Chapter 31 - THE REWRITE - Your Past Has an Edit Button- Here’s How to Use It

 THE REWRITE - Your Past Has an Edit Button- Here’s How to Use It 

What if your past isn’t as fixed as you’ve always believed? What if the story you’ve been carrying—the pain, the identity, the shame—is still being written in real time? 

In this powerful episode of Burn It Down and Begin Again, Erica dives deep into the science, psychology, and lived experience behind what she calls “The Rewrite.” Blending neuroscience, quantum physics, and raw personal truth, she explores how present-day choices can reshape the emotional weight of your past and transform your future. 

Through a deeply personal story of healing, forgiveness, and a full-circle family moment, Erica shares what it really looks like to break cycles, rebuild identity, and reclaim your power. From memory reconsolidation and neuroplasticity to emotional patterns and trauma responses, this episode challenges everything you thought you knew about healing. 

If you’ve ever felt stuck in old patterns, defined by your past, or unsure how to move forward—this episode will show you what’s possible when you choose to rewrite your story. 

Because sometimes the most powerful thing you can do… is begin again. 

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Transcript

Erica 0:00

What if the story you've been telling yourself about your past is actually still being written? Not metaphorically, not as a feel-good affirmation, but literally, on a neurological and biological level. What if the past isn't fixed? What if every intentional choice you make right now is quietly editing the version of you that already existed? The shame you've been carrying, the identity you lost, the version of yourself that you buried so deep you're not sure she's still there. What if none of that is sealed? What if the most powerful thing you can do right now, today, this moment, is understand that you're not done being written? And what if I told you that science is backing that up? Today on Burn It Down and Begin Again, we're going to dive into the neuroscience, the quantum physics, and the raw human truth behind what I'm calling the rewrite. How present action literally rewrites the past and will shape your future. Welcome to Burn It Down and Begin Again. Because sometimes the only way out is through the fire. I'm Erica, and this is my story, told one chapter at a time. Not to relive the pain, but to reclaim the power that was buried beneath it. I share it boldly because I know I'm not the only one. Too many of us carry stories like mine of trauma, silence, survival, and shame alone. But healing isn't just about surviving what hurt us. It's about becoming the people we were meant to be. How we can transform pain into purpose, rebuild life on our own terms, and show what is possible when we rise to the strongest version of ourselves. If you hear yourself in my words, know this. You're not crazy, you're not broken, and you're definitely not alone. This podcast is part of Chicology. Real women, real stories, and real transformation. We're here to break cycles, rise higher, and create lives that radiate power, purpose, and passion. So if you've walked through hell and you're ready to grow, evolve, and rebuild, then stay with me. There's hope here, there's healing here, and there's an army of us rising with you. Now, let's begin. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Burn It Down and Begin Again. I think this is my 31st episode. So very, very glad that you guys are here genuinely. If you are new to this podcast, I just want to briefly tell you why it exists. It wasn't born from a place of having it all figured out. It was born from the very bottom. And I mean literally. There was a point in my life where I had completely lost myself, and I mean everything. My identity had been consumed by a marriage that left me shattered in ways I didn't even have the language for at the time. And what followed was a depression that wasn't just hard. It was the kind of depression that makes you question whether or not you want to be here at all. I contemplated and actually took actions towards suicide. I fell into a drinking problem that became this horrible monster, a full-blown addiction. And I did not see my way out of that. At my worst, literally getting out of bed, guys, like taking a shower seemed like climbing Mount Everest, functioning as a human being, working in the public again, having social interaction. These were things I couldn't even contemplate. And that mountain was very, very hard. And just getting out of bed was like something, like I said, I had to climb that mountain every single day. And then I had a very profound experience. Um, I battled addiction with everything that I had. It kept winning. I battled depression, it kept winning. And I had this profound life-altering moment, which I do describe, I believe, in the second and third episode of my podcast, if you haven't gone back that far. And I literally rebuilt from the absolute bottom. I found the courage, I found the will. It was all after 50. And guys, I have uh lost over 70 pounds. I've reclaimed my health, my body, my mind, my spirit. I got off high blood pressure medication. I was pre-diabetic. I'm no longer. I became somebody that I didn't really believe was possible at the time. I never believed I could come back. And that's why this podcast exists, because I want you to know wherever you are listening from, wherever you are on the ladder of self-destruction, depression, and disintegration, guys, it is possible to rebuild your life from the ground up, no matter how old you are, no matter how young you are, no matter how far down you've gone. I am living proof of that. And every week I'm gonna show up here and I'm gonna keep proving it. This is for those of you that are trying to find your way. And believe me, guys, there are those of us out there that have walked that walk, and that's what I am here for. So this podcast has been a part of your weekly routine. I want to thank you for being here. And I do want to ask a favor, go and leave me a star rating on whatever platform you're on and drop a comment and or a review wherever you're listening. It takes just a couple of minutes and it really, really helps more people find the show for the algorithm. And you can always follow me on my social media channels under Burn It Down and Begin Again. I have uh TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and there's also my personal links, which I do make public, um, which is under Erica Gill on Facebook. Erica Gill3404 on Instagram. And you can look up uh my TikTok, which is uh it's called Erica's Orbit, but it's under 50-ish AF. So you guys can find me there, okay? So share, share, guys, give me some feedback. It helps it get to the people who need to hear it. So, as always, I begin with a challenge of the week. And before I get into today's topic, which I was inspired to do, I was gonna do a whole different podcast this week, and I had already pre-recorded it, and I didn't really love it. I didn't have that feeling of like, okay, I love this, I'm gonna do it. Uh so once I had this birthday experience, I felt very inspired to do an episode on that, which is what we're doing today. But before I get into today's topic, I always start with a challenge of the week. And I think a lot of you are gonna relate to this. I just I'm still sick. I got off the tail of being very, very, very sick. And what happened was I had come off a nine-day work stretch. Nine days, and I'm 56 now, guys, back to back. And you know what it looks like for me, I work in retail and in the telecommunications industry, and my shifts are not light. If I'm lucky, I walk out at eight hours, but really more often it's eight and a half to nine and a half to ten, and that's on my feet. That's not even including drive time, and I'm engaged. I have to be on the entire time. I'm interacting with the public, and people, a lot of them are coming in with issues and problems, and I have to be on. I have metrics that I need to meet. And a lot of those metrics are based around the interaction with the customer. So I really do have to be very focused. Now, I feel like I do everything right. You guys know if you've been listening, what I put into my body, the peptides, the supplements, the nutrition. I do, you know, red light therapy, I get to the gym, I lift. I take my health more seriously than I think most people do. And I'm really proud of that. But I had to be honest with myself, that nine-day stretch almost took me out. And that was definitely the catalyst. So, you know, I pushed through it. There was no way to change it based on uh scheduling needs. We tried, but my boss and I just couldn't find a way around it. So I thought, you know what, I'm gonna suck it up and I'm gonna do it. And I think it's hard for anybody, even you know, half my age, which a lot of the kids are that are working with me, but it was rough. And that last few days, I really felt it, even though I cut out my gym schedule for the most part, I increased those vitamins and peptides, I was getting my sleep. I could just feel it, you know, that edge, that thing that your body does when it's been drawing from reserves that it just doesn't have anymore. And no matter how dialed in I was, I could feel that coming on, right? So the last couple of days of that, I felt a little sniffly, no big deal. I thought, ah, it's allergies, you know. But by the time my days off hit, I was full blown sick. And, you know, on some level, I think I feel like I'm superhuman, but I had the tar knocked out of me. And I have not been sick like that in a very long time. And I was so sick that I, when I would try and get out of bed, my mind was still working fine. But I literally physically after five minutes, I was just wiped out. I just felt like, oh my God, I've got to lay down. And I slept and I slept and I slept. So essentially I called out sick my first day, second day, I knew I was no better. And by the third day, I was feeling mentally just really like I was at my wit's end from sitting in bed for so long. But my ears were stuffy, you know, I still didn't feel great, but I thought, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go in today. And I went in and literally, the minute I got there, I thought, my God, I should not have gotten here. I was still so sick. And by, you know, the time a couple hours were up, my boss encouraged me to go home. She's like, he shouldn't be here. And bless her heart, she said, you know, go to urgent care. And I don't know about you guys, but I have an aversion to the doctor. I don't know what it is. I don't trust Western medicine. And the only time you get me to go to the doctor is something is really, really wrong, right? And something was wrong. And I knew that. And I'm like, you know what? She's right. It could be COVID, it could be a million different things. I've not had the jab, you know, I don't know what it is. So I went to urgent care, and I was really, really glad that I did because I did end up having, I think it's called HMPV. It's something we normally don't test for, but because it's been very rampant lately, the doctor tested me for it and I had it. It's basically a pneumonial kind of a thing. And he said, You're gonna be sick for 10 days. You know, here's some steroids, you're gonna need this, it's gonna make the process better. I was already on ZPAC and ivermectin, which I of course self-prescribed. But um, I went home and I was sick, and I was sick for that day completely. But getting the added medication did make a difference. I was able to turn the corner and go on my planned PTO, which was to Mexico with my kids, which is what this whole episode is about. But I think what my takeaway is is my immune system had been working over time for nine days straight. I pushed through it. And, you know, retail being a petri dish, we all know that my body just didn't have enough left to fight it off and it surrendered. So that's not, you know, failure. That is information. So my challenge of the week to myself and to you is listen to your body, listen to the limits it puts on you. I preach this all the time and I still walked right past my own advice. I mean, I kind of had to, but I mean, I did. Your body will tell you when it's had enough. It'll whisper at first, and if you don't listen to the whisper, it's gonna start screaming. And that's what happened to me. Limits aren't weakness, they are intelligence. And at my age, with everything that I've got going on, everything that I'm building, everything I'm healing, I have to respect my energy reserves. Even superhumans need rest, especially them, right? So now I want to get into today's topic. Here's the story behind it. Basically, my whole family, my ex-husband planned this, and my kids all got the time off. He did this far in advance, and he has a beautiful condo in Rosarito Beach that he's bought recently that's you know over ocean front. It's overlooking the ocean. It's a large apartment, three bedrooms, and he wanted our entire family to get away from my birthday. And, you know, in his words, he wanted to make my birthday very special, which was so incredibly kind and thoughtful of him. So we all went down. It's our first vacation as a family since the divorce, almost 10 years. And there was always in the back of my mind, like, oh, how's this gonna go? But I thought, you know what? It feels right, I'm going with it. So I had literally, guys, the best birthday of my life. I will never forget the moments. I documented all of it. It was just so healing in so many ways. But there was a moment that smacked so much of the past and was a great reminder for me. So that's what inspired this episode today is that I really realized during that trip that the actions that I took at the time to put my kids first, and both my ex-husband and I didn't want the kids to have a horrible time with the divorce, it was hard enough. So we put them first and we were able to do Christmases and holidays together. It was very hard. But in that pattern of forgiveness, we were not only able to, you know, maybe not heal everything, but but forgive each other for the mistakes that were made in the marriage and have a working relationship for the kids. But it really did rewrite our past. And I see so many people that have divorces and you know breakups and they literally hate their partner, right? And we did not have that happen. And the result is basically what happened on this trip. So here's the here's the setup. I was gonna do a different podcast, like I said, I had it written, but it really wasn't sitting with me. And then after going on this birthday trip that I went on with my family, I was very inspired to do this epitome episode, which I am calling the rewrite. This episode is about rewriting your past through the actions of your present and how that also shapes your future. And it was so apparent to me during this trip that that is without meaning to what we had done. I had a full circle moment that I didn't plan for and I could not have scripted, and it became this living, breathing example of exactly what I want to talk about today. So I know that this is gonna raise some eyebrows, but I'm gonna just say that up front. But I spent my birthday in Mexico at a beautiful condo on the coast with my kids and my ex-husband. Now I know I can already hear some of you. For a lot of people, the idea of going on vacation with your ex is like somewhere between baffling and absolutely out of the question. And I do get that, I do. But it was a decision that we made deliberately, intentionally, and I made that decision somewhere along the way a long time ago. And I want to explain why, not the vacation, but the healing process for us, because it is connected to everything that this episode is about. So the setup is uh we've been divorced almost 10 years. My ex-husband, whatever his reasons were, he just really wanted to make it special. And he took the kids and I down to his condo in Mexico, this beautiful beachfront condo overlooking the ocean. And I literally had the best birthday of my life. It was such a healing, amazing emotional journey of just being with my family, you know, unplugged, just playing games, going places together, literally just being immersed in each other's company. And it was so healing. But there was also a moment that brought me back full circle, and I'll explain that. So, you know, as a kind of a precursor to all this, you have to understand that when our marriage ended, we both had a choice. We could let the wreckage of it define the next chapter for the kids, or we could try and choose forgiveness. We both made a decision that our children were never going to have to choose between their parents on holidays, birthdays, or anything that mattered. We were going to try and pull together and not have them have to choose and celebrate together. Now, we we wanted to spare them the guilt, the impossible, you know, positions of loving two people and having to pick. So we didn't want to hand them that wound. So we purposefully built something else. And I have to say, I believe I was the catalyst for it, but he jumped on board immediately and we built this weird, if you want to call it weird, family structure where their father and I actually coexist. Not perfectly, you know, not without our history, but as functioning, loving adults to the kids and a unit, a family unit. And guys, it is truly that. My kids know beyond the shadow of a doubt that despite their parents' personal issues and problems and problems together as a couple, they have a family unit that any one of us, myself and my ex-husband and the other kids, at any moment would be there for the other people in the family without question. We gifted them by choosing to forgive this incredibly strong family unit. And it was so prevalent on this trip. It was just incredible, right? And I am not saying it was easy to get here. There were plenty of moments that was anything but easy, especially in the beginning. Uh, it was just crazy, right? My ex-husband would show up at Christmases and birthdays with his new girlfriend or partner. And I never uh, you know, I did date a little bit and I talk about that in previous episodes, but I never chose to replace or have a relationship. I chose self-discovery and knowledge, which meant I was alone. And so I had to kind of deal with that, that's place in my heart where I still loved my ex-husband on some level, knowing perfectly well that I could never be with him. Uh, and I had to watch him, you know, rebuilding his life with other people, right? It was hard. But it's worked out so incredibly well. And it is it is now the fabric of our family. So, anyway, to Mexico. So three of my kids and myself got in a car and drove down to Mexico. And my ex-husband and one of my sons flew and then took a car across the border. Uh, we all met up and at the San Diego border and then drove across to the condo. What followed was this amazing weekend of total immersion in the family. We played games where the kids would drink and they would, you know, we'd have dinner. I don't drink, but you know, everybody would have fun and we would sing and we, you know, just went to restaurants and we went to the beach and we played volleyball and football and had barbecues and went to the one of one of the greatest restaurants I've ever been to in my life uh down on the water, and just this amazing birthday experience. And you know, there were a couple of moments that were just freaking highlights for me, which were so funny. One of which we get there and there's no power and come to find out that even though he thought he had left a credit card on file with a power company, they didn't have it. And so they had turned off the power. So we show up where there's no power. So we run down to the local power company to pay the bill, and it takes like typically three days to turn back on in Mexico. And not only that, we we grab a ticket, and it was like the scene out of Zootopia where you see the sloth working behind the counter at the DMV. It we it was on 79, and we were like 122. There was one guy working behind the counter as slow as molasses in January. So we found another way to pay it through a kiosk. And thankfully the next morning, he knew somebody down there that knew someone that could turn the power back on right away. So we did get it back. But the first night was spent by candlelight, and that was actually one of the best parts of the trip, honestly. No way to charge the phones, nothing but candlelight and hanging out as a family. And we did do that, and it was it was really, really cool. Another memorable moment happened that night when we went to this incredible restaurant that I was telling you about, and we were gonna get a picture in this beautiful scene, right? And there were three of us sitting on one side of the table and three of us in the other overlooking the ocean, this beautiful restaurant. And these the way these chairs were made, they were kind of small at the base and they kind of got a little bit larger for comfort, but not ideal for center of gravity. So when my ex-hus husband, who was sitting in the middle of myself and my oldest daughter, went to pull out his chair to take this picture and face the waiter who was going to take the picture, the chair tipped backwards. And instinctively, he threw his arms out to the side to try and catch himself. And as a result, he knocked both myself and my daughter over. And so here we are, nobody got hurt, but flying backward, our feet in the air. The poor waiter, you know, scrambling to try and help us pick up. And I'm telling you guys, I have never, I cannot remember the time last time I laughed that hard. I just laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed. We all did. And my son got this classic photo. One of my kids on the other side had the, you know, thought process to grab a picture with all of our feet in the air because he couldn't get around to help us and the waiter was already helping us. But it was just one of the highlights of my trip. I have to say, it was incredible. So we had this amazing time, extraordinary, actually. And I said it out loud to him more than once. I'm like, wow, you know, you seem so different. You're so much more patient. He was much more relaxed, you know, things that used to set him off, which is everybody taking their sweet time and not being able to coordinate everybody, uh coordinate everybody in a timely manner, like he does. One of the trigger points in our marriage had always been that he liked to coordinate everybody to leave. So when he'd say, Let's go, everyone was ready to go. It had to be seamless, right? And on this trip, of course, that just doesn't happen with like six people. The girls a little bit longer to get ready, or there was this, there was that. And I commented to him, I'm like, my God, you know, you are so patient. I mean, this is unbelievable. What happened to the old version of you? And he's like, Oh, yeah, I've changed, you know. And it he did. It was great, but it was on the very last day after we had gone horseback riding and everything, where something just broke. So we had piled into the car after the horse ride and we go to pick up some supplies for a barbecue that he planned with some neighbors that he has there at the condo. It was a little cramped and it was kind of chaotic, uh, chaotic along the way. You know, you've got a whole bunch of people stepping into a car to run these errands. And he asked everyone not to get out of the car at this particular store, that just he and I would go in and grab what we needed. But one of my sons uh decided I'm gonna go ahead and pop out of the car. And we didn't find what we needed at the store. So he jumps in the car, feeling impatient, feeling stressed, and I think feeling the buildup of the stress that he had been kind of dealing with, because it's against his nature to be that easygoing. That's just not how he's built. So when my son tried to get in the car, he didn't realize that he was getting in the car, and my son wasn't even in, and he takes off. And the kids start yelling, like, hey, hey, hey, you know, so-and-so's not in the car. And so he slams on the brake, and you know, the kid gets in the car, and he just lost it completely. After days of patience and ease, we had had this beautiful version of himself that we had all been marveling at, the pressure valve finally blew. He just snapped. He didn't just raise his voice, he like did what he does when he gets to that pressure point breaking. He blew up. It was so jarring. The contrast of everything that had come before hit harder than I think I could have realized. And you could see it happen in real time. The laughter stopped, eye contact disappeared. The kids who had been So open and present and trusting of that energy that we had all been living in, they just literally went somewhere else inside themselves and used their own coping skills to deal with what felt like a betrayal. And I know he didn't mean it that way, but that's what it felt like. Because all of a sudden, we had been pulled from this environment where this trust had been built, where this wonderful flow of family, you could see it, everyone had let their hair down, everyone was just being themselves, and everybody was just really happy. And this total departure from that in a blink of an eye to this red hot temper tantrum. It was this storm, you know, that came out of nowhere. And the kids just shut down and I shut down. And we all had this moment of just like everything went silent. Everybody, when we got back to the condo, just went their separate ways and went out in the balcony or went in their room. I mean, everybody separated. And I felt horrible. I felt bad, not only for my kids, but for my ex-husband, because I could see that he regretted it. But he is not the kind of person that goes back and, you know, I've seen him do it a couple of times in his life, but like, hey, I'm sorry I shouldn't have done that. I think he felt kind of like vindicated in the fact, like, well, you guys don't listen to me, you know. So I'll do what I say, you know, just do what I say when I say it. And that's kind of who he is. He's a very take charge type A kind of person. But the problem is not being that kind of a person, it's the way that he he reacts to things. And I don't want to make any excuses for him at all because honestly, I think that this is something that he needs to work on. And I think he knows that too, because it it breaks that trust, that that feeling of trust. When you grow up with that kind of trauma, uh, and I had that kind of trauma in the marriage all the time. I never really knew who I was going to be dealing with. Was he going to be this amazing, wonderful version of himself, or was he going to be this scary person that I didn't know? And even though that person has become, he, if that's dissipated, that that negative aspect, I think the reason it's dissipated is because we're not around him enough to experience that. And to be honest, you know, I think that's why my kids chose to live with me pretty much right away when I got my own place, because I have a different kind of environment. I am very much a, hey, whatever, live and let live. Oh yeah, don't worry about it. It's cool. Like that's just the way that I am. And I do, I don't want to say I avoid conflict, but I kind of do. I just lived a life of conflict. I don't want problems. So if something is not a big deal, I'm not gonna make it a big deal. I'm just gonna be like, whatever. If I feel like something needs to be said, I'll say it, but I'll say it in such a way that I'm like, hey, this is how I'm feeling. How do you feel? If there's a problem, okay, whatever, we'll talk about it later. I don't push. His way that he deals with his emotions is to build, build, build, build, build. And then like the champagne cork, they they spill out everywhere. And it can be frightening, honestly, because he just literally, it's like he he morphs into this version of himself that you would not have recognized from five minutes ago. And that was the story of my marriage. And the crazy thing is, is that I really was brought into both worlds, right? I saw wow, it was like such a gift handed to me, including the outburst, because I was like, I understand why I stayed. I've often asked myself that. Why is it that I stayed for as long as I did? I had the answer given to me on my birthday because, guys, when it was good with him, he's wonderful. He is magnanimous, he's giving, he's loving, he tries so hard to show his love by demonstrating it through acts of taking you places and making you feel like you're special. And he can be so much fun and he's great to laugh with, and he's uninhibited. He'll sing, he'll do karaoke. I mean, he's got this great personality. But when he builds and these things, and it could be because of things that are happening with the family, but usually it's just a lot of different things, you know, pressures that he has, he puts himself under a lot of pressure, and these things build, and then they're exacerbated by being together as a family and the pressure that can definitely occur when you have a lot of different personalities together, right? It will trigger something inside him. And so his release valve is like literally, he blows his top. You talk about people blowing their top, that's what he does, and that's what he did. And it really justified to me why I stayed in the marriage as long as I did, because when it was good, guys, it was absolutely incredible. But when it was bad, it was traumatizing. And so I had that moment, that full circle moment. And I think it's important to say that the thing that nobody talks about in relationships like that, it's not the explosion itself. I mean, it is kind of, but it's that aftermath. It's the way that real trust lives in your body, not just in your mind. And it can be built carefully and then it's completely shattered in a single act. And that's the hard part. It happens that way, right? And then everybody had to pretend that it didn't happen and regroup and make the best of it. They had to decide collectively without saying a word, okay, we can protect the rest of this trip and not open the can of worms because with him, there is no opening the can of worms. If you try and discuss it, his guilt kicks in or whatever it is, and then it just starts the fight all over again. So I just want to make this clear. I am not trying to disparage my ex-husband. In fact, I love him as a person, genuinely I do. He is a great father, he has a generous heart. He made the entire birthday happen out of love, and I will never forget it. I will always be grateful for that. But what I witnessed on this trip and what I felt in my own body when that happened is important information and it needs to be named. So there is a psychological pattern, and it's called intermittent explosive disorder, IED, and is characterized by explosive outbursts of anger that are disproportionate to the situation, which described that moment exactly. They're impulsive, they are not premeditated, and they're triggered by something that looks like an inconsequential event. So the person isn't evil, they're not necessarily trying to control anybody. It is their inability to deploy emotional regulation skills during high stress moments. That's the central problem. And it's a dysfunction in the brain's pathways for impulse control. It's not a moral failing. And what I've watched over many years is somebody who has the same pattern. He builds up pressure the way that a champagne bottle gets shaken. And no matter how hard they're trying, the cork has to pop. And afterwards, he feels terrible. He always has, but that's the pattern, it continues. And what happens to the people around that? There is a name for that too. It's called fond response. F-A-W-N response. It's trauma response, and it is a fourth trauma response along the uh fight, flight, and freeze, where the brain learns that the safest path is to appease the perceived threat. It looks like people pleasing and keeping the peace. It is not a choice, it is a neurologically driven survival mechanism where the brain learns to equate keeping the peace with survival, and over time it becomes automatic, happening faster than conscious thought. And I watched my kids do it, and I did it. What makes it so insidious is that you don't even realize that you're doing it. I did. I knew exactly what I was doing in the moment, but I don't think that they did. You just go quiet, you go along, you make the decisions somewhere in your brain, and you've decide that your feelings are less important than keeping the peace because you know that if you open up that can of worms, it's just going to be worse. So you tell yourself you're fine and you and you move on. And that was something that I needed to be reminded of the beautiful, amazing parts of my family, the joy of those days together, the laughter, the horse rides, the cocktail parties. It was all real. And then there was that moment of dysregulation that shut down the entire family unit for a period of time. And the kids, they recouped fast. And I am so impressed with them for that because but they did they have years of practice doing this, right? That is real. That cycle of intermittent reinforcement, the good times that follow periods of harm create a psychological dependency that makes it genuinely, that makes it genuinely difficult to leave a situation and to see clearly. The brain's chemistry is actually altered during these cycles. And that pattern becomes addictive. That is literally what happened to me in my life. That was my marriage. The good times were so extraordinary, uh, I could never forget them, uh, on purpose or not on purpose. And I'm still not entirely sure uh the reality of what it felt like when things went the other way. If it was bad all the time, leaving would have been easier. But the variable schedule of the good times pulls you back in because you really want that to be the truth, hoping that those good parts will continue, keeping you constantly trying to be enough, keeping you constantly trying to maintain that peace because you want those good times to be there. And the saddest part of the equation is that you lose yourself in it, you lose your voice, you learn not to express what you actually feel because you know from this experience that speaking your truth in the middle of that kind of energy does not lead anywhere good. It just escalates. So you learn to stay quiet, and your kids learn to stay quiet. And everybody performs the fine routine until it actually is fine again. And then right there, that inability to communicate truths without fear of what it would cost you is the clearest reason that leaving my marriage saved my life. Because it almost took my life to leave it, you guys. And staying would have finished the job, no question. I walked away from that trip with something I didn't expect, a full spectrum view, the absolute best of what we were, literally the best, and this crystal clear reminder of why we are better apart. Both things are true, both things are real. And holding those realities at the same time without needing to collapse them into one story, that is the work. And that's what it means to grow. That's the actual process of learning to really understand something rather than burying it, which brings me into my topic of the day. So here's the science. What I just described, that trip, that full circle moment, the choice that I made years ago to forgive and to build something new instead of letting the wreckage stand, all of that is a living example of a concept that is true and it's all over the internet right now. Most people are just getting it wrong. The concept is this you can rewrite your past through present action and your future. So let me explain to you what it actually means because the science behind it is real and it changed the way that I understand everything that I've been through. So let's start with what your brain actually does with your past. For a long time, the scientific consensus is that once a memory was formed and stored, it was locked, permanent, right? Fixed. It turns out that is not true. Neuroscience has shown that when a stored memory is activated, when you bring it back into consciousness or conscious awareness, it becomes temporarily unstable and malleable for a brief period of time, roughly five hours, literally. They have a time frame for that. And the process, uh, the process is called memory reconsolidation. It is not a theory, it has been replicated, it has been studied, and it is being used in clinical psychotherapy right now. Every time you recall a memory, it becomes malleable, like I said, temporarily, like soft clay before solidifying again. And during that window, new information, new perspective, or new emotional experiences can actually reshape that memory. So, what that means in all practicality is this the memory of something painful that happened to you 20 years ago, something you've been carrying around like a weight, is not written in permanent ink in your brain. When you reactivate that memory and you introduce new information that directly contradicts the old emotional learning that you attach to it, your brain rewrites that memory's impact. You can remember the event, but without the same painful grip that it once had. I became a better person because of it. It doesn't really work that way. You have to go a lot deeper, and you have to do the work and you have to really understand and go back into that memory. Most people are not willing to do that. Most people are not willing to go back into something that hurt them to heal themselves. It's easier to label it, make yourself a victim of the situation, and then label yourself a survivor. And that's as far as they go. But if you don't want something that happened to you that really genuinely affected the way that you see the world to permanently affect you, you've got to go back into it. How it made you feel, how it still makes you feel, how it helped you shape the identity that you had then and currently have about yourself. And then through really going through that, and you don't need to go to a doctor to do that, guys. You can do it yourself through reflecting, through journaling, through crying over things. You know, I'm still healing from my marriage to this very day. I don't know that I will ever stop because it was so impactful to me. The bottom line is you do not have to be a prisoner of your past experience. Your present awareness, that is the editor. Old pain no longer has to control how you respond in current challenges. Feelings of shame and guilt or fear lessen as these new meanings take hold. Freed from old narratives, you can pursue your purpose with confidence. Now let's go deeper because quantum physics has a layer in this, and it's called retrocausality. The neuroscience explains what happens inside your brain when you do this, but some physicists are suggesting something even more radical, that the relationship between the present and the past isn't just psychological, it might just be physical. A growing group of experts believe we should abandon the assumption that present actions can't affect past events because they believe that they can. The concept is called retrocausality, and it proposes that a decision made in the present can actually influence something in the past. And I know that sounds insane, but here's how they got there. So, in quantum physic experiments called Bell tests, physicists discovered that the distant particles seem to immediately know what measurement is being made on the other. So, retrocausality, it can explain these correlations. A decision made in the present actually influences the particles of the past. There is a physicist named John Wheeler, and his delayed choice experiment in 1978, he explored whether quantum events exist as definitive occurrences before they're measured, or whether the act of measurement itself participates in determining what already happened. What does that sound like, guys? Doesn't that sound like the particle experiment? It is kind of, right? Or Schrdinger's cat, right? His work suggested that a measurement made in the present could affect how a particle behaved in the past. Wow, let that one sink in. Wheeler himself said something that stopped me cold when I read it. The past has no existence except as it is recorded in the present. I want you to really stop and think about that for a minute. So let's be straight. I don't like it when people stretch real science into something that it isn't. So when researchers talk about modifying the past, they are not claiming that present intention can rewrite external historical facts. What they're saying is that by shifting present coherence and the nervous system patterns, the emotional charge and predictive power of past memories can change, sometimes dramatically. In that functional sense, the past that lives in you becomes something different. So we're not erasing events here. The event is the event. But the meaning you assign to it, the identity that it gave you, the neural pathways carved it into your brain, and those are rewritable. Which brings me to my favorite author, Joe Dispenza, and the practical application of this. Guys, if you have not read Joe Dispenza, you want to change your life, right there. Just start right there. Read his books. They shaped everything who I am today because I realized the power that lives within me and the power of neuroplasticity. That's where it's all about. But this is where it gets really practical. Dr. Joe Dispenza takes these concepts out of the physics lab and the therapy room and puts them into the hands of everyday people. The framework he's built is grounded in real disciplines, and I have seen it change lives, mine and so many other people. Dispenza integrates epigenetics into his teachings. Epigenetics are the study of how thoughts, beliefs, and emotions influence which genes get expressed. His position is that our thoughts and feelings have the power to turn genes off and on and influence cellular function. Again, Bruce Lipton, another author, talks about this. You must read these guys, or at least listen to them on Audible. Life-changing guys. And here's the piece that I think people miss. According to the evidence he works with, if an emotional state has more energy than a hardwired program, biological change can occur. Meaning the feeling that you generate right now is stronger than the old pattern. Your nervous system has been running, then the old program can be overwritten. Thoughts are the language of the brain. Feelings are the language of the body. And how you think and how you feel together create your mental state of being. So if you want to change the state by extension also and influence the past has over you, you have to change both. Not just your thoughts, your body has to believe the new story too. And another great book, The Body Keeps Score. And that also, my sister bought that for me, and that really helped shape a lot of this system that I put into place for myself. Here's the key mechanical piece that most people skip over. You cannot be the new version of yourself while you're still identified with the old one. You have to be willing to become someone that you don't fully recognize yet. And that discomfort is the signal that it's working. You will have to be willing to become someone you don't fully recognize yet. And that can be really uncomfortable. I know this because I lived it. So I walked out of my marriage. I was married to a very high-powered man. I had lived completely codependently. I integrated my whole reality and my personality and everything that I was into being a part of this marriage. And when it crumbled, I completely lost sight of myself. I lived in victim mode. I ended up with depression and addiction, and those things were real too. And I couldn't shake it because they had such a powerful hold. I had this life-altering moment where I realized that I was going to die or I had to live for my kids. I made that decision. I was given some kind of spiritual help. And then from there, very slowly, you guys, I began to integrate the works of these authors that I've talked about, Dispenza and Lipton and a lot of other works, and understand from my childhood how I learned to behave in that fond capacity to survive, how I brought that into my marriage. And I also begin to understand my ex-husband, because that was important too. Like, you know, a lot of people are like, well, you don't need to take on their psychological baggage. No. But I do need to understand why it was that I was attracted to this man and what his makeup was that made him act the way that he did. It's very easy to label people narcissists or, you know, villains. My ex-husband isn't either of those things. I mean, oh, sure, there was a time I'm like, he's a narcissist. And he does have narcissistic qualities, for sure, but he is not a true narcissist because he genuinely has empathy. He genuinely really loves with his whole heart. And it's kind of heartbreaking because he's alone. He hasn't been able to really maintain a relationship. I think because of some of these things that I'm talking about here that aren't fully healed in him, he hasn't really healed them. I think he's working on it, but a lot of people are not going to stay for that. And I stayed because I was very invested, right? But it still drove the marriage apart. And then my drinking, of course, didn't do that any favors either. He he didn't want to be married to an alcoholic. We both had our parts in this. And that was my coping mechanism, right? We have to understand both pieces of that marriage. And I really had to go back as hard as it was and understand where he was coming from psychologically, what made him the way that he was, and myself as well, what brought us together. And then I was able to celebrate once I got through all that, the genuine great parts of him that keep me in his life to this day, because he is a worthwhile human. He's a great guy. He has some stuff. And I am a worthwhile human and I have some stuff. Unfortunately, his stuff that is not so good really triggers my stuff and my inner core wounds that I'm still working on. And that's why we just can't be in a partnership together. But the kind of partnership we have now is something that was created by both of us through this neuroplasticity and not choosing to let the events that were bad dominate our story. We did not allow that to dominate our story. And a result is we can still have a relationship today that is meaningful and beautiful and that our kids get to benefit from. We can still be a family unit without the need to label ourselves as husband and wife, ex-husband and, you know, ex-wife, uh, victim, victor, whatever. No labels. We just learn to work with what we've got. So when people say that you can rewrite your past through present action, here's what they actually mean, the way that I understand it. Your past is not stored as fixed, like a fixed file in your brain. It is a living, dynamic story that gets edited every single time you bring it into awareness, right? So based on how you're feeling, you're gonna see your past that way. Are you feeling like a victim? How are you feeling, right? The emotional charge is attached to a memory. Or the way it shapes your belief, it shapes your nervous system responses, your physical health. That is not permanent. It's malleable. And you, right now, with intention and elevated emotion, with a willingness to tell a different story about what happened, you have the ability to change it. Not the event, but the meaning, the identity, the neural pathways. And when you do that through enough consistency and enough emotional intensity, you literally change your biology. Literally, you change your gene expression. You change that version of the past that your nervous system was operating from. That is not woo-woo, guys. That is neuroscience. Look it up. Epigenetics and quantum physics, all having a conversation. So let me land this plane and bring it all back to this trip. Years ago, I did make a decision. Instead of letting my divorce become a wound that my family would have to live with, I chose to forgive him. I chose to be very fair on the divorce, and I chose to do family holidays together. Now that was my initial choice. He jumped right on board and we did it together. We both had things that we needed to answer for. He had his stuff and I had my stuff. Both of us had to deal with the consequences of the actions that ended the marriage. We understood, I think instinctively, or I did, and I think he is beginning to understand before I had the science to back it up, that the story we tell about something determines what happens to us going forward. So we ultimately chose to rewrite what a divorce could look like. We have that Demi Moore, Bruce Willis kind of divorce that I always kind of admired, you know, I saw the way that they were with their kids. He got to jump on board and rewrite the story for the kids. That is a present action changing a past story. We could have chosen to live in the hurt and the pain and the infidelity and the drinking and all the things that tore our marriage apart and hate each other, right? But we chose to rewrite it for our kids. And what we got was a gift as a family. You don't have to erase the hard stuff to heal from it. You just have to be willing to tell a bigger story and a different story about it. One that includes everything, the beauty and the difficulty. You don't have to assign blame. You just have to choose how to move forward with intention. I came home from this trip knowing myself better than when I left. It was such a gift. I saw why I stayed for as long as I did because man, that was real. We we had some great times together and we were great together. But then I also saw why it didn't work in the end. And both were such a gift. And I had this moment of just looking at the last night of the trip, looking up at the moon and thinking, God, you gave me this incredible gift. I don't have to assign blame to myself because deep down inside, you know, there's always that, oh, what could I have done to change things? Or why did I stay so long? Now I don't have to do that anymore. I understand exactly why I stayed, exactly why he was worthy, we were worthy, and why I fought so hard to make it work. And ultimately, in the end, it was the way that we process things, the way that he chooses to, not even chooses, the way that he displays his unhealed stuff and the way that my unhealed self reacts to that. That is what broke up the marriage. Yeah, there were other things too, but ultimately that was it. I got to see both sides of the coin, why I stayed married and why it didn't work. This was a healing process in action, not a clean, straight line, but full spectrum, right? Everything. I got to see everything that I loved about being married to him and everything that I didn't love about being married to him. And I got to relive the laughter, the tears, see the psychological fallout on my kids and how it forced them to deal with certain things and how I deal with things, all of it at once in one three-day trip. And I wouldn't trade that trip for anything in the world. It was one of the highlights I could honestly say of my life. I walk away with uh a greater amount of love for my family and my ex-husband than I've ever had, and also a greater sense of being really, really grateful that I made the choices that I made, but also that where I where I'm at today. And I walked away with this understanding. I was talking to my daughter on the way home. This is why I choose never to be in a relationship again. I fought so hard for autonomy, and I didn't have that. My marriage was very consuming. He was very consuming. And his idea, I think, of a partnership is a true integrated sense of self, where I don't feel comfortable with that anymore. I do not want to integrate myself with anybody ever again. I want to be my autonomous self by myself. And it's interesting because I think my kids, they didn't say it, but I think they're very glad that we're not married anymore either. I could just tell by certain comments and things that they made. They also are very happy that things are the way that they are. They love that they can come back together, that we can do these family things together, but that both parents have a sense of autonomy and are separate now and aren't living in that toxic environment that they had to grow up in and had to deal with and have their own psychological fallout from. And that my healing has inspired their healing. And it's, I think, his healing, uh, because he has healed. He is still elements of the person he always was, but there's absolutely been healing. And you can see that in every facet of the trip. And you could also see what was unhealed in the trip, too, with that one outburst, right? It was just such a cathartic experience. And I wanted to share that with you because I think that wherever you are at, you know, maybe you were abused as a child and you've held on to that identity of being victimized by that. I'm not discounting that, you guys. There are traumatic things that happen to us. I had a childhood that had some super traumatic stuff. And rather than blame and be victimized by it, there is a way that we can turn it if we really understand and break down what happened to us and how we feel. And most of us are not brave enough to going back into those emotions because they aren't comfortable. And it's just easier to paint a version of what the story was and how you know we deal with it today, than go back in and rewrite that story. And so for me, I would not trade a single moment of my journey, not the depression, not the alcoholism, because I experienced forgiveness from my children. I learned to forgive my ex-husband and he, me. And through that, this cathartic experience has created this, you know, partnership as parents, not as a married couple anymore, that is more beautiful than I ever could have dreamed. And had I chose to stay in hatred and blame him and refuse to see his side of the story, and I think him, same for me, we would not be where we are today. And our kids wouldn't be reaping the benefit of this relationship that we have. But it is also a reminder that boundaries need to be kept and set and honored because some things just don't change. And how we feel, I have to always look at what is my reaction to these things, what is my psychological wound that's being reactivated again by certain things that happen. And how quickly can I put that in check and take everything that I've learned and put that back into perspective for who I am today? So I just want to leave that with you guys today. I think that you can look at something that kind of still mars your life, maybe an identity that you hold around something that happened to you. But I've heard a lot of ladies, you know, that are on my channels like, I wish I had that relationship with my ex-husband. It's not always possible. It was possible for me because both participants were willing to work with the other and therefore rewrite the story. If you have an unwilling participant that needs to be part of that equation, you're not going to get there. The best that you can do is heal it for yourself and rewrite the story for yourself and how you have changed as a result of the things that have happened. But if you got two willing people, you can have something like that. But I just want to impress upon you that you can rewrite the version of your life that you don't like by neuroplasticity. And if you want to explore this deeper, I just really encourage you to read Bruce Lipton's The Biology of Belief and every single one of Joe Dispenses' works. If you do this, I promise you, you can literally, if you put those things into application, you can rewrite your life. And my life today is beautiful and happy. I am not victimized by my past. I have learned from it, and I have created a beautiful life for myself with the tools that I learned in those books. So, guys, yes, it is possible to rewrite your past. And I really hope that you'll explore some of these concepts today and be able to use that in your own life. Thank you so much for being here and holding this part of my story with me. If today's episode resonated with you, please don't stay in silence. Share it with someone who might need to hear it. And if you're walking through your own fire right now, know this you are not too broken, you are not too late, and you are never, ever alone. This is Burn It Down and Begin Again. I'm Erica, and I will see you in the next chapter.