#8 - The isolation era - Surviving the sacred scary of choosing yourself

Hey friends! 

There's nothing wrong with you if choosing yourself turned into a dark void you weren't expecting.

Healing is messy. The old version of you has graduated — but you're stuck in this weird in-between where there's nobody.

I'll tell you my story of what it was like to heal my nervous system after years of codependent and abusive relationships, and why I'm so glad my isolation era happened.

Follow me on instagram and tiktok for more! 

@christie.heals 

( I love you, bye! )

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Oh hi, Franch. How are you? Unclench your jaw, roll your shoulders, crack your neck. Today, we're gonna talk about my isolation phase so that you, no matter what part of your healing journey you're in, whether it's never happened to you or it's starting to happen to you, or you made it out alive and you see why it was so good for you, we're gonna talk about that. I want you to feel seen and like take the stigma out of any part of your life when this might happen to you. And you'll remember, like, oh, Christy said this would happen, and I'm not crazy because you're not crazy. You're healing, and healing is messy, messy work, and life comes at us fast. So you're doing great, okay? Um, isolation for me was like the biggest part of alchemy. Like, this was the most alchemistic. Is that a word? Alchemy is when you take something and you turn it into something else. I did not intentionally go into an isolation phase, it just happened because of my divorce and people started falling away. Let's just talk about maybe what we'll just you know, I don't script these, these are totally off the cuff. We're gonna talk about first what hurtled me into an isolation phase, okay? So I got divorced after a decade of being like, please love me. And two amazing kids, and um just kind of woke up to the fact that I married a version of both my mother and my father with the alcoholism and the rage. So, oops, that's okay. Sometimes it's the wrong person, but it's never the wrong kids. But I had to hit eject because things were not changing. There were there was a lot of emotional hurt and things happening that were breaking my soul. And I was going to bed at night staring at the ceiling. It's so funny now to think back. I was like 26, 27, 28, 29, 30. Like, is this what I thought it would be? No. What am I gonna do? I don't know, I'll figure it out later. I wasn't ready for a long time because I was scared of losing access, regular access to my kids. I always wanted to be a mom, but I needed to get divorced to be a good mom. Because my kids needed to witness me at some point in this life be loved properly. And that hasn't happened yet, but I have hope. Um, what was being modeled in our home was not going to be good for my son or my daughter, and let alone the fact that my very existence was being violated like all the time. We can get into that in another episode, but I think I've told you guys I I was the breadwinner working in tech, but I wasn't allowed to log into my own bank account. Anytime I spent money, there was a phone call, there was a lot of talking to other women that would break my heart to the point where I even begged, like, can you just let me know what's going on? I was trying to be the cool wife. Um, lots of drinking, lots of driving this person around while I was like nine months pregnant, or they would be not in their right mind, and I would be about to have a baby and thinking, oh my god, I'm gonna have to drive myself. I'm so pregnant. What if I go into labor at two in the morning? Uh no eye contact, blah, blah, blah. That's okay, that's how my mom and dad treated me. And one day I was like, oops, okay, well, uh, the definition of insanity is begging this person to love me and hoping that one day it happens. So let's stop doing that. And so a version of me had to die off. Don't worry, I'll do a whole episode on divorce one day, if you if you ask me to. I mean, I will at some point, but um, we'll we'll talk about more details another day and how I really made that decision and what that was like. But a version of me left. Like she, I had to let her go. The version of me that would settle for breadcrumbs and would stay small and would let people treat me a certain way. I kiss her feet and I had to send her away because she got me here. I wasn't ashamed of her. She survived a lot, and she was trying to make sense of things that are nonsensical and should never have happened, but she chose them and she's now talking in third person. Uh I take full accountability for my marriage and who I chose because I didn't know any better. But I do I did now. You know, this was like four or five years ago. So, what ended up happening when you start to heal, even though divorce felt like, oh my God, it's divorce. First of all, divorce is the best if it's the right decision for you. If you're not being treated well, especially if you have kids, it's not that it's easy, it's hard too, but like choose your hard. Staying partnered with someone who does not care about you is very, very hard. Getting divorced and co-parenting with someone who does not like you is also very, very hard. Choose your hard. I decided to choose the hard that was more in the direction of living my best, biggest, beautiful life. And it was scary, but like you got to step through the wormhole at some point and just be like, this isn't working. But um, something happened when I when I did that. I started to stand up for myself at work. I started to stand up for myself to my parents, started to stand up for myself to my friends. I was doing less people pleasing, learning more about boundaries, um, learning how to properly set a boundary. Remember, that's an if-then statement. So um I had a friend that constantly poked fun at my height, and I'm six foot three, six foot seven in heels, and I love it. I've worked really hard to love that part of my physical appearance. I definitely had to build that confidence on my own. So I had a friend who I was just like, hey, if you keep poking fun at my height, I I can't hang out anymore. And it didn't stop. So then we like stopped hanging out, and I got this nasty long text about what an awful person I am. So when but wait, but it was a good thing. But it can feel like your life is falling apart when you start healing, when you start choosing yourself. And it's because that old version of you is not with us anymore. We gather here today to say goodbye to the old version of you. Like you've had to probably kill yourself off many times. You know what I'm talking about. So I was losing friends like crazy. And it wasn't just things like poking fun at my height. A lot of friends didn't believe me about the abuse and the violence in my marriage, the physical assault. That's dung. My family didn't believe me. In fact, everybody called my abuser and apologized to him, but also birds of a toxic feather flocked together. But at the time, it was like, oh my god, I'm losing everybody. Um, I counted in that first year that I got divorced, I ended 40 relationships. 40. It was a mix of coworkers, friends, lots of neighbors, lots of people giving me the cold shoulder because I was the lady who got divorced. And there was a big old smear campaign from my ex-mother-in-law, who could not bear to ever imagine that the very son that she raised could possibly be just like his father, who I witnessed many times be horrible to her, you know, so I had to kind of just keep moving and live in a small town in Texas. I'm right outside of Austin, and just keep my confidence and just like hold my head up high. Um, but what started happening was my circle started getting smaller and smaller and smaller. But also, this was kind of a weird but cool offshoot, like side benefit. I started getting, I started losing weight like crazy. I had this insane glow up, okay? I'll post pictures online soon about what I used to look like when I was married. Some of you have seen those. I look like a shell of a woman, okay? It's not about looks, but a benefit of choosing yourself, even though everybody falls away and you're the only one really appreciating it, is like you get your appearance back, you get your glow back. Um, I lost a bunch of weight, I grew up my hair long, I could finally wear clothes that matched my sense of style, and I didn't have to worry about like what my ex-husband was gonna say about my style. I couldn't do anything right in that household, I swear. Um, but people fell away. And it's it felt a little bit like rejection for a while and not evolution. And you know, those relationships that depended on you being a people pleaser, you putting up with breadcrumbs and people not doing what they say they're gonna do. They're they they don't like this new version of you because everything was programmed a certain way, and now you're acting different. So you're totally I had lots of people tell me that I was the problem, and that was confusing. Um, I bought this house. We lived in an apartment after I got divorced. I've got these two amazing kids, they're with me every three days because their dad's um a shift worker. So healing my nervous system was kind of funky because I would have the kids for three amazing days, but also had to work. I was still in corporate. But I also then didn't have them for three days, and I love being a mother and I love my kids dearly. I know, imagine that. I actually like my kids. That's that's different parenting from my parents for sure. So grieving not having them and this pain of what have I done by choosing this person, but also I couldn't imagine my life without my kids. That was a confusing loop that I was stuck in many, many times, many nights, like many days. Sometimes you're in like thought loops and you don't even realize it, and you're kind of like numb and you're just existing and and going through the motions because life comes at you fast. You still gotta work, you still gotta pay your bills, you still have to take care of things. So, yeah. My circle was getting smaller and smaller. Many people told me I was the problem. I mostly didn't believe them, but I had some dark nights. Um, I started wondering maybe I'm just depressed. Being alone was weird. Um, I still had some very codependent relationships, long distance, like existing friendships, that I would call them in a panic. Like, not what have I done, but like I was going through a lot of pain with my mom. Hadn't cut off contact with my my parents yet, and had bought this house, and I was just alone in this four-bedroom house, mowing the lawn, trying to get everything set up, trying to rebuild my life, still working in corporate. I have the kids, I don't. I gotta buy a fridge, I gotta buy beds, I gotta um get this house feeling like a home, and there's no village. Being the cooker, the cleaner, the the mom, the the worker, get the laundry done, it's it's a lot. It's overwhelming. Um, and it took me a second to to find my stride, but I did. Um, and I'd call these last remaining friends and just I would be having panic attacks. Like, I know this is what I needed to do, but like I'm not used to being by myself so much, and I spiral when I don't have the kids. And these friends of mine hadn't been through divorce, they hadn't, one of them hadn't even had children, so they they couldn't relate. And I had I had my therapist, but I I basically accidentally pushed a few people away because they were sick of hearing me doom and gloom. Um, I think a good friend is there with you through all the peaks and valleys. I haven't had that yet, but I realized how shallow some of my friendships were. Um, so I had days where I was like alone without the kids, wandering the house, so much to do, but like no plan, and like couldn't start because of ADHD. No excuse there, but you know how it goes when you're like, oh my god, everything needs to be cleaned. Oh my god, all the errands need to be run. Oh my god, I'm gonna do nothing because I'm overwhelmed. It's a freeze trauma response, is one of my that's my favorite. I freeze and then I either fawn, or uh which is like being people pleaser-y, or I freeze and then I have a flight um response, which is like running away from your problems or staying busy, like work is an outlet. I I started a business, I eventually eventually quit corporate because I was standing up for myself so much that executive teams were like, she's a problem, even though I was trying to optimize things and make things better, and I loved being a manager, whatever. It's fine. Corporate was not meant for me, but um, yeah, had days where I was wandering the house, just like, what am I, what do I do? What is this? Where is everyone? And I would try to go places, like, okay, I'm just gonna try to act like a normal person, go to a coffee shop or like go to a restaurant. I had no problem having dinner by myself. I didn't find that embarrassing, but I I needed to be around people sometimes. So I'd go somewhere into the city of Austin, and it almost felt like this was a video game where the universe was keeping people away. Every I'm not even kidding. When I say everywhere I went, it felt like it was empty. Every street I walked down, there were no people. And it was like anyone I talked to felt like an NPC, a non-player character, where I was like, Are there any lights on in there? What's going on? Everybody was just gone. Um, I had a big falling out with my two remaining friends. Those will be different episodes. One slept with a married man and had no shame. The other one had feelings about how I was raising my kids and thought I was being too nice to my kids. Uh so that didn't end well. So my brother took his life after a bunch of family drama. I ended up going no contact with my family, and then there was nobody. So my brother was dead. I quit corporate, was trying to run a business. I had my kids, I didn't, and it was just chaos. I I thought I was going to die. I don't even know how else to put it, other than I had nights where I was staring at the carpet fibers on my floor, having panic attacks. Like, how am I being punished so bad? Why is this going so poorly? But I chose myself, but I didn't realize I was stepping into the greatest masterclass of my life, which was Christy, this is where you've come to finally meet yourself. This is where you've come to finally understand that you've got you, and you can rely on yourself, you can trust yourself, you can become your own best friend and really enjoy your own company. But at first, it felt like death because I was a very codependent person. I needed to still run my ideas and my choices through other people's filters and see if they would still accept me. I had a friend who had a lot of money, a lot more money than me. And when I bought my house, I was scared because I didn't know really what I was doing, and um I just I couldn't trust myself. Um so with everybody gone for a few weeks, it was like groundhog day. So it was like, it's funny because it's not funny. In the wake of my brother's death, I was just trying to raise these kids, putting on a big mask to be fun mom with them, like everything's okay. Sometimes people die. They were too young for me to tell them how he died. He uh was in the military and he had a lot of guns. That's there you go. Um, and just processing that he was gone and how he was gone, and I didn't go to his funeral, and those first few weeks were just rough. I slept a lot. My nervous system needed to calm down like big time from working a corporate job my whole life, adult life, like that alone was a lot of burnout and unnecessary. Like, I didn't understand that you're not supposed to do your best in corporate, you're just supposed to do the bare minimum. Nobody told me that. So I was out there trying to do my best, and apparently that was a problem for executives who were like, stop trying to make things better. We don't want better, we want profit. And you're like, what? Anyway. Um, but that's when I started doing breath work. I found this YouTube channel called Breathe with Sandy, and I highly recommend it. This guy's great. Um, breathwork gave me some very out-of-body experiences. Josh Connolly also has some breath work. He's another toxic family thought leader. Look up Josh Connolly. I'm bullying him to come on the podcast soon. Um, I went to a Reiki healer. I had my like chakras cleared. I was looking into all this spiritual stuff, and um, I went to the gym a lot. I was lifting. Again, I was getting like I was having this huge glow up. I was getting more and more good looking. Like I felt like my face was changing. I would look in the mirror, and I wasn't like not eating. It's not like it was an unhealthy glow up, but I was my the weight was shifting where it was in my face, and I felt like I looked like a different person. It was so strange. And I slept a lot. I I started meditating and uh printing out pictures of my dream life and visualizing it and then laying down to like try and imagine it because this guy Joe Dispenza says, if you can imagine your future, then it's easier for you to go manifest it and bring it into reality. If you don't know where you're headed, then you just are stuck in anxiety and fear. So it was it was fun for me to print out pictures of like having a nice condo in the city one day where the kids and I can go to concerts and like go swimming and um have a nice place to live in the city and be out of this tiny bumble nowhere town right outside Austin. Um, but anytime I laid down, I felt like my body was I felt like my bed had arms and it was like, she's in the bed, make her fall asleep for like three and a half hours. And I never did this when the kids were here. This only ever happened when they were with their dad. But I would have these crazy dreams and dreams where I was like, there was a tornado and I would lose my kids, or I had a lot of dreams where I was fighting my mom. I had a lot of dreams where my mom was messing things up in my life, and my brain was rewiring. So I talked about how I think I said this in the beginning, from early childhood, we were wired weird. And if I didn't say it, I thought I said it. You're wired weird from childhood. You had to play a character. So I felt like those naps were like rewiring my brain to be like, no, no, no, you are the main character, everything's gonna be fine. This is what you had to do. And I I'd wake up from these dreams and I got a dream interpreting book, and I really I learned that our dreams are metaphors, and we have these like spirit guides. And if you believe in angels and God, that's fine. Think of it like that. Um, or I've gone the more spiritual route, which is more yes and. Um, and I I I've met some of these spirit guides. I've had recurring dreams of this giant eagle, like from this movie The Rescuers Down Under. If you watched Disney, if you're a 90s kid, 80s kid, this eagle is in my dreams a lot. And so I've just decided that it's it's attached to me, and I it's always a good dream when it happens. But I would look up the meaning of these dreams and the metaphors, and I learned that dreams are like messages. And every time I interpreted a dream, I was like, oh, I'm I'm dismantling my mother wound and like remapping my brain to understand that I never needed my mother's approval. I never needed to get her to like me. That's weird. She should have given me unconditional love no matter what. It was not normal the way she was talking about my back to neighbors when I cut her off and she was telling everyone that I was the problem. That that was hard. It was like my brain was processing so much change. Um, I also grew up in a household where rest was not a good thing. If you were sleeping, you were lazy, get up and do something. I was married to someone who, even when I was pregnant, if I laid down, when you're pregnant, you get tired. And he'd be like, What are you doing? He'd like wake me up. So it was like sleep torture. So I was finally able to sleep in a safe space in this house that I bought of just like, everyone leave me alone. What the hell was this life up until this point? I got sober because um, I mean, I definitely went through a phase where I'd have two glasses of wine when I first got divorced after work, but I I was like, I don't want to drink by myself. I'm okay. I don't need a drink. That kind of happened on its own because I was so sad that my brother died. Um, I'm not saying you need to go get sober. I'm not saying I'm better than you if you're not sober, but I will say my skin changed. My brain got more clear, but be prepared because you're gonna, you're gonna be able to like, your clear thoughts are gonna be loud. You're gonna start to see patterns, which is why I started journaling and walking every day. I started seeing my my toxic like loops that I would fall into. I would stay up a little too late and then be exhausted in the morning. Um, but I could start to see that I needed to put the kitchen away better and like I started to build better habits, and it was through journaling that I was like, I just I I came up with this rule never go to bed with a dirty kitchen because I was staying up late cleaning and trying to build my business, but I I had no process. So I was like, what's the number one spot that needs to be cleaned for me to have a good day? And it was always the kitchen, so there's never any dishes in the sink, the counters are wiped down, and then it doesn't matter if there's laundry to do or if the other rooms are messed up, if the kitchen's clean, that's a much better way to start the day. So I mean, I started talking out loud to myself. I tried to make friends, but it's like the universe was like, no, babe, you're in time out. You're in the corner here to learn that you are all you've got. And more people will come in later, but like it, you're never gonna attract the right people if you don't learn to love yourself for the first time ever at 34 years old, 35, now I'm 37. I had to go into time out to learn that I don't need people's approval to be okay and heal that part of me that needed to run ideas through other people and their filter and learn that I could trust myself to make good decisions. And if I don't make a good decision, I can learn from it and move on and not shame myself. It was about, I would say, my isolation, it's still kind of going on. I have one cousin that I reconnected with only last year. Um we weren't it we're the same age, but like we didn't keep up with each other as kids because our parents never got along. But there was about a year and a half to two years where I had nobody. It was just me raising two kids alone with no village. And I I I had no choice but to buck up, but also be gentle with myself and just like go through it. It was, it shaped me into such a much more resilient person. It it taught me, like I started talking out loud to myself. I would start using my car rides. I'd stopped listening to music in the car and at the gym, and I was just with myself. Sometimes I needed a break and I'd listen to a podcast or I'd listen to an audiobook, but I I stopped watching Netflix. I just, I, it was like an I was in my nest. I was in my safe space, and isolation actually stopped being super scary. Nobody could hurt me, nobody could tell me what to do. Um, it was like codependency rehab. I would say like those first that first phase felt like I was going through withdrawal, um, needing to talk to people, needing people to say it was gonna be okay, but those people got sick of me because they weren't the right friends. But I needed to tell myself that I was gonna be okay. And losing my brother, it was like you can you can really have some dark thoughts when you're in isolation and that your thoughts can get really loud. And I had many nights where I was like, again, staring at the carpet fibers, like, what is all of this for? I would scream out loud, like, what do you want me to do? I thought I did the right thing. Why am I being punished? But all I was yelling at was like myself. Because I had to learn that um this is not forever. This is temporary, and this is actually a great, I'm probably gonna miss this one day if I were crazy enough to get married again and and trust someone enough for that. Woo! That man's gonna have to do a lot of work to convince me that this is a good idea. But like to be in a relationship again, to share a space with someone again, I kept telling myself, I bet I'm gonna miss this one day, so I might as well enjoy it. And I I started to. I started to find good routine and habit habits, even though like they weren't perfect. But every single day I'd have my coffee, I'd read a chapter of a book, I would go for my walk, and then I'd have my day started in a way that I never could do when I was married. My life was just constant battlefield when I was married, constant battlefield when I was a kid. And for the first time, it was like my life was safe. But that also felt weird and wrong and bad. And it was like, this is bizarre. Like my nervous system was constantly hypervigilant, like waiting for the other shoe to drop, and that that started to fade away. So um, it can feel weird. It can feel like you're dying or you're gonna die, and your brain just can't make sense of like where did everyone go? But I I came up with this great way of thinking about it that that's helped me a lot, and hopefully it helps you. The reason everyone had to go away, I already told you, is because like the old version of you is dead, is gone, you killed them off. Good for you. A lot of people are never brave enough to do that. Well done. At a play, at a musical, whatever, when there's a scene change, what happens? Act one or act two of the play, the whole stage goes dark. They play music and it's like, don't mind us. There's people in black clothes on the stage, they're moving stuff around, you can hear things moving, and then the lights come back on, and then the play resumes, but the stage looks completely different. And I was like, okay, I've gone into this void because it's the second act of my play, or it's the third act. And that's that's helped me make sense of all of this. Like, this is temporary, everything's rearranging so quickly, and when the lights come back on, this is gonna look so different. And I feel like the lights are starting to come back on. I feel like, because isolation can become dangerous. I'm at the point now where I love my isolation and I don't want to go anywhere. When I go somewhere, I'm like, I regret that. That was exhausting. I want to go home and be alone. Um, however long your isolation lasts, I don't judge you. I'm now on like year three of I've got people to call, but I have nobody physically. Like, I haven't had a real hug in a long time, and I think that's not good for us. Um, so I am going to pretty soon here, like start to push myself to go back out there and trust that I can trust myself to make good decisions about people, about places. I can listen to my gut when something doesn't feel right. Um in isolation, I've also found my values. I have literal words that I live by, which is psychological safety, reciprocity, generosity, and oh, I always forget the fourth one. Oh man. It's late. That's why I can't remember. I did a lot today. But I found my values, and so the finding my values helped me make peace with this is gonna make me mad. Psychological safety, reciprocity, generosity, oh, and discipline. When I was able to take those words and apply them to all my relationships that ended and map directly to why the relationship didn't work out, because my values were not being mirrored back to me in that person. And it's we all have values, whether you figure out what they are or not. But it helped me get clear and let go of the shame or the pain or the regret or the sadness of losing someone and let them go and be like, Well, I value psychological safety, and that person doesn't communicate very well. I value um generosity, and that person is not very nice to weight staffed. These are real examples, and I don't like that. That doesn't feel good. I value discipline, and this person is like 400 pounds and telling me that I'm not a good parent. Like, that's why the it was something I could point to to be like, I'm not a bad person, that was a values mismatch. Um, highly recommend, and this is part of my course that's coming out the Unmask the Manipulator. I help you find your values so that you can point to why you're so triggered around certain people and trying to figure out who should be in your life and why and how much access they should have. But um, isolation is great for finding yourself. Isolation is nothing to be scared of. And when you get scared, you're probably having a codependency rehab moment. You're going through withdrawal. Don't believe anyone who says that you're the problem. If you're the kind of person who just wants to be treated well and you want to treat others well, you're definitely not the problem. Hard stop. But I know it can be confusing when so many people are like, What's wrong with you? You've changed. And you're like, Yeah, thank God. Why haven't you? You know? Um, oh, another thing I did in isolation, this is for the women. I don't know why men don't do this more. It's better than fantasy football. You should try it. I started doing tarot. I learned how to read tarot cards and got a book that would decode the tarot cards I would pull out, and it was spooky, the readings I would have. And it's not like you're gonna die on the 7th of May in 2057. It's like it tells, it's a way of journaling or meditating in a form. It's it's like a way of making sense of your thoughts, but I would pull cards all the time. I would get the tower card. And the tower card is all about how your life has to fall apart for it to come together, and everything's gonna fall apart really fast. Um, I also would have cards that were like, You're worrying too much about money, and I'd be like, that's stupid. And then I'd put it back and I'd shuffle the deck really good. And then I'd pull another card and I'd get the same exact card, and I'd be like, Oh my god. So the the deck is really witty. I also did a few psychedelic trips. I'll talk more about that publicly. Um, psychedelics are great, okay? This is not a drug that you do for fun. This is not even really a drug. It naturally comes from the earth. I think it's wild that it's illegal and alcohol is not. Um, I'm not telling you to go do this right now. I'll do another episode on what that experience has been like. But psychedelics, there's a lot of research that proves that it helps with CPTSD, complex, post-traumatic stress disorder. And if you've been abused as a kid, remember neglect is a form of abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, psychological abuse. I've talked about these online. If your parents told you you're not good enough, if your parents didn't pay attention to you, if they if your dad hits you or your mom hits you, or if your parents were constantly arguing, or you were told that you're fat, you're lazy, you were abused. Okay? That has lasting effects. Psychedelics, I've never had a bad experience. It's not, that's also like a choose your heart. It's not like, wee! I see all these pretty colors. Like, no, you go talk to entities, it's real. There's a whole other dimension that you peek your head into. If you've seen Harry Potter, it's like the pensive, like you put your head in there and all of a sudden you're in a whole other world. Um, I've seen my spirit guide in there, I've seen the the giant eagle. Um, but if you ever have an opportunity in a controlled setting, you you can go to a place even and like have an expert watch over you as a chaperone. You definitely don't like jump off a building or anything. It's not like that kind of drug, it's not speed. Um, but you you can have some major breakthroughs. I did psychedelics one day when I didn't have the kids and felt like I didn't even have time for this, but I was like, I need to have a breakthrough of some sort, and was able to really make sense of my brother's passing. Um, and I even went outside and I talked to a giant anthill. I know this is crazy, but I don't care. Um I talked to a giant anthill, and it was like, you're supposed to be making content, and you should be. That's where I got the idea for the wigs. These this anthill in Texas in my backyard, I was like appreciating how beautiful it was because that's what psychedelics does. It like makes your eyes see things so much more detailed. These ants were like dancing, and they were telling me, like, you're super funny, you don't belong in corporate, you're supposed to be doing your own thing, and you have a really funny story to tell, and you could make a lot of people laugh while also making sense of what happened to them. And I was like, okay, and here we are. My first wig video was a corporate. I was making fun of having a bad boss. It's way buried on my TikTok page. You can go check it out. But that was my first, like, big viral moment, big viral moment. And I thought I was gonna go save corporate. That was my first business, but then I was like, no, I want to save everybody. I don't want to save, you don't need saving, you're gonna save yourself, but you know what I mean. I want to go lead by example and take my pain of whatever this life was and alchemize it and help people understand that their mom should not be deciding their worth and their mom doesn't communicate well, their dad doesn't communicate well, and help as many people as I can. So um, isolation is bizarre. These last few years have been bizarre, but they've been beautiful. I think back to the woman who was me, who was wandering the house, who was having panic attacks, who was trying to figure out where everything went in this new house, and what was that marriage, and what was that childhood, and what was that job, and that boss, and oh my god, why is everyone so bad to me? I kiss her feet because I'm killing her off right now, because I don't panic anymore. I trust myself to make good decisions, and I see what all this was for. And I firmly believe those very scary nights where I had suicidal thoughts, but I was never gonna take action on it because my brother literally just did. But you know those thoughts can creep in. Like, what if I was just not here right now? What if I, you know, it would be a lot easier if is if I was just dead, and you're like, oops, what was that? Um, those thoughts can cross your mind. But I always had a voice in my head that was like, shh, it's gonna be okay. Just do it for the plot. And I was like, okay. Again, I was never gonna take action. I love these kids way too much to abandon them. After me feeling abandoned and watching what happened to my brother, and he had kids, my poor two nephews um have a lot to figure out uh from his choice. My brother saw no way out, like he had to hit eject. Don't hit eject. Please don't hit eject. My brother was so close to a breakthrough. He was losing everything, he was so much in debt, he was losing his second wife, but he he was gonna go get sober and like potentially become this like other kind of thought leader. Like he was so charismatic. I actually thought it was gonna be him on the world stage, and I was just gonna get to be a mom in a suburb and like rebuild my life. But now he's gone and I've stepped into the shoes of my very charismatic brother because I was projecting my potential onto him. But those dark thoughts, when they come, what I was trying to say was I reach back to that version of me and I tell her she's doing a great job. I'm so proud of her. This is confusing. There's no handbook that anyone gives you for your healing era. There's no clear answers. Sometimes it feels like you're lost. When the path disappears, that's how you know you're on your way. You're doing a great job, and you're doing something differently than what you were doing before. Because what you were doing before wasn't working. The that voice that I heard that was shushing me, I think it was me recording this episode right now. So whenever you can reach back to that version of you that was struggling. Maybe you're struggling right now and you're hearing some kind of inner wisdom that's like, just hang in there and you don't know why, and you're like, I don't want to be here anymore. I know, I know it's hard, and I know it, it's awful to be rejected, abandoned, and thrusted into isolation. But it's because you're meant for something greater and you're going into act two or three of the play, or act six, depending on how old you are. There's never a time frame for when you can blow up your life to rebuild it. And I highly recommend it. So I'm so proud of myself. I'm so proud of you. You're never alone. You've always got you. It's just that we were never, as children, allowed to fully love ourselves and be there for ourselves and like ourselves. So we have to teach that to ourselves as adults. And that sounds so kindergarten, but it's so true, and it's so important for you to learn that you're worth loving. And the first person who needs to love us is ourselves. I know that sounds like a bluey episode. It sounds like a little kid's whatever, but we're not taught this. And it's a very important part of leveling up, it's a very important part of finding yourself and figuring out what this was all for. So when things get dark and scary, when things get confusing, when your bad thoughts get loud, remember that you are in the rock tumbler of life, that this was not for nothing, that you're you're rewiring your brain, and that takes a lot of energy. If you need to sleep, do it. If you need to um sit and do nothing, do it. I think the gym was a great outlet for me. Like, go somewhere. Picking up heavy things and putting them back down was really good for my mental health, less than my physical health. But again, I kept getting hotter the more I healed, and I wasn't even trying to. It's like a byproduct of healing. I woke up one day and I had a six-pack, and I don't even remember doing it. It's good to move your body. Um, if you're in a lot of chronic pain, you're probably carrying a lot of trauma. Go to a Reiki healer, go get massages. I know it feels like you don't have time, or that's a selfish way to spend money. No, no, no, you're worth it. Anything that's putting you closer to feeling better is a worthy investment. Okay. It took me a long time to not feel shame when I booked a massage because I didn't come from my parents had money later in life, but they didn't have money when we were kids. And I remember my mom saying that that's like what rich people do, and that's like a snobby thing to do. Take care of your body, rest. Your healing's gonna look different than mine, but it's gonna be messy, which is the sameness that I want you to take away from this. Like, it's okay. And if you go backwards, if you date someone that's bad for you, if you start drinking again, if you pick up a bad habit, we have these coping mechanisms. Like our your old life will come knocking for you and try and pull you back because it feels safer. It feels safer to feel fearful, scared, anxious, and that's why healing takes a lot of energy. You have to have, you have to be able to debate yourself in your own head and say, no, I love you too much to let you um stay up too late, or drink until you pass out, or be in a relationship that's recreating all your other relationships. Like, this isn't right, hit it, get out of this. Um you're doing it right, however messy it feels. And now, again, I need to I'm getting to the phase where I need to go back out in the wild and I'm excited to do it because I do love myself now. I went into this, what a certain kind of woman, I'm coming out of it a completely different woman. And I'm I'm smiling as I tell you like, please have hope for where this is headed and just be gentle with yourself because it's worth it. Um, and I don't think I would have ever gotten here had I not gone through this. I don't think I would have learned to love myself if I would have jumped into a straight into another relationship like my ex-husband did. He's never had time to grieve our marriage, probably, because he was in a new relationship the moment I left. Um, I this isolation phase, I cried a lot for the first time. I wasn't allowed to cry as a little girl. I wasn't allowed to cry in my marriage. I cried and I let myself cry. And I would like write myself love letters to my inner child, and like I just tried everything. Just try things. Whatever you're doing, or if whatever you feel pulled to do, go do it. It's fine. And if you go places and there's nobody there, it's probably because you're still being protected by this bubble. I think the universe was like, she can't have friends now because she still hasn't learned the lessons. So, like, if you go somewhere and it feels like it's all NPCs, that's okay. It's good that you went out in the wild, but like you're still doing your healing work. Life is long, but it's too short to stay in these dead relationships and not burn it all down when we need to. Burning it down is a noble thing to do, okay? If anyone ever, if you've been through the kind of divorce that I have, that will make you tough and resilient as it is, but like then hurdled into isolation. Just look at the people who come out of the relationship. If you want to know who the problem was, who jumped straight into another relationship, and who got better looking. That's that's how you know someone's energy was being harvested. But you, you're being, it's all for something, it's all leading somewhere. You may not be making videos or content like me, but there's a way that you're gonna be able to help other people, and this is gonna shape you and prepare you for something far greater than where you were headed had you not chosen yourself. But all those people had to be weeded out. Oh my god, I never thought I'd stop talking to my college best friend. But like, we became such a mismatch that there was just a ton of resentment. She also slept with a guy that I was talking to in college, and I like never got over it, and we never really talked about it. And I used to settle for like really bad treatment and was like, well, I need friends, but that version of me is gone. And I was like, wait a minute, actually, this relationship has always been on shaky foundation, and I gotta go. Anyway, I hope this episode was helpful. Um, send me a DM online. I will like it or try and respond to you as best I can. I am going to put up um a landing page soon for the course, and I'm gonna make more content. You guys really liked that side by side of like the safe person versus the unsafe person. And I've got more wig content coming up where my mom steps on my foot, she like stomps on my foot hard, and she's like, I didn't do that. So um, more fun content coming up, the course is coming. I'm so proud of all of us. I love you guys so much. Thank you for loving me. I'm just some lady sitting on my couch right now talking to you. So when you all tell me that you listened to the show, or when you when you send me your messages, when you engage with my stuff, when you like my stories, sometimes. I feel embarrassed when my stories don't get a bunch of likes, like I'm I'm talking forever. I'm still working on my visibility wounds. See, we're always healing, we're always a work in progress. But anytime you interact with my stuff or you talk to me, you don't know what it does to heal me. And I think together we're gonna change the world. I'm not kidding when I say that. I think these collective conversations we're having are so, so important. And uh whatever you're going through, I see you. You're not crazy, you know what happened to you, whether you're being smear campaigned or you're being hurtled into isolation or you're being told that you're a bad person just because you're trying to set boundaries or you're trying to finally stand up for yourself for the first time in your life, no matter how old you are, you are not the problem. And uh you're going into the rock tumbler. You are you are being shaped and it's uncomfortable, but so was staying the same person, right? Some people never change ever. My God. My God, some people never change. Ain't that the truth? But you are different, and I'm so proud of you, and you're doing amazing. And I love you. Bye bye.