Episode 5 - Confronting the Doorway of Authority

In this episode of The Place of Permission, Liz invites listeners into the small town of Ashburn, Missouri. Here, Liz reflects on the moments when the structures that once defined safety and belonging begin to fracture, whether it be in a family unit, religion, or the inherited and socialized rules about who we are supposed to be. As these external authorities lose their certainty or prove fallable, what emerges can feel disorienting and lonely. This startling confrontation can become a threshold to larger expansion into Self. Through personal story and reflection, Liz explores how questioning authority can become a pathway to discovering inner authority, the steady sense of Self that develops when a person begins listening to their own body with curiosity and starts to integrate their lived experience. In a world that often teaches us our belonging must be given by others, this episode offers a different perspective: belonging begins when a person trusts themselves enough to remain present with all parts of who they are and claims their power, purpose, and place from the wisdom that life experience gifts them. 

Thank you for spending this time with me, friend. Your presence here matters more than you know.

You can find more on social media at @withlizchandler and at withlizchandler.com for sessions, offerings, and ways to walk this work together.

Deep gratitude to my producer Dennis Hull for his wizardry in sound engineering, organizational magic, and steady emotional support and a massive thank you to my admin team at Do What You Love for helping bring this dream to life with patience, encouragement, and steadfast dedication.

And to my closest loved ones- thank you for believing in me, standing with me, and encouraging me to radiate fully and unapologetically as myself. This podcast is woven with your love.

Transcript

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Welcome to the place of permission. I'm Liz, and I invite you to listen in as I share from the raw and authentic depths of my life. This is a space for those who've ever felt alone in their sensitivity, tangled in societal expectation, exhausted from giving too much, or lost in confusion. On this podcast, I explore the alchemy of these very places through storytelling, turning yearning into belonging, disconnection into collective healing, exhaustion into resolve, and confusion into imagination. In the POP podcast, we journey through a variety of topics ranging from grief and rage to sexual power and the expansiveness of love and joy, psychic insights, embodiment practices, conversations with the afterlife, and all the paradoxical happenings in between. My hope is that my stories and the voices I bring in serve as permission slips for you to embrace your own truth as the source of your power. Thank you for listening. And remember, all of you is welcome here, because all of me is too. Welcome back. In today's episode, Are You There God, It's Me, Liz, I'm going to talk more about the experience that I had in this rupture from self and safety and expand more into this overarching theme that really started at this point in my life of feeling disconnected from my parents and disconnected from God, disconnected from feeling taken care of by people or beings that were designed to protect. And how that created a sense of deep questioning in me about everything around me, and kind of birthed this hyper-vigilant part of me that always wanted to make sure everyone else around me was taken care of, and that I knew what was happening around me at all in any given time so that I would be safe. So this is where time gets a little funky. Um, and actually, before I even go into that, I wanted to give a bit of a backstory with this town, Ashburn. And I've talked about how this was a town that I played in, and I was free to roam and explore, and I would catch bugs, and me and my dog Maggie, we would we would go on adventures together. In this town, I was maybe one of like three or four kids. Actually, maybe one of five kids. And it was only about the size of like two blocks, maybe. There was a an old um, not old, it was actually new. They built it when I was a kid there. Um fire station. But right, this fire station was like for the rural area. Um, and so it wasn't like anybody was working there on a daily basis. It was, you know, if something happens, they've they've got this station, they've got this old fire truck that they can then use to help support in any way. Um and then outside of that, there was a post office and the train tracks that went through the town, and there was a church. And if I recall, I think this church was a Southern Baptist church. And, you know, beyond being able to play and roam this city, I loved going to church because I had responsibilities there. I got to ring the bell to let people know that it was time to come to church. And it sounds so interesting when I think about this, like it sounds like being back in time, like even further back than you know, 1998, 1999. Um it feels like much older. And uh, you know, at this church, I was able to connect with people and feel a sense of belonging. And at this church, I was able to learn stories about people and how they they navigated life. And again, I felt part of something. And I, as this experience happened to me with my great-grandfather, I started to feel this disconnection in my body, right? This connection that I'd felt to nature, to play, to my body, and this connection that I felt in the church and to the people that were there in this one moment of rupture, and then to have that further solidified in the in the expression of don't say anything, don't tell anyone. I started to question. I started to be um very skeptical of what I was experiencing everywhere, right? In my body, outside of my body. And at that time, my my parameters, my understanding were this town that or was this town that I lived in. And this still this gets a little this gets a little funky with time here because I don't remember if this happened in the summertime or if it was late summer and school had already started. I want to lean more towards the the second one that school had already started. But I know that my mom was out of town because she was doing a training. And again, I don't remember if if there was additional time in between um what had happened and when she came home. It doesn't, it doesn't, in my opinion, it doesn't really matter. Um, but when she came home, I remember she showed up with a moving truck. And that night I had a lot of confusion, right? Because I'm now in a state where I'm feeling quite hyper-vigilant about everything. And I'm feeling on guard for everything happening around me. And it's interesting when I think back about playing outside after this happened. I know that I still did. And my body experience of remembering is one of numbness and confusion. And so when these moving trucks showed up, I I felt kind of this freeze, almost like when a deer pauses in the woods because it hears a twig snap of like, what's coming next? What what are we doing? What's happening? And at some point, I think it was expressed to me that that we were going to be moving. Um, meaning my mom, myself, my brother, and my sister, and my father was not going to be moving. At some point, again, time is weird here as I remember this, but at some point everything gets packed up. And what stands out to me most in these in this particular memory or this time frame of memory is that I must have played outside all day while things were getting packed up, and at some point I decided to catch lightning bugs, like it had gotten dark, and that was also one of my favorite things to do was catch lightning bugs because they were like my little lanterns at night, you know, in my little mason jar with the holes in the top on the lid. And as I came in inside after playing, after catching these bugs, and it was eventually time for bath, I remember laying in my bed, or actually, it wasn't even in my bed, it was laying on the floor, and looking at these lightning bugs and having this massive amount of questioning come into really flood into my body of in particular about God? Like, why is this happening? I had all these questions. Why is this happening? What is like why why would my family split up? Why, why why am I being hurt? Right? Why why am I why did I experience this with my great grandfather and now my parents are are getting a divorce? And I didn't have the language for that, right? Like, why are they not gonna be together? Why do we have to go? Why do we have to leave? And I started to feel really fucking angry and really sad. Why do we have to leave? And also, why are you like I've been I've spent you know so much time in this place and church in particular hearing about a God that is loving and that takes care of his people and provides spaciousness. And if you believe in him, then good things will happen to you. And I believed in him, and really fucking terrible things were happening. And I remember feeling despair. I didn't have the words for it at that time, but feeling this like gut punch of realizing that maybe not everything that I hear is true, right? Which then started this it didn't start it, I mean the the the questioning had already started of you know the truth that I was, and I think that that we are spoon-fed, is that we are inherently safe. And in that moment, and in the moment of you know, hearing don't say anything, and in the moment of being molested, I had a very different experience or understanding come up in my body of safety, and I started to realize not everything that I know is true, and that was really confusing, right? That is confusing for a child brain, and so when we left the next day, that day is one that has created a very protective and smart part inside of me. Everything was packed up. We had the moving truck, one of my mom's friends who I had always felt strange about anyway. Um he seemed like a nice guy, but I I also felt something that I couldn't name as as a kid, and um I can't adequately name now, right? Because looking back on it with a child perspective isn't probably going to be accurate. Um, but I didn't feel right about him. And he was driving the moving truck. Our our final destination was going to be going from Ashburn in Missouri to just outside of Cincinnati, Ohio. And as we were leaving, I remember standing in the doorway and looking around. You know, there's like everything's gone in the house, or most of the things are gone in the house, and this imagery of my parents' door being shut has been embedded in my mind for a very long time. Because when it was finally time for us to leave, my dad didn't come out of his room. Now, as an adult, I understand that he must have been going through so much pain in that moment and despair of his own. And I also understand as a practitioner that his nervous system was probably so frozen. As a kid, what I felt, what I was experiencing, was an immense amount of confusion. Why is my dad not coming out of the room? Why do I not get to see my dad? What what can I do to help? How can I get him to open that door? Can I scream? Should I scream? Do I cry? Can I cry? What am I allowed to do here? What is safe? And I had no idea. That door being closed created a part inside of me that feels and that has felt like I have to be very careful. And so eventually it was time to go, and I didn't get to say goodbye to my dad that day. And when we got over to the car, at some point I realized that my dog Maggie wasn't getting loaded up. She wasn't coming with us. And I think I I must have asked my mom, and she she must have explained to me that she wasn't coming. And I remember, and this makes me feel quite emotional, um, I remember holding Maggie, holding her little face. Uh she was a, I should say, she was a Britney Spaniel, so she had curly hair like me, and she was so fluffy and probably super dirty because she was an outside dog. But I remember holding her face and petting her and telling her, like, I'm gonna come back for you. This isn't like this isn't goodbye forever. And I never got to go back for her. We made it to Ohio, and she, I think within the first few months, was hit by a car. And that devastated me because I promised her that I would come back for her, and she was my little adventure buddy. Right? So again, this experience that I was accumulating was not everything that I know to be true is actually true. Right. And uh I get in the car and I look up and I see in on the um passenger, how is that thing called? The mirror, um, there's a Polaroid of my mom and another man. And as a kid, I didn't have, you know, a lot of understanding of relationships. But intuitively, I knew that my mom was in a relationship with this person. And that was also really confusing for me. We're leaving my dad. I'm leaving this place that for a long time I felt safe in. I felt like I could be myself in, but also this place that has caused me my greatest pain. And now we're moving in, we're going towards somebody that I have no idea who they are, that I'm supposed to just trust my mom in who they are, and yet she just told me not to say anything about the moment that I'd been hurt the most to anyone. And so there was a lot of anxiety living inside of me about this, and you know, it was a decent trip. I think it was probably like seven, eight hours long. And my siblings were, I want to say respectively, like three and I guess one, maybe not even one. Um, and so it was it was a rough drive. Like all of us in this this car. I remember at one point, my one of my siblings was crying and like very loudly, and I remember my mom turned the music up super loud, and it scared me, but I had this sense of like I can't show that I like that scared me, that that jolted me. And it wasn't until I had my own daughter and had that experience of feeling so over-stimulated by my child and turning up the music so loud in hopes to just drown out the noise. I couldn't understand that. And as I became a mom and I had that experience myself, I had so much compassion for her in that moment. Because I grew up feeling so frustrated with her for not setting the the tone, the pace, the the safety. And yet in many ways, when I think about it now, for how hard and challenging and and heartbreaking on many different levels that that my parents' separation was for not just me, but for my siblings, for them, in many ways, the the experience of them separating has liberated me and my siblings to be able to step into. I shouldn't speak for my siblings. I don't I don't want to place that on them, but for me, it has liberated me to be able to step into myself. And And I've heard many different stories growing up of, you know, the divorce, the separation happened because of this or because of that. And when I look, when I think about it sometimes, my parents were, I think, 30, 31 years old when this happened. I'm 33 now. I grew up feeling so much resentment because of all the pain that their separation caused. But when I think of that piece in particular, how old they were, they didn't know what the fuck they were doing. Even at 33, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing a lot of times. And so I have a lot more compassion for them in thinking about that and navigating that. And it lives alongside my sorrow. It lives alongside my rage. Right? This is why I say that all parts are welcome. Because it can be true to hold both the grief and the compassion for an experience that you've had. And I see them and I see myself as a kid in a few different ways now. Whereas before, for so much of my life, this experience of not getting to say goodbye to my dad, not getting to come back for Maggie, my dog, really controlled me. This part of hypervigilance, of anticipatory grief, had controlled many of the decisions that I made in my life. Really coming from a place of scarcity as opposed to a place of safety. And I have a lot of gratitude for that part of me because she really kept me safe. She really showed me all the areas that it was possible that I could be hurt. It also took a lot of energy from me and created this frenzy inside of my body, uh, inside of my mind, inside of my heart, inside of my solar plexus, that I needed to make sure I knew what was happening at all times so that I would be safe. And, you know, this part was really needed because when we moved to Ohio, this person that we lived with did not do good things. And we moved in with the understanding that this was one of my mom's old friends, that she was going to be helping take it take care of him because he had broken his back in a motorcycle accident. And when we got there, everything was okay. He had this really cute dog, it was a husky, and so that helped, right? Because I had just left my dog. Um and it was pretty quickly that, yeah, I realized it wasn't going to be a good situation. Again, I'm not sure about time frame. I know I did start school there, and I really enjoyed going to school. And it's interesting to think back about it too, that my role at school became being the like conflict mediator between students at recess. So I was already putting these these newfound hyper-vigilant tendencies to use uh and trying to heal aspects of myself that I couldn't heal in my real life, right? I couldn't I couldn't support my parents in their separation. Nor should I have had to, right? Um but it gave me the opportunity to yeah, to to try to ease some of that stress, I think, at school. And meanwhile, our home environment was not safe. This person who eventually became my first stepfather was abusive. And he was angry. He never physically abused me, but I know that he did abuse my siblings. And I don't want to go into too much detail out of, you know, that is their their story, um, to to be able to tell and and unpack. But again, it was solidifying this understanding that these people who are supposed to be taking care of me because I am a child aren't able to do it, can't do it, aren't doing it well, and yet at the same time, when I look back on it, on this experience with adult eyes, I can recognize the areas in which they were trying their best. And so, yeah, I guess I guess my my point here with this episode, my my hope is that that this inspires you or or gives permission to hold, again, like we talked about in the last episode, to hold both the grief and the compassion for the experiences in your life. And I know in my own personal journey with you know, this disruption of the truth that I believed, it's been a balancing act of holding confusion and clarity with frustration and grace. In particular, as it relates to my connection to a higher power or my connection to my actual parents, or the parenting energy that lives inside of me, that you know, the more that I have experienced these ruptures in my life, the more that I realize I don't know shit. I don't. But that it's also because this world is not as binary as we try to make it, right? Being a parent is not so clean cut. Being in a relationship is not, does not look one same way for every person. God is not the same for everyone. What I'm realizing, what I'm having a lot of experience with, is that we are, in fact, deeply paradoxical, and everything in our life, is like that. So I hope that this episode has inspired you to ask questions about yourself. Ask questions about how you see the world, how you how you operate in the world. And I hope that it's given you permission to sit with all the aspects of being in this world. I hope it's given you permission to expand out of the boxes that our society tries to put us in and tries to tell us that we should be. And I hope that it's also given your inner parts, your inner children, your inner teenagers, your inner whatever age permission to be able to have a conversation with your now present self. Have a dialogue, have curiosity with each other. All right. As always, if this has resonated with you, if anything stands out to you, please feel free to send me a message. Um, you can send me a message on Instagram at with Liz Chandler, or you can send me an email at with Liz Chandler dot no wait. At with Liz Chandler. No, with Liz Chandler at gmail dot com. Oh, I have too many emails, I think. All right, friends. I'll see you next time.