Into the Light Podcast
Mediums Melanie Smith and Laura Hillkirk are sharing their weird every day lives with you. From spirit encounters to their healing journeys that led them to the place they are today. Together they will discuss healing, haunted locations, traveling as a medium, energy work, fairies and so much more. Join these besties as they share it all.
Into the Light Podcast
Healing Through Brokenness
We share our personal healing journeys, focusing not on what broke us but on the process of rebuilding ourselves. There is power in sharing brokenness because it helps others who feel they can't imagine ever experiencing joy or happiness again.
Do the work, love yourself, take care of yourself, be kind to yourself, and it will all fall into place. Nobody is coming to save you—you must save yourself.
This is Into the Light.
Speaker 3:Podcast with Melanie Smith and Laura Hilkirk. Welcome back, hey everybody. Today we're going to talk about the healing journey, our healing journey, and so we've talked a lot about sort of how we tackle this episode, because I feel like there's a lot to our stories. We both kind of decided we weren't going to focus so much on the what that broke us, but more the process of getting to where we are now, with a little bit of sprinkle of details.
Speaker 2:This is sort of what we're doing here.
Speaker 3:It's clear that way bit of sprinkle of details, and the thing that kept coming to me was and I actually had written that down was I want to talk about my brokenness, and so a great deal of my work here and what I do at my shop and with clients and my writing you know I'm a writer is always sharing my brokenness, because to me that's where the power is, because there is somebody right now that's going to listen to this that feels so broken that they can't even imagine a life where joy and happiness and light is a part of it. And I know both of us have been in that place. We have been in a place where we can't fathom happiness is going to be there.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I call it the pit yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's like that feels like that utter brokenness and darkness that you're setting in the exhaustion. Um, and so to me that's where I want to kind of take it back to is the the brokenness. Um, when we're thinking about what like, can you think of your brokenness and explain what that felt like?
Speaker 2:think of your brokenness and explain what that felt like. Oh my God. So my, my issue with me, with my healing journey, has always been avoidance. So I'm a big, I was a big avoider of everything. So I had issues in a childhood all the way up until life pretty much took me to my knees and I avoided everything. So when I got to the point, my turning point I have no issue talking about this, I write about it a lot on my business page is when my husband picked up and left me. We were married for over 20 years and he literally walked out the door, said he didn't love me anymore. It was the same day. I had no idea what was going on. He packed whatever and he looked out the door and he said don't call me if you need anything. Those were his last words to me and that's when my life started coming into more of a focus, where I realized I had a lot of issues that I was avoiding and that created a big mess that I had to deal with in my 40s.
Speaker 3:Don't you think too? Because you said like it brought me to my knees, but don't you think you had been brought to your knees several times before that and it was also like okay, I'm on my knees, I'm going to pop back up, but this time it was like I can't pop back up because everything's burying me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't have it in me anymore. I was always a person. If I get knocked down, I get back up. I get knocked down, I get back up. I get knocked down, I get back up. I get knocked down, I get back up. I get knocked down, I get up again. Oh, 90s girls, sorry, yeah, no, it was it really that was a.
Speaker 2:It was a pivotal moment in my life because I had to decide what I was going to do with myself. I was either going to allow that situation to ruin me or I was going to take that situation and make myself better with it. And I chose to take the situation and make myself better. The most hardest, hardest journey I've ever been on, but also the most rewarding, because it made me realize that there are do-overs in life, there are second chapters. You can have the most devastating things happen to you throughout your entire existence and then, once you take the reins and start looking inward and discovering things about yourself, your life, things you've avoided, you can turn it on its head and you can use your experiences to not only better yourself but help other people who are in the same position, because you have a story and you know what you're talking about, because you did it. Yeah, you seeded with yourself.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, and I feel like there's always these things that build up. There's a lot of little things, like I said, we could spend hours talking about the things but there's always that pivotal, the last thing that broke you, where you couldn't get back up right away, and that's kind of I feel like that rock bottom or that place where, where people on a healing journey will be able to tell you that moment where it all became too much. And I know for myself it was the same thing. There were many things since the age of five that brought me to my knees over and over and over again. But for me, to my knees over and over and over again.
Speaker 3:But for me, my rock bottom was losing my best friend to breast cancer. Like that moment I was also an avoider, like uh, um, I'm just going to keep going, like I would. Just, I was hardened, like I was not, because that's what my survival became was you must keep going in order to survive but like not really allowing myself to process many losses, a lot of childhood trauma and things. But when I lost her, it was too much, it just became too much. I was a young mother. I had two young children, a wife and I felt like just even the basics of who I needed to be for those roles felt compounded and compacted on top of my grief and I just was really struggling to get back up.
Speaker 3:I don't think I did get back up and so, like, for me it was that moment where and I don't even think did get back up, and so like, for me it was that moment where and I don't even think it really hit me until a couple years after she died where I was like I'm not okay and I don't even know how to fix it and I don't know where to go for help or anything.
Speaker 3:And so there's that, there is that brokenness, there's this place where you get where all the pieces of you are sort of around you and you're kind of like who am I? I don't even, you don't even recognize, oh no, who you are or were, or um, and that and that is a really big part of the healing journey, that when I see people, um, when you do get to that place where you're like, okay, I'm ready, I'm ready to try something, anything, um, in a direction of healing my life, it's extremely lonely because most of the time you're because this work is solo. Yes, it doesn't mean you aren't seeking help from whether that's therapy, a doctor, energy, work, whatever that is, the person that has to do the work in order for you to be successful in your healing journey is you, and so it is isolating, it's very lonely and it sucks and it sucks.
Speaker 2:It totally sucks. It's not this glamorous thing that you go through. You know, we talked about social media before and social media glamorizes the healing process and it's really an ugly thing. I really had to hold a mirror to my face because I had to look at me.
Speaker 2:And I was such an angry person and I had to figure out where all this anger came from. I mean, it was nothing for me to go out and have drinks and start a bar fight, yeah, and I can't even see myself doing that now, because I'm not in that place anymore and I had all this pain and hurt that had nowhere to go and I didn't deal with it. And I had tried counseling before and I just wasn't ready for it and I didn't meet the right psychologist, quite honestly. And but I had to face myself and be like, okay, I have to be responsible for where I ended up, like I made decisions through this process that got me here. And that's hard, because when you're, when someone hurts you or something happens to you, it's almost like you get into this victim mentality where life is just shitting on you and it happening to me and I'm powerless and there's nothing I can do. Woe is me. And you kind of wallow in it, yeah, and once you look at that and say, man, like I don't have to wallow in this, I can take control of where I'm at and also responsibility for my own actions in the situation. Responsibility for my own actions in the situation. It really is a power play and it allows you to go. Okay, I need to fix myself before I can do anything else.
Speaker 2:Let me I always tell people, emotions are like roots. There's always like my anger had a root. Where did that come from? How did I get this angry? And I traced it all the way back to when I was about in kindergarten and went forward because there were multiple things that had happened to me in my life that were abusive. I endured a lot. I lost both my parents, terrible marriage, et cetera, et cetera. And that starts compounding. It's almost like an onion. It's like you peel one thing back and then surprise, there's something else there, bitch Cause, you didn't quite get it yet. You just keep going. Yeah, you keep going.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I feel like like for me it was a ton of looking. I was focused on the what was me. I was focused on what had happened or the things that had been done to me, the things I had lived through and was waiting for somebody to save me, and so realizing nobody's coming and then I need to shift. It was all about shifting perspective. So, yes, being accountable for not only who I was because of my trauma, the way I acted out in that, but I don't know, To me it was like also letting go of control.
Speaker 3:After my friend died, I spent so much energy wanting everything to stay the same because somehow, if it stayed the same, it wasn't going to hurt as much.
Speaker 3:Um, and so, like I had this very tight knit group of friends.
Speaker 3:We'd been friends forever, like elementary school, um, you know, like a whole big group of us, um, girls, the guys, all of them, some had married each other. So it was like this big group and it was, and she was sort of the glue holding these very different groups of people together. That I don't know, and it's not that I'm not friends or friendly with these people, but it did become, because what grief does is makes you have to flow, you have to flow, you have to flow with what that death brings. And for me, it was like everything had to change for everybody in that situation to be able to move forward in their grief, because everybody grieves differently, and so a lot of mine was steeped in this anger and like, oh, like somehow, if things changed, we didn't love her anymore, and so a great deal of my healing has been letting go. Letting go and allowing whatever needs to happen happen. Um, and when that happened, I I did lose my life. My social circle, the people in my circle changed drastically.
Speaker 3:Yeah, my whole life is something that doesn't maybe not meant to be there anymore and I was really angry when that happened and again it's gonna make me cry. I'm gonna cry a lot, guys, on this episode. It felt and then again it's gonna make me cry. I'm gonna cry a lot, guys, on this episode.
Speaker 3:It felt and then again that was tied to another part of my childhood trauma, not related to the death of her, but it felt like abandonment.
Speaker 3:So the abandonment from my father leaving in an early age, you know, walking away my biological father.
Speaker 3:So it was like I'm in this place and everybody's sort of going their own direction. And it just felt again like um, like the damaged goods I'd become so accustomed to, feeling like like everybody's leaving and so it's like I was dealing with grief and then dealing with that, and so it was like, as that healing started, I'll never forget looking back on that situation, after doing a good amount of reflection and journaling and healing with that and realizing my own part in it and being able to see my behaviors, that entitlement like people owed me something you know, and it's a hard thing to see your own behavior. That's not, um, not something you love looking at. You know the parts of you that that are flawed and we're all that way. But when I, when I could look back on it, I had such regret, you know, and thinking that entitlement of they owe me something in the midst of their own grief, and so being able to let go of that with love was a really powerful thing.
Speaker 2:But, um, I feel like better with controlling things like, because I feel like we both still struggle with pieces still like it's not like we're totally different people. Yes, then we were, once were. Yeah, but healing never really goes away. It's like a never-ending thing. So like do you still struggle sometimes with the control where you catch yourself and like what do you do? What do you do with that once you see it like have you been able to catch it before it happens?
Speaker 3:Or it's gotten so much better to where I had crippling anxiety. I would have daily panic attacks and things like that, because I was trying to control everything and obviously couldn't because it's not attainable. But it's gotten a lot better for me. I recognize when I'm trying to control something and I'm usually able to catch myself and say, okay, take a deep breath, take a step back, we don't need to be controlling this. I'll reread the four agreements I'm currently reading let them um for the second time, and that has been really powerful, the whole. Let them, but it doesn't.
Speaker 3:Your journey never stops, and so for me it does keep coming up in various ways. I just had stuff from my childhood come up again and I mean I have done a lot of this work, but my childhood trauma showed up to me, but in a different way, from a different perspective, from a different angle, and it took me a second to recognize it. But when I did, I was like really emotional and I was like this is something I need to dive into now and you'll find that I mean I'm in such a good place now, but that does not mean I'm ever. I still have things come up for me where I say, okay, it's time for me to dive into this. Why was my reaction this way? Why am I so emotional? So, anytime we are very reactive to something or someone, that doesn't mean somebody's not doing something to trigger you, but what it means is you are responsible for healing and figuring that out, cause we can't make people not be shitty or trigger us or whatever.
Speaker 3:Um and so that you know, when that comes up, it's like okay, I got to do the work and um, you know that happens all the time and you could go. I feel like the periods of time are different. When you hit a certain point in your healing journey, it's relatively leveled out, and then you'll have like a two month period where you're like what the fuck? Leveled out, and then you'll have like a two month period where you're like what the fuck, which is what I've been having lately. I'm like what the fuck? And we're usually texting each other going excuse me, uh, is this on its way out? Because I really don't want another freaking day of this.
Speaker 2:I always get mad. I'm like didn't I just freaking learn this? Like what's the point of this? Oh, it's just another test, Melanie, did you really learn your lesson? Did you really get a handle of yourself? Is it going to trigger you still? Are you going to? What's your reaction going to be? You're going to get mad and go cuss everybody out like you used to do. What? What's going to be your reaction? Yeah, so it's like those tests.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I weird little tests. Well, I'm curious what your answer to this would be. What do you think was the biggest tool? Do you have like something that you think was the biggest part of your healing journey so far, like something you've used or done, or that's a tough one because I feel like it was a combination.
Speaker 2:It was a combination of things for me, um, I would say the biggest, the biggest game changer. I'm not responsible for how people hurt me and what was caused to me, but I am responsible for healing it, because I got really stuck in blaming other people and becoming a victim in my own circumstance, and that created a lot of anger for me because I felt like I didn't have control of my life. And once I turned that mirror around and said, okay, like this person did this really awful thing to you, I'm not responsible for what they did to me, but I'm responsible for what I do with it. Yeah, that was a hard pill to swallow and I think that's a hard concept to digest, because it literally did happen. It physically happened to you, it was something that was done to you, and then you have to hit a pause button because it'll send you spiraling and you have to.
Speaker 2:You get to a point where you see how it's affected your whole life and then you get angry all over again because you're like this has ruined me. That's what I used to say this has ruined me, that ruined my life. It ruined my life and I would get really angry. So To me, that would be the biggest turning point in my healing journey, because that's what started the whole trajectory, with me looking at me and not other people, because I was trying to figure out why it was done to me and why they treated me that way and why, why, why, why. And I had to settle with the answer of I'm never gonna get an answer, I'm never gonna get closure, I'm never gonna get that. So I have to do this for myself and take them out of the equation, and that was a game changer for me.
Speaker 3:And that's interesting because that's my answer too. Along those same lines, and before I say to take off of that, I wanted to also address the anger thing. So anger is a beautiful emotion that can lead you somewhere If you allow it. It can either keep you stuck, but if you follow the trail of that anger it will lead you to some really beautiful healing moments. And I, I would say the biggest thing that's been helpful also in my healing journey, I was going to say, is my self-reflection. It's been everything.
Speaker 3:I, too, came into this healing journey with a chip on my shoulder, refocused with what everyone had done to me, and there's a few pieces of humble pie I have gotten along the way. One everybody has bad shit happen to them. Mine is no different than somebody else's, it's not more than or, you know, makes me more of a victim, or this or that. Everybody loses somebody at some point and a lot of those are excuses and I was really focused on who had done what to me and this like the audacity of people's behavior and also not looking at my own really bad behavior, you know, because of my trauma and how I had treated people and you know my own there. If I go back to a lot of situations. Obviously losing people and grief, that's different. But there's these other traumatic events that happen where I can see myself mirrored in some of those behaviors.
Speaker 3:And so, for me, hands down the cat, the, you know, like the thing that catapulted the, or the catalyst for the entire healing journey for me has been me pausing, looking in the mirror and saying you aren't a perfect person and you need to fix the parts of you that are unkind to other people and that is reactive, and heal your throat chakra and a lot of these things.
Speaker 3:You know over time, but it's always been. The shift was when I was like I'm not going to focus on the what and the who. I'm not going to focus on the what and the who. I'm going to focus on healing the emotion and that anger and letting go with love and forgiveness. And I've had to let go of a lot of people that I don't like, that did horrible things, with love and forgiveness and knowing I'm not getting an apology and you know, not meeting those things. You know not not meeting those those things. But you know and then realizing that five, six years later I'm going to have some of the same stuff come up and I got to look at it from a different angle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's. I really like what you said about the forgiveness part, because I think that's where people get tripped up and it is hard to forgive somebody who's done something to you. But once you realize that when you don't forgive, you're still holding onto something, you're giving that person all the control in your healing process. If you don't let them go, they are still controlling your healing, they're controlling you, they're controlling where you go with your dynamic, with your own healing. So the forgiveness isn't essentially a forgiveness, for it is for them, but it's more for you.
Speaker 2:That's where that starts, where it's like I'm gonna let this go. I'm gonna forgive them because you know maybe they're just a shitbag person and they'll always be that way and I feel sorry for them that they live their life like that. But I'm going to forgive you and let it go because I don't want you affecting my journey anymore. And you get to that because it's a ball and chain. If you don't, it's always lingering and it's always affecting decisions that you're making. And that was also very messed up when I figured that out.
Speaker 3:Oh, God, it's hard when people have been bad.
Speaker 3:You know, when, when people have said awful, hurtful things, that pain and it can't be done until it can be done. You know, there's people that come in that are really angry and they are all about what the other person or what's been done and I'll say you're just not ready yet, but you have to let that go and it it doesn't mean that what they did wasn't awful. That's not what you're saying. It's saying I'm going to hand this back to that person and I'm not going to carry it around with me anymore.
Speaker 2:Cause it is. They're invisible weights and chains. It's you're a slave to what happened to you, and that's the best way I can put it, because then that determines everything else moving forward. It determines how you are as a wife, a mother, you know, a partner, everything.
Speaker 3:Like my abandonment wound from my childhood and my dad. My anger towards my biological dad was so much it was seeping into everything, it was affecting my relationships and that mistrust and you know all of that so to it felt unimaginable to forgive somebody, especially at you know, being a mother and that that love I have for my children it was. It almost just felt so wrong. It took me a really long time to get to a place where I was like, where I was like, okay, I'm going to let this go. And it's not excusing his behavior, but it is saying this isn't for me to carry anymore.
Speaker 3:Do I want to keep suffering? Do I want to keep, you know, going through this cycle of anger, all because this person doesn't have the tools to be a good parent? Why do I need to carry that anymore, you know, and then removing it from my body and processing that emotionally. But um it, you, you can't make people be there either. So you might have people in your life where you're like it's. You know you've got to face this and that, but it's like until you hit that rock bottom or whatever brings you to your knees for the last time. That's the thing. You need to be able to start it, because I do think you can't get there until you get there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it is really sad when I do see people for Reiki or spirit guide readings because they're looking for help. But I can only help to a certain point because your leg work is what matters and you're the same way, like this is for any, this is for psychologists, this is for healers, practitioners, whatever your leg work is what matters. So if you allow yourself to stay in a cycle, like a cyclical thing, and sometimes you don't even know you're in it until you take a step back that that cycle will continue until you say enough. So the best way to recognize if you're in a cycle is if you tell the same stories over and over again. You revisit the same memories over and over again. You hate the same person. You have the same reactions over and over again. You hate the same person. You have the same reactions to things.
Speaker 2:It's a cyclical event that happens, rooted out of trauma. So, whether that's anger, disassociation because man, I could disassociate with the best of them, I would be. I couldn't, even I'd have conversations with people. I can't even tell you what the fuck I said. Because I was in trauma mode and I was in. I got to protect myself.
Speaker 2:I was in constant fight or flight for probably 30 some years of fight or flight mode and that wreaks havoc on your nervous system Because once I started, oh when I got, when I realized it was in fight or flight mode, it was hello anxiety and hello panic attacks. I'd never had that before in my life and I'll never forget when I was at the grocery store and it was on Mother's Day, which was a trigger, because my husband had left in April. Here's Mother's Day. My mom died like a year and a half, two years, before my husband left me. She died around Mother's Day. I have no husband anymore. I don't know what I'm doing with my life. And I'm in the grocery store and I had the biggest of panic attack. I ran from the grocery aisle into the clothing section and hid underneath. That's like a 40 year old woman and I hid underneath the clothing rack because I couldn't breathe.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it was like you're dying, I mean in a panic attack.
Speaker 2:You do feel like you're dying, you do, and it was like my whole nervous system it was shot. So going through the process of healing your nervous system is a whole nother thing as well, and that comes hand in hand with the psychological things that you're healing too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it takes time to get out of that. And I feel like, even in the healing journey where I feel like my fight or flight, my nervous system has been regulated for the most part. When those triggers come up I have to fight hard to keep my fight. I'm not a flight, I don't run. Yeah, my trauma says let's go Like I turn and face whatever, and then I just want to fight you until you're done, like I turn and face whatever, and then I just want to fight you until you're done. And so that's been my, whether it's verbally or physically.
Speaker 3:I've been in a lot of physical fights too. That's why we're saying that as a flex, I'm like it's. I'm not proud of the times I've, you know, used physical, like, been in a physical altercation, but that fight or flight. And then, on the flip side of that, a lot of my healing journey has been allowing people in.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've been with my husband for 22 years 20, yes, 22 years and it's been 22 years of letting this very healthy love love me and me not run from it or fight it or whatever, and that that in itself has been a journey, you know, just allowing healthy love in. And I know you know that feeling too. It's healthy loving and I know you know that feeling too it's it's always been easy with my kids. That's like this give and take, but, um, for me that that love has been a work in progress, um, and I feel like my husband has gotten more the best of me me, you know in the last three, four years, but before that it was a lot of him getting pushed away and sticking around just because I was so convinced that nobody could love me like that that they were always leaving. So always like, let people into a certain point but we keep them at arm's length because I convinced myself that it wouldn't hurt so bad if he left me.
Speaker 3:It was like preparing for the abandonment, preparing, waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for that other shoe to drop, which is also something that has been huge. So my healing journey has been about allowing myself to take deep breaths in and fully enjoy moments, because I felt like throughout my whole life I would have really good things happen, only to have something tragic happen. Like something tragic always happened to overshadow something really big and important in my life, and that goes so far back, and so I just always felt like that wasn't real for me. Anyways, I just always thought good things aren't supposed to happen to me.
Speaker 2:I, yeah, I definitely understand that. I think I think most people, when they've been through trauma situations, they wait. It's like, oh, everything's going so good. And then they're like, when is it going to hit? Is it going to hit? And then, as soon as something little happens it doesn't even have to be major there, it is there. It is Because you're looking for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're looking for it and you create this very negative dynamic in your mind. It's almost like a malevolent type of thought process where you're like okay, it's going good, of thought process where you're like okay, it's going good, but I know something bad's going to happen, so I'm just going to go on knowing something bad is going to happen and then point at it when it happens. So you're creating like this energy cycle with yourself where you're pulling that shit to you, where, if something bad happens and you're in a healthy place, you're like, okay, well, there it is. You know, okay, happen, let's figure it out, let's get through it and keep moving forward. And it is a different mindset, but it's hard to get perspective.
Speaker 3:You're looking for bad things that you you're gonna find always. There's never a shortage of bad things. I also want to say it is a shift in perspective, but also this is heavily dependent on who's in your life and influences you. So when I look back on times when I was heavily focused on the negative in life, I was surrounded by people that focused heavily on the negative in life, and that's not putting the blame on them, because I too was participating in this, but, I think, a big difference in where I am now.
Speaker 3:You know, like we know, over the past three weeks I've had a lot of stuff happen. My dad's been sick. I've had just one thing after another sort of happening. My son broke his foot, and when I think about five years ago that happening, I would have been like, oh, there's a black cloud there and I would have found all this stuff, but instead I find myself in the midst of that, still going gosh.
Speaker 3:This is a really hard time, but I'm also seeing why it's happening, what I'm supposed to be learning from it, and I know it's not the end of the world. I'm also able to see beautiful things, like friends bringing me dinner and helping me, who's checking in on me, you know, seeing who my people are getting to spend more time with my parents than I would, have this not been happening, and more time with my son because he's not in sports, and so there are things I can find from these situations and say, ok, but I'm now looking for that. I also don't have people in my life who focus on every bad thing happening, and that is a game changer, because in years past, a good chunk of my circle were extremely negative, spiteful, hateful people.
Speaker 2:You know what, though, but that comes with the healing. Once you start working on yourself and you heal, people will fall away from you naturally, and sometimes you just need to let them go, because they're not. Energy attracts energy, so whatever your vibration is set at is who you're gonna attract to you, that's who's gonna be wanting to be around you and be near you. It's that vibrational frequency. So, like you said, you had really negative or debbie downers that you were friends with, and then, once you started healing, they just naturally fell away. You couldn't see your.
Speaker 2:It's hard to have a conversation with somebody when they don't understand the frequency that you're on or they don't understand the mindset that you're newly in. It's it's very dependent on where you're at. So if you start losing people and I don't even like the word loss with that, yeah, cause I think it's just it's very dependent on where you're at. So if you start losing people and I don't even like the word loss with that, because I think it's just a shift Don't you think so Like it's not a loss, it's a shift.
Speaker 3:It is and your energy. Well, because your energy tells people one how to treat you. Your energy shows it kind of attracts what you're looking for and just like the people that are in my life now and in your life now couldn't have been a part of your life until you healed and shifted and are who you are now because you wouldn't have been in a place to receive that. You know we are surrounded by healthy love and relationships and friendships.
Speaker 3:Now where I think we can go way back and we both have these situations where in a lot of these people I'm referring to I have so much love for, it's not saying I've healed and I'm better, I'm a better person now. It's like they aren't good enough for me. It just means they also have people meant for them where they are on their journey and I have people in my life. Hardest part and this, this will probably make me cry the hardest thing I've had to grapple with in my healing journey has been knowing that I could not be this version of me without losing my best friend. Yeah.
Speaker 3:That I don't think I could be me doing what I'm doing now helping people and just even starting that process had I not been through that horrific loss. And that's what's hard, that the thing, that the hard thing you had to go through had to happen in order for you to be who you are and it's the same with you you had to go through this horrific abuse in life to come out and find your boyfriend now to find out we talk about. It's a fucked up thing.
Speaker 2:It really is and it's. I've gotten to the point now where I'm grateful for what I went through. That was bad. Yeah. And I'm grateful for it because I have a family. I'm going to start crying Sorry, I have a family now.
Speaker 3:Now we're both just crying.
Speaker 2:I'm just so happy for where you are too. But I have a family now that I've always wanted and I have somebody in my life who actually cares about me and I've never had that before. And if I wouldn't have went through what I went through and healed the way I did, I would not have been ready to be in a relationship like this, because it is healthy and it is loving and it's caring, and I'd not experienced that before there. I mean, there was something that happened the other day where I went outside and I ran into one of our neighbors and I went over to her house and we were talking for 15 minutes 15 minutes. I was gone. That's it. This man looked for me in the backyard, he called my phone. He was. He didn't know where I went and he was worried and I was gone for 15 minutes. Yeah, I once left in my marriage for three days to teach my husband a lesson at the time and he didn't call me once. He didn't give a shit where I was at. Yeah, three days. This man looked for me and I was gone for 15 minutes.
Speaker 2:And that sound might sound trivial, but it's not. It's. It's a love that I'd never had and if I wouldn't have went through the healing process, I wouldn't have known how to react to that, because I wouldn't have been feeling deserving of it. I wouldn't have been feeling deserving of it and I think that's a part of like I feel, like I, you know, it's good for me to have these things. I do deserve this. I do deserve to have people who love me in my life. I'm not a shitbag person. I'm not a bad person, like. I do deserve these things and to get to that point has been a beautiful blessing and I'm grateful for what I endured, because I'm where I'm at now and that right.
Speaker 3:There is the healing journey. You go from the brokenness to the place where you do say I deserve this, where, like I can breathe and say I do deserve my husband. I am not a shitty person and I'm not. I don't have to lead a lifetime of suffering because bad things have happened or because I've been less than ideal versions of myself that I, you know, I'm not proud of. And healing through that and realizing I deserve good friendships, that I don't worry about being talked about when I leave the room, and supportive, loving people and I deserve to write and be successful and shine and not feel like I'm too much.
Speaker 3:And that is the healing journey. Where you get to a place where you are unwilling to waver from that. And I think we're both in that place, like I just will not. If you try to step into my life and you are negative or you are creating drama, I will walk away from you. And I don't care who you are, I don't care how long you've been here, I don't care if we share DNA, I don't care. I will walk away from you because my peace is so valuable to me. You know my, my peace and my connection to who I am and my self worth is everything, and I'll never let anyone take that from me again.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Cause. You know what it is not to have it and you know the chaos, the chaos and the pain that goes with that. And there is power in saying this is who I am and I love myself now and I'm not going to allow somebody else to make me feel like X, y and Z.
Speaker 3:And it's very clear when it's happening. Now I feel like we both can recognize that ill intention. You know, we both. There's times where we're talking and maybe somebody's come in or somebody from the past and it sort of looks like, oh, I'm here with this intention, it's immediate. We're both like, oh, it's, your body will recognize it, and we kind of talked about this before we hopped on.
Speaker 3:Make no mistake, like our healing journey has gotten us to where we are and it's no doubt like to be a good healer, you have to have been through some shit, because it's the thing that helps you understand and have empathy for others.
Speaker 3:If you've never gone through things, thing that helps you understand and have empathy for others, If you've never gone through things, you're going to struggle to empathize with somebody. But another part of the healing journey that we are always connecting to is what we need to continue to work on. You know we don't think we're perfect or in a perfect place where that work is done. You know the sharing this today is to say you can go from this broken place and you can get to this beautiful place like we just described. But there's this whole fucking in between yeah, messy and sucks, and then you're going to have really good times and you're still going to have bouts of the shit that you got to walk through. And that's life. You know that's a part of life, but it can get easier as you learn how to cope with it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely and don't give up. If you're just starting the healing journey, it's easy to say fuck this and just want to quit, because it is really hard. I know for myself. I did need a psychologist, like after my husband left and I went to therapy for a year once a week because I simply, you know, I I didn't want to kill myself but I also didn't want to be here, so I'd be like if I didn't wake up in the morning I'd be fine with that and that wasn't very healthy. So I needed to go to therapy and kind of work through some of those emotions. So for me it was therapy and then a combination of spiritual practices reading books, working on myself, just exploring what could help me and I.
Speaker 2:You do get tired, and it's not a physical tiredness, it's a soul tired. Your soul gets tired. And if you're in that space, please don't give up. Please keep one foot in front of the other towards simple, simple changes until you can build up the strength to get to where you need to look at the big stuff. Just don't give up, because it's so much. It's the quick fix to lay down and take it, and it's much harder to take the journey and help yourself, but it's so much more rewarding and there's so much life left. I thought I was in my forties. I'm like I'm done. I'm old, I'm in my forties, what am I going to do? Chapter two my ass. Like that was my thought process. And then here I am, like with somebody I never thought I'd be with. I'm happy. I have peace. I don't spend my days walking on eggshells wondering what's going to happen next. I spend it living and not in survival mode. And it's doable, it can happen for anybody.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's just as though the walk to get there and it's. It's kind of like uphill, uh uh. Forward 10 steps, backwards three, and it goes, you know, back and forth. It's the same. I don't, I could not have imagined the happiness that I feel now, that I could feel that every day, that I could not suffer from crippling, think about what everybody thought, that I could just truly exist as myself, as a person that sees the spirit world and the way I see and hear and exist, and um, to be surrounded by people who see me and don't just see that, they see the me as a whole is is an incredible thing that I didn't think was possible. But I mean, I had to do the work to get there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's work and it's worth it. It's not worth it. Investing in yourself is the best thing you can do. It's not being selfish either and I do want to say that to all the women listening, because I really think women have a hard time with that, where they think because they're taking care of themselves, they're being selfish and it's just bullshit, period. Bullshit, like you have to take care of yourself and get yourself in a good place in order to be the best you for other people and you just have to.
Speaker 2:And sometimes that I call it a wilderness period, and I had one of those where I literally self isolated myself. I didn't talk to most of my friends. I cut a lot of ties with people. I just stopped talking because I had to go within myself for a moment and figure out what the hell just happened and how I get myself glued back together, and I could have looked at it as me being selfish and all these people. But you have to live with yourself every day. I have to wake up with myself every day. I am in my head every day. So I had to do what was necessary to save me at that point, and that meant me moving away from people and I did lose friends over it because they didn't understand. They thought I was being, you know, bitchy and I wasn't. I was trying to, I was trying to live, I was trying to fix my life, and that's fine. And they fell away and I wished them well and I needed it. So if you need a wilderness journey, you sure as hell need to take it, yeah.
Speaker 3:You have to. Don't resist those people that need to go. Let them go with love and and I've done a lot of that too there's a lot of people that let go of that I love very much. But I can promise you I would not be where I am, in the happiness I am, had I held on to those relationships because they were keeping me stuck, rooted in a version of myself that was dying. There's been, you know, the version of me that a lot of people think they know she's dead. There's parts of me that have died off that I can't, I don't even recognize anymore, you know, and there's so much of us that stays the same, but there's a lot that's just changed and different, and to me it's a feeling, and to me it's a feeling, you know the. It's the feeling the people in my life bring, and that is peace. Yes, I don't want I used to look for that chaotic, drama, adrenaline filled relationships. It used to it.
Speaker 2:That's what I become normal.
Speaker 3:It's almost like that's love, that's if there's no drama or fighting or chaos.
Speaker 2:It started to feel like abnormal, almost boring or something, and it's like gosh, I look back on that, I'm like I never want that again, like that's that's interesting because it is like a rewiring of the brain that you have to do in the healing process, especially when you're in toxic relationships or unhealthy dynamics, because you start learning and believing that that is what love is, that's what being treated like that means, because you're with somebody that's supposed to love and care for you and that's how they're treating you love and care for you and that's how they're treating you. So a lot of it's the rewiring of those habits and thought processes and that gets tricky too and that's why it takes so much time and it's not something you can rush and you should rush it. You should have a full understanding of who you are and what you're going through the healing journey, and it does take time. It took me like three years before I was ready to even start dating.
Speaker 3:My bring you to your knees moment is coming up on 10 years this June. 10 years, but I didn't start healing from that. I mean, I think it was maybe five years after that. I mean I just walked like a zombie in life, um, and so that's gonna be different, but it's a journey, I mean it is. It has been a fucking journey to get to this place, like sometimes it feels like a lifetime, and other days it's like just yesterday, where I look back and go, holy crap, you know, so it it is.
Speaker 3:Um. I loved this episode. I loved how, um, the base, the baseline of it all is similar, even if the situations, names and faces are different. In our story. It's like there is those, those the foundation of healing, which really it starts with you, and you have to stop looking and blaming everybody else and say nobody's coming. Nobody's fucking coming for you. There is no white horse, there is no magical prince or princess or mother or father or friend or significant other that is responsible to make you happy. You have to get up, baby, one, baby, step at a time, and do the work, but, um, nobody's coming.
Speaker 2:Nope, it's just you and you alone.
Speaker 3:Yeah and uh, get a mirror and look in it often, because if you want to do powerful healing, you're going to have to look at yourself and the things that you need to change about the way you're living. So well, here's to healing wherever you are. I know we just made it sound super fun. Just being honest, it's not fun, but there will be beautiful moments that come out of it.
Speaker 2:Yes, do the work, love yourself, take care of yourself, be kind to yourself. Yeah. And it'll all fall into place.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, join us back next week for our season finale. And thanks for listening. Thanks, guys, bye, bye, bye. We'd love to hear from you. Email us your questions at itlpodcast1212 at gmailcom.
Speaker 2:You can find us on Facebook at Into the Lake Podcast. Thank you.