Journey To The Soul

Walk Your Talk: Learning to Live in Integrity

• Jacenda Villa

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What happens when the pain you dismiss as ordinary becomes a wake-up call to realign with your true self? Join me this week on Journey to the Soul as I recount a harrowing experience that escalated into a medical emergency. Through this personal story, we'll uncover the lessons learned about listening to our bodies and the crucial role intuition plays in our well-being. Reflecting on a health crisis I faced at 18, this episode sheds light on the importance of heeding our body's signals and making health-conscious decisions.

In a time of upheaval, it's more vital than ever to stay true to oneself and prioritize self-care. We dive deep into the transformative power of recognizing and valuing the messages our bodies send, and the courage it takes to embrace vulnerability and ask for help. We'll explore how maintaining personal integrity can serve as a beacon through turbulent times, and how breaking free from old, unhelpful patterns can propel us into our personal power. By the end, you'll be inspired to make conscious choices for your highest evolution and identify what you're ready to release for your own growth journey.

Instagram: @jacendamarie


Speaker 1:

Hi, loves, welcome to the Journey to the Soul podcast. I am your host, jacinda Villa, a spiritual life coach and holistic health coach. Every week, we will be diving deep into all things purpose, wellness, spirituality and creating the life that you dream of. This space is meant to be safe and transformative for you to dive into the deepest parts of yourself. I will share what I have learned from my journey along this path years of research and mentors along the way. Having spent many years living life out of alignment and afraid to go after my dreams, I know firsthand what it means to take the first step down, living a life authentic to you. We are on this road of self-discovery together. It is time for you to live the life you imagined. Hello, my loves, welcome to another episode of Journey to the Soul.

Speaker 1:

This week I wanted to share a story with you about something that happened last week and I've been running it through my head over the last couple of days as well, especially when it happened last week, and I really just wanted to kind of share my thoughts and just some of the epiphanies that I have had about this event, because it really was more of a test, I feel, from the universe to make sure that I am living in integrity, and I feel like so many of us have these situations, experiences that come into our life to challenge us and to expand us, and sometimes we don't lean into them. And we're all human, we're all given the opportunity to lean into those situations and sometimes we just don't. So this is something that, when it happened, I kind of recognized immediately what was going on. So I am recording this on a Thursday and this happened last Thursday, and last Thursday I was experiencing some pain in my lower abdominal area and initially I thought that maybe it was just some really bad cramping or PMS that I had because I had just got in my cycle as well, but I don't really get really bad cramping. Cramping is not something that I usually experience, and this was pretty bad even for cramping. So it progressively got worse.

Speaker 1:

I cooked dinner we were having dinner and this pain was just getting worse and worse and I even took something for it, which I never do. I took Tylenol because it was borderline debilitating pain and I'm like, oh my gosh, is this really my period? Like what is going on? What is this? So we were having dinner and I couldn't even have dinner. I was in so much pain that I was nauseous and I was just trying to breathe and stay centered and not get overwhelmed with the pain and hopefully the Tylenol would kick in and it would pass. So I was just staying hopeful and open to that and I just, you know, I was sitting there trying to have a conversation with my fiance, like we normally do around dinner, and I was just not able to do that. So I told him I was going to kind of ride this out and hopefully it was just going to go away. And I carried on to continue like my evening tasks and I was moving really slow and trying to clean up and all of those things.

Speaker 1:

And this pain kept getting worse. It kept getting even worse and I'm like I don't think this is period cramps. I don't think that this is what this is. And I had felt similar pain to this before because it was really just in my lower right side of my body, like my lower abdominal area, and I had experienced pain like this before in the past. So when it got to that point, I immediately thought about when I had experiences previously in my life and I'm going to touch on that later in this episode and when that had happened before previously in my life.

Speaker 1:

I put this pain off for days. I disregarded it for so long and it was not the right thing to do in that situation. But I learned the hard way, essentially, and I told my fiance I'm like I recognize this pain, I've had this pain before, you know, this debilitating, sharp pain. I told him I'm like I feel like we should probably go to the ER, even though I didn't want to, and that is so not how I typically handle these things. I typically handle these things. I am the type of person that goes to the doctor or leans into Western medicine, kind of as a last resort or when it is necessary. So me choosing to go to the ER was a really big step for me. But I knew that this pain needed to be dealt with and I had come to figure that out the hard way previously in my life.

Speaker 1:

So we decided to go to the ER and I decided to take a really quick shower and get ready to go, and this pain again was just getting progressively worse. I could barely take a shower. I could barely reach down and grab what I needed. I needed help to put my shoes on. It was just the craziest thing and it kind of just came out of nowhere over the course of like two hours and at that point I'm like this is so, not like my period, this is something else. This is something more. Like my period, this is something else, this is something more. And I know I should go get it looked at, even though that's just not what I have typically done in my life. So we go to the hospital, we check in and I'm going through the motions of getting admitted and stuff like that motions of getting admitted and stuff like that and this pain is just so bad. I'm just trying to keep it together as much as possible while they're asking me questions and getting me ready to go in and all of these things. And I'm just happy that I came because I feel like I have learned so much about tuning into my body and its needs. So I'm just really grateful that I followed my intuition and chose to come and I was explaining to the person you know.

Speaker 1:

This pain feels similar to the pain that I experienced when I was 18. When I was 18, I found out that I had an ectopic pregnancy and I was so young and, oh my gosh, that's a whole nother story within itself, but I had been pregnant for four months and had been experiencing pain on and off for weeks and had chosen to disregard it, to keep pushing through it and to tell myself that it was nothing. I had no idea that I was pregnant. It wasn't until I went to the doctor, until this pain was so debilitating and they did testing and all of these things. I thought it was my appendix at that moment in time.

Speaker 1:

No-transcript, and, by the way, this is an ectopic pregnancy and over the course of the next few hours they did ultrasounds and more testing and things like that. And I come to find out how far along I was and also that this pregnancy had been developing in my fallopian tube over the last four months, and I had no idea. The last thing that I thought that they were going to come in and tell me when I was 18, I had literally just turned 18, was that I was pregnant and, by the way, this pregnancy is not healthy. Those were so not the words that I was expecting to hear and I was taken so aback from that. But I can talk about that a little bit more in another podcast episode, because that was a really big, pivotal moment in my life as well. But one of the key things that that experience showed me is what happens when you keep pushing through pain and discomfort and not acknowledging your body and its needs. And that was a really hard lesson for me, because I was so close to death and I didn't even know it. The doctor told me that if I hadn't come in when I did, this would have been a lot worse and I probably would have had internal bleeding within the next day or two, because it was so far along, so far in advance.

Speaker 1:

And this pain that I experienced last week was exactly like that pain that I experienced when I started to experience pain from the ectopic pregnancy. And when I go back to thinking about the ectopic pregnancy and the weeks leading up to it, I was in pain at work, I was in pain at school, and I remember the day that I finally chose to go to the freaking hospital and get myself checked out. I had to leave my final. I was taking an English final in the middle of summer and I couldn't even stay for my final. It got to the point where I was like I can't even sit here and do this, and that was exactly what I experienced last week. So I recognized that pain. I recognized it immediately, the way that it was so pronounced, it was like my body just knew.

Speaker 1:

So to go back to last week's event, it was the weirdest thing that happened, because that pain was there and it was so pronounced in all of these things. And then they check me in and they move me to a room to talk to the doctor and all of these things, and then it starts coming and going. So it leaves for a few seconds and then it comes back and then it becomes minutes and then the pain comes back and then it suddenly goes away. And it was like an hour between me getting pulled back and the doctor coming back to see me and to talk about what they found in the blood tests, and all of that. And I'm sitting there telling my fiance like this pain is gone, like I don't feel any pain right now. It's the weirdest thing. And he's like we're here, we're going to make sure you're okay, because he knew that I was in such awful pain. He saw it in my face. I had been bent over crying because it was so painful and it was just the craziest thing because all of a sudden it wasn't there anymore and I felt fine. I felt like everything was fine. But even though I was, you know, a part of me is like okay, we should just go.

Speaker 1:

I have learned there have been so many situations in my life that have shown me that to just make sure that I'm okay, to just make sure that it's fine, because every other moment in my life I have not done that, but I have learned from other experiences up until this point, to make sure that I am fine, because when I thought I was fine, I was not fine and it doesn't hurt to make sure, it doesn't hurt to ask for help or to lean in to support. So, even though I felt fine at this point, I just wanted to make sure. So the doctor eventually comes in and he's like you know, all your labs came back fine, there's nothing wrong with you here. And I told him you know, I'm not having any pain right now. It's the weirdest thing, but I'm not having any pain. It kind of just disappeared. And he told me you could get a CT scan just to make sure it isn't something else like your appendix or something like that he's like. But based off of the blood results. I really don't think it's your appendix, because your blood isn't even showing high levels of whatever they test for when your appendix needs to come out, he's like. So he walked me through the pros and cons of getting a CT scan done and, of course, he gave me the option of just keeping an eye on it and making sure that if the pain did come back, I could always come back, and that was an option. But as of right now, everything seemed fine. So the choice was mine. Basically what I wanted to do. I chose to come home and not do any further testing and to keep an eye on it and to see how it went, to see if the pain came back, and if it did, I could always go back to the hospital and get checked out again. So it's been a week since then and the pain has not come back.

Speaker 1:

And the days after this happened like that weekend, and the days after this happened like that weekend, I kept mulling it over in my mind. You know like what was this? Why did this happen? You know this was such a weird experience for me to go through the motions of going to the hospital and making sure that I was okay, and the pain coming and going and all of these things, and I came to the conclusion that I do believe that this was a test to make sure that I was being true to myself, because over the last couple of years, my healing has been a huge theme in my life and I know I have talked about different aspects of that in this podcast and there's so much more that I haven't even covered but I have said that I have been devoted to myself and my healing and tuning into my body's needs, so that has been what I say that I'm devoted to.

Speaker 1:

So I felt like this was the universe saying okay, here is a test to see if you really mean it this time, because, like I mentioned before, there have been so many other moments in my life where I have pushed it off, where I didn't listen, where I pushed through the pain and the discomfort. But me, knowing what I know, now, I know that some things need to be dealt with. Things need to be dealt with when it comes to our body especially. These are messages from our body saying something is not right. Pain is showing you something and before I thought that in pushing through the pain, it made me stronger and more capable. It was almost a badge of honor for me and my gosh, have I pushed in almost every aspect of my life. That's kind of just been how I've been. That's always been.

Speaker 1:

My core being is pushing through every moment of life. But again, I have learned from firsthand experience what it costs to disregard the signals your body sends you, to keep pushing and disregarding the pain and discomfort. It has brought me to moments of near death where life is quickly flashing before your eyes and you have no idea. That's how close you were to the edge, how close to causing serious harm to ourselves, how much it could have really cost us. And so many of us get to that point in our life and it isn't until we are forced to face these situations that we become aware, our eyes open.

Speaker 1:

I was presented with this lesson at the age of 18, and I pushed and kept telling myself to push through, and there have been multitudes of times in the last 10 years where the lessons have been presented and I continuously told myself to keep pushing. I have seen many, many times what this has cost me and I know this was a lesson being presented once again. It was an opportunity for me to choose differently, to choose to listen to my body, to choose to ask for help and to choose to be vulnerable and open up to the situation, to the situation. So sitting there last week was like deja vu. It made me think about that younger version of me and all that she was feeling when she was in that experience. I remember being so afraid and so alone.

Speaker 1:

I was in a very interesting chapter of my life. I was living on my own. I had been living on my own for over two years. I was self-sufficient, I was working, I went to school and I was going at life very alone. I didn't have anyone to lean on. I was in a very toxic cycle that I didn't even know of and all I was trying to do was survive. That was my mentality when I was sitting there in that experience is I was simply trying to make it to the next day, every single day. So, as I was sitting there last week, that gave me the opportunity to really reflect on how my life has changed in the most beautiful way.

Speaker 1:

Going through that experience really brought me back to that moment in time where I was young and I felt so alone in my life, and what I learned from that experience. So I was able to sit there and realize how much I have grown in my life in the last 10 years, how much I have really expanded and chosen to walk a path that is more authentic to me. I'm walking my path. I am doing work that I love. I have a balance between all aspects of my life. Achieving and working are no longer my measures of my success, which they very much were at that moment in time. I have a partner that I deeply love in my life and I am not in a state of survival. My life is so full and I feel like this reflection was very necessary for me for where I am on my path. It gave me a deeper sense of peace to be able to see my growth from this vantage point. It has never been linear, as growth never is. It has ebbed and flowed, but it has been there nonetheless and it has allowed me to feel at peace with myself and my beautiful life and where I am in this moment.

Speaker 1:

This was medicine to the restlessness that I have been feeling so deeply in my life this year, and I did open up about that in last week's episode, about how every day, I am working more and more to cultivate presence in my life and how I have lived so much of my life in the future. So being in the present can still feel highly uncomfortable at times. It is a new way of being that I am creating for myself, and that is something that I remind myself of every single day when I do feel this restlessness, because creating a new way of being does take time. So with all of this, I just want you to notice what has kept showing up in your life, that is, asking you to be in your integrity, to really walk your talk. It is very easy for us to say we won't do something anymore or that we won't keep feeding into the same mental patterns, addictions, relationships, situations that we are so used to. True freedom from these things comes when we choose otherwise, when we use everything we have learned about life ourselves, all of these things up to this moment for us to make a better choice than we always have.

Speaker 1:

Dismantling these things are really some of the hardest things that we can do in our life, because it challenges our way of being. But we get to a point where we know these things aren't serving us anymore. We all know that we get to that moment and this is how that showed up for me is through this experience, and that's what I recognized in that moment. As I went through that experience and in the days that passed after it, I want you to notice how it's showing up for you.

Speaker 1:

There is so much going on in the world right now. All around us, things are falling away and it's a crazy time to be alive and to be able to witness all that is going on. There is so much unrest and upheaval that is happening in our world. Being in integrity with ourselves is the single best thing we can do in this moment Making sure that we are working on whatever we are meant to be working on, taking care of ourselves first, watering our side of the grass, nurturing our corner of the world. This helps the world at large in ways we can't see. Through all of these highs and lows that we have been experiencing, we are being given the opportunity to break away from whatever is no longer serving us, to truly step into our power, to free ourselves once and for all.

Speaker 1:

I want to leave you with these two questions all I want to leave you with these two questions here in this moment, knowing what you do now, how are you going to choose differently for yourself and your highest evolution? What mental patterns, addictions, relationships, situations, experiences are you ready to break free from once and for all? Really ponder on these questions, because we are all being given the opportunity to expand right now, but it requires us to really dismantle these things that have kept coming into our life. We are being given an opportunity. Stay strong and rooted in your path. I am sending you all so much love and light. I will talk to you all next week. And light I will talk you all so much love.