The Green Room: Build Your Safe Space Before the Show Starts | Trauma Rock Stars™

You've been going straight from bed to the show, from the 
show back to bed — with no preparation and no recovery.

In this solo episode, Tracy Smaldino introduces The Green 
Room — the protected backstage space every artist has before 
and after the show — and shows you how to build yours for 
your own healing journey.

Because that exhaustion you're feeling? That's what happens 
when the green room gets canceled indefinitely. The 
numbness, the irritability, the going through motions — 
that's a performer who has been on stage without a break 
for too long.

In this episode:
- Why the green room is a necessity — not a luxury
- Why trauma survivors often grew up with no safe space
- The 3 dimensions of your personal green room:
  Physical, Emotional & Mental/Spiritual
- Tracy's personal story: the only green room she had 
  at House of Blues
- How to build your morning green room practice
- Why your recovery ritual matters just as much
- How to create nervous system cues that signal safety
- How Rock Star 30™ acts as your guided green room

"You were never meant to perform without a green room. 
Nobody is. The fact that you have been — and kept showing 
up anyway — that's not something to be ashamed of. 
That is something to be in absolute awe of."
— Tracy Smaldino

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I think you're starting to get the hang of these Tuesday episodes, and they're all music industry related, but they all have to do with our daily lives. And this week I want to talk to you about the green room. If you've ever been backstage at a concert, really backstage, just not the side of the stage, but all the way in the back, you know about the green room. It's this protected private space that exists specifically for the artist. And I mean specifically. It's set up according to their writer. We talked about that last week. It's climate controlled. It's stopped with what they need. And most importantly, it is off limits to almost everybody. No press, no fans, no promoters trying to squeeze in one more handshake. The green room is sacred. And what happens in there? The artist prepares, they warm up their voice, they get quiet before the noise, they transition from being a regular human being with all the stress and exhaustion and humanity that comes with that, into the version of themselves that's about to walk out onto that stage and give everything they have for thousands of people. The green room is where the performance is actually born, before the lights, before the crowd, before any of it. It starts in there. And here's what I want you to understand the green room is not a luxury. It is not a perk reserved for artists who have made it big enough to demand special treatment. The green room is a necessity because without the protected space, without that intentional transition, you are walking straight from chaos of the outside world onto the stage of your life with no preparation, no grounding, no anchor, just raw and exposed and wondering why everything feels so hard. I'm Tracy Smaldino. This is Trauma Rock Stars, and today we're building your green room. Let me tell you something about the green room that most people don't realize. Every artist, even from most opening acts playing their first real show to the headliner with the sold-out arenas for that for 30 years, every single one of them has a green room. The size changes, the contents change, but the concept doesn't because the need doesn't. The green room serves two purposes. It's where they prepare before the show, where you get quiet, you get grounded, get into the right headspace before you walk out under those lights. And it's where you recover after the show, where you come down, decompress, shed the performance, and remember who you actually are underneath all of it. Think about that. Preparation and recovery before and after. It's not enough to just power through the performance and collapse at the end. The green room says your well-being matters on both sides of the show. Now let's bring this home. In your life, the show is everything that demands something from you. There's your job, relationships, responsibilities, your own healing work, the phone calls and the meetings and the deadlines and people who need you being pulled in all different directions. All of it is the show. It is relentless. It is loud and it does not stop. So where is your green room? Where do you go to prepare before the demands of the day hit you? Where do you go to recover after you've given everything you have? Where is your protected space? For a lot of you, especially those of us who have spent our lives in survival mode, always turned on, always performing, always managing. The honest answer is I don't have one. I never did. I go straight from the bed to the show, from the show, back into the bed, and then I do it all over again the next day. That is exactly what we're challenging today. You cannot keep giving from a space that never gets refilled. The green room is not where you go when everything is fine. The green room is what makes it possible for everything to be fine. It is maintenance, it's your fuel, and it's a non-negotiable. Even if you're not famous, even if nobody is waiting outside for your autograph, you still need your green room, especially if nobody is waiting. Because then the only person taking care of you is you. I want to get real with you for a minute, because I want to talk to you about building a green room, creating a protected, prepared, intentional space for yourself. I know that for a lot of trauma survivors, the response is something like, that sounds incredible, and also completely foreign. So, because many of us grew up in environments where there was no green room, there was no protected space, there was nowhere to prepare, nowhere to recover, nowhere to just be yourself without being on. Wasn't home wasn't always safe, relationships weren't always safe, our own minds weren't always safe. We learned to perform without preparation. We learned to keep going without recovery. We learned that our needs for quiet, for rest, for space, those were inconveniences at best and liabilities at worst. So we stopped needing them. Or at least we stopped letting ourselves acknowledge that we needed them. Does that sound familiar? And some of us have been so deep in survival mode for so long that the idea of giving ourselves a protected space actually feels a bit uncomfortable. Maybe guilt, maybe feeling selfish. Like if I'm in my green room, who's taking care of everything else? Who's managing the show? What if things fall apart while I'm in there? I hear that. I really, really do. Because I've thought all of those things myself. And I want to offer you a different perspective. Think about what happens to a performer who never gets their green room, who goes straight from the road to the show every night with no preparation, no recovery. What happens to their voice, their energy, their mental health, their performance? It deteriorates. Slowly, maybe at first, then all at once, until eventually they can't perform at all. That's burnout you're experiencing. That's what happens when the green room gets canceled indefinitely. The numbness, the irritability, the feeling of going through motions. That's a performer who has been on stage without a break for too long. I didn't have a green room. I mean, my office was a green room. All I had was that private space under the stage that I told you guys about that I could go and hide. No protected space, no preparation, no recovery. I didn't even realize my own home could have been my sanctuary. I was exhausted. I was unwell. I was a complete hot mess. My morning routine now is a non-negotiable. I talk about this all the time. Meditation, gym, protein shake, hot shower. I love to squeeze in walks with my fur babies. I love to lay in my hammock, even floating in the pool, going to the beach. They call it water therapy for a reason. You were never meant to perform without a green room. Nobody is. The fact that you have been going and kept showing up and kept giving without ever having a protected space to prepare or recover, that is not something to be ashamed of. That is something to be an absolute awe of. You did it without infrastructure that everybody needs. And now, now we're building it. Your personal green room is not just one thing. It's not just a room in your house for a morning routine or a person to call you when things get hard. Your green room has three dimensions, and you need all three of them. The first dimension is your physical green room. This is your actual tangible physical space, the place or places where your body feels safe and restored. For some of you, that might be the corner of your bedroom, a chair by a window, a back porch, the beach, the gym, a trail you ran on, a hammock, maybe your car. Believe it or not, for a lot of people is their green room. That five minutes before you walk into the house or the office where you just sit in the quiet and breathe, that physical green room doesn't have to be elaborate. It doesn't have to be a Pinterest-worthy meditation corner with crystals and a white noise machine. It just has to be yours. A space that your nervous system has learned to associate with safety, with rest, with being able to exhale. For me, nature is my physical green room. I've shared this before several times. When I grab my dogs and I go down to the bayfront, something shifts. The noise in my head quiets down. My body regulates. My body remembers how to just be. That's not an accident. That is a signal my nervous system has built up over time that this place means safety, that here I can put the performance down and just exist. Question to ask yourself. Where does my body feel most relaxed? What environment makes me feel most like myself? Where do I go or where could I go when I need to recover? Is there a space in my daily life I could designate as my green room? Dimension two is the emotional green room. This is your relational safe space, the people or person with whom you can completely take the performance off, where you don't have to be okay, where you don't have to have it all together, where you can say the thing you've been holding all week and know you will be received with love instead of judgment. For emotional green room, it might be your best friend, a therapist, maybe your journal, a support group, maybe a podcast. And yes, I know some of you listen to the show in that way, and that means everything to me. Your emotional green room is wherever you can fully, messily, honestly human without having to manage anyone else's reaction to it. And here's something important: not everyone gets to be in your emotional green room. This is backstage access. This is a very small, very curated guest list for people who have earned the right for full vulnerability. We talked about this in the writer episode, your relational requirements. Your emotional green room is where those requirements are actually met. Some questions to ask yourself. Who in my life can I be completely honest with? Where do I go when I need to fall apart safely? Do I have an do I have an emotional green room? Or have I been processing everything alone? If I don't, if I don't have one, what's one step I could take toward building one? And then the third dimension is your mental and spiritual green room. This is your internal safe space, you guys. The practices, the rituals, the daily habits, the quiet noise in your mind, and reconnecting with yourself, with your intuition, your faith, and sense of purpose. This looks different for everybody. For some people, it's meditation, like me. For some, it's prayer. For some, it's journaling or creative expression. For some, it's movement. That state when you get into when you're running or in a yoga class or dancing, where your mind finally goes quiet and something deeper comes through. For me, it's meditation. It is a non-negotiable. Even if it's in the shower, even if it's for five minutes, that practice is my mental green room. It's where I go to remember who I am underneath all the doing and performing and producing. Your mental and spiritual green room is not a productivity tool, you guys. It is not about becoming more efficient and more optimized. It is about becoming more you, more present, more connected to the part of yourself that trauma tried to bury. Some more questions I want you to ask yourself. What practices make me feel most like me? What quiets the noise in my mind? What connects me to something bigger than my to-do list? When did I last do that thing? And what's been stopping me? Step one, your morning is your green room. The most powerful green room practice you can build is your morning routine. That happens before the show starts, before the phone, before the emails, before other people's needs enter the picture. I know we've talked about this in the sound check show. Checking in before the world gets to you. Your morning green room is a space where that check-in has to happen. It's the preparation before the performance. And it doesn't have to be long. 15 minutes, even 10. Sometimes I only have five. The point is it's yours, protected, and consistent. What goes in your morning green room? Well, that's up to you. This is your journey. But here are some ingredients that work. Movement of some kind, even stretching is extremely helpful. A moment of quiet, whether that's meditation or prayer or both, or just sitting with your coffee before the chaos begins, some form of check-in, maybe your sound check questions from last week's episode, and something that connects you to your purpose, a page of your journal, an intention for your day, a reminder of why you're doing all of this. Step two is you want to build your recovery ritual. This is so important. The morning green room prepares you for the show. Your recovery ritual brings you home after it. This is the after-show green room, the thing you do at the end of a hard day or a hard week to come back to yourself. Maybe it's a walk, a bath, maybe it's cooking, something that gets you out of your head and into your body doing something rhythmic and grounding. Maybe it's this podcast. The point is to be intentional about it. Don't just collapse into the end of the day with no transition. Build the walk from the stage back to the green room. And then step three is create physical cues. Your nervous system learns through repetition and association. The more consistently you use a specific space or practice as your green room, the faster the system learns to shift into recovery mode when you enter it. This is why rituals matter. The candle you light, the playlist you put on, the chair you always sit in when you're meditating, the routine you always take on your walk. These aren't superstitions. They're nervous system cues. They're the sign that says, we're in the green room now, we're safe, we can put it all down. The Rockstar 30 program is essentially a guided green room. It gives you the daily structure, the rituals, the check-ins, the practices that turn your morning into a protected intentional space for your healing. I designed it because I know how hard it is to build this from scratch when nobody ever showed you what the green room looks like. Well, the Rockstar 30 shows you. It's waiting for you at trauma rockstars.com. And here's what I want you to sit with today. You have been performing without a green room. We all have. You have been preparing yourself for a show that never ends without anywhere safe to go. And somehow through all of it, you've kept showing up. You have kept going, you've kept giving. That is extraordinary. And it is also exhausting. And it does not have to stay that way. Your green room is waiting for you. It might be a corner of your bedroom. It might be the trail behind your house. It might be five minutes of silence in your car before you walk in the door in the morning or after work. It might be a journal, a walk, a prayer, a practice you haven't started yet. Whatever it is, it is yours. It is sacred and it is not selfish. It is the single most important infrastructure you can build for your healing journey because everything else, all the work, all the growth, all the beautiful, hard things we're doing in this space together, it all gets better when you have somewhere safe to come home to. This week, I want you to do one thing. Choose one green room practice, just one, and protect it for seven days. Put it on your calendar. Use your phone calendar. I couldn't live without mine. Treat it like a meeting you cannot cancel for seven days. That's it. And notice what happens. You are the artist. The show matters, but so do you, especially when nobody is watching everything in the quiet, especially in the green room. The Rockstar 30 program at trauma rockstars.com will help you build this into a daily practice that actually sticks. It was built for this moment. I'm Tracy Smaldino. This is Trauma Rockstars. And rockstars, they always protect their green room. And before I let you go, next week is a very, very special episode. We are celebrating one year of trauma rock stars. Trauma Rock Stars is going to be one year old. I can't believe it. One year of showing up, of real conversations, of building something together that I never could have imagined when I started this journey. I have some things I want to share with you, some questions I want to answer, and a little something special just for being here. You do not want to miss it next week. I'll see you next Tuesday. The content on this podcast revolves around personal life experiences and is meant to serve as a learning tool. I am not a certified therapist or medical expert. This podcast doesn't offer medical, psychological, or professional advice. If you're curious about your mental or physical well being, feel free to reach out to a licensed healthcare professional for assistance.