Episode 319 - Marta Hobbs, "Journey to Freedom, Healing, and Coming Home"

Welcome to Restoring the Soul with Michael John Cusick. In today's episode, we welcome Marta Hobbs, the author of Unraveling: A Woman's Search for Freedom and the Journey of Coming Home. Marta will share her inspiring story of healing, self-discovery, and reclaiming her inner beauty. She will also discuss her experiences as a survivor and refugee, her struggles with trauma, and her ultimate realization that healing is a never-ending process of self-discovery.

Throughout the episode, we will delve into Marta's background, growing up under communist oppression in Poland and fleeing to the United States at 12. We will learn how these early experiences shaped her response to pressure and trauma, leading her to overperform to prove her worth. Marta will share the pivotal moment in 2014 when she experienced a panic attack despite appearing to have a successful and enviable life and how this led her to seek therapy and embark on a journey of self-discovery.

Join us as we explore Marta's mission to normalize conversations about struggles and trauma, her commitment to creating a safe space for women to reclaim their worth and femininity, and her invitation to embrace freedom and playfulness in life after healing.

Click here to discover more about Marta.

Transcript

0:00

Well, I am excited to announce today on the Restoring the Soul podcast a very special guest, somebody who's very dear to me, Marta Hobbs. Marta, welcome to restoring the soul. Thank you, Michael. It's so good to, in a way, be back. Yeah. So good to be talking with you. We connected about four months ago, maybe three months ago, and we lost touch through the pandemic, and we're going to tell some of that story. But I brought you on because from the moment I met you, you have an amazing story, and you've experienced an amazing life story and a story of profound healing. And I'm going to hold the book up here, but you have a new book out, and it's called unraveling a Woman's search for freedom and the journey of coming home. And I've read the book. I first got a digital copy of it before I got the paper copy. It's so nicely done, and it was so powerful to read your story. And so I just. I'm so grateful for you to be here and for us to be able to talk about your story today. Thank you. Thank you. With your permission, I would like to read a paragraph that I think really, really sets the tone, and then we'll just kind of dive in. As most of my listeners know, there's usually not a script, and I don't have a list of interview questions, but in the very first chapter, it's a chapter that starts out the book, and the chapter is, ironically called the end, which is a great name for chapter one, but it takes you back to 2014, and in that opening chapter, you write this. The woman I was just 24 hours earlier, the successful, strong, well put together business owner, entrepreneur, mother, wife and daughter had vanished. In her place was someone I didn't recognize, a little girl somehow awakened for the first time, petrified of her surroundings and terrified by something inside herself as well. I desperately wanted someone to scoop me up and tell me that everything would be okay, that they would fix this and make my life sparkly and fabulous again. I wanted to go home, crawl into bed and sleep all this off, or better yet, wake up to learn that this was all one long nightmare. I refuse to admit that this was a crack in my beautifully polished surface created by pressure from within. And I didn't know things were only going to get much worse. Very powerful story, painful as I read it, because I know you and care for you. But can you take us back to that moment in 2014 that you start the book with, to kind of set the context for your story? Yeah, you know, ironically, it's exactly ten years ago, and ironically, I'm on the same island today as we're talking, where chapter one takes place, so, of course, right. Yes. It was a very special trip. We came down to St. Bart's to celebrate, you know, from the external, from the outside, it was like the peak point of my life. I had been married to Jim. We had two beautiful kids. And for the 14 years prior, we had founded and been growing and running a company that went from just the two of us to 500 employees, multiple offices throughout the US and Canada and Mexico. And we had just sold the business. I was 39. And the sale of the company allowed us both to retire financially secure for the rest of our lives. And so it was reaching that moment in my life where I felt I had been steering towards for the majority of my adult life, you know, like, this is it, this is it. So that mountaintop moment, we decided to commemorate it by taking a special trip. And so we came down to St. Bart's with both of our children. They each brought a friend. My mom and my dad joined us. And so it was a beautiful celebratory trip, seven to ten days, I don't remember. And it was perfect the whole entire time until. And the book opens the night before we're scheduled to go home. We just finish a beautiful dinner together. I cook it, I prepare it, I clean up, I organize the next day's departure, I start packing. I, I, I. And I have my very first panic attack, which, at the time, we were not talking about mental health the way we talk about it now. Panic attacks were not. You know, I knew nothing about anxiety. I had never been to therapy. And so I, at the time, thought this was the end of my life after this beautiful celebratory trip, I thought it was going to end on that one last night. And so I describe in that first chapter what that felt like, and then what the end, which really became the beginning of the journey for the next decade of my life with that looked like. So at a moment when celebration life is going, I mean, that's the pinnacle of the american dream, right? To be able to retire, to be that successful. And, of course, you and your husband worked so hard, but life doesn't get any better than this. And then, as the book title says, everything began to unravel. So unpack a little bit just of your background, because as I got to know you, and you're welcome to share about the context of that as you desire, because I know you talk about that in the book, but that you weren't born in the US and part of your trauma is that story. So will you talk about that and what was underneath, by the way, I think that description of what I read was so perfect in terms of that description of that pressure from within that's coming up, and that eventually something has to break. But a lot of that trauma and pressure came from your earliest years in Europe. Yes, I was born in Poland at the very end, the tail end of the Cold War. And what that meant for me and my home because of who my mother was. She was a very famous journalist who openly spoke against the communist movement that was sort of infiltrating Poland at the time. And so she was part of the rebellion against it. So I grew up under communist oppression, surrounded by scarcity, fear, lack, danger. There were tanks rolling through the streets. My home was regularly invaded as a little girl, just the police confiscating things like any western, simple western fashion magazines, like none of it was allowed. And so growing up in a state where I really didn't know what safety meant. So I also described in the book that home was sort of like a jail with prison guards outside of it because our phones were tapped and we were constantly followed. And so my nervous system, the way my baby, little girl personality, everything in me, my nerves, my cells, the way everything develops, is I'm in fight and flight. I am surviving, I am expecting danger at any step. So that's the little girl years. The country's not safe, home's not safe. And the adults in my life are so knee deep in their own trauma, both being babies of world War two, my father being an orphan, my mother having lost her mother during the war when she was only 18. And then her own father, my only living grandfather, got a lifelong imprisonment sentence and he ended up being released early because it was unjust. So that's the family that I'm gifted with. And I'm a sensitive kid who feels and sees all of it and there's just the warmth is missing. And it just was that feeling of like, everyone's running around and I'm sort of left there being like, are we not seeing the fact that it's me and my sister? And so that was the childhood. And at twelve, my parents decide, we're going to immigrate to the United States, which sounds lovely from the us side because we legally arrive, we're sponsored, but from the departure side, we're unable to tell anyone that we're leaving for fear of being detained. And so we in the middle of the night, flee with a cover story of going to Italy for the summer with paperwork and the visas, but we take nothing but a few small bags, which is very typical of most refugees. And we get in the car, drive across the border, not knowing back then if we would ever be able to come back. And so I turned 13 in the german refugee camp and arrived in the United States shortly after that, not speaking the language. This was before the Internet, so having no idea what to expect, but a little girl's dreams and expectations of what I was hoping it would be like. Friends with pretty hair and dresses and barbie dolls and, you know, the beautiful, new, colorful life that I thought the western world was having grown up in the gray communist Poland. And so that begins the journey of then, you know, the early years shaped me. And then the other thing that really the survivor and then holding the fear in my body, and then the second big part of my life that really impacted was then the refugee. And how does a refugee young woman prove to everyone around her, including herself, that she's worthy, that she deserves the chances that those who speak the language naturally have? She starts working really, really hard to show everyone, watch what I can do. And so that was sort of also a way not to look at the fear and the terror that I had left, ran away from. And so I just began over performing, over functioning, and I was quite successful early on in my life, which was great at the cost of never looking at what was happening within, in my heart, in my soul, in my body. I just was plowing through it, and. It took a huge, huge toll. Eventually, as happened in 2014. Yeah. You describe in the book how you really came here and felt quite lost. And even when you were here, you didn't have a lot of support because your parents got jobs and they began to work, and you were a young girl in New York City right at that time. Will you talk about what the process was like from that moment in 2014 with all of that trauma buried and the pressure from within the. And I often describe that process or that initial moment of experiencing and re experiencing the trauma when you don't know what's happening, but it feels absolutely overwhelming. You're flooded with emotion. People may or may not have flashbacks of particular memories, but you feel like you're going to die and you don't know what's happening. And you described that so eloquently, but that led to the beginning of this journey that you describe as ultimately allowed you to come home to yourself within and to develop a really deep spirituality. What was your next step after that moment of leaving St. Bart's and going back home? It was like you said, like death. It just felt like, you know, that episode in St. Barts was the first time. And so then you're sort of faced with not just the fear of that experience, but the constant fear of it happening again. And then it would. I remember, so we had to fly back to France after that, the day later. So first I was terrified I would have a panic attack on the plane, which I still thought was my heart, and it was heart attack. So then I'm thinking, I'm going to first die on the flight back. Then when I get back, this mysterious thing kept happening over and over, and I wasn't dying at the end of it, and it would happen daily. And so that. And I was just. It was terror. Like, I was so afraid. And then I was also afraid to show my kids that I was completely overwhelmed by it. I couldn't. I couldn't gather myself. And so I started therapy. Someone suggested I should go to therapy, of course, a good old eastern european, I think, you know, therapy is for crazy people. But I was desperate. So I met with my first therapist, and it started their first anti anxiety medicine, which helped me to sleep. Then, you know, after months of therapy, it was. We started to get into what was your childhood like? And I remember that it was. I had developed such a safe box that I put everything in and buried it so deep, I really had no access to my earliest memories. So had I had some, maybe it would have made sense. But it took years of therapy to finally break through the picture perfect childhood that I had told myself I had. My parents were loving, you know, that it was safe. I remembered things from photographs of, you know, the happy moments. But then I started to see it was never really vivid memories of me at a birthday party. It was just a still photo of something. And so it was, you know, that then breaking through that what I had thought I'd grown up like wasn't really true. And not having memories to sort it made it so confusing. And so it was just this desperate, deep seeking for something that made sense. And when you don't have your memories to rely on, you know, like, well, I remember it this way. Like, I just kept looking for the next person or the next book or the next methodology, or I just was like, someone has to know. And so it was, this is, I think, where my refugee hard work mentality worked for me, because I was relentless. And which, this is what eventually led me to you where it was like I would find something, and it would, like, move the dirt off a little bit, but I'm like, there's more. There's more under. So it was like digging this deep, like, layer of earth that I had plowed upon the past and the memories just to try and access it. And it's ironic that I'm trying to get to the thing I had been running from. I'm trying to get to the pain, the ugliness, the nastiness. It was so counterintuitive. But I was just like, I gotta go deeper. I gotta go deeper. This isn't it, and this isn't it. And I understood at one point that while what often drove me was, I just want to feel better, what I really wanted was to understand it. I really wanted to know how I became who I became, what shaped me as a little girl, as a young woman, as a mother, as a wife. What happened? How do we become who we are? And so it was years of everything and antidepressants after that, which helped me get my footing and get some laughter back in my life again. Cause things were getting dark and heavy. And then I started to get into. Was sitting in the body doing yoga, doing breath work, getting. I just would get certified and everything. I think by the time I got to you, you were like, you have a PhD in trauma without really having a PhD in trauma. And, you know, I was fascinated, I remember, by all the books on your bookshelf. And I'm like, what else am I going to read after we get done? So that it was just that wanting. I just wanted to know. I just. I wanted to know from myself what happened, to understand that so I can make sense out of my own life, because that was missing for me. Yeah. What's fascinating about your story, and forgive me if this sounds like I'm talking under a microscope in a clinical way, but so often people think about trauma and PTSD, or complex PTSD in particular, as an over clarification and a re experiencing of things that are there that we don't want to be there. And that was certainly true for you somatically in your body. You were experiencing all this flooding, but there was no narrative. The narrative was lost. You knew some of your origin story, but in the book, you talk very explicitly about how you have no memories of, like, arriving in New York City or any of those things that moment from having to flee in the middle of the night and be in the camp forward. That that's just kind of gone. And no wonder you know, you subtitled the book coming home because you couldn't go back to Poland and live. But there is a home within yourself that you relentlessly would not give up until you found that and got there. Yeah, I think, you know, for as long as I can remember, I always felt like an outsider. Everywhere I went, I always looked for the ways I didn't belong there. And so. And then I got to one point and I was like, oh, my God, what if that's a gift, you know? And what if I'm not really here to fit into the external societies, communities, families, friendships, situations, workplaces? What if the only fitting in is really a fitting out, which is discovering who I really am truly, deeply, at my core, not what my trauma story tells me, not what my life story tells me, what my parents taught me. Not all the beliefs and systems and ways of thinking and seeing the world that I picked up along the way. And so that's why the book is called unraveling. It's like, what if I let it all fall apart, take away all the things that are simply taught, behaviors, thoughts, ways of thinking, and find that purest essence of who I am? And what if we are, in a sense, all outsiders out there? But the moment we belong in here, there's that core connection to the soul, to the higher self, to God. Suddenly I fit in everywhere because it all comes from in here. So it's how I show up places. So that, to me, was like, so often our biggest pain points are the things that later give us purpose or become our mission. And so that was one of them. I feel like I have many. But the coming home in here was. That was a big one. Because that inner sense of inner peace and deep divine love that is unwavering and non dependent on external circumstances, even on people like, that's already there. And that's something I believe we're given at birth. It just gets lost in trauma and the pain that we pick up as we go. And so we learn to close off our hearts. But coming back to that in its purest form, when I remember that that is who I am, because I often forget. It's been such a gift of the journey. Yeah, I love the way you talk about that core self here at restoring the soul. We do a lot of work with internal family systems, and I think this is very much a Jesus idea and a scriptural idea. But internal family systems is built upon this idea that the true self or this core is indestructible, that there's no amount of political persecution. There's no amount of abuse or trauma that can destroy that, but it does get buried, and it's lost under the rubble oftentimes. Marta, from the very first day I met you, and probably even from when we talked on the phone, and I have a strange memory to remember where I was during certain phone calls, you struck me as a really soulful woman. And what I mean by that is that you had a spirituality that at the time, we didn't go into great depth about that, but I could just feel that there was something about you. You had had a long established meditation practice and yoga practice, and you did a lot there, as you alluded to earlier. But talk a little bit about your spiritual journey, because that has really evolved as well from, I believe that communist Poland was probably atheistic, like Russia, even though there's a strong catholic background there. But maybe what you grew up with spiritually and then that has evolved to ultimately, as we talk, before we end, I want to talk about the soul care practice that you do, but describe your journey. So I was brought up Catholic. Catholic being more in my family, a cultural thing versus anything more. My parents don't believe in God, so we went to church on Christmas and Easter, and, you know, it was very patriarchal. A lot of very important, scary priests and confession and fear. And so very early on, not just the culture of an eastern european country, but Christianity like that. So just, you're a sinner. You're filled with guilt. And a little girl growing up being told by her culture and by the church just how awful she is and how she has to work so hard to repent and make up for, you know, the evil that sits in her. I mean, what a narrative. So. But that's how we began. And, you know, there was no personal connection with God. I just was scared of the nuns and the priests. And you had to go to mass and you had to behave well, which meant, you know, if you're four or five, you can't move and you can't speak. So it was not a pleasant experience. Just fear everywhere when I'm little. Right. We came to the United States eventually. I met my husband, who was Methodist. So Jim introduced me to the concept of, well, you can have your own relationship with God, with Jesus. And so we started going to church. We had our daughter first. She was baptized in a Methodist church, and then our son. So we started. We were still in the states at the time, attending Methodist services, being involved in Bible study. That was the first time I actually started to read the Bible so I was in my late twenties, early thirties. Then we moved to France, where we joined an multicultural, interdenominational church. And that was really the first place I started to feel at home with the type of Christianity religion that I was a member of. The church was. Everyone was from everywhere. And that for me, felt like home. There were women there. I remember the women's Bible study, women from Africa, from all the continents. Everyone was an outsider. Yes. And so we all, I think I say in the book, we didn't belong in France, but we belonged to each other. And so it really felt like the first time I started to learn what love looked like in community. And there was such grace for the different ways that we all interpreted the same verses. For example, there was love there, and that was when everything started breaking down for me. And so that was the community that held me. And so through the healing in the early days, like, Jesus Christ is a huge, huge presence in my life and, you know, just thirsting. So in my seeking for what's happening, it was a lot of the answers came from listening to sermons from everywhere, going to Bible study and being held by these christian women who just loved on me, you know? And then at some point, we left France and moved back to the United States. A year after that, I came to see you. But that felt like a point in my faith's journey where it was the desert that I had to enter into alone. And so I left my church family to move to Florida two years before COVID and I was very much alone there, but I knew this was just me and God on this path. Really started reading the mystics, desert fathers, like old, old stuff. And then I came to see you, I think, a year after our move. And you pointed me to contemplative prayer, you know, Santa Teresa of Avila, which is what my soul care practice is based on. Inner castle, really, really connecting within, without a church, without a community, without a priest, just connecting to God using the vessel of my own body. So when I got quiet silence, stillness and solitude, meeting at the intersection of those places, I can hear the voice of God right where I'm sitting on my own couch. And that was like, oh, my God, I'm just scratching the surface. And so it really, you know, my spirituality. Like, I just started to see that, like, all of that so far had just been a mustard seed. And then it just, God got so much bigger outside of any labels. And so I have now, yes, a really deep spiritual connection. And I believe that is accessible and available to everyone. When you discovered the mystics, you really kind of found your people, you found your tribe that put words to it. And it's interesting to me that so many of the mystics are european, you know, and they're writing from a perspective that's so rooted in history but also rooted in a kind of suffering and persecution. Teresa was constantly being persecuted for her perspective and for being a woman. Talk a little bit about, if you will, and I'm only asking you as an alumni of one of our programs to talk about something that you've written about publicly in your book. Talk about what happened when you decided to come to restoring the soul, because I remember the conversation again, which you described this in the book, as well as some detailed conversations with another therapist, but that you had come back, you had received all this care in this, what I think was a really remarkable community holding space for you. But then in the transition, you found yourself without that home and that the therapy had taken you so far, but that you needed something more and a different kind of approach to get to the next place. And I think one of the things that people that I come up with in working is they say that I needed something new, I needed a shift, I needed not necessarily another approach, but I just knew that there had to be a change in order to get to the next step. And you, as you said earlier, have really been relentless in that. You have. You have been as intensely committed as anybody I know to get to the end of this journey, to say, I will do whatever it takes. So talk about that transition when you came to restoring the soul and what some of that was like. Yeah, I had gotten to a point in talk therapy. I had a great therapist in Paris. Then we moved. I was reluctant to find a new one because I'm like, oh, my God, I have to tell my whole story. Overdose. But I did. And I found myself in the very same spot that I was with a therapist in Paris before, where I'm like, oh, my God. I started to see this is the same cycle. I keep coming in. I'm looking for a problem to talk about. And then we, you know, and I'm like, it's not helping. So for me, because I had done the studying of yoga in the body, I knew that I needed more than just to talk about things. I really wanted to know the trauma piece like that. I needed somatic work. I was curious about Emdr, and I really. And so I remember, and we had some things happen with the move that were just re triggered. A whole bunch of long story short, re triggered a whole bunch of stuff for me. And so I found myself flooded and triggered back on my anxiety meds again. And I'm like, I can't. This is unsustainable. I wanted to get to the root. I was like, this is. I'm cycling. I want to go deeper. And I started looking for trauma therapy, but I also didn't want to go see someone once a week. I wanted intense and intense environment. My husband would always be like, oh, my God, you can talk about this stuff for 3 hours. He would tap out, and I'm like, that's what I need. I need someone who can sit across from me, and we can just, like, go and go and go until I tap out. And I, you know, I'm sure it was through, you know, the force of the higher power and God led me somehow to your website. And what was already so important and significant was when I was filling out the questionnaire, the things you had asked, I had never. I think it was. I remember the question was, like, tell me your trauma story or something phrased in something like that. And it was when I started writing it, you know, what you say in therapy and, like, you have, like, the first 1015 minutes. Like, I sat in my computer for hours, and I just wrote everything I could remember. And it was so thorough, and I remember being afraid that it wouldn't save because I had never done that before. So I started. That was probably the moment the book was born, you know, when I started to fill that out for you. Like, this was my childhood. This was, you know. And then as I started to mention more and more and more, I remember thinking, oh, my God, he's gonna think I'm helpless. Because there was just such. I think it was trauma inventory or something like that. There was just so much there that at the end of writing just that one question, I felt so heavy and alone with it, and I'm like, I wanted someone to enter into that space with me, and that's why I came. Well, and I'm so glad you did. And one of the reasons we do such an extensive inventory is so that we can kind of hit the ground running where you tell your story, but we already have a sense of what people are bringing in. You share in the book the story that I still chuckle at, and I'm wondering if you'll tell the story about my first words to you after me hearing your story over, I think, like, two days. Yeah. Yeah. I remember the room. I remember the sofas. I remember the white blackboard. Like, I remember it so vividly. And so you said, tell me the story. And that was the first time I. Instead of writing it, I got to say it using my voice. And I remember just talking forever. And then we would take a break and have some water, and I would talk again. And you didn't ask any questions. You took some notes, and then you said, we'll break for the day. And then I think I spoke the next day, and then we broke for lunch. And then the afternoon of the second day, you said, okay, so I just. In all the years that I've been doing this, and I've been doing this for a very long time, I wanted to respond to you, and I wanted to say, holy shit. And then you said it two more times. You're like, Marta, holy shit. And I think the third time you said it, I cried because it was like, oh, my God, I. He gets it. Like, it was someone. Like someone looked in here. And so what? All that weight and pain and darkness and heaviness that I had been carrying in my heart, and it didn't scare you? It didn't freak you out? Like, you just were right there and you were like, I see you. And, oh, my God. Wow. And you said, it's a miracle that you're alive. It's a miracle. I don't think I put that in the book. I'm remembering now. It's a miracle that you're here, and it's a miracle that you have raised your two kids and the family that you've built from where you have come. Yeah. So that was that huge gift that you gave me. Thank you. Well, you're welcome. It's an honor. And as I've sat with people over and over again, there's very few people that come to an intensive with just one issue. And I will say this to many people, that if you had had just any one issue, it would be overwhelming. And in your case, you had dozens of issues. I mean, when you describe just what you described at the top of this podcast, you know, there were a dozen different issues there. And then there's a lot that, for appropriate reasons, you didn't share that we just all have in day to day life. But your story is a testimony yes to God's grace, but also to the resilience that God gave you to overcome and to how oftentimes the greatest gifts and abilities we have help us get through. They help us to survive, but then they no longer serve us. And they stand in the way. And then the trauma and that pain become that pressure inside that. When that pressure starts to rise, it feels like we're dying. But the resilience of your story is just really, really remarkable. So why write a book about this? Because you would have had to go back and process this and trudge things up, and then the painstaking process of. Of writing it all down. When you said, I'm going to write a book, what were you hoping for? I don't know if you remember, but when I left the restoring the soul, I said to you, okay, great, now, like, now what? Where's, like, the manual? You said, cptSd. It was the first time I heard the diagnosis. It felt correct. And I said, where is now the manual? That, like, is like, okay, this is now. I was like. I said I wanted the steps, Michael. Like, what are the steps? And you said, you're gonna write that? Yes. And of course I was like, okay. And then Covid. And then going to whole foods to get toilet paper, empty shelves. I'm back in Poland under communism. Oh, wow. Right? So Covid re triggers that for me, and I actually started to remember. So the memories that are included in the opening pages of the book that talk about what it was like living under communism, I didn't have access to those when we were together. Those came after. So as Covid triggered me, I started waking up and remembering things, and I started writing them on a notepad. And then I started sharing them with a therapist, and she said, keep writing. And so initially, I was writing repressed memories and voicing a lot of anger that I had carried that I wasn't allowed to express as a little girl. And so I was honoring that. And so the writing started as a self healing journey. It was journal entries for me. It was poems that were just loaded with so much anger. And then I started to describe the story of the little girl and sending it to very close friends of mine who never knew that about me. And they were like, oh, my God, tell me more. The church in Paris, like, several friends there. I'm like, okay, here it is. And they're like, I want to know more. Tell me her story. Tell me her story. And so through the encouragement of them and then seeing what was happening to people during COVID what it was doing to us mentally, with the isolation, with, you know, everybody's stuff started to just come up and come unglued, and I'm like, there's going to be a massive need for healing and massive. It's collective trauma, what we were going through. And so I'm like, you know, and of course, I tried to get the book published, and all the publishers were like, no one wants to hear about trauma. I'm like, I disagree. And so I self published because no one wanted. First of all, you know, I laugh and say, because I wasn't Beyonce, so no one really cared about my memoir. But it's the stories of normal, average people, and I wanted to be the hope I didn't have that led me to you, you know, and we so often compare. So many people read my story, and they say, I didn't have it as bad as you. And it's like, that's not the point. Like, whether you got your teddy bear stolen when you were three or your mom was imprisoned when you were seven. The body holds the pain. The body holds the pain. Right. And so I wanted to normalize the conversations about how we struggle, what we carry, to give people hope, to describe the messiness of my journey. And I really wanted to present this beautiful cover and this messy, yucky, heavy, painful inside, because that is every single one of us. Yes, yes. And that that is not lost on the reader because there's a beautiful picture of you on the front, and then, boom, you go right into that story. Yeah. I am so struck, even though I know your story, and I think this is important for people to hear, that you went through all of this journey. You know, the time in Paris, the church is loving on you. And, by the way, oftentimes that kind of a loving, safe community is more important than the therapy, because a lot of people can't get therapy. Then you did individual therapy, and then you came to restoring the soul, and you have all of your contemplative practices and the pandemic hits and something completely unexpected. You go into whole foods, and there's no toilet paper, there's scarcity. And that brings you back to the little girl in Poland. And so often it's something completely out of left field. Like, who would think that something like that would bring it up? And the other thing is that you were significantly down the path on your journey, because the day before COVID happened, you probably would have said, I'm well, I'm more than well. It is well with my soul, and I've done my work, and I've gotten to this spacious place, and then something like that happens. Would you agree with me that it's not regression, but it's more of a growth spurt? Yeah. And I think at the time, I was really frustrated because I think, you know, there was a season in my life where I was like, I'm done. I'm healed. We all want to arrive at that place. Yes. And then, you know, I talk about this in the book, too. Healing is like peeling an onion. So, like, there are just layers and layers, and you just go deeper and deeper. And so, yeah, I thought I was done, and then a curveball. But now, you know, I don't heal. I don't call it healing anymore. I think it's just a beautiful process of self discovery. It's like, oh, I didn't know that about myself. Oh, I forgot that that was in there. And so now when it happens and, you know, things triggered me this morning, every trigger is an opportunity to see where I am still unfree. And if I can use my interactions with other humans, my interactions with my husband, random things that just tick me off as mirrors, right? Versus getting angry at the thing that poked me. What's already in here, that's being pokede. What a gift to get to wade through that mess, too, to clean it out of the way, because all I'm looking for is to return to that spaciousness of just full presence, of love. All this stuff is just muck that gets in the way, because at the core, we're just love. And so can I clean, lovingly clean that which, you know, clouds my seeing to get to that pure state of I am love. I love of myself, love of others. It's all one. And I think that process never ends, and that is very. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And you actually answered a question I wanted to ask, and that is that at the end of the book, you have a chapter called healing from trauma, specifically, and then the next chapter is finding freedom, and. And they can happen simultaneously. But there's also, once you heal from the trauma, and I like the fact that you're not referring to it as healing, because I never want to pathologize the fact that this is not an unhealthy response, it's a healthy response to an unhealthy situation, and it's a survival response that's God given. But there is a distinction between when we work through the trauma and our body starts to normalize that, then it's about more finding freedom and living in that freedom and being attentive to the things that obscure that freedom and that love. Yes. And I think also healing, to me, implies there's a problem. There's something wrong with you that you have to fix. And, okay, maybe initially there are some things you need to see that you completely blinded to, but we're not this massive self improvement project. You know, freedom versus healing. It's like, I want to get to a space of freedom because. And I think my second book will be about this. I feel like the first book was sort of like a permission slip to let all of it just let yourself just fall to pieces, just stop, kind of control and manage and hold yourself together. Like, blow it all up, take the risk. So then you can get to that space of freedom, which to me is like a blank canvas. Okay. Now that we got rid of that, I'm standing, I'm breathing, I'm free. I don't feel the weight of my story, my trauma, all that stuff that was so heavy for so long. From the space of zero, what is it that I want to create next? I remember the second thing you tasked me with when I left, besides writing, was play. Stop reading things that are functional or instructional. Can you read a novel, maybe or something? I remember you were like, do you ever read just for amusement, something funny? And I was like, what would be the point of that? But you will go and play. And so actually, my theme for this year has been pray and play. Can I tune in and connect? Remember who I am? Fully worthy, not broken. And can I play? Like we as adults, especially as women who are so responsible for our children, over responsible for our husbands, for our jobs, whatever, there's so many responsibilities to do things, so many tasks, we forget to play. And that's such a beautiful reconnection to the life force that flows through us. So I'm like, my second book will be about that. Now that you healed, now that you're free, what do you want to do with your one precious life? Because it can be anything. And can you allow yourself to dream the big dreams, have the big desires, play. And can life be fun? Can life be fun? Because healing is not a good time. And so now I'm like. I just. Like I said in that it's funny you read that. Can my life just go back to being sparkly and fabulous? That's the little girl wishing that in the beginning of the book, right? Well, what if the grown woman takes that on as her life mission for the next while? I don't know. That feels good. Can I do what just feels good? Because why not? Yeah. And that's the gift you bring into the world. So as we wrap up, talk about your soul care, work that you do and how you invite women to journey with you, because it's really unique. And I see on social media and just giggle when I see the things that you're doing and seeing how people. Are touched by this, it's that energy. It's that energy of, you know, I was robbed of a innocent, fun little girl childhood. I didn't get to play. I had to be responsible, I had to be strong. And so I invite women to play. I invite women to come with me to Paris for three days. We put on beautiful gowns. I take them to the most fabulous, luxurious places in the city and I plan everything out for them so that they can get in touch with that city side of them. Not just the play that we lose in our task orientedness, in our achieving, in our pursuing, in us trying to be successful, we lose touch with our feminine essence. So, you know, women do and plan and schedule, but can we soften? Can we open? Can we receive? Can we flow? So, so many women are such control freaks that when they come to Paris and I'm like, no, no, no, you plan nothing. You just show up on the plane, I pick you up at the door, you get a beautiful transfer to the suite, the whole itinerary. I got two and a half incredible days, and I'm just going to take you and you just receive it. You see how beautiful the city is and you start to tap into your own inner beauty and then you recognize, oh my God, all this external stuff is simply a mirror of my own internal state. And so it's this transformative shift where women simply come alive or they come back to that part of themselves that they lost along the way, whether it be in their careers. We lose ourselves in our children, in our families, in our careers. Oh. And so it's just that returning back to who we are and we do every morning, my soul care meditation, which is, I really appreciated how christians prayed. When I watched that in my community, I really appreciated how the yogis meditated. I studied every path of devotion and then I said there was a massive piece of the population that are non spiritual because their church has scared them off. And during COVID it was a mess. How do I take the people that don't have the language or the skills to find God, Buddha, whatever you call it, but connect them to that higher power, whatever you want to call it, that I believe is within each one of us. And so soul care is taking an inner journey based on Santa Teresa's inner castle and just teaching people that your life isn't just what happens outside of you out there, there is a whole inner thing happening. And can you tap into that? Because ultimately that's where the game is played. And so that's soul care. Yeah. So I take all that and I do three days with women in Paris that I just spoil them, love them, and all through the lens of someone who is trauma informed and safe. I'm a safe space, and I pride myself on that because that is not offered a lot out there in the online space these days. Yes, that's so true. And so we're going to pass on your social media handles and information, your website, and I cannot recommend enough your book unraveling. And I always have to look at the notes for the subtitle. A woman's search for freedom and the journey of coming home. Marta, I'm thankful for you. I'm thankful for your story. I'm especially blessed that you shared it in the form of this book and sharing it with our listeners today. So thank you and bless you. Thank you so much. It was my pleasure. And thank you for such a key and crucial role that you played in my journey.