🎙️ Episode 3: The Art of Surrender - How Chronic Pain Taught Me to Let Go

In this episode of Behind the Cusp, I’m sharing a deeply personal chapter of my healing journey — living with chronic back pain, undergoing surgery, and the powerful lessons I learned about surrender along the way.

I open up about what it really means to let go of control, soften into trust, and embrace the divine feminine energy of flow and receptivity to return to who we really are. This isn’t just a story about pain — it’s about the transformation that happens when we stop resisting and start accepting where we are.

If you’re in a season of uncertainty, burnout, or struggle — this episode is a gentle invitation to pause, breathe, and surrender.

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Transcript

0:01

Welcome to Behind the Cusp, a podcast diving deep into the layers of self-growth, inner work, and transformation. I'm your host, Marissa Meade, and after 15 years as a digital creator, I'm sharing my raw unfiltered journey of healing and self-discovery to walk alongside you in yours. Together we'll dive deep into the conversations that matter most. Uncovering what it means to truly evolve from the inside out. This is where you elevate into transformation. So take a breath, settle in, and let's begin.

Marissa: 0:47

Hello my friends. We are back for episode three and I'm so excited to share this week's topic with you all. This is something that is near and dear to my heart, has been very transformational for me personally in the last two years, I would say. And I believe it is something that is kind of rising, if you will, in the energetic shifts that we're really experiencing as an overall collective of human beings. And so I can't wait to dive in to this topic if you don't have a notebook or something handy. My friend, Amanda actually left a review on the podcast last week and she was like, you're gonna wanna listen with a notebook in hand. And I appreciate that so much. I am such a notebook girl, such a journal girl. Actually have my journal right here next to me.'cause there were just some notes that I had made earlier in the week and last week with one of my friends when we were just kind of having a really good heart to heart session together last week. And, I pull out my notebook and I'm taking notes and sharing and writing and all that that is a practice that is so powerful and it's something that I highly recommend doing if you don't already journaling, writing your thoughts. And you don't need to sit down and do that for 37 minutes a day if it's five minutes. And all you can do or all you can find in your day if you are really have really full days with kids or something, or just work or life and all these things in general, five minutes is so good to just really connect with yourself. And I highly recommend doing that in the morning. But anyway, I would highly recommend today grabbing your journal or maybe if you're on a walk or something, have your notes app ready where you can write a few things down. I really feel like this is a transformational concept and thing that we need in our lives, and that is the art of surrender. So before I dive in and talk about surrender,'cause you're probably like, what the heck? All I think about is surrender is like someone surrendering in a battle or whatever, and we are definitely not even going to go near anything like that at all. But we're going to really talk about surrender and how it is a deeply feminine concept. And we as women are feminine, right? That's our primary, that is our energy, if you will. And so before I dive in and talk about surrender, I kind of wanna set the foundation for you of where I was at in my life before surrender became something that I was aware of. And this is, I think, something that a lot of you will relate to, especially if you are an entrepreneur or a business owner or something of that nature. So from the outside looking in, I pretty much had checked all the boxes, career and personal life. Everything was thriving. I was smashing my goals in my business. I had just come off like literally the highest year income wise that I had ever had., I had purchased a home in Connecticut. I was. Then establishing a second home here in Naples. And I was traveling all over the world. I had been to Bali and Morocco in Spain, like all in these very short amount of time. And then I had met someone that I was developing real feelings for very quickly after just a really long season of singleness, which I would love to dive into.'cause I think singleness is something, well, it's something that we're gonna dive into soon here. But anyway, from the outside it looked like I had all the things right, like checking all these boxes, if you will. But truthfully, something kind of always felt off. And again, I was really aware of the nudges and the inner pulling that I had kind of relating back to the first episode, I was searching for something deeper. And in a more fulfilled and aligned way, within my life. My work had made me very successful, but it wasn't leaving me fulfilled at the end of the day because I knew I was called to more and I felt like I spent my days on a hamster wheel. I was also constantly burnt out and feeling drained like I was drowning, barely staying afloat, juggling 9,000 different things and frisbees in the air kind of thing. And never felt like at the end of the day I was actually accomplishing anything, even though my days maybe filled with a ton of things. And do you know what the first cause of burnout is? It's not hustling and doing and having a really full schedule and go, go, go and all that. It's actually misalignment, which is really interesting because it's probably not something most of us have ever realized or heard before. However, this was a concept I wasn't really even aware of at the time. And now looking back through this season of life, I have learned this concept and I'm still learning daily because I don't think we ever fully arrived to a state of fully understanding and grasping. We are beings that are constantly learning, growing, evolving, and changing based on our life and experiences and circumstances and all these things. But you get the picture. So today we're going to dive into unpacking the power of surrender and aligning with who we really are. Especially as true feminine beings. Now, if you're a guy and you are listening to this episode, because I actually know I have a few guy listeners, and first of all, I just want to shout you guys out and say thank you so much. Whether you are friends, I know my boyfriend listens, I have some family members. I really appreciate you and your support, but I also appreciate your desire to even learn maybe about these things that I think are very, really valuable for men to also learn and know about because it helps us to not just understand ourselves, but to understand other people. So on that note, we're going to go back a little bit, but I don't wanna go back too far for time sake. And I'm just gonna paraphrase and basically say all of my twenties, I was struggling with a back issue and it was rooted, or I thought it was rooted in me hurting, getting an injury in my lower back in my early twenties, I had slipped a disc, had severe nerve compression on both sides of my body, several herniated, like severe herniated discs. And I was on disability from work. At the time I was on bedrest for six months. I couldn't lift anything, you know, I was questioning if I'd be ever to be able to run again. I healed from that, but I would have flareups every like six or months or so, or they would be instigated by a very emotional time in my life. So if there was something going on, like for example, my engagement ending, I was experiencing a lot of issues within my physical body at the time because our emotions manifest physically in our body. That's a topic for another episode, but I kind of wanted to just give you guys the picture that like this was something I was struggling with for years and years and years for pretty much half my life leading up to this point in 2023. So my back pain that I had starting in 2023, I figured it would just be like the rest of the times and after like a few weeks it would kind of subside, but that's not what happened this time. It actually just kept getting progressively worse and I did all the things that I normally do To support myself through the couple weeks when I'd have a flare up and nothing was really working and the pain was just getting worse to the point where I was feeling it 24 7 and it was really painful and nagging and, it was disrupting my daily life. Fast forward to November of 2023, I was in such pain that. It was like beyond bearable. I had gone to the er, I had gotten cortisone shots, steroid, like epidural injections. I was on nerve blockers. I was trying topical things. I was literally doing everything that I could. I even tried taking hydrocodine because I was that desperate. Now if you know me, you know, I am not someone who just runs to a bottle of medicine for anything. I like to find the root issue, the root cause, support myself holistically in any way, and then turn to a medication if and when it's necessary, because I do believe that it is necessary in certain instances. But nothing that I was doing worked or even put a dent in the pain, and I was honestly to a point where I was desperate. It was also during the busiest time of my work season, like Q4 with brands and holiday and projects and all of that is so involved. It is high demand, it is fast-paced. There is so much happening, and I was still like performing at my top level during all of this. Like I would film a project and crawl into bed like nearly in tears after, because I was in so much pain, like filming a reel or a story or whatever. So by January I had made the trek back to Naples and started seeing a new doctor with kind of a concept I had never really been exposed to. And this was when I discovered that I had a severe scoliosis, not just like vertically, but also within my spine where it was literally physically twisting, like if you were taking a rag in the kitchen and twisting it to wring out the water. That's what my spine was doing, along with shifting sideways. So I was having a turn of my spine while it was going sideways and then additionally, discovered that I also had no curve in my lower lumbar. And you need the curve to alleviate the pressure on your discs. That's something that we're all like essentially born with. And I don't know if I was never born with it or developed it or whatever in my life, but I have no curve. I have a 89 degree angle, which if you know what a 90 degree angle looks like, that is straight up and down and perpendicular. And your actual curve, I think is supposed to be in the high teens. So that's how far removed I was from a curve in my lower back. So I discovered all of this and realized that is why I was really experiencing increased issues in pain in my back as a 20 and early 30-year-old, I got a back brace to really start supporting my scoliosis and to essentially realign my spine. So let me pause here and say my body was going through a physical realignment during this time, literally my bones were being moved into the correct place with the help of this back brace. And I actually, within about three to four weeks, started seeing a allievement of the pain. And then experienced like about two weeks where I had no pain and I was like, oh my God, this worked, this fixed. Things are fine. You know, I'm back to normal. I just need to wear this brace, continue to wear it. And I was wearing the brace 6, 7, 8 hours a day. Some nights I was even sleeping in it. And then all of a sudden one day it just came rushing back. The intensity was the same that it had been before. And to kind of put things into perspective for you, like I was pretty much unable to do anything within 10 seconds of standing, I was in like excruciating pain. And like I said before, no medications, pain things, nerve blockers, whatever would even alleviate any of it. And so this was like. A 37 level pain. You know, like if, if you have ever experienced any type of intense pain, you probably know, but when this came rushing back in April, I felt strongly that I needed to kind of explore a surgical option. And this is not something that I wanted to do, originally, but I felt led to do this. And so I had some conversations with the team that I was seeing with my back brace and asked'em if they had any recommendations because I also did not wanna do any type of spinal fusion. I don't really, at this point in my life, believe in that, for lack of better words, and didn't believe that that was the answer for me. And thankfully, they had someone that could do some other things surgically, and that's exactly what we did. So in May I was connected with the surgery center within two weeks, had an appointment scheduled because they had a cancellation miraculously, and I was able to get in all of the paperwork, everything done, and my surgery was only a couple weeks away from when I was originally connected with my surgeon's office. And through this whole process, I felt very led to this surgeon. If I dove in and told you guys each of the details about how these doors opened so quickly and the timing of phone calls and things like that, it was so divine in the timing and alignment of all of this. I knew that this was the right step for me to have this surgery, and I was at total peace even going into the surgery the day of the surgery. And it was the best decision probably, that I could have made for my body from a physical standpoint. But today I really want to go into more of the emotional and mental transformation that was taking place here. Painting the picture of the physical aspect is really key because it's important to understand the place that I was in, unable to move, spent my days pretty much on the couch. If I went from my bed to the couch, to the bathroom, back to the couch, that was pretty much the extent of the movement of my days or going to a doctor's appointment and my boyfriend would bring me because I couldn't really drive There were days where the pain was definitely worse than others, and what I essentially found out was my disc was so severed and crushed because of the weight of my spine collapsing down onto it that two of my lower lumbar discs were so crushed that the disc had been separated from the nucleus so long that it was basically dried out in calcified chunks and they were all sitting on my spinal cord, and this is what was causing all of the pain that I was in. So there was no relief because these pieces were so hard and calcified and dried out that they couldn't like float around or bounce around anymore, if you will. It had basically come to a point in my life where they were sedentary and stuck on my spinal cord, and the only way to really fix this was the surgery. So my life was pretty much spent, like I said, on the couch, unable to move. I was essentially stripped of all of the things that I love and enjoy because I couldn't move. You know, that meant I couldn't go outside, I couldn't work out, I couldn't see friends, I couldn't go do things. And there were times where I would muster up enough like energy and just be like, okay, I'm gonna deal with the pain and kind of go here or there, but it would exhaust me for days. and so from a physical standpoint, this is kind of where I was at and everything that I was going through, but in that pain, I found something I never would've expected. And that was the invitation to surrender. I am a strong, independent woman. I've taken care of myself for many years now as an adult. I've built my own life around me. I've built businesses. And I've done all of this essentially on my own. I'm the oldest daughter. I'm the oldest granddaughter. And so what I'm saying here is that a strong pillar of my life has been taking care of not only myself, but also everyone else. And even if that was from kind of like a mental standpoint or perspective, there was always this kind of responsibility that felt like it was on my shoulders. And so at the end of the day, it was like, who takes care of me? Well, me, of course, I'm taking care of everyone else and I take care of myself, you know? during this time when I was going through all of this physical pain. I had to learn something that I never really had to learn before, and that was to fully accept and receive the love and care I needed from other people. I was allowing myself to be taken care of and reliant on someone else. In this instance, it was my boyfriend primarily because, you know, he was the one that was around and able to within like his work schedule and stuff too, to be taking care of me or taking me to appointments. And there were some days where I couldn't even get up off the shower floor to like wash my own hair and this man was literally washing and conditioning my hair for me. You know, I saw a picture of sacrificial, unconditional, true love, and at the same time saw myself in a place of fully being present and receiving that love. As a woman, so much of being in a healthy relationship is allowing yourself to receive from your man. And I'm not just talking about flowers and you know, fun dates and fun things and all of that, but I'm talking about truly sitting back and receiving who he is as a man in his leadership, in his masculinity. And when you move into flow, you allow him to move into his own masculine role where you are able to feel at rest and secure in your relationship. And whether I realized it or not, this is what was happening in this process for me, from my relationship standpoint. It was also interesting that I had just met this man like six months before all of this, and within a few weeks of meeting him, I knew things were definitely different. But it was like the universe aligned this to happen to me from a physical standpoint, almost right away in our relationship because it needed to set the tone for our relationship. It was like the last piece in the puzzle, if you will, of my own healing journey to be fully present and ready to receive what this relationship had for me. And so that leads me up to what I experienced in this season of pain was something that I never expected, and that was the invitation to surrender. So leading up to this invitation to surrender, there's so many emotions that are happening, right? I want you to think about where you are at in life. What is your biggest hurdle right now? Where are you feeling misalignment? Where are you feeling unrest or not at peace? Or are you struggling with something emotionally or physically or health wise or mental wise, or anything? Whatever it is. Take a second and pinpoint what that is, and as we walk through the rest of this episode, think about that at the forefront as we are talking about the topic of surrender. There's so many emotions evolved in where you are at when you're going through something of a strong, intense nature. For me, I was feeling so many different layers of things like frustration, fear, grief, and confusion. There was frustration coming from questions like, why is this happening to me? I'm too young for this. No one else my age is going through this, frustration with why my body and what's wrong with me, and things like that. Then it would move into fear. What if this never goes away? What if I'm like this forever? What if I'm in pain for the rest of my life? What if I can't ever walk or work out again or swim in the ocean or whatever? Then it would move into grief and feeling bad and sad and almost sorry for myself in ways that I was like grieving the life that I felt like I had just had when I was so unaware and carefree, or maybe even taking my own life for granted, I was grieving that I wasn't able to enjoy the things that I love. Walking and moving my body and going to the beach and just up and leaving and doing whatever whenever I wanted. Spending time with friends, traveling, you name it. And then that would move into confusion. What is really happening right now? Why can't I find answers? What is going on in my body? Is there something I'm doing? Is there, you know, there was so much confusion around all of it. Why doesn't anyone know what's going on with me? And so as I was kind of shifting through all of these emotional layers, I came to a point where I had to let go and move from resistance, all of those emotional layers essentially were resistance within me, resistance to what was happening, and resistance to the process that I was in. And when I moved from resistance into acceptance, this is where things shifted. And I'm not saying that you have to accept your circumstances as like, okay, oh, well this is where I'm at. This sucks I give up. That's not acceptance. Acceptance is more acknowledgement. Acceptance is meeting reality without resistance. It's not giving up. It's not letting go in the sense of like you're just, oh, whatever happens. Oh, well, this sucks. It's not a negative thing. Acceptance is the moment you stop fighting what is happening, not because you're giving up, but because you're choosing peace over pressure or peace over confusion. It's a quiet, powerful surrender and decision to say, this is where I am right now, and that is okay. Acceptance doesn't mean that you love the situation you're in or that you want to stay in it forever. It simply means that you are no longer wasting energy, mind, body, and soul, denying, avoiding, or judging something. And that I think is really key right there. That last thing is judging. Are we judging ourselves for the place we are in? And so when we are in this place of acceptance, true change and healing can finally begin. So once we move out of resistance and denying and judging and avoiding and into acceptance, choosing peace and acknowledging where we're at, we move into a place where true change and healing can begin. Isn't that so beautiful? That is such a beautiful concept This is the space that I was moving into during all of those months. I just documented more of the physical process that I was going through, but in all of those months and as things were unfolding for me physically from an emotional standpoint, this is what I was learning. I was softening into where I was at in that season. It was uncomfortable and it was uncertain, but I was allowing the moment to be what it was without needing to fix it first. And that is exactly where the power returned. And not in a control kind of way, but more in a clarity kind of way. I would say this was happening around the time of like March April, where I had been wearing the back brace and things were going great and I was pain-free for that couple of weeks and was like, oh my God, finally I have an answer. Finally, whatever. And then I was thrust back into the pain and that is when I was like, what the heck is going on? And at that moment, that's exactly where the shift occurred because I realized before I was trying to do, do, do all of the things to find the answers, to do the right things, to check the boxes the doctors were saying and all of this, and I moved out of that into a really. Surrendered intuitive place. I had to allow myself to be held, supported, and healed and to really intuitively move forward with what I felt like was the right thing for me to do. Not because someone else was telling me what to do. In this process, I was learning to be in flow with my body and the true essence of who I am as a human being. We oftentimes lose sight of who we really are, we are human beings, not human doings. I heard this quote recently, I think on a podcast that I was listening to and I don't remember which one it was, otherwise I would give it credit. But it's really struck a chord with me and I wanted to share it in today's episode because it felt so aligned, if you will, with this concept of surrender. We. Call ourselves human beings, but we really identify as human doings and we need to get back to that place of human being. We are beings, not doings, we're not defined by the things that we do. And in this process when I was literally flat on my back on the couch, unable to move, I was learning that it was okay to not constantly be doing, and instead just being existing, allowing and receiving. also, I don't think I mentioned this before, but I had chosen to take a step back from work at this point because there wasn't any way that I could keep up with the demand of brand projects and collaborations and being present on, social media and producing content and everything every day. I didn't have the capacity for that and. Essentially was on health leave, which as a business owner, you're not getting paid during that. That was, obviously a huge factor, the financial aspect of things. And I was also spending so much money on doctors and the back brace and eventually the surgery and all of that, which also to that point, as someone who is self-employed, the insurance aspect is another side of it. So through all of this, there was also the financial aspect and like in the back of my head, how long can I go without working? You know? That was an aside, uh, that I forgot to mention earlier, but in a time when I was experiencing the most pain. I also healed the most, and this sounds so insane and almost like counterintuitive, if you will, but I was truly given the space to heal the parts of me that were in constant seeking of perfection and proving and performing and pressure, whether that was coming from me or outside things, it didn't really matter because I came to a place where I had to let all of it go. I had to release the emotions and sit in the exact place I was at. I was literally stripped of everything and unable to move where I had to face this within myself. And this created space obviously because I was pushed away from everything and everyone, and it allowed me to really connect with myself. I surrender to the painful process I was in. And when I did things began to move, like I said before the doors open, that you wouldn't believe for the alignment of the surgery and for the surgery and the day, and the doctor, and all of those things. Because I wasn't trying to do and dissect and figure out or fix, I simply just stood back, went inward, followed the nudges, and received what was flowing to me because I had moved from resistance into acceptance. And ironically, I also felt the most myself from a soul standpoint that I had in a really long time, or maybe even ever. My energy, the essence. Who I really was, wasn't being snuffed or smothered and wasn't being constantly poured out the drain or not able to shine. even though I was in this space of intense physical pain, I felt the most at peace from. An internal and spiritual and mental place that I had ever felt. And it's interesting how the dichotomy of those two could coexist. let's pause really quick right here, and I want you to go back and think about that situation, where you're at in life, whatever that you identified a few minutes ago, and bring that to now what we've just talked about in the last, like five or 10 minutes here of moving from resistance into acceptance. And what are ways that you are forcing or pushing or trying to control or not receiving right now within that circumstance or situation? And how can you. Step back and move into a state of more flow and into being instead of doing within this thing. Now when I say moving into more flow, you may be like, what the heck does that mean? And I totally understand because I was in that exact place. If somebody just looked at me and was like, we'll move into flow, Two or three years ago, I would've looked at them like they had 87 heads. so I'm gonna take a few minutes and share about what moving into flow really looks like, because I think it's something that's really foreign and kind of really disconnected for us in our society. And that's not really at fault of us. It's just the environment and what we are growing up in, which is a very real thing. But we can become more aware and move into a different place if we know. And I think that's something that I wanna point out, that this entire situation created within me was awareness. Awareness of myself, awareness what I was doing, awareness of the ways and things that I was being. And here maybe there's an awareness that's going to be created within who you are or how you're operating and how you can move out of that into a different place. Before surrender and flow, were very, foreign concepts to me, but at the basic level, they are less doing, more being and trusting and not forcing. let me relate it to the situation that I was going through. It wasn't just about my back, my back was the physical tool to bring awareness to how I was doing life. It was the mirror that allowed me to see myself. It showed me how I was trying to control every part of my life. And the experience that I had with my back forced me to release everything because I had to. I was left with no other choice. I was physically forced to sit back and let go. And in that process, I learned the most valuable lesson that surrendering to who we are, crafts the most beautiful version of us because we are allowed to just be ourselves. Before all of this even happened, I didn't understand what true feminine essence energy and principles even were. Until I hit that point and my body essentially forced me to slow down for basically my entire life. I guess, as far as I back, I can remember I was in a constant state of doing, pushing through pain, powering through deadlines, taking on way more than I could handle or chew, if you will, trying to hold everything together. But the more I tried to control all of these things, the more disconnected I felt from my inner self. And what I mean by that is from my own body, from my own peace, from my own inner knowing. And you can operate in that state for as long as you want, but you're only going to zap yourself from your own creativity, nervous system, all of the things. But when the pain that I was in became louder than my willpower, which actually happened pretty quickly, I realized that I couldn't force my way into healing. There was nothing that I could do that was going to fix everything. there was definitely a few months of resistance or me trying to figure it out. And that's kind of where I had shared before about the emotions of resistance into acceptance, because I was in that transition of softening into receiving. And that's when I began to understand the feminine energy that I needed to move into. And not it as a concept or something woowoo or far off, but as who I needed to be as a woman. And that was someone who was receptive and soft and in flow. Because when you do that, you become magnetic. You start to attract the right things to you. You're not chasing things, you are attracting them. And through the pain that I went through, I was invited to be in that space. It was forcing me to do nothing, and then allowing me to have a fresh slate, if you will, to move forward into a space where slowing down didn't feel like doing nothing. Instead, it felt like a necessity and sacred practice that I needed. Letting go didn't become a weakness. I saw it as wisdom, and that's really when everything started to shift for me. I can even look back at pictures of myself during that time, and it was almost like I had this soft, serene, glowing kind of countenance, even though I was in this intense physical pain because I was shifting into a place of true surrendered peace on the inside. This might seem literally impossible because the world that we live in is so structured and based on schedules and times. I mean, our days are like that. Our days are literally structured into Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, you know, like into a week, into hours, into minutes. All of these things. We are surrounded by quote unquote structure routines and schedules and calendars and everything. And of course there's a time and a place for this, and some of that is practicality. When you really get in tune with who you are, you are able to create a reality that you crave and need within yourself. let me tell you what that looks like, because you're probably like, well, I don't know what that looks like because that was the place that I was in. I'm like, it didn't really make sense. Living in flow, what does that look like? So now living in flow means that you feel like you stop swimming upstream. You're not going against the current because you're not going against yourself. Now, for example, I create from a place of inspiration instead of pressure. I don't force myself to produce just to keep up. And these two things, specifically in world that I'm in with, I hate the words influencing and even content creator at this point because they don't really feel aligned for me. I think for a while I have felt disconnected from like what my title even is because it has changed so much over the years. You know, like blogger and digital creator and all of these things, and none of them really even feel right. I'm like, I don't even know exactly what I do. I am. Just living in flow. That's, I guess, what I need to start telling people that I do. But anyway it's really hard to not just produce, to keep up in my industry, you know, everyone is creating insane amounts of content sharing every single sale, 9,000 new graphics, everything. If you ask those people that are close to me, even my assistant or even my managers, I'm like, I don't really care. Not in a way that's like flippant, but I'm like, I don't care to keep up with all of that because it doesn't feel aligned for me and it doesn't feel right. And I will say absolutely, before I was, and I, it was like I was living on a hamster wheel, but now. I don't do that. I'm not creating just because I have to keep up or because there's pressure or a time of year or a sale or whatever. I do it if I want to. I'm trusting the timing of what wants to come through me. And so if there's certain days where I'm able to just like create, create, create, I move in that flow days that I'm not, I don't, because when you force, you're immediately stepping outside of who you are. So that involves listening to our bodies in a way that maybe we never did before. If I feel tired right now, I rest. If I feel like I need to be outside, I get outside. If I feel resistance toward something, someone, a project, a deadline, I readjust. I. I pause and I check in and ask myself why and where is this coming from? Is this because this doesn't feel right for today? Is this because this project is not right for me? I'm kind of relating a lot of this to work, because I think a lot of my identity is mushed into my work because I'm sharing my life online, right? And so me and everything I do becomes part of my work and everything I do there. And there's blurred lines in some ways. And so having boundaries is really important. You might have to take this concept and apply it into whatever area you're in, but what ways are you forcing something? Are, is it in a relationship and you're not listening to your body and how you feel? And just uncomfortable, is it in you maybe your own workplace? Is it within a friendship? Is it within a place that you go? Is it within a store that you shop at? It can literally be anything like on a large scale like that. Or maybe it can even be this, food right now doesn't feel right. You can apply this to pretty much anything. So if you feel resistance, pause, check in, ask yourself why. I personally do not work well in the morning and I'm most creative and tuned in in the afternoon for the hours of 12 ish to four. That's when I can work and sit down and bang things out. And so I listen to that. I'm not trying to wake up and hit the ground running at like night or nine or 10:00 AM because it just doesn't work. And I end up burning out for that day again, burning out because I'm misaligned. For me, going back to what we kind of established in the beginning, honoring your energy, honoring your essence, honoring you and who you are does not mean you are falling behind. It actually makes you more powerful because you are aligned with you. So now when challenges come up, I'm not immediately jumping into fix it mode. I take a breath, I get still. I ask myself, okay, what's the lesson here? What am I being shown? Can I even control this? Newsflash? The answer is always no. I've traded in the reacting for responding and that has created so much more peace, not only for me, but for those around me. I have a funny story that I'm gonna kind of interject here'cause it's come up and I've thought about it three times in the last minute, and so that is a clear indication that I need to share it. Again, moving in flow here, this wasn't in my notes for this episode, but perfect example here in something I'm gonna share. We were on a ski trip a couple months ago with friends and I had brought my computer along to just get some work done while I was there. And I don't even know why because I ended up using it like twice. But the last night we were at the house in Colorado. I had had my computer out that day and left it on the bed open. And one of our friends came running into the room and jumped and belly flopped onto the bed. And I wasn't in there, but my boyfriend was. And he was like, oh, be careful. Like Marissa's computer's on there. Well, I don't know, five, 10 minutes later I come in, I get in bed and I go to grab my computer to put it away. And I look at it and I'm like, why does it look weird? And I opened it up and the screen is just filled with purple and green and blue lines all over the place. And I was like, uh, what happened to my computer? And my boyfriend was like, um, Austen jumped on it essentially. Sorry, Austen, and love you. It's okay. what happened next though is really, really key here, because I think this is a moment where I witnessed my own growth. Because your initial reaction or your initial thought is to react in this kind of situation, right? Freak out, oh my god, what the heck? How dare you? I can't believe this. Screaming, crying, mad. You know, this is$2,000 computer, whatever. In that moment, I literally closed the computer and I put it to the side and I took a deep breath. And I remember my boyfriend was like, I didn't do it, and asking me questions and I was like, I just need a minute. Just give me a minute. Let me have a minute here I was and I took a deep breath. And what was going on in those few seconds was, there's no reason to get mad. There's nothing you can do about it. Now it's going to be okay. You can get a new computer. All of these kind of thought processes were going through my head and I was like, okay, I can either go get mad and, cause a problem with a friend or just figure it out and deal with it because it's not worth it. And that's exactly what happened. But the reason why I shared that is because that is an exact moment where I just stepped back out of the reactive and controlling kind of mindset and state and into a place of responding instead of reacting. And like I said before, that created so much more peace for me because I wasn't getting riled up in my emotions and reactions and riling up my friends and the whole house and all of these things in that. So it was creating peace not only for me, but for everyone around me and my computer. I ended up getting a new one and everything's fine, and it worked out great. So anyway, let's move back into the episode here. So, living in flow, it is not about having no structure or routine or calendar. It's about having the inner trust that you can move forward with life and not against it. It means living in alignment where your inner world and your outer actions move in harmony instead of friction. Remember before where I said like, if I really need to get outside, I get outside. If you feel something internally, I need to do this today, or my body's feeling pulled to this, or whatever, and you're constantly moving against that, then your body is going to pick up on that, and you're going to feel friction within yourself. And that's only gonna create further compounded issues. When you stop resisting what is, and you stop resisting those things, you start responding with trust because you're moving into a place of trusting and knowing that what you feel or where you're being led is right, and you build the trust within yourself. You're not hustling, you're not forcing, you're not chasing, you are tuned into your intuition, you're tuned into your body and you're tuned into the little nudges and cues that life is giving you. Living in flow. Looks like, let's give some examples.-Taking inspired action instead of frantic motion. I know we've all been there living in flow, is listening to your energy and not your to-do list. And I know this one is really, really hard for probably a lot of us to hear, especially those of us who find our identity in how much we produce. I know I've been there and that's definitely something we can dive into in a further episode.-Living in Flow is trusting that rest is also productive. This is also another hard one for those of us who, find our identity in what we do and what we produce, because we look at rest as something that is waste of time. We're not doing, we should be up doing something, cleaning this, folding laundry, you know, organizing whatever. And I am definitely guilty of that. Still, it's definitely still a practice for me to learn to rest.-Letting go is letting the right timing unfold rather than trying to control every outcome.-Living in flow is also being guided by your inner knowing instead of outside pressure. this one is really key I think especially for those of you that maybe are in like your early or mid twenties, you feel so much outside pressure from society and timelines and maybe even parents or family members or even other friends and where they're at in life like, but I think what's key with you for that is to really be guided by you and your inner knowing and not the pressures of the outside or even the people that are asking, when are you doing this, that, what are you doing with your life? The blah, blah, blah, blah. You know? But also living in flow doesn't mean that life is just suddenly always easy or even predictable. It just means that you stop fighting the current and going upstream. You let it carry you, and somehow you still get exactly where you need to be. When you move in flow, you move out of control. And when you move out of control, you allow life to move for you. How can you take the concept of surrender, connect with it, and apply it to your life or your situation, or where you are at? We've established that surrender is not giving up. It is choosing peace over pressure. It's softening into trust, moving from force to flow, pausing, taking a deep breath, and observing exactly where you are at in your day. Surrender is the choice to release control and to allow life to unfold even when the outcome is unknown. Surrender is at the foundation of who we are as women. When we move out of the force and the hustle and the constant go, go, go mentality, we're brought back into our body, our creative juices can begin to move and we're relaxing instead of being tense. Surrender is actually an act of deep inner wisdom. Because what you are essentially doing and saying to yourself is, I no longer need to hold everything together. I trust myself. I trust the process, and I trust the timing. when you kind of release that, you're actually bring so much peace in. It is not passive, It's powerful. It's not weak. It's actually wildly intuitive. It is truly the feminine who you are coming home to yourself. A few key takeaways and questions that I wanna end this episode with to wrap up are your body is always communicating with you. Mine communicated with me through intense chronic pain. It was what was needed to get my attention because it essentially knew that something small wasn't going to get my attention. I needed to be in that state of intense pain, to be unable to move, to grasp this concept, and for all of us, it will be different. I hope that none of you ever have to face that intense level of pain. However, we will experience things in life, and I know that all of you may be going through something where you can apply all of this. So to that point, your body is always communicating with you. Are you listening or are you overriding? Maybe it's within your hormones. Maybe it's within your sleep patterns. Maybe it's within something you're eating. Maybe it's within your lack of movement. Maybe it's within pain or inflammation or whatever it is your body is communicating. Are you listening? The next thing is that control. We are controlling ourselves too much. Other people situations, it's actually a form of fear that's disguised as productivity because we control to keep ourselves safe. When we release, we are thrust into trusting. And the last thing is the feminine doesn't hustle for healing or really for anything. She sits back and she receives it. And so my question for you today is what would it feel like to stop pushing and start trusting. To stop forcing and move into receiving. If you are in a season that feels hard or uncertain? Ask yourself, what would surrender look like here? What would flow look like here? How can I move into a place of acceptance and let go of the resistance? And on that note, I just want to say thank you today for again, holding space for. Me as I share my story to encourage you and elevate you in the places that you are at in your own life right now. I understand the hard places that we can be in before we learn these lessons, and that's really the point of this podcast. It goes back to, I wanted to create a space to talk about the things leading up to the transformation. These are not easy things to talk about for any of us, even if they're things that I've already experienced or walked through. At the end of the day, there's still things that I am implementing and learning and applying to my own life. There's never a point, like I said before, where we've learned everything. They're a constant daily thing that we need to operate in moving in alignment and in flow. And so I just wanna say thank you so much for listening and holding the space for my story. And I know there are so many of you out there that can take this and apply it into your own life. I would love to hear from you or dive into any kind of conversations that you are having about the places and spaces that you are in. So please feel free as always to reach out. You can send an email, a message, whatever feels right for you. And today we are going to end with a little affirmation. And so really quick and easy, maybe this is something you wanna write out in your notebook or in those notes that you may be taking, but here is a little affirmation for you to say today. I allow what is ready to unfold. I let go and I trust.

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thank you for tuning into this episode of Behind the Cusp. If you love this episode, I'd so appreciate it if you'd rate, review or share it with someone else who's also on their path of self-growth. These all go such a long way in supporting the show. Be sure to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. You can find me over on Instagram at style cusp and follow the show behind the cusp And as always, keep tuning inward True transformation begins from the inside out.