word trauma, we think of it as this capital T kind of this, you know, natural disaster, or maybe what comes to mind is a combat veteran, or you know someone who's experienced sexual violence. What we don't always think about are those things in our life, not smaller, but different, and so trauma, those things that happen to us. But what happens from that are those responses. And so you know where a lot of my work has been, and I do a lot of work one-on-one with women in early recovery. So many of us have experienced something, whatever that something is, but it's what happens from that point that, you know, becomes these almost trauma symptoms.
Speaker 2:And so maybe I've experienced something, you know, like I fall down on.
Speaker 2:You know, I'm learning to ride a bike and so I fall off my bike, you know, and it takes me a very and this is true story, by the way it took me a very long time longer than my brother, in fact, who's younger to learn how to ride a bike, and that caused me a lot of shame and that caused me to kind of isolate and that caused me to feel a little bit afraid every time I would get back on that bike because I knew I was going to fall, you know.
Speaker 2:And so my body started to get a little bit anxious and it started to feel a little bit triggered every time. I even saw a bike. And so you know, but I had a friend who had the same experience of learning how to ride a bike, you know, she also took her a long time and she fell a lot, but she didn't have an emotional physical. She didn't have an emotional physical. She didn't have these certain types of responses to, maybe, when she saw that bicycle. And so we can experience something but have different responses, and those responses can be based on other traumas we've experienced, like you know. You mentioned adverse childhood experiences In my story. I've experienced so many of those that the trauma kept layering my ability to cope with that, the and how both our minds, bodies and spirits can respond when tough things happen.
Speaker 1:Well, that's right. It's like you can't say to someone oh, calm down, oh, get over it. You know all these things Because the question that came to my mind was the concept of resilience. Why are some people more resilient than other people? You could have two people who both served in combat come back and one seems to go on with their life with no bumps in the road and the other has PTSD, which we can certainly understand. Why didn't that other person get PTSD? I mean, you're not saying that everyone who has trauma experiences negative effects. Like you said, everyone's response is different. But it did raise the awareness for me to say you know, Stephanie, just because you experienced XYZ and you don't feel like you have negative responses, doesn't mean that you can expect the same response from someone else. We need to be compassionate to people because, for whatever reason, we all have a different resilience response. Right, and why?
Speaker 2:is that? I think that's a wonderful question. I think it has to do with our stories as a whole. You know our stories in context, including with what generations before us have experienced. It's a lot bigger question than I think human beings can probably answer, and I'm okay with that. I know my husband's a scientist and he's not okay with that. He's like we need to like it all has an answer and we can figure it. So I'm okay with there being a little bit of mystery there.
Speaker 2:I think, where we can step in though, as compassionate folks, whether we're working with someone maybe it's someone in our church or in our family, maybe it's ourselves we can learn how to bring healthier coping strategies and learn those things. So in my own recovery journey from trauma, it was working, and I talk about this in the book. It was working with an incredible therapist who introduced to me a type of therapy that wasn't about digging up the old memories, you know, although that has a place and is helpful for some folks. I've done it and it is helpful. But what I needed at a certain point in my life is learning coping skills, practical things that I could do, like breathing exercises, you know, not like woo-woo I'm going to, like you know, light incense and sit on a pillow, but no, like physically, how can I down-regulate? Because I've operated with such high cortisol levels and stress response for so long that my body goes in instant overdrive and I still need to work on some of those things bringing movement. And that's why, for for women, especially in early recovery, like go for a walk, you know, move your body. You got to get some of that out, you've. We've got a lot of cortisol that we need to start helping to relax.
Speaker 2:Another huge one, which is so tough for folks who've experienced trauma specifically around sexuality and relationships, is connecting with other healthy people. I mentioned earlier I spent so much of my life isolated because I was afraid of connecting, I couldn't trust people. But slowly taking steps, slowly taking steps, you know. That's why recovery groups, addiction recovery groups, are awesome for this, because we already have a starting point of connection. But building trusting relationships over time, that social support is a huge part of building coping, healthy coping strategies. So there's things that we can do. You know and that's the good news, I think, because you know when I read and there's some amazing books on trauma out there the good news, I think because you know when I read and there's some amazing books on trauma out there, but what I wanted to bring with this book specifically were practical things that we could do, because I personally I don't want to get stuck in bad things that happened to me.
Speaker 2:I lived most of my life that way. You know, I want to live in the place of yeah, these bad things happen, but here's what I can do now, you know, and here's some tools that I can use to keep going and then to help other people who've been through similar things.
Speaker 1:Well, that is exactly what I got from your book was this practical tool for? And also your Instagram account. I've been on your Instagram account and you have some really good short reels Like here are three things you can do. And, by the way, when we talk about recovery, I heard a podcast with Ian Cron recently talking about this and you talked about in your book we are all in some form of recovery. It's not the 12 step program I mean we could all benefit from that. It's not just about substance abuse. You know what are our numbing tools, what are our coping mechanisms that maybe aren't healthy. We can all take a look at that and we can all benefit from. So you talked about the three ways. You mentioned two of them, the three ways of kind of, I would say, grounding ourselves and trying to reduce the stress response. Even if you haven't had an adverse childhood experience that you would call major, we all have stress responses.
Speaker 1:And you talked about movement. Totally agree, especially you said rhythmic. So like walking, walking or running I love to walk, so I'm big on that. You talked about connecting with people, like checking in on people, just with the text. I call it easy kindnesses. What's an easy kindness I can do today. It's so easy to lift someone's day, even just like on their social media saying a nice thing about what they're doing. It's so easy. But you also talked about I loved the 15 minutes in the morning. Could you talk about that? The idea of just a little for the busy person? I believe in this. I do it every day. I'm retired, I do it longer. It doesn't matter how long you do it. You're a busy person with two seven-year-olds and a career.
Speaker 2:So tell us what your routine is in the morning. Yeah, Well, and that was that video, Cause I like to show up very real on on social media. That's just my style. It was actually really hard to say that out loud because I knew so many people might connect with that, but I wish it were longer. You know it's like oh, 15 minutes. You know that doesn't sound good, but you know what? It's not about sounding good, it's about what's real and what's realistic.
Speaker 2:And for me, at this stage of my life, I mean I used to do the hour devotion and I used to do all that. Then I became a mom and doing all these things, what my morning routine shifted to was and it was checking my emails. And I got to a place where I just started feeling, and this was about a year ago. I started feeling so depleted and just like oh, and I made a commitment and I was like I'm not gonna look at anything on my phone until my kids leave for school and my workday starts. And especially that time, before getting the breakfast and doing all the things, I have my devotional books and I'm going to sit down and I'm going to commit to 15 minutes. Now, on the weekend I get to have longer time, which is great, but just that little tiny shift has helped me so much. And so I think sometimes, when we think about like oh, you know, I have all this stuff I need to heal from, or you know, like it just feels so big Sometimes, just taking those really small actions, Um, I love that when you shared a small kindness, you know we can do that for ourselves too.
Speaker 2:And so that small kindness of you know what setting instead of you know, looking at my phone first thing in the morning, I'm going to do 15 minutes in a devotional book and pray and get my mind right. Or, instead of eating a bag of chips over my lunch hour because I'm really hungry which sounds great, and I've been craving Fritos for some reason, I don't know, I like salty things I'm going to go for a walk with my dog. Yeah, I'm going to have a protein shake and go for a walk with my dog. So you know, but just those small kindnesses we can do for ourselves go a long way, and sometimes for me, I had to learn that. I had to learn that I was worthy of those small kindnesses, not just from others, but for myself. And today it feels really good that I can make those choices, you know, to take care of myself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I totally agree. I am not going to keep you much longer, but I am going to keep you a little bit longer than usual because there are so many great things and I don't want people to miss. When you talked about the point of, let's say, a natural response to trauma, I identified with you. You said, you know, whatever your adverse childhood experience was, and then in our 20s, looking for Mr Right and settling for Mr Wrong and really not having boundaries, and really you know, then you're not really respecting yourself, you're not respecting your body, you're feeling even worse. It's like you're not worthy of it. And you talk then about boundaries and people don't always understand that word. Some people might think that's a selfish thing to do. Could you talk, as you did in your book, about boundaries?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's, and I'm kind of right there with folks In the past I've had really negative associations with boundaries. To me it felt very selfish and very much like someone just saying, oh no, my time is way more important than whatever this person needs over here, and it didn't feel right. It felt too individualistic or something. But the more that I've done research on boundaries for this book, for my own recovery, it's actually an issue that a lot of people that you know read some of my work my newsletter on Substack called Circle of Chairs have identified as like, hey, we really care about this issue. So I've done a lot of research and you know, ultimately boundaries it's about caring for and loving ourselves, you know, I believe, so that we can show up and care for and love others in a healthier way. And so for me, yeah, in my early twenties my boundaries were like zero. You know I've always struggled with people pleasing and so you know, always wanting to make sure everyone was okay and everything else is, you know, everyone's okay at my own expense. And then also, with some of the trauma I'd experienced, my physical boundaries were so flimsy or even non-existent that I, you know, repeatedly, was re-traumatized, had a very difficult time saying no when I wanted to, in situations, especially around intimacy just really, really tough stuff. That has taken me a long time to work through, but ultimately it was a point. And again, it was one of my therapists that I work with. She's amazing. She helped me understand that I had agency and that I could make choices that were good for me. Just like, you know, the bag of Fritos, right, maybe it's a guy in a pair of Wranglers, I think I joke about in the book, whatever that thing is that's tempting. You know, I can make a choice to say no. And what's amazing is, you know, we don't have to do that in isolation, cause I think for a long time I was like, well, I gotta, you know, I gotta, I gotta do this and you know, but I was just failing, failing, failing even praying to God. You know, please, god, help me. And you know.
Speaker 2:But what was missing for me was that and I talked about earlier bringing things out into the light and bringing other people into my experience you know, when I started to really start trusting people and I connected in a recovery community, what happened for me was that I started to realize like, wow, I am worthy of this kindness. I am worthy of someone who will treat me with respect. I am worthy of boundaries, you know, and not because of anything I do, but because of who I am and how God has created me, and that piece has been so significant in my journey with boundaries and learning about how loved I am by God. You know, today I will not let you know, people treat me the way that I've done in the past and it's, you know, still can be a journey and of course, the people pleasing part of me, you know, still struggle sometimes, but you know it's pretty amazing what can happen when we learn that we have that agency and that you know we can rely on God's help to say no when we need to.
Speaker 1:That's right. My mother used to say you are an adult, you can just say no. You don't have to say why. If someone doesn't want to come to something, you know when they give the great, big, long explanation, actually that makes me feel like they're telling me why their time is more important than mine, instead of just saying I'd like to, but I won't be able to. But thank you for asking. You know, just give us that. But I really do like I love that.
Speaker 1:I don't know if young women listening to this, or even older women who are back out in the dating world. You know that boundary is really not about I should be moral. That boundary is for your own self-respect and God knew that right God. You know, whatever guidelines we feel we read in scripture, it's really just how we would want to protect our own children. You know I wouldn't want my own children to get their hearts broken with Mr Wrong. So you are worthy of more. You don't have to settle and you don't have to.
Speaker 1:I had to laugh in your book. You know, at the ripe old age of 26, people are telling you you know, you're a spinster. Let's not do that to people. That's a true story. Oh, I know, I know. I mean my husband and I. When we were married he was 36. And I always say I'm his first wife, although I probably shouldn't say first wife, because that implies there might be a second one. We've been together 35 years, but it is. You know, let's not put our timelines on other people, especially young people, today. That's just too much pressure. So maybe they're making wiser choices by waiting until they're more mature.
Speaker 1:There are so many other wonderful concepts in this book and unfortunately we have to let Caroline go. She talks a whole lot about faith and the whole purpose of pain. So trauma can have a purpose. Protective factors, how we as adults can make sure that we're taking good care of ourself and I did read the protective factors and at age 61, I do all of them, so I felt better about that. There's hope and the concept of forgiveness, and that's such a huge one, forgiveness. So, but anyway, caroline, again the book. I want people to order it. You are not your trauma, caroline Beidler. You can find her on Amazon, and where else can we find you? Tell us your social media and your newsletter and how we can benefit from a whole bunch of your community stuff too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So everything, my hub, my home base is my website. You can find that on carolinebeidlercom show notes.
Speaker 1:I just want to thank you so much for your time your time today, but also thank you for writing this book. It's a winner and I think it'll help a lot of people, and I look forward to having you on with your next book.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Yeah, there is another one coming, so I will reach out for sure.
Speaker 1:So thank you, that's right, I saw that your next book is coming out in 2026 with Nelson Books. Did I read that?
Speaker 2:It is yes, yes, and it is for effective family members to help understand the addiction recovery journey family members and loved ones. So I'm really excited about it. But, yes, I'd love to talk more about that next time.
Speaker 1:That's great, alrighty. Thanks so much.
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