Chapter 42 - THE WOUNDS THAT NEVER FULLY HEAL (AND MAYBE THEY AREN'T SUPPOSED TO)

THE WOUNDS THAT NEVER FULLY HEAL (AND MAYBE THEY AREN'T SUPPOSED TO)

Can emotional wounds ever fully heal, or do we simply learn to live with them?

In this deeply personal episode of Burn It Down and Begin Again, Erica explores one of the hardest questions on every healing journey: Do old scars ever truly disappear?

After rediscovering old family home videos and reflecting on childhood trauma, marriage, betrayal, addiction, and recovery, Erica shares how unexpected moments can reopen wounds we thought we'd already healed—and why that doesn't mean we've failed.

In this episode, you'll discover:

•  Why healing isn't always linear 
•  How trauma can resurface years later 
•  The difference between healing and pretending you're "over it" 
•  Why old memories still trigger powerful emotions 
•  How childhood experiences, betrayal, and loss shape adulthood 
•  The role of forgiveness without forgetting 
•  Learning to rebuild your identity after heartbreak 
•  Why survival can become purpose 
•  How to stop judging yourself for scars that remain 

If you've ever wondered why certain memories still hurt despite years of personal growth, this episode offers compassion, perspective, and hope. Healing isn't about becoming who you were before—it’s about becoming someone stronger because of what you've survived.

If this conversation resonates with you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs the reminder that healing doesn't have to be perfect to be real.

Burn It Down and Begin Again is part of the Chickology Podcast Network, where real women share real stories of resilience, transformation, and rebuilding after life's hardest seasons.

🌸 About Chickology™
Chickology™ is more than a podcast brand — it’s a collective of strong, real women telling real stories. Together, we’re reclaiming our narratives, breaking cycles, and lifting one another up through truth, laughter, and raw conversations. Every show under the Chickology™ umbrella is created by women, for women, with love.

✨ Join the Movement
We’re always looking for bold voices and powerful stories. If you’re a woman ready to share your truth or host your own podcast with us, reach out! One honest truth at a time, we’re helping one isolated woman at a time feel less alone.

📍 Find Us

• Explore all Chickology™ podcasts at [Buzzsprout Podcast Directory link or Chickology website]
• Email us at: ChickologyPodcasts@gmail.com
  
  

💫 Because when women rise together, we change the world.

Transcript

Erica 0:00

Some wounds close, some just scar over and sit there quietly, underneath a life that looks completely fine from the outside. Today we're talking about the stuff that doesn't fully heal no matter how much work you do and whether that means we're failing at healing or whether we've just been sold a lie about what healing was ever supposed to look like. 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 and rebuild life on our own terms to 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 Czechology: 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 care, and there's an army of us rising with you. Now let's begin. Hi guys, welcome. This is Erica. Welcome to another edition of Burn It Down and Begin Again. If you're new here, this podcast is all about healing and growth. The deal. I'm here for the real talk. And if you've been here a while, thanks for sticking around. If you're new, welcome to the fire. If anything in here helps you, share this podcast, leave us a rating, drop a comment. That's the only way that the algorithm is going to hand this to somebody who needs it. I'm not asking for me. I'm asking for the woman scrolling right now who thinks she's the only one who feels this way, and she's not. So I hope you'll give us a like and a comment on whatever platform you are on. So I'm going to start as always with my challenge of the week. And my challenge of the week has just been managing my busy life. And I think so many of us can relate to this. I have got a full one, guys. I came back from a 49-day illness where I was out of work for 49 days and had to not only reintegrate into life as I have known it, but adding more things. Because during that time that I was sick, my wonderful best friend launched an idea for a new business, which we're very actively working on right now. And that has taken up a lot of time that I didn't even have in the first place. And now I'm having to manage even more. But I feel blessed and definitely able to rise to the challenge. It's just a matter matter of connecting it all and making it work for me. I definitely feel like my life at times, I don't have enough time. This weekend, we actually had a wonderful free stay over at the Green Valley Ranch Hotel and Casino with my best friend's kids. That was an amazing two days. Just basically spent the day at the pool. I shot a lot of content for our channel and we were able to just really enjoy and let our hair down. But of course, when you're managing two little kids, it is never exactly a rest. But thankfully, they need naps just as much as the adults do. So we were able to retreat to the beauty of our own hotel room and have them take a little nap and watch a little TV. And we were able to take a break midday. But man, it was just a wonderful time. And then coming back, I've got all this content that I need to pull together, videos that I need to create, do voiceovers for, running the Amazon business, the part that I do, which is small compared to what my my friend Elise, that's really her jurisdiction, uploading stuff to YouTube, and then having to live life, clean the house, and walk the dog and get my exercise in and keep up with housework and plan family dinners and just stay connected with friends. It's definitely a handful. And I'm so grateful for how full my life is because there was definitely a time, if you followed me from the beginning, that I did not feel that way. I did not feel that I had a life that was worth living, honestly. And it was all perspective. And I think so much of my life, the biggest things that has that has changed for me has been my perspective. I've done a lot of work. I've done a lot of shadow work. I've done a lot of just understanding psychologically, a lot of reading and and uh going into why my mind works the way that it does and getting out of victimhood. That was really, really big for me. And I do challenge everybody who's feeling like a victim at this particular time to try and find a way to turn that around because from every story of victimhood, there is a story of revival and reinvention that happens. And I definitely reinvented myself. I reinvented myself in my mid-50s, and I cannot tell you how happy I am with my life now. As busy as it feels, I feel needed, I feel valued, I feel that I have a lot of people in my life, or I should say just the right amount, because I really don't overdo it, but that support me, nurture me, and love me. And I feel like I love myself, and that's the most important thing. It has been a journey of self-love. And as I'm watching my kids and younger people that I know go through the process of living, I think this is something that we all have to achieve. I don't think that self-love is handed to us. I think it is the natural progression through life where we go out of the womb into childhood, and maybe some of us have great childhoods, and maybe some of us don't have such great childhoods, but we begin to realize that the world is not a safe place. And then we start to question our place in the world. And from there, we oftentimes go through our teenage years and our young adulthood really trying to figure out who we are. And a lot of us fall into situations bad things might happen or just things of our own making where we really begin to question the fabric of our lives and what life is made of. And then by the time you hit hopefully middle age, like I did, you have a coming home to yourself. But that doesn't come without work. And that's actually kind of the subject of today is the shadow work that never seems to be done. And a couple of things happened in succession that really made me think about shadow work and how I wonder if it's ever really done and if some wounds never heal. So uh I'll just start with the story, and this is how it basically started. There's a woman in my life who had her trust broken a long time ago by people that were supposed to make her feel safe. People with real power over her. And what happened to her wasn't a single bad night. It was something that got buried under fear and silence. And buried things, as we know, do not stay buried. They find a way to rear their ugly head eventually if we don't deal with it. They renovate, they move into your body and your mind, and they set up a whole apartment, a whole house. And years of it showed up everywhere in her nervous system, treating safety like a threat, in relationships with people that took more than they gave. Because when something teaches you young that no doesn't count, you become very easy to take from. And the wrong people can smell that before you name it for yourself. And there was a stretch where she wasn't really living, she was just kind of disappearing on purpose. But she did get free of that chapter and she built something really steady. She found someone that she'd known for a long time who she felt safe with. They built a family, got married. Recently, the two of them tried to close the distance that was kind of building up between them, which happens in marriage, right? We begin to live the business of life and we lose track of the relationship and what made it important in the first place, raising kids and raising a family and all that. And they tried to bridge the gap and real effort on both sides, nothing forced. And unfortunately, it didn't really land as connection. It started to bring forth all of this grief. And she felt like she needed hours alone afterwards of talking and rehashing and going into some of these things just to feel like herself again. And she was confused because he hadn't done anything wrong. Basically, he had just walked into this blast radius of something that had happened to her before he even existed in her life. And that's not a broken relationship. That's her body still fighting a war that nobody officially ended. And so she and I talked about this extensively and how marriages and relationships take a toll when we think that we've done the healing work, but it somehow finds a way to come to the surface again in other ways. And unless we're savvy and we catch what it is that is triggering us, we can blame it on other things. And so it was interesting because, in correlation with that, something happened to me that was similar. My kids found some old home videos and they were cleaning out the garage and found these home videos, and they were like on those old cassette things that you we used to have from those antiquated home video machines. And so my daughter took it upon herself to buy this special cable on Amazon and she was able to plug in the unit and charge it, and we were able to watch these home videos. And we sat there and watched these. And it used to be that I couldn't watch videos or even look at old pictures because I was so damaged, I guess is a word, or hurt from my previous life. If you've followed me, but I went into a marriage with all my heart. I really believed that that marriage was going to last forever. And there was infidelity and a lot of other things that were really unhealthy in that marriage. And I reverbiated back to my drinking, which I had quelled for I think the first time I went back into my first relapse, I was 10 years sober. And of course, it took cold, it took root very, very quickly when you're an alcoholic. And of course, that didn't do any favors for the relationship. And between the two of those things, we just split further further and further apart. And we never really healed. When I finally went through the last bout of drinking and the sobriety that's come after, I've had to go in and peel back the layers of that onion, if you will. And it's been really hard because there are things that just are so painful. Like when I look at those childhood videos, the dreams and the hopes that I had had for having this family unity, this family that I never really had growing up, that I wanted so much for myself, that just shattered, that fell apart, and the betrayal and the hurt and that innocence that was lost because I went into that relationship very much innocent, believing in true love, believing in that fairy tale, that Disney fairy tale, and believing that I really had it. And then when I first found out about these infidelities and things that were going on, I truly was, I don't know how to describe that moment in my life, but not only was I shocked, I never saw it coming. And it devastated me. Have you ever had a soul wound that just literally felt like you were dying? And I remember the moment that I found out, I literally felt like every part of my life had been shattered. And I knew on some level that I would never be the same again. And I fell into a deep depression afterwards because my whole idea, this construct that I had built up in my life of believing that my marriage was the saving grace and that this was my haven and this was my safe place was just completely ripped out from under me. And I realized I had a whole handful of nothing that he was cheating and had been cheating. And I literally had no idea. There were a lot of warning signs looking back. I mean, he was very angry when he'd come home. He exhibited a lot of those behaviors that are like reverse psychology kind of thing. He'd feel badly, so he'd come home and basically take it out on me like it was my fault that he was cheating. And I don't think he even articulated that, but he was mad at everything. I couldn't do anything right. I was under the microscope. I had to jump, how high, quicker, faster, nothing was ever good enough. And I just ran myself ragged. And I think that really triggered not only the depression, but that inability to please my husband really triggered that wanting to escape, which is my drinking, because that's what drinking was always about for me. People drink, we discussed a couple episodes back, how drinking and drug abuse and any kind of addictive anything basically manifests from a place where you feel like you either want to escape or there's something that you're getting from the drug or the alcohol. And for me, it was very much escapism. I just needed to literally check out because my mind would not stop torturing me that I had been living this lie and how could we ever get back to the place that we we once were? And I realized, I think that was the death of it all, that we never could, that that trust was permanently shattered. And even though we did go back and we were married for quite a long time after that first time, it eventually happened again and my drinking happened again because I did have sobriety in there too. And uh, that last time, it was just, even though we both tried, it was just broken beyond repair. And I think that watching those videos, uh, I'm in a place now where I'm very healthy, but it made me realize that some wounds never really heal because that it triggered that part in me where I could feel that old ache of a life that I had dreamed of that never came into fruition. And then there's that other part of my brain that very quickly goes in and be like, yeah, but look at what a life you have now. And truthfully, I wouldn't want to be in that marriage. I wasn't happy in that marriage. But I think it was the idea and the safety and the innocence that it represented, that first real love, that marriage. And I have to also go back and admit, if I'm being honest with myself, that it scarred me against relationships with men. And I told you before, I will never be in a relationship again. And it's true it is because I am happy. But the other part that's also equally true is that it's just reinforced every time somebody hits on me. I'm still relatively young and attracted. When men do, I put the feelers out and I'm actually repulsed. And I realize that's not a healthy, not a healthy response, but I have such distrust for men because when you give your heart from an innocent place very willingly and openly, and you're damaged like that, I don't know if that ever really goes away, at least to the extent that I was hurt. I know a lot of people do it, but I literally cannot imagine ever letting anybody in my life that would hurt me that way again. Um, because there is something about a love affair, right? Where you bear your soul to somebody and they become a part of you in that way. Friendships are different. Relationships with our kids are different. There's still a sense of autonomy that is maintained by the individual. But somehow when we get in relationships, there's that blurring of that line and we become enmeshed with the other person if we're not careful. And I think a certain amount of meshment is normal, but then there also has to be a really strong sense of healthy boundaries. And even though I'm sure that I would go into any relationship now with a very careful and wary attitude and a sense of self, I would I definitely have a red flag monitor. The problem is I see red flags everywhere, if I'm being honest. And watching the majority of my friends in their relationships, I am just that's reinforced by just watching them in their relationships. I'm like, oh my gosh. And I'm not passing judgment. I just see things that these men pull where these women are left holding the majority of the responsibility, so much of the child rearing. And then women are discarded. And I this is something that I can't get away from. I at the hotel and casino we were at this week, and I people watch, and I'm looking around, and the handful of older men, and I'm talking like 60s plus, right? With these 30 to 40-something year old women on their arms, obviously arm candy, it was everywhere. And I just was disgusted because I thought, man, where is the man? And I know that they're out there, guys, I know this, but where's the man that sticks with a woman when she begins to lose that beauty and she ages and he loves her? And it seems to me like so much of that is a story of old, right? You hear about the relationships that are like that from the 40s and the 50s, and not that infidelity and that stuff didn't happen back then, but I think people were just built differently. And I think because we live in a very disposable society, we take that into absolutely everything from what we consume as consumers, groceries and whatever, to the furniture in our home, to the relationships that we have. And I think it's just very easy now to be like, well, if this isn't working, I'm gonna move on and try something else, or even worse, I'm gonna test the waters while I'm in this relationship or marriage and see if there's somebody out there that fits me better. And if so, I'm gonna step out. And both men and women do that. I will admit that 100%. But I think it is very prevalent with men because they are biologically driven to be sex machines for the most part. And I don't think this changes. Like I said, I I've told you before, I'm in a business where I handle people's phones. And how many times I have gone in because there's a problem with somebody's phone, they'll hand it to me. This problem's going on. And there are messages popping up from like girlfriends on Facebook sites or pornographic pictures that are just there. Like, I mean, and they're there with their wives and their families. Like, like, are you kidding me? But no, I'm not kidding. And and so I think I'm just very disheartened and disillusioned by that whole world. And therefore, I have just decided that fuck it. I will never be in a relationship again and I'm not missing anything because my life is rich and full. But I think my trauma is taking me back to no, no man can be trusted. And I'm aware of that. I wish it wasn't so. I wish I was a little more trusting in that regard, but I don't think I ever will be again. I've come to peace with that. I think that I have a very healthy distrust of men, and I think I've earned that. And even the greatest guy can be driven to circumstances and situations. But I think as a whole, men as a whole are just treating women like they're very, very disposable and moving on to the younger version. I'm sure you've all seen that on social media, whether it be celebrities or even people in your own life, you see this happen again and again. So that is a trauma that definitely I am aware of that I have that hasn't fully healed. But it was more than that. That situation with the videos, my daughter, uh one of them, both of them actually, mentioned, oh my gosh, mom, look at you in that video. You look so tired. Not like you're like tired physically, but like you could just, they know me so well. They could just see my body language. And I remembered it, like took me back to that moment in my life, what was happening. And we, how often do we blot out things in our life that at that time or later, because we don't want to relive it? But it took me back like right front and center to that moment. I could remember those moments and I could remember the things that were going on in the marriage at that time, and the manipulation and the blackmailing, emotional blackmailing and sex as a weapon kind of thing that was going on. And how I was just exhausted because here I am trying to raise four young kids. He was gone three to four days a week with his career. And then I'd come home and I'd have to deal with this man who was really a stranger to me, who his wants, his desires, these things that he obviously had, I wasn't aware of. He was just playing the role of husband, obviously not very happily. Not only was he having affairs, but I could tell he wasn't happy in the marriage, and I wasn't happy in the marriage. And I've got to be honest, I have such a great relationship with my ex-husband now. And so it's very strange to go back and and see his uh body language and the way that he spoke with me. But in those videos, you could see kind of that young arrogance. He was a man on the move, in his prime, good looking. And he treated me, and I could tell by watching these videos with a certain amount of I was his little wife. What I mean. There's a line from a Madonna song that I I it was about her and Sean Penn, where she talks about that. I'm not your friend, I'm just your little wife. And that's the role that I definitely played. And in his culture, in maybe just the way he was raised by watching his parents do the same thing, the woman had a very definite role. And there was a line of demarcation where you went from being the trophy wife, which I definitely was when we got married, to even though I still looked good and everything, I mean, I was in a punched out four kids. I was a little heavier than I used to be. I was in pretty good shape and I looked good. But in his mind, and of course, I think both of our minds, when you're busy running that business of life together and you are making decisions and you're having to deal with it day in and day out of raising the kids and the stress and the pressure, it's I think it's easy for a man, especially a man that travels and travels with young, attractive women for a living, to be able to go into that culture. And there is an airline culture of infidelity. I mean, it's just a known thing, whether you're talking to flight attendants or pilots. This is a very industry that's like full of it, right? People will quietly and discreetly have affairs because they can. It's very, very easy. And of course, with it amongst themselves. And that is what happened. But so he'd come home to life and he was, I think, overwhelmed by having four kids and all this responsibility. And when he was able to go away, he was able to be in that role of the airline captain in control. The women were fawning after him because he's very good looking. And it was a perfect scenario for him. And somewhere along the line, he was able to cross that line and be like, I'm not happy at home. I'm the breadwinner. I deserve this, whatever his reasoning was. And he did it. And it became the more you do it, it becomes very, very easy. And of course, it shattered the family completely, shattered my trust, shattered my heart. And I have to be honest about that. I mean, I think that's something that I brush under the rug a lot because I want so desperately to have that relationship with him for my kids and for myself. I don't want to cut him out of my life. I will always love him as a person. Yes, I've been able to forgive him, honestly, really forgive him, but that doesn't mean that my heart wasn't broken and it doesn't mean that I don't have a scar or a wound that is never fully healed from that. He held my entire heart. He held everything for me. And when that was ripped away repeatedly, I know I think even after the first time, I was somewhat able to forgive and forget. But when it happened again and again, there was just no going back. The relationship was irretrievably broken in terms of how I felt, that trust that had been shattered. I would never be able to trust him again. And eventually I realized I'm gonna have to break out on my own and have this life. And I have no idea how to have a life without him because he was my world. He, I had put everything, all my eggs into that basket. But at any rate, just going back and watching those videos made me realize that there are definitely hurts and hangups and things that happen in life that we don't ever fully heal from. I think we learn to live with them. And if we're psychologically healthy or trying to be, we find a way to reframe them in such a way that we can live. And I think speaking frankly and honestly, I don't think about him that way at all anymore. In fact, I'm like so not attracted to him. We spend a lot of time together. And there are elements of his personality that I find difficult to deal with. And I'm ditto. I know it's the same for him with me. I'm I have certain characteristics that I think annoy the crap out of him and ditto, right? And so we found that perfect place as friends. We don't talk all the time. We might talk once a week, maybe, maybe not even that. Sometimes a couple times a week. It just depends. But we do get together for holidays I've shared with you and family birthdays. And if I have a family dinner and he's home, I'll invite him over. Everything we do, we do as a family. And that has been extraordinarily healthy for. My kids to be able to see that no matter how deep the hurt and how bad it was, that people can forgive and heal and move on. And make no mistake, he had to forgive me too, because the drinking was just like out of control, you guys. I was in rehabs and I mean locking myself in closets, passing out. And I mean, he had to deal with a lot. So I cannot fault him for any of that. He also had, I mean, we can argue what came first, the card of the horse. I definitely the cheating came first, but my reaction to that was not a healthy reaction. That was from a place of not being healed and not being able to deal and manage my own emotions that I went into drinking. And of course, that was kind of the nail in the coffin of the marriage. But ultimately, I think it was also the thing that saved my life because when I look back now, that relationship was so stifling to me. And I'm such a strong person. I learned so much about myself. Being married to him, I definitely had to take a backseat. I had to take a back seat in everything that I believed and everything that I thought and my opinions and what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it. It all pretty much had to be his way. He just kind of ruled the roost. And that was just the way that the relationship was. And it was killing me inside. And just everything from like how the fight ended, when the fight started, he controlled that, what our family spent money on, how much money I got to spend on the kids, if I wasn't working, I was like very closely financially managed. And it was honestly the most unhealthy, unhappy marriage for many years. But in the beginning, of course, it never starts out that way. It's just very slowly over time, these things begin to take root and patterns of behavior begin to take root. And if we don't fix those problems right away when they begin to happen, they just get worse and worse. And pretty soon you're at an impasse. And that's what happened with us. So it did save my life. I mean, I think the way that I live now, and that's the other flip side of the coin. I'm so happy being alone. I don't think I would do well in a relationship, honestly. I'm way too fucking opinionated. I want to do what I want when I want. And of course, I take like people's feelings, my kids, my friends, into account. I'm I'm a very loving, giving mother and friend. But when it comes down to my life, don't fucking tell me what to do. I'm going to do what I want to do and I'm going to do it my way. And I think that is the kind of thing that I've learned the most about myself. I don't think I would fare well in a relationship because it does require a certain level of compromise that I just don't think I have anymore. I have no compromise anymore when it comes to certain things. Certainly not putting up with bullshit, certainly not brushing things under the rug anymore, certainly not calling a spade a spade, and not putting up with petty bullshit things that a lot of men do. I watch my friends and some of these relationships and they tell me about some of these fights that I have. And it's like everything in me to not say, What the fuck are you doing? Put your foot down. I wish somebody had said those things to me years ago, but honestly, would I have listened? Probably not. Because we get to that thing that we've talked about before where women feel like their well-being is tied to a man financially. Why are all these young, beautiful women on the arm of these old fucking creeps? Because they're getting something out of it. It's a trade, right? It's a trade they're willing to make at what cost? I don't know. Financial. It's financial. And I can honestly say that was a huge thing in my marriage when I ended my marriage, when we both ended the marriage, was what the fuck am I going to do now? Because I had had a career, I had all these things, and then I sacrificed that to stay home and raise the kids for many years. So not only did I not have a work identity or an identity outside of the family, but I didn't have a way to make money. I had never finished college, not that that makes a big deal, but I hadn't completely finished college and I hadn't gotten a footing in any particular career path. So I had no idea, like how was I supposed to reinvent myself? I had no idea. And when you're rock bottom and you're faced with something like reinventing yourself, that's a pretty tall mountain to climb. But I think a lot of women knowing this inherently, like I haven't planned for my future, I don't have this or that, they're willing to put up with bullshit from men. And men, what are men getting out of it? A lot. Every woman I know is a caretaker. They are doing their laundry, they're cleaning, they're cooking, they're doing all the behind the scenes stuff that makes a man's life work. And I'm not saying all men, because I do know a few, I'll be honest, just a few that are not like that. But the majority of men that I've known, met, interacted with, seen in relationships are like that. The woman does 90 fucking percent of everything. Maybe the guy's bringing home a great salary, and that's his contribution, but she's planning everything for the family, the kids, she's cleaning up, she's doing the Christmas shopping, she's doing that birthday list, she's making sure that the buddy on that has his colleague at work, his birthday's not forgotten, getting the gift together there, planning the dinners, doing the grocery shopping, doing the laundry, all the unspoken stuff that happens behind the scene. Even if you don't have kids, even if the kids are grown, I have another friend who literally runs her significant other's life for him. He only has to go to work and come home and be waited on hand in foot. And she's not happy. I can tell. She'll profess that she's happy and she has this this is my man and the love, my love that I've waited for. I don't know. From the outside looking in, it doesn't look that way to me. And so again, these things come from the subject of the day, which is the scars that never, never heal. And I have to wonder where's that line of demarcation for me? What what of this is healthy and which of and how much of this is prejudice against men in general? And I do feel even in the music industry, you look at people as they age, most people don't uh get the same playtime. Madonna did, of course, Madonna's a different subject. She's off the wall. But she did a speech on this a few years back that was really interesting about how women are sexualized and basically discarded when they're not young and beautiful anymore. And that seems to be the way of it for women in general. And I have a deep-seated anger and resentment towards men for this. That how is it that men are in this position that they can do this? I mean, especially in this day and age when women are bringing home the bacon just as much of a man, what is this ingrained thing in us that makes us feel like we have to be subservient to a man or do all these extra things and it's not equal in the partnership? Again, not all relationships, and I realize this is a rant, but these are the things inside of me that have never healed. And so watching these videos from this place, it's almost like a bird's eye view now. We've talked about that before, where you're on the ground, you're looking at the tree, and it's a tree. But if you're a bird flying above the tree, you can see the tree and everything beneath it. And if you're an airplane, you not only can you see that, but you can see many, many miles out to it all around you. I feel like I'm in that airplane point of view now. And I'm able to look at myself and be discerning and be like, okay, you've got resentment there, obviously. Will that resentment and resentment ever heal? Probably not. If I'm being honest with you, probably not. I do have friends that have healthy marriages, very few or relationships. And I watch them and I nod quietly in approval to myself. I'm like, well, wait, he really stepped up there. Yeah, those great guys are out there, but I think the majority of men take advantage of women. I just do. And somehow, on some level, we women feel like it's acceptable because what society years ago, some outdated thing, told us that we need to do all of these things. Or is it because we're just inherent caretakers and we see the we see that need where that need needs to be filled, and we jump in and do it because that's who we are. Every woman I know is like this. Every woman I know feels this unspoken need to plug all the holes in the same sinking ship and make sure her presence is there and make sure it gets handled. And those conversations with the men, like, hey, you're not stepping up enough or whatever, are few and far between. I think we just get used to it. So my friend's thing that happened to her, where she basically is just realizing that there's so much unhealed trauma that she really did think for a lot of years was healed. And now that the kids are at a certain age that they're beginning to be a little more autonomous, and she is trying to fix some of these things with her husband, not the things that I've talked about today. I mean, he's actually come a really long way. I have to give this particular guy props. She brought things to his attention and he stepped up. But there's still this rift, this big chasm in between him and her really coming together because of these scars that she carries and probably will always carry because she has some really catastrophic stuff happen to her. And though she's healed beautifully, I think some things never heal. And when just when that happened, I had this video incident happen where I think some things never really heal. And I don't know that I ever really will heal from my marriage. I do believe that I'll spend the rest of my life alone, surrounded by my grandchildren and my beautiful clean house. There's have you noticed there's a lot of trending social media like that, even from men? Like, oh, this poor lady, she's all alone, she's in her 50s, she's gonna die, surrounded by her friends, eating good meals in her clean house with her pets and like her garden, like obviously saying, Hey, it's not so bad to be without a guy, to be not having to deal with somebody else's problems and creating a life for yourself that you love. That's a separate thing. I I do believe that. But there's a truth that is occurring underneath that. And I think if you want a healthy relationship, like my friend really does with her husband, they are having to work really hard at behaviors and patterns and old wounds that are popping up, especially on her side. He doesn't really have them, but she does. And his part is he's having to understand this. And he's having to understand that she has triggers and things that he wasn't even aware of because she hid them so well for so long. And now, for whatever reason, these things are being triggered. And for me, that bird's eye view, watching those videos, I looked at myself and I did look tired. I saw my young woman self. This is, I don't know, 15, 18 years ago, some of these videos, and how sad I looked, how broken I looked, how tired I was. You could see it in my face, and how his attitude, even in the videos, even when he was speaking to me, was very much one of superiority. He's the guy, he's the man, and I'm the wife, and I'm running around exhausted trying to do everything. And that was the story of my life. And I don't feel like those years were wasted because again, this journey through life, as far as I'm concerned, is about healing and it is about uncovering and discovering and coming home to yourself. I think that I attracted the relationship that I needed so I could be where I am today. I can't imagine being any place else other than where I am. Do I have financial security? No. Am I working for that? You bet I am really, really hard. I have some money saved up, but I'm not gonna retire like him. I mean, he's gonna retire. He's he's set for life. He's got a big income job. I got some stuff out of the divorce, and I won't say that I didn't. I got a decent alimony for 10 years and I got some money that helped me partially myself and partially the money that I got there, get bills paid off, travel a little and get into a home. But other than that, I spent years of my life basically selling myself out and not getting a lot out of it other than my kids. My relationship basically sucked. It was horrible, if I'm being honest. It wasn't in the beginning, I think, with that in-love time, but it definitely became that not that long after we started having kids, because that time in your life, when you have that much responsibility, it brings out the truth in people, right? And and it brings out patterns in people, and it did for both of us. And I can honestly say my ex-husband, he's done a lot of work. He's a very different person now in his uh mid to late 50s than he was as a young man. Much more humble, much more again, he's a human being, right? This is why I don't fault him. I don't hate him for what he did any more than he hates me for the things that I did, the drinking. I think we both come to that place of being like we're different people now. And he's done so much work himself. There are elements of his personality that are always going to be there, but I I truly believe that through the loss and the relationships for him that came after and the learning that he's done, he's just a different parent. He's just a different person. And I actually like him. I can't spend great deals amount of time around him because he just rubs me the wrong way. But um I think that is also because both of us are very, very strong people. And I think maybe that was always the problem for me is that I was having this very, very strong person having to take a backseat to another strong person and give up that piece of myself. And I don't have to do that anymore. But that's the big question that I was posing to myself during this week is do these old wounds, these old scars, ever truly heal? Can we ever really bury them and say, okay, that's done now and move on with our lives? Yes and no. I think I have moved on with my life beautifully. I think that I'm very happy, like I said, in every regard. But make no mistake, those wounds have shaped me. They have put a trajectory in motion. And it was my responsibility to pull out of the negative trajectory and get into a place where I was mentally healthy and thriving. And that was all conscious, you guys. I mean, I decided I am going to either get busy living or dying. It's not gonna be dying. I'm gonna live. I'm gonna do it for my kids. I'm gonna do it for me. I'm gonna reclaim my life. Fuck it that I'm 50-ish. Who cares? I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna start over and I'm gonna do it now. And that's what I've done. And I wouldn't trade that journey for anything, but I do have to acknowledge that there are pieces of my heart that I think will always be broken. And he was the love of my life. Would I ever go back? Not in a million years. No, not even, I don't even feel that way about him. I think it's the death of that very true, pure love that I had that will always haunt me because I will never love like that again. One, I can't. I'm not built to do that anymore. I'm a lot old. And you hear about a lot of people finding love later in life. You gotta be open to that. I'm definitely not. And the trajectory that our lives take by purpose and design, whether it be for the good or the bad. So many of my friends that are staying in these relationships that are just terrible relationships. I get it. I do understand that place of feeling like they are gonna be covered financially if they stay and just put up with it, but at what cost? At what cost? And I see the cost and I understand that cost all too well. And I don't have to pay that price anymore. I have to pay other prices, like worrying about getting the bills paid and worrying about having enough money so I don't burden my kids for retirement and creating an extra income source for myself that if I ever, and which I will eventually quit working, that I can be able to maintain as I get older. I think about all these things. And that is something that I probably wouldn't have to think about if there were two incomes in the house. But guess what? I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world or the independence that I have. And the other thing is I've just not met anybody that I think is really worth my time. I think those really good guys, if you've got one, hang on to him because they are few and far between out there. But what do you guys think? Do you think that old wounds ever really heal? You hear about people suffering from childhood trauma that never really heal from that childhood trauma? And I think the answer is no for me. I think that those wounds, we can put a band-aid on them, we can do work and at least get them scabbed over and scarred over, but they are still scars, as real as a scar on our body from a traumatic injury physically. Those traumatic injuries live inside of our minds and our hearts and our souls forever. Even if we do the work to fix what we can, I think that they exist. And I think it's a myth when people tell you that you can completely heal. I think you can heal to a certain extent, but I think part of that healing is acknowledging the fact that there are certain things that have shaped you for the good and the bad that altered the course of your life and will always remain with you. And so now that bittersweet sadness that I have is almost a friend to me, where I was able to go back after watching those videos and it didn't bother me at all. It was great to see my kids young. And I could not say that eight years ago. I could not look at those videos. I couldn't look at anything without just having my heart ripped open again, like reliving everything. I don't have that experience now. Now I very quickly go into my God, look at the amazing relationship that I have with my kids, how blessed I am with my ex-husband. We actually can go on vacation together or we can with the kids, we can have birthdays and everything together. And how he's really in a place where I feel comfortable with him, which is outside of my everyday sphere. He's still there, apart he's a parent, but he's not like a daily comrade because I don't think I can handle that. He's just too much for me. But we definitely have that healthy relationship. And so I'm able to find that balance within myself. Yes, the young woman that I was was scarred and broken by a set of circumstances, and the mature woman who came home to herself was able to recreate a life that she's proud of. And that I feel really good about. But it did get me to thinking that I think we have to work with the handicaps, if you will, that we have, these spiritual psychological handicaps that were unfairly sometimes to do to no fault of our own, handed and these scars and these wounds that are created. We can't just gloss over them. We have to do the work, but we also have to, at the end of that work, accept the process that we were our our current selves were shaped by these things. And they've shaped the way that we think, the way that we see the world, the way that we interact with people. And I think that's the constant work, right? Is making sure that it doesn't turn toxic. So for me, I have plenty of guy friends that I led to death, wouldn't want to be in a relationship with a single one of them. They hold their place at my heart. I have value in the friendship with them. Some of them I see behaviors, I'm like, ugh, thank God I don't have to be in a relationship with that. But as a friend, it's fine. But I definitely feel like for me, that is my wound that I will always have is I will never give my heart away again to anybody but myself and my kids and the people that the friendships that I have in my life that are wonderful and true. And I don't know if that's a handicap, guys. I think that might be the recipe, at least for me, for a happy life. So that's basically my rant this week. And I appreciate you guys being here. I did want to kind of share. Sometimes I try, I had try to have a more structured podcast a lot of the time. But today this was just me talking about stuff that I really feel strongly, emotions that I had this week, because I think sometimes in life these things just pop up, right? They crop up, healing that we thought that we did that we maybe haven't done, or things that we need to work on, or just thoughts that we have and things that we need to acknowledge about ourselves, the inner dialogue that we have with our own mind. And that's what all of this has been about this week is just my thought process on all of that and just accepting that. Um, what is that Japanese art form where they have a piece of pottery and they shatter it and then they glue it back together? And that becomes an even more expensive, more priceless form of art, which is this broken piece of pottery that's been glued back together, obviously glued back together. And there's a name for this pottery, I don't know what it is, but it's even more beautiful than it was before because it was broken and glued back together. And that is very much how I see myself these days. So, guys, if you've got a version of this, something that cracked you open when you thought you were long past it, a coping habit that maybe you've judged yourself about, that's actually just your body doing its job. You are not behind. We're right here with you. You're not broken for still carrying a wound. Healing is never linear, and I don't believe it's ever finished. And I don't think it's tied up with a bow. Because some things they just get managed instead of erased. And it's all about how we manage it, and that's still survival. And at the end of the day, we have to survive inside our own minds. And that's something that we never should have to apologize for. So that's it for me this week, you guys. I want to 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 somebody 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'll see you in the next chapter.