When Life Interrupts the Becoming

Last week, we talked about truth, alignment, and becoming your highest self.

But what happens…
when life tests everything you just said you believed?

In this solo episode, I’m sharing what I’ve been going through in real time:

Fasting and what it revealed beyond discipline

Losing someone and navigating grief

Losing a friend and processing a different kind of pain

The uncomfortable truth about alignment and letting go

What it really costs to become the woman you’ve been praying for

This isn’t a highlight reel.

This is the part we don’t talk about enough—
when growth feels like loss…
when faith is tested…
and when you’re forced to sit with the truth you’ve been avoiding.

If you’ve ever felt like everything is shifting at once…
this episode is for you.

Key Takeaway:

Alignment isn’t always peaceful.
Sometimes it feels like everything is falling apart—
but it may actually be falling into place.

Listen if you’re ready to:

Face the truth you’ve been avoiding

Understand what growth really looks like

Navigate emotional loss while staying grounded in faith

Step into your next version, even when it’s uncomfortable

Subscribe & follow the journey:
Life’s Deceit Podcast,  where we stop whispering and heal out loud.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back to Life's to Seat. I'm your host Jen Simpson. Welcome to season 4, Legacy by Choice. Chosen, not inherited. I hope you guys are having a beautiful morning, afternoon, night, wherever you are in the world. Welcome, welcome, welcome. If you are new to the channel, thank you guys for joining me. And please, I hope, I pray that you will hit the subscribe button and get familiar with this channel and continue to grow with us. Please give me a like and leave a comment and let's get familiar with each other so you guys can get to know who Jen Simpson is and what is Life Stacey really about. But we talked about the uncomfortable truths of life. And certainly not the truths that we just post on social media just for somebody to see it and like and agree with it. But the kind of truth you have to sit with, you have to pick apart the truth that you sit with when life gets quiet and you're alone and no one is around you. And I've been sitting with that very truth myself. Because what we talked about, I didn't just hear it, I felt it, I breathed it, I smelt it, and I've been living in it. I've been living with those truths. Larissa said something that stayed with me that when you move with intention, when you become aligned, you start to show up differently. You walk different, you speak different, you choose different, you eat different, and you are different. And I thought I understood that. Like I really thought I understood and I grasped that until life tested me. And I want to go back to my 21-day Daniel fast that I was doing. If you guys remember, I told you about that fast that I was doing, and I enjoyed it. And during that fast, it was more than just food and diet and being obedient. It was about being disciplined, it was about surrendering. It was about silence. It was about my intentions. It was about aligning with what God has for me. And when you remove the distractions, when I remove the distractions and start hearing things that I was avoiding that you may be avoiding, you start to feel things that you numbed and that you tucked behind you for so long. You start to see people and situations for what they really are, even in yourself. And I realized something deeper. I wasn't just fasting from food and being obedient. I was being forced to fast from control because I always wanted to control everything. I always wanted to make sure that everything was right for me instead of right for God. And in the middle of my fast, the 17th day of my fast, life took a huge turn for me. Life happened like it always does. And I lost someone, and I also lost something greater: a sister, a friend. And those were two different kinds of grief for me at least. One was final, the other was confusing. Because when you lose a person physically, you grieve what was. But when you lose someone emotionally, you grieve what you thought it was. And that hit me differently. Because I thought I knew what grief felt like. So I thought I knew how to handle it. I thought that actually I don't know what I thought grief would have felt like. Because I lost my grandma, and that hurt because, like, I if you guys have been following me since the beginning of time, then you know my grandma was like my mother, that was my mother figure, and that one hurt me bad. Like, I was in bed for days, numb, not knowing what to do, not knowing how to feel, not knowing what was next. I went to a very hard time when my grandma passed away. But this one hit me different, and I wasn't I wasn't sure if I was gonna talk about it now, and I'm still not sure if I'm ready to talk about it, to be honest. I'm not ready to talk about it. I'm not I'm not ready to talk about it. I tried to bring myself to a point where I could talk about it, but I I realized that even now that I'm thinking about it and I'm bringing it up, I'm actually not ready to talk about it. So I just want to say on that grief affects us in different ways, and we'll never know how it will affect us or how we'll respond to it. But I want to say give yourself grace. Give yourself grace to process, give yourself grace to grieve, give yourself time. Don't try to rush yourself through it because I know we can't stay in one position, but allow yourself to feel, allow yourself to go through those motions. Because I'm learning to allow myself to go through those motions because this one is so painful, physically, emotionally, mentally. And I said, I'm I'm not gonna cry on here, so I just want to say if if you're grieving someone, it doesn't matter how long ago you lost a person, it could be a relationship that ended, it could be somebody that passed away that's no longer here. Give yourself time to process, give yourself time to grieve, give yourself time to heal because it is necessary. Don't let anybody rush you, and you don't rush yourself. And I'm learning not to rush myself and take time with me and what I'm feeling, and I want to thank the people to all of you who have written comments, sent me private messages, sent me a word of encouragement because some days, since she's been gone, I have a lot of questions for God. I haven't been feeling like myself, but I have a good coping mechanism, and that is smiling and laughing through it. But I truly just want to thank you guys for your support and your love and your messages. Um, they all mean a lot to me. And um to the people who are around, people who've lost somebody um and don't know what to say. Sometimes your presence or just checking up on the person is great enough. It is good enough. Because sometimes words can't help, but you being present is greater than words. Larissa said she represents truth, not everyone else's truth, but her own.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

I think I I represent truth, not everyone else's truth, but my own truth. And and I think it took me a while, it took me a long time to really accept that and to own that and to comprehend what that really means. I I remember in contrast to the truth, in high school at some point, probably 11th or 12th grade, for some weird reason, I thought lying was just a good idea. So I tried being like a liar and making up little faiths. And I by Friday, like I don't think I could keep up with being a liar for a week. Like I don't always, I sometimes share too much information. I I sometimes share things that people don't don't understand and and may not comprehend. But I know for myself, like this whole idea of of being truthful, I'd rather be truthful than perfect. I'd rather be truthful than and and potentially hurt someone's feelings.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

And I had to ask myself, what truth am I avoiding? Because alignment sounds beautiful. It sounds great to hear it. Alignment, I'm aligned, I'm working on the way I align myself to the things that are for me and the things that I want until it starts requiring you to let go of things, let go of people.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

I think a lot of times we simply accept what other people say, we accept the common ways of being, and we don't have the guts to even pay attention to who we are, what we want, and express that.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

Let go of people that don't align anymore. Habits, people, things, versions of yourself that no longer serves who you are. And I loved and we love the idea of becoming. Such as outgrowing people, sit in loneliness, choose yourself when it feels uncomfortable, stop performing, wearing a mask, and start being your authentic self. And that won't always be pretty. That's not Instagram, that's not Facebook, that's not TikTok. It's real life, real life things that we will have to face. We talked about money in that episode too, and how so many of us were raised in survival mode. Money doesn't grow on tree. My mom used to say that all the time, especially when it came to food. Eat up your food, money don't grow up on tree. Jamaican. Money doesn't grow on tree. Don't waste. It's love, it's validation, it's worth self-worth. We've been living like, don't pour too much into yourself, don't celebrate too much, don't take up too much space. And those things caused us to wonder why we feel empty when we're told not to do all these things for ourselves, not to celebrate and honor who we were. And during my fasting, it showed me where I was still operating from a place of lack, where I was still holding on, where I was still trying to control outcomes. Instead of trusting God and letting him take the lead in my life, I was trying to control and stifle and say, and say, I got it, I'll do it, I'll make sure it goes this way instead of God's way. Because the truth of the matter is, I had a plan for myself, I had a plan for everything, my magazine, my book, for timing, for how things should look. But life interrupted all of that, and it made me have to ask myself, am I building a legacy or am I trying to people please? Am I trying to control perception, the perceptions of me that people will see and form their own opinions? Am I trying to control that? And this is where faith became and becomes real in life, as it did for me. Not when things are going right or looks right, but when things fall apart, and me, you, we're still choosing to trust. Are we going to still choose to trust God? When you still choose to move forward, even when you don't feel ready, when you stop forcing and start listening, stop trying to force things to go your way and listen. And I had to learn that, listen to God's voice and stop trying to control my own narrative and make my own narrative. So I want to ask you, just like I asked in last week's episode, what truth have you been whispering to yourself because the world felt loud? But this time, I want you to go real deep, deeper to the root. What have you been avoiding? Because you know it requires change and you're not ready to make that change. You're afraid or you're just not ready to let go of certain people, things, traits, cycles that you're already used to. The whole of this week since it started taught me something I didn't expect or want to hear. Alignment isn't always peaceful. Sometimes it feels like loss, sometimes it feels like confusion, sometimes it feels like everything is falling apart. But just maybe it's not falling apart. Maybe it's falling into the right places that God wants it to fall into. And maybe this is the version of you you've been praying for, and you just didn't know what it would cost to become her or him because you are too focused on doing the work instead of seeing why certain things were happening were necessary to get to where you need to be. Sometimes we don't pay attention to the fact that a lot of the things that are happening into in our life, it's not happening to us, it's happening for us in order to step into that next season of our lives. And I had to learn that that a lot of things that were happening, it wasn't to me, it was for me, it was in my favor. And although it hurts, and I wanted to be mad, and I wanted to resist and pull back and take a seat and say, I'm not gonna do anything anymore. I had to realize that God would never do anything to harm me, and that in every season of my life, whatever it was that I was going through, whether it looked bad or good, God was still in the middle of it. He was still at the center of my life. But I was still focusing on, I was so busy focusing on it happened. Why did it happen? And I'm not saying that we won't have questions, I'm not saying that we won't be upset, I'm not saying that we won't have moments when we're like, why me? Because we're human, we are human, we are flesh first, and we're gonna have questions, we're gonna have doubts, our faith is gonna waver at times. But when we turn off the noise and focus in and listen to his voice and ask him, is this for me? What do you want me to do? Everything around us changes and everything is different from the inside out. Everything is different and will change during my fast. My prayer changed. I started praying and I started saying to God, I haven't lost a friend or a sister that left me wounded, and a lot of people have. But I want to thank you for not allowing me to feel that type of pain and grief. And I want to thank you for keeping my loved ones, my friends, my sisters present alive and well. Because sometimes we take so many things for granted. Sometimes we wake up and we we jump out of bed and we start our day and we forget hey, you didn't wake yourself up. God woke you up. So where's the praises and the thanks that goes back to him for what he's done for us? We go to bed so entitled. We wake up entitled thinking, oh well, we had to wake up. Oh no, no, no, he chose to wake you up, and my prayer changed during my fast. And I said in the beginning, on the 17th day, I got a call that my sister, and I questioned God, like I'm not gonna cry, I'm trying not to cry, but I questioned God, why? Why? Why such a person that's so pure and loving, and you put somebody in my life that aligns with me, like we just aligned, our purpose is aligned, the plans aligned. I couldn't understand it, and I still have my moments where I question it. But I learned that God said, even when you are grieving, even when you've lost it all, even when you have to start from scratch, even when you're at your lowest moments in life, will you still believe in me? Will you still love me? Will you still worship me? Will you still honor me? Will you still do the works and complete your assignment that I've given you? And that one hit me deep because I still had to minister to other people's hearts, minister to my own heart, minister to my children's hearts, my partner's heart, all while I was grieving, all while I wanted to be mad at God. I still had to trust him and the plans that he had for my life and what he was doing and what he is doing, even with the questions, even with the doubts in the back of my mind. And I really don't want to talk about it too deeply because I will not lie to you. I'm still processing a lot and I'm still going through it, but I do want to say that even when you're going through it, God never leaves your side. Even when you are at your lowest moments of life and you feel like you are down to nothing and you have nothing left to give, God is still present and he still has so much more to pour into you. And even when you take your moment to process and go through what you're going through, don't forget that God is there and he's always going to be there and he's never changing. Don't stay stuck in the grieving season, but allow yourself to process. Allow yourself to feel, allow yourself to be in the moment because grieving is so hard. Grieving is so hard. And to those of you who know who knew or know, knew Susan Smith, you know how I can't even. But as I said before, I don't think I'm ready. Um I don't think I'm ready emotionally or mentally yet, but to those of you still grieving, and to those of you who are grieving someone, a loved one, whether someone that passed away or relationship, I'm praying for you. And know that you are not alone and that God is right there. Take the time you need. Um to the family and friends of my dear friend, my sister friend that God gave me assigned to my life, and I I was assigned to her life. I'm praying for you while you're going through your grieving process. I'm praying for you through your grieving process, and unfortunately, right now, that is all that I can say. Um, I love you guys, and I'm praying that you guys stay strong and don't give up. Don't give up on yourself, don't give up on your faith. It gets better, it does get better. Please continue to pour into yourself, continue to give yourself grace and love on yourself, self-care, self-care, self-care. I'm all about self-care. Do something with yourself, spend time with yourself, find something that you love to do and do it by yourself. It's important for us to spend time with ourselves and get to know ourselves and allow ourselves to shed and get rid of the old things that no longer align with who you are now and who you were called to become. Thank you for tuning in with me today. Thank you for continuing to tune in with me and help me build this channel. And to my new listeners, welcome, welcome, welcome. I love you guys dearly. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button. Leave me a comment, hit the like button, and I pray that you have or continue to have an amazing morning, afternoon, night, wherever you are in the world. This is Life's Deceit, and I'm your host, Jen Simpson. Until next time, I love you guys. I love you guys dearly. Have yourself a beautiful rest of the week. What you choose today becomes the legacy you pass on.