Episode 3 That’s Not Your Name

Episode 3 That’s Not Your Name is about the labels people, society and even ourselves place on us and how they are not who we are. They are an experience we had or a part of our story but there is no need to name the book after them. We are more than what happened to us. 

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Hi, welcome to Exhale. I'm Laura Bunchkar, and this is Where You Exhale. So take a deep breath and exhale. This is episode three, and it is That's Not Your Name. We're going to talk today about the labels that we have either placed upon ourselves or that society or others have placed upon us due to the events in our lives. We're going to learn that what happened to us is not who we are. Healing and rebuilding doesn't happen all at once. It happens one breath at a time. It's not linear. And you will continue to heal and grow as long as you continue to do the work. That's not your name. You are not what happened to you. And last week we talked about boundaries and standards to help us rebuild. This week we're going to use those boundaries and standards that we have set and learned and move toward realizing that what we have been through is not who we are. Often when you have been through experiences, you get labels like if you have lost a husband, you're a widow. If you have been through a traumatic experience, then you are a victim. There are many different labels that you can be given, and some are generic and some are specific and some are negative, and all of them are not who you are. None of them are who you are. Who you are has nothing to do with what has happened to you. You were your own person and who you are were to your core before any of those things ever came into your life. That's not your name will take you through the labels that you've collected in life, whether they were given to you by circumstances or other people, or whether you have placed them upon yourselves. But in this podcast, I hope that you can realize that what happened to you is not who you are, it is not your fault, and you don't have to carry it forward into your new life that you are rebuilding for yourself. We're going to try to turn what happened to you into something that shapes you versus something that has defined you. I experienced rejection, I am not rejected. I experienced failure, but I am not a failure. I experienced abuse, but I am not a victim. I experienced poverty, but I am not poverty. I experienced divorce, but I'm not broken. I experienced loss or grief, but I'm not lost, and I'm not always going to be there. I experienced sickness, but that doesn't make me that sickness. For example, if you have experienced diabetes, that doesn't make you diabetes. Even if they label you diabetic, there's so much more to you than that one disease that you have experienced. Same with obesity. You are not obese, you have experienced obesity, but you're so much more than your weight, you're so much more than the disease that your body is having to fight. You are a person with dreams and goals and experiences and empathy and compassion and thoughts and beliefs. And all of those things about you are more important than this one thing that you're experiencing that's often used to define you and describe you without all the other components of who you are. And this is how we get caught in a cycle of feeling like we're hopeless or that we are going to be in a bad place forever because we carry all of those labels with us, and without realizing it, we take them on as part of our personality instead of events or diseases or unfortunate happenings that happen to us or about us. They're not us though, they are never going to be us, and you've got to start shedding some of those and differentiating between what happened to you, what you are experiencing, versus who you are as a person. I want to invite you to do a little call of action for me. If you enjoy these podcasts and find needed information in them or want support from us, like our podcast and share it with your friends and family and on your social media, and most importantly, subscribe so that you will continue to get them every week when they are released on Tuesdays. To keep this podcast going, we need to reach as many people as possible and help as many people as possible. And this is a way that you can contribute to do that. I want to tell you a little bit about how things shape you. Now, we've talked a lot about growing up in the North Georgia Appalachian Mountains with my grandparents and how the teachings that they instilled in me helped build a foundation so that I was able to make it through a lot of the traumatic things that happened to me as a child and as an adult. This is where I came from, and that is what shaped me. It taught me survival and resilience and strength. Mostly my grandmother and my mother were the two main components that taught me those things. Paw Paw taught me possibilities and to find humor in things. And that's how when we were talking in podcast too about talking about boundaries and standards, that I knew from even a little kid that this wasn't going to be my future, this wasn't going to be my life, that I would not be happy and be the same path as what had been in front of me. Because roots are part of your story, but they're not a limit that you have to adhere to, they aren't where you have to stay in life. And it's okay for two things to be true at the same time that you honor those roots and that you love where you came from and that you have gratitude and you're appreciating all that they taught you without having to embrace that that has to be you forever and your life forever. And a lot of people have a hard time with that because they feel guilty if they are leaving those things behind, and and sometimes others even make you feel that way and even say that to you that you're somehow betraying your past by wanting a different future, and that is entirely wrong. It can be a huge part of you that loves and cherishes and is grateful for where you came from and the good things that you carry from that while wanting a completely different future for yourself, and it doesn't mean that you think that was bad, it's just not where you are and where you're going. Losing Terry changed me in a lot of ways. Widow became something that was true about me, but it wasn't the whole me. I wasn't just a widow, I was a lot of things before that title came into my life, so that wasn't who I was, it was a part of my story, it was something that happened to me, but it was not who I was and who I have to be for the rest of my life. It wasn't all of me, it was just a part of me, and in some days it was a big part of me because it was heavy and it was present, but in other days, whenever time passed and I was finding joy and rebuilding and having this different life, it's not as big a part of me as it once was, and that's okay. It doesn't mean that I don't still love him or miss him, and it doesn't mean that I've forgotten him, it just means that it has a different place in my life than what it once had. It became part of my story, not my entire story. Who I am now and who I choose to become doesn't change where I once was, but what I once was and where I once was doesn't dictate who I am now and where I'm going. Hard things leave scars on you. It doesn't minimize your trauma and your pain and your loss to go forward and heal and rebuild and make a life for yourself. Healing isn't pretending like that, it didn't happen. You can honor what happened without living in it forever. Scarves tell a story, but they don't write your future. When you have your story to tell, and you should own your story and tell your story. And when I say tell your story, I don't necessarily mean that you have to start a podcast or go on social media and tell your whole life story. Owning your story and telling it can be telling it to a journal, can be telling it to a therapist, telling it to your best friend, your mom, your sister, whoever. It can be as big or as small as you want it to be. If telling your story is going to help other people and you want to write a book about it or do a podcast about it to help other people, then it's your story. You can own it, you can tell it to whoever you want to, however many people that you want to. I do invite you to remember though, when you are telling your story and you are giving advice to people, make sure that you also keep in mind that however many people you can reach to help is exactly the number of people that you can reach to hurt. So you have to make sure that your intentions are pure and that your information is right. Will it be perfect? No. Will you make mistakes? Yes. You're human. If you didn't make mistakes, that would be an unreasonable expectation. But if you keep that in mind in everything you do, not just if you tell your story or if you have a podcast, but in the work that you do every day, in the way you interact with your family, friends, co-workers, if you always keep in mind that what you do can hurt as well as help, and you do it with the right intentions, you often will find that what you are doing is more productive and better than you could have ever dreamed that it would be. So you don't have to keep living in the past, but you can keep honoring the past. You can keep the things that you learned in the past and carry them as a foundation to place your bricks upon for your future. I do invite you to find that gray area in the middle, though. Because if you're always worrying about how much of the past you need to leave in the past and how much you need to carry with you, and where you're going and what you're building, then you're not taking time to really enjoy where you are. I told them in my live that I did earlier today that I went to the beach yesterday morning to do some prayer and meditation and take an ocean swim. And I realized as I was looking out over the water that I've been very engulfed in building the things that I want in life and looking at what I have come from and through, and have forgotten to take the time that I need to be where I am and be grateful for the day that I'm in and enjoy it for all that it is. And I don't know if that was my revelation or a message from God, but I took it seriously. The rest of my day was planned without working, any type of work, whether it was on the podcast, whether it was on soft again, or whether it had to do with my corporate job. It was non-existent. I took the rest of the day for family, for this beautiful place that I live at the beach and by the pool, and to spend quality time with the people that I loved and be fully present in doing that. Not worrying about the past and not carrying the worries of where I'm going for the future. Even if you're not worrying about it, even if you're happy with your past and you're extremely happy with where you're going, if you're always in those in your mind, then you're not giving the attention and the gratitude that you need in where you are now. So there always has to be a point where you stop and you take that time to just be where you are. Other people's labels are a big problem too. Someone else's opinion of you is not your identity. What they call you may say more about them than it says about you. Often, when people are calling you out of your name and they are labeling you, it is to compensate for something that's going on inside of them and has very little, if anything, to do with you. Stop carrying those names. They never belong to you, they never will belong to you. Release them and let them go. You don't have to prove yourself to everyone, you don't have to prove yourself to anyone. You know who you are at the core of you, and that is what matters. Often it's not other people that's the problem, though. We're giving ourselves labels. Sometimes nobody is still saying it, but we are. Remember, I told you that the voice in your head is the voice that you hear the most. It's with you all the time. You hear it more than you will ever hear anything or anyone else. So if you are labeling yourself and you are calling yourself by that label mentally or out loud, every day or several times a day, that's going to become who you identify as because that's what you are labeling yourself as. That's the identity you have to start living toward and building for yourself. I want you to listen to your inner voice and determine what name or label have you been carrying, calling yourself or answering to. Is this something that you are, or is it something that you experience? Remember the distinction. You can be experiencing something, but that's not who you are. There's a lot of things you're going to experience. There's a lot of things you've already experienced, and there's a lot that you may be experiencing right now. None of them are who you are. All of them are just a part of your story. What would you rather call yourself? The label that you just named when you were thinking about a label that you've been carrying. If you could change that label to anything else, what would it be? In your journal that you've been journaling and writing your three things that you are grateful for today, three things that you are grateful for that happened yesterday, three things you are proud of yourself for, three things you forgive yourself for, and three things you commit to yourself. In your commitment part of that journal, you could write this week on one of your days. What are three things that I can commit to calling myself versus the labels that I have been calling myself? Three qualities about me that I would like to incorporate into my life, or if they're already there but not a big enough part of who I am, what of those would I like to make a bigger part of myself to replace that old label that I need to shed? Writing it down makes it more likely that you will do it. In fact, any goal that you have is 75 more times likely to be achieved if you wrote it down. Now that's an old statistic, it could be higher now. Because writing something down makes you more likely to remember it and to continue working toward it. You must continue to practice correcting yourselves when those old names appear. They're going to come up and they're going to be intrusive in what you are thinking and trying to build in your life. And you're going to have to slow down and tell yourself, that's not my name. This is not who I am. This is only something that happened to me. The trauma, the grief, the abuse, the divorce, getting fired, getting picked on, bullied, none of those things are who I am. They are things that happened to me. They are things that I can choose how to react and go forward with. Each step, you build your foundation, you start building your steps to your bigger goal, and you celebrate each step that you achieve on the way to that goal. Two things can be true at the same time. We know that we've experienced that. And we know that we have choices, and our choices have consequences. And a consequence is not always a bad thing. Sometimes a consequence is a very good thing. So while we're taking responsibility for that, we need not forget though that we're human and we're going to make mistakes. And sometimes those consequences are going to come from those mistakes, but they're not permanent. We can always turn that around and make another choice and a better choice. And that is true in the labels that we have picked up. They're not permanent, they're only going to be there as long as you choose to keep carrying them. So it's going to be important that you remind yourself when they sneak up and you're hearing that old label in your mind, and your day has been heavy, or something else happened in the day that reminded you of that old label that you carried, that you change that mindset and come back to what we talked about with reminding yourself that you are not that. It's a choice that you made and it wasn't a good one. But it's not a choice that you have to continue making. You can honor the chapter without naming the whole book after it. I honor the woman that I used to be. I have a lot of respect for the woman that made it through all of the horrible things that happened to her. But I don't carry that label as the only thing that I am. Yes, I had to be strong. Yes, I had to be resilient. Yes, I am a survival survivor of childhood sexual abuse. Yes, I'm a survivor of alcoholism in a home that I grew up in that was full of that and all the things that come with that. Yes, I am a survivor of having a chronically ill husband who spent 17 of the 19 years together that we had being sick and in and out of hospitals and doctors' offices. Yes, I'm a survivor of being a widow and all that came with that. But those are things I experienced. Those are not everything I experienced, and they're not who I am today. I also experienced a wonderful childhood with amazing grandparents and a very loving and supporting mother. I also experienced great friends, family members, cousins, a little brother. I've had many blessings in my life in my childhood, even though there were some bad things. I have many grandchildren. Now I have stepchildren and their children, and my family continues to grow. This means that even though bad things have happened, good things have happened along the way, also. So you're not just carrying those negative hard labels around. There's some pretty good ones mixed in there too. If you let yourself remember those, you get to decide where the focus goes. And you can name your book that you're writing of your life after the good parts and make them the focus, or you can name them after the bad parts. You can carry the labels of the bad parts, or you can choose to identify with the labels of the good parts. This is up to you. But maybe it's time you stop answering to the name that was never yours to begin with. So I invite you again to take a deep breath, hold it, think of a label that you no longer want to carry, and exhale, and let that label go. You no longer answer to that label, and you're gonna replace it with a good one that you now choose for yourself. Thank you for joining me today. Please hit that subscribe button and share this with your friends who need to hear it. I will see you next Tuesday. And remember, take time to be in the now and exhale.