Latest / Back Porch Confessions / Learning That Not Everyone Leaves
Transcript
- Gravesb41: Y'all, let me tell you about one of my favorite little gyms back home in Robinson, Illinois. If you're looking for boutique style that feels good, fits right, and doesn't break the bank, you have to stop by Polished Boutique, owned by my sweet friend, Mindy, and her two friends, Jennifer and Valerie. And it's ran with heart, y'all. Polished is one of those places where you're not just shopping, you're family. From on-trend outfits, cozy everyday staples, Sometimes my soul is just tired, tired of being strong, tired of carrying the heaviness, tired of fighting battles nobody else can see. And maybe you know that kind of tired too. The kind of tired that doesn't come from sleep, the kind of tired that settles deep in your heart, your mind and your spirit, the kind that comes from surviving, enduring, holding it all together and still showing up when your life had tried to take everything out of you. But here's the truth. Back Porch Confessions: Hey, it's Back Porch Confessions again. ⁓ today I'm going to be talking about learning that not everyone leaves. So if you listen to last week, last week's message, this week is going to be a continuation from that. I'm gonna do a little bit of review in a little first part of this to kind of go over some of the things of the core belief. Healing the abandonment wound. Gravesb41: That's a wrap on this episode of Back Porch Confessions. Where the tea is hot, the stories are real, and we never apologize for keeping it honest. Produced and edited by the magic makers over at Zay Media. Until next time, keep your porch talk spicy and your secrets safe, mostly. Welcome to Back Porch Confessions, where the sweet tea is strong, the stories are stronger, and no topic is too taboo for the porch. Grab a seat, kick off your shoes, and let's get into the kind of conversation your mama warned you about, but you listen anyway. 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Gravesb41: Being tired does not mean you are weak, it does not mean you are broken, and it does not mean your story is over. At Renewed Mind we talk about the hard things, the hidden heaviness, the silent battles, the trauma, the grief, the healing, and the fight to keep going when your soul feels weary. This is the place where strong people can finally tell the truth, where healing gets honest, where pain is spoken out loud. Ixa's products give you spa quality results right at home. I'm obsessed with Our Way Skin and the way it makes my skin feel buttery soft. Go check out Our Way Skin by Ixa at ourwayskin.com and tell them Barbara sent you because your skin deserves to be cared for your way. Back Porch Confessions: So I guess but b basically where I should start is back at that childhood core belief, which is where most people end up learning this from. something that changes every relationship we have. The belief that people leave. The belief that they maybe they left physically, maybe they've left emotionally, maybe they were there but just unavailable, emotional unavailability, maybe they loved. Gravesb41: And where the ones who have spent their whole lives pouring into others can find a space to breathe, be seen, and remember they are worth the battle too because sometimes the healer needs healing. Sometimes the strong ones need somewhere soft to land, and sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is admit you're tired and keep choosing to heal anyway. This is renewed mind, real talk, real pain, real healing. Back Porch Confessions: loved you but couldn't show up in the way that you needed them to. oftentimes that happens happens in some kind of parent relationships and sometimes it happens in friendship and sometimes it happens in marriages. ⁓ You just don't learn the other person's love language, don't know how to, don't understand what it is. And so therefore you can't truly love the person the way they need to be loved. And it just doesn't work out. ⁓ Somewhere along the way, Gravesb41: One honest conversation at a time. Back Porch Confessions: Your nervous system started making a rule that people leave. And once that belief gets planted, it starts showing up everywhere in every relationship that we have. It starts showing up in friendships, marriages, parenting, ⁓ in things that we should trust. It shows up like anxiety, hyperindependence. Hyper vigilance. And even when or the Actually, honestly. It's even in the way we see ourselves, honestly. It shows up even in the way we see ourselves. Sometimes we don't even trust ourselves. We certainly don't trust our judgment in being a good picker of partners. So the first segment is going to be about that core belief. I'm going to go back to it just to do a brief overview of what that is, what the core belief of people leave is. Core belief is a deeply rooted belief about ourselves. others or the world that develops through repeated experiences. That's a core belief. So when someone important in your life becomes unavailable, as a child, as a young adult, a teenage, kid, adolescent, the the brain starts creating explanations. Not because we're weak per se, but because Our brain at that age is just trying to make sense of the pain because we can't make sense of the pain because we don't understand it. The child doesn't understand this. The adolescent doesn't understand this. The inner child of us didn't understand it. They don't understand the things that go wrong around them with people that have addictions or in emotionally unavailable. The child doesn't understand what trauma is. The child only understands the person I need isn't here. So over time, the nervous system learns. People disappear. Love isn't consistent. Relationships aren't permanent. And I have to be prepared at all times. The mind remembers facts, as I've said before, and I repeated myself on this one. The mind remembers facts. The nervous system remembers. Experiences. So why does the brain keep expecting loss? I don't know. It's what's happened. It's anticipatory. Anticipatory abandonment is the expectation that relationships will eventually, I don't know, fade, end, become unavailable. ⁓ The brain's primary job is prediction. If abandonment has happened before, the brain prepares for it again. So does the nervous system. This is why some people struggle to enjoy good relationships. They can't. It could be sitting right in front of them, sitting in their lap. And they're just particip participatory, anti participatory. They're just waiting for the other shoe to fall off and the relationship is gonna end. So they sabotage it. ⁓ Part of them Like I said, they're waiting. They're preparing. They're preparing for it to end because it always does. Do you? Do you prepare for everything to end? Do you ever prep do you always prepare for anything that good is happening to you is gonna be taken away? I do it. Several of my friends do it. We are doomsdayers. Mm-hmm. So why do people feel unsafe? Gee, I don't know. Why do we feel unsafe? There are so many reasons in this world to feel unsafe. ⁓ but right now I'm just focusing on these. We will oftentimes have hypervigilance in relationships because of these things. Hypervigilance, as I've told you before, is just a trauma response. It's where the nervous system is constantly scanning for signs of danger. As soon as you walk in a room, you are waiting for a sign. The brain says, if I can see abandonment coming. Maybe I can stop. And I have that song. I don't remember what the song is, but I the guy goes, ha ha ha. That just went through my head. ⁓ yeah, no. So my brain, your brain, the nervous system, is constantly watching everything. Text response times, tone changes, facial expressions, energy shifts. I pick up on energy shifts in a big way. Changes in the tones of voice, facial expressions, text response times, sometimes. I yeah, mm, I just named me. You, any of you? ⁓ and it's not because I'm dramatic. It's because I'm trying to stay safe. Think about it. I'm not being dramatic, even though the person on the other side who doesn't understand it probably thinks I'm being dramatic. I'm simply just trying to stay safe. You're simply just trying to stay safe. Have I never thought about it that way, did you? You're not looking for a reason to worry. I'm not. I've got enough to worry about. As I've said before, and if you listen to the last podcast, you're looking for proof that you're safe. We just want to feel safe, protected, secure. So we're so used to an unhealthy love that when healthy love shows up It seems unfamiliar. It it's not. Easily accepted because we don't believe it, we don't trust it. So familiarity is a bias. It is the tendency to trust what feels familiar, even when that familiar is actually unhealthy, which is why a lot of people repeatedly pick emotionally unavailable, unsafe people to be around. Because they stick with familiar, which is what they were raised with. Are they emotionally unavailable people? Narcissistic people. This is why we choose them. We're choosing what's familiar. Chaos can feel normal. Stability can be sufficient suspicious. Have you done that? I know I have. I know that when I've been in friendships, relationships, jobs, anything where I felt life is kind of stable, I'm just like starting looking around going, where's the black cloud? When's something gonna fall? What's gonna happen next? Because it always does. Some kind of crap show always happens. So Sometimes trauma survivors don't hear their internal dialogue that tells them that they're safe. Sometimes trauma survivors don't fear unhealthy relationships. They dive right in. They're built for it, right? You're built for it. But what you do fear Is what? The unfamiliar relationships. The unfamiliar ones that actually are safe, that feel safe, that that you feel loved in, that you feel cared for in, that has communication, that has a band that steps up and shows you unapologetically every day how much you mean to them. A lot of times people that have lived through abandonment and rejection wounds. when they get in a relationship with somebody that treats them with the love and respect that they should be treated, and a man that wants to know what your love language is and wants to know everything about you and is highly curious about what you do and what you are and how you're doing it and actually truly wants to show up every day for you and not just long enough to get you to stay. That becomes an unfamiliar thing for those of us who are used to the ones that are put the show on in the beginning and then get complacent and and actually truly aren't interested in what we're doing and what we're about and who we are and what our love language is and what's gonna make us happy. It's all about what they need. So when we we are in those situations where somebody actually does love you, you oftentimes will hide from that, you oftentimes will run from that, you will sabotage it because it's too unfamiliar to your nervous system. It scares you. And when you live with that innate fear, because people have always left and people aren't real and truthful, they show up for a minute and then they walk away. You end up sabotaging it because the person that truly does want to be there. Can't continue to show up because you're constantly questioning everything they do and say. So you have to learn to receive support. You have to learn to receive that kind of love. Receiving that kind of support and love is allowing yourself to accept care without feeling guilt, without feeling shame or feeling like you owe them. Because I know that that's something I've struggled with: is when when someone shows up for me and shows me love, I feel like I have to repay them somehow. That I that I am indebted to their kindness somehow. And that's just a trauma response. ⁓ We don't owe people who love us. The only thing they truly want if they're actually truly loving us is they just want us to love them back as they are. They want us to know their love language. and That's where like relationship counseling can come in handy because oftentimes the person that has gone through trauma doesn't know how to be in that type of familiar relationship, doesn't know how to accept an actual love ⁓ without questioning everything because they haven't gone back and reparented that child. So many survivors. And as as I've said this before, and I'm pretty sure I said it in the last podcast. If I need people, I get hurt. So if you constantly are thinking because you need something or you need help, you don't want to ask for help, you struggle to do it on your own. Because if you let somebody help you, they're gonna hold it over your head, they're gonna become pompous asses about it, they're going to make you feel like you owe them, they're going to throw it in your face all the time, hold it over your head. So we equate all of that to I get hurt. If I need people, I get hurt. So we become hyper independent. that happened to us. Because when we were younger, we asked for help. We needed things and nobody showed up. We needed love, care, safety, protection. And we didn't get it. We stopped asking for it. People that have been through that trauma have stopped asking for it because nobody came when they needed it as a child. Nobody was there. And after disappointment after disappointment. Needing nobody felt safer. This is where hyperindependence is created. I chuckle now that I know that. I used to wear that with a a bad like a badge of honor of honor, you know, hyper independent. She's always been hyper independent ever since she was a kid. Well, now I understand why. And now I hurts my heart because I know I didn't get the love that I needed as a kid. ⁓ so that isn't such a badge of honor now. The hyper independence isn't such a badge of honor now, yes. I know I'm resilient and I can handle things on my own if I need to, but it's not a badge of honor. ⁓ hyperindependence is actually grief disguised as what? If you watch the last one, it's grief disguised as strength. Mm-hmm. Let that one sink in. So trust is built, not forced. Trust is confidence built through repeated experiences of safety, consistency, and reliability in a person, in a thing, in a place, a job. Trust isn't created by words only. Trust is really truly created by evidence, by actions, by the things you that happen consistently over and over, repeatedly without fail. Healing Healing isn't convincing yourself everyone is safe. Healing is learning how to recognize who is safe. So how do you do that? How do you go about Convincing yourself. Going actually going from convincing yourself to learning how to recognize it. Because if you have to convince yourself that someone is safe. They're probably not. They're probably not truly safe. If you have to convince yourself of it, if you have to talk yourself into this is this is safe. It's probably not. No can Do sometimes we need to talk ourselves through a situation? Yes, I don't want you to confuse that with convincing yourself. Convincing yourself is kind of like having to lie to yourself. Whereas walking your way through it. having open eyes and open heart and being able to recognize. That's completely different than convincing. If you have to convince yourself of something, you probably don't need to be doing it. That's just my opinion on that situation. So trauma has a past and a present. Learning to have discernment between the two and not carrying the past to the front future, that is another part of the healing that you have to go through. So the difference between the past and the present. So trauma distortions occurs when past experiences convince us that current situations are identical to the old wounds. So that's why I give you the caveat that convincing yourself of something is probably not the route that you actually need to go. If you have to convince. I think you have a warning, but So there's that distortion. The nervous system struggles to tell the difference between them, between the then and the now. You have to learn the difference. You have to learn to be able to recognize an old wound and how it's triggering a present situation. And then you have to take that. and take that old wound and put it back over here to be able to see what's happening actually in front of you right now. Because if you allow the two to commingle The situation is going to fall apart. You're not going to be able to see it correctly. You're going to have ⁓ distortions. And the person on the other side of the receiving end of that is not going to understand at all because they don't understand this old wound or trigger that you have. And so you're going to go from something that probably should be a molehill and you're going to turn it into a mountain. Because you you you allow that old wound, the past, to commingle with the present. So what's happening is your brain in the moment is reacting. But it's reacting to every moment that came before it. It's reacting to that past wound. It's not reacting to the actual situation. So you could be having a very explosive reaction to something that doesn't warrant that kind of reaction. But it's because you've never identified what those wounds were as a kid. You haven't identified what those wounds were as an adolescent. Or from an old marriage or an old relationship, whatever wherever the trauma has come from. So those explosive behaviors oftentimes will create dysfunction in a marriage, in a relationship, in a job. So you have to learn to have discernment between the two and leave the past ones over here and not allow them to interfere with the current ones. It's probably a whole nother podcast that I need to do. Someone send me a text message on that. So being able to reparent the abandonment that you went through, that abandoned child. Being able to go back and do that is going to be optimal for your healing so that you can recognize when the past trauma is square in your face in the present trauma. Reparenting is giving yourself the emotional support, protection, validation, compassion that you didn't consistently have or receive when you were young. When you were a preteen, when you were a young adult, the times when they were really important for you to have that kind of thing. You didn't So that's reparenting that portion of you. Pretty sure I did a podcast on this at some point. Reparenting your inner child. I'm gonna have to go back and look. I've done so many I I have to once in a while go back and look. But here's the thing, healing happens. when you, as the adult, begins to care, see, recognize, understand, and feel what your younger self went through. With a high emphasis emphasis on understanding the younger self and what happened then and how it shaped how you do and see things now. You didn't deserve abandonment. None of us do. Nobody ever deserves abandonment. Do we still go through it even as adults? We do sometimes. Sometimes people leave and we have that abandonment wound from that because we never s expected it. We didn't see it coming. You didn't deserve the neglect that you got. You didn't deserve the inconsistency. From your childhood. You needed the consistency, the love, the people to show up, the emotional support and safety, the family support. We all need that. We all need that to be able to have the ability to be true, strong adults as we grow up. Some of us didn't get that. A lot of us from Gen X didn't get that. And sadly, that makes makes for a very difficult situation as we grow up to become adults. we don't always have the ability to show up in love consistently ourselves because we ⁓ tend to be sabotagers. And so in the reparenting of ourselves, we have to know and understand. That portion of our childhood that we didn't get, that portion of our adolescence, whenever it happened. Make sure that you're doing that healing. Even if you're in your fifties, make sure that you do that healing. You deserve the peace and happiness and contentment and safety in life. So when so that when we experience people who stay, we can be more accepting of that. ⁓ sorry, I got distracted by a bee that seems to be building a nest outside my window. We'll have to tell the hubs. So when we recognize safe people, we don't always recognize that until we can learn to heal. So safe people They're they're the ones that are emotionally consistent. They're reliable. They're respectful. They're trustworthy. Trauma survivors, you know, those of us that had the childhood wounds, trauma survivors often focus solely on red flags. like I've described before, we are very in tune to what's going on around us. Every word, every move, every facial expression. We are in tune to everything. And we are looking for all the red fell ⁓ red flags. ⁓ they used a tone. There's something wrong. They have a pissed off look on their face. There's something wrong. What did I do? So the red flags are constantly something that we battle with. Healing also means learning to notice green flags instead of being focused on red flags only. We have to see the green flags. And what are green flags? It's hard for us to know that because we've never really experienced a green flag. So it's unfamiliar. So upon reparenting and healing that inner child, you learn to recognize the green flags, which are safe people, safe spaces, safe places. These are the people or the things that are going to have follow through. They're going to show up and actually continue to show up. They're going to say the things, and they're really genuinely going to mean it. They're going to be in tune with you and actually mean it. They're going to show up in your life and participate in your life and be interested in your life and the things that you're doing and saying and the ways that you're growing. they're going to actually be a part of that and mean it. they're going to follow through on the love that they promised you. They're not gonna just show up just to get you and keep you and then kind of pull back and then pull back a little bit more. They're gonna consistently stay and show up and want to know how to love you and how to make you happy. They're gonna learn to communicate. Everything is gonna be communicated properly. Well, I can't say everything because I'm sure there are times when people don't communicate properly and they're not meaning what they're sounding like. That's not always trauma related. Sometimes it's just people suck at communicating or don't know how to say something. ⁓ but they're gonna communicate. They're gonna try to have that open line of communication with you. They're gonna respect your boundaries. They're not going to ⁓ push back. If they don't like a boundary or don't understand it, the safe person is going to have a conversation with you about that. And then you will find a common, happy ground of understanding. a narcissist or an emotionally unavailable person, they're not going to do that. They're not going to respect boundaries. They're not going to communicate. They're not going to have follow-through. They're going to throw you that fishing line and they're going to reel you in. And then they're going to give you a little nibble over here and they're going to reel back in. And then they're going to quit showing up. And they're going to half-ass the relationship. They're going to become complacent. They're going to just let things fall apart. They're not gonna ask you how you are, how your day has been, and they're not gonna care whether or not your love has been love needs have been met that day. You need the opposite of that and recognize the opposite of what that is. A safe person is going to be one that's going to stay during difficult conversations. Some people do not like difficult conversations and they will sit there quiet. They typically will not have much to say. they will do a lot of nodding and shaking their heads when generally their brains are off thinking about something else and not hearing half the words that you're saying. But a person who genuinely is concerned and cares about your well-being, your health, your needs, your feelings are going to stay present during those heavy, difficult conversations. And they're going to want to be able to communicate back and forth with you. They're going to want to have that dialogue with you. They're going to want to work through those things with you and have those difficult conversations, even if it is saying something about them. That has hurt you. They're gonna be able to take that information as an adult, as a safe person, and have that conversation. Be apologetic, be compassionate. And want to resolve and not do that type of thing again. Whereas you're gonna have the other side that the flip of the coin that is gonna be the emotionally unavailable of narcissistic person that is going to give you pushback, that is not going to listen, that is going to say one thing or promise during the conversation and not actually ever do the thing that they say they're gonna do. Or if they do do it, it's only for like a week or two, just long enough to keep you happy and till you feel like you're safe again and then they're gonna go back to their old ways and be complacent and half ass the relationship. so that's recognizing the difference between the safe person and the not safe person. And here's one of the biggest things about safe people and unsafe people. Safe people are not going to weaponize vulnerability. And here's what I mean by that. So there are gonna be things because you've had this childhood. If you have core beliefs, trauma, and the things that led you to this point that you're listening to me. And you've said things to people about something from your childhood, and they've taken that said thing where you've been vulnerable enough to talk to them about it, and they've somehow use it against you. They throw it in your face. ⁓ for instance, I spoke with one of my exes about being ⁓ inappropriately judged, you know. Mm molested as a child. And in his moments of Ugliness. He would throw that in my face and he would say things like, You're just as disgusting as they are. You you asked for that kind of thing. ⁓ you you're just as effed up as the rest of your family and ⁓ blah blah blah blah blah. Like try to turn me into the monster that I grew up with. Because for whatever reason his narcissistic feelings were hurt. ⁓ so he pushed back on me and used against me the things that I was vulnerable and explained and expressed to him. so that's what I mean by like weaponizing vulnerability. sometimes children have a father or a brother that they have to be vulnerable and when they're older and they have to go back and they have to ask the father or the mother for help. And if this father or mother is is a narcissistic type person, they may use that vulnerability and hold it over the child's head. They're weaponizing the fact that they had to help the child. and using it against them in in words when they're feeling mean or nasty or or whatever brings it up. So knowing the difference between somebody that is going to weaponize what's happened and they're an unsafe person to a person that you can come to and be vulnerable vulnerable with and express what has happened to you. And and they don't weaponize and use it against you. They actually care. They actually have compassion. It actually hurts them too. They would never ever want to turn around and use it against you. Hold it over your head. that's a safe person. A safe person is one that you can be vulnerable with. An unsafe person is one that's going to use it against you. They're going to weaponize it. They're going to use it against you. Save people. don't require perfection to stay. ⁓ One of the things that we do is is I don't know that I so much do it now that I'm older and I'm doing more healing and things like that, but at times in my life, and I know I see some people still do it, we learn to test relationships. So we have to learn to stop testing relationships. What do I mean by that? Relationship testing occurs when a fear occurs or causes people to push others away and to see if they'll come back. Dell Do that on purpose. Probably did it in my definitely in my teen years. ⁓ know about maybe in my early twenties or whatever. It wasn't really something I did a lot, but I I've seen a lot of people throughout my life do it. And it and it's a trauma response. It really is. When you have to test someone and push them away just to see if they'll come back. Mm-hmm and then you're all hurt because they never ever come back. Because they get tired of your BS. Yeah. It's not a it's not a good decision to do that. But anyway, we have to learn to stop doing that. Those of us who have done it or even still do it. And what it is basically it boils down to the nervous system is just wanting certainty. It's just looking for safety. It's just wanting to be reassured in a psychotic type kind of way that you're there for the long haul. and so let's just see what happens if we do this or that. Let's just see what happens if we Get our friend to text our boyfriend and see if they respond. I mean, I don't do anything like that, but I have seen people do it. I've heard people do it. I've had friends do it. I didn't do it. ⁓ but they're testing. They're testing to see. If you're in it for the long haul, if you're really truthful and if you really mean it. ⁓ they're looking for certainty in you. And some people learn to manipulate that in ways that's just crazy to me. So kind of what goes through some people's minds when they're testing a relationship on them, whether or not the person is truthful. If I push you away and you leave, I was right. I was right, because I knew I couldn't trust you. But you push them away. I g I guess I just have been through enough that I I don't ⁓ I don't I don't do that. it's a dynamic that has always been perplexing to me. But it happens on a routine basis. People do it all the time. And then they end up losing good people and then they're all butthurt because they've lost good people and ⁓ and then they want to cry around and be a victim. Anywho's and anyhouse. it's not a healthy way to to test a relationship. You shouldn't be testing relationships in the first place. ⁓ so you have to learn to stop doing that. Don't do that. It's not good. It's not healthy. ⁓ What they're looking for is if I push you away and you stay, then maybe I can trust you. ⁓ Well, ⁓ you may do that to the wrong person too many times. You may that do that to the right person one time and then then then they're they go away and they're not gonna put up with it. So is is it worth the risk of of plaguing that game? Because that really becomes a a psychotic game that I don't think is healthy in any way, shape or form. ⁓ So we have to go into like a healing journey to be able to move forward from that. we have to be able to create new evidence that everything is okay without like testing relationships, ⁓ needing reassurance constantly. So healing recur healing, blah blah blah. Sorry. Healing occurs when When new experiences repeatedly challenge old beliefs. Makes sense, right? New experiences challenge old beliefs. So that means that the new person or the person in our life that has consistently showed up repeatedly whether or not we believe they would, whether or not we tested them, ⁓ That created a new experience, sometimes one that scares the bejeebis out of us. Because we're prepared for them to not do that. We're prepared, prepared for them to leave. And so when they don't leave and they're giving us new experiences and new ways that they love us, we realize we're on this healing journey. Some people don't. They end up pushing that person away. It's a whole nother podcast for a whole nother day. So trauma says to us, as I've said before, everyone leaves. Healing says some people stay. So When you go through the healing in one healing moment at a time, one safe relationship at a time, one healthy friendship at a time, one trustworthy person at a time, one consistent experience at a time helps build us. And helps build that reassurance and that safety within us, that we don't have to do things like test the relationship. We don't have to have that constant reassurance. Learning that not everyone leaves. Takes time. Is built one truthful, consistent thing, experience at a time. A secure attachment, which most of us don't experience until we do the healing. A secure attachment is the ability to trust that healthy people can and will remain emotionally available and connected. That's a secure attachment. Secure attachment is the ability to trust that healthy people can and will remain emotionally available. And connected. Maybe people did leave. Maybe we have been disappointed. It happens right. maybe that hurt that we went through, it shaped us over time. It shaped the entire view of every relationship that we've been in. But the healing comes from when we learn that their inability to stay, be it the parent, the child, the relationship, whatever, their inability to stay was never proof that we weren't worth staying for, that there is something wrong with us. That's not what it says, even though as a child that was our core belief, because we didn't understand the context of everything. That's why you have the the reparenting and the healing that you do now as an adult so that you can look back at yourself at that age and learn to do the healing and why things happened, why the parent acted that way, or whatever the seri s scenario was. You will learn during that healing process that you were always worthy, you were always lovable, always enough. And the healing begins the moment you start asking, am I enough? Are they going to leave? And you start noticing that people do stay. People already have stayed. Who has already stayed? Who's already stayed in your life? Can you think of anybody? Can you answer that? Who has consistently showed up in your life? I'm sorry, I keep pushing this drawer open and close. I don't mean to do that. It's the popping noise you guys keep hearing. ⁓ who has showed up consistently for you? And stayed. Who is safe in your world? I have plenty of people that are in and around me that are safe. Some people that are not safe. Some people that I still need reassurance from and that I need to have. consistent communication, showing up, connection with because of my inner wounds, my inner healing that I'm still doing, I need to have that consistent with somebody. So learning to reparent, letting go of the what was and seeing what it is now, releasing that past wound and not letting it connect with the current wound and making things a mountain out of a molehill, that is healing in and of itself. Learning to find safe people, trusting people. and knowing that people aren't always going to leave is another step of healing. Actually feeling safe within yourself is also another place of healing. How long has it been since you've done anything to really think about the healing that you have or haven't done? The vulnerability that people have taken advantage of, the people in your life that you want to keep there because you know they are safe. After listening to this, I would like for you to be able to write down or even just think about the people in your life that are there that show up and that stay consistently. And that are safe. When you see those people. Thank them. They may not know what you're talking about, but just thank them. Thank them for being there. Thank them for loving you. And thank them for keeping your heart safe because you deserve it. And sometimes the people on the other side need to know you're grateful. Anyway, this is Back Porch Confessions. I appreciate you guys listening. This is always where the healing ⁓ it gets honest. The truth gets spoken. Sometimes we don't want to hear it. And nobody has to carry old wounds alone. Because healing isn't pretending abandonment never happened. It's learning that your future doesn't have to be defined by it. I think that each and every one of you has the ability to heal. You just have to want it. You have to see it and you have to commit to it. As always, make sure you listen to the commercials. Make sure you hit me up if you need to have any kind of virtual therapy. There's a commercial on here for it. The porch therapy is always open. Thank you to my friend Tina for the sign. I have a second one that Tommy got ordered for me. I have it out on my actual back porch. ⁓ and hopefully when the weather gets a little bit cooler I can sit outside and do some ⁓ of these for you guys. So I can actually be on the back porch. Anyway, thank you guys for being here. As always, till next time. Love you. Love yourself truly. Don't be pushing people away. Do the inner child work. Do the inner healing. And know that you are worthy and you are enough and that I love you. Have a great day. Thank you guys.