Latest / Alive & Kicking: Stories of Waking Up with Kay Eck / Interview with Ashley Livingston

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Interview with Ashley Livingston · Alive & Kicking: Stories of Waking Up with Kay Eck

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, I'm Kay Eck, and welcome to my podcast, Alive and Kicking: Stories of Waking Up.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Hi again, everyone.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the podcast, Alive and Kicking.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: My guest today is Ashley Livingston.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Ashley, I am so glad that you're here with me today because I feel like your story is one that could be critically important for people.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: I know that your experience is not uncommon, but it's it's challenging.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you've gone through something really challenging.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember I myself, I went through something very similar to what you're going through.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I know that our conversation is going to be really potent today.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I just want to thank you so much for being here and for your willingness to share your story.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited to be here.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, welcome.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so let's just dive right in.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit um about your upbringing and what your family was about and how you fit into that.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I was raised by first generation Christians, which means they were the first in their family to um find Christianity and claim it as their religion.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think my dad's side of the family um went to church, but it wasn't um necessarily uh a living relationship as maybe Christians would call it.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: It was just going on Sundays.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um my parents went to Purdue and they became Christians through Campus Crusade for Christ in their college years, and then they went on to um be on staff with Campus Crusade.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: So then they took the message of Christianity and their job was to help spread it.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I was born a few years after that, and then my parents moved to Wheaton.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: My dad began trading because being on staff with Campus Crusade doesn't afford you to really pay for a whole lot in your life, and they had me as a child now to support.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: So um my dad shifted into working in the business world and was pretty successful.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I was raised uh within Christianity, fundamental evangelical Christianity is kind of how I would label it now, looking back on a quiet street in Wheaton for all of my life.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think we moved there when I was a baby from Indiana.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: And my brother and sister were born, and we were taken to church on Sundays, we were at youth group during the week, we were volunteering and serving, um, and really a lot of our lives revolved around our Christian faith.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm the firstborn, and I would qualify myself as a highly sensitive person.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm actually reading in the middle of the book right now, the highly sensitive person.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, yeah, this is explaining a lot about who I am.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: And as I look back over my life and I look back over my childhood, that informed a lot of my experience.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I definitely resonate with remembering and being able to pick up on tone in a room or knowing when an adult was unhappy.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think something that was important about my upbringing that I recognize now in light of my personality is that there were a lot of um men in my life who were angry and controlling and um just like a very patriarchal upbringing.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what the men say goes even in the church.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: It was, you know, everything's led by men.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: Women are there to serve or to play a supporting role.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but the leadership was male-driven.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so I watched the women in my life, who were my only examples, um, really take a subservient role in all of those situations, in their homes, in their communities, in the church.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I learned how to be a really quiet, small, good girl.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I remember many instances of um recognizing that men were angry and feeling really afraid, and then knowing that I needed to do everything I could to help them not be angry or do everything I could to not be the source of their anger.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that really affected me a lot and was one of the coping mechanisms I employed was to be a people pleaser so that I could get the love and the security that I needed in order to feel safe and okay as a young girl and even through adolescence, and that carried through adulthood to some degree.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that's kind of the framework for my story and for my upbringing.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, how did your parents communicate their expectations to you?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm, that's a great question.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um a lot of it felt informed by the church, and a lot of it was not, I don't think it was really when I think about how I parent my children, I lay things out really clearly so that they know the expectations, and then we go from there.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know that that was really done as I was growing up.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think the generation I come from, our parents didn't talk a lot.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't express a lot to us in their parenting styles.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think a lot of times it was just kind of like, oh, okay, this is what's expected.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: You kind of look around, you take the temperature of the room, you see, oh, that didn't go okay, or that um was disappointing.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: I need to do it differently.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a lot of a lot of uh biblically centered uh moral standards and expectations were a part of my upbringing.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um we always went to churches that said, you know, where is it found in the Bible?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Or if it's not found in the Bible, then how do we know that that's something that's good or true or right?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: So everything was run through the lens of scripture.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and if it wasn't clear in scripture or no one had made a clear, you know, stance on an issue based on what scripture said, then you go to the pastors and the elders in the church and you get your collective wisdom from them.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um and of course, there was an emphasis on doing your own spiritual work and growth and studying the Bible, but um, I feel like for me, my upbringing came a lot from the church and it was filtered into our home through my parents.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: And and so it was really this um, you know, God is the authority, and then the parents are given this transferred authority from God over the children, and so it was very clear to me as I was being raised that if I loved God and wanted to please God, then I needed to go through my parents and obey and fall in line there first, and then that um that proved my allegiance or my love for God first.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: So the relationship between us and our parents was a serious, I mean, I took it seriously because of this perspective of there's a God in heaven and he's a man and he is angry that you are sinful, so angry that he killed his son, and there is one way for him to not be displeased with you, or for him to be able to be in the same room as you, um, for your sin to be forgiven, and that's claiming Jesus as the savior and trusting him for the forgiveness of your sins.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then from there on out, then it's obey scripture, obey your parents, obey God.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so there was, it was confusing for me when I look back because I've always been an empath and I've always been very connected to my feelings and to the energy that's around us and within us, and none of that was talked about or explained or valued or highlighted.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've only started to learn about that in the last few years, and I'm very connected to myself now, um, but I wasn't then, and so it was very confusing to just have this very prescribed way that you needed to be as a child, and it was obedience and respect and keep yourself small and don't rock the boat.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember being a very inquisitive child, and I remember in junior high, I had um a Sunday school teacher, and he was the first person I really felt like welcomed my questioning.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, he would teach us something out of the Bible, and there were only like eight or nine of us around a table in this small room in the church I grew up in.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: And he'd ask, he'd teach us something, and I'd be like, but what about or what about this?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: Or but when we learned this earlier, then how does that fit together?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: And he would actually entertain my questions and wouldn't try to shush me or you know put it aside or say, oh, it's just the mystery of God.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: He actually was engaging with his faith and with scripture.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: And but that is, I felt like that was kind of an anomaly in my early formative years.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't feel like questioning or curiosity was especially welcome.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: It was here's the lay of the land, and you need to fall in line.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: This is serious.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know that what you're talking about is really making me realize how little um work at least I did as a parent to make sure that my expectations were being effectively communicated.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's one thing, you know, that you've you've got kids and you're telling them what to do, but you don't know and you don't stop to ask how they're receiving that information.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: So so much of how you grow up is like you're you're left to your own devices to figure it out.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, your story really points that out, and that's like in hindsight, feels kind of shocking to me.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: And that's part of the awareness I have now.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's been, I'm sure we'll get to, you know, what has my awakening been like?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: And was it abrupt?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: Was it a long process?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: But that has been a challenging part of my awakening, is that within a short amount of time, I looked around and I was like, okay, with what's happening to me and how I see myself and the world now and what I think about God and spirituality and religion, I can't keep parenting my kids the same way.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like one of the biggest things that the church was encouraging us to say, and all the Christian literature was saying was tell teach your children to obey the first time, first time obedience.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: And if that doesn't happen, there's a consequence that's swift and firm, so that they learn to respect and obey quickly.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I looked at that after recognizing that there was just more to the story of life than the small narrative I had been involved in up until that point in my life.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, I don't know everything.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: And how can I expect my children to obey me right away all the time when sometimes I'm gonna get it wrong?
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a humility now to my parenting, and I'm trying to parent in a different way that's more conversational with my kids.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I don't pretend to be up here and they're down here.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: I actually think that they are my greatest teachers and they are leading me into greater love and awareness.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and certainly I'm their mother and I've been alive a little longer, and so I know a little bit more about planet Earth, but that kind of is it.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like they have deep inner knowings, just like I do.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: And some of the things that come out of their mouths, I'm like, wow, I am listening, I'm paying attention.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: You are teaching me.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: There's some things I can teach you, but often it's you teaching me.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so that role reversal of having humility, apologizing to them when I get it wrong, saying, you know, I'm gonna give you some guidance, and there are gonna be times that we can have a conversation around that.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: You can tell me how you feel about it, and there are gonna be times where I expect something of you, and even if you don't want to do it, you're gonna need to do it because it's just part of life, folding your lottery or pitching it around the house.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I always want to hear what's going on in your heart and in your spirit as I'm guiding you as your parent.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's more of a partnership to me right now than it ever has been.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: But navigating that is really tricky because there aren't many voices in the in this sphere.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's something like the intersection of psychology and spirituality is really interesting to me right now.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: I think that they're very intertwined, there's no separating it.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm really interested in how can we parent our children to have a sensitivity to waking up even sooner than we did?
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and what does that look like?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: How do I reverse engineer what I've been through to save them the heartache of some of my story?
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: How do I keep them tender and open-hearted and open-minded and yet still respectful and loving and kind and compassionate?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: And um, of course, your children are much younger than mine, but I just had a um conversation with my daughter yesterday uh about this topic because I was telling her that you know, she's 21 now, but when let, for example, when she was 13, um, because humanity as a whole has awakened to a greater degree, her version of 13 was much more self-aware and awake than my version of 13.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I really have like I already recognize all the ways in which she's far ahead of me in terms of growing up more awake than I was, and it presents all kinds of challenges, and the only way that I have found to reconcile that is to allow her to teach me, you know, how things are and to really dive deep into what she's thinking and feeling about her surroundings, and of course, that's um particularly relevant uh these days.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to go back a little bit and ask you about like other events and circumstances that you experienced as a child with and outside of the church that affected you and how you made decisions.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's a really open-ended question.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think the most influential things that come to my mind were um I think just the limited the limited scope of community that we had within Christianity was a really big influential factor for me.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: So most of my community believed the same things that my family did because that's where they felt safe and that's what they knew, and so that's where we spent the most time.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um we spent a lot of time with our grandparents who um, you know, believed differently than our family.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: I always had, we always had this mentality, especially towards my mom's side of the family, where her parents were um, I think you'd I think they would have probably said they were atheists.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they just didn't really believe that there was a God at all.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and they weren't really open to like conversations around spirituality.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so, and same with my mom's sister as we grew up, that was kind of the impression I got.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: So we were always praying for them.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: And whenever we were with them, we were always um, as I got older, I was aware of the fact that I was supposed to be an example in the faith to them.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so, because my parents had this background with evangelical Christianity, a big part of that is sharing the gospel, which is that Jesus died for your sins, that you are born broken and sinful, and there's a way out of hell.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: And here's what it is.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: And if you'll just pray this prayer and believe, then you're safe from God's wrath.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so when my mom's parents died, that was there was so much grief and confusion around that.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, it even makes me emotional.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um like I watched my mom grieve her parents' death thinking they went to hell.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um and even as a child or an adolescent, I remembered thinking, that's awful.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's I don't know what could be worse than that.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: This doesn't make sense.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they loved us, they weren't terrible people, they earned an honest wage, they lived a very simple life in Indiana in a rural town.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: And how could this be?
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it didn't matter how much we loved them or tried to show God's love to them in whatever ways we did that, or how often we prayed for them, they didn't get saved, to our knowledge, when they were living.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so then it became this shift of well, maybe after their after people die, maybe they get another chance, but there's no biblical grounds for that.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so there was just this mystery around what is real and what is life about?
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that really infiltrated all of um our experiences with our extended families, my dad's side of the family, some of them were Catholic, and so there was a little bit of like, well, maybe they know God and maybe they're saved, but it's not the same version of faith that we have.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so like quite literally, my whole existence up until a few years ago was really only through this lens of Christianity.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: That is where I began to see everything in my life, how I saw people, how I experienced situations, what I thought about what was happening, my fears for the future, um, fears for my own salvation and the teachings around that.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so my experiences within the church were um like all of that fear drove me to being as good of a Christian as I could be.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because if this is the one truth, which they would say there is one truth on earth that has to do with God and Jesus, and this is the way, um, I was like, if this is the one truth, I need to build my life around this.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: I need to be really careful about my eternal salvation.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing else matters.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: If you go to hell after this in internal torment, then what was any of this worth?
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so in junior high and high school, I got very serious about my religious, the religious side of my life.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: And um, it was based in fear.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: It was based in fear of God's wrath.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then once I knew I had prayed the prayer and would repeat the prayer at night to myself just to make sure, you know, for years, um, make sure I was safe, make sure I really meant it this time.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe I didn't mean it last time, maybe I wasn't earnest enough, maybe I've sinned too much and I need to ask for forgiveness and salvation again.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: Then it became, can I lose my salvation?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so really it was almost like this obsession with feeling safe and knowing that I was safe and that I was loved.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that was a really honestly, it was a really hard way to grow up in fear.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I was an anxious child, anyways, but to not be able to articulate that or to not ask those questions that I really felt like were nagging in me, like how could this be the way it is?
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: And what about all these people?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: And what about people in the church who aren't doing it this way that you're saying?
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I just had so many questions about what I was seeing that I didn't feel like were safe to ask.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so instead I I bought into the story and I lived, you know, completely within the boundaries of that story.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: And if that's the truth that you see, then that is all that matters.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: So um I don't know if that answered your question well.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, that's so powerful because it's making me realize that you know, the foundation that the church sought to deliver to you was the very same foundation that was creating, you know, all these realizations that you're never gonna be good enough.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: You're never gonna be enough because you're already flawed, you're you're fundamentally flawed, and now your life is about compensating for that.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: So those two, you know, that's like a such a slippery foundation to actually build a life upon.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: It must have um just caused so much inner turmoil for you.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: It did.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I've always been sensitive to um the psychology of things, and so from a young age, psychologically, I thought, well, what if I lose my mind?
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: And what if I blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, or what if I denounce my faith, I'll go to hell.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so it was.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like it creates it spun off, and this might just be the way my mind works, but I have a feeling that I might not be the only one.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: It spun off into all of these what if, what if, and it created all this fear for me around what if what if I start to lose my mind and I say or do something I don't want to do and I lose my salvation?
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: Or what if I actually am not understanding it right and I I've gotten it wrong all along and I've deluded myself.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and this is just how my mind works, but I think the suppression of all of my questions and the curiosity is what led to my suffering.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: If I had been able um to ask the questions I had, or if I had felt safe to say, I'm not sure this lines up for me, um, I think that would have changed my experience of depression and anxiety, which I struggled a lot with throughout my 20s and 30s.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I've gotten through for the most part because of this new way of seeing the world and understanding um what choices I do have with my thoughts and my beliefs.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, what you're describing to me feels like almost like a life of torment in a way.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it was supposed to be this life of being covered by the blood of Jesus and saved and full of joy, and now we take it out to other people so they can know, and something just didn't feel right about telling other people you're wrong, and I have the answer, and you need to believe the same as me so that you don't go to hell.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, in our youth group, that was a part of our mission trips.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: We would go on work trips, we would hold VBS, and everyone had to participate in evangelism, whether they felt like it was their spiritual gift or not.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and there was just this, there was, I read somewhere recently that one of the problematic things people encounter when they pull back from the Christian faith is that it can feel very tribal when you're in it, um, because it's like we have this one way, and we are um persecuted or we are criticized for saying that other people are wrong, but this is just the way life is, and the Bible's very clear that there's one way and there's one truth, and all other religions really are wrong and misguided.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: Doesn't mean people are bad, but it does mean they're gonna have eternal separation from God.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's this we are up here with the one truth, and everyone else is down here.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so when you go out from the church into the world and you're sharing this gospel truth that you have that other people don't have and they desperately need in your mind, and they're going to die without forever, um, and you're met with rejection, you go back to the tribe, and the tribe is like, yeah, it's okay.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: We've been rejected too.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: Hopefully, they have their eyes open to see the truth one day.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it's okay that they don't now, but you're safe here with us.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I got to the point of being very honest with myself and saying, I'm not sure that this adds up for me, I'm not sure I can believe everything that evangelical Christianity is claiming.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: I can't believe I can't take the Bible literally.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, some of the things that we say that God wants for us and will do for us are not happening in my life, and I don't see a reason why God isn't acting the way you say he should.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I started to pull back, and it's psychologically very difficult to do that because you have been in this tribe and the tribe protects you, and you're a part of it, and they hold you and say it's okay, like the world is gonna disagree with us and all of that.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then you go back after you felt rejected in the world for saying there's one truth and one way, and you feel safe again within this tribe.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so what I experienced when I finally two and a half years ago said, I just I can't go to church anymore.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: I need to reevaluate what I even believe.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know who God is or where God is, if God is a man or a woman or genderless or if there's energy or what in the world this divinity is and where it exists, and is it in me?
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: And do we ask for it?
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: Is it inherent in everyone?
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: I was just asking all the questions and I lost all that support.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: Those aren't safe questions to ask from the inside.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was very quickly ushered to the outside and lost the support of my the only community I knew.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: And it was really my entire community because often Christians will kind of insulate themselves, especially in the town that I live in.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's largely Christian, and so uh that was really hard and psychologically really difficult to say, I'm not going crazy, it's okay to question this, I'm not gonna be banned to eternal torment for asking these questions and being honest with myself.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: And it took a lot of courage, and um I'm thankful that I got to the point where I was able to ask those questions, but it really I only got there because I was in crisis internally.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I um the the courageousness of your path is just to me, it's just astounding because at this time when this is happening for you, you've been married and you have five children.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, you know, that's a big deal.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not just about you, but it's about your entire family.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: So can you kind of describe how this path unfolded for you at this point?
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because what I what I'm really, you know, one of my um my heart's calling and my passion is to show how this path of awakening that can often feel like a break a complete breakdown, like everything is falling apart, and in a way that's true.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but tell me about how this path unfolded for you.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think I would have to back up again to my childhood.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um the foundation that was set was that this is what Krishna marriage is, this is what God intends for people on earth, a marriage between a man and a woman, one commitment forever.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, divorce is not an option.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um and the idea behind marriage was that it was a reflection of God's relationship with us.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so God wants healthy marriages, a healthy marriage, a healthy Christian marriage is one way of proclaiming the gospel in the world, and then birthing and raising children.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the purpose of that is to make disciples of Jesus Christ out of them to also go out into the world and serve the greater purpose of spreading the gospel.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so this is what I saw, and this is what I knew, and this is what my parents expected for me.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's no living with boyfriends before you get married, there's no premarital sex, there's um, you know, you choose the person that you're gonna marry and then you make a forever commitment to them.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: And within Christian circles, that often happens pretty young because you go, well, I went to a Christian college and everyone laughs about the fact that there's a senior scramble.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: When else are you going to be in an environment with a ton of other Christian people, which you're not to marry non-Christians?
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: If you're a Christian, that's called being unequally yoked.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's encouraged that you marry another Christian so that you both hold the same values and raise your children in the faith.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I met my husband in college, and he seemed like a pretty good fit for me.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he balanced me out in areas and in ways that I needed, and I brought something different to his life that enhanced his experience in life.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and my parents thought he was a really good fit for me.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was kind of good enough for me.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um I checked in with myself while we were dating, and we broke up.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: I initiated breaking up with him and I said, you know, you're a wonderful person.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: I care about you, I love you.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know that this will be a happy marriage.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know that we're hearing each other and that we're coming halfway, and I don't know that we're gonna be able to do that.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: I don't see that demonstrated.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so we broke up, and that was the last time I listened to my intuition until two years ago.
• 30:55
  unknown: Sorry.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it's I think it will always be kind of painful to admit that because um I didn't know how to make decisions for myself because I was so disconnected from myself.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: I was following a prescribed way of living, I was always having an eye towards what does everyone else want from me and for me because they know best.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um this is how Christianity works.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: You you pull the audience all the time.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: You ask the pastor and the elders when you can't figure something out.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: You go to the elder, the older women in the church as a woman, and you seek out their counsel and their advice, and you're in small groups where you have accountability, which means you share everything about your life, and then everybody else gets to speak in about what decisions you're making and what we're all supposed to be doing as Christians.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: And there's this group think that is focused on what does the Bible say and what are we all saying about how we're supposed to be living, and now let's all do that.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and if you stray from that, you're you're looked down on.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I was just very disconnected from my deep inner knowing, my intuition, feelings were not um anything really of worth.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: They were, you know, feelings come and go, but God's love lasts forever.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: And if you obey, then the good feelings will come later.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: And if they don't, and you end up in a life of suffering, well, there's always heaven.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, literally, that is the narrative.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so I came to, you know, the end of our senior year.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: I have this boyfriend who is a good man and would seem to be a good enough choice for a husband and a father and came from a good family.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I just had this inner knowing that was like, I don't know if this is it, I just don't know.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I broke up with him, and then we got back together.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, my parents kind of reconnected us in a roundabout way, and um, and we reconnected, and I felt like maybe I should go ahead and be with this person, and so we dated and we got married.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: We dated for six months with an eye towards are we going to marry each other or not?
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then within six months, it was okay, yes, we are, and then we got married six months later.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: So it was one year after we broke up where we dated, and then we're eventually married.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: And um I had that deep inner knowing, and I didn't listen to it, and it's um it set me off on a course of being in a marriage that just lacked passionate love and it lacked truth because I wasn't able to be in my truth at that point.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't really even know myself.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: I was making the best decision I could, and I was making it based on a lot of other people's input in my life rather than um taking full personal responsibility for how I felt and the big life decision I was making.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I have it's emotional for me to talk about that because I regret that.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like I had that knowing and I didn't even realize how important it was.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: It just felt like, uh, I don't know.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um but it felt like a safe choice and it felt like the right choice.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: And it felt like, well, I'm told that if you're faithful in your marriage and you pray and you live life according to the Bible, then God will kind of fill in the cracks and the gaps and take care of the rest.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, maybe once we're married, the passion comes then.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, maybe the obedience and the faithfulness comes first, and just for me, the passion never came.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, the first couple of years of marriage were really confusing for I think he would probably say also for him, but for both of us, it was not a switch from okay, we're dating and now we're in love, and marriage is wonderful.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's this intimate experience, it was really hard for us.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it was a very lonely couple of years beginning our marriage, and then we started our family, and I just put all my attention and effort into becoming a mother because that's kind of all that was there that was real for me.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then we just and then it's the fog of the child bearing or the child birth bearing and birthing years, and I was either pregnant or nursing a child for the better part of eight years in a fog, uh, struggled through postpartum depression with many of those deliveries and didn't realize it until the third one was born, um, and just kind of had a breakdown.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I was completely lost.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: I was completely isolated, I was so sad, and I just couldn't ignore anymore that I was so unhappy.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and at that point I saw a therapist and I eventually got on to antidepressants, and that helped for a time, and then we had our last two babies.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's when it all really started to fall apart.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think the stress of those early years with children and the lack of sleep and um all the shifting that happens within the structure of the family, it really brought a lot of our issues to a head.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you know, we saw therapy a few times, it just it just wasn't helping and it it wasn't um helping us get through the issues.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I hit a point where I couldn't ignore it anymore.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't pretend that the life we had was um fulfilling or satisfying for me.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: It felt like it was uh beautiful from the outside, but really empty on the inside.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um and my husband had a wonderful job, and we have a beautiful home.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: I have five healthy children.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I look like I've got it together, and on the inside, it was just I was in so much denial of the pain that I was feeling.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I just hit a point where I thought, none of this is real anymore.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm praying to a God that I don't feel, and who I don't feel is listening, and nothing is changing, and my heart is breaking, and what happens within our home is not the same as what other people are seeing outside of the home, and there's such a disconnect and there's so much dysfunction, and I don't even know where to go to get the answers.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I don't even know who to turn to.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things about Christianity is that you go to the person you have the issue with, you don't take it outside of that one-on-one relationship until it escalates.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so a lot of our marital issues I kept between he and I and prayed for over a decade about and waited on God like a good Christian woman does, and nothing changed.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's when I started to realize uh either God isn't who he says he is, or who Christianity says he is, or something else is up here and I'm missing something, um, but I can't keep living this way.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I got to a point where I was so sad and so confused and just in so much pain that I thought it's either death or divorce at this point.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and there were some things happening within our home that no one knew about that uh were extremely painful and had a lot of shame attached to for both of us.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I just thought, I can't, I can't tell anyone about this.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so I finally, when I got to a point where I found myself drinking, like I was not a big drinker ever.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I found myself drinking to numb the pain at times, and I was like, this is not good, this is not me.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I there's not enough alcohol either, like it numbs me for a half an hour or an hour, and then I gotta take care of my kids, and the pain is right there all the time, and um I thought it's death or divorce at this point.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I either need to leave this existence and end the suffering, or I need to leave the marriage.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I really consider death for a few days because I was so afraid of I was so afraid of disappointing everyone.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I was so afraid of doing something that would cause God's anger to be on me.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that's God hates divorce.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: Anyone who's a Christian has heard that over and over.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: And for us, divorce was not an option when we married each other, and I took that seriously.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: That was my covenant to my husband.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I got to the point where that covenant was breaking me and I didn't know what to do.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I had a really honest conversation in my own head of okay, whatever God exists, which would he advise me to do?
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: Would he say, Yeah, death is the option, or yeah, divorce is the option here?
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, there's no way if there is a God in this world that that God would allow all these things to happen, and then say, and you can't divorce him, so you should kill yourself.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that might sound dramatic or severe, but that was really how deep my conviction and my faith um how seriously I took that.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I went through a crisis of religion at that point and a spiritual crisis of saying, okay, I need to leave this marriage now.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's really what would be best and healthiest for all of us, and I can see that.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I don't intend to do it in a way that's hurtful or harmful to anyone or with anger, and yet this just this feels like the natural end to this relationship, and there needs to be something beyond this that's healthier.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's really what started the awakening process for me.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: I had to deconstruct everything and start from the ground up and say what's real and what's true and who am I.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: And how did you?
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you were always a questioning child, which I think is so important because it's to me, it's always the questions that lead to it's the inquiry that leads to the exploration that leads to the answers that are are right for you.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I can't imagine that you received much support in this process.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: How did you keep yourself going?
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: How did you know where to go?
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: What to do, what to question, where to get the answers.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um I had a very small number of people that I was connected to at the time who were going through similar questioning.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I'm like, I'm very I find it very easy to connect with other people.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so I just started looking for other people.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: Once I realized, yeah, my support system is gone, and they can't journey with me through this because they're too afraid to lose their salvation or to step outside, or they're just not ready, or this is not their path, whatever the reason, I'm alone here.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so my truth was not able to be held by my family and my friends and my community anymore.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that was a really hard moment to recognize that there were very few people who could stand in the questioning and in the mess of all of it and say, let's just be really honest and let's ask the hard questions, and I'll just sit here with you.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe there's no answer, and maybe you end up choosing something I wouldn't choose for myself, but it's gonna be okay and let's just do the next thing.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I started to network with what few people I did find that were safe and felt open-minded and accepting, and then they would say, Oh, and you need to know this person out in this town.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I eventually um found this community that already existed in a neighboring town.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and they were just very loving and accepting and spiritually curious, and they would meet and they would talk and they would study different religious books or books about religion, and all of them believed different things or were questioning, and all of it was okay.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I sat in that group for the first time.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think I went to a meditation with that group once, and they just welcomed me like, yeah, we meet all the time, we've been meeting for years, and welcome.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: We're so glad to have you.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's very unusual.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I would kind of slowly share where I was or what my background was or what it was I was seeking and what I was struggling with.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I was always met with loving acceptance, and that was the beginning of finding a group of people where I could just sit in my pain and say, I have no idea what I'm doing, and I have no idea what's real anymore.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_01: But I I want to know and I want to come back home to myself.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not sure if ever I've ever really known who I am.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and they just said, that's cool, we're all on that journey too.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: Join the freaking club.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: Join the club.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: We're all honest about it here.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, where have you been all my life?
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: This is these are the kinds of people that I need in my life, and this is the kind of person I want to show up as to other people.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: And this is the kind of community that we need in our world.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: Not here's how we look, here's what we all do, and it's all the same, and it's safe, but we are all such unique individuals with unique stories and backgrounds and childhoods and traumas and dreams and goals and families or orientations, and it's all beautiful and it's all unique, and there's room for all of it.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_01: And by knowing you, I'm better.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: And by loving and accepting you, I learn.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe I recognize a part of myself that I didn't know was there.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's just so much beauty in authentic community, and that yeah, I just started to keep, I was really hungry for authentic community at that point in time.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so that drove just my willingness to walk into a room full of people who are already friends and say, Hey, I'm here and I'm looking for friends.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_01: Are you are you open to that?
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, and thankfully I that's such a brave act.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's like stepping into the abyss, you know, and you're a mom, you got five kids, and like you're at this really um highly charged point in your life, like the vulnerability of that, and I just can't.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I mean, it's just incredible that you're able to do that.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: That I mean, that is exactly why I wanted to have you on, is because people need to know that there is, first of all, there is someone who's gonna save you when you fall, and it's you, and there also will be other people on that path.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah so how well do you have like things in your practice or do you have practices that now help you with this work?
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: This work meaning just meaning it's ongoing, this connection with the self, right?
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like, well, first of all, there's the deprogramming, which I'm sure you know, you've only been on that deprogramming path for a couple of years, so I'm sure that's ongoing.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then two, the connection with self, which seems to be, you know, in my experience, an everlasting project.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: Totally.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, how how do you get that work done?
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: Especially since you now you have a career, which we haven't talked about yet, and you also still have five children that you're raising.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, forever, right?
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: They're not going anywhere.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, thank goodness.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um I this is I'm such a nerd, and this is gonna, I'm gonna out myself right now.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_01: But um when I didn't have friends and I didn't know what I believed anymore, books became my friends, some of my most trusted companions.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: I would sit and read and I would find so much that was resonating that I never knew about, that I was never taught.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so I devoured books on spirituality and on um just opening your mind and your heart and not one specific religion, but spirituality and allowing myself at first I bought these books and I felt like I had to hide them because it was like these are not Christian books, and these are saying things that are openly, you know, shunned in Christianity.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so I had to get over the guilt of I'm exploring what else is out there.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_01: And in my mind, I had to tell myself, I'm just doing this because I've never educated myself.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then as I started to educate myself and things started resonating, and I built the courage in other aspects of my life, and as time went along, I allowed myself to say, I'm reading this because I'm curious about it, and I wonder if this is for me.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I did a lot of exploring, I watched a lot of videos on YouTube, I looked up a lot of different people's talks, um, and a lot of what has begun to resonate for me are Buddhist practices.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I struggle with depression and anxiety, and so I lost my connection to God through prayer when I left Christianity.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: I um I deal with a lot of like throat chakra blocking because I feel like I don't know how to talk to divinity anymore.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: I don't exactly even know what is um, like I had a very clear picture of who God was and who's a man, and there was this whole story.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then when all of that was up for grabs, I thought I actually know very little.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's very little that's knowable as truth with a capital T.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so I needed practices to support my journey as I decided or sought out what resonates for me and what feels true for me now spiritually.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: And meditation became a big part of that.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um I started to read up on energy and vibrations, and I got curious about crystals and the different ways that they can just affect our energy and the different ways they can promote health and support within us.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_01: I started to use my essential oils a lot more to support my focus and um my emotions, um, and then meeting with others for meditation and just like our book club feels like group therapy sometimes because we all just show up ourselves and there's no pretense, and we share a little bit about what's going on in our lives, and then we talk about this common book that we're reading, and that has been really a beautiful space of safety and connection, and I'm very wired for connection, and so um finding those safe spaces to connect with others became very important.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_01: Another thing that I did right after I realized that I needed to end the marriage was thought, well, I've been a stay-at-home mom for 12 years, what am I gonna do?
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I have a background in psychology, and I knew about the co-active training institute that trains coaches, and I had a friend go through the training and she didn't become a coach, but she would tell me about these different workshops, and they were fascinating to me, and her mindset would shift and she would tell me about you know, I'm going into this weekend and here's where I'm at, and then I would talk to her after the weekend, and it was like a veil had lifted for her, and like all of a sudden, so many different things made sense because she had access to something within her that she didn't before.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I went through um the co-active coach training process and just the training, it's um five long weekends that you space out however you want.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_01: I happened to do them back to back, so it was five months in a row of a long weekend of training each month, and that was like I picked CTI to do my coaching training, but the universe picked me to go into that space because that's where everything came out.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_01: I was able to really face what is happening within me.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: I had support, I had unconditional acceptance.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: There were people of all different walks of life, ages, races, orientations.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the instructors in the front of the room had alternative lifestyles that a year prior I would never have learned from them because of the pride and the right and wrong filter I had about the world.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: And by the time I walked into these coaching training weekends, my heart was just cracked open and my eyes were open, and my mind was hungry for a new way to be in the world that made more sense to me.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_01: And everyone was just right there, learning alongside each other.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I was able to receive and build relationships that I continue to this day with the instructors and other people in our cohort.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that was life-changing for me.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: I found my voice and I found my center, and that for me was the single most important thing I could have done in the last two years because it did connect me to my purpose.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_01: So, as you're in the coaching training process, you're also coached the whole time, over and over and over, by your colleagues and also by the leaders in front.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then I would hire a coach also so that I was just really serious.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_01: I knew that this is what I was going to do.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I always have a coach that I meet with also.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_01: And through all of those coaching sessions, you bring real issues.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so I worked through so much of what was happening for me in those training sessions with one-on-one coaching, with my coach between sessions on the phone.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I found the support I needed to really go inside and find a new truth that I had never discovered before.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: And now I knew I became aware through that training process that this is one of the big life purposes.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: This is one of the reasons I'm here is to have these conversations, to create the safe spaces of love and acceptance for other people, to go into those scary parts of themselves that they don't want to face because they think it'll be rejected, or they don't love themselves and they don't see themselves as worthy, or as having any divinity or goodness within them.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: And now I get to, after having experienced that and finding that deep knowing and being rooted in who I know myself to be, now I just have those conversations with others who are where I was, and I don't tell them what to do, but I just create that safety and that warmth to say we're all in this together.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_01: And what are you thinking about?
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, wow, that's really so powerful.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_00: Your story just knocks my socks off.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so before we go to onto the lightning round, I just want to ask you one final thing, and that would be what are some of the new things that your life is teaching you right now?
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the new things my life is teaching me.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think so.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_01: Curiosity and listening are really important to me.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_01: And as I've stayed curious and as I have listened to myself and to others in a deeper, more global way, global meaning, I'm really zeroing in on the person I'm listening to.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a skill that I was um taught and that I refined through coaching training.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_01: I carry that through my life and I listen in a completely different way.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_01: And because I have that skill and I practice it all of the time, I'm blown away by the beauty and the divinity that exists in all people everywhere, and I see everything differently.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I see people differently, I have greater access to forgiveness within me because I see that some of the things that maybe you would say were done that were wrong, either to me or that I've done.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's like we're all doing our best.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I think that's been really important to learn to listen in a new way, to listen with my ears and my eyes, but also my energy and my heart, um, and to really embrace a new perspective on humanity that we're not born bad or sinful, and then we need fixing, but we are really born um from a place of divinity and goodness, and we forget that in our lives, and so awakening is like a coming back to our true selves, it's a remembering.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's really important to me right now.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's beautiful.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_00: Oh I love it, I love it all.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_00: I do too.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_00: So um do you mind if we move on to the lightning round?
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_00: Let's do it.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: Would you rather be able to speak a bunch of languages or to be able to talk to animals?
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_01: I would love to be able to speak a bunch of different languages.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_01: I just connecting with people is the best to me.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, I love animals too, but I just there's so many people all over the world that I would love to be able to communicate with.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think um is the purpose of dreaming?
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, great question.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_01: I am an avid dreamer, I dream all the time, and they are graphic and I remember them and I'm a lucid dreamer.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that are you talking about nighttime dreaming or dreaming in our lives?
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I'm like, am I getting the right question?
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I really do notice for myself that my dreams are like my subconscious trying to work things out.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I just had a conversation with someone yesterday, and I woke up this morning, and all of a sudden I realized, did that happen like in my dream?
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, no, it didn't happen yet, but I'm thinking about it and I'm working on how do I want to approach that situation that's going to happen in the future?
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_01: And how do I want to show up?
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_01: And who do I want to be and what's the outcome I want?
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so much of my life now is and lived from an intentional thought world.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm so intentional with my thought because I really do think that our thoughts create our reality and they also greatly affect the reality of others, and so I'm really careful about my thought life.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I think dreaming just gives us access to a layer in our brains that's harder for us to harness and to access on a daily basis.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_01: There's mystery in the psychology of humanity, and there's mystery in spirituality, and when we're asleep and we're unconscious and our brains are still moving, there's a really interesting thing that happens.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_01: So awesome.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um does that answer it.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, what's your favorite holiday?
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_01: Birthdays?
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_01: Does that count?
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sure.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_01: Why not?
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_01: I have a complicated relationship now with a lot of holidays.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like this year, I was like, do I celebrate Easter?
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_00: Birthdays safe.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_01: Birthdays are my favorite.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_00: Would you be interested in traveling in space?
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_01: Never.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of my greatest fears is space, like being in space.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, part of my awakening that was so painful for me is going from having a certainty around this is what's true, this is what I believe, this is who God is, this is what we're supposed to do on earth.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then when I deconstructed all of that, two words that I used over and over were this is very discombobulating and I feel untethered.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_00: No space for me.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that pretty much describes my experience when I was um, I was at this point in my life where I had left uh Catholicism behind.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_00: And through yoga, I was introduced to various Eastern religions, but they didn't feel right to me.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I completely felt like I was operating without a net.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it was so terrifying to me because, like you, I had been told that there's a certain path to salvation, and you know, you're clearly not on it.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_00: You're not anymore.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that's funny.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_00: So um, final lightning round question.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_00: Do you journal by hand or on your computer?
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I do both because I have five kids and my free time is so limited.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_01: I've in the last year been journaling a lot on my computer.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_01: I have always kept handwritten journals, and I will only keep a paper planner because I'm a nerd.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_00: So adorable.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's adorable.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_01: But I love handwriting.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, my daughter has the most incredible handwriting.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_00: Her college notebooks, like they should be in the Smithsonian, they're so special.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so um, did you bring a question for me today?
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_00: I did.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, how do I want to phrase it?
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_01: I want to, it's kind of twofold.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_01: What is um what is most important to you right now?
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_01: And what do you think is something that's really important for all of us to have our awareness put on that we might be missing?
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, I could definitely answer the first one.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_00: So my personal practice right now is very and has been actually for several years.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um the foundation of my spiritual practice is the breath.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_00: And when I I have this understanding that when I'm in a highly conscious, awake um mode, the breath is like the expansion of God within me, and I feel it um like God has always been like in heaven to me.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_00: And as I've been through my path, the heaven has gotten like closer and closer and closer, but it was still like above my head, and now it's like descended into my heart space and it's growing from there.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, that has been just watching, observing the effect of that has been incredible because I have so much peace.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_00: And um I guess that leads perfectly into the second part of the question, which is um that it's possible for the world around us to be in chaos and still to be anchored in peace because our peace comes from truth, from knowing the truth.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_00: And the only access we have to the real truth is within.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing outside of us that can tell us what this can.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's it's like keep keep diving, keep going, keep expanding, keep the focus here, and and also you can pay attention and be in the world without necessarily being of the world.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm saying?
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's such a question, such a Christian thought, be in the world, but not of the world.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_01: But in a new way, the shift.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_01: Love it.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, Ashley.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to thank you so much for being with me today.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that um, you know, this is going to be heart medicine for a lot of people who might be in your situation as things start to fall away and um become untethered themselves.
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's um you're definitely a light who has gone through a very dark and challenging path.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I just my hats off to you.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I hope to be a safe space for vulnerability for myself and for other people forever.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, thank you for having me.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Namaste.