Latest / The Bold Lounge / Shelley Halligan: Bold Resilience- The Power of Yet

Transcript

Shelley Halligan: Bold Resilience- The Power of Yet · The Bold Lounge

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge Podcast.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: My name is Lee Burgess and I will be your host.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: If you're anything like me, you love hearing inspiring stories of people who have gone on bold journeys and made a positive impact in the world.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: This podcast is all about those kinds of stories.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Every week, we'll hear from someone who has taken a leap or embarked on an extraordinary journey.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: In addition to hearing their stories, we'll also learn about their bold growth mindset that they use to make things happen.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Whether they face challenges or douse along the way, they persisted and ultimately achieved their goals.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: These impactful stories will leave you feeling motivated and inspired to pursue your own bold journey.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I believe everyone has a bold story waiting to be freed.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Tune in and get ready to be inspired.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Today I have Dr Shelly Halligan.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: She is an experienced psychiatric nurse practitioner with over 20 years of experience in the field of addiction medicine.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: She is the Chief Clinical Officer for Spiranza Therapeutics, focusing on medical trials, research opportunities and growth while managing her own practice, new England Recovery Services Incorporated.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Her extensive knowledge and experience in the field of addiction medicine have awarded her many research opportunities and publications with Yale, drexel and Emory University.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Dr Halligan is a subject matter expert in the area of detox and medical conditions that companies substance abuse disorder.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Thank you, lee, excited to have you, and we're going to kick right into your definition of bold.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: I love this question and I actually would be lying if I did say that I haven't thought about it quite a bit meeting you, but I think my definition of bold is doing things that are very difficult and very hard, knowing they're going to be difficult and hard and doing them anyway.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: So you know that being bold isn't always easy.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Most of the time it isn't.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: I would say that the majority of the time that it isn't.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: So what is a memorable, bold moment for you?
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: You?
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: know I have many, but the most recent.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: I had a very tragic fall last year March of 2023.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: And I fell 14 feet into an empty swimming pool at my sister's house and I landed on my feet, but I broke three of my extremities.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: I ended up in the trauma ICU in Florida and was absolutely terrified, but not only mentally terrified.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: I was in the most physical pain I'd ever been in in my entire life.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: So at that bold moment of having an accident, where did your bold kick in?
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: It kicked in.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: It was a very quick kick in.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: It was either I am going to push through this or I'm going to choose another pathway.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: I have to say I have worked with people with substance use for many, many years.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: As you mentioned in my intro, I'm a person in long term recovery myself.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: I've been through a lot of bold moves in my life.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: I've been through a lot of tragedy I was thinking about it the other day and I think I've lived most of my adult life in some sort of traumatic state like an active traumatic state.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: So active alcohol use, active domestic violence, active unhappy marriage.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: So a lot of active trauma use in my adult life, whether it be substances or behaviors.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: So for me to have gotten into recovery in my 30s and have been sober for many years by the time this accident happened I got to tell you the second.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: You're in that extrucating pain.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: Your brain goes right back into knowing I know what will fix this.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: It's a scary thought.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: It's a scary.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: I will lose everything, I will throw everything away by picking up a drink, but that doesn't mean that I still don't have the brain of someone that knows.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: I know what would fix this pain and I know it will make me disappear, because really, what pain is you want to disappear from it?
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you want to escape it, right, right.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: I have recently read, and I thought it was said really well it becomes a boundary, like I'm not thinking anymore, I'm not dealing anymore, I'm not going to have to feel this anymore.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: And here you are, after an accident, in recovery, and you know what to do, and you've been doing it for years.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: And here's your brain saying I know what will fix this.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: That's exactly right.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: And then you have to actually manage your brain, which is a lot of the things I think people really don't understand, is like we have these situations and I'm going to take it way back from something as serious as an accident or an addiction, but just two kind of things that they do on a daily basis.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: And I often say to my coaching clients well, that's a choice, that's a choice you made, you know.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: So let's unpack why you made that choice right.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: So you chose to be bold in the moment that you were in this very unexpected accident.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: So, in the sense of that, like you, you chose to move forward.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: So when it comes to recovery and you can, we can either use recovery from the accident, recovery from addiction.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: What are some of the things that you used out of your toolbox, you know, to kind of be able to pull you through.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, it hasn't even been a year and I thought you walk into a bold table just in November, so I'm pretty excited to see you walk into the next one in a few weeks.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: To so like, what is it that you have or that you've learned that you can share with us, that we can maybe use when we're trying to get through moments and obviously there are professionals involved in a whole process when it comes to addiction.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: So I'm not just saying do this on your own, but there's some things in there in the toolbox that some of us can use for, like, our everyday challenges that we're trying to move through.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that trauma is trauma is trauma.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: That's the bottom line.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: So, whether you're experiencing trauma from a physical accident, whether it was your situation or your circumstances Perpetuated, so you got behind the wheel of a car and you had, you know, you had a terrible accident, well, under the influence, or you had a slip and fall, like myself.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: This wasn't even a slip and fall, this was just I took a step back and fell into an.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: It is when pull no substances on board whatsoever, so, but it still was based in trauma.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: So the trauma of the fall, the physical fall, the substance use, was based in trauma of Of a sexual assault.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: That happened early in my life.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: So trauma is trauma, and so what I did was I mentally went through the motions of what would this pathway look like?
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: Meaning Lay in bed and take pain medication and just be a miserable human being.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: I know what that pathway look like and lay in bed and take pain medication all day.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: But I did drink Alcoholically every single day and I was miserable and those around me were miserable too.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: So I know what that pathway look like, and so it was pretty quick that I knew I did not want to choose that.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: I wanted to choose this recovery path that I had chosen and had served me so well for so many years of relationship with my daughter, who was very young when I got sober.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: Relationship with my four sisters, who is there's just no amount of money that can repay that trust and Relationship that you have, relationship with my partner, that is just.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: We have the most incredible life.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: So I knew pretty quickly that I didn't want to choose that path of what would help and what would get rid of this pain quickly.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: But every single day, since march 22nd 2023, I have chosen, every day I wake up, that pathway of recovery, and not just I'm not going to pick up a drink today, but it's also I'm not going to use my medications at the doctor gave me or I'm going to go to physical therapy, even though I don't want to.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: And I want to say I would love to say I'm like this girl that loves fitness and loves eating right and do other.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: I'm not that girl.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: Love dancing, that's the short.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: I love to dance, I love to move.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: But you know, like there are things I have to make myself do, yeah, and that's what.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: What all of us have to face is that.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: And the biggest thing, I will say that I have learned that I cannot do any of these things alone.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: I cannot get better by myself.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: I cannot mentally get better alone.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: I cannot physically get better alone.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: All of those things take a massive community of support.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: So Doctors, physical therapists, nurses, nutritionists all of those individuals have been great on my team, but they don't match the love and the compassion of friendship, community and my family.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: And I'm grateful to have all of those, you know, licensed individuals like myself that are on my team.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: But again, they're not the people that are holding me at three o'clock in the morning when I'm in tears you know that's my partner.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: They're not the person who I'm making the phone call to saying I don't want to freaking go to this meeting today, I don't want to do this, I just want to do this.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: They're saying, okay, well, if you don't do this, this is what's gonna happen.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: It's, it's real life.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: People that have walked Beside me for the year that it's almost the year that it's taking me to get back, to learn to walk again and it still is hard.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: It's still is hard every day, every day, but I know what the other thing looks like and I don't want my life to look like that yeah, you take a step every day, literally, and figure till the most likely and I think that's what I try to help people understand is just begin, and it's hard, and the first step is, you know, usually the hardest, and then the next one, and the next one, the next one.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, from the from the perspective of what you just said, being bold is not a solo act.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: That's right and I think people need to hear that.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: So I want to say it again being bold is not a solo act, the things that we do in our lives.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: It doesn't mean you're not in charge of that step, but it's like who's gonna be there when you kind of swivel or kind of, you know, almost fall, or you need, you need to sit down, you know, or you need to cry, like you know, there's just things along the way or you're really happy and you want to celebrate.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: You know, celebrating with people that support you and and really want you to win and succeed Is such an incredible feeling.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: So I think people realizing that.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: You know, one of the myths of being bold is that you to go alone and you're always confident and you're always just, you know, leaping, leaping, leaping.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: And it's like, though sometimes you're like tiptoeing rarely are you alone, and definitely you have little kicks in your confidence every now and then, and sometimes big ones, but it's how you come back from it, right?
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: So, when things have happened in your life and you've shared some extremely hard things, you made a statement of you've been in a traumatic state most of your life.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: So you kind of get through a lot of these things in a way that it doesn't mean they go away or that they're not with you.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: So I don't mean that, but I mean you've you figured out how to manage, how to deal, how to be in charge?
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: And then the accident happens, and what happened is you had tools in your toolbox where you're like, well, I know what happens if I do that and I choose this.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: Right, you're making Good choices.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: You're making choices for you, your family, your daughter, your sisters, for Salvatore, the person that's kind of by your side.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: You, you are doing those things for a reason.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: What helps you make the right choice or the choice that's right for you?
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: What do you go through in your mind?
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, I take my, not only my career, but my job, whatever you want to call it.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: I take it very seriously.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: I feel very fortunate that it's a mission for me.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: It's.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: I'm not here just to.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: This is a box I check or a card I punch, whatever.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: I love what I do.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: I love helping people and there are so many people that are strugglingly I mean emotionally, physically, spiritually and they're lost.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: And something that helps.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: All of those things are substances.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: Alcohol is free, marijuana is legalized in most states.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: If you have the brain of somebody who is in a traumatic state, you want all of those things to stop, whether it be the thoughts of that memory, of that assault, the feeling of the physical pain, the emotional loneliness that people are struggling with every single day.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: So for me, getting up out of bed every day, modeling what recovery looks like and it's not always pretty, you know.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: I said we were talking about bold is not always leaps and bounds.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: Sometimes bold for me is getting up and taking a shower, but those things for me are my mission on life.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: That is what I'm here to do is help others who are struggling, and that is everyone.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: There's not one person that I meet that hasn't said oh, my mother battled with alcoholism or my brother overdosed and died.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: There's always one.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: When you're a provider, you always got one story that kind of haunts you for life and that memory almost pops me out of bed.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: Sometimes it almost just gets me going and thinking what do I have to complain about?
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: So I do know the other side of a lot of stories that don't end well and you know that vicarious trauma.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: We can do definitely two things with that.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: I can live in that and just be so sad and so morose.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: Or either I can think there are so many people that are out there struggling that I can help because I do have the tools and very different way of practicing.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: I use a lot of humor, but I also very much open myself up and I level set and I just say you're not, you know you're not struggling alone, or you don't have to struggle alone.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: I'm here with you to be that warrior by your side, because life is hard I mean life is really hard and some days it's almost impossible to get through.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think one of the things you said there that's important is every day won't be a perfect day.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: Every day won't be exactly textbook of how you planned it.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: A lot of the days are not right.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: So when you're thinking about getting through something or moving to the next level or taking the next step towards being healthier, it is going through the stuff that's hard and messy, you know, not pretty, I mean and I don't mean you personally, not pretty, I just mean the moment isn't exactly like we wanted, it isn't all set up, isn't like oh, step one, step two, let me follow this chart.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: You know we have guides, we have maps, we have ways to do things and process that have been defined for us right, but sometimes, most of the time, we're human, so we have these moments where we're just like, well, I didn't actually follow the plan or I didn't make the right step, or maybe I stepped backwards instead of forward, but the thing is you can start again.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: You just have to make that choice, and I think it's easier said than done.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: It absolutely is not something that's just like a you know snap of the fingers, and so I think it's important for people to realize and to hear from you that it's hard.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: But when you do it, what does it feel like?
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: What does it feel when you have conquered or managed or you're directing your life versus the trauma that's happened to you?
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: For me.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: I mean, I know for a fact it gives me such a feeling of ability to help other people, knowing that I think it through this and a lot of times, lee, when I do share my history and my story with individuals that I'm working with, or even not just in practice, but along the way, when I'll hear, you know, other providers that will hear what things that I've gone through, they just can't, you can't believe that someone has, has gone through all of this, but then there's somebody who has always gone through so much more right, and those are the stories that I'm just like, I lean into and I sit up and listen, because those are the stories that inspire, really inspire you.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: So there's always another story, I think, that can inspire us even more.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: So, definitely don't go it alone and don't be afraid to laugh.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: I have laughed so much in the past nine months of the things that have happened to me.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: Savitura and I both we just there's things that we just laugh about, you know, I mean helping me take a shower.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: I mean that's not something you think is going to happen to you in your life, right?
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: And having to rebuild part of our house so that I could get around and be able to do that.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: You didn't think you were going to do that before 60 years old, you know, but here we are.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it takes vulnerability and I think one of the things that is important, because in today's world, like everything's perfect, everyone's perfect, there's a filter for everything, but there's not a filter for real life.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: And I think sometimes I get really fired up about the AI stuff and how people have no imperfections.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: Are they look actually very different than who they really look like, right, and that's just like an example of kind of things that aren't real.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: But people, I think it just sense that you can, you know, put a filter on your pain, put a filter on your life.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: It doesn't do anything other than mask it.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: It comes back, it doesn't go away, right?
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: So I think, for people realizing that, the healing and the time that, like, there is no way to filter this away, like you, you have to deal with it, which is probably some of the hardest, the hardest things to do is to know that you're in charge of it.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: So, when it comes to that, like, what are some of the things that you did to really know that you had to move through it, that you had to take the steps, that you owned it, you know one of the bold pieces of bold framework which you could be like a poster child for that is ownership, like what do I own, what do I not own?
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: Right and that's some of the things that I work through with folks is owning what they should and then making sure they disown what they should not, right.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: So tell me a little bit about how you kind of move through that ownership piece which gets you to the next step, which is healing, understanding.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: And probably it's an ongoing cycle of healing and understanding, because some days things could kick up, most likely oh, definitely, and I hadn't experienced a winter until this year, so I hadn't understood what the pain was going to be like in cold weather at Livington, Connecticut.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: So I guess for me, every day I have had some setbacks, you would say where I go to the doctor, and I think the message is going to be one thing and the message is something else.
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: Like I needed to have another surgery on my wrist, Was so not mentally prepared for that, and what do I do?
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: I give myself 24 hours.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: I give myself 24 hours to have a pity party if I want to.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: If I want to be angry, I get angry.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: I'm open about it.
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: I'm not happy all the time about the things that have happened to me.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: I wrote a book not too long ago.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: Can anger and gratitude exist at the same time?
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: And absolutely it can.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: I can be grateful that I didn't have a traumatic brain injury, but I'm still pissed.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: What happened to me?
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, I'm still angry and I think that's OK and I love that.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: You said that our children have it so different than you and I did.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: Right, I'm almost 60.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: And I know when I wanted to go play with my neighbors, I ran across the street and rang the doorbell or knocked on the door and we didn't play for hours.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: We didn't play across the country video games or whatever, and so we've got to experience real life.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: Real life and what it was like to look like not your best hair day, whatever.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: No social media, no cell phones?
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, look at that.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: Right, you have one.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: Somebody, hopefully on your trip that brought a camera because they didn't need it.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the disposable kind Exactly.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: Those memories were lost, but I take every day just as OK.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: What is today going to bring?
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: Because I never know, I don't know.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: I don't know if it's going to be in one of these days where I am ready to put music on, I am rolling around the house.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: I'm not quite there dancing.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: Like you said earlier, I am so motivated by music, by the arts, by theater, things like that really get me excited.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: And so the thought of me dancing again, the thought of me dancing around my kitchen and cooking again and doing things that I can't do yet and that's the big word that I put in front of it yet I can't do this, yet it's not off the table.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: I haven't really accepted and maybe this is part of a little bit of a denial in my head of that's not going to be me.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: That's not going to be me.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: The description of what they told me in the emergency room isn't me.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: It isn't me.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: They told you, you wouldn't walk, didn't they?
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: I would not be out of a wheelchair, that I would never do these things.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: And I have to tell you I just remember very vividly, because my pain was out of control and everything is so.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: When you're in so much pain, everything is heightened, senses, the lights are bright.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: Everybody's talking too loud, like I feel, like my gown was too loud, like everything was good.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: So, I heard and remember every single thing, and my sister that was there with me.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: I'm one of five girls, so I have four sisters.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: So I saw my sister that was there with me and when the doctor was talking to us both, she literally fell back against the wall Like she couldn't believe what she was hearing about her sister.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: And I remember at that moment thinking it's not going to be me, that is not going to be me.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: And every day I had the same thing.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: That's not going to be me.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to be on medication for the rest of my life, I'm not going to be walking with a walker, I'm not going to be in a wheelchair, I'm just not going to do that.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: And so there's some days I'm proven incorrect and there's some days that I just am like, ok, I'm going to get up and do this again tomorrow, and that's all it is about.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: It's not beautiful, it's not what you see on social media, it is ugly, it is not pretty.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: And there's times that we would laugh hysterically Like I would try to get in the bed.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: Or we just booked an Airbnb and we got there and the bed was literally like one of these old fashioned, high-rise beds.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: We laughed every night.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: You're like, well, that was pretty.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was your push to be in the bed.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: I saw that going a different way right.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: I saw it as being too much different than it is.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: And that's literally how we have gotten through this A lot of tears, but way more laughter than tears, way more laughter.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: I will get home from physical therapy and he's literally built me some new elaborate thing in the house or whatever, just so that things are easier for me.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: And one thing that how he and I live our life together is it's not 50-50.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: It's 100%, 100%.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: He thinks of me 100% of the time, I think of him 100% of the time, and it works for us.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: It really does Works for us.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't be as far, I wouldn't have come as far as I am, without his humor, without his resiliency, because he is.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: When you have somebody like that in your life and when you're that positive person but you don't have somebody to match it, it's really difficult and, yes, heartbroken, heart sick over what happened.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: But I'm not going to live in that.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to live in that sadness, because there's still a heck of a lot of fun stuff that we have together.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, push me in that bed.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, lots of 10 months of memories and more to come.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: I visualize you dancing in Paris at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: That's next Christmas.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: You know, last Christmas yeah.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Last night, yeah.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: So for me, I definitely can see it, and I think there's times in our lives where we believe something that maybe 98% of the world does not, and I think it's really important for people to realize.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: The most important belief in your success is what you believe.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you believe you will make it.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: You believe you will get over it.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: You'll have good days, you'll have bad days, you'll have mediocre days, but you will not give up.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: You will keep going right.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: So there's this sense of I'm focused.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: I know this path is imperfect, but I am walking it 100% and dancing it.
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: And you said that about their good days, there's bad days, there's this.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: I could say that about the day before my accident.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: I would have said, say, I would have thought I've got good days, I have bad days, they're in perfect days.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: I would have described my life that same way before the accident, just not the physical pain.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: So it's all like it's really.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: I feel honored that I was chosen to go through this accident and I think that sounds really bizarre.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: But I am so grateful that it wasn't one of my four sisters, because I don't think they could have managed it as well as me.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: That's really how I feel.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: I was in such great physical shape that the doctors did say, oh my gosh, if you hadn't been in this shape, you wouldn't have probably survived the accident.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: But grateful that it was me, because I know how to navigate stuff like this.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: I also have a massive recovery community that shows up for me, big, and when I say Lee, I got home from the hospital unable to walk, unable to take care of myself, unable to do any of the activities of daily living on my own, and I had 13 people at my house most weekends, doing yard work, bringing dinners to me, bringing groceries to my house, making sure Salvatore was okay.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: So I already knew how to not do life alone.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: I already knew how to talk openly about how ugly life can get.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: So I had those tools already ingrained in me.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: So I feel like I was almost prepped for this right, and so I was prepped to get ready for this massive accident that was going to happen to me, but it's not happening to me today.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think one of the things I learned early on, like I, you know, I lost my brother when I was six and he was 11.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: And I saw my parents go through that and I'm talking about a significant life moment of loss as a child that sticks with you forever.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: And then you have you know, everyone's probably done the lifelong activity where, like, there's other moments along the way that hit pretty hard and kind of kick off a scab or kind of kick off something that you had healed from.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: But I think what's interesting with that and what I found is something you just said that you feel honored and I can just see some people going like what are you even talking about?
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: Is your vulnerability, your story, your ability to overcome and move forward becomes inspiration for someone else?
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: And you don't think about like, oh, today I'm going to be inspiring.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: No, today you're going to like live your life and you're going to go left, right, left, right, left, right, as much as you can and you're going to keep going and that in itself just you don't realize, because you've opened up and shared your story around your traumas is inspiring other people and so you're actually serving others just through your life journey and you've been chosen to do that.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: I think, when you said that, I really feel like he gave it to you because, like you actually are strong enough to do it, that's right, yeah, and and I think that's a different mindset as well it doesn't mean like that it was anything like you would want anyone else to go through or anything.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: But I mean, but you can do it, you're strong, yeah, and I think we get our strength also from many other things.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: Like it's not by ourselves that we're strong or that we're able to do some of the things.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: Now it takes your motivation, your habits, your discipline, your action.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: Like it's you, that is you, and I think it's just really important that people understand that that vulnerability actually is a gift, and keeping things inside or not telling, or sharing or even seeking help doesn't help anyone.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: So, like being able to open up and if someone's listening and they just they want to ask for help or they want to they've always had the strong face, but they just need someone to know that they need a little boost or need some help or want to talk to someone, what guidance would you give them, just to kind of take that first step?
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: Well, the first person I asked for in the emergency, the trauma ER that I was sent to was a priest.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: I wasn't sure that I was going just to live or not, but the only way I knew this is just for me that I knew that I was going to get through this was with my faith.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: I have an extremely strong faith.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: So that was the first person that the ER doc was like not your family, not your, you want, that's exactly right.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: So I knew from that second I needed help.
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: So, asking for help from your family, asking for help from your, you know EAP, your local community church.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: There's 12-step meetings across the globe 24 hours a day.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: So if you're struggling with substance use disorder, all you have to do is go online and find a meeting.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: You don't even have to actually identify, but you can seek a lot of help through those types of meetings.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: I also asked while I had been, I was, I spent 11 days in the hospital, but about day three or four I was basically organizing a support group on the floor.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: I asked the nurse do you not have a trauma support group for people who just experienced this?
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: And she said we've never had anybody ask for that.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: So I was like well, I think we should all get together in the capital.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, there's a zoom meeting at three o'clock.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: I just see my laptop.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah and that's.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: And instantly they realized we have one of those on our floor.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: But you know, I'm glad I'm one of those, I'm glad I'm somebody that has no problem saying I'm not having a good day, you know I'm not having a good day.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: I need time off, I need a break, I need help.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: I need help from my friends, my loved ones, my sisters.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: I'm so blessed, like I said, to have the family that I have that never given up on me.
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: No, that's never even been a thought of theirs and the same thing, you know.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: But, salvatore, I was in the hospital, heavily medicated, I will say, and I said cryingly I understand if you don't want to stick around and I'm not going to tell you what he said, but he was basically like get the f out of here.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, like I don't.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: I don't even want to hear that come out of your mouth.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: It was like talking crazy, yeah, but it was so traumatic, like it was just.
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: I felt so like, okay, everyone's going to walk away from me, when actually what happened is everyone turns toward me and that was so beautiful.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: And you know a really good friend of mine, john I'm going to call him out.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: He sees, like my brother that I never had.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: He's also a personal in recovery and, and you know, we both have had.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: Just because you're in recovery doesn't mean life is going to be great.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: It actually means the opposite.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: You're gonna have some good is harder yeah.
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and everybody's toast and champagne and you're sitting there like this stops, yeah, and then really.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: But there are moments when you're like, okay, this is not fun.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm ready to go home now.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: But what has happened to me is John and I have had where we have said to each other, I'm glad we're not sick the same year, like where we've helped each other so much along the way.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: And you know, it's just, it's beautiful people like that that text me and call me and my friend Wendy from work she texts me almost every day, you know, just checking in on me, and she calls me.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: She says she's my, my fan girl, or I don't know which way it goes.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I'm her fan or if she's my fan, I don't know.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: But I think keeping your ego in check is really important, no matter how you can go to the most elite school and have all these letters out after your name which I have a ton of letters after my name you do.
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: What I say is that that gives me.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: That means I have a lot of student loans.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: I hear that you know, but but it doesn't mean I have to lead with ego.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: And it doesn't mean you're not human, and it doesn't mean you don't feel pain, and it doesn't mean you don't get hurt or feel hurt or that.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to fall into addiction.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: I think that's something that's so important here and substance use does not discriminate.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: Accidents don't discriminate, diff divorce does not discriminate, and I know women you know that could be they're so embarrassed about losing their, their marriage or whatever it can be.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: It shouldn't be full of shame.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: We put shame around things that are just life, things that happened, and why we put shame and guilt on something that people struggle with.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: I think that is so important for people to hear, because I think that shame becomes a barrier for them getting help.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: It does Right, I got, I'm embarrassed or I feel shameful or I don't.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: I don't want people to know this about me, because then they'll think X, y or Z and you just have to break that and it again.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: It is not easy to say and it's, and it's vulnerable and it's crappy feeling and it's just like.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: It is not always, you know, like oh wow, I feel so free, but it's the next day and the next day and the next day where you can actually put your energy, versus trying to hide something, to actually healing something.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: Right, right, and that's.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: That's.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: That's the message.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: So don't be embarrassed.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: Don't think that you're the only one.
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: If I'd had it sponsor early on in my recovery, that said, if there's a name to it, somebody did it before you, so it's, I love to say to I'm not, I'm not much, but I'm all I think about.
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: You know so.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: So ask for help, be super vulnerable, and then what you get to do as a result of that is exactly this get invited on some amazing podcast that you have the opportunity to help another human being.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: There is no greater gift on this earth than to help another person.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: There isn't.
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: There's not another gift ever.
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: If I can help and save another person's life, if I could help them from suffering in shame and in silence when those things should not happen, they should be raising their hand saying I need help, so that we can help each other.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, one of the things you said that I'll will probably end on and most likely be at least a potential title of your book, is the power of yet.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: So you adding that word on the end of a sentence you know I can't walk yet.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: I can't dance like I used to yet.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: You know I can't run like I used to, yet I'm not as healthy as I was yet.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: Like whatever, however, you wanna use that word, but that word is a very powerful word.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: What advice would you give someone on how to use that word?
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: You know, you have to put something in front of it first.
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: So you know, I want to be able to dance, I want to be able to run again, I want to be able to jump.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: There's things that I can't do yet.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: So when I go to physical therapy, I have a list of questions and I have a list of things that I want to accomplish.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: So every time, my physical therapist his name is John and he's a great guy and he's very dry and like I will ask him every month, when am I gonna be able to run again?
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: And he'll say things like, can you jump?
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, no, okay, and those are this little things.
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: So I don't know until I ask the question right.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: So I have to be able to define what is it that I really want to accomplish?
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: Do I want to be able to open my own business?
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: Do I want to get down to the way that I was in college Whatever you want to put around this, I don't have something in front of it and then develop a pathway to get there.
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: As a coach, I'm sure you know all the time.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: Well, what is it that you want to brand?
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: Let's see that's a really hot topic, right, you want to brand yourself.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: What is your brand?
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: What?
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: do you do for what do you want to be known for?
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: What is it, yeah, what makes you different or authentic, or you know what makes you you?
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: And why is it your mission right?
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: Why is it?
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: It's like for me, I mean, it was kind of, it was very I fell into this, literally Like it was something that happened.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: I found myself a difficult time finding recovery through the medical community, so I saw it elsewhere.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: And so then I wanted to be that missing piece in the medical community where somebody could say I've never had a doctor talk to me like you, where I'm like, of course you drink too much, you've been sexually assaulted or of course you have been drinking yourself the past three years because you lost a child, like I.
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: Absolutely let them know.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: It's okay to be broken, it's okay to absolutely be broken, because we're all broken.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: It's just a matter of how are we gonna fix this?
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: Or can we fix this?
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: What can we do to get better?
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: And so for me, it's those little bitty questions.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: Okay, so right now it was.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: I was asking the question of when am I gonna run, when I couldn't even walk.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: So I have the questions not in the right order.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: So I needed to have somebody tell me get this, do this, do this and do this.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: So I don't know if I'll ever be done.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: I don't wanna ever be done.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: I love pushing it as far as how far can I go to school, or how maybe can I do this or can I do that?
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: So I really enjoy being able to finish that sentence, but I'm sure once that dancing has happened again, I'm gonna add another yet to it.
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you keep moving, you keep setting the next goal and I think one of the things that you said around the power of yet is, like you said, I wanna run and someone says, well, can you jump?
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: Cause that's a predecessor for running, putting the stress on your knees and your legs and those other things in addition to the things that go along with it.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: But sometimes we think, okay, I wanna do X, but we don't think about what do you need to do before that.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: We have this big goal and then we maybe pump it up really big and then we get determined for about two weeks and then we give it up because it's too hard, because we didn't think about the what's before it, which are those small steps, those chunks of that goal that have to happen, those steps before the larger goal.
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: So I think people hear that they know that, they're smart enough to understand it, but they don't implement it.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: Like you hear people say, oh, I know what I gotta do, I'm just not doing it.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: Well, like start.
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: Let's keep it from starting.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk about that.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: So what's getting in the way?
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: So so much that can be learned from you.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: I really do.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: I hope you write a book because I think so many people could learn from your journey and the scale of Shelley could be just times 10, 10 X, and I think just being able to share your message is so inspiring.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: I'm honored to have you on the Bold Lounge and for you to be able to share it with us today.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being on the Bold Lounge.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: All the information about Shelley is down in the episode notes.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: You can contact her there and reach out to her.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: And the power of LinkedIn, which is how we met.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: That's right Connected.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: And your video of you taking your first stand up must have been on your porch.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: I was my back porch, yeah, so that's how we connected and I was like this lady needs some bold merch, and so I said it out to you, and then here we are.
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: That's right, and I have to want to say how many times I've worn that bold merch to my physical therapy and everybody's like, I love that I love it, I'll set them up.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: Tell John he's probably earned a sweatshirt and saboteur, so let me know what they need.
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: That's right, I definitely will.
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: But it's an honor to be here and I really do.
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: I admire you and your daughter so beautiful your family and what you've gone through and I think about you mentioned about Lutz and your brother and those trauma.
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: They leave marks.
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: They leave marks.
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: But, those scars are what are so attractive to me.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we all are broken.
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: I think that's what you said.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: And when you said that and reminding me of, there's actually an art where they break a ball and then they put it back together with gold, that was totally like we're all broken but we're all put back together and we could be stronger, even in pieces, than we were whole, absolutely.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, really just hoping someone here as a today reaches out to someone who can help them or just ask for that help or takes that first step towards where they want to go.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being on the Bold Lounge.
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Lee.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the Bold Lounge podcast.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: Through the continuum of bold stories vulnerability to taking a leap you will meet more extraordinary people making a positive impact for others through their unique and important story.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: By highlighting these stories, we hope to inspire others and share the journey of those with a bold mindset.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: We hope you've enjoyed this podcast and look forward to sharing the next bold journey with you.