Episode 8: Accepting the Plot Twist

Sometimes life doesn’t go according to plan. The relationship ends, the vision changes, the timeline shifts, and suddenly you’re standing in the middle of a story you never saw coming. In this episode, we’re talking about what it really means to accept the unexpected turns life throws at us — grieving what you thought your life would look like, letting go of the script you had written, and learning how to trust yourself enough to keep moving forward anyway. Because sometimes the plot twist isn’t the end of your story… it’s the part that changes everything for the better. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I do not have a polished story to tell you. Just pieces of things that I've lived through and learned the hard way. About people, about love, and about myself. I think I've spent a lot of time trying to make life look like it made sense. Like everything was supposed to be figured out by now. But the truth is, I'm still in it. Still learning, still unlearning, still trying to understand myself in real time. So this is me, in it. Not after it, not past it, right in the middle of it. And if you're here too, you're not alone. Welcome to No Shame, No Filter. Welcome back to No Shame No Filter. And tonight we're gonna talk about something that I think every single person eventually has to face. And that is the plot twist. The moment when life just takes a turn that you never even saw coming, or the moment everything that you pictured for yourself changes. The relationship that you thought would last doesn't. Or the career path that you thought you were so sure about suddenly changes. The person you thought you would become by now looks completely different than who you actually are. And suddenly you're standing in the middle of a life that you know, like you didn't exactly plan for, but you're trying to figure out what to do with all the expectations you had because I for sure thought my life would be drastically different than what it is now. I never thought that I would be a single mom of four little ones. I am your typical little girl who has a dream of a big family, a marriage, the home, the happiness, the love, the just everything. Um and yeah, life is different. Life is not that, you know? And if I'm being honest, I think one of the hardest things that we ever have to do is grieve the life that we thought we would have while still showing up for the life that we actually have. And walking that path last year was hard. It was just hard. Um, and I say just hard, like as if it's just easy to say it's just hard, dude, but it was really hard, and it was really dark. Um, because I definitely people don't talk about it enough that you go through a grieving process, you know. Um you go through this grieving process while you still have to show up for life, and you don't have the option. Some well, some people, you know, do not have the option to just not show up for life. We still have to. You might have kids to raise, you might have, you know, your job or a family, you're a caretaker, you're doing something where you still have to show up. And that takes a different kind of strength. Not the loud, obvious kind, the quieter kind, the kind that keeps going when things just don't make sense anymore, the kind that chooses acceptance without having to give up. And that's what today is about. It's accepting the plot twist that is thrown at us when we sometimes least expect it, and sometimes it hits the hardest because we just didn't see it coming. And I think, you know, or at least maybe me, growing up with some version of a timeline in my head, like I just explained, by this age, I'll have this. By this point in life, it will look like that. I'll be settled, I'll be stable, I'll be certain of different things, and I'll be happy in all the ways that I thought I should be and would be. And, you know, these expectations get built so naturally that we don't really question them. We don't really ask if this is in fact. Um we don't ask if this is like is this what everyone dreams about? Is this what everyone's expectation is? Is this the same thing that everyone and all my friends are thinking their life would be? We just assume life and we have followed this script that just everyone has set out before us, and we think of the timeline, and we kind of hold ourselves to this timeline that if we make good choices, if we work hard enough, love hard enough, sacrifice enough, do enough, show up enough, um, maybe even perform enough, right? Things will unfold the way that we pictured, and I've had the privilege um to learn that life doesn't always unfold that way. That, you know, I lived for quite some years a life that I made horrible choices, I didn't work hard at anything, I didn't love anyone, uh, and I will truly as the version I was, I was unlovable um in the middle of addiction. And like, so when I got sober, I really thought that you know, I'm going to make these good choices. I'm going to be a hard worker, I'm going to love hard, and I'm going to be lovable. I'm going to show up and show out, and then things will go just as I wanted, or just as I assumed they would go in this life. And then life does what life does. It changes, it pivots, it interrupts, it humbles. Talk about humbling. Um, it reroutes, and suddenly that script, that narrative, that timeline that we had originally is gone. And you're staring at a completely different storyline, a completely different thing than uh than what you had written for yourself, you know, like this storyline. You're like, wait, this does not match up what I had in store for myself, and that can feel gut-wrenching because it's not just about losing a plan, it's about losing the identity that was attached to that plan, and no one talks about this enough. Um, because the reason Plot twist hurts so much isn't always because of what actually happened, sometimes it's because of what it forced us to let go of. Because if you are like me and if we are the same, which somebody's like me, right? Like, I just tell myself that, but seriously, if you're like me, letting go is very challenging. I love hard, I feel very deeply, and um letting go, I wait until the absolute last straw to let go of things, people, places, things, the whole thing. Um, but yeah, you know, sometimes it's a force us to let go of the imagined future, the certainty, the version of ourselves we thought we would be by now. That one's a that's hard. And there's so much grief in it, like actual grief, real grief. And I think people underestimate that. You can grieve things that never happened. You can grieve expectations we place on people, places, and things. You can grieve dreams that quietly dissolved and disappeared. You can grieve the life you're mentally preparing for. And sometimes I look at it and I'm like, you know what? That grief feels can feel very confusing because there's nothing actually tangible to point to, if that makes sense. You're you end up mourning an idea, a possibility, a potential, a version of the future that truthfully doesn't even exist anymore. And that kind of loss is really, really real. And I think when life throws us a plot twist, a lot of us go through resistance. If you're like me, again, someone just messaged me after listening to this and tell me that we are the same, so I don't feel alone. No, I'm kidding. Um, but no, seriously, we fight I fight, I fight reality. We fight reality, I replay everything, I obsess over the what ifs, and I replay different narratives, and what if I had done this differently? What if I had seen the signs, or what if I actually made the wrong choice? Because I had I knew I had to make a choice, and I had to commit to the choice I was making, and so but what if that was the wrong choice, or what if I could somehow just rewrite this entire thing, and truthfully, that phase, the resistance phase, can trap people for years and make them feel stuck because what ends up happening is resistance gives us the illusion of control, because if we keep analyzing it or replaying it or questioning it, maybe just maybe we can change it, right? That's how my brain works. But at least I am grateful that I've learned that acceptance doesn't happen when we fully understand why something happened. Acceptance happens when we stop negotiating with reality, and you know, I'm gonna be so honest, I still suck at this, I still go to war with reality. I still fight and fight and fight acceptance of situations, of people, of things, of places, of just at life. I fight against it, and when I fight against it, I'm fighting reality, and I'm not accepting things or people as they are, and truthfully, I'm the one who gets hurt, you know, because again, this leads back to lack of acceptance, is then setting expectations, and when we set expectations, we're the ones who get hurt by setting them in the first place, and that's really hard because there's something deeply uncomfortable about admitting that this is not what I wanted, this is not what I planned, and I can't undo this, but at the same time, those admitting those things, that's where the piece actually starts. And you know, I learned this in the runes too, and um I'm really grateful for it, but I think people confuse acceptance with surrendering, they think that accepting the plot twist or life on life terms means approving it or being okay with it or pretending that it doesn't hurt, and that's not even what acceptance is. Acceptance is simply saying this is what is true right now, and because this is true, I'm going to work with reality instead of trying to go against it because that's exhausting, but that realization is also really freaking powerful, and I've personally experienced that the acceptance part of it is so freeing when I stop fighting against my reality and say, okay, you know what? I'm gonna throw my hands up and I'm going to stop fighting, I'm going to stop trying to force outcomes that I want to happen. I'm going to try to force relationships or friendships or just whatever, right? And the moment that we stop wasting our energy wishing things were just different, we have the energy to build what's next. Because I do know that acceptance creates movement and resistance will keep us freaking stuck. We will not move forward, we will not continue on, we will be stuck in a cycle, and we'll be on the merry-go-round saying, How do I get off of this? Not knowing what to do, when in reality it's just accepting where we are, and you know, the part that's really hard to see when you're in it is that sometimes this plot twist, this life on life's terms, or when life is really lifey, it actually saved you. Because I've had things happen in my life where major plot twist freaking saved me on every level. And sometimes a thing that feels like it is making our life fall apart was actually like redirecting us, or what felt like rejection was protection, or what felt like failure was refinement, right? Or what felt like loss was being made. This is my favorite. What felt like loss is actually making room for something even better that you're supposed to experience, and you know, to be clear though, not every painful thing happens for a reason in some neat inspirational way, right? Sometimes painful things are just painful, sometimes things break because they broke, and that trust me, I know it feels awful, but even then, we still get to decide what the experience produces in us, and I was actually hiding in my bathroom earlier while my kids were watching their little show before Ben, and I was journaling because I recently gone through this experience, an experience where when I was in it, it felt awful. I was stuck in a cycle and it just it was crappy, you know. Um story short, is that the experience in it felt crappy. Coming out the other side of it, looking back in hindsight, that was where my growth happened. That's where my change occurred, that's how my everything just shifted because I needed, and I say this all the time, and I say this like in the I believe this, especially in the rooms and just in just in life in general, is that we need these experiences that we experience the good, the bad, the ugly, the indifferent to then once they compile, we experience growth, we experience the change, the growth is in the ugly, right? And we get to decide whether it becomes our ending or the turning point for us. That part's ours to own, and one of the hardest parts of accepting the plot twist is letting go of the original script that we wrote. We wrote the script without anyone's approval, without showing it to anybody. We didn't even tell the characters in the script what their lines were, what they're supposed to do, how they are going to show up, and who they are going to be. We told no one anything, but yet we expect things to unfold how we want them to fold and how we orchestrated it all, and the version where everything happened exactly as planned, the version where life just looks cleaner, more fun, less chaotic, safer, more predictable. And sometimes, honestly, I personally hold on to these old expectations so tightly, like claws in deep that we can't even see the opportunities that are coming up in front of us. We're so busy mourning what was supposed to happen that then I end up missing what's trying to actually happen now in front of me. And that's a real challenge because you know, I think to myself, like, can I release, can I let go of the need for life to look like the way that I imagined? Can I trust myself enough to build from here? Can I believe that a different story doesn't automatically mean it's a worse version? Because different doesn't always look or mean broken, and unexpected doesn't always mean wrong. And if things are messy, it doesn't mean they're ruined, it's just you're in that icky middle. I like to say the icky middle part of everything, and where everything just feels ugh like gross, it's just messy, but it doesn't mean we're broken, you know, because for a while I was in that messy middle that not a lot of people talk about, and I wish it was talked about more because we're so used to social media and the Pinterest Perfect curated graphics videos, the whole entire thing. We're so used to it that the messy middle doesn't get talked about enough. And um, but the messy middle, when I was in the thick of the messy middle, I thought I was broken. I thought someone broke me. And looking back, I was never broken, you know. I was just sh I was just honestly broken down a little bit, but I wasn't broken, and there is a difference in that, and I had this narrative, I had I had this internal dialogue of Cam, you're just broken. That's all you are, you're nobody, you're not gonna come out the other side of this, you're broken. You allowed him to break you, and through a lot of tears, a lot of grief, I realized I was never broken. I wasn't ruined. That messy middle wasn't me being ruined, it was just me growing, and growth can be messy. Growth happens in the messy middle, guys. It really, really does. And I think some of the strongest, most grounded versions of herselves are built in seasons we never would have chosen. I mean, how crazy is that, but yet how beautiful is that? Because I look back in hindsight, and my most challenging, heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, gross seasons are the seasons that I changed, that I grew. The plot twist it forces us to grow, it strips away the illusions, it teaches us resilience, and it reveals what actually matters to us. And it introduces parts of ourselves that we would have never discovered if life had gone according to plan. And nine times out of ten, I like to believe that when we let go of these things, better things are able to then come to us. And while I don't think we have to glorify the hard seasons, I do think we can respect and honor what those hard seasons had have taught us about ourselves, and those hard seasons have helped us build because some versions of us can only be born through disruption, and that is what a plot twist is it is a disruption to our plans, to our dreams, to our hopes, to our desire. Desires to all of it. And acceptance ends up looking like waking up and choosing to participate in life again. It looks like making plans even when things feel uncertain or letting go of timelines. They don't serve us. They do us no good. We're trusting that our life is not behind. And refusing to measure our worth. Ready? Refusing to measure our worth by how closely our reality matches what we originally had planned. It's choosing to say, okay, listen, this isn't what I expected, or this isn't what I wanted, but I'm still here. And I'm still capable of creating something meaningful from this. That's strength, guys. And if life has thrown you a plot twist lately, like it has me, many, many plot twists. If things look different than you thought they would, if you're grieving a version of your life you thought was yours or should be yours, supposed to be yours, I want you to just know this. A detour is not a dead end. Okay. And just because your story changed doesn't mean it's gotten worse. It can only go up from here, baby. And no, but seriously. But some of like the most beautiful chapters are the ones we would have never written ourselves. And that's what's so amazing. It's the ones that we've resisted, that we fought against, that we didn't understand, that we questioned, that we doubted, that we just could not wrap our heads around. The ones that eventually taught us who we really freaking are. That's growth, babe. That's growth. And you don't have to have it all figured out right now. You just have to stop fighting the page that you're on. Read it. Live it. And honestly, do us both a favor and trust that the story is still unfolding. Because it is. I'm in it with you guys. You guys are never alone. Anything I talk about that I share is because I'm walking the same path as you. So thank you for listening to No Shame, No Filter. And if this episode resonated with you, just know you're not alone, please. And sometimes, I just want to end it with this sometimes the plot twist becomes the whole point of this story. And that's a big deal. I'll talk to you guys next time.