Best Believe I’m Still Bejeweled: What Cancer Taught Me About Belonging, Pedestals, and Being Fully Alive

The hardest part wasn’t cancer. It was what happened when I got better.

This episode is part two of my 10-year Diagnosiversary reflection series — but instead of revisiting the drama of diagnosis and treatment, we’re diving into what came after.

I’m talking about the identity shifts, relationship reckonings, and cultural patterns I began to notice when the casseroles stopped coming and the celebration faded. We’ll explore why people rally when you’re suffering but sometimes disappear when you’re thriving, how childhood bullying for “shining too bright” shaped my adult relationships, and what I learned from both being on pedestals and putting others there.

I’ll share why I threw myself a shimmering Taylor Swift–inspired anniversary party, the hard truth about sickness as currency for belonging, and the rebellious act of staying fully alive in a world that often only claps for your comeback — not your continued glow.

Whether you’ve navigated illness, career shifts, or just the lonely truth of outgrowing old dynamics, this conversation is your permission slip to celebrate yourself in every season — no pedestal required.

00:00 — A Decade Later: Picking Up Where Part One Left Off
04:49 — When Pain Gets Applause but Joy Gets Silence
05:54 — The “Bejeweled” Party and What It Really Celebrates
10:12 — The Old Bind: Belonging vs. Being Fully Myself
14:20 — The Pedestal Problem: Gurus, Gatekeepers, and Growing Pains
26:16 — Sickness as Worthiness and the Disappearing Act After Healing
32:12 — The Price — and Freedom — of Living Fully Alive

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Transcript

Julie Granger (00:00)

Hello, everyone. Welcome to this episode. This is part two of a two-part episode series where I am reflecting on the 10-year anniversary of my cancer diagnosis. Part one was entitled From It's Nothing to It's Cancer. So if you haven't listened to that one, I definitely recommend you go back and listen to it in addition to this one. I...

I'm really excited about this particular episode because this one really gets more into the here and now version of me, the lessons I've learned since then. Part one told the full backstory from the journey of being young and setting up my personality to going through a mystery illness and a toxic job to a cancer diagnosis that got me out of that toxic job.

I didn't really detail cancer treatment, and I'm not actually gonna detail that in this episode either, although it's a really important part of the story. We're gonna fast forward because really this episode is all about the life that has come from that experience, and it's less about the actual cancer, the actual experience of diagnosis and treatment.

but the full aliveness that has come as a result of all of that.

And I think it's really common for us to get into the drama of the painful part of the story, of the problem part of the story. And that's actually something that I'll be talking a lot about in this episode on how that showed up not only in my identity, but also in my purpose and in my relationships. And so this episode is really a reflection of the lessons learned from a really big metamorphosis that I went through.

after, I mean, during and after cancer and who and what I've become. So today I'm picking up where we left off, looking at what shifted in my identity, in my purpose as a divine human being here on this planet and in my relationships after cancer. We'll talk about why people often disappear when you're thriving.

why they show up when you're sick and when they disappear. We'll talk about my experience of how much amazing community gathered around me when I was sick and then how that same community seemed to banish into thin air once I was healthy and thriving again. And the lessons I've learned from that, the pain I've had from that and the

purpose that has come from that experience. I think some real beautiful things have come from that painful experience. I will dig into the role of pedestaling, which I did dig into in the previous episode as well, from being bullied because I was a kid and also later on an adult who was shining up on a pedestal. And there were people who

didn't really enjoy the fact that I was thriving or doing really well. So a similar parallel to that sick experience. And also I will reflect on pedestaling people myself and how that turned around and hurt me in the long run. I will talk about the loneliness that comes when you are fully and authentically and unapologetically fully alive.

and fully yourself. And when I say fully alive and fully yourself, I don't just mean happy or joyful or thriving. I also mean having the full gamut of the human experience. So all the way from the dark depths, the sinking places that we exist, but also the highest heights. The particular loneliness that can recur for a lot of people that's often not talked about is the loneliness that happens.

at those highest heights. Because sometimes when we are in those sinking depths, when we're sick, when we're having an emotional crisis, people do show up for you. And then when you're better, again, they can disintegrate into thin air. And lastly, I will share what I now know about

being fully alive and not just surviving on a daily basis. And when I say that, I wanna just acknowledge that there's gonna be times for myself included where we feel like we are literally just putting one foot in front of the other and surviving. There's gonna be periods of that. There's gonna be seasons of that. It may be for a couple of days, a couple of weeks, a couple of months, a couple of years. That's part of the human experience. And...

When I say being fully alive, that's included in being fully alive. But we live in a culture that has programmed us to believe that those times are a failure or we've sunk in and therefore from a sink or swim mentality, we're failing. Whereas when we're shining and swimming and doing great, then we're winning, right?

I say sink and swim, it's both the sinking moments and the swimming moments. And that is a part of the human experience.

And one thing that's really exciting about this episode is it is coming out four days after a really important celebration that I just had. I haven't had it yet at the time of me recording this episode, but...

I already have this vision of it. It's going to happen I'll have to record another episode about how it actually went.

I'm throwing myself a party to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of my cancer diagnosis. And the theme of the party is being fully alive, fully shining, experiencing the full gamut of human life.

The party's name is Best Believe I'm Still Bejeweled, which of course is a Taylor Swift line. And if you've ever heard that song called Bejeweled, there's a line from it that is, "Best believe I'm still bejeweled when I walk in the room, I can still make the whole place shimmer." So the whole theme of the party is shimmering and bright colors and sparkle and shining.

and being fully alive and celebrating life. One of the reasons was, of course, celebrating this important milestone 10 years since being diagnosed with cancer and being fully alive. And the other one was as I'll dig into in this episode, I noticed when I was really sick, that's when people gathered around me in droves and dropped everything to be there for me.

And then once I was well, people disappeared into thin air. And it's like, once I finished going through cancer treatment, once I recovered from cancer, there was no celebration. There was so much pomp and circumstance going into my surgeries We had a going away party for my tumor. One of my friends, my friend Julia from Duke, from college,

who is an attorney, hand wrote a poster and put it on the front door of my house. That was a eviction notice for my tumor. So funny. And there was all of this that went on going into treatment and during treatment. But after treatment, everyone, just kind of stopped paying attention. I think about how I have so many friends who have gone through things and I fall into that too.

there's no shade here, it's just something I'm commenting on as humans we don't realize we do, but it can really, really affect the person that we're supporting. A friend of mine had a really traumatic experience with her child about a month and a half ago and you know, everyone gathered and was in a group chat.

about it right after. But people have dropped off now that her child is OK and on the road to recovery. And I just have to kind of look at us and go, why is that? So I decided I was going to throw a party for the sake

of celebrating the fact that using the line of the song, "When I walk into the room, I can still make the whole place shimmer, that I'm not only shimmering deserving of community when I'm ill or broken or seemingly weaker than someone else or more vulnerable, but also when I'm simply existing and thriving."

I think that it's also a closing of a chapter logistically speaking, which I talked about in the episode before this one of I no longer have to go to the oncologist for checkups. I am celebrating that in the time since cancer. I have maybe met for the very first time or at least the first time since I was a young child, the real Julie.

And I've also really realigned my purpose from healthcare provider to a role that I still have trouble naming. I call myself Soul Story Guide. If you're gonna get technical about it, we might call it Life Coach. But it's deeper than that and way more nuanced than that. So it's hard to put a name around it. But in my own healthcare healing journey and healing from medical trauma,

in reestablishing a more kind and

compassionate relationship with my body as not this project to be fixed or healed, but a beautiful resource and

telephone line to my soul, I talked about that in the previous episode a lot. But also realigning my relationships in looking at not just from my cancer experience, but other experiences in life, who shows up, not just when I'm hurting or sick or weak or vulnerable, but who shows up all the time. And also looking at how I do that for people. I think that's just really important to acknowledge and own that which I wish from

my own community I need to be giving, right? And in that process, I have become more alive than I ever have felt, which I think is a really, really beautiful thing. And so that really was the basis of throwing the party and inviting people to also come and celebrate themselves being fully alive. So we'll to do another episode about the party itself since I'm recording this before the party, but

Maybe you can go to my Instagram, look at pictures of it.

So I mentioned a lot of the before story about the cancer itself in episode 11, and If you want the full deep dive, make sure you definitely go back to that.

But generally speaking, some things to highlight from that episode, some of which I did highlight and some of which I want to dig into a little bit more here. In childhood, I always was the kid who was at the top, top athlete, top student. And a lot of that came from me. I was a curious, passionate athlete, loved to learn things,

never met a school subject I didn't like. And I naturally fell into a sport, swimming, which was a great fit for that, where I could work towards a goal. And for me with swimming, it was always about competing with myself, staying in my own swim lane literally and also figuratively speaking. And the same at school. I was always seeing how

well I could do, how deeply I could learn things. That zeal, that curiosity was very much a part of my aliveness. And I learned very early on, unfortunately, that that zeal, that passion and the results that came from that zeal and that passion, which were being, you know, a top ranked swimmer and then also a top ranked student.

those didn't always make me friends. I was bullied in the fourth grade for being the only kid in the class in the gifted program. In seventh grade, I had friends who leveraged friendship in exchange for trying to get me to let them cheat off of me. Thankfully, I didn't give into that, In eighth grade, I purposely

misspelled words in the school spelling bee so that I wouldn't be seen as the uncool kid. So by that point, I'd learned that it's not cool or you'll be shamed and bullied for being the winner. And I didn't want to win the spelling bee because I couldn't take it anymore. In ninth grade, a girlfriend of mine told me I better tone it down.

with my good grades and my achievements in sports because I'd never get a boyfriend. So that just paints the picture of the concept here of when you're thriving, people don't always like it, especially if you're a woman. And we're not gonna dig into feminism or the patriarchy or anything like that, but I think it's important to acknowledge

there's this very deeply rooted belief in at least our Western culture that women and marginalized populations are weaker, And more vulnerable. And so you're always looking for the reason. How are they, are they cheating? Are they sleeping their way to the top? Like what is it that got them there? It couldn't possibly be that this person is just genuinely that talented.

Anyway, that's all I'm going to say about that. So what developed was this bind. I had this zeal I had this passion. This is just who I was. I wanted to see how far I could go. I wanted to challenge myself. That was quite enjoyable.

for me. But when I was acting from my very intuitive, essence of Julie, lots of zeal, lots of passion, lots of curiosity, lots of intensity.

The bind was...

I could either keep swimming and keep thriving and keep achieving, or I could have meaningful relationships. We are wired for community. We are wired for connection. is our deepest, deepest human need, belonging. I learned early on.

that I could trade belonging for my authentic expression. And you see that happen when I was choosing to misspell a word in the spelling bee. Sounds like a small thing, but that was actually a really big departure from my authentic, passionate, spelling bee nerd personality. And I was doing that in exchange for what I hoped was belonging.

I can say that now I've done a lot of healing around it. And I can see it really clearly, but as an eighth grader, there was so much wisdom in the anxiety I felt in my body. I didn't know it was anxiety at the time, but I am standing here on the stage. This person,

who's running the spelling bee just said a word to me that I absolutely know how to spell. And I'm going to make a conscious choice to misspell that word because I am now old enough and mature enough to know that if I win this spelling bee, it might compromise me friendships.

So I'm in this bind of I can either authentically express what it is that brings me joy and who I really am all the way, like go all the way with myself, or I can have friendships. I can have relationships. By the time it's high school, I can have romantic relationships, right? And I just remember.

Feeling that bind, feeling this, I can feel it now. I can feel myself wanting to shrink into my own body and just hide. And like, I just remember wishing like when report cards came out in high school, I knew I would get good grades because I wasn't ever gonna really not follow my passion and my heart. Thank God for that, right? But I did it quietly. I didn't want people to know.

I remember wishing that word wouldn't get out about my grades. Somehow it always did. You know, I told one friend and somehow that friend would tell everybody else. I learned very early that I can be myself or I can belong.

such a hard choice. And what I now know based on the work I do, the research I've done, a lot of healing that I've done is as humans, our biggest innate unconscious drive in our nervous systems is for belonging. That's what creates safety, all of the things. also what will fire up our

fight, flight, freeze, fawn responses the most is when there's some type of relational threat going on. That drive in humans will always win out over an important but not quite as important for survival drive, which is authentic expression of who you are.

And so the spelling bee, the ninth grade friend telling me that you'll never get a boyfriend if you fully shine as who you are. What was happening in my system, that anxiety was feeling, that worry I was feeling, that shrinking I was feeling, was my nervous system literally deciding, negotiating, well, do I want to belong, which is my biggest drive, or do I want to maintain who I really am and what my purpose is? And I think that...

I tried to do both. It was sort of like spinning your wheels, like hitting the gas and the brakes at the same time, where I did my best. I did it quietly. didn't talk about it very much. I hoped that nobody would find out. So I hoped that me doing my best would just not make it into the group chat, so to speak. We didn't have group chat back then, but I just didn't want people to know. And I was praised for that. I was called humble.

I was called someone who leads by example. And so it got reinforced from the outside that shine, yes, but don't shine too much. Shine quietly. Don't let people know. Don't own your talents. Don't talk about them. And your more important role here is to maintain relationships. So that's what I did.

this had become a well-worn pattern. However, I was pleasantly surprised when I got to college because I was surrounded by people who were absolutely incredible at school, at sports. And so all of my peers were just like me. And it was the first place I really remember feeling like I could be fully myself.

So for four years of my life, I had this wonderful formative experience where my friends didn't bat an eye, it didn't faze them when I did something incredible. And I just remember when I graduated from college sobbing when it was time for me to move home and go to physical therapy school.

I look back on that, and I think how even family members of mine were like, you're being dramatic. Yeah, OK, college is over. Move on. It's time to grow up. And they're not wrong about that. But at the same time, that response emotionally was one of great grief. Because whether I realized it or not, consciously,

My body knew, my soul knew that I was departing a place where I was fully at home. And once I got to physical therapy school, while I had wonderful friendships and still have wonderful friendships from that experience, the focus was very different. It was a much less formative experience of life. By the time I got to

a graduate program, the focus was on career. I didn't necessarily hold back on letting people see me excelling academically. And I did, I graduated first in my class. Once I entered the physical therapy profession, I...

continued to not hold back. So one really beautiful thing was that formative experience in college carried through with me into my professional career I really wasn't shy about owning that I was really good at what I did.

And I also wasn't shy about trying to grow my connections and getting mentors. And very, very quickly what happened was I saw that there was this

rank and file type of system in healthcare where there's all of these gurus at the top and all of these people underneath them who are working their butts off to try and become that guru or they just praise the guru non-stop. They become these worship symbols

I saw these people who were doing amazing things, who were teaching amazing things, who had done this amazing research, who had published books. And it woke up that part of me that was so passionate, that had so much zeal, that had so much curiosity and intensity. And I was like, amazing. it's not necessarily for me about being the guru or being in the spotlight, but how cool is it that they've taken their zeal and their passion and their craft all the way up?

to a level that their work is impacting people and it's trickling down into the lives of not only the clinicians who are learning the information from them, but also their patients. And it's changing lives. And that was something that always lived in me. That was this very intuitive part of me that was like, yeah, I wanna do that too.

and some of these gurus became mentors of mine or superiors in a professional setting, in a job. And I did whatever it took to stay in their good graces, to prove myself to them, to receive more mentoring from them because they were

praising me. They were like, my gosh, you're amazing. We want you to work for us, And in the process of

chasing after my passion and letting my zeal come to full life, I got tangled up in the guru complex, as I call it, where I was also pedestaling these people that I saw as peers, but they were also mentoring me. There was a little bit of a power dynamic there where they said jump, I said how high, and I would basically do whatever they said and think that they could do no evil. But slowly, as I began to learn from them, as I began to grow,

in my own expertise and my own craft and my own...

light as I started to, in the rank and file system of healthcare, get up on the same level as them, their tune changed. And then I would start to exceed them.

And suddenly these people started to mirror my peers from middle school and high school they would either shame me, try and bring me down for shining, throw me under the bus.

to colleagues, compete with me. And as I've told you, for me, it's never really been about competing with other people. It's always been a game of one. And so that was really, really confusing because on the one hand, these people said they were there to help me. But as soon as I was doing well, they did a 180.

And I know that...

This is common in a lot of fields. This isn't just a healthcare thing. But in healthcare, especially in physical therapy, and I've talked about this in other podcast episodes, your worthiness for belonging, your worthiness for being looked at or seen is based on your credentials. It's based on how well you're doing.

Your ability to teach a million courses, write books, your worthiness, your credibility, your guru status is based on all of these external things you produce. There's all of this proving of yourself, not only like in what you create, but also in your client care.

Do you have the most clients? Do you make the most money? Do you have the longest wait list? Do you?

And it's really easy to get this complex where it's all about all of these people looking up to you, your ability to heal and fix other people. And so for me, I was rising and getting put up on pedestals by my colleagues

while at the same time trying to be dragged off that pedestal by other colleagues. And so again, I was in a bind. I was like, well, these people are looking up to me. I've always wanted to make an impact and have that ripple effect, not only on people that I'm mentoring, but also their patients. And yet when I do that, people are trying to tear me down. So I was kind of back in that same place of trading

belonging for authentically shining and authentically expressing myself. And so fortunately, this is where the cancer part comes in. Cancer became a forced pause that got me out of that system.

And it got me to start really asking myself some questions about what are we doing here? Do I really want to keep participating in this rank and file pedestaling type system where If you get up on the pedestal and everyone's worshiping you, some people are going to try and tear you down who say they're there to support you, but they actually aren't.

And if you don't maintain the image of this all holier than thou person, if you decide to change, if you decide to be a little contrarian, if you decide to be authentically yourself and you're not what everyone needs you to be while you're on that pedestal, then you're going to fall off of it really easily. I see it happening all the time with colleagues. They get canceled. I think that

cancer gave me this opportunity to step out of that and go, I don't think I want to be a part of that. And that was in 2015, 10 years ago. And it's honestly taken me 10 years to get to this point where I feel comfortable saying that. It's taken me 10 years to wrap words around it and say, I don't want to be a part of that system. I did...

two podcast episodes about this earlier this year that were entitled Outgrowing the White Coat. So you can go listen to that a little bit further. But I think that for me, it really came down to this idea of I want to fully and authentically express myself. And when I do that, I don't want to have to leverage my relationships in exchange for that. It it didn't feel right to me.

I also don't want to have to be within a system just so can maintain friendships and relationships. when I was in my cancer experience, that's when I really started to see this from a 30,000 foot view because it gave me time to step out from it. But I was also in the system as a patient.

and I was looking up to and pedestalizing my own doctors. And so I had to not only look at how I was in the system as a provider, but also as a patient.

that's the part that really sets the stage of.

how my cancer experience was a gift in that it gave me the space to start looking at who is the real Julie and what parts of me from the life experiences and career experiences that have led to this point, do I want to bring along? Which ones are authentic? which ones became

a conformity corset that I was trying to squeeze myself into. I was creating identities for myself. I'd built this whole purpose around a community that I was a part of, a healthcare community. That's where all of my friends were. Many still are. And I had to reckon with who are the people who are showing up when I'm shining?

unapologetically and still there for me? And who are the people that are only there when I'm seemingly weaker than them? also, who are the people who seem to be pedestaling me, and not seeing their own greatness because they're worshiping mine? That's also not great. I didn't want to be a part of that. It's not that I didn't want to mentor people.

but my idea of mentoring is I'm helping you find your greatness, not making you addicted to mine.

I want to dig into how cancer changed how people showed up for me, or more specifically, how cancer changed how I saw people showing up for me.

everyone came. and this is such a beautiful thing about humans, everyone showed up. And everyone showed up out of the woodwork. I was getting cards, I was getting fuzzy socks, I was getting meals sent.

I was wrapped in this communal hug for a really long time. And it was a beautiful, beautiful thing. It felt so good to be held and seen by people checking in. Even people who in the past had tried to tear me down.

those same people when I was now weaker than or more vulnerable or sick they showed up and I noticed that and I just remember thinking and feeling like on the one hand grateful of course and on the other hand

⁓

There is this feeling of incredulousness that said, this is what it took for you to finally see me and act like you care.

Is that what it took?

And I think the underlying message I learned was I became worthy of community when I'm in pain. So I'd learned early on, I'm not worthy of being in community or being in relationship when I'm shining. And now I'm seeing really, really firsthand the opposite of that is, but you are worthy.

when you're in pain or you're sick or you're weaker or lesser than.

And that's a learned thing in our culture, that pain warrants connection. We gather around, we tend and befriend when we're hurting. And that's actually rooted in our DNA and It's part of the nervous system response, which is to reach out into community when your autonomic nervous system kicks in. So this is a good thing, I'm not saying it's bad that people show up.

when you're sick or hurting or vulnerable. This is a good thing.

The thing that goes wrong is when we're thriving, people create distance or they actually directly attack you.

And I saw that almost immediately after I got through cancer when there weren't any more things for me to post online to keep people updated. People were gone. And you know, I think that this is such an interesting thing when we think of it culturally, like a online culture where we've become really internet-based. And most of the people who were reaching out to me were doing so via the internet.

Back in the old days, they'd be making phone calls. We'd be actually having conversations face to face. There would be neighbors dropping by with casseroles. But now people were sending stuff via door dash. Or there was never an actual human exchange. And I think that that is abnormal for us. I think we're not wired for that. We are wired for connection. But even within that connection, it was very disconnected. And it's no secret to anyone out there that

Even when we're doing well, we're disconnected from each other. Ironically, we're so connected now, I can pick up my phone and message anyone across the world. And yet that very system makes us disconnected because we don't have to interact with each other live. And I think that what also happens is we're encouraged, yes, to share only our highlight reel via that online system.

and celebrate each other within that highlight reel. But is it real celebration? Like when you like someone's posts, are you genuinely celebrating them? Or is it just sort of like, oh, that's nice. Here, let me hit the heart button, then we're going to move on. And I even think more about the requisite times that we show up to celebrate people.

go to the greeting card section of the grocery store. was just there yesterday. And there is an entire aisle. Half of the aisle is birthday cards. About another quarter of it is get well soon cards. There's maybe a tiny sliver of cards that are for Mother's Day, Father's Day.

But there's very few cards that are there just because they're there, but you have to dig for them. There's very few congratulations cards. There's, of course, the baby section. You're having a baby, congratulations, all that kind of stuff. But it's these requisite times that we gather. But what about when someone's just generally doing well?

we somehow have stopped as a human species in so many parts of us only gathering when there's pain or these times when it's socially acceptable to gather and celebrate and be in community with each other. Those are just some examples. And if you have any others, I'd love to hear them from you. But I think that what's interesting is when we look at this from a health care provider perspective,

we are trained to diagnose and treat and intervene when there's pain, when there's a problem. We are so good at looking for

and diagnosing problems, sometimes to a fault. Sometimes we create problems that aren't there. And yet, when someone's doing well, they're discharged from our care. They're kicked out. We don't know what to do with them. In fact, many people in health care business would say, wow, you're not making me money. I want you to get out of here as soon as possible. And so with health care providers, we're not taught.

to hold the whole range of human experience, of human aliveness. We're not taught to hold all the way into fully alive, fully living, fully joyful, or all the way into fully broken, fully grieving, down in a puddle of life.

We're always trained to look for something to fix. So think about like preventative care. When you go and get blood work done from a preventative standpoint, let's just see what's here, let's screen. They're looking for a problem. Very rarely are you getting balloons and cards sent to you because your blood work was great. Isn't that weird? Shouldn't we be celebrating that?

that we're fully alive and doing great. I just wonder, it's like the concept of what you give attention to grows. And these are things I really started questioning, not only during cancer, but in the 10 year sense of, wow, we pay so much attention to problems that may not actually be problems, or maybe they are. Or we're always looking for something to fix. We're always looking for a reason to show up for people.

but we don't really super celebrate when people are just status quo or doing great. But what if we gave our attention to that? Just being status quo or doing great? Would it grow in our world? It's kind of a rhetorical question, but I think we all know the answer to it.

I really started to notice this in the last 10 years. I couldn't unsee it. It's like, once you look behind the curtain, you can't unsee it again. I still had this purpose, but deeper questions emerged for me as a provider, as a coach, as someone who's guiding people. Who am I when someone's not putting me on a pedestal to solve their problem or their crisis for them?

And as I moved into the coaching world, that's exactly the question I had to ask because coaching, when done correctly, is putting the client into the driver's seat to solve their own problems. It's not that I don't help people solve problems. It's that they're the one who has all of the wisdom within them or the resources around them to do that. It's not my job.

to be the savior, the healer, the fixer, the answer giver, any of that for them. And so the first thing I had to really break out of was my own role in creating that kind of system in the work I was doing for people. I also in 10 years have looked at being on the receiving end of that as a patient and only choosing providers who let me be in the driver's seat as well, Who trust that I have inherent wisdom in a...

autonomous body agency type way where I'm asking them for input, but I'm making decisions for myself based on their input, not because of their input. And I also looked around at it outside of the healthcare world in friendship and community relationships and even colleague relationships on the patterns and how they showed up.

noticing how people would ghost me unless I was seemingly more vulnerable than them in some way. And it looked like people wanting to sell me something or quote unquote friends who just wanted to network with me so I would support their business or they could get something from me or buy something from me. And of course continuing to be pedestalized by people.

expecting me to be perfect or flawless or infallible instead of being fully seen as the human that I am and was. And I think that's part of that piece of full aliveness,

It's being imperfect. It's messing up. It's sending out emails with typos in them. It's producing a podcast episode that has a lot of glitches in it, which one of my last ones did, It's just being human and making that okay and making humanness great again. But part of humanness is that full experience at the extremes as well, that full joy, that fully living

and also the full depths of it. And I've seen time and time again how much people either show up for you only when you're in the depths or when you're in the highest heights, but when you're in the highest heights, they're doing it to try and get something from you.

or to try and bring you down. And so...

I don't think this is personal. I think it's cultural conditioning. I think that we are taught so early to transaction bond with each other, to basically bond. So we're using that bonding urge that we have as humans to get something, to make this a useful relationship for us. Instead of having relationships based on presence and connection and

knowing that we have differences and that's okay and we can learn from each other.

And I just really, really started to notice that I wanted people who could co-regulate with me in joy and in pain and in boredom. I wanted people who would clap when I said, hey, you know what? I'm not going to go to the thing this weekend because I think it's going to make me more tired than I want to be.

I wanted people who would geek out with me when something amazing happened in my life. I wanted people who wouldn't somehow only slide into my DMs or text messages when I posted about being sick or injured or my dog was struggling or whatever it was. I wanted people who would laugh at my geeky, nerdy reels

I wanted people who would read my long ass blog posts. And I have found these people slowly but surely, but I have kissed a lot of frogs in the process. And that's okay, that's part of life. But I think that now what I really know as I continue to pursue this path of following my desire and being fully alive and celebrating being fully myself

is that we live in a culture where it's not always celebrated to be radically and fully alive, radically and fully in your most authentic expression of yourself, because it's scary. Because there is...

such a stigma about fully shining. I'm actually going to read this It's a quote by Marianne Williamson, one of my favorite quotes that I think illustrates this really well.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, talented, gorgeous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. You're playing small.

doesn't serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same.

As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

In 10 years since cancer, and honestly in 30 years since being bullied in the fourth grade, I've learned many, many times that people trying to bring me down or bring other people down when they're fully alive and fully expressed as themselves and shining is not about the person who's shining. It's not about the person in the spotlight.

their behavior is because of their own fear of shining, their own fear of being fully expressed. Because why? Because when you fully express, it might affect your sense of belonging in whatever group or groups you belong to, your family, your religion, your people. Because our greatest human drive is for belonging. And we will unconsciously almost always trade being

fully ourselves for belonging. Even if we compromise being ourselves, even if we squeeze ourselves into what I call the conformity corset, that is just human nature. That's a beautiful thing about human nature because belonging is very important for us to get our needs met, both emotionally and physically. We have to be part of a tribe. That's just how we're wired. That's what helps our bodies be the most healthy. And I saw this time and time again throughout my life. I saw it.

really pronounced during cancer. And honestly, one of the biggest lessons was I'm not going to go back to that. I'm not going to go back to a way of being,

where I have to constantly trade in who I am and what my most beautiful way of operating in the world, my purpose is so that I can belong.

I also have really learned that my purpose doesn't have to dictate my belonging, that I can have friends in different professions. I can have friends who do nothing similar to what I do. For so much of my life, my friends were school friends, swim friends, PT friends, healthcare friends who got it because that's where I spend most of my time and that's not a wrong thing or a bad thing. But it's also really, really fun to be seen and held and supported by people who aren't.

in those spaces because they see you for you and not necessarily for your purpose, for your job, for your career. The other thing that's really, really, I think, beautiful from this quote that I see and I've learned myself and I help a lot of clients with is actually bringing yourself off the pedestals that you didn't necessarily put yourself on, but you ended up on because you are shining and fully expressing. And that can be a really, really difficult

process because obviously it might be affecting your livelihood. People might be buying courses from you or books from you. It might be your reputation that's at stake. Again, it's your relational bond to people that might be at stake here. And people who pedestalize you, as I mentioned earlier, might unconsciously be doing so because they're afraid of their

own power, their own light, their own strength. And so they look at you as this sort of like guru, God complex person to worship, and they're missing out on their own strength. One of my favorite types of relationships that I've built in my friendships, but also in the people I mentor, but also the people who mentor me is we see each other's greatness

as encouragement for each other, as something that is inspiring, as, I see your light, and that helps me see mine. And so what I declare is It is an act of resistance. It is an act of rebellion. It is counter-cultural to fully own your aliveness, your full expression, who you really, really, really are.

because it might cost you. And I think we all know that deep down. And I think that we've also been so programmed from the self-help world to tell us that we shouldn't care what our people think. But I think that's really terrible advice because it's basically telling you to go against your own nature, which is to care.

what your people think so that you belong. And it's not as easy as just saying, I'm going to do what I want. I'm going to be who I want because your nervous system is still going to rev up every time you do that. And so there's a slow titrated way to start stepping into who you really are. Start unlacing that corset, start stepping into your full aliveness, all while creating or maintaining relationships.

that actually fully support you in that aliveness and while grieving and letting go of relationships that don't. So one of the biggest things that I love to help people do is that exact process right there. It's the process that I've been going through, honestly, for 30 years since being bullied in fourth grade. but it's also the process I love to help clients go through, especially women in healthcare who have found themselves in this same bind.

not only in your healthcare roles, but also in your personal life, in your families. maybe you're ready for something else, but taking yourself out of those roles, responsibilities, the pedestals you're on might compromise you, not only like your livelihood, your financial wellbeing, but also who.

is actually supporting you. So thank you for coming to this podcast episode. think it's a really important conversation.

offering permission to anyone out there who's listening, who is having these little whispers in your heart, in your soul that say, this is not okay. it's not okay when people try and bring me down when I'm succeeding. It's not okay when people only show up for me when I'm seemingly more vulnerable than them. That sucks. And I think we're taught, well, you should be grateful that people are showing up for you at all.

or you should just be grateful for your accomplishments and people trying to bring you down is them just being jealous. And so you should just ignore that. But I think it's okay to push back against it. I think it's okay to call it out. I think it's okay to say, no, I'm actually not gonna just settle and just be grateful. I'm also not going to accept that people just show up when I'm perceivably more vulnerable than them.

I don't want that anymore. want people who show up for all of me all the time and are ready to go all in. So if that's you, I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to hear your thoughts. I'd love to hear your stories. Please reach out to me. My DMs on Instagram especially are always open. I will absolutely respond to you. And you can shoot me an email. If you're not on my email list, make sure to go to my website or my Instagram and you can subscribe to my email list where I send out.

little bit more personal writing and always, always updates on when the podcast has come out. All right. Thank you for listening and I will see you in the next episode.