Coherence vs Distortion: Learning to Hold Truth Without Losing Yourself

Coherence vs Distortion: Learning to Hold Truth Without Losing Yourself 

What if the patterns that keep repeating in your life aren’t punishment… but invitations to evolve?

In this episode of Star Women Rising, Melinda continues exploring the profound personal shifts she’s experienced over the past few weeks—unpacking powerful concepts that help explain the deeper processes of emotional healing, ancestral patterns, and spiritual awakening.

Melinda dives into ideas like emotional cycles, integration, ancestral memory, emotional noise, and self-realization—offering language for experiences many people feel but struggle to describe. She shares how recognizing patterns, releasing inherited burdens, and stepping out of emotional entanglement can bring a powerful sense of clarity and freedom.

One of the most transformative ideas she explores is the difference between coherence and distortion—and how learning to stay grounded in your center allows you to see people and situations clearly without being pulled into chaos.

Through personal stories, reflections on family dynamics, and lessons emerging from her own journey, Melinda offers a compassionate reminder that growth doesn’t come from suppressing reality or pretending everything is love and light—it comes from seeing clearly, releasing what isn’t yours, and standing firmly in your own energetic truth.

If you’ve ever wondered why certain lessons keep repeating…
 why emotional patterns seem to echo through generations…
 or how to stay centered in a world full of chaos…

this conversation may help you recognize exactly where you are on your journey.

✨ Star Women Rising is part of the Chickology Podcast Collective — Real Women. Real Stories. Rising Together.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Star Women Rising, where cosmic roots meet earthly power. I'm Melinda, and together we'll awaken the fire within and above, exploring intuition, soul wisdom, and the ancient truths written in the stars. This isn't about escaping the world. It's about remembering who you are and rising stronger in it. Star Women Rising is part of the Chicology Podcast Collective, Real Women, Real Stories, Rising Together. Let's begin. Okay, where to begin? Left off last time. I had kind of a list of some concepts or terms that I've come to just recently learn over this crazy wild two weeks, almost three weeks now, part of my journey. Honestly, it's kind of it's not that this is new. I think this is a culmination of the past 55 years and it's all starting to unfold in some rather intriguing ways. And funny part of my world is as I'm, you know, my I was planning to do the podcast. I had some free time, I had some quiet time, got into the podcast, and then in the middle of these terms, and I feel like not that I really felt like I had a flow because I always feel so awkward, but there was a flow going, and then my husband busts in, and he's got these wide eyes, and he's like, You're you're broadcasting. And it felt like it threw me off. I felt like that flow collapsed and I had to regroup. And I was a little irritated. I was annoyed. And it wasn't really his fault. I think he got back sooner than he anticipated. And I actually started a little later than I had anticipated. But I feel like the lesson in that was regrouping, right? When somebody throws you off your course, and are you gonna collapse under it or are you going to regroup and and march on? And I tried to regroup and march on. And then after that, my mind took over and was like, maybe you should redo it. You should probably just redo it. You know, you lost the flow. And I totally overthought it. And then I got a phone call from a good friend, just seemingly out of the blue, that said, Hey, I just listened to your podcast and and you're doing really good. So I felt like that was that was the message that I was I was overthinking it because in reality, this is going to land wherever it needs to land. And those who are ready to hear it will hear it. And that's really all that matters. So there's a couple more concepts I want to get into because I I think probably going forward, and and maybe if you haven't kind of taken notes and and looked into these, you might want to, because there's it's sort of this pattern that happens, I think, along the journey. And I think it's worth knowing what you're experiencing. And so bear with me on this. There, there's a method to my madness, and it makes it makes perfect sense in my mind now, knowing where I've been and where I'm at now. But I feel like these concepts are helpful to know where you are to help you navigate your journey. And I think I left off maybe on an emotional cycle, but I'll I'm gonna go over it again because I am absolutely not that squared away where I can pinpoint where I was and I, you know, I just but I I know for sure that I I left off on, you know, the lens and your perception shaping reality. But the next the next aspect is the emotional cycle, the rise and fall of feelings as they move through your awareness. And I think I did cover it, but you know, you you may recall memories or situations may come up that are really emotionally charged, and they come up again, and each time you may discharge more emotion, and then eventually you can come to a point where those experiences are no longer emotionally charged. And, you know, therapy, I think, addresses this. I know in hypnotherapy, one of the aspects is recreating the image and removing the emotional charge from it, which is really helpful with people who have trauma. I'm not, I am not a professional, I am not diagnosing, and if you think you need assistance, please do so. This is strictly my own experience, and I can tell you this is how my journey has played off or played out. I guess maybe off was the right word, but where you notice patterns and things keep happening, and maybe each time you're a little less attached to it, you're a little less nutted up over it, and then pretty soon it disappears, it's gone. And that would be the next phase is the integration phase where you pause after a big experience where your system absorbs the change. And when I talk about what happened to me over a year ago now, where I walked away from something, it was a major change, and then pretty much over the past year, I have been absorbing that change. I have my my life has sort of shifted into something different as I have absorbed my new, my new experience, having let go of this old experience. So you're integrate, and I have found during the integration phase, and if you know, looking back and these past two weeks has really made it apparent that during that integration phase, I'm tired. I feel achy, I feel exhausted, I wake up feeling like you know, three tons of lead, I can't move around. And just recently learning that I'm integrating, you know, I'm integrating all these changes, I'm integrating all this new knowledge that isn't really new. I'm sure it's it's ancient and and I've known it all along, but I'm starting to tap into it. You know, I've created enough coherence in my life, enough clarity now that I I'm actually able to tap into those things. I don't need somebody outside myself to to tell me. I'm I'm feeling it within. Ancestral memory, people who know me know that I'm really big on um my ancestry and not not just like the ancestry, but honoring my ancestors. And I am acutely aware that there are patterns in my life now that are likely ancestral. And I can look at even family members and I can see things that are playing out. In fact, I took my mother to physical therapy this morning, and as we were leaving, I looked at her and I called her little Geneva. Her mom was Geneva, where I'm seeing my grandma really big in my mom. And it's it's strange because my mom was a maverick. She was really rebellious and she was the antithesis of everything that my grandma believed in and stood for. And my mom broke out of that. She was not having any of it. But in her aged years, I look at her and I absolutely see my grandma, and I even see some of the same behaviors. So the ancestral memory, when you feel emotions or patterns that seem older than your own life, I think we all have these experiences that you know are ancestral, these patterns that loop over and over and over each generation that are definitely ancestral. And I've known intuitively for several years now that I probably came here to break some of those patterns. It's I've known it. I've known it deeply. I have actually sort of steered my life in that direction where I've made a conscious effort to to deal with that. And over these past, these past two weeks, that has been happening like crazy. Now, you know, how that was done, I think was, you know, there's so many people out there that are talking about how you do things or how you get to that point. But this this was maybe, you know, I think I've I started down that path of what other people were saying you need to do to break ancestral patterns. But what has occurred over the past two weeks was something vastly different. It was not what I thought it would be, but there were ancestral things that were coming up that I know were not my crosses to bear. And I was viewing them and releasing them. And there is a visceral response to that. My body was responding physically. There were physical aspects of this release. And I can tell you, I felt like my ancestors were so appreciative. Like I could, I could feel it. There was an element of them cheering me on. There was an element of gratitude that our lineage has been released from whatever has been binding us for probably millennia. Emotional noise. When your inner state is chaotic and your reality feels unstable, this is something I feel on a regular basis. And not so much anymore, actually, over the past, not just the past two weeks. The past two weeks have given me a name to it, emotional noise. But I know that I have been experiencing that in so many ways. Like when I talk about I don't like visitors, people come into my home. There is emotional noise. There is sometimes my interstate feels chaotic, but it's not necessarily my stuff. You know, go into Walmart and I'm edgy and I just want to rip through there and get the hell out as soon as possible. And usually that results in me forgetting stuff because I'm just, I just feel it feels so deeply chaotic. And not just that, not just what other people are bringing to the field, but over about the time when I made that big step, and I keep referring to that big step because it was really pivotal for me. My life felt chaotic, and everything felt chaotic. I there was just a lot of turmoil, a lot of inner just chaos that was mine, maybe how I was viewing circumstances or or dealing with them. I I had a lot of chaos, and it was it was kind of strange because I felt like I had moved out of a place to a quieter place, to a place where I could grow and thrive. And that's really when the chaos heightened. And I think it was really a sign of you got to do something different. You know, what you're doing's not working. You've got to look at this, you've got to process this, and you've got to move on. And that led to some self-realization, uh, which is when you see yourself clearly and you let go of illusions, you have, you know, the illusions. We I think we live a lot of our lives in illusion. I can tell you there's a person close to me that I look at now that I've known all their lives and I don't recognize them. And it came to me, it's like because you were looking at them through an illusion. You were looking at them as what you who you thought they were, maybe what you thought they should be. And when you wipe away those illusions and you start seeing clear, you just then you're blown away. And then letting go of that, like, well, you know, that illusion, I created that, and it's time to let it go. And that the self-realization part of it is very powerful because you start, you start dealing in a more coherent way. You're recognizing things as they are, and in that, you're realizing it's not, it's not yours to change, right? You you can you can see what's happening, you can recognize it, but you don't internalize it. And the self-realization, I think, is probably what has happened in reality over the past two weeks. I think I hit this the self-realization stage and I started really letting go of what wasn't mine, what wasn't mine to carry. And I think as mothers, we tend to do that. Uh, and I'm speaking because I'm a mother. We call it the cross to bear, but you know, we carry these burdens. The expectation is we put it on ourselves, but it's also kind of this societal societal thing as mom, you're supposed to be strong and carry the weight, the burden of the family, emotionally, mentally, and and also physically. I I came to the realization that there was a lot of these burdens I was carrying that were just not mine to carry. And when you you also look at your adult children and you see that they are dealing with burdens, but it's their journey. And you you can still hold that space for them, but not allow yourself to be entangled with it to just to realize they have their own journey. And we talk about that. People talk about that. Oh, you know, your kids, it's, you know, they have their own journey, but I feel like that's more of a cover story. I don't think it goes nearly as deep. It it just scratches the surface. So you you kind of turn your kids uh loose or or whoever, you turn them loose and you're still entangled, your heart strings are still being pulled, you're still responding or reacting to situations that you know are not healthy or that are not good. What I'm describing is a deeper level of detaching from that. And I don't even think detaching is the best word, but there's there's a deeper level of removing removing that from your energy, just witnessing it and holding your energy strong so that they know they know that it's there. It's it's not interfering, it's not being emotionally wrapped up in it or involved in it. It's just a presence. And man, when when that when that hit me, I can tell you I started feeling lighter. I started feeling like, yeah, I can do this. Yeah, I went from why the hell am I on this planet to oh it's starting to kind of make sense. We we feel like we have to do do do BBB, you know, constantly. And I don't think I don't think that's that's what it's about. So I have had just a remarkable inner transformation in such a short amount of time. But like I said, in reality, it's it's been probably many lifetimes in the making, but it's finally landing. And I'm grateful. I'm grateful for that. The biggest, the biggest thing I learned was how, or I'm I'm still learning, but it's it's landing is the coherence. When you talk about coherence versus distortion, and coherence allows you to really see or feel, because you and and it's kind of it's kind of both. I think there's you open up different levels of it. You you may some people may see it, some people may feel it. I'm getting to where it's it's both, where you can feel the distortion, you can witness it, but you don't have to make that the reality. So, you know, a good example. Oh, I was just talking to somebody yesterday about, you know, holding two truths. I think it actually, I think it was my son. My son has a a an ex-friend because now he wants nothing to do with him. He doesn't like this this man's behavior. He's so averse to how he behaves, and he seems like he's a little unconscious and he lives like he's like he's on an island. I have a little bit of a different experience of this young man, just based on something he said to me in the Walmart parking lot. I ran into him there and he asked how I was doing, and I shared some of my a little bit of my frustration over some things, and he offered me some words that were very gentle, very kind, very loving, and very true. I will always remember that. In that moment, he told me what I really needed to hear, not what I wanted to hear, but what I really needed to hear. He pointed out some things and he was right. So I view him from that perspective. My son views him from the perspective of he's a little chaotic, he does some really strange things, he's not real aware of how his energy or presence affects anybody else. He seems to be tunnel vision or distracted. So my my son was expressing his frustration and and this this person still wants still thinks they're friends, still tries to be friendly and and does some really nice things, but my son can't get past these really poor behaviors. And I said to my son, you know, I can hold two truths about this young man. I can hold the truth that he is really a good person, he really has a good heart, he means well, and I can also hold the truth that he has some really crappy behaviors that are off-putting. I've not really witnessed the off-putting so much, but I hear about it. I hear about it often. So the coherence is the aspect of being able to hold those two truths and not even really, not so much judge, not judge the distorted part of him, the part of him that is operating from a level of distortion. And that distortion comes from our programming, it comes from our lineage, it comes from so many angles, you know, the systems that we live in. So recognizing that that he's not just this distorted behavior that he's exhibiting, and also being able to understand where that kind of behavior comes from. And it allows you to not judge the person. Now, judgment's a funny word because we have the connotation that you're looking down your nose at somebody and you're kind of with disdain or whatever. But I'm speaking of the element, I'm not speaking from that perspective of judging. I'm speaking from a discernment. You can discern when people's behaviors are not healthy, you can discern when their behaviors are going to be disruptive to your own field, but you can also understand why it may be out of distortion. It's it's been our programming, it's been our training, and it goes way back. It's so deep. I'm learning how how deep this distortion aspect is. I'm using that word because I think it has a certain vibration. But when you look at people's behaviors, maybe that aren't so savory, I think if you if you view it from the concept of distortion, it makes far more sense, at least to me. And maybe that word will land with some of you that it's it's you know, it's not, I don't know. It it I know what I know what I'm trying to say, I know what I'm thinking, and I think it'll land where it needs to. But that conversation with my son, and I think he actually kind of sat back and thought about it for a minute. You know, we always feel like things have to be black or white. He's behaving poorly, so he must be a jerk, he must be a loser, he must be somebody that I need to stay away from at all costs. And there are there are those people that you probably want to stay away from at all costs. You can discern that. You can meet somebody and you can say, Oh, this is potentially dangerous. This person is potentially dangerous, so I just need to stay away. They are they carry a lot of distortion. Their thoughts about how to behave or how to exist in this world are completely distorted. Like when I watch a lot of Dateline, I think I've mentioned that. When you watch how these people are able to take another life and sometimes over really bizarre things, you know, in my line of work, I I it always sticks with me the guy who who murdered a man for a 1986 Nissan truck. And it's man, that's that's really distortion. So, you know, this this conversation I think gave my son an opportunity to view it a little differently. It makes the relationship not so edgy. You stay grounded, you stay in your in your spiral, you stay within your uh, and you don't let these distortions enter in your field and throw you completely off kilter. And then you collapse into distortion. Good example, your friend gets mad and wants to argue with you, and you get pissed off because they're arguing. So then you collapse yourself into that argument, and now you're both operating in distortion as opposed to coherence, where you step out of it, and that's not to say you don't, you not to defend yourself, but you come from a different space with it. You're not trying to prove anything, you're not trying to win. You may need to get your point across, but you come from a different perspective, you come from a different place in that that is more coherent. I can I can see, I can see where you're coming from, I can see why you're so angry, I can see why you're so upset. However, this is this is my perspective. And of course, you know, in a perfect world, that would that would land well and and the response would be equally coherent, but that's not always the case. And I'm I'm not sitting up here trying to offer rainbows and unicorns and love and light because that is not. Not realistic. And at some point I'm gonna I'm gonna discuss that because you know the whole idea of just capitulating and collapsing and making yourself small, just to keep peace, or just to to be the love and light is not is is distorted. It is it is not a realistic view of how things work. And if you try to come from that perspective, you are going to get trampled on, you are going to get flattened. And I've kind of learned that. So I'm certainly not sitting here trying to profess that that is how you function, that you completely turn a blind eye, and if you don't view distortion, then you're just gonna stay in this beautiful, lit up place, you know, with your halo and all that. It it doesn't work that way. But what I am trying to offer is a different perspective of dealing with these very distorted elements that exist in our world and staying in your center, you know, not allowing yourself to get knocked off kilter. So what I'd like to do is put it out there, you know, maybe these concepts I I brought up in the last episode and continued on in this episode, maybe you're finding yourself in one of these areas in your journey, or maybe in a pattern, in a loop. Maybe you're finding yourself looping and learning that each time you come back to this exact same situation, you know, like the women who say, Why do I keep dating the same man over and over and over, even though he's got a different face and a different, you know, lives in a different place or whatever, it's the same person. And each each opportun each time it comes up, it's an opportunity to view it differently or respond differently, and then release it. So if you if you're one of those people, and there's many of us, I think we all have that in our lives, then these these concepts I think will be really helpful. If you can, you can journal them, you can kind of write them down and see how they pertain to where you are in your life, in your journey, your cycle, your pattern, whatever it is. Hopefully, you know, hopefully you can find some resolve, collapse that pattern and move on to something new. And I'll tell you what I'm finding is over the past two weeks, most of what I am managing or looking at or viewing and releasing is past stuff. Lineage things, childhood things, you know, on through the years, we've we've managed different different aspects at different stages of our lives. And it's absolutely, it has been absolutely liberating. And it doesn't, it really doesn't require a whole lot. It just requires looking at things in a more coherent perspective. And I I will tell you one of the things that started this off was I actually for several days, I actually sat and did a meditation and really told my entire body that I wanted to start to start operating from coherence. And I don't know if it's random. I don't believe in random, I don't believe in chance, but literally that's when when these things started opening up to me. So I I feel deeply that coherence is a very powerful word, and it is a very powerful state. So I'd like to challenge you to to look into coherence, look into what it means, how it feels in your body, how it feels in your relationships, in your field, in your world. I don't think you'll regret it because I certainly have not. So thank you for joining me here on Star Women Rising. If today's conversation stirred something in you, trust it. That's your fire awakening. This podcast is part of the Chicology Collective where women everywhere are reclaiming their voice, their power, and their light. Be sure to subscribe, share this with a soul sister, and explore more shows under Chicology because we rise higher when we rise together. Until next time, keep reaching for the stars and rooting deep in your power.