Trusting Yourself to be All In with Amanda McKoy Flanagan

Buy the book here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C4M137BJ

I have the honor of introducing a remarkable guest whose life story is a testament to resilience, self-discovery, healing generational trauma, and the power of love.

Her name is Amanda McKoy Flanagan, and she is an author, podcast co-host, a mother, wife, and a life-long spiritual seeker.

In this episode, we’re talking spirituality, personal growth, and inspiring journeys of transformation.

Originally from New York, she now resides in beautiful Colorado. She is co-founder of the nonprofit organization, Castle Rock Clubhouse, a recovery sanctuary, and she is co-host of the Sol Rising Podcast, along with her soul friend Ginny.

She holds a bachelor's degree in English and journalism, and a master's degree in social work.

Today, we celebrate the release of her inspirational memoir, "Trust Yourself to Be All In: Safe to Love and Let Go," quite literally an open-book perspective on generational trauma and healing, sibling loss, love, multiple losses, addiction and recovery, spirituality and healing.

We discuss how to harness the power of various modalities like Rapid Resolution Therapy (RRT), EMDR, meditation, spirituality, Imago Therapy, and more, to heal oneself, marriage, family, and how that healing ripples out to the community and beyond.

Amanda shares what it means to be "all in" and "let go".

She is available for speaking engagements, podcast and blog interviews, workshops, book clubs, and collaborations:

• Follow on Instagram: @amandamckoyflanagan
• Website: amandamckoyflanagan.com
• Email: amanda@amandamckoyflanagan.com 
• Purchase the Book on Amazon (paperback or Kindle)

“Allow yourself to be loved when you hurt. Then allow yourself to become love. Then go love others.” — From Trust Yourself to Be All In

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

It's about feeling comfortable enough in all of your emotions to embrace them, to be all in with them. Trust yourself to be all in. It's not necessarily all in with others. You get there, but it's by being all in with yourself.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

You just lost your loved one.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Now what?

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Welcome to the Grief in Life Podcast, where we explore this new reality through grief-colored lenses. Openly, authentically, I'm your host, Nina Rodriguez. Let's get started. Hi, friends. Today we are delving into some of my favorite topics. We are going to be talking spirituality, personal growth, and inspiring journeys of transformation. And I have the honor of introducing a remarkable guest whose life story is a testament to resilience, self-discovery, and the power of love. Her name is Amanda McCoy Flanagan. She's an author, podcast co-host, mother, wife, and lifelong spiritual seeker. She's originally from New York. And now, as you can see in the background, she resides in the beautiful state of Colorado. She is co-founder of a nonprofit organization called Castle Rock Clubhouse, which is a recovery sanctuary and co-host of the Soul Rising podcast with her soul friend Ginny. She holds a bachelor's degree in English and journalism and a master's degree in social work. And today we are so excited to celebrate the release of her inspirational memoir, Trust Yourself to Be All In, which is quite literally an open book and her perspective on love, loss, addiction, recovery, spirituality, and healing. There is so much to dig into. So I'm excited to welcome Amanda to the show. So welcome, Amanda. Hi, Nina. Thank you so much for having me today. This is all. It's a pleasure. No, it's my pleasure. And we were just talking before the show that you were nominated. Could you tell us a little bit about that? Or your book was?

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Yes, my book was nominated. I am a finalist of three, top three finalists in the motivational, inspirational category for the Colorado Independent Publishers Award. It's called the SEPA EVIS, is what they call it here in Colorado. So that's a huge honor. Um, so I am going up against um two other authors. Um, I'll find out on August 31st at a ceremony, at an award ceremony. So me and my family, my kids will go. That's what I'm like the most excited about. Is that my little girls will see?

SPEAKER_00 2:26

No, that's amazing. And congratulations. Seriously, that's so exciting. I, you know, we met recently, and it was through, I would say, your energetic footprint via the Instagram algorithm. So I like to think about it. But in conversation, you'll realize

"Trust Yourself to be all In" Book

SPEAKER_00 2:43

that this book has been the culmination of a lot of your life's work, a lot of the inner work that you've been doing and continue to do, and your kids are a huge part of it. So I'm sure that all of it coming together in these moments is so special and it's so exciting. One thing that we have in common, actually, Amanda, is that we both lost our siblings. So you lost your brother Jeremy. I lost my brother Joseph, and Instagram algorithm, if you will, put it together, among other things. But one thing I loved about your energy is that you are such an authentic person. There's no filter about you. There's just this beautiful essence. And that has, I learned, come from all of this work that you've done throughout your life. So tell us a little bit about how, where it all started and what role Jeremy played in being the catalyst to this journey. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

So I um got sober in 2006. Um, I

Sobriety & Divine Guidance

SPEAKER_01 3:36

started drinking when I was about 13 years old. My older brother Jeremy, three and a half years older than me, started, you know, before me. And, you know, I kind of followed in in his footsteps. Um, he did pass away from an overdose back in 2018. You know, the question we kick around a lot in the rooms of recovery is like, why, why, why, why did I stay sober? You know, why did I have this experience? And he never did. He wasn't able to. But he, you know, is such an integral part of this whole thing, like you said. But I'll start with, you know, my my journey a little bit. So getting sober when I was 26, I um about eight months into sobriety, I had a boyfriend who passed away. My boyfriend Mike passed away. And that really shook me. That really rocked my world. Yeah, I didn't drink through it. You know, that's one of the main messages of my book, is that I have had three emotional breakdowns in recovery. Like, not even, I say like not to my knees, but took me straight to the floor, like hardcore breakdowns. And I didn't have to drink through any of them because my recovery program had been so strong, really, from like from like day one. Um, it was a divinely inspired, divine intervention sort of experience that happened to me getting sober. Same thing with my book. All these wonderful things that have happened to me in my life are not not my doing. You know, that's like the beauty of believing in something greater than yourself and spirituality.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

And also being very receptive because you're somebody who's very connected, and you get that from the book, you get that from the experiences that you share, that all these major moments of change or pivotal moments were actually the result of some kind of that they have like a spiritual undertone. There was some calling, there was some event, there was something, but it also requires you to be the receiver of that message and know what to do with it. So please go ahead and telling us about that.

SPEAKER_01 5:19

Yeah, so it you're a hundred percent right. Everything that has happened to me has really been done by a force greater than me, not of my own doing. It's been sort of out of desperation, I guess, on my part. And then I sort of like a knowing or something would come in and just guide me towards some kind of healing or some kind of epiphany or catharsis or awareness or whatever that has just kind of pushed me, like getting into recovery. I was kind of just pushed into that room. Like I don't even know. I was just kind of led by something else. And then, you know, after Mike passed away, and when I was eight months sober, you know, people showed up for me. You know, I believe I call I call God, the high power God, the universe. It to me, it's just one loving, benevolent force of goodness that just is just love. And I think it works through people. And my friends, a couple of my friends who I actually was not that close with showed up and one of them had said to me, Do you want to join the no matter what club? And I was like, What is that? She goes, We don't drink no matter what. And I said, Yes. I love that. Okay. Yeah. Absolutely. Um, so yeah. So and I haven't had, like I said before, I haven't had to drink through any of these emotional, mental, nervous breakdowns, whatever you want to call them. So went on my journey, kept going on my journey. I met my husband. We had two girls. We got hit hard with Hurricane Sandy. We lived on the south shore of Long Island in Long Beach, New York. We lived a block off the bay, and the uh water, the ocean was covered the whole island from beach to bay, like four feet of water. It was very extremely tragic. And he had just retired from the fire department, FDNY, as a captain. Um, he had been he was at 9-11. Um, he had some PTSD tied to that experience. And I said, you know what? Maybe we can go somewhere else. And during Hurricane Sandy, I couldn't get in touch with him and I kind of freaked out. I pulled out a map and I pointed to the middle of the country and I said, Kansas. I don't know if I can go to Kansas. I'm not sure about this New Yorker in Kansas. But I saw Colorado was right next to it. And I was like, I had a friend who just got back from Colorado, and I was like, let's go check it out. So I kind of just knew it was kind of like a knowing. Just like when I stopped drinking. Like I just kind of knew it was over. Moving to Colorado. I kind of knew, I didn't know where in Colorado, but I kind of knew we were gonna go. You know, went on. Uh different things happened that I I talk about in my book

Generational Dysfunction & Multiple Losses

SPEAKER_01 7:36

and stuff. And then my brother passes away in 2018. And again, I believe that he stepped in to bring some sort of spiritual awakening to me and really just wake me up. It was just this, like, and it was done pretty forcefully. It was, I had to have like, you know, a two by four to the face to be like, okay, wake up. You do not have to continue in this generational dysfunction, which is what my book is very much about. And my particular family, and I believe many other families out there, my form of generational dysfunction comes in the message of protect your heart. Don't always go all in. It's always better to love a little less because you're gonna get hurt.

unknown 8:17

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

And that was sort of handed down to me indirectly, I believe, like through the centuries. And I believe it was to protect me. I believe that my mother, her mother, that you know, I believe that it was good intentioned. Right, right. And I think it's like I say in the book, I think back in the day, like when things were really, really hard, maybe you had to. Maybe you had to just kind of like pull yourself up by the bootstraps, get through, don't show the emotion, don't feel because you had to survive.

SPEAKER_00 8:44

Right. We don't need that anymore. It was more of a survivalist mindset. And you saw it's very clear that you see your role as that person who has the challenge to break the generational trauma and patterns and things that are not working, not just to heal the past, but also for the generations coming after you. So your daughters and and their kids. So you took this on. It's like you say, a lot of your changes have been through something greater than yourself, whether it was like Jeremy's two by four type of awakening or a more subtle understanding or anything like that. You understood the assignment of what role you play in all of this, and you've taken that honestly by the horns, taken that bowl by the horns, and really done some very, very interesting, deep work to heal all of that.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

Yeah, I love that you use the word assignment because that's exactly what it feels like: a mission, an assignment. You know, so when I hit that other emotional bottom after Jeremy died, I pushed my husband away, is essentially what happened. I decided I didn't love him. I decided that my it was just purely a decision, a very logical, good decision on my part to marry him. My friends were getting married, they were starting to have babies. I was almost 30. You know, it was kind of like I convinced myself that that was why I married him. And I told him that. I said, I don't think I love love you. I don't think I ever loved you. And he said, mind you, I'm five months out of Jeremy's passing.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

I'm in yes, and it's like grief, I'm sure, had a lot to do with all of the emotions that were coming up and all of these uh realizations or questions. And ultimately it was my pathway, all this healing.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

Like I had to feel that, and I feel terrible about what I put him through, my family through, but it was my vehicle to this greater healing. It and it had to be the way that it was. And he says to me that he says, Don't you think your grief might be playing a part in this? And I said, Probably. Now I had four other close family members pass away before Jeremy within within a span of three years, right after moving to Colorado. So I had like a ton of loss on a ton of trauma. A lot of them was four out of five of them were sudden and unexpected. Wow. Um, yeah, two aunts, my closest cousin died four months before Jeremy, and then my mother's cousin, who was just like just this amazing, amazing.

SPEAKER_00 11:02

So you're dealing with with layers and layers of loss and grief and just all the secondary losses that ensue after that.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

Yeah, and and I actually I wasn't even dealing with them. I was just kind of like, okay, you know, like I felt relief for some of them. I felt like they had been suffering, like, you know, maybe they're, you know, I believe in the afterlife and I believe that it's glorious and just enjoying love and that they are now at peace, you know. But I didn't actually go through the healing that I needed to go through because of that loss, right? Like I could believe that I could trust in that, but it's still affecting me. Right. I can't just tell myself that and then just keep marching forward, which is which is what I actually

Sibling Loss

SPEAKER_01 11:39

I did. And then when Jeremy died, it all just blew up. It all right. It's like, and I'm sure you experience this too. When you have a major loss, then every other loss after that feel, especially when you're reeling and when you're in it, feels huge. Feels like crazy and and and just all encompassing. And um so that's why Jeremy's, I believe, hit me so hard. And I believe, you know, I he's my brother, right? Like I know people who had had siblings who passed away, and I felt for them and I saw the pain they were in. But just like you, you could never really grasp that feeling. It's like this soul severing sort of thing, which we're still connected, but it's this thing that feels like it's cut and it's visceral, and it feels like this thing is being like pulled out, like it's just this very odd feeling that it's very, very odd, and it feels like a part of you is just also gone, you know, gone.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

I don't know if gone is the right word, but that's a word that comes to mind. There's a little clip because of I don't know if I could read an excerpt from your book. I just want to highlight something because what I like is like there's a whole person behind, there's a whole person behind the loss, right? And so when you say, you know, some people lost siblings, and I'm highlighting this because I share a similar experience, and that's where that what kickstarted my journey as well. And it's the the sibling relationship can be a little complex because not everybody shares the same type of relationship as you would with, let's say, like a mother or a father or something like that. But they were a whole person and they were ripped out from underneath us, and then that kind of you know, that kick starts everything else. So there's this beautiful, it's just the way you write is so beautiful. And whoever has read the book or will read the book will see what I mean. She has like this very raw way of expressing herself through her words that just really get to you, and it's very relatable. So this is an excerpt about like who Jeremy was in her life. It says, Jeremy was the boy who buckled my orange life preserver to board our speedboat for a thrilling ride through Zack's Bay, followed by a sun-drenched day at Short Beach. He knew the secret to catching jellyfish barehanded at the end of our rock and the number of steps from our front door at the end of the stoop. Jeremy was the boy on the school bus that I chased after when he left for his first day of kindergarten, sporting his platinum blonde bowl haircut, and infectious smile. Jeremy was the only person who shared completely in my youthful experiences the highs, the lows, day in and day out, from the laughs around the table as we savored mom's Italian family tradition of Sunday sauce and meatballs to the tears of grief that accompany the death of our grandparents. So it's just that shared experience that that person that really gets you up to a certain point in your life, or really throughout your whole life, that gets ripped out. And I feel like maybe what I'm hearing you say is that yes, there were all these other losses, and then this one just was the the last drop that kickstarted so much of the transformation. A hundred percent.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

I was gonna say it's almost like losing a limb because that relationship with a sibling, that's your first friend. That's the person, the first person who stares over your little car seat. Well, for me, because he was older, star over their car seat when they're brought home from the hospital. Like, or the first person that's there, that's not a parent that you recognize as like you, they're another child, you know, baby. They're you know, and you spend so much time at home when you're so young. A lot, a lot of us, a lot of us spend time at home. And he's he's my best friend, you know? And so it was we've had our we had our trials through the years when his addiction would pull up really hardcore and I would have to like sever ties for a little bit. Um, you know, we we weren't speaking at the end. Well, we actually did. I feel very blessed that we came back together right at the end. Like I knew he was gonna die. I said to my husband on New Year's Eve of 2018, I said, Jeremy's gonna die this year. Um, it wasn't hard to tell. I mean, he was homeless for a couple of years before that, living in his car, and then he wound up dying in this like shed, this like shack basically. And he was doing some hardcore drugs, and I just kind of knew I just I hadn't even seen a picture of him. I saw a picture of him after he passed away, the last time he saw his daughter, my niece. Right. She was nine when he passed away. That was December. He passed in March, and uh he just he just did not look, he just did not look good.

SPEAKER_00 16:03

I'd never kind of knew you had that knowing that it was just not going anywhere from there. I'm so sorry. I just I just knew.

SPEAKER_01 16:09

So um, yeah, it was so Jeremy's death like really propelled me on this, this, this crazy healing journey. And I believe he's also behind the book. I

Being called to write a book

SPEAKER_01 16:18

believe that the moment that another divinely inspired moment running on my treadmill one day after going through three years of this healing, this marriage counseling, when I was I was talking about I didn't think I loved my husband. We went to marriage counseling because I said, Yeah, this, I'm sure my grief is playing a part here. Like I was in recovery long enough to know that there's usually something deeper going on underneath the feeling. So after a few years of healing, I'm running on my treadmill one day, and and I just feel like I hear where I just know you're gonna write a book. And I was like, what? Yeah, I'd been trying to figure out like my kids were getting a little old or getting a little bit older. I mean, they're still young, they're going into fourth and sixth grade, but I was like trying to figure out what am I gonna do? Right. It was during COVID. This was well, it was 2021 when this happened. So it was at the end of COVID. So we were e-learners, we were home all year because of my husband's respiratory illness from 9-11, and uh, we had to take it very seriously. And um, I was kind of like, what you know, what am I gonna do? I've been spending a lot of time out in nature, which I believe nature is where we find ourselves. It is where I found myself.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

Very feeling and has the capacity to hold all of us and whatever we're going through.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

Yes, so beautiful. So it just came out. The story just came out of all that I had. The dots just kept connecting. It was like you go through, it's kind of like hindsight's 2020. Like you go through this, and then all of a sudden it just like one day, like makes sense. Like, oh my gosh, like that's why this happened, and that's why this happened, and some some good stuff, some not so great stuff, you know. Um, but ultimately it brought me to this massive healing of, like you said, like the breaking, breaking chains of this generational dysfunction. And I did it by healing, healing my grief. And my therapist calls it being a good griever. And I that was very interesting. That's in the book too. Good griever, learning how to embrace all of life, all the emotions, all the feelings, the love, all of it, and then being able to let it go. Right. So be bringing it in and letting it go, like a circle, whether that's events, places, people, things, feelings, relationship, whatever it is, being able to take that in. It's almost like a circle. I almost look at it like a circle. Like bring it and embrace it. And then so that's why the subtitle of the book is, and I just grabbed one to show you guys, Safety, Love, and Let Go. Because that's the whole real deal. There is it's about feeling comfortable enough in all of your emotions to embrace them, to be all in with them. Trust yourself to be all in, it's not necessarily all in with others. You get there, but it's by being all in with yourself.

SPEAKER_00 18:49

And in context, a lot of you know, it wasn't just the loss of Jeremy. It wasn't just um the the issues that you had with and realizations you had about your marriage and your husband. There was, you know, I would say like sexual trauma as a child. There was family dysfunction, emotional abandonment, parents' divorce, like there were so many things that happened throughout your life. So a lot of people deal with just one or don't deal with just one in their entire lifetime. And you had this culmination of many things come together throughout the span of your life that you go into um very honestly and very openly in your book. And people don't realize how much it takes just to get through one of those things in life,

Grief can be an alchemical process

SPEAKER_00 19:30

and you know, nevertheless, to get through all of them. So the fact that it's like you say, trust yourself, allow yourself to feel all of it in its fullness as it shows up and transmute that. I believe that like grief and loss and all of this can be an alchemical process of sorts. So, like trust yourself to be the alchemist of all of that and transmute it into something else for yourself and for your loved ones and for your future.

Don't Waste the Pain

SPEAKER_01 19:56

Yeah, you know, while I was going through all the pain, um, I have a good friend who was there through the whole thing. And she said to me, Don't waste the pain. She said, Don't waste the pain. And I loved that. And I was gonna put it in my book, but I learned it's a title of another book. Um I'm gonna read. It's about for me that alchemical process is turning the pain into power, power within yourself to say, you know what, I I got through that, right? It's like all the references. It's saying, okay, I mean, if you could look hard enough, I'm sure everybody out there has gone through something, right? Right. If you get honest with yourself, right. Um, if you turn over enough rocks and and and look honestly at your life, you can probably see you did get through something that was painful. And then the next painful thing that comes along, then you say, Okay, I had the power, I had the self-love, I had the self-worth, I had the grit, I had whatever it was to get me through that last thing that I can get through this next thing, right? But we've got to go through at least one of those things first to then look back on that, right? So I'm grateful. I mean, I know it might sound crazy. I'm not grateful that my brother's gone, but I am grateful for all the experiences, which I personally believe I signed up for the lessons before I got here. Not necessarily how they played out. And I think I make that clear in my book too. I don't think that I said, all right, I'm willing to learn how to love with the fear of loss or to love through any of that fear. I'm willing to lose my brother for that. No, I don't think that's how it works. Right. My brother's soul played a big part in his going and in his path. But I agreed to learn whatever lesson that I have to learn here in whatever way, shape, or form that's going to come to me. And I believe that's why I personally went through, you know, the pain that I've gone through, and I'm sure there's more on the way. I'm only 43 years old. Life is life. It has its ups, it has its downs. Um, but to be the whole point of the book is to now I trust myself that I can show up for myself and that I will not self abandon. I don't even want to. Say, I won't end up a puddle on the floor. I might. I might. I probably will. I mean I would embrace that too as part of that process. Embrace it, love it, right? I love this whole thing about like sending those scary parts of life or the parts of yourself that like you don't love about yourself, right? This is a little bit of a different topic, but like sending all of that love and light and grace and compassion. And then that for me eliminates the resistance. That's like the antidote to the resistance of going through the pain, is when I'm not putting so much judgment on myself about who I am or how I've showed up in the past or my fear of I'm not going to show up for myself in the future. Just send love and light and visually, right? I use a lot of meditation. Those are like the tools that I use, like visualize that stuff. Like see almost like I sometimes I see like myself outside of myself. Yes. And then I'm like an observer of your own life, if you will. Yeah. Totally. And then you send it all the love and the light and and the peace and all that that you've always

Inner Child Work

SPEAKER_01 23:07

deserved. Right. And I talk about a lot of like inner child work in my book. You know, I was actually just talking to somebody about this yesterday. That's huge. That's huge. Because little Amanda, you know, whatever she was told about her or whatever, you know, other people's stuff was put on her, because that's really what happens inside our parents, people in our lives, they're unhealed parts, which I give a lot of grace and compassion towards. I don't blame anybody in my book. This is all loving and forgiving and all that. But just for me to be able to like wrap my head around it, I have to understand that we say, right, hurt people, hurt people, that whole thing. You know, that they they could have done better, they probably would have. They did the best with what they've known. And I also say the only difference between me and my ancestors and my mother and my father is that I was born in 1980. And they were born at a time when what I call the evolution of consciousness, and most of a lot of us are calling it that, wasn't available to them. It just wasn't a thing.

SPEAKER_00 24:06

It just wasn't a thing, and they don't have the the conversations that are more publicly accepted nowadays. And, you know, the internet, social media, all of that has, I think, helped quite a bit to get the to make it more acceptable and available to a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 24:21

We are encouraged to heal now. It's not even like, well, it's just available. Yeah, it is available, but we are encouraged to heal. It's not looked at. The stigma is sort of starting to melt away in terms of going to therapy, addressing your mental health, addressing your addiction, addressing all of these things that are hurting, hurting yourself, and then hurting the people around you, right? So we are in a massive shift. And, you know, the underlying message of the book is that healing our personal pain can help heal collective pain, right? Because this whole thing kind of coincided with COVID, you know, and everything that was going on in 2020 with the divisiveness over COVID, with the divisiveness of the presidential election in 2020. I mean, like, and it's still, it's it's bad. It's yeah, right. I mean, there is a lot of love and light, and there is a lot of goodness in the world. And I'm not like this doomsday person, but like we're very divided. Like there's a huge division going on, and it's a big shift that I believe is necessary. I believe the division and the pain we're in is necessary to bring us to this next space, just like my own pain was necessary to bring me to the healing.

SPEAKER_00 25:28

Would you say that you know the change starts with yourself first? It can expand from your own change to the collective. I wholeheartedly believe that. We have to change ourselves first, and then that ripples out into our families, friends, community, and so on. Does healing have that type of order?

SPEAKER_01 25:49

180,000 percent. Yes. It's your energy, your energy, right? This is like stuff they've been talking about forever. And I and I love like you said, social media is really helping to get this stuff to be more on like a mass scale, just the education and the awareness and the attraction to it is growing. But it's our unhealed energy, I believe, is creating the chaos in the world, the whole law of attraction thing, the whole, you know, what you put out, you get back. So if

Heal yourself, heal the collective

SPEAKER_01 26:18

I'm doing that on a personal level, if I'm whatever I'm putting out into the world with my own energy, and then I'm getting right back, whether that's good stuff or or not good stuff or whatever, sure. Why doesn't why wouldn't that translate to the entire collective? If we're all putting out some fear energy or anxious energy or ego energy or whatever it is, that's what's gonna reverberate out there. So yes, we are responsible. And I'm sure some people don't want to hear that, but we're responsible for what's going on out there. It's our behavior, it's our thoughts, it's our feelings that turn into action. Right. So, like, yeah, so like if we're healed, like I said, hurt people, hurt people. We're I'm seeing a lot now and people who said healed people, heal people. Right. So if you are transmuting, actually, the first version of my book that I used that word, it was transmuting personal pain into collective healing or something like that. That was gonna the that was like the working title for a minute. So, yes, so it's about transmuting your own energy into healing energy. And then of course it's just it just makes sense and you're gonna be kind of happier, more at peace. You're gonna be kinder to the people around you, you're gonna be kinder to yourself. Once you learn to love yourself, that's like we we say we say this forever.

SPEAKER_00 27:35

You can't love anybody until you love yourself.

Boundless Expansion

SPEAKER_00 27:37

And you introduced a concept that I love. You called I think it's the name title of a chapter called Boundless Expansion. I'm gonna read like a very quick excerpt that stood out to me. It is the home of exponential, unending growth of mind, body, soul, and spirit, house within my heart space. It is the amplification of my emotional nature to such an extent that I make room for everything, thought, feeling, and attribute to commingle peacefully without having to reject any of them. I just love that because that's that's really the growth. When it's, you know, when somebody says like, love yourself or start with yourself or heal yourself, that's part of it. The bravery that it and strength that it takes to let things be, take a look at them and allow them to commingle as if they all lived in a house under one roof and try to get them to get along takes a lot of work. That takes a ton of work and dribbles out into you know everybody else. And that is why the cover is the cover.

SPEAKER_01 28:37

That's why you see all the different flowers, like beautiful wilting, these are like sturdy, these are kind of flowy, black, white, gray, light, dark, all that kind of stuff. That's why that's the point of it, is that what you just read. Thank you for reading that. You know, that's the whole thing right there. Like I was saying, like you give love to all these parts, the good, the lovely, the unlovely, whatever, however you want to look at them. I don't like to say good and bad because there's really no bad about us.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

Yeah, I say like useful or not useful or helpful, not helpful.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

And then to transform those unuseful parts or unhelpful parts into ones that are serving you and others is a process called integration. And that comes from another 12-step program that I'm in and that deals with dysfunctional families. So that is a process that you you look at the these things that aren't serving you and aren't serving the world well, and then figuring out how can I transform them, transmute them, integrate them into myself, into my life, into my heart, to who I am, into this field of beauty that is me. And then they will serve you because I believe everything is God given, right? All these things and all this stuff that is not serving you, we talk a lot in that program about something called survival traits. And you touched on the word, you know, for survival. You know, so a lot of those things are learned behaviors. Most of them were not with you. I'd say none of those unserving behaviors are with you when you were born, when you were just like this little itty bitty baby that was just like love and light and beauty, and like, you know, you look at a baby and you're like, oh my gosh, like just so beautiful. You're untainted, basically. It's like this clean sweet, like you said, this like untainted, like little human that can that goes out into the world and then gets kind of like all these layers and stuff and other people's stuff and life experience and traumas and pain just get like layered and layered and layered upon you. And the process that you just read is more is about like kind of shedding those things, but in a beautiful, compassionate, loving way and saying, okay, I'm shedding them. And but what of those things can actually serve me? Which of those things can actually be useful? Right. Because they were there for a reason. They're there for a reason. So instead of like furiously trying to like pluck these things out, like you're pulling a root, like a root of like the one of the ugly flowers or the weeds, right? And talking about the weeds too in the book, like the weeds and the flowers. Instead of trying to like pluck it out and be like, oh, I don't like that about me. I need to change that, right? How can I do that with like ease and grace and love, right? And that's why I rely on a higher power very often, because left to my own devices, I'm a natural self-sabotager. And I don't know if that came from a life lesson I need to learn, or I don't know how that all started, but um, I know. I mean, I've tried I tried drinking a million times on my own before I went to recovery and turned my my life and my will over to a God of my own understanding. You know, sometimes those 12-step programs get like a bad rap. They're like, oh God, this and you know, that kind of stuff. But you can make it whatever you want it to be. It's just, it's not you. It's just something greater than you that can do for you what you can't do for yourself. So I look at, I take that concept and I apply it to every part of my life and getting, you know, changing those flaws into attributes.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

And I feel beautifully stated. I feel like reading your process about your process and all the different things you and your husband tried separately and together, because he did a lot of work, it sounds like himself as well. This is why you're still together and thriving. But what was interesting to me is that you tried what I like to call a soup of different modalities, like each ingredient is a different modality, and you just tried a little bit of this and a little bit of that, like EMDR, EFT, RRT, Imago. Like you did all, and obviously your spirituality and your belief in God, energy, source, and whatever resonated for you, like you found a way to extract what worked from each modality and make your own soup, if you will. Charlotte or whatever. Maybe I'm hungry. I don't know why I'm using this analogy, but um this soup of different tools that helped you get to where you're at and helped essentially restore your marriage and realize that you do love your husband, especially, you know, after that tumultuous period where you make thought maybe you you didn't even.

SPEAKER_01 33:04

Yes.

Unconscious fear of loss and "the great myth"

SPEAKER_01 33:05

What I've come to learn is that my I don't love you was I'm afraid you're going to die. So I didn't really touch on on that when we've talked about the book. So this unconscious fear of loss that I had no idea back to the generational dysfunctional message of always protect your heart because pain is coming, that was compounded, like you said, through different events that happened throughout my life, starting in childhood with sexual traumas, and then my father cheating on my mother and like all this and my mother's breast cancer that we've never really, you know, healed from or even talked about much how we felt, you know, just a whole bunch of my grandparents passing. It was kind of just like we never really talked, we didn't know how to heal. Um so a lot of that stuff was compounded. So when my brother died, the great myth, I call it, the great myth became true. My mother's right, everybody leaves, everybody hurts me. Well, everybody does die at some point, but everybody's gonna die in my brain. Unconsciously, I said, Jim, that's my husband, he's next. So I'm just gonna grieve him now. I'm just gonna get it over with now because I don't ever want to feel that pain again. I mean, after Jeremy died, I'm sure you know. I mean, I think it was about three months of straight like laying in bed, crying, taking a bath, and going to my recovery meetings, and that was it. He took care of everything. Jim, the kids, the kids were little, they were like four and six. Like it was a lot for him, and I was just down for the count. But so when we went to therapy, and then I unraveled this whole story, this narrative that I had been telling myself, you know. So we did the marriage counseling, we did individual counseling on our own. He went into he started the EMDR. That's what he did. That that was the first thing. He'd been in top therapy for his PTSD for a while. And so cool how we're learning now that reliving

Grief and healing are physical experiences

SPEAKER_01 34:45

trauma does not heal trauma. It actually makes it worse. And that trauma is healed by um a rewiring of your neural pathways, and it has to happen in the brain physiologically. There's really no thinking your way through healing trauma.

SPEAKER_00 34:59

I am constantly fascinated by how much of healing is physical. Even the emotional and mental healing is physical first. Like the solution is physical. It just blows my mind.

SPEAKER_01 35:11

It's really wild. So he, like you said, you know, he and I wouldn't be together. You're sure you all see my wedding ring. We're still married. We wouldn't be together unless he did his work because his PTSD before even Jeremy died, it started about 2016, it started to get it. I mean, 9-11. I mean, he was a fireman and a cop in the New York City subways, like when he was a cop in the late 80s. He was like 19 years old, as like scrawny, like kid, you know, from like long.

SPEAKER_00 35:36

He's seen some things. Yeah, he's been through quite a bit himself. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:39

So the trauma isn't just from 9-11, it's from all his years as a cop and a fireman. So, but 9-11 was like, you know, the icing on the cake that really set it off. So he didn't deal with that for 15 years. He just was like, he didn't want to be put on medication. He was kind of just denying it, but he was still talking, he was talking to somebody. And then finally in 2016, I was like, you know, you need to really do something more, you know, about this. So he's he stepped it up a notch with some medication and stuff, but like that still didn't address the biological the part in the brain, right? Um, and so he did the EMDR. That was sort of

Healing the "crumbs"

SPEAKER_01 36:11

my therapist suggested that when we were in marriage counseling, and he did that um for about maybe 10 months or so, and that helped him. For him, it didn't uh get it all. There was still some like crumbs. Like when I like to look at like after you do a lot of healing and there's still some stuff left, I like to call it like crumbs. He had a lot, he had some crumbs going on. So I said, you know, you need to do something else because my kids were being affected. He had put us in some dangerous positions, you know, where my kids could have been hurt or maybe hurt, or my older daughter, you know, she's like a little nervous and we're sure we're sort of un trying to undo some of the damage that was already done. So even though P.S. I'm doing all this work doesn't mean that my kids are gonna end up great, you know. And I always laugh. I say, you know, in 20 years or whatever, when they have their kids, they're gonna be like, I can't believe mom did that.

SPEAKER_00 36:59

There's I mean, they're all walking, everybody's walking their own spiritual path, and maybe that's going to be part of theirs for sure. That's gonna be part of theirs, but yes, and every generation is supposed to do it better than the last.

SPEAKER_01 37:10

And just like we have more information and healing available to us now, they'll have even more. So how I'm doing things now is probably gonna look like I'm doing it wrong compared to how they're gonna do it when they're 30, 35, right? So, anyway, so he found that when I told him he needed to do more

Rapid Resolution Therapy (RRT)

SPEAKER_01 37:28

healing, he found RRT, like you mentioned. And I wanted to talk about that because that's like life-changing, life-changing this RRT. So it's called rapid resolution therapy. It's a form of hypnotherapy. You're not out, it's not like uh you're getting sleepy, like a pendulum thing. Like it's not that kind of hip hypnosis. It's really just like a deep, deep meditation. And I did it as well. So that's why I can speak on to what it is. But he came home. It's three sessions. That's why it's called rapid resolution, and it rewires your neural pathways. Like, I don't know how long you'd have to think your way, because you can think your way into rewiring your pathways, but I don't know how long it would take to get the effect that he had. The first session, he came home like on cloud nine. Like he's like, I don't even know where I went. You don't know what happened, what happened, but I went to some other place and I'm back and I feel amazing. And so then he did two more sessions. And I tell you that he well, he's been maintaining it too. It's just the kind of stuff you gotta maintain. He meditates every chance you can get, and he's a different man. He is a different man. And I tell him all the time, I thank him all the time. I say thank you for doing your work, because we would not still be together. Because even though I had all my stuff and that I I worked on my healing, you know, he he hadn't do his part too. That's why not all marriages are gonna work out, even if you do this work. Yes, work is not about saving marriages, it's not, it's about healing you because even if the relationship is is supposed to end, you're gonna bring the same hate with your next relationship and you're going to recreate the same, and you use the word emotional abandonment.

Imago Therapy & healing our marriage

SPEAKER_01 39:05

That speaks to the imago therapy that we did. So mago, now it means image. Jim had heard this speaker come to the counseling unit when he was working there through the fire department um like years ago, like in the early 2000s, before we even met. And he used to like tell me like randomly, like, oh, this is this guy, Harville Hendricks. And he came and he spoke to the fire department and this really awesome concept. And I was like, Oh, yeah, that's cool, that's cool, you know, whatever. And then when everything blew up with us, and we asked our therapist, Hey, do you know about this Imago? She goes, Yeah. She goes, I'm actually using some of those techniques with you guys, but I'm just not like calling it Imago, but that's essentially what it is. Okay. So then COVID hit and we stopped going in to in person, and we didn't want to do online with her. I stayed online individually, but he didn't want to really do the zoom. So she said, Well, this is a good time. Why don't you guys do the workbook? So the book is called Getting the Love You Want, and the Workbook comes with it. So every week we would force ourselves to meet and to do this work. And it's some some writing, and it really what it does is it uncovers. It's essentially like the whole, like you marry your father kind of thing that we talk about in psychology.

SPEAKER_00 40:14

You marry their subconscious traits or certain dynamics within your family system and you recreate them. I believe is how it happens.

SPEAKER_01 40:23

100%. You know, we identify the things in each of our parents, mom and dad that um, and our caretakers or whoever takes care of you, those things that are lacking in them, you subconsciously realize you don't sense, you don't, it's not at the surface, but you sense somewhere that your partner has those same shortcomings or lacks, they're lacking those same things. So the whole point of this is and why we're drawn into partnership is for healing. So when Jim says to me, I need you to be more patient or something, like I'm just throwing something out there, like say his one or his parents were like not patient. And then he says to me, you know, you're not patient, which I'm not, and that's probably why I threw that out there. But I need you to be more patient with me or more compassionate or you know, what whatever it is. And I and I say, Okay, you know, I'm willing. You have to become willing. I'm willing to look at that and heal that part of me to love you better, to meet your needs, to serve our relationship better. I'm not doing it just for him or for the relationship. I'm essentially then healing that part of me that lacks patience or that lacks compassion. That's why we're in these relationships. That at some point, I feel like I say in the book, like seven years, eight years, nine years of marriage, sometimes you got a couple of kids, things aren't going so great, you don't have a lot of time for each other, whatever it is. You hit that like rough patch. And I think it's sort of a motivation, a soul motivation, if you will, like to do this kind of work to heal yourself. The byproduct is healing your relationship, because then you're bringing a more whole person to the relationship who can love with an open heart.

SPEAKER_00 42:02

That's beautiful because it's not about, hey, you need to fix this, and the other person is saying, No, you need to fix this. It's not even about that. It's how are we mirrors to each other in the positive and the not so positive and the challenges and the the gaps? How can we fill in those gaps within ourselves? And like you said, the side effect, the byproduct is the marriage being well or whatever, whatever needs to happen with the marriage. But that's not the main, it's not like this panic, like let's stay married by doing this. It's more like, hey, how can we heal this within ourselves, become whole, and then see how where we go from here? And that's that's a very powerful place to start over from.

SPEAKER_01 42:40

Yeah, I remember when I was in therapy when I was like convinced that we were gonna get a divorce, like the first few months. And I remember telling her, You're not gonna convince me to like stay together. I don't know what you're trying to do here. For she goes, I'm not trying to do that, Amanda. She goes, Really? It's none of my business whether you stay together or not. She goes, My job is to help you heal and to bring you to the greatest sense of wholeness that that you can. She said, So give it a year. She goes, Well, you give it a year, just give it a year, see what happens, do the work, do your healing. And then if you still want to get divorced, go for it. And I was willing enough, and I talk about my book too. The first six or nine months that I was in it was really for my kids. Thank God. And somebody told me, I remember when I was going through this, they said, Sometimes the kids are the anchor. Like sometimes you gotta use the kids as the anchor. And I'm really grateful that I did that because then, like after like nine months or so, I just had this like epiphany, this awakening that it was like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm I'm all in. I'm gonna do whatever I gotta do to to see this thing through

There's no summit of personal development

SPEAKER_01 43:45

and to heal. And we're still healing. I mean, it's just like, and we're constantly growing and changing. I, you know, there is no summit of personal development. There is no, well, I've arrived. I'm standing on the final point. Yeah. There's no finish line here, people. And I believe even when we die and go to the afterlife, there's even more work to do then. And then we come back to do even more work. So it's never ending. So that is a good way that I give myself some compassion and grace by saying, I am a work in progress.

SPEAKER_00 44:14

Yes. And that opens up to looking at things from different perspectives. Just one example that popped into my mind, even as simple as, and this ripples out from to marriage, self, marriage, community, everything else. Like you were saying, there's this collective healing that needs to happen. So tying it all together in a way like uh I'll give this example. I posted something the other day about the word resilience, right? And you had a different viewpoint and you shared your viewpoint. And I think the reason why that's so important is because it helps me see a different perspective. In me sharing this one viewpoint that I felt very strongly about, you had a different perspective, an added perspective. And I'm like, oh, I could, I could see why that's also very true. You know, it's not, I like to say it's not this or that, it's this yeah, right. So it's super important to to work on self, work on each other, allow ourselves the grace, the love, self-love, and grace to evolve and never have reach this elusive summit because there doesn't really exist, you know. So we're a constant work in progress. There is like no end game, if you will, there's just

The Holy Grail

SPEAKER_00 45:25

constant progression. There's a chapter in your book called The Holy Grail, and it's towards the end. And there's a quote that says, When old stories are revised, new messages hold the power to heal deep wounds. So let me read that again because there's just there's so much to unpack. When old stories are revised, new messages hold the power to heal deep wounds. So I think there is what what did you mean? Let me not say what I think. Let me let you fill in the gap here. Like, what is this holy grail?

SPEAKER_01 45:55

Because it's not a summit, but it's uh the whole the holy grail, I believe that is part of um when I talk about compassion forgiveness as well, right?

SPEAKER_00 46:05

There's so much packed into this this one book that I feel like each chapter could be something that you double-click on and write an entire new book about it. It's an entire it's your life to date, all the realizations, all the healing, how you got there, how that's manifested, where it all started, where it's all going, right? And it's very powerful. So for somebody who's looking to transmute certain things that have happened in their lives to get to a new place of equanimity, to heal their ancestral trauma, to be better for their children and their marriage. This is a book that really helps you see where to start and then provides an example of somebody who got there and how they got there. And that's very powerful.

SPEAKER_01 46:50

And I like how you thank you, and I like how you said provides an example because I'm not telling anybody what to do in this book. And I'm not saying I have all of your answers. I'm just showing you how I did it, how it worked for me, the steps that I took. And if you can take one kernel from there and use it for your own healing, then I think I've done my job. But yeah, though this holy grail about like shifting your perspective, really. It's about like this revising the old stories, revising the narratives, right? Instead of telling yourself, I actually we were talking about this recently on my podcast, about the the last episode, about so instead of holding on to these old stories and reliving these old stories and compounding them and making them true. And you know what we what we think is who we are, basically, the whole thing, right? And we see the world. I love this um a nice nin quote. And we see the world not as it is, but as we are. Whatever story I'm telling myself, I'm gonna live out. I'm going to manifest that story, right? So if I can shift the old stories, if I can revise them, if I can create a new story out of what happened, instead of saying, oh, this happened and I'm blaming this one and this one hurt me, they screwed me over, they did this, they left me, da-da-da. Find a new empowering story to say, how did that pain serve me? How did it bring me to this healing? I would not have had the depths of healing that I've experienced so far if not for those painful experiences. Every single one of them. That's why I said before, I'm grateful for a lot of my pain because it it I would have never chosen. I would have never chosen to do the work in 12-step recovery unless my life depended on it, right? I'm not this like great human being that like is just so willing to jump into it. No, no, it's to save my life, really. Because if I don't do this work, I'm I could drink again if my pain gets too great, and then I could die. But it doesn't have to be that serious for everybody. Like, just if you're in pain, you don't need to be in pain anymore. Like it could be over today, and it's about the stories that you're telling yourself. It's all about what you're telling yourself, it's all happening in here. Yes, some of us, many of us have had horrific life experiences. Horrific. And I'm sorry that you've had to go through that. But now, how do you use that? How do you use that to then propel you forward and then heal and then help others? That to me is the key. Is this now being of service to others, like what you're doing on your show, Nina, and the book and my podcast, and all this, all the beauty that people are making out there in the world, all our creativity, all the stuff that's happening is really spurred from a place of pain. So how to use that to then help others, and that's gonna get you out of your woe is me, you know, pity sort of mentality. Um, so yeah, go into the story, you gotta, you gotta be in it for a little bit, you gotta do the work, you gotta keep healing and then you use it, you shift it into something that's healing for others and yourself. Because then by helping others, you're still gonna heal in the process. You keep healing.

The power of sharing our story

SPEAKER_00 49:53

And that's a that's very powerful because when you do that, even if uh you're not what I call like a finished product, like there's no such thing. So even as you are progressing in your path, in your own process, when you share your story, I believe in the power of storytelling. I believe in the power of sharing your personal truth and your personal story, because the way that Amanda shares her story is going to connect the dots for somebody differently than when I share my story, than when somebody else shares their story. And they're all equally powerful because like your experience holds so much healing and so much power and so much strength. But if nobody knows about it, then you know, it maybe you helped yourself, but therein lies like that uh responsibility that you talked about, like helping, kind of like paying it forward or making it available to the collective for somebody else who resonates with it to pick it up and it helps them on their journey. So it's like this beautiful unfolding of life and healing and love. And like you said, we live in a time and a place where that can happen so quickly as compared to the past and where you doing your work can heal your family and and and also your children and their future children. So, with that said, we're kind of getting to the end here, but I want to know have you seen all of your work manifesting for your family, for your life? Obviously, your you and your husband

Healing manifested

SPEAKER_00 51:17

are still together. So that's like that's huge. Congratulations to you both and doing the work and making it work. How else have you seen that manifesting, you know, with with the work that you do and with your family?

SPEAKER_01 51:28

It's just, it's just like more and more peaceful and serene, and the energy in that in our home gets better and better every day. And no, living where we live too in Colorado, with the nature, our house is surrounded by trees. We're like in a forest. Yes, that helps, you know. We spent a lot more time together as a family. Like I said, being being together in COVID that whole time was great for us for bonding. And since then, it's just gotten like we trust each other more. So that exists that's exactly what I remember my therapist said once. Like, you're having a hard, because I would get to like a good place with my husband, and then I would he would have some sort of experience, and then I would like backpedal, and then I'd be like back in the fear. And that still happens sometimes when you get sick. But she said, Well, this PTSC specifically, she said, you don't trust him enough that like he's gonna be good for like a while because I'd get to this part, point, point where I'd be like all in and all in, and then like something would happen and it would like crash down, and I'd be like, Oh, now I gotta go back to like do this all over again. And so I think we just trust each other to show up for each other more. Like he just broke a rib recently, which is like, I'm sorry, I don't hear that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's been in a ton of pain. And he trusts me to not run away in fear because when he would get sick, I would like close off, I'd shut down, I'd pull away in fear of future loss and sickness and whatever. So I think we both trust each other a lot more now to show up for each other. Like when I would talk about things like, you know, over and over and over, certain family members or things that would happen, you know, like, and he'd be like, all right, okay, like you don't he talked about it. He talks about it enough, you know. Like now he just listens. Now he's like, you know what? I'm not gonna try and give you an answer. I'm just gonna let you talk, you know. So I trust him to be there for me more. I he trusts me. My kids are thriving. Every they're they're doing awesome. We have a lot of music in our house. I feel like one of your littles is a drummer. I saw that post. I'm I I drum. She's a singer and a guitarist in her little kid rock band. It's like the cutest thing ever. She's really good. Um, my husband plays guitar, my other daughter plays the flute. Um, so we just always have music going. It's just lighter. It's just lighter. And yeah, and I can get sometimes like in a mood, or I can get trouble, or I'm a human being, right? Or like, man, I don't want to wash this dish. I don't want to do these dishes. I don't want to, you know, I don't want to do all that. I don't want to do this. But um, I I we make it fun. We try to make it more fun. And we don't look at it as like drudgery. We look at it as we get to do this, we get to live this life, we get to be together for as long as we have together, you know. I was just thinking about that this morning. Like, I'm just gonna be in as much joy and peace and happiness as I can for however many more years that we have together. You know, my husband's older than me. This is you'll see if you read the book, you know, like it's the there's some threat there. But like, we're just more peace. I really and and it and I feel personally just

One step closer to whole

SPEAKER_01 54:20

one step closer to whole. Like each time I do a show or my own show, or I write something, or I write my blog, or I do any, I put a post, I do whatever I do.

SPEAKER_00 54:32

I just feel like I'm one step closer to that purpose. I do love, love what you just said. One step closer to whole. I love that. That could be a whole series in and of itself. I love that you said that. That's beautiful, and that resonates and ripples out into places that we may not even know. So I love that you share that. What is what's next? I know that you have the award that is so exciting. So that's gonna be in August.

SPEAKER_01 54:57

Yeah, so the end of August is an award ceremony. So we'll see where I land on that. I have a few more,

What's next?

SPEAKER_01 55:02

I might book into like two or three other awards to see like what else you know can come up for me. But right now I'm focusing on like speaking engagements. I actually had my first one a couple weeks last week and a couple weeks ago. Um I have another one coming up in in August in the town where I live. That's called Finding Belonging After Lost. So a few speakers are gonna be talking about that. I'm organizing some local author events. I really I like people, I like being together. I used to call myself like a matchmaker. Like I've put some of my friends and their husbands together. Like I I co-founded that clubhouse with a bunch of people. Like, I like bringing people together. So the speaking and the podcasts and the connection is really like my my jam. So I'm focusing on the speaking event, I'm focusing on my podcast. I love doing my show with my friend Ginny, focusing on you know, being on other people's podcasts just to spread the message as far and wide. And then when the kids go back to school, I'll have some more time. I'm probably gonna flesh out like a workbook or some kind of workshop for this book to take.

SPEAKER_00 56:00

Oh, that would be so useful. Yes. There's a lot that can be unpacked there. Yeah. Yes. It's so it's like a it's a memoir, but it's also personal development.

SPEAKER_01 56:08

So it's absolutely like me, me, me, me, me, me, me. It's it's there's teachings and lessons for the reader in there too. So I'm gonna work on that. I have some book clubs also scheduled. So just getting it out there and bringing people together.

SPEAKER_00 56:23

That's really my message. I love it. Yes, you're a natural connector um personally, and it seems like for other people as well, and a natural communicator, natural leader in all of these spaces. You're already helping so many. I know your energy is just beautiful, and whoever gets to meet you benefits from all of the work that you've done, and hopefully you've received the same. It's been a pleasure. You're an amazing person. I'm going to go ahead and link the show notes. Um, I'm going to link the book, your podcast, and your contact information. So if anybody wants to get a hold of you and hire you for a speaking engagement or do a collaboration, they can go ahead and reach you there. What is your website so you can tell uh people where to reach you? So my website's AmandaMcCoyFlanagan.com.

SPEAKER_01 57:08

So and again, it'll be linked in the show notes. Yeah, it's McCoy and Flanagan are spelt a little bit differently. So check out the notes. Yeah, Nina, thank you so much. I'm so glad that we connected, even though my wife over a very painful experience for both of us, you know, and our brothers might be working some magic up there for us, you know. Absolutely. Thank you for all the beautiful, wonderful things that you said, all the very humbled and flattered, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to be on your show and to reach some more people that might need this healing.

SPEAKER_00 57:39

It's absolutely my pleasure. Um, you're amazing. Please, if you're listening to this, get her book. It is incredible. It's available via the link in the show notes. And just as a last goodbye,

Advice to my younger self

SPEAKER_00 57:51

what would Amanda today say to Amanda six years ago? Six years ago. Uh or when you started this process where this whole thing started. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:04

Um, you are worthy, you are lovable, no matter what. You've always, you've always been. You've always you've always been. The answers have always been inside of you. And I'm proud of you for finding the bravery and the courage to go in and find them and then to share them.

SPEAKER_00 58:21

Perfectly stated. Thank you, Amanda. That's it for today's episode. Be sure to subscribe to the Grief and Light podcast. I'd also love to connect with you and hear your thoughts and your stories. Feel free to share them with me via my Instagram page at grief and light, or you can also visit griefandlight.com for more information and updates. Thank you so much for being here, for being you, and always remember you are not alone.