Latest / Alive & Kicking: Stories of Waking Up with Kay Eck / Jen Lee -- Healing, Christianity & Queerness

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Jen Lee -- Healing, Christianity & Queerness · Alive & Kicking: Stories of Waking Up with Kay Eck

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: That is part of what drives my practice now.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like so many people living with chronic pain, chronic anxiety, unsafety with different stories than mine, but they sound the same when you hear them.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I get to say, this makes sense.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: You make sense.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: People have focused on this area of pain.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: They've focused on this specific symptom.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: We need to go back and be a drone and look above.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: What have you been through?
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: This makes sense if you look at it that way.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: And we start at are you even safe in your body?
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: If the answer is no, that's where we start.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: You're not going to build health and healing and efficiency in an unstable, unsafe system.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome, Jen.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: Hello.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so excited for this.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: I am so grateful that you are here.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: I think we're going to have a good conversation today.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: I agree.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_02: So you and I met um at a workshop on the West Coast.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: And although we we both were residing in Arizona at the time.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I um found your story and your uh your compassion, your heart.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: I could just feel it from across the room.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so so intriguing to me.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: You're also a um a very particular type of physical therapist.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: And um, so I I was like, oh yes, and also I need to get treated.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: So it started there, and then um, yeah, so and here we are.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: So welcome.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: Good.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, thank you.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Very excited.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so um I like to just begin by getting a sense of who you were as a child, not just who you were, like in retrospect, but how your childhood felt to you.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: What what what what was your sense of yourself as a child?
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: To be able to answer that, I have to give a little backstory.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I am an unintentional only child.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: So my parents had my older sister two years before me, two and a half years.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I came around about six months later, she got ill.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um and what ended up happening is she passed away basically due to medical malpractice, which left me six months old with grieving parents.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Quite frankly, I think the rest of my life journey is unraveling the gifts and tragedies that just that put into my nervous system.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so my childhood, I don't have a great memory of it.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um the memories I have, very, very worried, very fearful, just wrought with anxiety.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't have used that term at the time.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um but there was a simultaneous knowing that I was capable, I guess would be the the term.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: So when I turned 12 years old, my mom got diagnosed with stage four AML leukemia, acute myeloid leukemia.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it was stage four by the time she even went to the hospital.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, which looking back, I'm like, this is the stubborn family that I come from in Missouri.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody can be stage four before they're like, oh, this isn't a cold.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, yeah, it's not a cold.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um and she did chemo, it did not work.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: They, my parents are extremely devoutly religious, Southern Baptist, which also plays into my history.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: And they decided to stop chemo, pray, and let what happened was happen.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the entire time that she had had chemo and been in the hospital, people would talk to me about how things were, and I was like, it's okay, she's gonna be fine.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, I remember I do remember a specific conversation with my grandma.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: She got almost irritated with me.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost like you you don't understand the gravity of what's happening.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, yeah, I do.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: She'll be okay.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like, oh my word, you're not, something's not connecting.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and with the the tragedy that had already been in our family, it's like, you're the like, this is rough because you've lost a sister, now your mom's got stage four.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so when the chemo didn't work, they sent her home for her last Christmas, literally told my family this might will likely be your last Christmas together, uh, make it special, what we're gonna do, send her up for labs, CBCs after Christmas, and then likely start around hospice care after the holidays.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so that Christmas, I remember her being on the couch and bald or with her wig on.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: I I it's a pixelated memory for me.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but she went up to the hospital after Christmas to have the labs and no trace of leukemia in her body.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: So it was 1994.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: I was 12, I'm 44 now, so she'll be 78 next month.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: And there was this, I think back on the feeling of it because I never questioned it.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know if it was the innocence of my childhood.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: It feels like a knowing.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like, nope, I've been told how this is gonna go, and I'm just trusting it.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so my my childhood was both felt gifted in a way and extremely fearful most of the time, even around people I knew, even around situations I'd been in dozens of times before.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: There was never a comfortability as a kid, um which feeds into the work that I do now heavily because I understand the impact of trauma on memory, on the nervous system, and all of that, which we can get into.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, there's so much to unpack there because like what you're pointing out is like your your childhood was an example of like these intense extremes, yeah, tragedy, ultimate tragedy, and miracles, you know, like that's a lot to handle for in 12 years as a child.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's so I'm I'm going back to, I mean, obviously, you were only um six years or six months old when your sister became ill, and then eventually you lost her, which is just heartbreaking.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so sorry.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: So you didn't really know your parents before grief.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: Did you have a sense that that that grief was that that person that they were now was not the person that they'd always been?
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like was there a sense?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 7:31
  unknown: No.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: Oh gosh, how would I even describe it?
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: I felt at the mercy of people that couldn't quite connect to me.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um with my anxiety, I would get stomach aches all the time, which I've come to realize is very normal for the nervous system.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they didn't know any, they they didn't do counseling, it was pray everything away.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they they turned very devoutly religious after she passed away.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so I only knew very devoutly religious people who don't really know what to do with all of my fear and told me I was fine because what do you do?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: If this is happening all the time, you don't know what to say, like you're fine, is probably like I give them credit, they did the best that they could, but you're dealing with people that have, in a sense, chemically, hormonally, emotionally left the building.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's it's very, I don't feel like I got a good connection and grounding point as six months old, which is if you know anything about development, extremely important.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so most of my life there's been a feeling of kind of a floatiness, avoid a I'm I'm alone in space type of feeling.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that is the embodied experience of a nervous system based off of that trauma.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's almost like they were teaching you like, here's how we deal with it.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_02: We we we get out of our bodies, we escape, we don't connect to what we're feeling, like we just paced over it.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: So that's what you learned.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I learned.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, and it's effective in a lot of ways.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_02: Very yeah, turns out you can achieve a lot.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, what's the downside of that?
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: Lacking presence, lacking memory.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_02: So that's where the lapse in your memory you think is like from being in a disembodied state.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, like because further into my story, it it's becoming more clear even now.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm 44 years old.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm still unpacking.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like, oh, like I was at breakfast with one of my best friends last Saturday, and I had mentioned something to her, and she goes, Well, you always got it.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like you always you always think you can think yourself into something.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I was like, she goes, It's because of your mom.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, What are you talking about?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: She was like, Your mom basically healed herself, dude.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like you have that in your nervous system, is you can do anything, like expect the unexpected, and that's so true, which is the flip side gift as a practitioner.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm never say never with people, like right, anything's possible, let's go.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but at the same time, yeah, there's a huge tragedy in how many how long will it take to unravel who am I?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: Or who was I supposed to be?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Or like you learn by other people, so I'm watching other people going, okay, this is normal, so I should be like this, I should act like this.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: They look happier, but I'm not really that happy, so but I should be okay.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: What's wrong with me?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: And you just put on these costumes of people, and I think I'm still figuring out how to take off the costumes at 44.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: Right, and I feel like that's almost the experience of every child.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know any other way it could be done.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if there's any children born, you know, up until recently who have been taught how to discover who they are, how to access who they are.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's always about, you know, what the parents say, what the doctor says, what the teacher says.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: We've I just did a um a panel chat on the subject of identity.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: And it's it's like such a huge topic to unravel, you know, how we pace these things on ourselves.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: So when you were moving into adolescence, obviously can be a very challenging time.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: How did your background kind of play into your development at that age?
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: One word, I would say achievement.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: I figured out very quickly I could get my parents' attention, achieving.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: So academically, I always did very well.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh athletically, I figured out I could do very well.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so I played baseball when I was little.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: I really excelled at that.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I top of the class without knowing it.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it was just this is what I do.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: And if I win this speaking competition, my parents show up.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: And if I win this game, or if I can catch, or if I can hit, like those things got me connection and attention, and I ran with it.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: And that can have some ramifications.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: I've been there.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: You make a such a valid point, though.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how does any kid find themselves?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm I'm so very aware that my story is like partially unique and partially universal.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: So you mentioned that your parents turned devoutly Southern Baptist, and I don't I only know a little bit about that um particular vein of faith.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_02: What was that like?
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: What influence did the church have on you?
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: As a child, it just was like it's the place that we go on Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: My dad's gone two to three times a week because he's a deacon.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I remember thinking, man, I wish I was important as the church to my dad.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: My parents, every morning, still to this day, very routine people.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: To give them credit, they do what they say they're gonna do, they're very structured.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but reading the Bible was a part of it.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: You read the Bible, you go to church.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: What they say in the Bible, what they read, is literal and inerrant.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: There is, it is God breathed, we do not question it.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that was life.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I would say a lot of it was boring and sterile, but I wouldn't have had the the verbiage for it at that point.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: It just was like this is yeah, from your parents' perspective, it's like so understandable that when your life is shattered, there's a big giant space in there for something to come in and tell you exactly who to be, exactly what to do, like what's right, what's wrong, why this makes sense, you know, like it's very tempting.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, and and you know, who could blame them for wanting something like that?
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: No, yeah.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: And as I've worked through other parts of my story, I always come back to so much compassion and grace for them because even in the things that we struggle to get along about now, uh the loudest voice in my head is the grace and the compassion because I have no idea what that would feel like.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I do know a part of Southern Baptists' evangelical Christianity in the United States rests on something called penal substitutionary atonement, or you'll hear it called PSA.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: But it's the idea that Jesus came as a sacrifice to die for us.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: So inherently we're not good and we need someone to sacrifice for us.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: Now we need to put our trust in that thing, and if we put our trust in that thing and in that person and live according to what we are told, uh then we will go to heaven instead of go and spend eternity in hell.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so they are, I would say it's if there was a word stronger than belief, it is that for them, that that heaven and hell is that crucial.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it ties back.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: I I've never talked to them about this, um, but I think it ties back to how do we get to see our little girl again?
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: That would not surprise me at all.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so I don't push that door.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just even as I deconstruct and as I work through my own spiritual journey, I just allow because it's yeah, you don't, you know, you there's a sanity that rests in that for them, I think.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, when the stakes are so high, this is what I found um growing up Catholic, it's like very similar stakes, you know, it's like it's the best and the worst, and there's nothing in between.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I was, of course, human and flawed, and the only way that I could reconcile that was to walk away from the whole system, just like it's not working for me because I couldn't couldn't handle the pressure of it.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_02: Did you feel that as well?
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: Eventually.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: As a child, I didn't know that I could walk away.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: Honestly, as a I I tell people my story feels like I got dropped into my body at 19, and it was very like even then, I don't have a lot of good memories.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and by good memories, I mean like actual memories, and so it there wasn't to my recollection a ton of awareness that there was better or there could be better.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: It was only when, wait a second, if you're straight and white and fine with staying in this small town and fine with everything that you read in the Bible and don't want to question authority, there is no reason to challenge it.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: The problem is you start to figure out as a queer person, uh-oh, I don't I don't fit in this box.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: So something's gotta give.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: Either the box has to give, something's wrong about the way they're believing.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: If they're believing that and that's true, then I'm just screwed.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's existential dread and anxiety to the max.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like even my hands are cold, even talking about it right now.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so dealing with that ended up it it's a better catalyst, even for achieving and for dissociating from your body.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because what the hell do you do about this might be all you get, and then you're gonna burn forever.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: So says the people.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like, whoa! Like okay, so take us, yeah.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: Take us back to that actual, I mean, moment that you're talking about at 19 where you feel like you were dropped in your body.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: Sharing that journey would be so beneficial for people.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's always a catalyst of some kind of change or pain that gets us jarred into what could be new.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: And at 19 years old, I had finished uh high school, I was at the community college in my hometown, and I had kind of taken over hanging out with my grandma the way that my older cousin had.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: I come from, I have a ton of cousins, and I think that's one of my saving graces.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: So um, one of my older cousins had gone into the Navy, and prior to deploying into the Navy, she had taken my grandma.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my grandpa didn't really like to leave the house.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: He would drive her around.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: She never drove.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so he would drive her to the grocery store and things, but he didn't really like doing that.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so Casey, my cousin, had taken over driving her to the Quilt Lady and to Aldi's and to wherever she wanted to go.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then going back and hanging out and playing rummy with her and just spending time with her.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: And when Casey left, I kind of naturally just took over this role because there was a gap in my own life.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a lot of my friends had left.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: I was in a transitional space, and so that would have been in 2001.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: And in December, December 15, 2001, um, I had a job at a sporting goods store.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: It was my first 10-hour shift, and I was not looking forward to it.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I had told my grandma Irene, uh, I'll come over and have breakfast before I go in.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: And because she knew I was dreading it too.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: And she was like, okay, that sounds good.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: And my alarm goes off, and I'm like, no, like, I don't, I've mornings have always been hard for me.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm gonna just lay here as long as I can.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm dreading this, she'll understand.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how much longer later it was, but the phone rang because my parents still have a landline at this point.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think they still have a landline.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I just hear my mom shriek.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember getting out of bed and running down the hall, and she's on the floor.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, what is going on?
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: And she was like, Mom, mom, and I'm like, Oh my, oh my god, what's happening?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: I run outside, I'm getting goosebumps.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: I run outside, my dad's outside, and I'm like, Dad, I don't know what's going on.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: And he runs in.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um it turns out my uncle John, my my mom's youngest brother, had called and said, like, he found my grandma on the porch swing, and she had already passed.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that at the time was very obviously traumatic.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: In within that same day, for some reason, we all ended up at the local hospital to see her body and kind of say our goodbyes.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I put my hand on her hand in that room, freezing cold.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: Her hand was cold, but I get thrown back in a memory.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: It was like a flash to her standing at her kitchen stove telling me where a book was.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: That she had filled out for my cousin Casey, and all of the directions for her funeral are in this book.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, oh my gosh, like she told me this, but I didn't want to listen because you never want to think about somebody dying.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, mom, there's a book somewhere.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: There's a book somewhere.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: We gotta so all of us go back eventually to the house and are just looking through everything because I don't remember what was.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: We find it.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we ended up being able to give her the exact funeral that she wanted.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: But amidst that chaos of finding the book, I mean, there's probably 30 people in the house because my grandma had nine kids.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um the phone rings, and my cousin, who is on a ship in the middle of the ocean, felt something was wrong and called the house.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: And her mom answered, and she was like, Is it grandma?
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what is happening?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like, this is otherworldly this entire day.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: But in unraveling that grief, a piece of it was, gosh, if I had just gotten up, why didn't I get up?
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like and go to breakfast.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like I would have been there.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: I've since made peace with that.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: But um, that was the catalyst.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like, now your best friend's gone.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: And oh, by the way, people leave and you can't control it, which was already in my system as a fear.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it happens out of nowhere, and this just ramped up my anxiety, which ramped up my need to get out of my head and just do, just start doing.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so I quickly went full speed into getting my bachelor's um and getting the heck out of town is basically what happened.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: But that was that was the catalyst for okay, I can't stay this way forever.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm kind of stuck, but I need to some kind of pain had to push me forward.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: That is intense.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, yeah.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_02: To have no memories except for these incredibly dramatic events is rough.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's rough.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: Not much mundane about your early life.
• 24:07
  unknown: Oh, no.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: Did it continue on that way?
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: Not that I recall.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: I I have more memories of finishing undergrad, more mundane memories coming in, uh little things, right?
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like laundry and making coffee.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like I can I can start to remember at that point.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's when I really started to grapple with my sexuality, because the idea of like, oh uh oh.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I wanted to be away from my hometown for multiple reasons.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: And that was one of them.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: I can actually be who I want to be if I'm not here, if I'm not close to this place.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_02: So you had some some kind of awareness back in Missouri and and knew that it was not gonna be easy to be that to be yourself in that.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: So you had to flee.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: And honestly, it wasn't even like in the Bible, they've mistranslated homosexuality, but even with it being in scripture in a actually harmful way that's not correct to the actual original scripture, it wasn't taught in the Southern Baptist Church.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: They don't touch that.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't grow up knowing that that was a thing or that it was bad, and yet at the same time, I have multiple people on both sides of my family that are in some way home, you know, and um, and so there was a comfort about belonging with these same groups.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I did come from these people.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: We we do feel this way.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Something we we we used to joke, don't drink the water at grandma's, it'll make you gay.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but at the same time, it's this oh, this is not okay.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: Not only are you gonna get you have to grapple with the divine, but the people that raised you are very loudly not okay with this, very loudly not okay with this.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so there's a sense of like I need a distance to be able to even process.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_02: When did your so like in your college years, did you were you still practicing your faith or trying to practice in some way, or had you just made it, made a break?
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I ever made a break.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think I disregarded, and in the back of my head was always like, it's gonna be tonight that I have had like six bud lights that God's gonna come back and I'm screwed.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be like that was always like, oh no, it's gonna be now.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: Which I look back and I'm like, never did my like actual faith in something bigger shake.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: It was always, even in this pain, this stuff I haven't deconstructed yet is gonna happen.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: How do you deal with that?
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: Have another beer.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I didn't go to church, I didn't there was no relationship with anything greater.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um but almost like beard of spiral dynamics, like the idea of for me going back to just me was step one.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like further up you get to like connecting with your creator and and all these things, but I pretty much had to go back to step one and figure that out moving forward.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't it interesting that one that traditional religious structures have a very um particular relationship with the Bible, yes, uh, you know, the instruction manual.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_02: And it's and when you look at the totality of uh religious documents, you know, the the Vedas and the Naghamadi scriptures and the Bible and the Quran or you know, all the things.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um if you took it all, it would be very all-encompassing, you know, but in order to feel comfortable within it, it's almost like they made it reflect who they already were and you know, kind of create a rigorous box for you.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_02: And that that's one one observation.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_02: My second observation is like you didn't feel the well, maybe I'm putting words in your mouth, but you didn't feel the need to change yourself, you had to change your image of God.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_02: That was easier.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, you know, it's kind of incredible, really, when you think about it.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_02: So, how did that journey go for you?
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: There were a few years I tried to be straight, did your best, gave it a good college try, literally.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um did not work out very well.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: All of the men I dated were very effeminate and like very lovely hair.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's like, come on, honey.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: I did the cliche thing of falling in love with your best friend.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like most lesbians know that one.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: The reality was I had enough example around me of people living into their authentic selves.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: And my same cousin that I told you about that was in the Navy got out of the Navy and moved to St.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: Louis.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I grew up an hour south of St.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: Louis, Missouri.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: She got out of the Navy, moved to St.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: Louis, and I actually ended up living with her around 2005, 2006.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: And she would ask me, because she'd had all this experience traveling the world, and she wasn't brought up the same way.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: Her parents weren't as devout in the church.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um so she would ask me, like, why?
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: Why do you think, okay, what happens, like all the people that I met in Dubai, like the people that haven't experienced Jesus, are they like going to hell?
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I would have to just mentally wrestle with her.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: And it would make me so angry because I still was stuck to this paradigm that my safety, my childhood, my parents are in.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to neglect that.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: And at the same time, I can't fit in it.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: And she sees that, and we she would just ask the hardest questions and just beat the ever-loving crap out of me mentally and emotionally.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't have deep answers, and she knew it, but it poked enough holes uh that I started to be able to answer or start to at least ask questions about yeah, like how come if if everybody's gotta find this guy, what happens if they get they're in another culture, in another religion, and the answer that you get, if you actually ask that in a cult like US Christianity can be, is we don't ask those questions.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: You just have to trust that people will find it, which was never enough for me.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: Once I found permission, I ask all of the questions.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um the questions that nobody has answers for.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and they just go back to, well, you have to have faith.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: You have to that to me is a cop out.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it drives a lot of who I am as a provider, too.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like, there's no, oh, you're just gonna have pain with sex because you're over 40.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you're just chronic back pain's normal.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-mm.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't deal with that shit.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's not enough.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: There's a reason people have the pain they have.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: There for sure.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like, we're living in this vessel that walks through all of these traumas and tragedies.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like, it's it's holding the messages, yeah.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so, yeah, I forget what your question was at this point, but just kind of how that that journey was taking place within you, this you know, move from religion to a more spiritual um viewpoint, if if if I can say that, if that makes sense to you.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think what made me kind of lonely and unique for a while is that in the so basically at 24 years old, I came out forcibly to my parents.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um what does that mean?
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: Forcibly.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: My mom read my journal.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so it was okay, here we go.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I was still an undergrad, and at that point in time, like I knew enough to know I I had consistent crushes on girls.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: I knew enough to know it was not gonna be okay with them.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: Eventually I got to the point where I said, either they are right, in which case I need to be celibate and just figure out how I'm gonna live my life, or something is being really, really mistaught.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it's my job to figure it out.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so as my parents started writing me letters and sending me um, gosh, I got like articles about conversion camps, I got letters to guilt trip me, I got all of these things over a course of time.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I was reading different translations of the Bible, I was studying apologetics, I was looking at the historic history and the contextual language, I was looking at what is this actually, what is this story, and is it what they taught me?
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: Which spoiler alert, not at all.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's not at all what they taught you.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: And in doing that, I actually reclaimed a different faith in a stronger way, which has been really difficult for my parents because now we can talk the same, they can't change anything, and we hit a that's kind of where things are at right now.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: We just can't talk about we agree to disagree on things because they don't have this view of the Bible over me anymore.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: Plus, I'm an adult who has her own opinion, and so yeah, I I fought for my own divine, and in doing that, the the verbiage changed, and oddly enough, I kept my devotion to the life of this Jesus guy.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think the life he lived was phenomenal.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think that is like one of the highest callings.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: Do I think he was the only one?
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: No, but that's my experience, right?
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's what I know the most of about.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so I have this kind of open faith at this point that tends to lean more towards following that way.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so I'm interested in this moment where you had to, you know, kind of accept that the situation with your parents wasn't going to change.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: And how you how did you get through that?
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_02: And how did you allow yourself to continue being yourself, letting them continue to be themselves?
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_02: Like, how did you do that?
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_02: Because I would think that that would be, especially as an only child, you know, you're you're their only child.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_02: How how did you get through that?
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: How did you do that?
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I have.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's an evolving relationship with grief around anything from who would they have been had she not died?
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: Had someone checked, are we allowed to curse on this?
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: Had someone checked the fucking chart and not given her another medication, what would my life have been like?
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: Would they have turned as Southern Baptists as would they have needed something?
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: Would they have been cooler?
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think those things less anymore.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm much more present than I've ever ever been.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: And there's still a grief about like their faith has been co-opted by a big government and political machine that wants them to feel a certain way, and it's really sad that they can't see it.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm going, it doesn't, it doesn't do anything but make our relationship harder.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's uh it's a grief I live with all the time, and simultaneously work into who I actually am as a person, knowing a lot of it they're going to disregard, and it makes our relationship very shallow, um, which makes other relationships for me very difficult.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so I struggle with any really friendships, relationships.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: I tend to push people away.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I have to watch myself from not pushing people away uh and try to be vulnerable as much as I can, but I'm just so unbelievably scarred and scared, even now.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: I've done over 10 years of counseling and I still work through.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm much more likely to be able to explain to you why I am the way that I am and why they are the way that they are than I am to sit in the pain of the reality of the journey.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the human race.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the human experience.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_02: Let's let's talk about, let's explain this.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_02: The brutal shit show.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, it's it's actually such a lesson in codependence because that parent-child relationship is so fraught with codependency by its very nature.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_02: And to and to move out of the codependency, it's huge.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's a huge step.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_02: But obviously, it's one that every human being is gonna have to take in some way to become themselves, and that's what God wants of you, right?
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_02: Because he's responsible.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's one of my biggest realizations in doing all the spiritual journey that I've done in the last 10 years or so.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: I had a nervous breakdown when I was 34.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure people saw that coming.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it was rough.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: And my parents told me Jesus was dealing with me.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um I was a PT by that point.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: So my head was very science, very physiological.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: Do I have a brain tumor?
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: What's going on with my autonomic nervous system?
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: Is my heart okay?
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: No ability.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I remember being in the ER and they're shooting me up with Atavan to calm me down.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: And the girl says, Like, do you have a lot of stress in your life?
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, no, I don't know why this is happening.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: I look back now, I'm like, oh, for Pete's sake, like the brain is amazing at its ability to just like move on from things if it wants to, but it's always gonna come up, it's gonna come up in some way.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so for me, it was at 34.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: And whew, yeah.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's when I started to find presence and sit with who is God, what is this, and never through any of that time, before, through, or after that, have I ever felt that when I was personally connected with the divine, that they were trying to tell me you're wrong.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: Never, there's never been that message.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's always, I'm sorry that the message is wrong.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: My heart breaks that that's happening too, and I'm with you in it.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: You're okay.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry that the message is not okay.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't that interesting that even though you had the supreme confidence of your maker, that you still had a nervous breakdown?
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, that goes to show like how potent this human, oh, this relationships especially are.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm wondering if it would be sort of elucidating and useful for you to talk about what a nervous breakdown looks like, um, in case people aren't familiar with that.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think it looks different for everyone.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, my specific story I can share happened in a moment.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_01: Sitting on the couch, I was waiting for my then girlfriend to get ready, and we're going to a spring training game.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: They have I'm out in Phoenix now, uh, and that's where the Cactus League is for spring training.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: So my entire clinic was going to this game.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm sitting on the couch getting ready, or she's getting ready.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: And in a moment, I felt like the best way I could physically explain it was I felt like something, somebody unplugged my life source.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I felt like my body just and I was like, what is happening?
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a it was the realization of like whatever just happened, this is not a momentary thing.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: You can't fix it quickly and get ready.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I knew all of that in a second, and I panicked.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because I had reached kind of the pinnacle of where I was gonna be at that point in time.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: I had my doctorate, I was working in one of the um most probably sought-after mentors in my clinic.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: I was mentoring other people across the company, I had done a fellowship.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I'm very highly achieving and yet don't know myself at all.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it was like I'm a PT, this is what I do.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me about yourself.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like that was it.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_01: So that night I pushed through.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, this is gonna go away.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'll wake up, it'll be better.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna have a beer at the game, it'll be, it'll be good.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: No, um, the game was rough.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: I did have a beer, I tried to relax, my heart was just pounding sitting there, and my mental state was just something's wrong.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what this is, but something changed that I can't go back from and I don't know how to unwere's the switch.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: What happened?
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that probably a week later or less, um, I ended up in the ER because I couldn't, there was no riding the ship.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: Every morning I woke up to more like a gloom and doom.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, what?
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_01: It like my heart rate just resting heart rate was like 100 or 106.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: Just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't eat.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I was shaky all the time.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my roommate had to shower me at one point because I couldn't, I just was not okay.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, very, very existential dread hitting me.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then people telling me, oh, this is God grappling with you.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_01: You better turn around and make it.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_01: I knew that wasn't right, but I didn't know what the heck was going on.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: I ended up in the ER, they put me on anxiety meds.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: And my doctor at the time put me on, well, they gave me out of van in the ER, which helped call me and just knocked me out, uh, which gave me the first sense of peace that I'd had in a very long time, just not being.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: There's your first clue.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_01: If like knocking you out of your like thought process calms you down, likely your nervous system is dysregulated chronically.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I started this med, and she said at the time, it's gonna take four weeks, it's gonna be slow, but you will notice the loudness in your head will shh start to quiet.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll be honest, when she said that, I was like, what loudness in my head?
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: I had no idea.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: I was that unaware.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um and over the next four weeks, I would have experiences like I was walking downtown, Phoenix, at one point, and I saw a bird fly over my head and it registered as new.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, uh, uh why is a bird flying over my head a new experience for my brain?
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: I am 37.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: How old was I?
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like, have I not noticed birds?
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like things like that all of the time.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: The smell of coffee, um, the color green, which is where I started to encounter Rob Bell, which is where you and I met because he's colors, colors, color presents, like, and I started to find this like there's a different life that people are living, and those people say that I'm actually okay.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so sitting across from Rob Bell at that event was just devastatingly healing for me because this is the first person that in a biblical way told me I was fine.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um I have goosebumps.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so my god, why don't we have those people in our lives all the time?
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_02: I know they're having sent, right?
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: They're having sent.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: And like that is part of what drives my practice now.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like so many people living with chronic pain, chronic anxiety, unsafety with different stories than mine, but they sound the same when you hear them.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I get to say, This makes sense, you make sense.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: People have focused on this area of pain, they've focused on this specific symptom.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: We need to go back and be a drone and look above.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: What have you been through?
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_01: This makes sense if you look at it that way.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: And we start at, are you even safe in your body?
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_01: If the answer is no, that's where we start.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: You're not gonna build health and healing and efficiency in an unstable, unsafe system.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm very deeply driven to work with people in that way.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: And part of it is because um, I just discovered this in like the last six months to a year.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, somebody missed it with my sister.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: They missed something and they didn't read the chart well.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, I'm like, I'm not gonna miss anything, I will not miss anything.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to ever miss anything.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I will stay up all night to not miss something in someone, and so it's kind of beautiful in a way of like, I don't I don't know how people get their passions otherwise.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_01: Except through presence, yeah, yeah, and like integrating a story.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like I work with the nervous system because I've worked with my nervous system, yeah.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_01: I know anxiety and I know pain because I've worked with pain.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like and yeah, probably like what informs you to do this, you're right.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_02: You know what they say, like your greatest challenge becomes your greatest medicine, you know, that you have to offer.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted to ask you if you feel that in your life, your life, your nervous system, your spirit was trying to get you to pay attention before it had to come down with the hammer of the nervous breakdown.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: What comes up as a memory in my fellowship, which would have been 2014, three years before my nervous breakdown.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: The night before our graduation in Michigan, I got ill.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_01: I was thrown up all night.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it was one of those.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_01: I've always had a sense that certain sicknesses are sicknesses, and many sicknesses and symptoms are messages that if we know enough, I knew like you're still pushing, you gotta slow down, like right at the end of things, I would always have a hard time.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: The last mile of a half marathon, uh, the last question of a test, the last like ah, just like just push through, get the last rep done.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it was always when it presented, and so I got just ridiculously sick, threw up all night before um that next day, end up going in.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_01: We we had our fellowship in a big auditorium space, and I sat by the people that I was closest to at the time, and I told one of the girls who had more of like I've always gravitated toward gravitated towards mothering energy big time.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_01: Shocker.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and she had a mothering energy, and I said, I am not feeling okay.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what I'm gonna say.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even know if I can go up on stage.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, Here, and she hands me this little thing, and it was just a garlic chew.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_01: Just chew it, or not garlic, uh ginger, I'm sorry.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I put it in my mouth, and I just the fact that she had given it to me, what it was, ginger does help with nausea.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_01: Immediately I feel seen, I feel witnessed, I feel safe, I'm okay.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_01: I did not get nauseated, I was fine the rest of the time.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_01: But my nervous system and my my body has always been presenting physical symptoms when I don't feel like I'm okay, even to this day, which then I can kind of take and flip it and go, okay, I can use this as a tool to feel other people.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's a great kind of transition into your professional life.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, they're so intertwined, they really can't be separated.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_02: But I want to know, I want I want to know how you moved into this particular modality that you're practicing and and share with us a little bit about what it is and how it works.
• 50:37
  unknown: Sure.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I'm a manual physical therapist.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: I practice techniques called neural manipulation, visceral manipulation, and emotional release.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that's like if I have to give an elevator pitch and tell people what I do, that's what I do.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_01: Bigger than that, I'm driven by why people have what they have.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_01: Why do they have the dysfunction?
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_01: Why do they have the pain?
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_01: Why do they have the anxiety?
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_01: Why do they have the headaches?
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_01: Why do they have the IBS?
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_01: What about their system is unrested and creates?
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think of it as a domino effect of tensions that stack up over time.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_01: That after a certain point, we get to a place where we can't compensate anymore and we start to get symptom.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_01: So the symptom isn't the thing, it's the straw that broke the camel's back.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_01: Underneath it is the story.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I've always been driven by the why.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: I spent 10 years in orthopedic practice, so low back pain, knee pain, shoulder pain.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: And all of it was fine and good.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_01: I liked what I did, but it was all head knowledge.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it wasn't, I never had a piece about I did what the person absolutely needed today.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_01: I did the thing they needed most.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't have time to do it, and I didn't have the skill to do it.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: And when I found the way I practice now, which is through an institute called the Beral Institute, Barrel, but AL at the end instead of EL.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the way that he has actually created a system to be able to use polarity in the body to create enough sensitivity in your hands if you're skilled enough to feel the compensations and the tensions in the body.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_01: Helps me connect the dots to what are the physical tensions somebody's carrying, and then what is what's the priority one?
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, in most chronic cases, people will present with one thing, and where we end up working is completely different, which is not easy for some people.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't want to look at your history, you're probably not a good candidate to come into my space.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_01: But the ability for me to have the peace and go, that's 100% what they needed today.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like, and I pray before each time, I watch my energy with people, I protect myself.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot that I do about it that I just feel like I'm a conduit.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like the divine's gonna help you through my hand somehow.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna step out and just like let this happen and then insert my anatomical knowledge into what I'm feeling.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's basically what I do.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: But I got there by nothing's ever enough, um, which is good and it's not good.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm not ever doing enough.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_01: I could do more.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: What else is there?
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, that's a bit of a trap.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's a trap.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it makes me like successful in the work that I do and also constantly striving.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what more?
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_01: What more is there?
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_01: What more is there?
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so working through in my own life, how how do I just relax and be how's that going?
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_01: But you met me at the literally at this event where I met Kay.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_01: The the goal is to ask a life question.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I sat there for the first day watching people ask questions, going, Well, I don't want to ask, I had some ideas, but they just got blown to pieces by the first few people that got up there because they asked the question or the answer or the dialogue gave me like, well, I don't want to go that way.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_01: To the point where by the time I felt it's your time go, I found myself sitting in front of this like spiritual and emotional hero of mine, and just saying, I think I just want you to hear my story.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think I just need a witness because I've always just been told you're okay, you're fine, or you're not okay, or you have everything together, can you give us the answer?
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_01: I've never really, and most of my job now, like I love, I love what I do simultaneously, I'm it's always about somebody else.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_01: Always.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um and with a history of dissociation from myself and a career that's bent towards others, it's hard to be witnessed.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's like my my friends are working with me.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how do you feel?
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_01: How is that today?
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_01: How are you like when can you asking for help?
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: Can't terrible.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um working on it.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm bad.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a work in progress.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, that's just gonna what I was gonna say.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's like obviously work in progress.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_02: That's normal.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_02: We're all a work in progress.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_02: And it sounds like I don't want to put words in your mouth, but well, but maybe I should just ask the question like, what do you feel is next for you in terms of your personal journey?
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_01: Are you familiar with Brene Brown?
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_01: She gave a definition of play that says, play is time spent without purpose.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I went, well, I don't play.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like ever, there's always, even if it's a nap, it's a nap because I need the rest.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if I'm going outside to lay in the sun, it's good because I need the vitamin D.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_01: There's nothing that isn't a reason.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that is difficult.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's hard to live in a brain that always needs a way.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I can relate to that.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_02: I can relate to that.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_02: So I mean, it's pretty good to have as your primary objective your work to do is to learn to play.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_02: Like, let's um switch over to our lightning round if that's okay with you.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, okay, so my first question for you in the lightning round is what would you do differently if you had infinite time?
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe that's the wrong question for you.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe I should phrase it like this.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_02: How long is it gonna take you to be you?
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_01: To be honestly, Kay, I can be me in any given moment that I'm present and aware.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_01: I don't like there, there um Peter Diamondis just wrote a book about longevity and that they're getting to the point, the people that have the money and the science to do things that actually increase our lifespan, to the point where they're knocking on the door of could we live infinitely?
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_01: Is there a point to dying?
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_01: Is dying inevitable?
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_01: They're asking that question.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_01: I hate that with a passion.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_01: I hate that because I I need the finite, I need the brevity.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_01: The brevity ignites me to the importance of a moment.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_01: If moments are never ending, ugh, it's like oatmeal.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like I the as much as as much as I've like focused on death in my life as a fear, I don't anymore.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not that I look forward to it, but it does give a bookend, and you get to write the story in between.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so I don't I don't want to take away the bookend.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_01: I want in any given moment to know that I was here.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I want.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting, and that can be now, and that can be I did a great job five years from now.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, I I feel like that is one of the challenges of the concept of oneness, is like it's very hard for us to give up our specialness, our perceived specialness.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm getting over that because I'm over myself.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's getting a lot easier, yeah.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the ego dies hard.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, for sure.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, do you do you have a childhood hero?
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_01: Mr.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_01: Rogers.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, perfect.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_01: Love Mr.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_01: Rogers, yes, yes.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, what was your first car?
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_01: My parents got a Chrysler Seabring when I turned 16, which was pretty cool.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm also an only child, right?
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_01: So definitely some spoiledness in there.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, it was a nice car.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_01: My mom and I shared it.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_01: Nice.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_01: What color was it?
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_01: Black.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_02: Black, a black seabring.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_01: A black seabring.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even think they exist.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like I remember seabrings, yeah.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_01: Do you?
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, can you name a fear you've overcome and how did you do it?
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_01: The fear of there's so many attached to my upbringing in religion: existence of hell, eternal damnation, being queer, and not being okay.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_01: All of those were a journey of allowing the strengths of my mind to meet the knowing of my heart and listening to that over listening to the voices of others telling me that I wasn't okay because they have an agenda to that.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_01: But another one that's more practical now is public speaking.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_01: I love public speaking because I like connecting with people and sharing my story on a on a bigger scale.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_02: I have a similar one.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I was I've always been very introverted.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_02: And when I opened my yoga studio, I had to do things that I didn't know I was gonna have to do that I wasn't really prepared to do.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like I just speak in front of the city council a number of times to you know tell them what my plan was.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I also had to go around the neighborhood to the other business owners and introduce myself.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_02: And this is like oh my god, like this is a this is a terrible for me.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_02: Like I do not be cracked up.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_02: And um what I learned to do, which has been so effective, and it's hard to remember it sometimes, but I just decided to drop from my head into my heart and just let my heart open.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_02: Just speak from my heart and be in my heart, and it is so effective.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, it is because like it's the mind that's the one that's anticipating the judgment and you know, all the blah blah blah.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_02: The heart doesn't do any of that.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's it is it's just presence and it's loving and it's accepting and it's not fearful, you know.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's like the head that's fearful, you know.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man, you know that you're like how bad do you want this thing when you get up against marketing and networking as an introvert?
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm the same way.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I remember learning from someone uh in sales when I was first starting my practice, something that to this day I think has been monumental for me.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_01: He said, People don't buy from you when they understand you, people buy from you when they feel understood.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_01: My job is never to sell myself, my job is to connect.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's such a good point for anybody who is in I'm like, Oh, okay, I can connect with people.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like, tell me what about tell me what makes this difficult.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_01: What is like ah I can do all day, and then you have the rapport.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_02: That's and then that's really powerful.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, my last question for you is what do you feel hopeful about?
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_01: My own growth in a personal way, and hopeful about in the microcosmic way that my journey has shown me trauma creates breakthrough.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_01: Macrocosmically, I'm expecting the same thing, and so I think we are headed towards an interesting time.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I love that so much.
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_02: I love that so much.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for sharing.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_02: Of course.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_02: Did you have a question for me today?
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_02: I have two.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_02: Can I ask two?
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_02: You can ask the first one, we'll see how it goes.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, which one do I want it to be?
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me about the greatest joy of your life.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_02: That is a very overachieving thing of you to do, is to bring two questions.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_01: Say it again.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_01: Would you would you really tell me about the greatest joy of your life?
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_02: Oh I think I would have to say um that it would be allowing myself to be a full-time mom.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, despite the fact that I had a career that I was dedicated to, well, sort of dedicated to.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_02: I was interested in anyway.
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I because I never had the feeling, you know, this draw to be a mother when I was a child.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like I it wasn't really on my radar at all.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_02: I I guess it was one of many things that I possibly assumed I would be.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_02: But um I felt that it was going to be a gift to myself and a gift to my children to be there for them.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_02: Even though I knew that I wasn't the best mother.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, I had flaws and shortcomings that would make me not a perfect mom, but I was there for it.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I threw myself into it.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_02: And did I do a sloppy job?
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_02: But I um that's something that I'm just really glad because there's a lot of pressure to work also.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and financially, we couldn't really afford it, but I could not go back to work.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_02: I I worked free, I freelanced for a little while until I had my fourth child, and then I it was too much.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_02: But um I, you know, a lot of times these big decisions that you make are made when it's not possible, it's impossible.
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why they end up being such great decisions, is because you made it happen.
• 1:05:31
  SPEAKER_02: So I would have to I would have to say that.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_02: Do you feel complete with that question, or would you like to ask your second?
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_01: My my curious mind wants to know this one.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_01: Clearly, there's a mission, a service-minded mission for you in doing this podcast.
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_01: And there's certain things that I would imagine are life principles that are universal that you see present themselves.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: What I want to know is what has doing this podcast taught you that you didn't expect.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure if this is specifically answering the question, but um, I'm I'm still guilty of having what I consider to be a narrow, an unnecessarily narrow view of how this spiritual journey is supposed to go.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I think doing the podcast has helped me let go of that, uh, because there isn't one way.
• 1:06:32
  SPEAKER_02: There are eight million, eight billion different ways to do it.
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's intentional.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it that's how it works, you know, it it's it's a unique journey that is the path of God to express through individuation.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_02: And does it all come back?
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I feel like it all comes back to the source, and ultimately we we do find that, you know, the the one thing that connects us all, which is the divine source, you know, God.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_02: But um, so yeah, it's helped me be more and more open to that.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_02: And to and to have less, I don't have any skin in the game anymore when it comes to other people's paths, you know, because I'm not handling it, God's handling it.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's you know, it's relieving, huh?
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_02: It is very relieving, and it's and it improves relationships greatly.
• 1:07:29
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_01: When you're not trying to change somebody or like give them this.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_02: I know.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yeah, and that and honestly, that is the path of motherhood as well.
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_02: Is um, you know, it's obviously these children depend on you for so many things, and taking your hands off the wheel, there is no instruction manual for that.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_02: It it it's it's not an easy process because it is that unwinding from codependency that it has to come.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to be healthy, it has to come.
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but it's definitely talking about identity, like your identity as a mother.
• 1:08:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's a big one.
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, massive.
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_01: Excellent, massive.
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_02: I want to thank you so much for joining us.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_02: I've loved talking to you, and I think this conversation is really going to be helpful and supportive, just as we hoped it would be.
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I hope so.
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for being here, and I look forward to connecting with you again.
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_02: Oh good seeing you.