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Fire At Will with Megan Margherio · The Trauma Therapist

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma Theripis Podcast. My name is Ga Macpherson.
0:04
Speaker 1: I interview incredible people who dedicated their lives to helping
0:07
Speaker 1: those who have been impacted by trauma. Here we go,
0:12
Speaker 1: So five, four, three, two and one. All right, folks,
0:15
Speaker 1: welcome back to the podcast. They're very excited to have
0:18
Speaker 1: my guest today, Megan Margerio. Meghan, welcome, Hi, thank you.
0:23
Speaker 2: It's nice to be here.
0:24
Speaker 1: Awesome. So. Meghan is a trauma informed coach, writer, speaker,
0:28
Speaker 1: and yoga instructor based in Saint Louis a survivor of
0:32
Speaker 1: childhood sexual abuse and intimate partner violence. She helps women
0:36
Speaker 1: reconnect to their bodies and in her wisdom through somatic practices, coaching,
0:40
Speaker 1: and storytelling. Her debut memoir, Ever Woven a Reckoning, comes
0:45
Speaker 1: out in October twenty twenty five. Megan, is it Saint
0:49
Speaker 1: Louis or Saint Louis?
0:51
Speaker 2: Saint Louis?
0:52
Speaker 1: Okay, it's one of to reveal my ignorance before we
0:58
Speaker 1: get going, share with our listeners where you're from originally
1:00
Speaker 1: and where you are currently.
1:02
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:02
Speaker 3: So, originally, I'm from a really small town in mid
1:05
Speaker 3: Missouri of population of fifty five called Middlegrove, Missouri, deep
1:10
Speaker 3: in the heartland, so surrounded by an Amish community on
1:15
Speaker 3: one side and farms on the other, so.
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Speaker 2: Very very much out in the middle of nowhere. And
1:19
Speaker 2: then now live in Saint Louis.
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Speaker 3: I've lived here for about almost twenty years, but getting
1:25
Speaker 3: ready at some point to kind of pick up and
1:27
Speaker 3: head to the West coast.
1:28
Speaker 2: Actually, and I'll be heading to Seattle soon.
1:30
Speaker 1: Oh so awesome.
1:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, so a little bit of transition.
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Speaker 1: Happening, all right, So let's dive in here. You've got
1:37
Speaker 1: a book coming out again, Everwoven Reckoning. But how did
1:42
Speaker 1: all this start for you?
1:45
Speaker 2: Yeah?
1:45
Speaker 3: So I've had the idea for writing a book kind
1:48
Speaker 3: of playing in the back of my mind for a
1:50
Speaker 3: really long time, and it's something that I've always toyed
1:54
Speaker 3: with but always resisted at the same time. So the
1:57
Speaker 3: resistance was very strong because I have to be visible,
2:00
Speaker 3: which is kind of the thing I didn't want to be.
2:03
Speaker 3: But then also I just really didn't know what I
2:06
Speaker 3: was going to say, and so the idea, you know,
2:09
Speaker 3: kind of just kept percolating in my head and I'd
2:11
Speaker 3: push it away, and then I'd come back and I'd
2:13
Speaker 3: push it away and then this this time, when I
2:16
Speaker 3: actually sat down to write it, it was because I
2:19
Speaker 3: thought to myself, well, what would I even say? And
2:22
Speaker 3: when I asked that second follow up question, which I'd
2:24
Speaker 3: never asked before, the words just flooded. And so it
2:29
Speaker 3: was like the book came already formed to me. I'd been,
2:34
Speaker 3: I guess, in the back of my mind or on
2:36
Speaker 3: the walls of my mind, been writing the words to
2:38
Speaker 3: this book for years, and I was just finally at
2:41
Speaker 3: a place that I felt safe enough in my story,
2:44
Speaker 3: safe enough in my healing to actually be able to
2:46
Speaker 3: not only hold it, but be able to then present
2:49
Speaker 3: it out to the world.
2:50
Speaker 1: Okay, that is the general response. Now let's dive a
2:55
Speaker 1: little deeper here. When I wanta how did this whole
2:59
Speaker 1: process journey start for you? That's what I want to
3:02
Speaker 1: ask you?
3:03
Speaker 2: Got it so odd?
3:05
Speaker 1: Go backstory in details?
3:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, I, like you said, I am a survivor
3:12
Speaker 3: of childhood sexual abuse and intimate partner violence, and so
3:17
Speaker 3: a lot of trauma work, a lot a lot of
3:19
Speaker 3: trauma work has been done, a lot of decades of
3:21
Speaker 3: ignoring what was screaming out from the inside of me,
3:25
Speaker 3: begging to be seen heard.
3:28
Speaker 2: There was this emptiness that was in me that I
3:30
Speaker 2: couldn't fill.
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Speaker 3: No matter how many times I tried to do something
3:35
Speaker 3: on the outside, whether that was some level of achievement
3:38
Speaker 3: or just high functioning kind of ability, I couldn't fill
3:43
Speaker 3: whatever was kind of in me. And what I found
3:48
Speaker 3: was that what I was missing, this emptiness that was
3:51
Speaker 3: kind of coming from me, was really it wasn't the
3:55
Speaker 3: absence of love because I'm unlovable, which was the story
3:59
Speaker 3: I was telling myself. It was the absence of self
4:02
Speaker 3: love because I'd been taught that I was unlovable and
4:06
Speaker 3: that distinction changed everything.
4:09
Speaker 1: For well plus right there, because that's major.
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Speaker 2: Yes, So.
4:17
Speaker 1: Walk me through that again.
4:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, So a little bit of.
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Speaker 3: Kind of like what you said, like my backstory, So
4:24
Speaker 3: was I survived childhood sexual abuse from a adopted kind
4:30
Speaker 3: of child that came into our family. I don't refer
4:33
Speaker 3: Tom as brother, but an adopted sibling that came into
4:36
Speaker 3: our family. And so I was abused from ages eleven
4:40
Speaker 3: to fourteen, and then I went and my first husband
4:46
Speaker 3: was abusive as well, and so from the ages of
4:49
Speaker 3: twenty one to twenty eight, I was experiencing intimate partner
4:52
Speaker 3: violence as well.
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Speaker 2: So a lot.
4:55
Speaker 3: So the first twenty eight years of my life carried
4:57
Speaker 3: a lot of heaviness inside all of that was also
5:01
Speaker 3: some suicidal ideation and just like deep self loathing, deep
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Speaker 3: self blame, and I had to kind of dig myself
5:11
Speaker 3: out of this darkness that I was sitting in. And
5:16
Speaker 3: when it kind of started to click for me was
5:19
Speaker 3: that I was constantly looking for external validation, external things
5:26
Speaker 3: to make this hole that was inside me feel full,
5:30
Speaker 3: so that.
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Speaker 1: I were you seeking out therapy or not?
5:34
Speaker 2: Initially no, so yes.
5:36
Speaker 3: So for the first gosh, like so I would say
5:42
Speaker 3: about ten years, I didn't. I just kind of was
5:47
Speaker 3: like white knuckling it through life. After everything had ended,
5:52
Speaker 3: I was really trying to just like push it aside
5:55
Speaker 3: and be like, well, it's over, I don't need to
5:57
Speaker 3: deal with that anymore, like, and it just kept coming
6:01
Speaker 3: back around in different ways and the ways that I
6:04
Speaker 3: was unable to show up for myself, the ways that
6:06
Speaker 3: I didn't think I deserved to get to show up
6:08
Speaker 3: for myself, the ways that like when people tried to love.
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Speaker 2: Me, I couldn't let that in.
6:14
Speaker 3: And eventually it all kind of just came to a
6:16
Speaker 3: head and I knew I had to do something. And
6:19
Speaker 3: it was my son who was kind of the impetus
6:23
Speaker 3: for going into therapy, but he was also the impetus
6:26
Speaker 3: for why I got out of this intimate partner violence situation.
6:30
Speaker 3: And so so in so many ways, like my.
6:34
Speaker 1: Son, when you say he was the impetus for getting
6:36
Speaker 1: into therapy, are you talking about like, oh my god,
6:38
Speaker 1: I've got a kid, I've got to get my stuff
6:40
Speaker 1: together and deal with it or what.
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Speaker 3: No, So there was this singular moment, and I can
6:45
Speaker 3: I vividly remember it. A lot of like my life,
6:49
Speaker 3: she'll see in the book, A lot of my life
6:50
Speaker 3: tends to happen in my closet inexplicably. I don't really
6:53
Speaker 3: know why, but I actually wrote part of the book
6:56
Speaker 3: in my closet. But I just happened to be in
6:58
Speaker 3: my closet at the time and the door was closed.
7:01
Speaker 3: My son was thirteen at the time, and he came
7:04
Speaker 3: and he was like knocking on the door, and he
7:06
Speaker 3: was mad about something. And I can't remember what it
7:09
Speaker 3: was he was mad about, but it was unfair and
7:11
Speaker 3: he you know, and so he was yelling about how
7:13
Speaker 3: unfair something was, and then something happened and my body
7:20
Speaker 3: locked into place, and I couldn't move, and I didn't
7:25
Speaker 3: hear my son's voice through the door anymore. I heard
7:28
Speaker 3: my ex husband's voice through the door, crystal clear, perfect,
7:34
Speaker 3: and it froze me, like that's why I locked in place.
7:38
Speaker 3: I froze because it all came back. Everything came like
7:43
Speaker 3: a flood back to me. And so what started as
7:47
Speaker 3: just like this crystal clear auditory hallucination or you know,
7:51
Speaker 3: like flashback, then went into like images kind of just
7:55
Speaker 3: cycling through, and then just as fast as it came,
7:58
Speaker 3: it was gone.
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Speaker 2: And I was back standing in that closet.
8:02
Speaker 3: My son's still yelling at me, and I started just trembling,
8:06
Speaker 3: and I fell to the floor of my closet, and
8:09
Speaker 3: I thought, I cannot mother my son if I am
8:13
Speaker 3: worried that he's gonna sound like his dad, and I
8:17
Speaker 3: need to handle that like that comes to me.
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Speaker 2: And so I spent the rest of the.
8:23
Speaker 3: Night looking for therapists and well first making sure I
8:27
Speaker 3: wasn't like like needing to be checked in somewhere because
8:30
Speaker 3: I was deeply concerned about what.
8:32
Speaker 1: I from that dad.
8:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, And then I found a therapist that night, called
8:39
Speaker 3: her the next morning, and I got into therapy like
8:43
Speaker 3: a week or so later, because she was brand new
8:45
Speaker 3: to her.
8:47
Speaker 2: To the to the group that she was with, which
8:49
Speaker 2: meant she had wide open books.
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Speaker 1: So right, wow, pause it damn intense. I mean, thank
8:59
Speaker 1: you so much for shit learn that and that is
9:06
Speaker 1: just so much in there. My god. So how old
9:12
Speaker 1: were you at that time?
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Speaker 3: So I was thirty eight then, and that's what that's
9:17
Speaker 3: what prompted me to go into therapy, And so I
9:20
Speaker 3: started talk therapy at that point, and then through talk
9:24
Speaker 3: therapy we got a lot of stuff uncovered, like, uh,
9:28
Speaker 3: you know, I have CPTSD, which obviously isn't that surprising,
9:34
Speaker 3: but anyway, so and then just kind of learning how
9:36
Speaker 3: to navigate that and that diagnosis was helpful because it
9:39
Speaker 3: helped to explain a lot of the things that I
9:42
Speaker 3: was experiencing, but also just normalized it a lot more
9:46
Speaker 3: so I didn't.
9:47
Speaker 2: Feel so isolated.
9:48
Speaker 3: But then from talk therapy, that led me into things
9:52
Speaker 3: like ketamine therapy, which was really helpful and accelerated a.
9:56
Speaker 2: Lot of my healing. Yeah, R was really helpful.
10:00
Speaker 3: Trauma sensitive yoga has been incredibly helpful. So just like
10:04
Speaker 3: a lot of modalities that I've been able to try
10:07
Speaker 3: because I'm very lucky and very privileged in that way,
10:10
Speaker 3: and so being able to try these things and see
10:13
Speaker 3: how they've made a difference for me, and in the
10:17
Speaker 3: five years since then, I have fundamentally changed my life.
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Speaker 3: Like everything about my life is different. I am different.
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Speaker 3: I don't know. I just walk through the world holding
10:32
Speaker 3: myself a little bit more and not asking for the
10:36
Speaker 3: world to.
10:39
Speaker 2: Take pieces away from me to make it easier.
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Speaker 1: You have this really incredible way of articulating your feelings
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Speaker 1: and it's very graphic in the sense of producing images,
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Speaker 1: and it's pretty amazing. So what were you doing for work?
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Speaker 2: So I Yeah, so I was a teacher.
11:05
Speaker 3: So initially started my career in education, I worked with
11:09
Speaker 3: primarily gifted learners, so those who were intellectually gifted, so
11:14
Speaker 3: working with them on building social skills and creativity. Worked
11:18
Speaker 3: with a lot of people, a lot of kids that
11:20
Speaker 3: were on that autism spectrum.
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Speaker 2: And so that was kind of my primary job.
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Speaker 3: I did that for about fifteen years and then I
11:27
Speaker 3: got burnt out, and so in the middle of doing
11:30
Speaker 3: all this therapy work, I was also dealing with extreme
11:34
Speaker 3: burnout from teaching through the pandemic and kind of coming
11:38
Speaker 3: out of that in everything, and so I ended my
11:40
Speaker 3: career teaching high schoolers, but I've taught everything from kindergarten
11:45
Speaker 3: all the way through. The bulk of my career was
11:47
Speaker 3: spent actually teaching middle school, which is kind of like
11:50
Speaker 3: the weirdest group, as everybody says, but my favorites, but
11:54
Speaker 3: I'm biased, didn't think that they're special. But anyway, so
11:58
Speaker 3: I left education and I spent the last couple of
12:01
Speaker 3: years trying to really kind of figure out who I
12:03
Speaker 3: am now that I get to actually live out in
12:07
Speaker 3: the world as me and stop trying to please other people,
12:12
Speaker 3: stop trying to shield myself from what isn't actually there.
12:18
Speaker 2: And so once I was able.
12:19
Speaker 3: To kind of do that, I found trauma sensitive yoga
12:23
Speaker 3: and became a trauma sensitive yoga coach and facilitator, And
12:27
Speaker 3: so I've been able to use that to then work
12:30
Speaker 3: with women who've experienced trauma on embodiment strategies, so and
12:35
Speaker 3: then added in semantics, added in meditation and mindfulness and stuff,
12:40
Speaker 3: so I now can work with women who just need
12:44
Speaker 3: to be able to feel in their body and know
12:46
Speaker 3: that they can and that it's still possible and that
12:49
Speaker 3: they don't have to be a floating head.
12:51
Speaker 2: All day long.
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Speaker 1: Let me just remind everyone speaking with Megan Margerio. Her
12:56
Speaker 1: book is called Ever Woven Reckoning. It's coming out in
12:59
Speaker 1: October twenty five. So all right, let's kind of go
13:03
Speaker 1: back to the book here and dive in. When did
13:08
Speaker 1: you realize you wanted or and or needed to write
13:12
Speaker 1: the book?
13:14
Speaker 3: So earlier? Actually this year. So I actually wrote the
13:18
Speaker 3: book in February. It took thirty two days to write
13:22
Speaker 3: because I wrote it NonStop. I've never I have ADHD
13:27
Speaker 3: so hyper focus and I can get along really well,
13:30
Speaker 3: but this was an extra level of hyper focus. So
13:34
Speaker 3: I was focusing for about twelve hours a day, every
13:37
Speaker 3: single day, for thirty two days straight.
13:39
Speaker 2: And out of that came ever Woven.
13:43
Speaker 3: And like I said, the book itself was already kind
13:46
Speaker 3: of like formed in my mind. It was just the
13:49
Speaker 3: it was the process of actually going through it. And
13:53
Speaker 3: so the structure of the book is that the it's
13:57
Speaker 3: a conversation. Each chapter is kind of a conversation between
14:00
Speaker 3: myself and the press, like the past version of me
14:03
Speaker 3: who lived it, so little me, team me, twenties, me,
14:07
Speaker 3: thirties me all kind of get to share their stories
14:10
Speaker 3: and so for me, that was really important is that
14:13
Speaker 3: I wanted to honor these versions of myself that I
14:17
Speaker 3: ran from for so long and that I kind of
14:20
Speaker 3: just tucked away and was like, I can't deal with
14:22
Speaker 3: you because I have to keep moving forward. And now
14:26
Speaker 3: I was at a place where I could kind of
14:28
Speaker 3: deal with them.
14:28
Speaker 1: And why was that? Why was that important to be
14:31
Speaker 1: able to do that.
14:33
Speaker 3: Because it felt like such a I don't know, it
14:37
Speaker 3: felt like such a misrepresentation of my entire life to
14:41
Speaker 3: just keep ignoring them and to keep their stories like
14:45
Speaker 3: talk aside where only I knew them and I didn't
14:47
Speaker 3: even want to look at them, and so it just
14:50
Speaker 3: it kind of just felt like that I was making
14:52
Speaker 3: them disappear, and that isn't don't I don't want parts
14:57
Speaker 3: of myself to disappear when I'm going through a process
14:59
Speaker 3: to try to reclaim parts of myself through my healing.
15:03
Speaker 3: And so this was really critical and paramount actually to
15:06
Speaker 3: me being able to kind of I think progress in
15:09
Speaker 3: my healing was being able to get to this place
15:11
Speaker 3: where I could kind of talk to these versions of
15:14
Speaker 3: myself and kind of like truly like I dialogue with them.
15:19
Speaker 3: And so that's what that first like at the beginning
15:22
Speaker 3: and ending of each chapter, that's what I'm doing. My
15:25
Speaker 3: present self is dialoguing with those past selves.
15:28
Speaker 2: And then in the middle, it's a.
15:30
Speaker 3: Series of vignettes that are just memories that that version
15:34
Speaker 3: of me that I worked really hard to channel from
15:37
Speaker 3: the floor of my closet, where I wanted them to
15:42
Speaker 3: be able to tell their stories in their words, and
15:45
Speaker 3: so those were dictated into my phone and then have
15:49
Speaker 3: been largely left verbatim because I wanted I wanted those
15:53
Speaker 3: stories to be honored properly by the one by the
15:56
Speaker 3: ones who lived it, And so this is kind of
15:59
Speaker 3: in anyways, it's a love letter to them, in gratitude
16:06
Speaker 3: for surviving, and not just for surviving, but for protecting
16:10
Speaker 3: and holding on to the parts of myself that I
16:14
Speaker 3: think are the most important, like the fact that I
16:16
Speaker 3: can still love people and be kind and show up
16:21
Speaker 3: like those all matter, Like that trauma didn't harden me,
16:25
Speaker 3: and I don't have me like present me to thank
16:28
Speaker 3: for that. I have past versions of me to think
16:30
Speaker 3: for that, because they're the ones who had every reason
16:32
Speaker 3: in the world to harden and they didn't. And so
16:36
Speaker 3: this is kind of my opportunity to really thank them,
16:40
Speaker 3: but then also for them to kind of confront me.
16:43
Speaker 3: And so the reason it's called a reckoning is because
16:47
Speaker 3: there is a chapter where I invite every past version
16:52
Speaker 3: of myself to kind of like this round table in
16:54
Speaker 3: my mind where I ask where they are allowed to
16:59
Speaker 3: fire at will. They get to ask me the questions
17:02
Speaker 3: why did you abandon me? Why didn't you think my
17:04
Speaker 3: truth was worthy of you? Why didn't you listen when
17:07
Speaker 3: I was calling for you? Why wasn't I worth your attention?
17:12
Speaker 3: Like these questions that hurt to hear, right, but also
17:16
Speaker 3: are things that I needed to I.
17:18
Speaker 2: Needed to acknowledge.
17:19
Speaker 3: I needed to acknowledge my own self abandonment and my
17:22
Speaker 3: own self erasure so that I could stop doing those things.
17:27
Speaker 3: And so I could also prove to myself that I
17:30
Speaker 3: could stay, that I could hold myself, that I could
17:33
Speaker 3: hold them, that I could hold their stories, and that
17:35
Speaker 3: I was worthy of that trust. And so that's really
17:38
Speaker 3: whatever Woven is all about.
17:43
Speaker 1: Within there, I'm sure there's an answer to the question
17:46
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask, but I want to ask it
17:48
Speaker 1: just here. When you decided to write the book, what
17:55
Speaker 1: did you I guess, why did you decide to write
17:59
Speaker 1: the book. Was it to contact those other parts of yourself,
18:03
Speaker 1: earlier parts of yourself. I need to get this out.
18:06
Speaker 3: Or what a little bit of that, A little bit
18:09
Speaker 3: about this was going to be an avenue for my healing.
18:12
Speaker 3: I don't know that I initially thought I'm going to
18:14
Speaker 3: publish this. I had just initially was like, I'm going
18:16
Speaker 3: to write this down. But then I think as I
18:19
Speaker 3: was kind of moving through it, I realized that what
18:22
Speaker 3: was happening was that I was I was writing from
18:25
Speaker 3: the trenches. So you know, I'm deep in the middle
18:28
Speaker 3: of that messy part of healing, right like where I'm
18:33
Speaker 3: confronting old stories and rewriting them and creating new ones.
18:37
Speaker 3: And so there's this push pull that's constantly happening within me.
18:41
Speaker 3: And every trauma memoir I've read has kind of ended,
18:47
Speaker 3: like they go through the trauma of what happened to them,
18:50
Speaker 3: and then it stops. And then that's kind of like
18:53
Speaker 3: where like survival and kind of all of the fallout
18:57
Speaker 3: from the trauma really starts. And that's not necessarily always
19:00
Speaker 3: covered in those books, but that's usually where kind of
19:03
Speaker 3: the clinical books pick up and kind of fill that void, right,
19:07
Speaker 3: And what I wanted was to offer a voice from
19:11
Speaker 3: inside the trenches, from inside the messy middle, to go, hey,
19:14
Speaker 3: every contradiction, you're going to push up against everything that
19:17
Speaker 3: you're like, well, this does not make sense. That makes
19:20
Speaker 3: you human. That is your humanness on full display. And
19:24
Speaker 3: it's not something to convince yourself that you're broken about,
19:29
Speaker 3: because none of us are broken. We are just operating
19:33
Speaker 3: under a story. And when we start to kind of
19:36
Speaker 3: see our contradictions and we start to see our own humanity,
19:40
Speaker 3: those stories can change.
19:42
Speaker 2: And so then.
19:43
Speaker 3: That's really whatever Woven ultimately came about was that I
19:47
Speaker 3: decided to publish it because I wanted. I wanted the
19:50
Speaker 3: book that I was looking for, which is the like,
19:53
Speaker 3: what is it like to be in the messy middle?
19:55
Speaker 3: What is the mind like in the messy middle? And
19:58
Speaker 3: what is what.
19:59
Speaker 2: Does it feel like? What is it like navigating that tension?
20:02
Speaker 3: And very much throughout this book you stay entirely in
20:06
Speaker 3: my mind, and so you get a front row seat
20:08
Speaker 3: to all of my contradictions, all of my humanity, all
20:12
Speaker 3: of the ways in which I am trying to heal,
20:15
Speaker 3: and I'm putting that out in real time for you
20:17
Speaker 3: to see.
20:21
Speaker 1: You talked earlier in the interview here, you talked about
20:27
Speaker 1: hesitancy of being seen being visible. Did you to what
20:36
Speaker 1: degree were you sharing your process with friends, relatives, family members.
20:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm.
20:48
Speaker 1: Talking about even earlier, kind of earlier as you were
20:52
Speaker 1: like going through before the book.
20:56
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, so no one knew my story.
20:58
Speaker 3: My sister is seven years older than me, and so
21:02
Speaker 3: she had moved out of the house by the time
21:04
Speaker 3: that the sexual abuse had begun, and she didn't know
21:08
Speaker 3: about it. No one said anything to her, no one
21:10
Speaker 3: talked about it. It was never anything that was discussed,
21:13
Speaker 3: you know, very much a we sweep this under the
21:15
Speaker 3: rug and pretend it never happened kind of situation. So
21:18
Speaker 3: even my own sister didn't know what I experienced until
21:21
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen. My husband, who has been in my life
21:26
Speaker 3: for the last fourteen years, he waited a decade to
21:29
Speaker 3: hear my whole story because I didn't feel safe sharing
21:33
Speaker 3: any of those because I thought I would be rejected.
21:36
Speaker 3: I thought, you who, He's going to see me and
21:38
Speaker 3: think like, she's so messy. I don't know that I
21:41
Speaker 3: can handle that kind of mess And at every turn
21:44
Speaker 3: he showed me that's not who he was. But when
21:47
Speaker 3: it came to writing Ever Woven, the first day that
21:51
Speaker 3: I actually had started writing, I'll never forget it because
21:54
Speaker 3: I it took me forty five minutes to tell my husband, Hey, so.
21:58
Speaker 2: I'm doing this thing.
22:00
Speaker 3: I'm writing this down and it's coming out really easily.
22:04
Speaker 3: It took me forty five minutes because I was deeply embarrassed,
22:07
Speaker 3: and the only way that I could do it was
22:09
Speaker 3: by like basically I hidden my hoodie like the whole time,
22:12
Speaker 3: Like I was just like, please don't judge me, Please
22:14
Speaker 3: don't think I'm a terrible person, because I'm doing this
22:16
Speaker 3: because embarrassed.
22:18
Speaker 1: At what at the writing or what had occurred, or
22:22
Speaker 1: what was the what we embarrassed?
22:24
Speaker 2: The audacity, In my mind, it was the audacity.
22:27
Speaker 1: Like you could write a book, that I could write
22:29
Speaker 1: a book.
22:29
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, yeah, So it was the it felt like
22:32
Speaker 3: arrogance at the beginning. And then as I watched the
22:36
Speaker 3: book of all that arrogance faded into shame because there
22:40
Speaker 3: was a lot of my life sitting on the page,
22:43
Speaker 3: and so that brought up some old wounds that I
22:45
Speaker 3: had to face, and then shame faded into pride and
22:50
Speaker 3: now what exists and what's going into the world in
22:54
Speaker 3: October is the most honest thing that I've ever created
22:59
Speaker 3: in my entire life. And next to my son and
23:03
Speaker 3: my marriage, this is the thing I'm the most proud of.
23:07
Speaker 1: You, Megan, exude that what you just said. You exude
23:13
Speaker 1: this authenticity, this, this presence, this ability to be in
23:26
Speaker 1: the moment of you know, and and and connect with
23:33
Speaker 1: what you've gone through and to be able to bring
23:35
Speaker 1: it out and share with us. Not everyone can do that.
23:39
Speaker 1: It's it takes a lot of I think, a lot
23:43
Speaker 1: of courage, a lot of guts, a lot of having
23:46
Speaker 1: done a certain amount of work, I believe, But you know,
23:54
Speaker 1: you you exude it. You can I can feel it.
23:56
Speaker 1: It's amazing, it's really and it's powerful.
24:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you.
24:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's powerful.
24:02
Speaker 3: I'm deeply honored. That's so nice of you to say
24:04
Speaker 3: thank you. And I'm working on taking compliments.
24:06
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, practice No, that's that's that's awesome. But
24:11
Speaker 1: it's true, you know, and it's really cool that I
24:15
Speaker 1: get to interview someone like you who really exemplifies what
24:19
Speaker 1: I hope my podcast is about be able to connect
24:22
Speaker 1: with people who are like that. So excuse me. Yeah,
24:27
Speaker 1: you're welcome. So what do you aside from the book,
24:32
Speaker 1: what are you doing how professionally?
24:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I work as an embodiment coach, So working
24:38
Speaker 3: with women who've experienced trauma, who may or may not
24:42
Speaker 3: be going through talk therapy.
24:43
Speaker 2: It's not a requirement.
24:45
Speaker 3: I'm not obviously, I'm not handling that component. That's not
24:48
Speaker 3: what I'm qualified for. My job is really to help
24:51
Speaker 3: women feel into their bodies and realize that their body
24:54
Speaker 3: isn't it isn't something to be feared, It isn't the enemy.
24:59
Speaker 3: It didn't betray them, even though we oftentimes think that
25:02
Speaker 3: after trauma, we don't understand why our body acts the
25:05
Speaker 3: way that it does, and so it feels like it's,
25:08
Speaker 3: you know, not in our control and.
25:09
Speaker 2: Like it's doing its own thing.
25:11
Speaker 3: But what it is is the body is deeply loyal
25:13
Speaker 3: and it's following the scripts that kept us safe because
25:16
Speaker 3: they kept us safe.
25:17
Speaker 2: And so it's about teaching the.
25:19
Speaker 3: Body that this where we are right now isn't that
25:24
Speaker 3: so it isn't the thing that we went through. And
25:26
Speaker 3: so that takes a lot of time, it takes a
25:29
Speaker 3: lot of practice, and so that's really my job is
25:32
Speaker 3: to really help people to kind of feel into their bodies,
25:35
Speaker 3: to notice the weight of their feet in their shoes
25:38
Speaker 3: and not immediately want to check out and like come
25:42
Speaker 3: back into their head, but to actually stay with the
25:44
Speaker 3: sensation or the absence of sensation and let that be enough.
25:50
Speaker 3: Because every time that we come back to our bodies,
25:53
Speaker 3: we're building self trust, We're showing that, hey, the story
25:57
Speaker 3: and the proof that my body is giving me of
26:00
Speaker 3: what I'm experiencing right now is what I'm experiencing right now,
26:05
Speaker 3: not I'm what I'm thinking or telling myself in my mind.
26:09
Speaker 3: And for me, embodiment was really the first stage of
26:13
Speaker 3: feeling safe. So I started my yoga practice about fifteen
26:18
Speaker 3: years ago when I left my now ex husband, and
26:24
Speaker 3: for me, yoga was just a place to be on
26:27
Speaker 3: my mat to be with other people, but to know
26:29
Speaker 3: that no one was going to be able to talk
26:31
Speaker 3: to me or come up to me. Like during that
26:33
Speaker 3: sixty minutes I got to be alone, but with people,
26:36
Speaker 3: and that was at the time, that was what I
26:37
Speaker 3: really needed. But as I kind of moved through yoga,
26:42
Speaker 3: I noticed that there were people who just kind of
26:45
Speaker 3: like did whatever they wanted. They'd take shavasna the whole time,
26:48
Speaker 3: or they were doing different poses, and I was like,
26:50
Speaker 3: they're breaking the rules. That's not allowed, like, oh my god,
26:54
Speaker 3: you know, and so I would judge them right, And
26:57
Speaker 3: then I realized, wait a minute, they're doing yoga. They're
27:01
Speaker 3: doing the real yoga because they're listening to what their
27:04
Speaker 3: body is calling for where I'm performing for the teacher,
27:09
Speaker 3: and that switched a.
27:12
Speaker 2: Lot for me.
27:15
Speaker 1: Very very cool. Once again, the book is called ever
27:19
Speaker 1: Woven a Reckoning. All right, Megan, how do people learn
27:24
Speaker 1: more about you? Reach out to you? What's the best way?
27:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, So you can find me on my website Meganmargario
27:31
Speaker 3: dot com, or you can find me on TikTok and
27:36
Speaker 3: Instagram at Megan Underscore Margario.
27:39
Speaker 2: The last name spelled m A R G H E
27:42
Speaker 2: R I O.
27:43
Speaker 3: Always helpful, and I'm on Facebook, but I don't do
27:47
Speaker 3: much there, so I would highly recommend Instagram or TikTok
27:50
Speaker 3: being the places to check me out.
27:52
Speaker 1: Got it? Okay, we'll have that linked up here at
27:54
Speaker 1: the show notes page at the Trauma Therapist podcast dot com. Megan,
27:58
Speaker 1: love to have you back. You're amazing. I know there's
28:02
Speaker 1: a lot we haven't even touched upon, but best of
28:06
Speaker 1: luck with the book and Jesus, you're so inspiring. Really,
28:10
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you, it's the truth. Thank you so much.
28:16
Speaker 2: Well, thank you. It's been an honor and a privilege.
28:18
Speaker 1: All right, take care,