How My Childhood Illness Reshaped My Brain, Memory, and Mission (Plus Why You Should Stop Trying to “Fix” Your Flaws)

Have you ever wondered if the biggest struggle you faced as a child, maybe being “different,” having a learning issue, or feeling not enough could actually be your greatest superpower? This week’s episode unpacks an astonishing intuition story about discovering a lifelong insecurity was linked to a childhood illness, a hidden brain imbalance, and a soul lesson stretching over lifetimes. What if your quirks, setbacks, or “weaknesses” are actually the keys that unlock your purpose, confidence, and ability to guide others? If you’re ready to rethink everything you thought you knew about struggle, success, and self-acceptance, don’t miss this episode.

Topics Discussed:

• The energetic and soul-level roots of recurring life challenges, and how our childhood struggles are often purposeful opportunities for growth.
• Personal story: discovering the link between a severe childhood illness (pneumonia), decreased thalamus function, lifelong memory troubles, and intuition development.
• Why trying to “fix” or eliminate our insecurities can actually cut us off from our gifts and how radical self-acceptance changes everything.
• How parents can support unique learners without making their child’s path about their own performance or shame.
• Training children (and ourselves) to listen to the body’s intuition, decode physical and emotional symptoms, and see the deeper meaning behind learning differences.

If you’ve ever felt broken, behind, or wished you could erase your quirks, this episode invites you to see the perfection in your perceived flaws and to trust that your deepest struggles might just hold the doorway to your most extraordinary gifts. Sometimes the thing you wish you could change about yourself is the very thing the world needs most from you.

Previous episodes and resources mentioned:

• Welcome to Rooted Within: A Grounded Space for Unraveling & Reclaiming
• How Emotional Imbalances Made Me a Match for Pneumonia
• Sign up for our email newsletter to access weekly free Q&As and webinars.

Connect with us:
Instagram: @wholefamily.health

Website: ourwholefamilyhealth.com

Community: Join Our Spiritual Community

Check Out More Free Resources:  https://www.ourwholefamilyhealth.com/free

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome back to the Rooted Within Podcast. My name is Mickey, founder and CEO of Whole Family Health. This is where ancient wisdom and modern science come together. A return to wholeness, led by the wisdom that has always lived within you. Welcome back, you guys. I have a really cool intuition story that I would love to share with each and every single one of you guys for this week's episode on the podcast. This one is going to absolutely blow your mind. And if you haven't gotten the itch to go out and start training your intuition so that you can essentially have superpowers, see inside your brain, see inside your body, be able to decode different things that your body is trying to tell you, be able to have clarity on things that you have been struggling with your entire life. Like that is what intuition can bring you. And I want to share this really cool story with you guys that I went down this intuitive rabbit hole on myself with my own brain, with something that I've been struggling with since I was a young toddler. And just now at age 35, I was able to find so much clarity in this topic. So without further ado, let's get into this little story time. Okay, so it was a couple months ago I was doing a lot of internal research within my brain. I've been having, again, so many mental health clients, so many clients that are dealing with PTSD, so many different clients that are having brain injuries and different things along that line that I've been spending a ton of time within the brain. And it's been really cool. I've been just skyrocketing my knowledge and my expertise within the brain. And so I was doing a little research on my own brain. Now, if you guys listened to the very first podcast episode that I ever launched on this podcast, the Rooted Within Podcast, I was really open and shared how I kind of got started within intuition and a little bit about my recurring soul lesson. Now, every single person has a recurring soul lesson. So this is something that your soul has most likely struggled with for lifetimes after lifetimes. Now we can clock that with intuition and go, you know, it's been 42 lifetimes that you've really still struggled with loving yourself, or still struggled with prioritizing yourself, or you are still learning how to love the way your body looks or whatnot. You haven't found your power yet. There's all these different types of themes, if you will, that souls will kind of struggle with lifetime after lifetime. And as the higher self comes down, you know, kind of is in body, then gets out of body, transitions over, dies, and then chooses another body to hop into and you reincarnate and go over and over and over again. Your soul will choose different parents to help you with this reoccurring soul lesson. They will choose different obstacles, different sicknesses, different diseases, different soul contracts to essentially keep evolving your consciousness and working through some of these reoccurring soul lessons. It's actually pretty cool. It's like a big interactive map where I'm seeing, oh, this sickness and disease had to be on your timeline at age 31 or 28 because it's gonna propel you forward and help you with your recurring soul lesson by 43% or something like that. You can get really mathematical with the different soul contracts and what they're helping and how they're helping, and you know, what was destined on your timeline, kind of set in stone that no matter what, you were gonna have to deal with this, you were gonna recruit this obstacle in. This was, you know, written in the stars. Your higher self has created it and made it a non-negotiable within this lifetime. So we have all these different pieces put into play to help us with our reoccurring soul lesson. And throughout the very first podcast that I did, I was able to share with you guys my own personal reoccurring soul lesson that had a lot to do with me not feeling very smart. I talked a lot about how I had a learning disability in school, so elementary, middle, and high school, and how I was never actually labeled that because I went to a private school. So there was no IEP or anything like that, but I was always pulled out of the main classroom with a really small group of kids to go into this separate classroom. And it was the bane of my existence, right? I've talked heavily about how embarrassed I was, how upset I was that I couldn't seem to learn in the same way as other children. Now I went on to explain that I truly felt like I learned just as a visual learner. I'm a visual person. I needed to see in science the actual cell structure and a visual model of the cell to be able to understand and remember what the different areas of a cell were, the membranes, all of that stuff. I needed to be able to tangibly see it, tangibly touch it, right? I had people reading tests out loud to me so that I could hear it a couple of times and then make the very best answer. And my mom and dad were so, so great. They worked really hard with me in school to help me try to get the best grades that I possibly could. But I kind of have always had a sort of recall memory issue where if I don't care about the topic, if I don't care about the subject, so basically anything to do with math or just trivial details, it will be really hard for me to recall it. Okay. So I have just a ton of memories of my mom laying in bed with me. And she would like, I have this memory right now that I'm pulling up where she was trying to teach me that Jamestown was founded in 1607. And I remember the way that she highlighted it, and then she went on to tell me a little story that she made up about Jamestown. And that was like honestly one of the best ways for me to remember things is if I had a personal connection to it, if I had an emotional connection to it. So I did not do great in school. Like I even remember multiplication facts. You'd have those half sheets of paper where you'd have to spit out like 30 multiplication facts in under five minutes. The teacher would time you, and then you know, you'd have to like push it over to the next student over and they'd have to grade your paper. Like, oh my gosh, just kill me right then and there. I would get so anxious. Or if you had to read aloud to your class, you know how they did the popcorn, or you're going desk by desk, and you're like, okay, I know I'm 14 kids away. I'm gonna have to read this paragraph. Like it would create so much anxiety inside of my body. All of these different academic things. So my parents were great though. They never held an IEP for me. They actually never even told me until I probably was 15, 16, 17 that they thought I had a learning disability. Like it was never talked about in our house. And my dad and mom were always just like, you just learn in a different way. You're a very visual learner. We had my younger brother, very gifted and talented. So he was in a lot of the upper classrooms. So they just kind of spun it like every single person in our family learns really different. So I never had any type of peer pressure or shame at home with the way that I learned, which I am so appreciative of. They didn't go the IEP route. I didn't have to go to special ed. They just always made sure that I had teachers that were supporting me, teachers that were making me feel like I understood the concepts and the different materials and that I was really supported inside my academic journey. They also were much like how kind of Tyler and I raise our kids, where they didn't really have such an emphasis on academics. Like I could get C's and it wasn't a big deal. Nobody was going, Oh, you're not gonna have this for summer. There was nothing ever hanging over our heads for academics. It was always do the best you can, and that's good enough. So that all was so helpful in my recurring soul lesson of not feeling smart enough. So I think parents do the best that they can. And I always tell this to my mom that I am so incredibly grateful, my mom and my dad, because they have always instilled in me that I am perfect the way that I am, that my brain learns differently than other people, and that it's a good thing. And they have never made me feel shame or doubt for the way that I've learned, for the way that I approach academics. And you guys have heard me talk about this as well, but my dad also is very much like, you can do anything in the world, and just kept pounding in that we are perfect just the way we are, and nothing will ever hold us back from getting to be where we want to be. So again, such an incredible upbringing. And even though I had this type of upbringing, like best possible scenario for myself as a child, I obviously still had the societal pressures of going into a classroom, seeing that other people could memorize things really easily, and then seeing that I couldn't, right? So even though I had a great support system, I was in a great education system, I had friends that loved me for me. Nobody made fun of me, I was never bullied, I had great loving parents, great loving teachers, like all of it. Like there was no issues there. It was a type of shame and a lack of acceptance in myself just from watching other people. So I think this is a really good lesson for us, if you guys are parents right now, that you can do all the things. You can say all the best things, you can give your children the highest quality environment possible. And there is still that chance that they are going to perceive that event, that trigger, that circumstance, that situation in a different lens, and there's nothing you are going to do about it, and it truly has nothing to do with you, right? So I think that's really important. And I often think of that as we are parenting our own three kids right now, that we can make all the best choices, right? And we can give them wings and then they will go off and fly and see the world in all these different lights and perspectives. And that's kind of their soul growth. It's their soul journey. So I see that a lot of people in our community, and I struggle with this myself, where I try to make everything perfect. I try to get the best of the best. I try to make the best decisions possible. And what I've had to learn over the years is then to let it go, right? So make the best decisions possible, use your intuition, have it guide you, and then allow your children to make the mistakes, allow them to grow and develop in the way that their soul and their consciousness needs to within this lifetime and kind of surrender to that idea that it's all on you. It's all your responsibility, how they act, how they behave, how they all of this. There is so much of that that is reflections and imbalanced emotions and all that stuff. But there also is this piece that we forget, which is they're on their own soul growth and they're on their own soul journey. And we can make the best of the best. And it's also sometimes still going to be a hard rock on their timeline that they need to hit in order to grow and evolve in the way that their soul needs to within this lifetime. So, like I said, bringing it back around to I had the best of the best and I still felt different. It was me being pulled out of class and going, nobody else has to have their test read aloud to them. It was me seeing my brothers and sisters pick up concepts and ideas really quickly and me having to think about them and study them for hours and hours and hours at a time and seeing that I was different in other people. It was me getting words mixed up that sounded similar and going, wow, I'm like 18 years old. I shouldn't be still mixing up thermostat and thermos, right? So it was my own self-criticism. It was my own self-shame, even though I had the best environment possible. So, really interesting. I went on elementary school again, got pulled, never had an IEP. Middle school got pulled. Actually, some of my very best friends were also pulled in middle school, and we all went to this little resource room and we had like the best time. The resource teachers were incredible. Like I said, they color-coded things. We just went through things at such a deeper level. And I have always just had this knack that if I could create an emotional story to it, I would remember it better. Right. So even Tyler, Tyler does this to me all the time, even still today. If I can't remember a word or I'm confused on recall, he will immediately come in with like an acronym or something like that, some funny little thing that will help my brain remember it. Okay, so you guys may be going, like, yeah, we all have memory stuff, but I have been really insecure about this all of my life. Like I said, people in my family, like it was like a running joke. We had different speeches throughout the year. Like I remember at my wedding, my sisters were saying really funny speeches, and everybody says these things, you know what I'm saying, in a very light-hearted, whimsical tone. And then it's you that is like, oh my gosh, I'm so embarrassed about this, right? All of us can think of something like this. So, anyways, I've always just felt very intimidated in conversations where I've had to share my knowledge. It's a lot of my throat chakra, being closed up, not wanting to express myself, not trusting that I'm gonna say the right thing, and so many different angles of kind of this recurring soul lesson where I don't know my power, right? I don't think I'm perfect. I feel like I'm not great at communicating. I feel like I'm not as smart enough, right? These are all the things I've had to work through throughout the years that have really hindered me and held me back. I even remember science, like into high school, and I would stay after school from three, probably to like five, just rehashing out notes for science that day for physics, because I didn't understand what we went through in class, that I would volunteer and willingly go sit with my teacher and she would just rehash it out with me, color code things with me, all of that stuff that I was just always trying to do what I could to catch up, but it never came easy. And then when I went on to college, and I told you guys, like Tyler did all my college math for me. Tyler, my husband, did so much of my academics, but I remember getting my two degrees in special ed, which obviously is a part of my story. I love helping other kids that have unique and different brains, and especially with my intuitive abilities now to look inside brains. I don't feel like anyone has the same learning style. And I totally get what my younger self did not understand. But when I went on to go to college and I graduated with my two degrees, I got one bachelor in special ed, one bachelor in regular ed. And my mission was like to go out and help students feel special for who they are, feel special for how their brain works, to feel like they had the utmost support in their own journey and in their own growth, right? Because I felt so blessed with my own academic career. I felt so blessed with how my parents helped me through academics. I felt so blessed with how my teachers helped and supported me. I just felt like it was my way to give back to the younger generation and help them feel special and unique and loved and cared for for exactly who they were. I would do crazy things when I got my degree. Like I would provide all the students breakfast in the morning and it was like I became really gun-ho. Like, I will not have a student because I was into the fight or flight, the nervous system, the emotional aspect of it. I would go, I don't want somebody to be hungry at the start of our time. There's no way they're gonna learn academics if they're in fight or flight. Their stomach is growing. So I would bring loaves and loaves of bread in. I would make sure everybody was fed. There was just so much that I was passionate about with these developing children. These are one of the core, core memories for me that I'll probably just even get teary-eyed talking about now because it's just something that immediately brings me to tears. But I was graduating and I remember feeling just so proud of myself. Like, damn, academics is so hard for me, memorizing things, recalling things, standing up and teaching and having all these people observe you and take notes on you and all of these types of things. Like it was so out of my comfort zone because I had that lack of confidence, right? I wasn't confident in the way that I was teaching less. I wasn't confident in creating new lesson plans, like all of these different things, it just made me feel so anxious and nervous inside because I had this root neural pathway in my mind going, I'm not smart. I'm not smart, I'm not smart. So when it came to using my creative side to present lesson plans to my teachers or present lesson plans to my professors, that really caused me to get out of my comfort zone. And it was really hard for me to overcome that. So I just remember graduating and just being so freaking proud of myself. Like just tears crying. Like I can still see myself standing in my parents' house going, like, I can't believe I did this. I'm so proud of myself for going on to college and get not one degree, but two degrees. I am just so proud of my gritty behavior and my willingness to go through it to come out on the other side. It's something that I'm always so dang impressed with myself with. And I remember it was the night before graduation where I was gonna walk across that stage and the whole week I was just so emotional, so proud of myself. And at the time I had my little sister home, who was in our hometown, but my older sister lived in California, and my brother was out of state as well. And at this time, my parents were still together. They hadn't yet divorced. We were a really, really tight-knit family. And I remember my mom and dad the night before graduation, they were like, you know, we are going to go out, we're gonna go to our favorite restaurant downtown, and we're gonna go celebrate you walking across the stage tomorrow. And I was like, okay, so Tyler, you know, still dating Tyler. No, actually, we were married at the time. We were married, early marriage, and so we get there, and my older sister flew home from California. She didn't have any money. My brother flew home from wherever he was, he was traveling across the US, and my whole family was there to see me walk across that stage. And the minute that I saw them, you guys know I get emotional on this podcast. I can't help it. The minute that I saw them, my whole body shook, like full goosebumps. I was quivering. That is like such a sign for my body that I am so excited, feel so loved, feel so blessed. Like I'm having such a core memory. I've had it with every single delivery of my kids as well, where my body just trembles and it's like such an adrenaline rush, and it's just such a surreal moment that my whole body reacts in this way. I'm such a physical gal, you know? So I see them, and it was like they came home to support me, and they knew what a big deal it was for me to walk across that stage. And it's just something that I will never forget. The never-ending, like unwavering support from my immediate family, my brother and my sisters, and my mom and my dad, and Tyler, and all these people that just have loved me for me throughout this entire academic journey. Such a cool moment. We'll never forget it. But needless to say, it was hard. It was hard for me to push through school all those years, right? And it was just something that I had to learn little quirky ways to help myself remember things and to again grow emotional connections to it. And honestly, looking back, I can even remember first grade, kindergarten, second grade, all of that, where I would intuit the answers. Like I was intuiting from such an early age on, going, oh, I feel like this is A. Like for legit, I wouldn't even look at what the answer A was. I just would be like, no, this is A. It feels like A. And I remember just showing Tyler that too when I was with. Him early on in marriage again when he was doing all my college work because he has such a great memory. He could spit out just facts, like trivia facts. Like he just remembers stuff. Him and my son are so good with memory that they just recall things super easily. My son can remember things from when he was one or two in his crib. Tyler just knows random facts, and he's also a pharmacist, so he remembers so much with all the medications and generic and oh my gosh, just he's got an insane memory. So I remember telling him that early on when he was doing like my math for me. I'd be like, I just think it's C. And he'd be like, You don't even know what the question is. And I'm like, I see. It's C. And he'd be like, wow, you're right. He was always amazed by that. But I have been intuiting from such an early age on. And it's really wild to sit back and see how my intuition has been cultivated from such an early age and how it's really been orchestrated to help me throughout this recurring soul lesson and you know, coming out on the other side of it. And for those of you guys that are new to all this information, you might be going, wow, like I can't believe you have a podcast. I can't believe you do three to four hours of live content a week. And yeah, it's because I've had to take this recurring soul lesson, take this root neural pathway where I don't feel smart, I don't feel special, I feel unintelligent, and I have thrusted myself into positions where I shine, where I feel like I'm the most intelligent person in the room. And that's in all my one-on-ones, that's in doing this podcast, that's in teaching classes. Like I have totally been able to rewire my brain to know at an innate level that I am so freaking intelligent. I may not care about random historical facts and geography and being able to spit out directions on a dime, but I am so intelligent in other ways. And I've really, really learned to love myself through it to the point where I am extremely public, right? I have, you know, a large social media platform, I have a large email list, and I do all these different public things where I am speaking and helping people heal and all these different things, but it's taken a long time of me understanding my recurring soul lesson and literally overcoming it and making it my full-time job to believe that I am special and to believe that I am intelligent in my own ways and to not let the past habits and things people have said and the way that I felt in school and all that stuff come and play a part into my present moments. Okay. Little context backstory for you. Now, the really cool story for intuition. It was a couple months ago, and like I said, I was doing a lot with the brain, right? And I have had my intuition become so spot on in this last year where I will not remember all the anatomy parts of the body, but my intuition will whisper me words. So to be able to come up with names on a dime, to be able to recall words and different things like that, it has gotten really, really, really good where I'll just hear whisperings of it and I will know exactly where I need to go within the brain to help this person heal or to connect to a problem I'm trying to solve. So my higher self and my intuition has gotten to such an incredible point that it literally talks to me and it shows me words that I've never heard before, shows me anatomy parts I've never heard before. And then I'm able to dive into that with my conscious brain and see the inner workings of what I'm trying to solve. So, all that to say, I was in my brain one night, and I think that the day earlier I was obviously sitting in an emotional imbalance because I think my son said something like, Mom, you're supposed to remember this. And sometimes those words like remembering or you don't have a good memory or things like that can be really triggering to me. It can automatically talk about memories and environmental cues. It can push me back into that very emotionally imbalanced space where I need to be on top of it again, right? And if I'm too busy or I let like life slide and I'm not on top of my reflections, I can kind of be pushed back into that, like, ooh, my memory isn't good, or my brain's not working the way it should, or I need to focus on the overall function of my brain and do some energy. I can kind of get into that little bit of that scarcity energy. So I think this is what happened. I took his uh, I think it was his switch, his Nintendo Switch, and I hit it. And I couldn't remember where I hit it. It was one of those moments where there was like so many things happening at once, and I took it and I shoved it somewhere, and then I couldn't remember where I shoved it, and it took me like a minute or two. But he was like, Mom, you've got to get a better memory. He said something in a lovingly, jokingly way, but it kind of got into my field, and I'm like, shoot, that means that I'm feeling that way and I'm feeling like I don't have a good memory. And I start to understand, you know, and recall like reflections. He's being my inside out voice right now. He's picking up on how I feel about myself. Dang it, somewhere along the line, I let go of having a high percentage of feeling really intelligent and feeling like I have a good memory. So I was working on my brain that night and I was telling my higher self, I'm like, you know what? Show me where maybe I need to do some energy work or need to do some healing around my memory. I was feeling imbalanced about it. And so my higher self literally whispered the word thalamus to me. And I was like, Thalamus? What? What? And so I went and I researched it, and lo and behold, thalamus is all about memory and emotion. It's really crazy. It has a lot to do with the limbic system, but it has the complete integration of emotional and cognitive information. And I was like, well, that's just interesting as heck. It also has a lot to do with sensory information, so feeling overstimulated, which my dad had a lot with that stuff. Like he couldn't talk to us with the TV on at the same time. Like he was overstimulated in that sense. And I have also worked through a lot of the overstimulation of having three kids, all talking to you at once, you know, dogs barking, all that stuff. But oh my gosh, you guys just wait. It just makes so much sense. So I've dealt with a little bit of overstimulation stuff. Always just thought it was learned behavior from my dad because he was so testy with noises coming in and sounds coming in. And he's like an honri old man. Love him so much. Hope you're not listening. But if you are, I love you and you know this about yourself. A little bit of overstimulation. So I start looking at the thalamus and I'm like, oh, that's interesting. I'm gonna dive deeper into the thalamus now. And I'm pulling stats and numbers of my current thalamus, and I'm walking in there doing my MRI scan, like I do with my third eye of my physical body, and I'm like, holy crap, like, halt. My thalamus is functioning so low. And I'm like, what the heck? Like it was 18% low, 18% out of a 100, which is scary low. So I'm starting to panic a little bit, and I'm like, why is my thalamus so low? And does that have something to do with my memory? Getting a yes, yes, your memory, your recall, all of that. And by the way, you guys, it's not like my memory goes, it's not like I can't recall things, but if it's not important to me, I have a hard time recalling it. So again, stats, just like trivia type stuff. Like nobody would ever know that about me, right? It's just something that I am really hard on myself with. And different things like expressions or idioms, I also have a hard time having those up and ready and you know, getting them out of my mouth appropriately. I feel like I sometimes switch them up or make them backwards. Just things that I'm super self-conscious about. And for those of you guys that are live with me, probably you already know this about me, and you guys love me for who I am. So it really is this beautiful thing. But anyways, I'm starting to at this point go, my gosh, my thalamus is so low. It is functioning so low. I'm starting to go, wow, like my memory is connected to my thalamus. And is this a little bit of some of my issues that I've had with communications? So I'm starting to backtrack and I'm like, okay, well, let's just see. Maybe it's been like a year-long thing. Maybe it's been, you know, in my head, I'm like, I'll spend my whole life type of thing. So I start going back and I'm like, you know, is it 10 years ago when I started having kids? Is it 20 years ago? Is it 30? And I keep going back, back, back, back, back. And I get that at four years old, my thalamus is still functioning very, very low. And then I go to three years old and I have a very, very high level functioning thalamus. And I'm like, whoa, what happened between three and four years old? Right. So at three, I was perfectly fine, had a great, great 98, 99% functioning thalamus. And then at four years old, boom, I'm tanked to below 20%. And I'm like, that's interesting. And immediately, you guys, immediately I was like, oh my gosh, that is when I had pneumonia. And if you guys have heard the episode early on in this podcast, I talk all about having pneumonia when I was four. And then I talk about having pneumonia again last summer. Like, actually, one year. This is so freaky. I have chills right now. One year from today, I got really bad pneumonia. And it was a whole mess. And I did a whole podcast episode on it, and I just divulged all of my reflections for you guys. So go back and listen to that. But pretty crazy, it was one year ago today I had pneumonia again, hadn't had it since I was four. So I'm like, okay, I know I had really bad pneumonia when I was four. I was hospitalized and truly I almost died. And so my brain is just like reeling right now. And I'm like, God, I remember my mom has always told me that before I had pneumonia, I knew all my colors. I had recognition over nursery rhymes, I would sing them. I had like a great memory. And she said, after I had pneumonia, my memory was never the same. My word recall was never the same. So I'm like, my gosh, is this all a piece of my lower functioning thalamus? So I'm going into my thalamus and I'm having all sorts of conversations with it, right? And I'm seeing that there's a blockage there. And when I went in to talk to them, it was like resources have been taken away, like they're no longer high functioning in the thalamus, and the resources that should be are being overcompensated in another area of my brain, like my intuitive brain. So all of a sudden, I started to have all these clicks and aha moments. Now that night I come out of the bedroom and I'm like, oh my gosh, Tyler, like it makes so much sense. My thalamus has been functioning low since I got pneumonia. And even that night, I pulled from myself that I was deprived of oxygen in my brain. This is like the details that were being pulled from my thalamus talking to me. And it was like we were deprived of oxygen, like all of these different things. And it was so crazy. I come out and I'm like, taller, this is what happened. This is why I have such a poor memory. This is why I had to work so hard in school. This is why all this stuff. And I said, it was all on purpose. I got like goosebumps, I got chills, and I was like, it was all on purpose because I needed to have that experience to get pneumonia at a young age, to have oxygen be deprived of me, to have this lower-functioning thalamus. And because I had that, I had to grow my intuition from a very young age. I had to be highly intuitive. I have been working on my intuition from age three years old. And I started to have like this entire timeline be put before me where I was just blown away with how perfect it was. Completely blown away. And I was like, of course, I had to feel like I wasn't intelligent so that I could rise above that, so that I could relate to people. You guys always hear me talk about this, right? So I could relate to you guys, I can relate to your reoccurring soul lessons, I can relate to the hardship, to the valleys, to overcoming, to having grittiness, to all of that. Like I needed this very, very large life experience to be able to do what I have been called here to do, which is to run whole family health, is to be a medical intuitive, it is to help you guys, it is to live out and fulfill my soul contracts with each and every single one of you. Like I needed this life experience. And so what started out as this kind of emotional imbalance of going, oh my gosh, my thalamus is slow, tracing it back to being in the hospital when I was four years old. And what happened was my mom took me into the hospital quite a few times, and they kept going, oh, she's fine, she's fine, all of these things. And they weren't taking her seriously. And finally, I was to the point where I couldn't walk, and my mom had to throw me over her shoulder, which guys, my mom's like four foot nine, she's so tiny, and she had to throw me over her shoulder and bring my siblings in. And she's like, My daughter isn't walking. You need to take care of her. Something is wrong. And she barged right into the hospital and shouted it. She was like, Take me seriously, and she got really angry and she got really mad and she got to this point where she needed to be a strong advocate for me. So, anyways, they start doing all this blood work and they're like, Wow, she's got pneumonia, she's got water in her lungs, there's fluid in her lungs, like this is really far gone. Because I wasn't at a children's hospital, they had an adult-size oxygen mask over me, and I was losing oxygen like crazy. It was two days before they decided to take me by ambulance two hours away to children's hospital. And then when I got to the children's hospital, they were like, She needs a catheter. If she gets up to go to the bathroom, she is losing way too much oxygen. She can't afford to lose any more oxygen. And they were just mortified that the mask that I was wearing was an adult-sized mask for the days prior, right? Before I was ambulanced to the children's hospital. So they took it a lot more seriously. And I do have memories of being at the children's hospital. I have memories of going a million miles an hour in the ambulance. I have memories of them taking all this fluid and like worm-like substance out of the side of my body, like all of it. I have some glimmers and some memories. I had so many people that came to visit me from school and gifts. And I remember my parents just being like, you can eat anything, right? Because there was this precedence that, you know, there was a chance that I wasn't gonna make it. I was in children's hospital for a really, really long time, couple weeks. So it was kind of a scary situation for my parents. And anyways, all that to say, I didn't know about the oxygen mask situation until after I had this epiphany in the middle of the night when I was like, Tyler, oh my gosh, this is crazy. So much stuff makes sense. The next day I call my mom and I'm like, hey, mom, tell me a little bit about when I had pneumonia when I was young. And she told me and filled in some holes and some gaps of the pieces that I was missing within the information, whereas then she went on to tell me, you know, I feel so bad. They said you lost a lot of oxygen in your brain. They had an adult-sized mask on you, and it should have been a children's mask. So she filled in all those gaps for me. And my intuition was just like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So I was just like, wow, it makes so much sense why some of these words to have recalled are really challenging for me and something that I have dealt with my entire life. It makes so much sense. Like I couldn't believe it. I had chills and goosebumps, and I was just ecstatic talking to Tyler. And I was like, it had to happen, right? Like I was just seeing the balance in all of it. And it was such a life-altering moment for me because again, it's something that I had struggled with my entire life. It was something that I rested my identity with. Something that brought me to that moment was kind of making me be emotionally imbalanced with my son, saying, Oh, the memory thing. Like it still can shake me at times. So to have this full clarity of it had to happen this way, right? Because if I didn't have a low-functioning thalamus, I would not be as intuitive as I am. I wouldn't have had to rely on my intuition for all those years in school. I wouldn't have had to work hard. I would not have had the grit. I would not have had the life experience to want to go into education and want to homeschool my kids and to all of this stuff. I needed to have that experience. And here's the kicker. So I'm sitting there and I'm like, oh my gosh. Okay, so I have a super low-functioning thalamus. Like, great. This is a couple days later, maybe even a week. And I'm just sitting with the information and I'm like, this is perfect. I see how it was all perfect. I see how I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. I just had such an intimate connection with my higher self, being like, thank you, thank you, thank you. I see, I see what you were doing all these years later. I see it. And it was perfect, and I appreciate you. And I just, oh my gosh, I was just moved. I was so moved by how perfect it was. Okay. And then I started having these thoughts of like, well, I'm just gonna fix my thalamus. Like again, Maggie is like anything that's possible, right? Like, I'm gonna energetically go do surgery on my thalamus and get it boosted to the appropriate markers. Okay. And so I'm like, I'm just gonna go in and boost it. I'm gonna have the best memory ever. I understand this all. I'm gonna move past it. And my intuition was like, full stop. Full stop. And I was like, what? No, like I'm gonna go in, we're gonna make it perfect. This is something I've really struggled with. And she's like, you're just still not seeing the balance in this. You're still not seeing how perfect this is. She's like, you have a high functioning thalamus, you're gonna rely less on your intuitive brain. It's gonna affect your business, it's gonna affect your clients, it's gonna affect everything, and it's gonna change who you are. And I was like, what? Because for so long I've been wanting to get high numbers for high functioning everything, right? 90s or better. I'm like, I want everything running on all full cylinders. And it was not the first time she said this. Like, she brought me back again from that imbalanced space, and she was like, You're perfect just the way you are. We need you to have this lower functioning thalamus. And it was so cool because again, I was so balanced, balanced, balanced with this whole idea of seeing the perfection. And then my ego and my human self started to jump in again to be like, no, I want it, I want to change it now, right? I want to change who I am, I want to alter this insecurity. And it was like a little nudge again for my higher self, being like, whoa, that means you're still not content with it. That means you're still not happy with it. That means you're still not balanced with it and you're not seeing the beauty. And she really truly had to provide me so many visuals, so many understandings, so many examples of how I want a lower functioning thalamus, and that there's a little bit more, I think like two or three life lessons I need to master before if I choose, I can, you know, put my thalamus, do some energetic surgery on myself and put it at a high, high percentage for its functionality. So again, I just thought the whole thing was so special, you guys. I was so blown away with just the connections of everything I've endured in school and how it dealt with my pneumonia when I was a kid and the lowered oxygen of my brain and the recall and just what I've struggled with. And then to see how it actually propelled me into the woman I am supposed to be, so incredible. And I know one of the life lessons that I'm currently working on right now, and this is something that has to deal with the thalamus and my intuitive brain and all that is just way slowing it down, right? So for the last couple of years, I've just been wanting to be immersed in slow living, wanting to be in nature, wanting to speak slowly, wanting to channel slowly. It's something that I'm working on because I get so excited and my intuition moves so much faster than my mouth does. And sometimes it's like I can't get out all the words and everything I'm seeing and feeling into this like beautiful communicative style. And so part of what my intuition was showing me was that I have to master that slowness in order to get the speed of recall to be faster, right? Because if you think about it, if one of my life lessons right now is to slow down in my channeling, to slow down in my intuition, to slow down in my speaking, if I have a faster functioning thalamus that's recalling at the speed of lightning, which I haven't had in the last 30 years, is that gonna help me with that goal? No, no, it's not. So I know that is one of the lessons that are tied to me keeping my thalamus low and allowing my intuitive brain to take over. Cause again, like I said, the resources that should be within my thalamus have been outsourced to other areas of my brain that are overcompensating. One is the intuitive brain, another one is my third eye and my pineal gland. So it's all perfect. And like I said, we can get our bodies to this state of complete homeostasis, but also taking into account the different. Areas of your life lessons, what you're trying to accomplish right now, seeing how there's beauty and perfection in exactly where you are, and even going a step further and seeing it from a 30,000-foot view of man, this was so perfect, right? And I probably wouldn't have said that at any other season or stage of my life if I had figured that out at age 13 or age 16, 20s, 30s. I probably wouldn't be as appreciative as I am now just allowing myself to understand this information. And we talk so much about allowing our higher selves to give us knowledge, give us connection, give us epiphanies when we are ready for it. And I truly believe that there's been so many times in my life where I wasn't ready for the information and I desperately wanted it, right? I desperately wanted to fix it. And then it came and was thrown in my lap at the perfect timing, and it could not have been any other way. And that's exactly what this experience was for me. And it just goes to show you how freaking cool our bodies are. Like how fascinating are we? I will never get over the vastness of our bodies, of our intelligence, of our minds, of our intuition, of our higher selves. I will never stop seeing the sheer beauty that God has given us within our human body and the absolute gift that it is. Like I think forever my practice will be surrounded with that notion of you are powerful, you are beautiful, you are capable of so much more than you think you are. And I just really wanted to share that story with you guys today. It's been a while since we've done a little storytelling episode. And I just want you guys to know that you guys can all have these epiphanies, you can all have these understandings from your higher self, from your bodies when the time is right. And you will know when that time is. We always talk about this within our community, but following the energy, right? Following the energy and trusting and surrendering that your higher self knows what's best for you. And again, there's going to be times where your human self is frustrated and angsty and just full of irritation and battling the insecurities of our world and our families and the different things you're walking through. But to be able to have this fundamental knowing of this is all perfect, this is exactly happening and unfolding the way it was meant to, nobody can take that away from you. Nobody could ever take that emotional ingredient and that innate knowing away from you when it is embedded so deeply within the cells of your body. And I think when you have some of these connected moments with yourself, which again, if you're in our intuition programs and courses and you're training your intuition, or you're even just having the emotional mastery to be able to be in connection with yourself, or you're joining the free webinars and the free QA is you guys know what I'm talking about, right? It's the moment where it clicks, it's the light bulb moments. I see it on every single one of your faces when we're in these live events or we're in a one-on-one session. It is the most beautiful thing. And sometimes we forget how powerful those clicks and those aha moments are and we kind of take them for granted. And we don't understand how monumental it is to be able to have these conversations with our bodies and to be able to read energy and to be able to be gifted this 30,000-foot view perspective on our life and how everything happened the exact way that it should have. It is so, so, so special. So, anyways, that is the episode this week. I want you guys to think on that. I want you guys to think about what is going on in your life. Where do you think your recurring lesson is in your life? Are you still working on it on a weekly basis? Do you feel like it's meddling with body symptoms? Do you feel like you wish you could change it, right? Do you wish you could go in there and do energetic surgery and completely revamp it? And are you seeing that that's an imbalanced perspective? Because it's so easy, like I just shared, to get out of that and to go, oh great, there's the life lesson. I see it. I got it now, let's change it. It's like, are you seeing it for all that it is and all that it's given you? And have you extracted all the life lessons that needed to be extracted for you within that event, right? So there's a lot that goes into it, but I just wanted to start opening your consciousness a little bit so that you could understand this level of awareness by seeing it in my life and you can mirror it in your life as well. And take some of the hard moments, take some of the hardship, the moments that you regret or you feel like should not have been, and start working on that reframe. Okay, you guys, this is what I have for you today. I will see you guys all next week, unless you guys are popping in at our live interactions, which you absolutely should. Free QA's, free webinars every single week. Hop on our email list so that you get our weekly newsletters. It's the only place that we will send out the link for you to actually register for our events. And the times and places change every single week. So again, make sure you guys are on the newsletter so that you guys know what's going on, so you guys can hop in, use my medical intuition to clear up obstacles, gain better understandings, get more breadcrumbs for these epiphanies that you guys should all have in your life. Okay, you guys, we'll see you next week.