Latest / Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce / 156. Finding Yourself Again: Navigating Divorce, Generational Trauma, Caregiving & Adoption

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156. Finding Yourself Again: Navigating Divorce, Generational Trauma, Caregiving & Adoption · Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce

• 0:49
  Speaker 1: I love.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Today we have an amazing guest with us.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Her name is Lori James.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: She is a mother, divorcee, recovering caregiver of her elderly parents, turned author.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: She wrote the book Sandwiched.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: I read it.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: I loved it it was such an easy, powerful read and relationship coach.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: She also has a podcast, confessions of a Free Bird, and today we're going to have a rich discussion where we especially get into how someone can really experience tons of really good therapy couples counseling, individual counseling, the spiritual dive, the yoga journey and still end up very, very sick after divorce.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Hi love, welcome to Dear Divorce Diary, the podcast helping divorcees go beyond talk therapy to process your grief, find the healing you crave and build back your confidence.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, dawn Wiggins, a therapist, coach, integrative healer and divorcee.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: In today's episode, you're going to hear me talk with Lori about how being adopted impacted her relationship choices and, ultimately, the end of her marriage.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: You're going to hear her talk about how being a caregiver for her elderly parents really impacted her understanding of responsibility for herself, for others, and how she lost herself and found herself again.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: And then, finally, we are going to dig into all things somatic healing, where Lori and I just hit it off immediately when we met, because Lori got very, very sick post-divorce and was able to find her healing, her ultimate healing path, through somatic release.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Lori welcome.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me, Dawn.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: I'm so excited to be here with you today.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Oh, my goodness, when we met virtually, it's like maybe it was a slow burn at first, but once it clicked for us it was like ka-chow, absolutely's like.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Maybe it was a slow burn at first, but like, once it clicked for us it was like ka-chow.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: Absolutely no.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: There's definitely a connection here and just in terms of the work that we're doing out in the world and helping women after divorce.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: And although it's different, it's also very similar, very similar, yes.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: I think that our lived experiences have enough similarities, right when it's like, hey, we worked really hard to reclaim ourselves, but then there was still this missing piece about health and wellness, right Even after you worked so hard to heal your traumas.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Gosh, I'm so proud of your journey that you never gave up right Grit around healing, healing, healing.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: And the way you've supported your family, your parents, your daughters yeah, even the way you encouraged your husband along the way right To get, when he did get better For better or worse.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: So tell us a little bit about your story, right?
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: I promised our listeners that they would hear how you being adopted really impacted your relationships.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: It's like in reading your book you can look back in hindsight.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: It's all makes sense, you can connect all the dots right, but in but in the, at the moment, like you don't really know, always right.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: It's like I'm a life learner and I also look at life as my experiences, as what am I supposed to learn from this experience that I'm going through in the moment?
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: And sometimes that doesn't come out until later.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: But so you know, that's that hindsight, but just to share with your listeners, and thank you for that beautiful introduction.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: So my book is about an eight year period of time in my life when I was raising my four daughters.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: Eight year period of time in my life when I was raising my four daughters, my mother fell ill at about 75.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: She had a minor heart attack and she started to need care.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: My dad was always another child, to put it very simply, and this so.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: So that piece happened.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: I had four teenagers.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: Actually two my youngest are a set of identical twins.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: So they were preteens.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: Two teenagers and about a year after my mother fell ill, my marriage began to fall apart.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: So that was really my awakening of you know.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: I'm kind of in my mid forties and I'm thinking, okay, my forties are awesome, my kids are.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm kind of in my mid forties and I'm thinking, okay, my forties are awesome, my kids are.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: You know, getting older, I'm going to have more freedom.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: Oh no, it was.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: It was.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: It was.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: It was the opposite.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: It was, you know, from a spiritual standpoint.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: It was, you know, somebody's tapping you on the shoulder and then you know, and then it gets to be a little nudge and then for me it ended up emotionally from my husband.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: I needed to get hit up side the head with an emotional two by four to really wake up.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: And you know, I'll please read my book to to learn more about that emotional two by four.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: But that was really an awakening for me.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: And that was really the first time I went into therapy on my own.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: You know, I had done some yoga and I had been reading some spiritual books at that point, but that kind of catapulted me into therapy, which it's been a journey like.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: That's over 10 years and I'm still in therapy different types of therapy now than what I started with, but it was so.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: My book is really about parenting, it's about marriage, it's about adoption, which I know we're going to, we'll jump into but it's really my, my introspective journey from feeling alone most of my life to finding belonging.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Yes, so beautifully put and who and where do we?
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: who do we belong to?
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: And where do we?
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: Who do we?
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: belong to Ourselves Right, and I had lost my way.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: And so just to dive in part of that is from my adoption from very early on, and so I will share this with your listeners.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: So I'm the third of three children.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: We were all adopted from separate families, so no blood relationship.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: Growing up, I never really felt like I belonged in my family.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: I didn't look like my parents, I didn't look like my siblings.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: And as you read through your book, right, there was abuse with your oldest brother and then the younger brother kind of covered it or was also being abused or you know there's.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: There was so much stuff, like there was so many places where you wrote in the book like I hung close to my parents, right, there wasn't, there wasn't a lot of sense of safety in that sense yeah, let alone connection or belongingness.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: Right, and my dad wasn't that very strong boundary center father type, so it was more my mom.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: but here's the thing that I'll share is through.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: So my, so my mom had a stillborn.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know this, but your listeners don't.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: My mom had a stillborn eight.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: She was eight months pregnant.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: The umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: She lost her first little girl In between my two older brothers.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: They adopted a little girl.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: They had her for six months and then the birth mother wanted her back.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: Her name was.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: We named her, my mom named her Julie, or my parents named her Julie, so baby Julie.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: I did not know that until I was in my forties I was driving my dad home from a doctor's appointment because I took care of my parents for 14 and a half years.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: And he said thank you so much, I don't know what I'd do without you.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: And you know we almost didn't have you.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: And I said what do you mean by that?
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: And I knew you know I'd seen Right, you had found things and you know it's like yeah, like we're kids, so like we're curious and we're going through drawers and but I could never kind of put the pieces together and that made so much sense.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: But in that moment too, it was a very healing moment for me, because I was always closest to my mom but I always felt this emotional distance from her and.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: I could not understand, even as a child, even as a you know 20, in my 20s, 30s, when she and she was a lovely grandmother to my children and she was a teacher and she loved children, but there was a layer of heartbreak that she never processed that just kept a wall Right and she wasn't even conscious of it.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yes, there was something that really stood out to me from your book and I think our listeners will appreciate this.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: But there are, there are moments throughout the book where you do this amazing therapeutic work Right, where you do like inner child work and you do what we would call empty chair and or like like experiential role play work, and you have these shifts right, these obvious mental and emotional shifts.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: But I can see in the book where there are people in your story who kind of own their part or or they say thank you or they say I'm sorry, and then there are people in your story who don't.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: And what stood out to me as I'm reading it is gosh, it really is easier to forgive or shift when people join us in the recovery work, right, and when they don't, it really becomes such a sleuthing job to get to the roots of those things and discharge them when someone doesn't join us in that healing process the resentment, the anger, the age, I would even say.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: There were times literally like from a somatic place, like I'm driving out to my parents' house because my oldest brother, who has addiction issues and who was my abuser when I was a child, issues and who was my abuser when I was a child.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: He comes back into our lives right, not necessarily for the right reason, and so there are times when I am literally driving out and every bone in my body it's like I want to turn around.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: So you can see me, I'm bracing.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: I realized several years later that a lot of times when I drove I was not breathing Flashbacks.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you were having flashbacks.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't breathe because I was still bracing, right.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: It's like that moment, right, where he assaults you and you're not breathing.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're dissociating, right, it's a flashback.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, 100%, completely, and so, and that took me time, once I started working with a somatic experiencing practitioner, to breathe through to unfreeze, to unfreeze your nervous system.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, beautiful.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: And to realize I'm just driving to and from therapy, I'm just driving to the grocery store, I don't need to brace.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, nothing's happening right now.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: I am safe in this moment.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and those are just layers that happen over time.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: Right, they're not going to happen right away.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: And, as you know and as I know, the whole somatic healing process needs to be slow and gentle.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: Yes, otherwise we're just re-traumatizing.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Yes, Right, Forcing, forcing, forcing for sure.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: So connect the dots for us about this right.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: You're adopted and your mom always has this bit of a you know, unconscious, unintentional wall.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Dad's not a good boundary setter, he's not a great, you know, role model.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: If you will Connect the dots for us how that contributed to picking your particular partner, for us how that contributed to picking your particular partner.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: You teach us in the book, right?
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: But yeah, well, you know, and it's so funny because I didn't want to marry my dad, that's what I told myself before I got married and you know I was I was married 26 years, you know four kids with with the same husband and um, and it's uh, it's that unconscious peace.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: Right that if we haven't healed that unconscious peace.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: I married my father, parts of my father and parts of my mother, emotionally Sure, because my nervous system, that's what I equated to love.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: That's right, and family and connection and that's the best it had, yeah, yeah.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: And the other thing that I did was and this was my doing in my own head was, if I created the ideal, perfect family, that I would be safe.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that you would be safe.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: If you created the ideal, perfect family, you would be safe.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: I just really want everybody to take a breath with that for a moment, and I want to slow it down right here, because then what is unanticipated often?
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: When the divorce is final.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: We feel a lack of safety and think it has to do with the marriage, but it doesn't.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: It's to do with our own subconscious patterns, our own nervous system cues our own unhealed stuff, because anyone who doesn't feel safe in a consistent basis in their body has unhealed trauma and most of the time it's from zero to seven years old.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: Lack of sense of security or wellbeing in yourself, in the world, in your relationships.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that low level chronic anxiety.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: Yep, oh you, I lived with that, and and here's the thing I didn't know I had low level chronic anxiety until I didn't have it Right.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: So then I'm like oh my God, I think that's true for a lot of people, and if I could explain that to people you know.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: So here's our PSA.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but you don't you don't know what you don't know.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah Right, and if you lived with that all your life?
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: it's normal.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you feel like that's normal and I hear people.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: In fact, my boyfriend, you know he's he, he's had a traumatic past too.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: He's doing some work and very proud of him.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: But, he said I've always been anxious, that's just the way I am.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: I'm like, hmm, and we can't.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: I have learned from studying and applying constitutional homeopathy in my practice.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: I have learned that we can be born with inherited energetic patterns.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: Yes, but those can also be unbound or released and generational trauma can be passed down to us yes.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean we have to live with it.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah, we can heal that, yes, and that is a beautiful thing.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: And the other note that I want to make around this right now, because I I get this too.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you do.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: My anxiety is what motivates me.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you've ever heard that or get that, but I have heard that from clients and I have a couple of friends are like, no, no, I like my anxiety, it motivates me.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: It's like, but what if you could still be motivated?
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: without that anxiety, that somatic place is, is over coupling, what we call over coupling right.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: It's coupled or layered, however you want, with other things.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: The way that I've experienced that in this place that I'm going to say is, you know, it's not perfect.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: We have symptoms, we have negative emotion.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Right, like to be human is to feel right, positive pain, right.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: So I still feel pain, mental, emotional, psychic, whatever Right.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: But from this largely healed place, I will say that what healing has provided me is this radical capacity for presence, presence without anxiety.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: And in this place of being fully present, I am able to trust my higher power, I am able to trust that I am safe.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: And then what motivates me is the things that are, I think, my gifts, my calling right, that, things that I'm inspired to do, things I'm called to, things that genuinely right and I have so much more energy and so much less stress in completing them.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: It just is easy, it just all of a sudden, you know, I'm not you know, but that phrase a peace that passes all understanding comes from the Bible.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: That is what I feel.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: This peace that passes all understanding, that it, it's just this presence, this ease, and it I don't need to be motivated by anxiety.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: Right and see when we and we get rid of that anxiety and it's lower and you touched on it, but we can be more in touch with our higher self our intuition.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: And because with that anxiety from a somatic place and I don't know if you've felt this before, but sometimes it's hard to differentiate if you haven't done the healing, the difference between your nervous system, or fear-based decisions, and your true higher power, or your intuition.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: I think I think that's.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: I think that a lot of people relate to that.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: Is this anxiety or is this intuition?
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Right, and it doesn't mean that you don't listen to that anxiety in the moment, because we do need to feel safe to be able to take our next step, if you're going through a divorce or a bad breakup, or you're trying to create something or you're trying.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: You know you're divorced and you need to go figure out how to earn more money so that way you can continue to live the lifestyle that you want to.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: But we have to heal that.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: want to, but we have to heal that, and that is key for us to be able to then be more creative and trust ourselves and try different things of like.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: Okay, I'm going to throw this out there, but it's not a reflection of me.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: It just means maybe that's not the right path for me, so then I'm going to try something else.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but you're going to play and try and explore, yeah.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: And childlike creativeness and fail and be okay with the failure.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, that's beautiful.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: So I'm hearing you say that adoption and what happened in your early childhood experience led you to want to create this perfect family so you could have this sense of safety.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: I also heard you say in the book that I think this is related to your emotional two by four right, but that you were really really afraid to be alone.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that that's something you've healed kind of along the way.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: That probably started with adoption also.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: Oh, completely, I mean absolutely.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: And I relate to that and I'm not adopted, and you don't have to be adopted to have this.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: I think it's just was a layer when you're adopted.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: It might be a little bit more magnified.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: Because, energetically, even though my birth mother, I have met my birth mother and she didn't want to give me away.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: I mean, I was, I was adopted in the sixties, I was left in, you know, from a somatic place when you and from a trauma place talk about early trauma.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: I was left in the hospital for three days, right To make sure that everything without a primary caregiver without a caregiver, To make sure that everything is okay Without a primary caregiver.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: Without a caregiver, without that bonding and I was fed by a nurse with a bottle.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, without that bonding.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: Where's that initial bonding?
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: Where's that skin to skin contact?
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, In the 60s especially.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah, so that's first.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: Then I go into this family with a mother who wants me but just has, you know, her own trauma, and so she has this shield.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: I'll call it that.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: You know, and I knew I was loved.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right, like she told me.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: She loved me all the time and her actions demonstrated that right.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: But it's like her heart was under saran wrap.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, couldn't quite penetrate.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: Couldn't quite penetrate, and it's just so interesting that, as a child, like I knew that I felt that as a child.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: I think that that's so validating, right, like I hope our listeners can hear that where they look back.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: You know I'm sure you find this in your coaching practice too that people will say I had a great childhood and that's not wrong.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: Right, you can have great parents or you can have loving parents, but that doesn't mean that the depth of connection was there to create that bonding, that intimacy, that comfort diving deep that helps us feel that sense of belonging or this kind of unshakable bond or sense of wellbeing or security righthakable bond or sense of well-being or security.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: Right, it's like you can know something intellectually but not feel the match energetically and it's so hard to put your finger on.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: And we don't want to blame parents because that serves no one to blame or be resentful or angry, but it's just to kind of trust that that's real right.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: If how it felt to be with them wasn't delicious, you know that something was off.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: Right, but.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: But touching on that anger and the resentment, what I do want to go from the somatic place there is healthy aggression.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: Oh yes.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Right, yes, yes, and we're way too civilized about our aggression.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: And we're way too civilized about our aggression, right, and so I don't want I don't want your listeners to think that well, oh, if you are feeling anger and resentment, to just suppress that and push it down, right, we do need to address that.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: And there are healthy ways to do that.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's the key.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, but it doesn't mean that we project that and take it out Right, weaponize it onto people, right Onto others.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: We need to learn how to discharge it from our somatic bodies.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, embody it, get into our bodies and process discharge.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: Feel, you know, like I've taken a pillow, yes, and hit my bed.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, right before our call here, I was on a call with somebody who was like, give me, I need a remedy to feel less stress.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: And I was like, no, we don't need a remedy to feel less stress, because we need to get it out right.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: What we've done is we've given a remedy to exactly to excavate it.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: Yes, the remedy excavates it, it doesn't make it just go away magically Right and push it away.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: Yes, we want you know, when we feel it in our bodies and we feel the tightness in our chest, we want to stay with that and feel that and discharge it.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: And discharge it and so and so in that moment yeah, ask your body what do?
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: What do I need right now to release this tension, this resentment, this anger that I'm feeling?
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: And it will often involve a pillow right, whether it's punching it or screaming into it or the woods or wherever right, if you've got a soundproof, you've got a panic room like yes, somewhere where you can yeah, I often say stomping your feet, pounding your chest, pounding pillow, yeah, really yeah.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: You know, stomping your feet or you know, sometimes it's just taking a really long fast walk too.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: But then coming back, and what I often tell my clients and I do myself is come back even for five minutes and either sit or lie down and notice the sensations.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: Stay with the sensations in your body.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Like what's shifted and what hasn't like, developing that intimate awareness, that body awareness?
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: Yes, and if you don't have, if you, if you are not that in touch with your body, because this is a practice and it takes time.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: Just notice the chair that you're sitting on.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: Notice where your feet are touching the floor, Notice where the back of your chair is supporting you.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: I mean, those basic things help to bring us back and goes back to what you goes.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: Bring us back to the present moment.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it signals to our nervous system that we are safe and that we're not experiencing what is triggering us in the moment.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Then is not now.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: Now is now.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: Now is now and it helps to rewire.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: Yes, yep, our nervous system Beaut, it helps to rewire yes, yep, our nervous system.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: Beautifully, beautifully said, Thank you.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: So tell us about how being a caregiver for your elderly parents right.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: And mom got sick pretty young, 75.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: But I think this happened and especially with COVID, right.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: I think we're seeing more and more.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: You know aging folks have massive health issues in this season of life, earlier and earlier.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: But tell us about how that influenced your right Like overburdened with responsibility, and then it sends us all of these messages about what we think is possible for ourselves and what we think isn't possible for ourselves.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: Sort all that out for us, given your experience.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: So I think there were, there was a couple of things that led to my loss, my loss of my sense of self.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: Well, first of all, I don't know if I truly always had one right yeah, when you talk about my adoption.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: And then, um, I had an anxious attachment style shocker, so I wanted to attach, and so when I married, I wasn't necessarily looking at, I was looking for somebody who was going to love me.
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: You know it's kind of like provide security and provide security, because also, my dad was not a very um, he wasn't a businessman, he was a craftsman.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: He wasn't a businessman.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: And so my mom handled the finances and so I always saw their struggle.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: So I wanted security, so I got that financial security.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: There was no emotional security, you know, and I loved reading.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: I don't want to digress here, but I did love reading how.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: I think as women we can sometimes be each other's worst critics rather than raising each other up.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: You know, and I loved reading how here you are.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: You did have an affluent experience, right, you all traveled to these beautiful places and the finances were taken care of, but it did not change your sense of wellbeing in yourself or in the world.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Right, you still experience the hardship of having sick parents, sick children, sick yourself.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: Right, like it didn't spare your marriage.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: Like people often think that money creates security, we falsely equate money with security and wellbeing, as did you, as did I.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: Same thing.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: My first husband was an attorney.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Right, compensating for my early childhood experience and it didn't work, and so that's just to say to people, like, don't fall into that trap of thinking that money is going to create security.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: No, it doesn't, and sometimes it causes less security.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: Golden handcuffs.
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: Depending on your spouse's relationship with you, that's right, control right.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: That's right, because that's exactly what happened to me Through my marriage.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: I was giving and giving and had very little needs emotionally and I thought, okay, so when I do have needs, which then started to surface when I did get into therapy and started expressing them, he got angry at me because now, all of a sudden, whatever 18, 19 years into our marriage, what you have needs, you're asking me to do something.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: Wait a minute, I can be on the couch and have sniffles and not need to deal with any of the kids stuff, but if you have strep throat, you need to still do your duty Like no no.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: But what it did is, as I was healing myself, I was speaking up for myself, I was asking for my own needs to be met and I wasn't accepting what I used to accept, which then ended up becoming the demise of my marriage.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: But going back to your question, too, there were, you know, there are times when I was like, ok, I'm ready.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: I'm ready to leave my marriage because my ex was never going to leave the relationship, right, he was never going to do it.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: I knew I had to do it, but then my mom would fall, you know she would, right, you'd be on, you'd have another scheduled trip and right, and there'd be some health crisis, right?
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: Right, I heard throughout the book how, um, and one of the things that inspired the book, right, was your experience with all her caregivers and you could hear how, as you got healthier and healthier, your standards would increase with the caregivers, right, the kind of behavior you would tolerate and wouldn't tolerate.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: It's like your vibe was constantly shifting and you were constantly rising.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: Even with the caregivers.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for noticing that, that's a little subtlety, that I don't know that everybody notices, but it's true and that's a really good point.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: Little gut feelings that you would have in the beginning, that you would just gloss over.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: I would just shut it down.
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: I would just like immediately shut it down.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: I was like oh no, and and that was part of also trusting myself more- yes.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Oh, I just got chills Trusting my intuition, yes, and feeling like you could say no, like you have a right to say no, which ties to so many things.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: What happened with your brother?
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: What happened you know?
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: Like, oh my goodness.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: There's layers of feeling like you don't have permission to say.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: This doesn't work for me.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: Right and having and finding my voice, because I didn't have a voice yes and that, and then look at me, look, look at me now.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: Look at you now, literally on a microphone, with a book in the world, a book, baby, full of your voice, and it is, and it's written in your voice.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: You know a lot of books.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: This is something I would say that I mentioned to you, you know, before we hit record.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: Is that your book?
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: There's so much to learn from your book, even in just the ways that you did the experiential therapy work and that kind of thing.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: But it's written in a way where you're telling your story, right, it's written in your voice, in storytelling format, and that's why it reads so easily and it really is a joy to get to know you in that way.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: So let's fast forward to the epilogue.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: I was joking earlier.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: Right Way to bury the lead lady.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: So in the epilogue of the book you get really, really, really sick, which I relate to, and here you had done all of this spiritual work and all this deep therapy but you got really sick and then you found somatic processing right.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: Walk us through that and what you see is the difference between, like good therapy and good therapy.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, right, okay, here we go.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: So I leave my marriage and I say yes to a lot of things.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: I'm writing my book, I start doing some coaching, I'm dating.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: I say yes to all my girlfriends because one of my fears was, if I leave my marriage, you know that we did a lot of social things for him and some of the volunteer work and work stuff for him and some of the volunteer work and work stuff and one of the fears I had was that I wasn't going to have anything to do, right, which is fascinating.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: So I relate to that right, like am I going to be alone forever?
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: But it's fascinating because, as you're reading the book, you had such a rich, your own, you had carved out for yourself a rich community.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: Right, and that is a really this.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: That is a key.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: Thank you for pointing that out, because that is key that I want to share with your listeners.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: It's so important to develop a strong female tribe as.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: I called it and to this day they are my core group of friends.
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: I love that and that is so key.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: It doesn't matter whether it's in a church or a synagogue or a spiritual group, but you need to really find other women who have your back.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: Yes, who, well, I think?
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: Who have similar goals right?
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: Who whose goal is alignment, Like well, and and are on the same journey as you of healing?
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: Yes, Because I'm assuming everybody who's listening is listening because you know they want to heal something.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: And they're working through their own divorce.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: So that's one piece, but I took on two.
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: The bottom line is, I took on way too many S's.
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: Too many S's, too many S's and two weeks before I landed in the hospital, I was walking with a friend.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: I said everything is going really well, but I'm stressed and I didn't know how to back out of everything that I had on my plate, like didn't feel the permission, or but my body did yeah or a, but my body did.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so my divorce.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: I.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: I received my divorce papers stamped by the court on a Wednesday, on a no, I'm sorry.
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Maybe on a Tuesday.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: Two days later I closed escrow on my house.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: Two days after that I ended up in the hospital.
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: I had passed out, I developed vertigo.
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: I had extreme, severe pain in my lower back, so bad.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: They were giving me a drug that was like five times stronger than morphine, and I'm not.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: I don't take drugs.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: I'm not on any prescription drugs.
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: I take vitamins and some supplements.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: I am active, exercise regularly and I ended up in the hospital for four days.
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: They kept chasing my symptoms with more medication.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: And I said get me out of this hospital before you kill me.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's my thought process.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: My oxygen level has had dropped, my blood pressure had dropped and they, you know, and they kept giving me more medication.
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: I left the hospital that first time with a walker looking six months pregnant, because I had retained so much water.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: Well, what I've learned homeopathically that connects with so many things, but is that when we administer medications, we're suppressing vital force.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: It's like taking that anger and resentment that we referenced earlier and then like numbing it with an antidepressant or a benzodiazepine right Rather than processing it out of the body, rather than expressing it, or yeah, and so it's the same thing.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: When the body is having symptoms, it's trying to express something, and when we numb it and that doesn't mean medication is never appropriate.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Certainly there are times, yeah, but oftentimes and I did.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: I needed some of that pain medicine because I could not move, and so what happened then is you know, this is my body expressing it.
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: So, then I developed what they call it took them two weeks to finally diagnose me.
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: And I ended up finally getting diagnosed by, because I ended up two weeks later in the hospital after my first visit.
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: I couldn't eat, I continued to pass out, I was throwing up.
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: How scary.
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: And this is where my friend, my tribe, came in.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: My friends were there for me because I couldn't do anything for myself.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: And they were there 24-7.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: And my girlfriends would take shifts.
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: They would bring food over and for two weeks and I have a girlfriend who is a doctor and she would come over and check on me.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: She only lived a couple blocks away and she was freaked out.
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: So second time I landed I pass out again.
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: Second time I landed in the hospital I have my doctor friend come.
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: I have fluid lining, you know, like a fluid around my lungs.
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: But one of the things that I had is they called it migrating arthritis and they so I went to a rheumatologist finally, and it wasn't rheumatoid arthritis but it was just they called it a virus with migrating arthritis Fascinating, and so I had these hotspots, so it would was in one knee and then it would move to my ankle and then, I had an air bubble on my chest and and moved my upper back and I think it was this energy, this vital force, that was trying to release express yes express it out of my body.
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: It took me six months to fully recover from that, and so, through that process this is the other thing I will say I had left my therapist because she was our couples therapist about halfway through my divorce, and so when I and so I wasn't in therapy during that time which is a mistake, you know, hindsight being 2020.
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know it's good to take breaks, right, because that's where we often learn what has been integrated and what hasn't.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: But I don't know if that was the best time.
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: Lesson learned?
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: Yes, but so when I was healthy enough.
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: So I have a bunch of therapy therapist friends also.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: I love that, and so a couple of them said you need to go see Bob.
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: Okay, bob is a he's a PhD and he's a SEP somatic experiencing practitioner, which is and so, and he's also a buyer and bioenergetics um uh certificate.
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: So he's all about the body.
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: And so the therapy I had been even though I'd done experiential therapy and I'd done some inner child work, most of my therapy had been talk therapy, and that's why I left was because I felt like I was but it was also Groundhog's Day.
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: It was like I'm talking about the same things over and over and it wasn't until I started working with the somatic piece, the body, and releasing and completing that fight flight and freeze response that I was stuck in.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: Flight and freeze response that I was stuck in.
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: That all helped me heal my anxiety, my illnesses, and I was so inspired by it, as well as my SEP.
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: He encouraged me to take the training yes, because you're a natural right.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: It's like it's, it's of you, like you were.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well, but the benefit from it was so profound for me and it's not, you know everybody, I think people think somatic.
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: What does that mean?
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: That's, you know, sounds scary or different, or but it's very gentle and they're very often easy exercises.
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: But, just like anything like yoga, it's a practice right, and it's integrating.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: Whether it's homeopathy or, you know, the EMDR, it's integrating these things slowly into our life, one layer at a time.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: I was just having a conversation with my chiropractor today.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: We have this tendency to label diagnoses right.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: Just for an example right, adhd, and we think of ADHD as like a layer, something that needs to be healed, but actually there's so many facets to it.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: There are probably many, many, many, many layers within ADHD that need healing right, contributing from different places.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: Some of it could be CPTSD, some of it could be inherited, some of it you know so much stuff, right, and so, yes, it's like integrating these practices.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: I can often be heard on my podcast saying if you try it once and tell me it didn't work, that does not count.
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: Right, yes, yeah, we have to try it multiple times.
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: And going back to yoga, I mean I've been doing yoga for over 15 years and the first time I went to yoga I hated it.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: Yes, well, I think most people do.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: I hated, it.
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: But I felt something.
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: Yes, you felt something.
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: I felt different and I had a sense of focus and a sense of calm Maybe not calm, but it was like a sense of focus there was something that was different.
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: That kept bringing me back, like with the somatic experiencing that it's kind of a whole nother level too, of okay, it's taking me to a place that I can just be present, I can be present with you, I can be present in my life and in the end, the more we can be present, the more we can enjoy the journey that we're on and enjoy today, and not because I was just, I was just listening to something.
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: It's like you know, I'm going to be happy when when those people who were.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: Anxiety motivates them.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: That's what it is right.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: It's like anxiety is motivating me to chase after this thing that I believe is going to bring me joy, rather than having the capacity to just feel good now, to feel at ease now.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: Yes, that happy when thing, it's the, it's the incapacity for presence.
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: Right, right and the incapacity to deal with whatever it is that you're dealing with in the moment and that's what somatic experiencing and EMDR and all these somatic practices do is they help us build more capacity?
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: Yes, thank you for saying that To deal with what we're going through in the moment.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: In addition to what we've gone through, we don't have to live in the past or look at the future, we can just be here Well said yeah, and enjoy this moment.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: Love it.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: There are people in this world that you meet, right.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: You're called to this.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: It's just to think of your story, right, how you were adopted, what you experienced in early childhood in your adoptive family, what you experienced in early childhood in your adoptive family, what you experienced as a caregiver, and to even see how your husband it's not that he didn't do any work right, it's not that he didn't do work, he did work right but you have always kind of had a sense that there's more.
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: There's more out there, there's more.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: And you've never not heated that calling, and it is admirable.
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: And it's well, I've had moments.
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: You know I do have my pity party for one Of course, cause you're human.
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: to be human is to feel pain.
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's right.
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: But then you know, I have my pity party for one.
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: Then I put my big girl panties back on and, yes, I go pity party for one.
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: Then I put my big girl panties back on and, yes, I go, I go out there and I still do.
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: Like you know, I was having a, yeah, a moment, like a week or two ago.
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: I was just like you know and I'm like, okay, let's, you know, let's what's what's, what is this, what's here?
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: And I just sat with myself and you know, and I worked through it and you know.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: So it is human and I still experience it, but it it is less and it's less frequent.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: So it stays for a shorter period of time and it happens less frequently, and that's the beauty of this work and when it does happen, you have the tools and you know what to do and you feel empowered to do it and, yeah right, like you're in charge of your health and well-being and you know how to get the results and you're not a prisoner to it.
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: You're not trapped by it, yeah, yeah.
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: I love that.
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: Tell our listeners how they can find you.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: I'm going to put you know.
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: We'll have all the links in the show notes, right?
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: I'll have a link to your book on Amazon, right?
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: But tell them how if they want to get in touch with you, how they can get in touch with you.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: So the best way is through my email, which is Lori L-A-U-R-I-E, with an extra E, james, and then I'm on Instagram and my beginner's guide to somatic healing.
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: Ooh, that sounds sexy.
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: It's just a short, you know like five or six page, and it gives you some practical exercises.
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: Explains the basics.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: I think that's so valuable because we throw around these words and they're intimidating and it's like this whole thing to unpack right.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: So I love that, Love that.
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so those are the best ways to reach me.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: Love it Well.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for A living in your gifts B sharing them with us and the world.
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: It's amazing.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: Keep going.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: I am so proud of you, so so proud of you, and it has been just such a joy to get to know you, and I look forward to us having more conversations, yes, thank you.
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me.
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: I so enjoyed being here with you today, dawn.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: All right loves.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: In today's episode you heard Lori talk about the difference between good therapy and good somatic therapy.
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: You heard her talk about the impacts of adoption on her attachment style, her relationship choices.
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: You heard her talk about how she lost herself in too much responsibility and the work that she did to climb out of that and to find herself and to hear her calling.
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: Do not miss Lori's offerings in the show notes and we'll talk soon.
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: Peace, dear.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: Divorce Diary is a podcast by my coach, dawn.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: You can find more at mycoachdawncom.