Healing After a Narcissistic Marriage: Infidelity, Trauma & Starting Over | EP201

Today, April and Chad sit down with Adrienne Isbell, a yoga and sound healing teacher who spent over a decade inside a narcissistic marriage before her world collapsed and rebuilt itself into something far greater than she ever imagined.
Adrienne opens up about the childhood wounds that shaped how she loved, the financial control that left her with no career and no way out, and what it really felt like to discover an affair, stay, and discover it again. She shares the moment a yin yoga class cracked her open after months of emotional numbness and how somatic healing, sound baths, and the courage to stop playing small brought her back to life.
What the world calls starting over is usually years of quiet inner work nobody sees until it arrives all at once, changed.
In this interview, you'll learn:

How to recognize the signs of financial abuse and coercive control inside a marriage
How to understand avoidant attachment and why it quietly damages the love you want most
How to use somatic healing and yoga to process trauma when talk therapy alone is not enough
How to trust your body's truth even when your mind is not ready to face it
How to release the word "deserve" and stop measuring your worth by what others took from you
How to rebuild your identity, your body, and your sense of play after leaving a controlling relationship
How to give yourself permission to leave when every support system is telling you to stay and work it out
How to move from emotional numbness into a life full of creativity, connection, and real love

You are allowed to choose yourself. You are allowed to stop playing small. The life you are grieving may be the very thing making room for the one you actually belong in.

With Love and Safety,
Chad & April ❤️


What We Discuss: 
0:00 — Welcome to Safe to Love | Valentine's Day Special
1:41 — Adrienne's Story: 6 Years That Completely Rebuilt Her
3:22 — How She Got Trapped: Meeting a Narcissist at Age 21
8:27 — Financial Control in Marriage: When the Money Was Never Yours
15:46 — Childhood Wounds That Made Her the Perfect Target
19:19 — Discovering the Affair: "Love, Your Boyfriend"
29:07 — The Second Betrayal: Hawaii, Lies, and the Point of No Return
34:39 — The Yoga Class That Finally Let Her Breathe Again
45:01 — Why Women Stay: When Every Resource Tells You to Work It Out
53:55 — Spy Cameras, Stalking Injunction, and the Gift of No Contact
1:05:00 — "Deserve Isn't Real": The Bhagavad Gita Moment That Set Her Free
1:12:10 — DRIP, Drums, and Reclaiming Her Body Voice and Life

If you're serious about ...

❤️ Work With Chad
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❤️  Work with April
Instagram |  @aprilbenincosa 

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Transcript

Welcome to Safe to Love | Valentine's Day Special

SPEAKER_05 0:00

I've invested my entire life into this relationship. I have a family and I have no career. I have no money. And this man controls all of it. We had a lot of money, but we didn't have a lot of money. He had a lot of money. And I didn't have any money. I was very trapped financially. Also, I'm like, oh, you're so stupid. You put all your eggs in these baskets. That this basket that you thought was our basket is his basket and it's up here. And you can't reach it. And it's by design. I felt like I couldn't leave, but then I also understood why people don't.

SPEAKER_06 0:32

Welcome to Safe to Love. We are on a mission to help the world believe in love again and give you the courage to find it. And we are here in the studio on Valentine's Day, single awareness day, loving day, a hard day, a day with lots of complex things about heartbreak and grief. And as we um want to bring you this message of hope and courage of these stories of people who have overcome um so much in their life to find love, um, find love within themselves. And um yeah, we're just so excited to bring this episode to you on Valentine's Day. And so we have our guest, Adrienne and Jake, and we are gonna do the format a little differently today. We are going to, their stories were just so powerful each on their own that we didn't wanna, we didn't want to keep it to the normal time constraints. So we are going to deep dive into their backstory, which is so important to how they got here, their story of becoming. And um, so first we're gonna start with Adrian and have you share your story with us, Adrian, in whatever fashion you would like to share it. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 1:40

Um,

Adrienne's Story: 6 Years That Completely Rebuilt Her

SPEAKER_05 1:41

well, how do I start such a big story? Uh well, thanks for having me. Uh, when you guys started doing this, I was immediately like, I want to be on the podcast. And so I'm glad that you guys were like, okay. Yeah, no, I mean, we wanted to have you on. Yeah. Um, okay. Well, I would say um that I've been on a bit of a journey the last um, I guess it's probably between six and seven years now, which feels weird to say because it feels not that long ago, but also feels like um such a different life. Like I've literally completely become an entirely different person, which I'm super proud of. Um, but so backstory is uh I was married before to a partner that was 16 years older than me. And I I how did that happen? Hmm. I did tarot the other day with with a clown, and it got like real personal real fast, and in one of the questions in the tarot, she's like, I don't mean to be, I don't mean to be rude, but I'm gonna she's like getting all this information from the ethers. She's like, How did you not know that he was like this? Like, really, and I was like,

How She Got Trapped: Meeting a Narcissist at Age 21

SPEAKER_05 3:22

uh, because I was so young.

SPEAKER_06 3:25

I was young, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 3:27

I met him, I met him when I was 21, working in restaurants. I served at restaurants, and he was uh a regular there and honestly liked some other girl and would leave her like these gigantic tips. And I was like, How do I get this guy to sit in my section? Like, even if she's just not here, like, and that's literally how it started. I'm like, everybody's friends with this guy, I'm gonna make friends with this guy. Um, and then uh uh anyway, we started dating, which was wild because he was going through a divorce, and um, but it was very casual and it was weird because uh looking back, he was very clearly a gigantic narcissist, and I was just a young, dumb girl, you know, and he would pay for things um for me that I really needed. Like I was so poor in my 20s, and he would uh like pay for all my new tires because all of them had like literally metal hanging out of them because I was not a responsible car owner, and and he would be like, You can't drive on these. Uh, this is unsafe. And I was like, Well, I don't have any money. So he would be like, and he would pay for my tires, and I think that's where it began, is I just felt so cared for. I felt really cared for. And knowing now so much about my how my um parenting played into this, my dad was not around. My dad didn't pay the child support, my dad moved away, and then and then when he moved back, he like just didn't really like take great care of us. Like when we would go to his house every other weekend in our teenage years, we were going to West Valley where our girls didn't go to school and they were pregnant, and we were allowed to drink on the weekends, and then I would go back to my regular middle class life, you know. So I I just didn't have this like good dad figure. So having this man want to take care of me felt so nice, and that's how that began. And and he so he was a good caretaker, um, like that. And I met him early, and then I moved to California, and then I moved back. Um, and because he was like, come back. Uh, and backstory, even I see so many signs of narcissism, so I don't need to get into every instance, but I didn't know about narcissism. Um, and and it's not the the word is so commonly used right now about oh, people taking selfies and they talk about themselves a lot and blah, and I'm like, that's not narcissism. Narcissism is a very real uh diagnosable way of people to be. Um, and being with a partner who is a narcissist when you're both uneducated about that, is really really difficult. Uh and there is uh there was a big period in which I realized that I was a victim of that, and I don't want to get into victimhood and those words with if I'm not a victim, for a minute you would just need to let yourself be so you understand what happened to you. Um, but anyway, uh so we were we got married after being together for like three years, and I was like 28, I guess, when that happened, and and I was really terrified to get married, and I did not want to uh for a long time. And I I told him, I'm like, I I I I can't even have you talk to me about this for like a year. Um, and I finally warmed up to it, and then I was finally okay to get married. But there were times before that I knew that this was not a good idea because there were violent fights. And um, throughout my marriage, I I came in very independent, um, and I did a hair apprenticeship like early in our marriage, and because my stepdad died when my mom was like 50, and I saw what would have happened to her if she hadn't really pushed to go to school and have her own career. And I was like, if you die, because he was 16 years older than her, and my grandma's husband was 16 years older than her, so I don't know what we're doing, but anyway, so I was like, I'm not gonna have you die, and then I can't make any money. I'm like, so I'm gonna do this hair apprenticeship. So I did this hair apprenticeship, and then as soon as I finished, um, that's when we got married, and then that's when um at my freedom started getting coerced away from me. Um

Financial Control in Marriage: When the Money Was Never Yours

SPEAKER_05 8:27

it's like, I don't I don't want you to work, and I'm like, yeah, but I want to work. Like, I what am I I don't have children? I did have two stepdaughters though. Um, one was 10 years younger than me, and one was eight years younger than me. And that was a rough beginning, but then later I I had such beautiful friendships with them and and a different kind of mothering than their mother. Um, but um it got coerced to me like, well, I make so much money, it's silly for you to, and we lived in to well, it's silly for you to drive to Salt Lake to cut hair for $25 or whatever I was charging when I was new. And I was like, yeah, that does kind of make sense. But I was new and I needed to build my clientele and all of this stuff. But it it got to the point where he's like, if you would just take care of the stuff at home, though, it would be easier for me to be present when I'm here. Not that he would use those words, but anyway, so that's how it got proposed to me. Like, you take care of all the house stuff and all the take care of all the other things. So I ended up not working. Um, and I didn't go to college and I didn't grow my career um because I was like, well, this is the group thing that we're doing, you know. Um, and so I would help him uh with all of his businesses. He owned a commercial printing company, which funny, I work there now because my best friend bought it and I will work there again. Love it. And he really hates that. Um so anyway, I would help him with that, and then I would help him with his race car team. He had this big race car team, and I would like help book all the fly. I was a personal assistant in many ways. Um and his job was super stressful, and we decided like Toella is too far away, and um, we're gonna move to, we're gonna move to Mill Creek and build a big brand new house, which became a giant uh source of contention between us because then he felt that I was forcing him to move, which was weird because we spent months looking at houses together, and then when it was like we bought this property, he was like, You're forcing me to move. And I was like, Okay, so then I wasn't allowed to talk to him about it. This house that took five years to build, I never knew what was happening with it because I would get in trouble if I talked to him about it. So it was a really hard process to do to build this house. And at the same time, he was like, My my job is so stressful, I want to quit it. And and I was like, Okay, well, you own a company of a hundred people, like you can't, you don't get to just quit your job. Um, so this was all happening at the same time, and so the house like kind of finished, and then um he was in this really bad place with that, worse than I knew. I didn't know this, but he was to the point that he was suicidal, and I was unaware of this. Um, it just manifested in different ways. Everything was obsessive to the max. Like I decided to start running, and then all of a sudden he was running hundred-mile races, you know, and I'm supporting him and crewing him in the middle of the night on mountains, you know, and it would show up like this now that I know all of these things about people. But I didn't know anything about this, I was such a basic bitch, you know. Like, I didn't know anything about any of this. And he he gets to this point um where he's like, I want to sell the company, and I'm like, okay. And this is when my best friend bought it with another woman. Um, and they're both such badasses, and so it's so cool that they bought it. So they buy the company from him, so now he has um no job, and that was not good for him. Uh, because as a narcissist, he really enjoyed having being the lord of something, being the guy who walks in and and people uh can uh uh can be so grateful to you for what you do, but also like are under you. They're the you need to be praised for how how generous you are, but then when the second that they don't praise you, take it away because you're like you're not grateful of me, you know, because you like by your friends um because of deep wounding about being liked. And so when he didn't have that dynamic anymore to walk in and be the guy, uh he had to create it in another way. So he was like, I want to buy a bar. And I worked in restaurants for 10 years, and I was like, it's not fun. You think it was gonna be fun, you think you're gonna walk in and high-five everybody and be like, Yeah, it's cool. I own this place, let's get beers. And I'm like, it's not fun. Um, and I didn't want that. Uh, but he didn't he always did things without it, didn't matter what I wanted. So he bought this bar after I was like, I don't want this. And he wanted to hire this girl, this woman that I knew. Uh, she was my first real serious boyfriend's cousin, and she worked at another bar that Jeff was a regular at. Sometimes anyway, uh, and I was like, I don't want her because that family still has a lot of negativity that would seep into my life sometimes throughout. I'm like, how? We've been broken up for 20 years. I I just don't want these people a part of my life, that family and the way that they talk about people and her, but I just don't want them to know anything about my life. I just want, uh, but it didn't matter, he hired her anyway. And um, about two or three months into this bar, like it was a full-on renovation while it was open, which was really difficult. Um, then all of a sudden he was gone every day, all day, working on this bar. And this is how it would go. This is a cycle. It would be running, it would be a race car team, it would be whatever. He would become very obsessive about something and then be gone for a long, long time, uh, and not like come home. And I was uh a very avoidant person. I didn't know this at the time. I have major, I had major avoidance um problems from my own childhood. Um, I I love my mom and she loves me and she's a wonderful, but my mom can be emotionally unavailable or emotionally awkward. Like going through my childhood, we did not say, I love you in my house. And not because we didn't love each other, it just wasn't ever said. So, so showing love was very awkward in my whole life. Um,

Childhood Wounds That Made Her the Perfect Target

SPEAKER_05 15:46

and and part of this too is I was molested as a child by my grandfather who molested my sister and my cousin, and tried to molest with the other cousins. So what was strange was that some people already knew that this man was a child molester, and it ended up being me that said, Hey, this is happening, you know, when I was like seven, but after years, where because you go to school and they're like, Hey, if anybody's touching you, you need to say something. And you're like, is that me? And you know, when you're little, you're like, Oh, that's me. I'm supposed to tell somebody, and then you're like, Well, I don't want them to get in trouble, you know. And so I remember like telling them, like, this happens, but I don't want them to get in trouble. But now I'm older and I'm like, no, I want them to get in trouble. I want them to get in trouble. Yeah. Because this became uh still a thing that I'm healing from, is that really not much happened. Um, so no, it they they didn't fight for me, you know. And I think that they tried. It's really hard for me to remember. I remember there were police involved and it may be some court, but uh ultimately nothing happened uh with that. And he just and my grandma just stayed married to him. And then we would just go over there every year uh for Christmas and whatever, and everyone had somehow silently agreed to just pretend that didn't happen. Um and as I got older, I got much more angry about that and and being like, why, why, why will none of you um risk your comfort for the children? Like, why why is it like it's easier for one of you, little kids, to be to like carry this burden than it is for the whole family to be uncomfortable. You know, so this very much played into my avoidance and my my um inability to connect fully to somebody uh and and love and sexually and like I just I didn't know that though about myself. I didn't know that these were big problems that I needed to heal. Um and and this manifested in my marriage, so when he would be gone like that for a long time and be obsessed with something, I would be like, it's okay. I don't need a lot, I don't need a lot, um, because I didn't. I didn't need I didn't need the affection, I didn't need uh and he was anxiously attached to me, so uh, and I was avoidant. So I would be like, stop. And he would be like, but more, and I would be like, you know, so um that I see now um that why would you why would you have come home if the person there isn't like please come home, I want to see you. I'm like, hey, it's cool, I know you're busy right now. Which I thought I was being cool. I thought I was like, no pressure. Sometimes in life we're just busy, sometimes it'd just be like that, and sometimes it just be like that. Like, we know, like there's seasons for busyness. Um, but anyway, he he uh

Discovering the Affair: "Love, Your Boyfriend"

SPEAKER_05 19:19

started having an affair with this woman that I didn't want him to hire. And uh it was a weird time um because we were like doing all this race car stuff, like so we were gone every other weekend. This thing he signed us up for to like travel around the country and go go do NHRA races where I cook food for seven dudes and live in a parking lot for four days in a motorhome, you know, and it's just like things were always like this, you know. And I I I remember though um she she had a friend that died and she was really upset about it. And to me, I don't know anything about this affair. And I'm like, oh, that is so sad. Like, I I hope she's doing okay, and and he was like, I'm gonna send flowers, and I'm like, okay. And but then I was looking through our iPad and I saw there was the receipt for those flowers, and they said, um, love your boyfriend on them. And I was like, and she had a she had a daughter that was young, and um I talked to him about it the next day, and I was like, What's up with this message? You know, and he's like, I it was kind of a joke. I mean, it's not funny. No, um, also, I'm like, you need to be really careful with women. Uh, you cannot be this savior man, you cannot be coming in and saving the day with flowers when she's upset and paying for you know her kids' bike when it breaks because she doesn't have money. You cannot, women are we are so sensitive, and to be honest, we're starving for for to be noticed, we're starving to be taken care of, especially this single mom girl without a lot of money. You cannot position yourself as this man to take care of her, um, because she will become attached to you. And he was like, and he was very weird about it, and he was like, Okay. And that was my first indication. Um, but he just blew it off. And my friend just kept saying, like, I can't I don't know, I can't stop thinking about those flowers later. And I was like, it's fine. I and I'm already denial, you know. Um and then uh I really started diving into it a couple of months later, and I I got into the text messages and really I could only get into some of them because, you know, iPhones anyway. There's a whole science to getting into your partner's personal shit. And I became a detective. And it consumed a lot of my life. Anyway, I found text messages that were proof of this happening. So I grabbed my shift and my shit and I left. And uh I went to my friend's house and I left all the texts printed out on the counter. And I came home the next day to talk to him about it. And he was just absolutely destroyed, like crying, and I'd never seen him crying. And he was like, I'm so sorry. And it's it's not we haven't slept together, you know. And I'm like, I anyway, like totally convinced me to stay. And uh for me, I was absolutely destroyed. It didn't matter to me that they hadn't slept together. They were saying, I love you in these text messages, and and it just like ruined my whole world because I'm like, I'm at this bar with both of you. I am in there scrubbing these stupid floors that I didn't want at this stupid place with this this woman. I I said I didn't want her there. I said I didn't want this bar, and now I have this, and and she has to go. And then for a week, he still let her work there. And he was like, Well, I don't know how to do the things that she does. So I was like, she gotta get out of there. And and so then she left and I ended up with her job. So now I ran a bar that I didn't want, that I didn't know how to run, and with my cheating husband, and everyone there um didn't know what was happening and why she left. And and I just had to absorb all of that, and and it was really difficult because I I didn't know how to do any of these things, I didn't know how to pay quarterly taxes to a business or like um program computers or hire and fire people, and I'll all the same while renovating it, still, you know, and I'm having to do all this work for the situation that is actually like crushing me, absolutely crushed. Like I I just couldn't, like the feeling inside of my body just absolutely broke me open. And and it was really interesting because it like opened my feelings to a level that I didn't know that I could have because I also was living like pretty numb before. And I I always kind of prided myself in that I was very mellow human and that I didn't have a lot of highs and lows, and I was like, that's why I don't have any wrinkles because I don't get crazy with my face. Um, but I I realized how how broken I was in the first place, actually. To be broken like this, it was like seeing both. And so uh one of the conditions of me staying was that Jeff would go to therapy and that I would go to therapy, um, and that we had to find a couples therapist. So I started therapy. Um and it was helpful, uh, but it was hard because I was staying. And I had always said, like prior, I I would never be able to recover from an affair. I would never, I just know that I wouldn't. And so when that happened and I stayed, I felt shame immediately because I felt like I have completely abandoned myself already. I I said I would never stand for this, and here I am. But I also understand there is a place where you stay. Um, because I had invested over a decade at this point, um, because we'd been married, or not over a decade, but about a decade, um, because this started happening in um 2019, and and I I'm like, I've invested my entire life into this relationship. I have uh I have a family and I have uh, you know, I have my stepdaughters and I have no career. I have no money. I uh and this man controls all of it. And like I even the money in the house, like I we had a lot of money, but we didn't have a lot of money. He had a lot of money, and I didn't have any money, and I didn't even really have a lot of access to the money. I had a credit card that I could use every month with a a decent limit and no access to real money. So even as an individual, I didn't have the capability to even save money for just me because it's not money, a credit card. Um, and and I was very trapped uh financially, and I did it was just being um relayed to me. Also, I'm like, oh, you're so stupid. You put all your eggs in these baskets, you know, and like that this basket that you thought was our basket is his basket, and he and it's up here, and you can't reach it, and it's by design. Oh, so I also felt like I couldn't leave, but then I also understood why people don't, because it's like it's the that's a lot of investment. Um, and to leave over kissing or an emotional relationship, and then when you start going to therapy, you start seeing, oh, I I have a part to play in this. I I made my partner feel um unloved in many ways. I I contributed to his feelings of like she doesn't even care if I'm there. Um, she doesn't hug me or touch me or kiss me, you know, and I didn't. Um so I I understood my part in why this happened. So it felt like, okay, let's invest in fixing this. Um so I did, and and I read I started reading all the books, started going to all the therapy, and I um was healing um and doing better. And um about six months later, uh I connected the iPad to all the iPads and blah blah blah, because I still felt that I was being lied to,

The Second Betrayal: Hawaii, Lies, and the Point of No Return

SPEAKER_05 29:07

and I could feel it in my body, and I knew, but I was not connected to my body at all. So I absolutely denied my intuition. I did not trust that, I didn't know about it. Um, and so I found all these text messages, and they had been sleeping together for a while, and we had like just gotten back from Hawaii, in which there are pictures that I'm cropped out of that he's sending her because we're there to look at a house because he was gonna run away and go live in Hawaii. Another big weird narcissist thing, and that you know, he's sending her these texts the whole time of that this is her house for her. Uh, but he's there with me, and then sending her a picture of like my suitcase on the other bed, like she's sleeping in this other room. I'm like, not like, and we're intimate, so because we're married, you know.

SPEAKER_00 30:05

So he's he's lying to both of you.

SPEAKER_05 30:07

100%. Yeah, yes, and and he's he's very charming. Um, narcissists are super charming, they are super charming, and so I know that what he's giving her is what I got in the beginning. Oh, caretaker man, so nice, we'll go scrape your windows with from the frost and turn your car on in the morning and shovel the walk and pay for your tires and make sure your kid has a good Christmas. And like, so the version that she's getting is not real, and I see how they meet up for coffee like every day and other weird things, and and that they're like deeply in love and all of these things, and have definitely been very intimate, you know, and I um was redestroyed all over again, and this time I uh I drove to her house and because I knew he was there, and I decided to see it. Um, and I drove to her house and very calmly knocked on the door, and they wouldn't come outside. And so I was like, okay. So I took some pictures of his car in the driveway, and then I left, and I drove home, and I didn't cry at all. I just was like stare and like violently shivering, like it was freezing. Um, and and he immediately was chasing me home. Like wouldn't answer the door and then immediately chased me home. And I just remember being dead and just being like, I I don't want to be touched, I don't want to I can't. Um, and then after that, he slept in another room for a long time, and I I knew that I was dead, um, and I immediately developed a whole body thing in which I could not be touched um uh by anybody, and I couldn't even be sat by. Um, and and the noises were too loud and everything was too much. And I I just my my nervous system, now that I know about that, was so overwhelmed. I was in freeze and fawn like so hard. Uh so I was like, I'm gonna go to Florida. We had timeshare. I'm like, I'm gonna go to Florida. Um, I I just need to be alone. I need to go away. I am so stressed from this stupid bar job that I'm working 12 to 16 hours at every day for this to happen to me, happen to me, you know, and so I go to Florida and and I have a hydro flask full of wine. I have a whole whole ass bottle in my hydro flask. I'm like, people think I'm drinking water, you know, and I'm like, I'm gonna go, I asked my couple therapist, we're in this therapy for months that he's just lying through, so that was a huge waste because of just acting when we're there. And I I told her, I'm like, I'm gonna start reading The Body Keeps the Score. And she was like, okay. And for me, being a analytical person that's a little avoidant, I can read all of those stories and be like, fascinating. Wow, this traumatic story is fascinating because so much. And people are like, I can't. It like really like gets me, and I'm like, super interesting. I'm like, whoa. So I started reading that, and and there's just so many chapters in every every self-healing book about yoga. Um, everybody finds themself at some point in yoga, and then when you get to read But the Body Keeps the Score, it's talking about the neurological patterns of your body and in these loops and why yoga works um for PTSD. And I was 100% in a PTSD uh state, and I was for a long time. Um,

The Yoga Class That Finally Let Her Breathe Again

SPEAKER_05 34:39

and so I go to yoga and I'm like, I stop at Target, I buy myself a mat, and I get there late, and I'm like, ah shit, I'm late. I'm being late to yoga is like going. And the door was locked when I got there, and I was like, all right, whatever. And this woman comes outside, she's like, no, no, come in. And I was like, okay, okay, well, and then we go in the room and it's dark, and and everybody is laying down, and I'm like, because I also was like, I'm gonna go do hard things, I'm gonna I'm gonna use my ego to get some Warrior Ones and Warrior Twos into some vinyasa headstand, yeah, and I'm gonna plank it out and whatever. And uh so I get there and like everybody's laying on piles of pillows, and I'm like, okay, and I'm already late, so like I'm trying to tiptoe around in the dark, and I'm like, okay. So I like roll my mat out and like copy this man next to me, and I just go get everything that he has like out of the corner and like just set it up, and then I like lay down and I'm like, I don't know what this is. Um and it was a yin class, which I teach now and I specialize in. And um yin yin you hold your poses for five minutes in a rest. Uh, and for a person who is not in their body, uh, that's really hard to do.

SPEAKER_00 36:19

Very uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_05 36:20

It's very uncomfortable to be still with yourself in your body, um, and not be doing something hard to mask it or to transmute it out or whatever, to just be with yourself. And and I was so uh so um tight, like my anxiety level was like I could literally feel everything was my physical body was holding it together, like so much so that I could hardly breathe, but I didn't know that I was hardly breathing. I just was there living like that, and so we we laid down this was gonna make me emotional, which is fine, but um I I laid down and she started playing these big sound bowls, and they were absolutely foreign to me. And I was like, oh, these are loud, these are loud, and the tones, um, the frequencies that they are at is really like invasive to me. Um and and they were like so loud that they could come through, they could penetrate through what I had. And I was like, I don't know if I like this. I don't know if I like this. And it felt like it was like the reverb of like being like out of like a high school football game, and when it would like flip and you're like, and I would be like, are they gonna get louder than this or are they gonna flip into like and and once I figured out that they weren't going to like change or like hurt hurt my ears or something, yeah, I was like, okay, and and she kept saying, like, and just breathe, and just breathe.

SPEAKER_03 38:19

And I was like, I can't, I can't do it, and like they're so loud, and this is happening at the same time. They're like, breathe, and she's just up there, like, and now I'm like, that's me. I'm just sitting up there saying, just breathe. But I remember being in these poses where I'm just like, I can't do it. My body can't. I can't, I can't do it. And um taking this like like a over half of the class to really be like, um thank you, to really be like, okay, you have to try. You have to try. I'm like, okay, okay, okay. And I'm like taking the longest breath that I can, and I can't do it because it's like very um jagged and uh like restricted.

SPEAKER_05 39:30

My body was like, well, I can't, so it'd be like and so I would coerce and I'm like, what is this? I'm like, I I I'm full of so much fear, and I'm like, what will happen if you breathe?

SPEAKER_04 39:49

What will happen? And I was like, nothing, nothing will happen, nothing, you have to try. I'm like, okay.

SPEAKER_03 40:02

And that happened for over half of the class to the point that I finally was able to soften my body enough to breathe to just take big breaths. And then for the rest of the class, I I just wept through it because I saw how dead I was, and that I was starving for breath.

SPEAKER_05 40:32

The absolute simplest thing that you can do, and I couldn't do it, and I realized that I had not breathed in months, and that how sad that was, and I was so sad for me, and how how broken I really was, and how how physical it was that I needed to keep it together. And so after that, I class ended, and I was like, I felt like a jar that they were like pop. And then I they just gave it back to me, and I was like, what you can't just like do that? How now what? You know, and I was like, Well, what is this?

SPEAKER_04 41:33

They're like, This is a class that we do on Mondays, you know, and they're just like, this is a class we do on Mondays, and I'm like, But I what I what is it? Well, I don't understand what happened, you know. Like, can I come back tomorrow?

SPEAKER_05 41:46

You know, and they were like, well, we only do this on Mondays, and I was like, Okay, you know, so I came back um because I bought a week pass and I was there for a week, so I came back to yoga every day, but it wasn't like that. Um, and I immediately like went to the beach with my hydro flask full of wine and put on headphones and looked all over the internet for the sound bowls. I didn't know anything about them. I was like, what are these? Were they these Tibetan bowls? I'm like, oh no, those are metal. So then I had to found all these things, and I'm on Spotify looking for these bowls so I can sit on the beach and listen to bowls and try to uh um offer more of that to myself. And I after that, when I came home, I I was open. Uh and this really like started a major healing part for me. Um, because then I I wanted to go to all the sound baths now, and I was on a search in Salt Lake to find that experience again because I knew I needed more. I needed more of that. I needed to go lay in a class and cry. And I needed help. I needed help. I needed something to help me because me just reading these books was not enough. Me just going to my therapist was not enough. I needed um a thing to help me that I could have. Uh, and so these sound baths, now that you know a lot of us are in soundbath life, they're so different. They're so different. Like, some have drums and some have flutes, and some are just all sound bowls, and like so I obviously could not recreate that because every sound bath is a different experience depending on who you go to and what kind of cool instruments they're obsessed with. That they're like, look at it, my cool toys. And so I um I tried to find that, and um. My my husband eventually convinced me to stay again. And this is when I knew that I was being uh coerced. Uh being being in a narcissistic um marriage for a really long time, I was very, very under the spell. I was very brainwashed into uh a different reality. And then I see very differently now. Um but he made all these promises, you know, and all these things, and and uh I very reluctantly said I would try to stay, and I already felt in my body that I didn't want to do that. I actually wanted to leave. I wanted to leave. And this is one of my biggest things that I think I would offer to people now, having gone through this, is um that the

Why Women Stay: When Every Resource Tells You to Work It Out

SPEAKER_05 45:01

the support for somebody that uh has is going through infidelity is all geared towards you working it out. All the books, all the therapy, every every piece of of support um supports the idea that you will stay and try to work it out. Uh, but I wanted to leave and I needed help with that. I needed a book to help me um make that decision for me in my power. I needed something to say your body and your intuition is saying you want out. No, fuck this. And and I needed to be told you're right, you know best. You know, and you as an individual know what you can choose to not stand for. And it is okay to say, I will not stand for this, I'm leaving, and and to choose yourself. Um, and and a lot of what happens in marriage, um, in a lot of our stories with marriage is we stay too long because we're very attached to, but I made a promise and I took vows, and those are very serious to me. And my word, I keep my word, and I was more loyal to my loyalty than I was to myself, and I was very attached to the idea that I am a person who doesn't lie, I'm a person who doesn't cheat, I'm a person who keeps my word, and I want to continue to appearing as such as well. So I also need everybody to know that I am nice and I'm the good one, and that I didn't do that. So um, so much of it. So I wanted to leave, but I kept getting talked into staying. So, anyways, this this happened. Um, this happened for a year and a half, almost two years actually. And over this time, we sold our house and moved into a house, and he bought another house in Lake Havasu without him talking to me, and then was like convinced me to stay, and then would go down to Lake Havasu and be like, I need time to myself. And I'm like, so whatever. So the last time that I found more text messages, more evidence, and there was always more. I was always finding little things, we would just find a new way. So I became uh uh a detective of digital technology, and and that that's a whole thing too of that of that life. Like that's very consuming to the person going through it because you you're constantly looking for something, you're constantly on guard, you're constantly looking for a new email address, a new Snapchat name, a new Instagram. Um, what's a password to your email? Give me the password, give me the password to the Verizon account, and the passwords are held as leverage, and waking up in the middle of the night and trying to go through their laptop and and just being like on guard, like all the time, being so vigilant. Um, and honestly, that's how I found it the last time. I just saw the emojis he was using in his phone. I was like, those are her emojis because they only come out when you talk to her, and that's how I knew, and that's how I found it the last time, and so that time I went to her house and I talked to her on her porch for a long time, and she told me how long it's been going on and whatever, and and um she was like, He's a narcissist. I'm like, I know, and she was like, You should read this book. I was like, Ah, okay, thank you. Thank you for that. But anyway, I I took a picture of her. I took a picture on her porch with her and sent it to him.

SPEAKER_03 49:04

So good.

SPEAKER_05 49:05

And he was like, Oh shit. But it doesn't matter. I think they're still together today. She she, I feel bad for her. I feel bad that she didn't read the book. She didn't uh she did not choose her higher self. Um, so so anyway, it took uh a long time to get divorced. And as soon as I took my power back and was like, no, you need to leave. I made him buy uh his own house and he and he moved out, and I stayed at my friend's house for six weeks until he bought that house. And and during this time, I knew that I needed to play uh very nice, um, or he would screw me um because I had now 13 years invested into this relationship with our marriage and our pre-time, and that I hadn't worked and and we had a pre-nump, but the pre-dump was pretty low just based off of 13 years of inflation and just seeing that like I didn't work though. I helped you make lots and lots of money in all of your jobs. I've been working at this stupid bar because you had an affair for almost two years and didn't get paid for a single day. And like the house we built, we built like sweat equity, like built it. So I'm like, uh, some of this money is mine, you know, and and so then it became this game that I had to play where I had to be nice. I had to go to lunch with him all the time. I had to be friends, I had to continue to let him take care of me, which was his piece of control. He's like, I'm gonna keep paying your utilities so that you can just get back on your feet. But it was control because then I couldn't, I couldn't go out on my own. So then when I started getting a job, I already got a job at the printing company. And then he called those women and like said, if you give her that job, I'm not gonna sell you the buildings that they were like a few days away from signing on and sabotaged my job so that I had to stay under the wing and I couldn't say anything about it. I just had to know that that happened. And um, so months and months of control of um I might give you the house or I might not. I might give you the house, or I might not. He would give it and he would take it away and he'd give it, and he would never sign the papers. And I don't know how many times I went over to his house to be like, please sign these papers today. And he'd be like, I altered them last night. On so I and I printed them out. Here you go. And I'm like, I can't sign these, I don't know what they say. Uh and it was always trying to like screw me a little bit, and I was like, So we had this prenup that had this clause that said, if he cheated on me, or if I cheated on him, I got nothing. Uh, but there was no clause about him cheating on me. And of course I signed this when I was 28 because I was like, whatever, I'm never gonna need this. Um, so um anyway, like this is taking almost a year at this point, and and this man shows up in my life, and I know that Jeff is dating this woman. People tell me about it, they send me pictures. I saw a screenshot of or I saw her leaving his porch because I still had access to his porch camera. Like, I knew that they were dating, and we were still married, but we were separated. So then this man shows up in my life, and one of my friends was like, Go to her yoga class, and then he came and I was like, Don't send these men to my yoga class. Uh but anyway, he was nice and like we just hung out a little bit. And the second that we did, Jeff, uh, my ex, he knew he knew about it, he knew where I was, he knew what I was doing, he knew his name, and he he freaked out. So when when people um that are narcissists, and we should see this in the public and some of our political figures, narcissists are really just deeply, deeply wounded people. Um, and when they have the capability to mess with people's lives, with their power, when you have a narcissist that also has power and they have uh wild emotional swings that are like what a if what a regular person would do is they'd probably throw something, you know, or throw your shit away, or you know, put your clothes on the lawn or whatever it is, you know, like a regular person's reaction. But when you have narcissists that are in positions of power with money, uh uh

Spy Cameras, Stalking Injunction, and the Gift of No Contact

SPEAKER_05 53:55

they are able to do way more heinous things. Um so he um like hired an investigator to find out where this man lived and where he worked, and like all these things. And I'm like, nothing has even happened. Like we went mountain biking one day, and you're dating, you know, so whatever it was. Anyway, what happened is that relationship progressed a little bit. And um, one day when I went to work, he stuck in my house and installed all these little tiny cameras inside of my plugs, like spy camera. They are in the little grounding hole, you would never know, uh, to catch me cheating so that he could give me nothing. And um he did he did catch me being intimate with this person and lost his mind. It was very he didn't even keep his own secret, like immediately lost his mind. And uh so the next day I knew that my whole house was bugged. And and at that point, like many things came into my awareness of like that's just how he knows like where I am and what I'm doing, and conversations, like, how do you know these conversations? So I was like, I don't know if anything is safe, I don't know if my car is uh being bugged, like I don't know, I don't know to what extent this is going to. Um, and so the next day I went through my house and tore it apart and and found the these cameras in my plugs and became an electrician real quick uh by pulling them out, and that's just what I could find. Nobody told me where they were or what, you know, so I I found these cameras uh and I I'm no expert, so I was like, I don't know if there's mics in here, I don't know if there's more cameras. I and I was so afraid at this point that he'd lost his his mind this much because I also knew he was following me. Um like I would see him outside of the yoga studio and stuff. Um and that I'll have to come back to, but anyway, so at this point I was felt very unsafe. Um, and this is another layer of trauma on top of it. So now I felt um very, very punished. I felt like, why is the universe beating me down like this? I'm a nice person. Like, why why am I being cheated on like repeatedly? And why am I having my home taken from me and my family and my kids and my my my money and and why and now I'm being punished, you know, and and now I'm not safe, and now I'm being beat up by this person that did this to me. You know, what did I why is this happening to me? Like, and then and then it just after this I I I filed for a stocking injunction, and when he got served with that paperwork, he was so irate that the the lawyers he were like, you're not getting anything. And um, and I knew that it was all the nicey nicy was over, that there was just giant explosions that I was trying to avoid for all this time. And what I learned in the long run of all of this is that that gave me the leverage I needed to leave. That gave me the 100% permission and golden ticket to go no contact, which when every piece of advice you're gonna have about narcissism is no contact, no contact. And you always like, I can't do that, I can't do that. I have to play nice, or I'm gonna end up with nothing. Uh, and so I was able to go no contact immediately, like we never talked again ever after that day I found the cameras. We still haven't. Uh the no contact to me is very real and very such a big part of my healing, and then it was forced upon me is amazing. I would have never done it. That was one of the worst things that has ever happened to me that ended up being such a blessing. Um, and then because I had this stocking injunction, he hated that so much that he traded it for the house. And that ended it. He gave me a gigantic piece of leverage uh by losing his shit. And uh this uh in my healing process I have to backtrack just a tiny bit. Um during like six months prior to to this happening, um, I decided to get my yoga teacher training because I knew that I wouldn't keep up on the yoga by myself with the healing. I could I needed something to keep me accountable. And so during this absolute worst time of my life, I was going through yoga teacher training. And the first time was during the nicey nicy period where I had to play nice and be know I was being manipulated and think that I could nice my way out of it, um, which is not possible when you're dealing with a narcissist. There's no other way but explosions. You have to, there will be explosions. Uh, and you have to be okay with it. Because guess what? Explosions go away. So do tidal waves, and like you have to be willing to mess your whole life up because there's no other way. Uh and so I that was during the Nicy Nicy period, and I started working at this uh this yoga studio, and um, she was having another yoga teacher training, and this was during COVID. So the first one I did all online, and I felt like how sad because the you you are learning such big things um that you need you need to be with people because you're in a cohort um and you're in a group, and so I really missed that dynamic. So when she said you can audit the course, I uh if you want to sit through it again, and I was like, yes, because in my therapy that I'm going through, you know, I'm going through EMDR for um sexual trauma, I'm going through EMDR for this PTSD of this relationship, which I thought about obsessively, like obsessively, and and I was so so wounded and so sad that that I really thought I would never really be happy again. Like I had I had made um a choice to be like I I know that I'll never be a hundred percent happy again, and that's okay if I could get to like 80, that would be really nice. Um and so in the my yoga teacher training, what I didn't expect um is uh the amount of self-discover and deep dive that you do about your way that you move through the world is 85% of yoga teacher training. There's like 15% of, and then this, and then this, and then if their foot's like this, then help them fix it. That is so little of yoga teacher training. Yoga teacher training is uh a therapy course with Eastern philosophy that teaches you about how you move through the world and uh how your perspective is very um ego-driven and about this big, and um uh your attachments, your attachment to your identity, what you think your identity is, and my realization that I was so attached to my identity that I was a wife and that that was being taken from me, um, for at no fault of my own was uh really uh difficult releasing process. And um, so to be in therapy and to be in this yoga teacher training at the same time um saved me as a human. Uh, I don't actually know how other people do it, and I remember saying that to my therapist and my yoga mentor. I'm like, how do people, how are other people doing this if they're not in yoga teacher training and therapy at the same time? Because I have this um this clinical uh and and book and modern uh things we've learned about people and the nervous system and um EMDR and like all of these wonderful techniques. I I'm a proponent of therapy, but then we have um the journey of the self and the capital S self, uh, which is very in line with internal family systems. And Richard Schwartz is he knows he knows about Eastern philosophy because I can see it in there. Uh but they were the same ideas, just presented to me in different ways, and and really helped me open my perspective and to stop being such a victim of my circumstances and things happening to me and what I deserved. I was really, really like, I don't deserve this. I don't deserve this, I don't deserve this, and and I didn't, I didn't deserve that, but at the same time, when I was ready to start healing, really, because I think everybody's entitled to a long wallow victim phase, I think it's fine, it's okay. You you had a shit hand dealt to you, and it feels bad, so go ahead and feel that for a little bit. Um, and then when you're ready to get up, put your boots back on, um, to say, okay, you didn't deserve that check. Yeah, what did you deserve? And

"Deserve Isn't Real": The Bhagavad Gita Moment That Set Her Free

SPEAKER_05 1:05:00

I was like, uh, this is me asking myself, and I was like, Well, I deserved loyalty. We're like, okay. That's kind of like a vague idea because it's very relative, like, to the situation and to the people. I'm like, okay, well, what else did you deserve? I'm like, I deserved love. We're like, right, but you did get love. I'm like, that's true. And everything I came up that I deserved uh was I uh they are not things, they're ideas, they're agreements with people. And it's like, well, did you ever actually have the the very blunt conversation of you will not ever cheat on me, right? Okay, and if you do, I will leave. That's the agreement and shake on it. And it's like, did you ever have that conversation? You're like, no, it's assumed. You're like, and you see how much of your uh relationship. Uh was assumed and your your reactions of deserving and non-deserving are in relation to those agreements. Um obviously I didn't deserve any of those things. And obviously I didn't need to make an agreement about that because that's what marriage is. But it didn't matter. I was in a neutral world thinking about its own, and then I was like, you deserve this for I go to work 40 hours a week, you're gonna pay me X amount of money. Yes, we agree on that. Great. You deserve money, and I deserve work. That's for an exchange. That's a word that people made up when we started like bartering and services, and it's an it's for exchange. It's not really for these like emotional, um, vague spaces, deserve. The word deserve is not for that, it's really about exchange, and and like um that's not what these spaces are. So I'm like, you really didn't deserve anything because deserve isn't real, deserve isn't real, and I was like, oh this is after I read the Bhagavad Gita, and I was like, deserve isn't real. And when that clicked to me in my mind, I was freed from it. I was freed from any any uh thing to do with deserving because it wasn't real. I was like, oh yeah, that's just for like exchanging that's a people word. We made it, we made that up. Um so I was very freed from the deserving, and I was able to start um I I maybe wrote something about this on your whiteboard, but I was finally able to start moving into um accepting my story. I really didn't like that this was my story. Um and I uh moved into not um being able to stop trying to tell my story, my story. I'm like, listen, sorry, this is how it goes. And I I was able to start to be in flow with my life, and I was able to start to just know that if I could operate in a higher vibration, that eventually the universe would swoop around and take care of me. And that I didn't need to know because I lived very, very anxiously during this time. I needed to know, I needed to know where I was gonna land, I needed to know how I was gonna make money, I needed to know, I needed to know. Um, so much so that my throat was like this like so tight that I could feel like a physical um ball in my throat. And this became part of my mission in my embodiment uh to release that. And I would talk to my therapist a lot about it, and she would be like, That's because you're not speaking your truth. My my clinical therapist, and then my yoga mentor would be like, You're not speaking your truth. I was like, Okay. So, in all of this, as I moved through it and I started accepting like my life, and I let my story tell me what the story was, and I didn't need to know what was coming next. I just knew if I if I kept going and I was in good intention and I was in service and I was operating in love, that everything would work out for me, and I didn't need to know what it looked like. So I um as I continued down this yoga road and these sound baths, and I was like dabbling in the hippie world, and I was like, these people are weird, these people are weird, they say weird things, they do weird things, they wear weird clothes. I don't know. It's not weird. It's I know, but for me, you know, I was just a regular white girl, you know. And as I was like dabbling in these spaces, I was like watching them though, and I was like, Yeah, but look at them. They are happy. Uh they're happy and they express love freely. And I want that. I want that for me. I want I want to express and receive love freely, and I didn't know how to receive. Uh, especially after that, and and my own childhood stuff, and like I realized that you don't know how to receive, you don't have to give either. But let's start with receiving. Um, let's start there, you know. And so I started going to all this weird stuff. I'd be like, that's weird. Okay, I'll go. Um, because I wanted to be uncomfortable. I wanted because I could I was starting to understand like that's where the goods are, you know. And so I would pick things that I knew I was gonna be very uncomfortable, and I would go and I'll go by myself, which was also new. Um, and so I was going to full moon circles, and I was going to uh weird sound baths, and I was going to, I don't know, any anything that I could find that I thought would make me feel uncomfortable. And and it did because like I I didn't grow up like a popular child, I didn't have lots of friends, you know. So like there's always this part of me that feels like I don't belong in the circle. And so when I would go, I was like, I'm not like these girls. I don't know, I don't know what these words are that you're using, and I don't feel comfortable saying womb work. I don't weird, you know, and so I I started going to those spaces on purpose and and I started going to drip. Um,

DRIP, Drums, and Reclaiming Her Body Voice and Life

SPEAKER_05 1:12:10

and drip has been one of the most healing things I've brought into my life to to be able to repattern and and explore um sensuality in a really safe space that does not involve men. Um, because I I think I've spent most of my adult life avoiding uh men uh attention from men um and not calling it to me because of the fear associated with it that I didn't even know was like living in my body like so heavily. Um to and and there's a there's a there's a thing about poll. I started going to poll. Um poll and drip and burlesque. I'm in a burlesque course right now, too, because I'm still exploring this avenue. I still I'm like there's more here for me to be comfortable in my body and to learn how to be in play. How do I be in play and and sensual and powerful because I very much still feel like like a a teenager, you know, you get in these situations as a teen where where things start turning sexual and you're still so young, and you're like, I'm a baby, I don't belong in this room. Why am I taking my shirt off? Like, and there's that part that is still there. Like, I'm still this young person that doesn't know anything about this because we're not really taught about it, and we're not taught how to inhabit our bodies here, and we're not taught how to come here confidently, and we're definitely not taught that that space is for you first, and then you share. We're taught that's a group space, that's with you for your partner. You bring your sensuality for your partner, you offer it up, and and getting the like reclaim my body and and heal that like sexual trauma and and and come into being a woman um from a confident space where I'm no longer under this person's like wing or shadow and and to bring in play, like there's such a silly aspect to drip too. And for anybody that doesn't know what drip is, drip stands for daily rapture and inner peace practice. And it's a women's practice that is now expect expanding to men, which I also teach now, um, that really has just a lot to do with uh gentle self-touch, and there's moves of yoga in it, and really the very simplified version is we roll around pretty slow on the floor on sheepskin rugs in some lingerie to the most basic of flows. We teach you like roll on this side and then touch your body and then roll on that side and then touch your body. And we do this to music, so like you learn how to like like twerk a little and like grind a little and stuff that you wouldn't never like go do at a club or even in front of your partner. Like, like even now, I'm like, oh no, I'm gonna do that. I would now actually, but two years ago, no, I would not have done any drip moves in front of my partner. And and when I had a partner, I wasn't together now. Yeah, we do it together now, and so like the amount of growth that I've experienced over the past six years from going to these weird spaces and and having this this like yoga uh drip life, and like and um one of the most uh biggest uh expansive playful shadow work things I've done is is come to the drum circle. Uh because as I as I came through my yoga teacher training and stuff, I bought some bowls and I was like, I'm gonna play these bowls. And then I started um partnering with my friend who taught yin. I'm like, you teach yin? Well, I play bowls. I'm like, I'm gonna recreate this experience for other people. If it's the last thing I do.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:16

I'm glad you said that because I've spent this whole podcast thinking I want to go to this class.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:21

I I recreated it. I didn't know that's what I was doing, but I've recreated it. And and that's been a journey too um in the sound baths, because I for a long time I would partner with other people and I still do this. I partner with other people and I play in the background. Um, and there's a part of me that's still trying to figure out well, how do I get to be people to come see just me? You know, because there's this part that I'm still like, well, just me isn't enough, you know, which is not true, but um so anyway, I bought more instruments and I bought more instruments and I bought more instruments, and and I was playing all these soft, like soundbathy instruments, and I've always been a singer, but in the shadows, like at my house, like little, where I was an inquirer a lot of my life, um, but definitely not in front of my partner. And I started playing guitar when I was 28, and and I was never very good, but my whole reason I wanted to learn to play was like I want I want to play and sing in front of people at some point, and I didn't even know I was doing because I I didn't have social circles like I do now in my marriage. I am so my life is so much better right now. It is the best gift that was ever given to me to be forced to leave that life. My life is so fun and so playful. I can't remember, and not it's totally fine to watch TV, okay? But I can't remember the last time that I watched TV, and that's what I did every night for a decade, you know. Um what my life is so fun and so playful. I have not only reclaimed my my life, I I invented a new one that's way better. And um speaking of like I wanted I wanted to go to weird things, I saw Bryson, our virtual friend, on Instagram drumming in a teepee. And I was like, What are you what are you doing? Where are you? I want to drum in a teepee. I don't even have a drum. That's not true. I made a drum in my sound healing course that I took, but I never play it. It's just a decoration, you know, and so he was like, Come, and I was like, but I really do don't don't send me a DM be like, come whenever you want. I was like, give me the address. When? What day? What time? And then I went to Energy Stack for my first time. And when I sat down, I was like, I bet I'm gonna see Bryson here for the breathwork sound bath thing. And then boom, he just walked in. And I was like, Oh, I knew you were gonna be here. And um so then after that, I met everybody and they were like, Yeah, we're drumming on Tuesdays, and and so I was like, okay, but for real, I was like, I need the address. So I I started going to that, and I came with like a tongue, a little tongue drum and my one-hand drum that I didn't know how to play. And then I and then I sat down, and then it was like very clear that I did not have the right instruments, or at least I felt that way. Uh I felt like I didn't have the right instruments, I didn't I didn't know what to play or do. I didn't know how to be included. And so I just kept coming back though, and then I would buy more instruments that like the they they had. I would be like, I have this tall drum, whatever that is. And so I would buy one of those. I bought a djembe, and then I bought flutes, and they sat around for a while, like learning how to play them, and then I wasn't confident enough to play them out loud because I didn't know how to play them, and like Scott was so good that I was like, and I didn't understand the keys, so I was like, I don't want to play the wrong flute at the wrong time, and and I they're so loud, everybody will see me and hear me. And that's how I was feeling with the drum too. I was like, well, if I play, everyone will see and hear. And I was learning so much shadow work through the drum circle about uh that, and I was and I would ask myself, why can't you play this? And I'm like, because it's it's for boys, because the drum is very masculine, it feels to me. I know that's not real now, but it doesn't matter. At the time, this is what it feels like to be a new person in a drum circle, especially as a woman. Drums are masculine, especially gem bass. They're big and they're wood and they're loud. And and you have to like part your legs to play it and put it in there and like sit on the edge of your chair and tip it and like hit it and be like in a more masculine stance, and just everything about it doesn't feel feminine. So when you watch new girls come, they tip tap the edges and like beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. And uh so now I've started teaching girls a little bit about that sometimes, and it's like you have to tip your drum, and when you're playing back here, you're gonna hurt your thumbs because you're gonna hit the rim a lot, so you have to open your stance and don't play small. And this one girl, she heard me and we had a little drum night, and she started crying after her. She was like, Don't play small.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:48

And I was like, 'cause she was like, I didn't think that this was for me. She was crying, and she was like, and I was like, Don't play small. And she was like, Don't play. Yeah, don't play small. And I was like, Oh, you're so cute. I love you so much.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:05

And it's there's so much about that, like, you're hitting this job and you feel like I don't belong here. You're like, why can't I do this with my hand, like a five-year-old, and just be like, bang, bang, I want to make noise and have fun. Why can't you just be in play? And I was like, I don't know why I can't be in play. I'm like, God, that's so fascinating. Like, people and and all these fake rules, and I was learning so much about my fake rules about what I could and couldn't do and why, and what it all came down to is like, you don't want to be seen or heard, you don't want to be seen or heard.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:40

Because if you did, you'd be playing this drum. And I'm like, do you want to be seen or heard?

SPEAKER_05 1:22:48

I'm like, oh yeah, and the the growth that has come out of the drum. Like, I did not know how much of me was in there and what it put out, and so I exploded after that. I got more drums, I got more instruments, um, and then I started singing in front of everybody and playing in front of everybody, and met with such such praise and such openness that I've never felt more a part of something. I've never felt more included and more um supported to grow somewhere. Almost like it's like adult children in so many ways in the drum circle, because you're like, oh my god, cool toy! Can I play with this? And you're like already playing it, and you're like, sorry, and there's toys everywhere, and everybody is in play, and it's so fun, but also like we are like these babies, like learning how to do something together, and some people are better than other people, um, and just depending on how long they've been coming or whatever it is, and everyone's so nice to be like, Oh, you just do it like this, and they're not like weird or dudgy, and like to to be uh met with that kind of support weekly or bi-weekly, like repeatedly, we need to feel that over and over. One time is not enough, like you need over and over to be like, Oh, it's okay to be in play, it's okay to learn out loud, it's okay to show up not as good and then be way better six months later, and to have someone say, You're way better now than you were six months ago, and you're like, Yeah, and and to have that turn into now that I'm like singing and playing like in front of people all the time in big uh big spaces and like writing my own songs and playing and singing in front of my partner at home, which in this relationship is new. Um, and I feel so grateful to be have grown to be this kind of woman who like is so in in their own um power and in play, and I have so much silliness in my life. I brought this for a second. I have so much play in my life that I'm so grateful for that I can be this girl, you know. I like wear this in the car while I'm driving around and like pass them out, and that I have been able to bring this level of silliness into my life. I'm so happy to, and like in the car, like on the way here, and like dancing in front of him and like um playing and singing, and like there's no limit to my authenticity. It has there's no limit to my authenticity, it is getting more potent every day to the point that I am enjoying watching it. I'm like, what's what's next for me? So fun, so curious, and this this beautiful partner um that just brings it out of me and like uh supports it and and matches it. And God, I feel so grateful to have done all of that work to be able to be in this relationship now, in this healed body, in this healed um mentality to be operating in this higher vibration, to be a teacher to others, to help them rise to uh and just to I have so much play in my life and so much love, and and I'm able to express it, I'm able to receive it, and I'm I just didn't know that my life could be this great. I didn't know I thought my life ended, I thought everything was taken from me, and and many things were taken from me, but I was given so much more that uh I could this is how I know that there is um guidance happening because my guides had to had to find a way to get me here. They had to find a way to get me here living like this, and what they chose uh uh as far as life stories go, um, people people have some pretty terrible stories. Um and for mine to be unfair and then I had my heart broken, actually feel like a god of pretty light to uh it didn't feel that way at the time, but I to see what I got out of it and the very interesting. Creative way that they were like, you need to arrive in this higher vibration where you're in your power and you're you're um you're in your your music this deeply and you're in your teaching uh this deeply and to be uh uh living at a a higher level of consciousness and in highest self. I I just don't know how it would have happened another way, you know. Um so I'm really grateful for that. I'm really grateful for the way it turned out. Um, and even though I don't speak to my ex anymore, I I I hope he's happy, you know. I forgive him. I forgave him. Um, and I don't want that poison of not forgiving in my body. Um my guess is well, I'm not even gonna say that. Anyway, I hope he's happy.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:00

Well, Adrian, I just want to say um I think now everybody listening by this point understands why we we decided this episode needed to go longer.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:10

Yeah, sorry.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:11

No, no, no, no, no. Definitely no sorries. We uh we just had an inkling of intuition, you're right, that this is just we're just getting up to the fun part. But um I can tell you from having known you from the outside perspective, it's just another random dude at the drum circle going through all those same experiences. Except with me, it was always everybody's like, you're playing that a little too loud. But um you do not play small. And I have like never the these are the epitome of whatever's on the other side of playing small. Honestly, I believe the first person that has just said straight up, I'm gonna be on your podcast.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:58

Yeah, I can be kind of forward.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:00

And to think about it for a lot of people that may know you to think, oh, well, look, of course, it's Adrian. She's just big and powerful and competent, and her voice is amazing, and she has all these talents. But they don't know without hearing the story, they might just think that's her. But to hear that story, they might be able, oh, to realize, like, wait a minute, that's something for me. And if there was if somebody just asked to like, what's the if somebody asked me what's the most important thing that came out of this message, especially to women, but to everybody, but especially to women from the last the story we just heard, is don't play small. And your uh transformation through that, through the cur through all that courage to face all those emotions. Um I'm just grateful to have the opportunity to help bring that message to other people. Um and it like that group that you talked about. I mean, you're kind of in like nobody really talks about it, but anytime somebody asks a question in our drum circle group, like we're kind of waiting for Adrian to weigh in.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:18

Like, kind of like the mom of you know, we're like waiting for where's Adrian?

SPEAKER_00 1:31:22

What she's not here yet.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:23

Can we start with her? I just very quickly start with the very quickly became um uh like one of the leaders, which is so interesting because I like I don't even play like a lot of these instruments.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:35

But that's that's the that's the I mean I think that's what that's what leadership is, right? You just stepped into it. And and uh I'm I'm so grateful that uh we got to hear it hear like how how like the story of how someone comes from feeling broken, feeling voiceless to stepping into it. So as you can tell, this story ended up being so epic we broke up into a couple different parts. So that concludes episode one, which was Adrian's story, and tune in next time for episode two, which will be Jake's story, and then we'll come back one more time to share their love story.