The Moment That Changed Everything

Some moments arrive without a headline and still rearrange everything that follows. We open our February theme of integration with a story from Lizzy's first summer after freshman year, working at a camp in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where service, nature, and a simple morning ritual cracked open years of anger and made space for trust. What began as survival mode, born from divorce and parentification, softened into presence through an unmistakable full-body experience during Morning Shine. Call it grace, God, or the felt sense of something larger; the language is personal, but the shift is universal: the body often knows first.

From there, we walk the slow path of healing that doesn’t fit a highlight reel. Lizzy shares how forgiveness became a practice that rebuilt her relationship with her dad, not by denying history but by loving the person in front of her. We explore how unconditional regard for children who carried too much, illuminated a long-buried tenderness, and how that tenderness later fueled work in wilderness therapy, yoga instruction, and coaching. Along the way, we unpack why gentle momentum beats urgency, how nervous system safety turns insight into action, and how to honor a mid-month energetic threshold with release, realignment, and rest.

You’ll leave with practical reflection prompts to help you locate your own hinge moments: the quiet shift you missed at the time, the truth you stopped resisting, and the way that change still shapes your choices. We lean into embodiment over certainty, trading force for trust and chasing for inhabiting. If you’re craving movement without self-abandonment, you’ll find language and tools to move forward with less friction and more faith. 

Reflection Moment

Take a moment to reflect on a defining experience in your own life. How might that moment still be shaping who you are becoming, even if you didn’t recognize its impact right away?

Chapters

• 0:09 Welcome And February’s Theme
• 0:37 Integration Over Hustle
• 1:31 Mid‑Month Threshold And Practices
• 2:43 Solo Cast: Moments That Change Us
• 4:10 Family Turmoil And Rising Anger
• 8:44 Camp Bob: Love And Responsibility
• 10:01 Morning Shine And A Spiritual Awakening
• 13:45 Embodiment Before Understanding
• 15:25 Forgiveness And Rebuilding With Dad
• 18:31 From Pain To Purpose In Coaching
• 21:03 Trusting Timing And Gentle Momentum
• 22:43 Reflection Prompts And Guide
• 24:05 Your Story, Your Next Action

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:09

Hi, I'm Lizzie.

SPEAKER_00: 0:10

And I'm Nikki. Together we welcome you to the Modern Science Collective Podcast. A space where we explore holistic living, spiritual alignment, and personal growth.

SPEAKER_01: 0:20

Each week we'll share conversations, practices, and wisdom to help you live with more joy, practice, and connection. And now I'm February is not about rushing forward. It's about letting what's already shifted settle. If January opened doors, asked big questions, or stirred something deep within you, February is the month where those insights begin to land in the body. This month on the Modern Sun Collective Podcast, we're exploring integration, embodiment, and gentle momentum. Not the kind of momentum that pushes or pressures, but the kind that grows quietly, naturally, and in its own time. We'll talk about what it really means to live what you know, how healing and growth unfold beyond the moment of awareness, and why you don't need to have everything figured out to be moving in the right direction. We'll also honor a powerful mid-month energetic threshold, inviting intentional release and realignment as we move forward. Through deep conversations, powerful interviews, seasonal reflections, and grounding practices, February invites you to soften your grip, trust your timing, and allow change to become something you inhabit, not chase. If you've been feeling the urge to move forward, but without burning out, forcing clarity, or abandoning yourself in the process, this month is just for you. Take a breath. Let your nervous system catch up to your growth. And join us as we gently step into what's next. Together. Wherever you're listening from, I'm so glad you're here. One of your hosts, Lizzie Sutton, here with a solo cast for you today, all about the moments, the big moments in life that change everything. Moments that we may recognize while we're in it, moments that we may recognize months or years down the line, moments that we may not recognize as times that really shifted the trajectory of our lives. I'm really happy that you're here with me today. You know, there are many moments that I can think back on that have shifted the course of my life. But the one that I want to share with y'all today is probably one of the first ones that I can really remember in my adult life that really changed the trajectory of who I am, how I show up in this world, how I relate to myself and to others. And realistically, really the thing that started me down the path of finding out my own beliefs and going on my own spiritual journey, separate from a religious one, but really a spiritual journey. So this moment in time is way, way, way back in 2008. It is my freshman summer of college, so the summer after my freshman year, and I was working at a summer camp in Western North Carolina called Camp Bob. It was a nonprofit summer camp for kids that came from orphanages, homeless shelters, kids that had parents who were incarcerated, pretty much kids who would not have the chance to normally go to summer camp. And they were sponsored by different church groups to come to this camp. It was an episcopal-based summer camp, which is how I grew up. It's how I got involved in it. I went to a episcopal campus ministry at my university, my freshman year, and they're the ones that told us about the jobs. And this summer completely changed my life. Before I showed up at this camp, I was a very angry person. Not on the surface. That came from my parents' divorce, being the oldest one. Also, I have weasel energy. So I know things that I shouldn't know. I can read between the lines. I find things I shouldn't find. I see things I shouldn't see. Not that I do it on purpose. It's just always been something about myself, especially as an adolescent. That's where it showed up. And so I kind of knew the things that were going on behind the scenes. And my parents had a very, very messy divorce. They couldn't even email each other. I mean, it was bad. It was really bad. And I felt caught in the middle, especially as the oldest. They were divorced at five since I was five years old. But trying to protect my sisters from knowing the truth of what was going on. You know, my dad coming to Minnesota to see us, my mom having the cops meet him to take him to jail, all these different kinds of things. My dad does not deserve to be in jail. It was over child support, lots of different things. I grew up hating my dad, honestly. I really grew up hating my dad on a deep level and also having serious trust issues with my mom. So I was a very angry child. And it was really, really wrecking who I was. I was, I was born as a natural nurturer. I was born as a caring person, as a loving person. And that's not who I was anymore. I was selfish. I was independent. I was making sure that I was taken care of because I felt like nobody else would make sure that I was okay. And so it was really a selfish place to live from. But that's what I needed to survive. I was always pretending that I was happy and fine. But when little things would happen, they would set me off. And I felt like I couldn't, I know that I couldn't deal with it. The only way that I knew how to deal with my emotions was to run until I was exhausted, work out until I was exhausted, till I couldn't run anymore, because I had no positive coping mechanisms for this intense anger that I had deep inside me. And when I say intense anger, I'm talking about my, I got thrown out of my house my senior year of high school. It was so much for my mom. I was a terrible, terrible child. I would get so angry that one night I remember she was having sex in the bedroom with our stepdad or her boyfriend at the time, and I heard them. And my sisters were downstairs, we were still awake. And so I was trying to get them to stop. And I literally kicked the door in and broke it off the hinges. That's how angry I was. It's not normal. It's not healthy. And that's how I was living my life up until this point. So here I am at an Episcopal summer camp here with these kids that are just not shown love. They're not taken care of. They're not, they don't feel safe. And it literally broke my heart every week when they had to leave camp. They were only there Monday to Friday. And I had the little girls in my cabin. I had the six-year-olds, the seven-year-olds. And some of these girls were responsible for taking care of the rest of their family, the other kids in their family, smaller kids than them. I had little girls that had bed wedding issues. I had all these other issues that showed up because they were not taken care of and they were not given unconditional love. So my whole job that summer was to help them get in touch with nature. A lot of them came from cities, so they weren't, didn't spend much time outside. But really, my main job was to give them that unconditional love and support that they were not given in their everyday life from an adult. I say adult in quotes. I was 18 years old at the time. And it was just really heartbreaking, but also very, very fulfilling. And that summer was just one that shifted the entire, the entire trajectory of my life. We had this thing called morning shine each and every morning. We had this beautiful outdoor chapel in the middle of the woods. We're off the Blue Ridge Parkway in the Appalachian Mountains. So I'm telling you, it was absolutely gorgeous. And we had this thing called Morning Shine, which is our little religious, you know, Episcopalian church service every morning. It was about 20 minutes. And really what we did is talk about one thing that we wanted them to think about for that day, sing these beautiful songs that were written about, you know, praising God, Jesus, that kind of thing, and spend time out in nature in this spiritual kind of context with these kids. And one morning we were in morningshine and we were singing this song. And I remember, I remember this so, so vividly. I can, it's like I'm back in the moment. I'm saying I'm getting a little choked up. And we held our arms up. We were holding our arms up, my eyes were closed, and we were singing. And I just remember this full body explosion. It was like a tingling sensation, an intense tingling sensation all over my entire body. And it brought me to tears. It literally brought me to tears. And what I recognized after this, I still it was this summer, but I talked to some of the other counselors, is I felt God for the first time. I felt the divine creator for the first time in me and all around me. And I'd never felt that before in my life, and I never felt connected like that, and I've never felt that kind of faith and trust and like pure bliss. I don't know how else to explain it, but pure bliss, happy tears, joyful tears. And in that moment, everything changed. I no longer felt like I was so broken. I couldn't be fixed. I no longer felt like I had to take on others' issues as my own. And for me, that was really big because I felt like I was holding so much of the tension of the anger of the issues between my mom and dad as my own and was carrying that weight on me as I walked through life. And it's so wild because my body knew this first. Just like Nikki and I share with you all the time, like the body is what tells you the truth. And the mind can tell you both sides of all the stories all the time. So my body knew first. It felt it resonated and it embodied this shift that only after I was able to talk to some of the other counselors that I felt really close to did my mind understand what had happened in that moment. After this moment, this incredible moment, things didn't shift right away. You know, I had talks, like I said, with the other counselors to talk about what I felt and for them to reflect back to me what it was. I was very lucky to be in this bubble, this camp counselor bubble at the time with people who were very strong in their faith. And they were able to talk to me in a very honest and truthful way that allowed me to do my own work. So it was very, very lucky that I had the space, I had the time, and I had the people and the environment to help me dive deeper into what happened and how it was feeling and how I wanted to shift. But over the course of the rest of that summer, I was able to truly let go of all of my attachment to my parents' divorce and their relationship afterwards. I was able to forgive my dad and start a brand new relationship with him. One of trust, one of respect, and one of love. And I can say in this moment in time, my relationship with my father is stronger than it's ever been. And it's all because of this summer, because of what started there and what I was able to release and understand that I need to love people for who they are, if I'm going to love them, if I want to be in a relationship with them, and not be looking for them to be someone different so that I will love them or so that I will want to spend time with them. That was a huge realization for me. If you want people in your life, you need to love them for all of them and not be constantly wanting to change things. That was really, really big for me. It took me a little while to release everything. But spending all that time in nature, having honest conversations, vulnerable conversations with people that I trusted, allowing myself to sit in the feelings that were coming up for me, and just allow them, my body to process them, not my mind, but my body to process through the emotions so I could finally release this tension and this pain and this anger that I've been holding on to for 13 years at that point. I would never be the woman I am today without the pain, without the anger, without my experience, and without the ability for me to work through and reshape my perceptions and my reality and to learn that there is beauty on the other side for myself. I would not be able to help all the kids that I helped at the horticultural wilderness therapy program I worked at in Hawaii. I would not have been able to be the person to be there for those kids that were going through similar things as I was, as I had, if I had not done it myself. I would not be the coach, the spiritual life coach or the life purpose coach that I am today without this story, without this moment, without me living that version of myself for all those years. Because I know what it's like to feel so terrible all the time and to put on a good front, to just not feel comfortable in your own body as yourself, and now to be on the other side of it. And I'm getting emotional right now because it's still a part of me, you know, like even though I'm on the other side and I can see a lot more clearer, it's years later, it's 2026. I mean, this was 2008. We're almost 20 years later, and it's still a big deal to me. It's still something that I can think back on and feel all the feels again. So just know that even though these moments shift everything, it doesn't mean that we forget about them. We just transmute them. It's not about things being neat, it's about th you continuing to deepen that understanding that you had in that moment. Because of that summer, I am able to fully embrace my father and my mother for who they are. I am able to fully embrace myself for who I am and all of the hardships and all the things that I took on that were not my own. I am able to help others work through their pain and their anger and their sadness to come to the other side where there's beauty and there's hope and there's love and there's joy in your daily life. And I'm constantly learning how to have deeper trust and deeper faith in both the divine, his, her plan for me, and my ability to trust my inner divinity, my intuition to guide me towards the path of least resistance and towards my highest self. I really appreciate you for holding this space for me, for allowing me to be vulnerable with you. And now it's your turn. If you're in a season of your life where nothing feels clear yet, it's okay. Allow yourself to sit with your emotions, sit with the feelings, not try to figure everything out logically, mentally. Allow yourself to be with the unknown. If something is meant for you, you will not miss it. It will not miss you. And if it comes around and it doesn't feel like the right time, it's okay to say not right now. If it's meant for you, it will come back. If you've had a moment that maybe didn't feel as dramatic or intense as mine, that's okay. I have many other moments that shifted my life that weren't so intense. But I wanted to share that one with you because that was the first one that shifted everything for me. That changed the whole trajectory of my life. I would not be here as a yoga instructor, as a coach, as a podcast host, as an entrepreneur, as a mother, as a wife, as a friend, as a daughter, as a sister. Without that, without that moment, without me allowing myself. Myself to really feel into it and allow it to slowly integrate into my life. Not push. We can't push. We can't push. We have to soften. We have to be vulnerable. And we have to allow ourselves to sit with the uncomfortableness of the feelings we don't enjoy and the uncertainty that comes on the other side. So I'd love for you to take a moment to reflect quietly on these questions that I'm going to offer you. Or download our reflection guide. I create a listener reflection guide to go along with every single month of our podcast episodes. So if you're interested, it's linked in our show notes. Click into our free library, download the February listener reflection guide, and take some time to journal on the prompts that come from today's episode. So I'd love for you to think about what moment in your life quietly changed you more than you realized at the time? What moment in your life quietly changed you more than you realized at the time? What truth did you stop resisting in that moment? And how might that moment still be shaping you today? Again, thank you so much for listening to the end. You know, this podcast, it might be Nikki and I stories or the people that we interview, but it's all about how this resonates with you. How this shifts your life. What parts of my story made you feel something, made you have some sort of inspiration of something that you want to do? That's what's important. Not my story, your story. And the action that you're gonna take from listening to this. It's designed to support integration and we don't mind. Especially at this point or someone called to join the iconic off. Thank you so much for supporting this part.