The MEN1 Mosaic

#49 - Rebuilding Who You Are When Illness Takes Everything (Self-Love Expert, Purpose Coach & Kundalini Yoga Teacher)

• Lizzie Dunn • Season 1 • Episode 49

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What happens when your life no longer feels like home?

In this soft, soul-level conversation, Diwa and I explore the identity shifts that happen when illness, change, or pressure pull you away from your authentic self. We talk about how to come back to your body—gently, compassionately, and without judgment.

In this episode:
• Illness, identity loss, and the grief of change
• What to do when your body doesn’t feel safe
• Kundalini yoga and the release of stuck emotions
• Boundaries, self-permission, and everyday self-love
• Why community and vulnerability are key to healing

Diwa’s work supports women—especially travelling partners—who are navigating emotional transitions, inner disconnection, or simply yearning for more joy. Connect with her here.

Are you sure MEN1 can’t be influenced?
When I stopped just 'settling' for symptom management, I began carving a path to somewhere I believed impossible in MEN1: symptom-free, surgery-free, and medication-free. If you’re curious to see how I’m making this happen, join my community here.

Disclaimer
I share my personal experience as a MEN1 patient. Nothing in this episode, including the opinions of my guests, is intended as medical or holistic advice. Please consult a qualified professional before making changes to your care.

Today I'm joined by Diwa, a purpose coach, Kundalini yoga teacher, and someone who really understands the deeper emotional layers of healing. This conversation feels a little bit like an unfolding of that. We get to talk about identity, self-love, energy blockages, and what it really means to feel safe inside your own body, especially when that body might be presenting with symptoms. It's one of those episodes that may speak to you on a much deeper level, and I'm so glad you're here to enjoy it.

Diwa, something that unites our communities together, you with traveling partners and me with MEN1 patients, so often we're feeling as though we are looking at our lives playing out in front of us and somehow we're stuck behind the scenes almost like being behind a kind of a glass screen per se. When you are working with your community what is it that you give to them to help 'em feel as though they have a little bit more agency and a bit more empowerment over their own life.

What I give them and foremost is permission. A lot of times, traveling partners come into an environment, we come into a role with an expectation of the woman we're meant to be. The wife, the mother, that person. Very often that takes precedence and so much space that we forget that there is also our own selves to tend to. We actually lose that agency that you talk about because our needs maybe are, ranked lower. We don't put them first. We take care of our partners, our families whatever else needs to be done. And then we come to ourselves. When the needs are lost, so is the voice. And a lot of traveling partners forget that they have permission to be angry, to be lost, to be upset, to even feel guilty for wanting more from their life. They might be living like a really beautiful life in a beautiful environment. From the outside it looks nicely tied up with a bow and what more could you ever ask for? But very often there is that deep yearning inside for more because it's that kind of disconnection. So the first thing I do is really to give them that space to just acknowledge what's going on, to speak up all the thoughts, the feelings, the words that they haven't had the courage or the permission or the space or the person to hold that space for them.

I wonder if you can talk us through the process of having to build an identity. Maybe that's different to the one you've had before. I probably speak for many MEN1 patients where sometimes with a click of a finger, their life just changes overnight and it's like, who am I anymore? Talk us through what it was like to rebuild your sense of identity, knowing that you also had something really amazing before, and sometimes that's difficult to let go of, right?

The first move we took involved me leaving my corporate job letting go of financial independence I had, being able to make those decisions connected to finances, to my time, to who I wanted to see, where I wanted to go. They all just disappeared because I was now in a new environment where I didn't have access to all of that, an environment where I was, up as the partner to somebody else. I thought I needed to take on that role and really be that role. That's, and it was a very new role for me because it was our first move, to an island resort. It was my partner's first time being a general manager in a resort. There was a lot of freshness, a lot of newness and we were living in the resort, so we had a lot of adapting to do and, rules to get used to in an environment which, we really did not escape from at all for weeks on end. And so I was like, okay, this is my place now and I need to be this person and I need to show up in a certain way. And while that probably took me a while to get used to, and I eventually did. I also quickly realized that was just one part of me. The person I had to be was very much different to my authentic self of being this carefree, spontaneous, creative even childlike in a lot of ways, playful kind of person. It took me a while to figure out how can I create that balance for myself? And I went through a lot of, let's say, in the early days or in the early moves a lot of hiding, unfortunately, because it was intimidating. You come to a new place, people looking at you because you are, the boss's wife, or you are somebody they think you're meant to be, you don't wanna let your partner down. You don't wanna let anyone else down. And I molded myself. Each place was a very different environment and in each place took different amount of time and different ways of unraveling and being my authentic self. I didn't have much support around how to navigate all of that. I was just figuring things out on my own. I think now that I'm a little bit more practiced after, living in different countries, I realized that I have the confidence and also the agency to show up as who I am from the very beginning. Whereas I didn't have that before. I was really clinging to this identity of being the wife. Now I am more comfortable in myself. It was the journey of these different moves and these different environments and really seeing what I needed and I wanted to be. To be able to embody all of that and to come into this version of myself.

I'm not a traveling partner, but I have lived abroad and have experience as an MEN1. I know we've shared notes on feeling your authentic self and feeling embodied as well. If someone comes to you and just the state of being in their body feels unsafe somehow because they're having to put on a front, or they're having to be someone they're not, or they're constantly hyper aware, hypervigilant, which you explained when you would first arrive somewhere and people would watch you and or maybe wait for you to trip up. How do you help people in that respect? Learned through your own experience and maybe seen in your community as well?

I really like that you mentioned safety. Personally, in my experience has always been the anger I needed to feel safe to express and even acknowledge. I can remember not feeling safe in my body, not trusting my body. It uncomfortable. However, I believe that it comes to a tipping point and you can take back that power even if it's having to need to just sit down and cry. Love is not always beautiful and sunshiney, right? Self-love is actually, to me, being able to hold yourself and to love yourself exactly as you need in that time. It might be, having a really good cry. It might be acknowledging your fear, it might be releasing anger and it could look like a thousand different things, but it really is, I believe, rooted in compassion for yourself and just being in that present moment, without having to think like it should look a certain way. It doesn't even have to be this big grandiose moment or an aha or whatever. It really is giving ourselves what we need and. From my experience and from what I've seen in some of the women in my community, it really is just even acknowledging what that thought is, what that emotion is. And that brings me to being able to connect to your body. So often when we feel scared and don't feel safe to connect our bodies, disconnect. And I've had experiences of disconnecting by numbing, by addictive patterns, all sorts of things. But somehow whenever I come back to my body, and it might even be like in a really unexpected way, when I lived in the Maldives, I was really blessed to be living on an island because water is one of my elements. It's one of my healing elements. There were times when I would just be into the water suddenly I'm in tears because there's suddenly a tenderness or a softness or wow, I didn't realize this was here, or had been carrying something. It really is just being aware of our bodies and being able to sit with what is there, which is also not easy to do on our own. I think a lot of the reason why I doing that for a long time was because I was on my own. I didn't know how to do it and I didn't want to do it, but if I had like perhaps called a friend or spoken to someone, I trusted that I could open up a little bit more too.

You mentioned connection to the body and for an MEN1 community where it can feel like the body's the enemy sometimes and it's just constantly causing problems. Sometimes we just feel unsafe. It's just easier to switch the tap off on emotions and processes that are going on. You mentioned about how important  it is to just acknowledge the feeling no matter how uncomfortable that is. One of your practices, I know you come back to and you teach as well, is Kundalini yoga, of which I've had a little bit of experience. It was actually one of the first modalities that introduced me to energy blockages and the idea that my disease or my dis-ease was energy stuck in my body. How do you personally use your yoga practice, and when you teach it, how do you see that as helping you find safety in your body and reconnect to something which sometimes is just easier to leave and get out of?

I put a lot of trust in the practice. In Kundalini yoga we have Kriyas. Kriya means to initiate and complete an action. You could come to a class and say, if today's crea is about releasing anger, or it will focus on asana or postures or movements, breath work, focus say around the liver where we store anger. You might be doing lots of different movements around that and I always trust that the Kriya is gonna guide what needs to be released. Often I don't feel any form of release. There have also been moments where I'm just overcome with emotion. I think it's just being very present. It's not like you're doing like some aha, pose or you're in like some, big grandiose thing or whatever. You could just be sitting there connecting to your body. Maybe your hands are in a mudra, in a posture, maybe there's a mantra playing, and then in that moment of just really dropping in, something connects that brings a release. When I used to teach, I would always invite my students to just breathe stay connected to whatever the experience they were having. The one thing about Kundalini yoga is that it's quite different to a Hatha class or, traditional vinyasa classes. Often it's deliberately structured as it is because it's also meant to challenge you and take you out of your comfort zone and, make you question like, why am I holding my hands up this for 20 minutes or whatever it is, right? And so I always encourage my students to stay in their thought process and to just be present with what's coming up, because that's gonna help you deepen your breath, that's gonna give you the benefits of the posture. We have celestial communication in Kundalini yoga. It's movement combined with music. Very often the music has mantra playing. I was in a workshop talking about healing addictive patterns, which I thought I had none of. But there I was trying to heal my addiction to coffee . We had done an exercise and then we closed it with celestial communication. It was four or five steps just coming forward, lifting your arms, coming back, into a very simple leg posture, just moving, flowing. But with this mantra guiding us, we're making a prayer and giving it up to the universe and just surrendering. We did that for maybe 15 minutes. Honestly it was one of the most powerful things I have ever done because in its simplicity of connecting the breath to the body, listening to the music, the emotions started coming up the grief, the sadness deep sadness. But then, eventually that gave away to peace. And I finished like the exercise feeling light and feeling hopeful and actually feeling more expanded. I believe that a practice like that can do wonders. The key really is being present with it.

I've been thinking as we've been speaking of a little paradox, which is that you work with traveling partners. You call yourself a traveling partner, and yet you barely mentioned your partner at all. And I love that because what I'm finding in my own MEN1 journey, and I believe what you're experiencing yourself, is that it's not about necessarily having our needs met from the outside by other people. It's about learning to connect to something that's coming from within. With MEN1 patients, sometimes it can feel really frustrating because there is so much that's external to our control, whether it's healthcare or anything like that. And I'm sure with people in your community as well, it often feels like that. In a situation where actually it's about meeting our own needs first before looking for someone else to come in and fill that space, how do you help people through that process? It can't be easy if, as we're growing up, we very often have people there to meet our needs for us. How do you find that connection to self and how does that process become gradually easier, if so, or does it not become easier?

I don't know if it becomes easier to be honest. I think it becomes more intentional when you ask for your needs to be met. One thing I see, a very common pattern and even from my own experience, was meeting my needs around boundaries. And boundaries of saying no and also saying yes. And this could be saying no to things that were not supporting me or were draining me but really saying no, in a very conscious self-loving way. Without feeling that guilt or that expectation or, oh, but if I say no, then what are they gonna think? Really feeling that no in your body as well. Oh no, this is what I need. And it's the same with saying yes too, because often, you can say yes just half-heartedly again, not only with people, but with food choices, daily routines. What am I saying yes to? What am I consuming like from the fridge, but also on my screen or what who am I hanging out with? What am I doing with my time? Those are all forms of boundaries that we allow in. I believe that is one of the key pillars of self-love and when it comes to meeting our needs because it's a very big part that's also often overlooked. When we don't know we need, then we can't ask for what we need. Or we're so used to just thinking, I need this because X, Y, Z told me or this is my belief. Then we're not actually addressing our needs. A lot of our belief patterns are patterns that we formed when we were children and they were very supportive of us back then when we were younger. But as we've grown up, we outgrow our belief patterns. what I see is like sometimes. Some clients come to me and they uncover a belief they have about themselves whether it's connected to worthiness or self-love and make it wrong or reject themselves for thinking a certain way or for however they are. I think it's really important to acknowledge that there is no wrong. It's just something that is there. Actually that's something we learn in Kundalini yoga too. How to see information in the neutral state. And that's something meditation helps us to do. Where we don't see things as good or bad, right or wrong. It is just as it is. That takes out a lot of the ego wanting to put a label on something or to understand something or to give us a reason for doing something. But I believe if we can just see things as they are, then we're actually in a state of deep compassion for ourselves as well, and not only for ourselves, but for other people. Then the belief becomes something that I needed and now I don't need it anymore. It comes up again, because of a situation or a conversation, or you feel reactive towards something. I know that I can respond differently and maybe this time ask for what I need instead.

I love that. Meeting our own needs and getting support, being our own go-to, but also that important thing as you spoke about with boundaries and the ability to ask for what we need. Being clear on it first. Do you think it's possible for anyone in your, in your community to be settling, building that sense of self and living their best life without community? Do you think it would be possible without like-minded, like-hearted people around them?

Community plays a huge role in my own personal journey. I know I couldn't have come as far as I have without support, a like-minded community. I think, we're not designed to do things on our own. Even if your community is not present in front of you. You and I, we're in a community that we meet online, right? But this is still a community and it's still that support. Like-minded community helps to address one more really important topic, which connects back to everything, which is like the ability to be vulnerable. Without being able to be vulnerable, we're not gonna feel safe and we're not gonna be able to ask for what we need. Vulnerability gives us permission to just be ourselves, be our unrefined, messy upset, tantrum-y or even powerful, amazing, courageous. It gives us permission to just be ourselves. This is something which I see a lot of my clients really working on. We are not taught how to be vulnerable, right? We're always told, especially as women, just be strong. You gotta have it together. You are the one keeping the family in check, the partner, this, that, this, that. We're always figuring it out ourselves. I can't say how many times, myself, when something goes wrong, I'm like, oh, I just do it myself. Because we're the fixers and we have to be Wonder Woman or whatever it is, right? And we're not taught to be vulnerable. At least I wasn't. And I can see a lot of my clients the same as well. So much courage in being vulnerable, to be able to like really look someone in the eye and tell them exactly how you feel or, what you need from your partner. I think vulnerability with my partner is one of the things that I'm least practiced on. It's always the people you're closest to. For me, the ones I have so much edginess with, my mom, my sister, whereas people who are not my family members, I am a little bit more comfortable with. For some people it might be the complete opposite, but I think vulnerability is a real superpower. I cannot emphasize enough how much that is something that is really connected to self-love and to accepting our bodies as they are and knowing that there's no permanence either. We're always changing. Things always change.

The word vulnerability is powerful in so many respects, I think for all communities, but particularly here for you with traveling partners and for me as well with my MEN1 community, where it is not second nature by any means to open up and be seen as struggling or "failing" in inverted commas, let alone even ask for help. So I think that's something that is gonna resonate so much when people listen back to this, that actually we can't help ourselves and we can't be helped until we make space for that. And it feels so difficult at the time, but but it becomes intentional.

It leaves me with one last question to ask you, which is for anyone who's watching this back, a traveling partner, maybe even a traveling partner managing MEN1, who knows? There may be one of those in this community. They've lost their sense of self. They feel like they've lost their identity, struggling to fit in. Struggling to create again and go from afresh with all the sense of responsibility, with all the sense of pressure that's being placed on them to be a certain way. Is there something really tangible that you can give to people that will maybe just shift things almost instantly? Maybe it's a personal practice of your own that you love or something that you wish your younger self might have had?

Oh, I love this question. One of my go-to's because I love to write, to journal and I've learned to ask myself the question , what do I need right now? Or what is here right now? What. Or even, what am I avoiding? With the intention of really just dropping into the present moment, and when I answer that question in my journal, I just put a timer on my phone 15 minutes or 20 minutes, or however much time I have, and I write that question and I just write and I just let it flow. Sometimes I know exactly what's gonna come out, and very often I'm just quite surprised at how the piece ends up. For me, it's a really great way to just process that. 'cause I do that through writing. But you can easily ask yourself that same question in a quiet space. Maybe like taking a candle or just gazing at a candle flame or staring out at nature, or even with a cup of tea and just taking an intentional sip. Anything that anchors your mind to the present moment and trusting yourself to be honest with what comes true comes through. It's not something you have to do on Instagram or share with anyone. But it really is that time for yourself to acknowledge, because yeah, that's the most powerful thing you can do for yourself, to really know. I guess it's the same with illness, you wanna get to the root so you can really start to address it and to make that long-term healing and transformation. It's something you can do every single day. You can even do it many times a day. It's a lifelong practice, really. Each time you practice, you're only going to get better at uncovering yourself. And maybe once you have one layer off, you're gonna find another layer and another layer until you get to the root. Doing a practice like that, allocating time for yourself, being gentle, being kind, honest, is one of my favorite go-to practices.

I also love writing and I love journaling so i'm glad you said that. I can speak, from experience to anyone who's listening back, it is one of the most powerful modalities of being present, getting to sit with that stuff that we want to leave to one side, and that's for my experience with MEN1, that's the stuff I really need to look at if I really want to shift my health.

I can't thank you enough, Diwa, for your generosity of time and wisdom. I've loved chatting to you. I always loved chatting to you and just finding those areas of common ground between not just our own lives, but those of the people in our communities as well. I'm taking away a gold mine of wisdom from this episode so thank you very much for being here, and I hope to have you back on again at some point in the future.​

Thank you for inviting me. I think you're doing an amazing job with, all the ways you're helping people and all richness and, learnings you're sharing. So I'm really honored to be here and thank you so much.

 ​ If something in today's episode stirred something inside you, especially around self-love, identity, or reconnecting with your body, I really encourage you to explore more of Diwa's work. She holds space in a really beautiful way for people who are navigating life's transitions, emotional healing and the uncertainty of not quite knowing who they are anymore. You'll find all her links below in the description box. As always, thank you for being here and for choosing to explore your own healing, however it might want to unfold right now.