Krystel Clear
In this podcast you will experience my unique approach to healing, happiness and following my souls purpose. My intention is to provide a platform that aims to guide and support individuals on their journey towards personal growth, inner healing, spiritual enlightenment or just taking the right steps to reach your highest potential!
My goal is to create a thought provoking, safe and nurturing space for listeners to explore various topics. Healing, self-discovery, mindfulness, wellness, empowerment, accountability, the raw truths of life, love and overcoming everyday obstacles.
I will have my tribe of healing coaches, doctors, colleagues and peers joining me to discuss their journeys in hopes of bringing enlightenment and empowerment to your world.
Life can be messy so let’s talk about that and the worthiness, forgiveness and compassion it takes to face our darkness and shine our light!
I hope this podcast validates your feelings, gives you the permission needed to share your voice, speak your truth and navigate your own journey with strength and perseverance.
**This podcast does not supplement any mental health or medical advice from practitioners. It’s a guiding tool providing resources from my own personal life experiences. The intention is to shed light and love onto the lives of others. You are not alone**
Krystel Clear
Grief, Growth, and Moving Forward
Grief has a way of cracking us open when we least expect it. This summer, the sudden loss of my beloved dog Nilla forced me to confront not only fresh pain but also unprocessed grief from my grandmother's passing thirteen years ago. The parallels between these losses revealed a deeper pattern—both represented the physical manifestation of protection and unconditional love disappearing from my life.
Through tears during cycle classes, long walks where emotions suddenly surfaced, and the forced stillness of recovering from bone graft surgery, I've been peeling back layers of myself that needed healing. Grief moves through our bodies differently, and for someone who typically processes emotion through movement, being physically still created an unexpected opportunity for emotional release.
What's fascinating about deep grief is how it illuminates other aspects of our lives needing attention. For me, it spotlighted my triggers around transparency and half-truths. Growing up with adults who "protected" me by withholding information created a fierce commitment to honesty in my adult life. When people aren't fully transparent with me now, my body immediately sounds alarms—what are they hiding and why? This reflection helped me recognize times when I wasn't honest with myself about my pain, my boundaries, or my needs.
As we navigate the second half of this numerologically significant 9-year—a year of endings before next year's fresh beginnings—I'm intentionally letting go of anything that weighs me down. Decluttering physical spaces, releasing emotional baggage, and being mindful about energy and time commitments creates space to receive what's next. The grief journey has taught me that acceptance doesn't fill the void left by loss, but instead creates room for memories and gratitude to take root.
What's weighing you down? What patterns, behaviors, objects, or relationships no longer serve you? Give yourself permission to let go—piece by piece—and open yourself to receive the love and experiences you deserve.
Thank you for joining me today. Please know that this podcast and the information shared is not to replace or supplement any mental health or personal wellness modalities provided by practitioners. It’s simply me, sharing my personal experiences and I appreciate you respecting and honoring my story and my guests. If something touched your heart please feel free to like, share and subscribe. Have a beautiful day full of gratitude, compassion and unconditional love.
What's up you guys? Welcome to this episode of Crystal Clear. I am excited to be back in the studio today solo. I feel like there's always a different vibration when I'm here by myself, so it's nice. I took a couple months off from filming front loaded my podcast, but there's been a hell of a lot of life going on in that couple months. So we're actually leaving today, tonight, in a couple hours, for a trip Just my husband and I, which I think is long overdue, much needed, but I wanted to jump on to just kind of A dump out some of summer so I can leave it behind.
Speaker 1:And because we've been processing through a lot, I feel like there's been a lot of life happening, there's been a lot of transitions and just things festering up that have given me the opportunity to grow and evolve and like sit with it for a while and really kind of explore where the mirrors are. I don't know if anyone else is experiencing this, and I know that some are, because I have friends that are kind of going through similar not quite as parallel experiences, but just a lot, a lot surfacing, which I think is on par of just like we're in the second part of a nine year in numerology and it's like all about endings and next year is all about new beginnings and fresh starts and fresh perspectives and I think that's you know. It's bittersweet for us and honestly, it's been a roller coaster. It's been a roller coaster of growth, evolution, like icky shit too, like there's been some yuck that's come up, and a big part of that in my personal life and for my family has been grief.
Speaker 1:We lost our dog unexpectedly in June. She was only seven years old. So, which is really interesting, because intuitively at the beginning of the year and I even expressed this to my husband I was like I just don't, I don't feel like she has long, I don't. I just had like something in the pit of me that was like spend more time with her, like like pour more love into her, because you know, when you have a family pet, especially if seven years and you have such a busy life, you can take them for granted for just being there, right, and and that doesn't hit you until they're gone.
Speaker 1:And you know, I was out of town and my husband was home at work and our oldest was home and non-responsive and lying on the ground with like little foam around her nostrils and some weird liquid coming out of her mouth and, um, we still don't really know what happened to her because you know they wouldn't take her to again. I wasn't there. She wasn't taken to um DR to do like autopsy, figure it out. I just, you know, I don't think they had the capacity to do that. But when Matt got home he said it was I made him FaceTime her, like I had to kind of see it for myself and it was really hard. And um, yeah, I don't, it was really interesting because, a, obviously I was in shock, I was upset. You go through all the.
Speaker 1:My initial observation for myself is my initial feeling with grief is anger. So I think I immediately kind of just like. So I think I immediately kind of just like like what? Why? Like you know, not like angry anyone, just like like upset, like for not being there. And of course I went through that like if I was home this wouldn't have happened. You know, it's just all the unfair things we do to ourselves when something's out of our control, like that.
Speaker 1:Um, I was in Cayman Islands with our two youngest and, um, it was devastating. And, uh, my daughter overheard the conversation. I wasn't even really able to tell her in the way that there was intentionality behind it and, um, you know, when you get a dog, when you're seven years old and they're half your life, um, we've never really known our house without her. Um, it's really hard and I think the first time our kid, like we've had to experience witnessing our kids suffer true grief for the first time. Like, my daughter has lost a couple of grandparents, but it just it hits different when it's something living in your home. It's, you know, it's like it was our man. I was first baby together. Right, it's our.
Speaker 1:It was hard, it's still hard, um, the witnessing my kids experience grief for the first time and feeling that helplessness of like I can't help them, I can't fix them, I can't do anything to make it better. I just, you know it's right now. I need to sit with them. I need to sit with them, I need to love them through this and also allow myself time and space to grieve as well. And I'm going to be completely honest, I didn't really do that the first day initially. Obviously, it was very upset, more upset to see Tatum, upset. We were out of town. I chose not to, or we chose not to, tell our youngest son, who's five, until we got home Because I don't think that a, we had one more day left our trip and I didn't want to rob him of that and I don't really think he would have quite understood either way. So, you know, allowed space and time for grief. We had a really low key day.
Speaker 1:You know, talked to her with my husband and it was just, it was weird. It actually brought up a lot of parallel feelings for me because on my Nana, my grandmother who raised me, when she passed away 13 years ago, I was also out of town and I didn't get to do like a proper goodbye and it was sudden and it was. It was very parallel and for me, what resonated in all of that and I've done a lot of processing since um in different ways and realizing it was me losing the physical manifestation of protection and safety. My dog, nilla, was my absolute unconditional love, support and protection, um, even more so than my husband sometimes. You know, she was with me and protected me and gave me emotional support through really hard times and trying times in our life and relationship and marriage. And she was, she could feel me and she didn't. You know she followed me in every room, um, and I feel like she was one of my little soul. You know she followed me in every room, um, and I feel like she was one of my little soulmates.
Speaker 1:You know, I was scrolling Instagram seven and a half years ago and there she was just looking and I'm like, oh, my God, like I know we just moved into our new house, but can I wire this bully breed dealer in Alabama money? And Matt's like, are you crazy? And I'm like, no, I need her, she's perfect. And so a month after we moved into our new house, we purchased her and it was one of the best things we could have done for our family. And so losing that was really hard and I've been able to sit with it and realize and come to shifting it more to a. I'm really glad we didn't have to watch her suffer, in a sense, and make the decision ourself to put her down, because that's it's honestly something I've never had to do for an animal and I don't I don't even know if I could make a decision. It's gotta be really really hard Um decision. It's gotta be really, really hard Um be, you know, shifting.
Speaker 1:I feel like I've I've been in a space where I'm like okay, universe, whatever. Um, I'd really love a little bit of less responsibility. That's really not what I was fricking asking for, though, so coming to a place where I'm okay with being okay with her not there. We've had a lot of travel and a lot of busy stuff coming up. You know, I feel like I would have rather quit my job than that happened, that's for sure, and really just coming to acceptance with it. But I have gone through some avoidance as well, like I.
Speaker 1:You know, some things were intentional. Like we got back from Cayman, the next weekend I had a trip with my husband, and then the next trip week I had a trip with a kid. I mean, it's literally I've been traveling every week since May with like little to no downtime, um, until a few weeks ago. A couple of weeks ago, I had bone graft surgery, so I had to get like part of my jaw from the inside cut. They shaved my bone, placed the bone shavings up here, stitched it all back up. I mean it was actually pretty horrendous. They kind of sugarcoated it. If it was, yeah, I'm glad to be on the other side of it now.
Speaker 1:However, that was the first time I had actually been still enough to process it, because prior to that, in between trips and travel and camps and responsibility, I found myself going back to old patterns of two classes a day or always needing to move my body, which I know for me means I have like pent up energy and I need to get it out, which is healthy. However, I found myself, you know, I forced myself into stillness at times. I tried to get some good meditation and really getting outside and doing some grounding good meditation and really getting outside and doing some grounding but I really felt like hyper, like I felt the energy in my body that it needed to release, like, whether you know, so I'd be on a walk and all of a sudden, just tears start flowing, like. So I tried to make myself like cycle, like I'm getting a cycle class and the momentum of class and I love it and it brings something in my soul alive. The soul that I am brings me alive. I don't know there's something about it that just feels so good to me, but it would just pour out the tears and I allowed that to happen and, to be honest, it made me realize that I hadn't fully processed my Nana's death from 13 years ago and I think, because there were so many parallels, I was able to pull some of that up and pull it out and gain another layer of acceptance and clarity. And you know, even though she's not here in the physical body, I know very much that she's guiding and protecting and, you know, I think sometimes, um, we don't understand it in the moment, but it's those situations that make us a bit stronger. And you know, everyone has a different perspective of this, but I really like to think that my guides and angels and all the things are guiding me and protecting me along the way and you can have all the acceptance in the world.
Speaker 1:However, nothing will ever replace that connection and I think that that's where the real grief comes in. When you lose someone, or a pet, or a family member or a friend or someone that's close to your heart, you can accept it and you can move on, but I don't think anything will ever fill that connection. I don't think it's meant to. I think what's meant to be there are the memories and the love that they poured into you and just instead of allowing that to become a gaping hole of grief, fill it with love and happy thoughts and gratitude for the times you had and the things you got to experience together and you know how it shaped you and how it molded you and that's really kind of how that's taken a turn for me. You know, after the processing and moving through it which moving through pain and grief is just the way my body likes to move.
Speaker 1:Like, when my man passed away, I was teaching 20 classes a week, literally 20 group exercise classes a week. I was taking every class. I was like performing the class with, with the participants. So plenty of movement there and I think I probably got up to about half that now. But it also helped me to like do more of like the cycle and the Pilates and the walking and just things that I was kind of mindless with. That I didn't have to think a lot of my own on which I really liked and which was really helpful.
Speaker 1:But when I had this surgery a couple weeks ago but when I had this surgery a couple weeks ago, I had to be. Still, my husband was out of town. My daughter was out of town, she was at a lacrosse camp. He was in Vegas playing a World Series of Poker. He did really well, by the way. He got in like top 9%, so that's always kind of fun. Fulfilling his dream is a bucket list thing for him and I love that for him. So I go and schedule this bone graft surgery when he's away. It actually worked out great. It was just me um had my home helper helping with all the things and my little guy and um.
Speaker 1:But I had a lot of days at home to be still and also realizing that when I'm in physical pain, my body also wants to move. So being up and organizing drawers and closets and color coordinating closets and just cleaning things out, like, yes, it's productive energy, but at times I would force myself to just sit with it and be like, okay, you need to feel this, like it's important, it's part of the process, and realizing how much physical pain makes me feel vulnerable and knowing that that is definitely an area that I am still healing and still working through, because there is something about being that type of vulnerable that I don't know if it's mind or not, like in my body just has a very hard time accepting. So I don't know if it's conditioned, I don't know if it's from lifetimes of pushing through, but it was. It was really intense, um, but then after a couple of days. I really got to the point where I was kind of excited for the alone time I was nurturing myself.
Speaker 1:I actually felt really good, like the soft food diet I was eating, like Greek yogurt and I'd put some like first of all, one of my new favorite snacks is the ratio of vanilla Greek yogurt. It's like protein yogurt and putting a scoop of coffee protein powder in it. It's so good, um, so, um, yeah, like soft diet and sweet potatoes with some Greek yogurt at dinner. Um, thank goodness my body can handle dairy, otherwise I would just be carbon it out. Um, but no meat, no fish, nothing.
Speaker 1:For like two weeks. I actually felt really good. I felt super lean, I didn't feel inflamed. Um, I felt like my body needed the rest because I had been working it so much and so hard after the loss of nilla that it really just appreciated the downtime. And mentally too.
Speaker 1:I'm not really one to watch TV and I went through seasons of Nine Perfect Strangers, which is amazing, by the way, sirens amazing, and I mean a few other shows. I asked my girlfriends what shows should I be watching? And oh, daisy and the Six. So good, we're going to Stevie Nicks in August and I like totally felt the vibes of that. But it was interesting.
Speaker 1:It took me a few days but I allowed myself to be there and be in that vulnerable space and feel the pain. The pain not only the physical pain, but I allowed myself to feel the grief and go outside where um Nilla is buried in our yard. We have 10 acres and she's out, um by a tree and I allowed myself to. I mean, the sunsets in Sarasota right now are just amazing, so I eased my way out. I avoided it for a lot of reasons because it just feels real when I go out there and I swear I still like I hear her like little nails scratching the floor sometimes when I'm walking around or I still kind of expect for her to be there, and at night, after I put Brody to bed, I still almost make that corner to go say goodnight to her. And so it's definitely still um, very fresh and very raw. It's only been a couple months. Um, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:It's been very difficult, but it's been great to have so many observations and opportunities to observe unhealed layers of myself. You know, until something like this happens, you're not necessarily peeling back the grief layers. It's hard to until you experience it firsthand and interestingly enough, I've read a bunch of books this year that there was a theme around grief and I actually reached out to a friend of mine who lost her daughter, beth Knopic, and she wrote this beautiful book and I would love to have her on sometime. But I reached out to her before any of this happened and I'm like I just feel like grief is a theme. I've been reading these books and it turns into grief and how people process it or don't process it, and her books was one of those. Lisa Marie Presley's book was another that was co-written by her daughter, and then Prince Harry's book, spare, which is so good and just talking about like the, I don't know. I was just really it was a theme and I guess this is why I was thinking to myself it was preparing us for you know, something happened into my in-laws or my grandfather who were in their eighties now, but I think it was really preparing me for this and I don't even know if you can call it preparing because I don't really think you're ever prepared for it. But yeah, so, wrapping up the little segment on that, I just felt like I needed to get on here, not only to share my experience and how hard it is, but also to just complete the, the processing.
Speaker 1:I think that the one thing that I know the podcast has done for me is allowed me to verbally process and what that happens. It's like when something happens to you. You know, you journal, um, you do talk therapy. The more you talk about something, the more you create a narrative form around it and you can release it from those areas of your brain. Then it stays stuck in that amygdala like the fight flight freeze the grief, freeze the grief, the deep, the deep areas, um, the more you can talk about it and express yourself, the more it comes out and I'm like you know I'm not the person that's gonna be like hey, guess what? My dog died, blah, blah. This is how it.
Speaker 1:You know I'd, um, I've been a little set back. I'm not gonna say reclusive, because that's not the word, but just kind of wanting to be in my own space and my own element. A lot of family stuff and kiddo stuff. This summer, like I said, I'm excited to take a trip with my husband. I think it's long overdue. It's been a whirlwind for him as well. We've had some other family stuff going on. We have a son that moved away to a week and a half after he found our dog. So we had some concern there with coping and you know he says he's okay and um says that he rather have happened and got to say his goodbyes while he was still home rather than away. But you know that's really hard, um, and you know, just to segue into something else that I feel like it's been kind of a theme this summer for me is transparency.
Speaker 1:So I am a product of a crazy childhood, for lack of a better word, you know, and I think I think we can all relate to this in some way, shape or form like people not telling us the whole truth. And for me that's something that I'm like no, because as you all know, I'm probably an overshare when it comes to most things. But the biggest thing, like for me, for my integrity, for my character, is to tell the whole truth, and it doesn't even have to be to everyone else, it's to myself. So you know, I remember being younger and you know my grandmother saying my uncle was away at work camp. He wasn't away at work camp, he's in prison. You know my father's car accident like people not telling me the whole truth about that, which you know it's not appropriate at a certain age, um, but there came a time where it was, and when I ask questions, I want honest answers and I think that sometimes people have a tendency to tell themselves these stories over in their mind so much they believe their own stories.
Speaker 1:My mom is someone that did that my entire life, and so for me, honesty is very important and I feel like there's been a theme that's come up with people in my life that you know they haven't either fully disclosed all the information about, like planning or events, or you know, like situations with my children and seeing the lack of transparency with them, and that's a trigger for me because it's like, no, they deserve the whole truth and we all do right. And so I think the first place my, my mind and intuition leads me when the lack of transparency is there is like a my mind. You know those PTSD patterns I used to have there as much as you heal and unravel. I mean that's that's hard wiring for survival over 40 years now. So immediately I go to what are they hiding? What is their motive and why aren't they telling me? And then my intuition kicks in and is like it's their own shit, it's their own shame or guilt or whatever. They're feeling behind it. Or see, maybe they don't feel safe, maybe I haven't been a safe person for them in the past because of you know my own ways of not understanding or coping or judging them because of their choices. Again, I've talked about it quite a bit like those rigid boundaries I had.
Speaker 1:I even really was very conflicted after surgery. They told me to rotate Advil and Tylenol and they gave me Vicodin and they gave me 15 of them. For they said you know, the first two or three weeks after surgery is going to be quite painful. You take them when you need them. And I really mentally, morally, struggled with that and it was very interesting Like I had like quite a bit of resistance with it and I talked to my life coach quite a bit, talked to my husband a lot about it and I think it comes from I know part of it comes from as a child. Someone like I'm not a safe person, like that person's not safe because they're doing that, whether it was drugs or alcohol or pills or whatever. So for me it was like, oh my gosh, if I take this, I'm not going to be a safe person for my kids, which is crazy because it's you know, like you take one. You take the recommend like. I didn't even take the recommended dose. I would take like one a day and then rotate the Advil, tylenol which I don't even take, advil and Tylenol, but for this, for this procedure I had, it was necessary. So I really morally struggled with that and I probably overshared all the time and I talked about it a lot. And Matt's like you B, I set so many rigid boundaries on myself as a child and a teenager and I mean, don't get me wrong, I was no saint.
Speaker 1:I tried plenty of things throughout my life and but I always there was never a time, unless I was completely sober and healthy, that I didn't hold shame or guilt for trying something, and that's not healthy either. And now my perspective on all of this is like if you're going to do something, just do it. You don't have to feel shame and guilt. If there's shame and guilt tied to it, then don't do it. Listen to your inner self, your inner you know whether it's having a drink or whatever. Like these are things I choose not to do right now because I know that they just don't really serve me as a person and my purpose and my mission and my passion right now. But you know what, if I feel like I'm gonna have a cocktail, I'm gonna have one and not feel guilty about it. So I had to really work through and dig deep on being able to take this medication when I needed it because I was in severe pain I mean, the surgery was no joke and being okay with it. So that was another big kind of observation I went through and so I encourage you, like, if you feel you have some resistance in your life somewhere like whether it's to a person, whether it's to a place, whether it's to something, an activity, a smell Smells are really big for me.
Speaker 1:Really, try to go inward and peel apart the layers, like, okay, where was I when the smell triggered me the first time and where have I smelled it in my life? It's a really big one for me. The smell of marijuana for me is a trigger because of my stepdad my first stepdad there's been like nine. That's a trigger for me because he would smoke pot in the car on the way to take us to school. It's like then you get out and you're embarrassed and you hold a shame because it's like nothing you can do, and so the smell of that is one that gets me, or like that, um, like stale beer alcohol on the breath smell. It grosses me out. Um, the sweaty smell of like people sweating out alcohol grosses me out because it's like those were common smells in my childhood. So in adulthood, like I can't handle it, which is really interesting, and now I don't have to, yeah, so really interesting.
Speaker 1:And back to the transparency and the half truth trigger. Back to the transparency and the half truth trigger. So I've really been pondering this and going back to it all and I think it really definitely stems from being a child and people feeling like they're protecting me by not telling me the whole truth, but they're really not, because I already know. Um, you know, I feel like in my marriage when we stopped being completely open and honest with each other about everything for a smidge. There. That's when chaos started and cause, you can feel it. You can feel when your person is not being your person and you know that transparency that is, that is a. It has to be a hundred percent for me. Like, like you need to own your stuff and I promise to own my stuff and um, and yeah, it's just really interesting to me, even with having teenagers, I think that my daughter and I have a really open relationship and I'm very grateful for that, so we have that transparency.
Speaker 1:So I think if, for some reason, I ever feel it slipping which I'm sure it will at some point in time I hope not, but teenagers is inevitable I feel like you can always tell, you always feel it. I feel like, whether you know for a fact or not, you can usually feel it. And I think this really goes back to times in my life because I think that anything that triggers us is kind of somewhat of a mirror and an area that we need to heal. I think this goes back to times in my life where I wasn't transparent with myself, flat out, like I wasn't being honest with myself about how much pain I was in or, um, maybe previous relationships. Like I wasn't honest with myself when I wasn't being fulfilled or heard or seen, um, I was continuing to give and give and give in situations where I wasn't receiving, or I felt like I was receiving from relationships that I wasn't willing to give. Or, you know, even when it comes to I used to be the epitome of an overexerciser, like exercising all the time, like I wasn't admitting to myself when I was tired and I was exhausted and I didn't want to push forward. But I did it anyway.
Speaker 1:But it wasn't from a place of transparency and health. It was from now realizing and all this stuff that's bubbled up has made me realize I was doing that from a place of pain. There were things inside me that were painful, that I had not faced, that maybe I didn't have the tools at the time. I didn't have the tools at the time, I didn't have the courage at the time, I didn't have the support at the time and until I started allowing myself to peel back the layers and, you know, chip down the walls and started being completely brutally honest and vulnerable and exposing my shit, especially to you guys, has been so healing, I wasn't able to understand how important transparency was to me.
Speaker 1:I mean, we all know we've all said a little white lie or half truth or, and it's like that shit adds up it really does, and what it does is it causes you not to trust yourself. So, facing all of that and whether it's a journal, I mean it might not be appropriate to reach out to you know someone when you were 15 and apologize to them or whatever. But what's helped me is unraveling a lot of it in my journal and being able to face some of the things and some of the hard truths. Those of you who are close to me know I'm like the queen of hard truthing. I'm not going to sugarcoat and tell you what you want to hear. I don't do that to myself, and that's the biggest reason. I really like to be honest with myself and recently I've had a lot of opportunities to do that. So I think that that's why this transparency thing is coming up, and it's been some people that are pretty close to me and I think it was part of the grief, part of the overmoving my body and a lot of the themes that were resurfacing over a 13-year time span really allowed me to dig it up and process it and work through it and to tail in from this some things I've done in the meantime, because I just really needed to shift gears.
Speaker 1:I really needed to start being more intentional about my nervous system. I was dysregulated, completely dysregulated. Not only did I have grief going on, I also had physical pain, which just regulates your nervous system. You know we're traveling a lot, so the instability of that. So finding time to go outside and breathe. We went to a convention center. My husband had an event and I had to go outside and walk laps around the parking lot in the building. I needed to get sunshine and fresh air and be outside in my own energy field to pull in all the goodness of the sunshine and the trees and the breeze and listening to the birds, and I just treated myself to a retreat, actually, with some really beautiful ladies. This lady named Jessica Brace did the most intense, impactful breathwork session. She does 90 breathwork. Her name is Jessica Brace. She has some stuff on YouTube I literally want to go. She has a ladies conference actually coming up, I think in August, but I want to go get certified in this. It was one of the most impactful, intense experiences I've experienced in my healing journey Just total reset. It was amazing.
Speaker 1:I really did a lot of decluttering and just getting rid of old stuff when I was home recovering from surgery and just cleaning out stuff that needed to be cleaned out, like organizing drawers, like for me that there is something to and energetically there is something to, because if you have a lot of clutter and chaos going on in your home. It's a reflection of what could be going on inside of you. So everything has a place. You know, making things, making sure things when you take them out we put them back. We don't leave the bag sitting on the chair for three days just because it landed there. On Friday we unpack it. I went through all of my bags and all of everything and just took everything out and just eliminated a lot of baggage and it felt really good to do that and I feel like with getting rid of old baggage, it just makes you feel so much lighter.
Speaker 1:So I think going into this new half of the year the second half of the year is really I mean, we're going into the end of our 9-year Next year is all about new beginnings and just starting fresh and I want to be very intentional about that. I want to continue to work through and let go of anything old and heavy that's weighing me down, even things like, you know, shoes that are clunky and heavy. It's like why am I? Why am I wearing that Like everyone's on this weighted vest trend? And I'm like why am I wearing that? Like I never was on this weighted vest trend? And I'm like why, like, why are we weighing ourselves down as we're walking? For me, walking is such a free like. I want to feel light and free and I mean more praise to you, vesters. I am not one of those girls. I do not like to be weighed down by anything. I feel like I've worked so hard to release stuff and it's like energetically. Why are we weighing ourselves down? Because I feel like my goal has been just releasing all the things so I can feel lighter. So that's been really interesting and just allowing myself to have more downtime.
Speaker 1:Like I said, just a little less responsibility. Right now we have a few more weeks until the kids go back to school and um, just being very intentional with that time it's a new season. We only have three kids in our house. We used to have four ones at college. Just being mindful of time and energy and um and my community outreach, life and career, um events are a big deal and so a ton of events in the fall and the spring. But you know I can do that differently, like maybe this year we can help and we can um, we can support, but I don't necessarily have to be there in the physical to show up Like I can show up in other ways, and I think it's really important for me to be transparent with myself that that is what I need in the season. Like I, I love you know I really. It was yesterday.
Speaker 1:Actually, with all this going on, I've really had to be intentional about my gratitude practices in my mind, because when you have a bunch of things different things happening back to back to back, it can be very easy to get into those. Oh my gosh, I can't believe this just happened. Like I literally got a parking ticket on the way here. I was three minutes over, or like before I came to film my podcast, and it's like you know what, whatever, instead of having the oh my god, this on top of everything else, like it's not about the glass half empty, it's about you know what. I'm just grateful that it wasn't anything bigger than that, Right? So yesterday I went on a gratitude walk. I went for four and a half miles and the entire time I was literally out loud talking about the things I'm grateful for, what I love, about the people that I love, like what I enjoy most about my life.
Speaker 1:We did an exercise it was the icky guy chart um with Bree Sweezy Sweezy, I believe, is her name name, which was really great. It's a retreat I went to on Sunday and we had to list, like, what we love, what we're good at, what we could get paid for and what people think that we're great at or what we get complimented for, and it was a really amazing exercise to do because it was something that I think that, a I really needed but B it really reeled me in on. I am absolutely in alignment with all the things that I love, all the passions, the missions and the purpose, whether it's community outreach and providing resources or podcasting and sharing my truths, my vulnerability and providing resources and retreats. I'm hosting my first crystal clear retreat away in Sedona this October and it's like you're just holding space for people to get to the next level for them and whatever that means for them, and I realized I'm doing that in so many different avenues of my life and it's a beautiful life. I mean it really is, and I'm not saying it in a boastful or bragging way. There's always room for improvement, but I think doing this exercise was so important because it really allowed me to intercept any of that like low vibration energy and just circle back to the gratitude Like listen, chris, like you're on your way, you are doing it, you have everything's in alignment. You just need to keep navigating through.
Speaker 1:I think sometimes we can get so caught up in the what's next and I have to do something more and something bigger and do this, and our friends calling about all these different ideas and I'm like I think I'm good. I think I want to marinate here for a little while and allow myself to enjoy this chapter. It's a beautiful chapter. It can change at any moment. I mean, my little guy lost two teeth already this summer and I'm like what is happening? Time is flying.
Speaker 1:My daughter has her first real relationship and I'm like what is happening, like time is flying. My daughter has a little, her first like real relationship and it's the most beautiful experience and it's so healthy and I'm just you know, reflecting on Wow, you've broken a lot of those cycles. Like she's so secure with herself. She had a opportunity to go spend some time with family and realizing the dynamics are different than they are at home and that's okay. But she's able to see different dynamics and understand that you know where growth is needed or healing is needed in other areas and to protect her own energy when she is in those situations and I'm just so grateful for that. And it's like this is all paying off, like it's it has the trickle effect, like seeing my friends really doing great things with their life and not personalizing their spouse's things anymore and, you know, making healthier choices and we're all just kind of evolving and growing in different ways and, um, it's just really beautiful to see and it just makes me super grateful and I just hope all of you appreciate this as much as I do. Like it's really a gift and an honor to be able to share my life with you and I do it because you know we all a we all have our shit be. We all have our shit be. It's so healthy for me to be able to to share and have that level of vulnerability and let y'all know that like I see you, I feel you, I hear you, you're not alone. Um, you know, knowing there's so many resources out there and just, I did a resilient retreat, I facilitated a program.
Speaker 1:Um, I do a journaling program there every month and our theme was letting go of things that no longer serve us and creating space for new. So I feel like that is definitely my theme for the rest of this year, especially being a 9-year. Letting go of what no longer serves you, what patterns, what behaviors, what people, what objects, what places, what is it in your life that's weighing you down, that's pulling you down, that's not serving you well, like, give yourself permission to let it go. And it might be hard, it might be very hard, and you don't have to do it all at once. You can peel it back, you can do it piece by piece. Peace, but also, once you let it go, giving yourself permission and inviting yourself to open up to receive. Because once we release something heavy, we don't have to fill the space, but we can be open to receive the love and the worthiness and the kindness and the experiences that we deserve.
Speaker 1:And I am going to leave you guys with that today. It's just it's always an honor to talk to you guys and I just wanted to kind of do my summer dump for lack of a better word and, you know, share some experiences, because it got pretty heavy for a little while and I feel like I'm on the other side of it and it feels good and you know always here. If you guys need to reach out, process anything, go to my crystalclearcom website, reach out to me on Instagram, Facebook, all the things Like always here to process, looking forward to some really great collaborations and future retreats, to coming up in the fall, like a girlfriend of mine, um Timmy Valencenti, who um was on my podcast, I think we might get something in the works for a fun Florida retreat and um really just looking forward to this new space of honoring, moving forward, honoring pulling back and enjoying the flow. Have a great day.