Latest / Reframe / How to Love With Boundaries
Transcript
- 0:12SPEAKER_01: Welcome to week three.
- 0:14SPEAKER_00: We're honest conversations to create new possibilities.
- 0:17SPEAKER_00: It's Sarah and Sandy, and each week we sit down together to explore life, growth, and everything in between.
- 0:24SPEAKER_01: Hi.
- 0:25SPEAKER_01: Welcome.
- 0:26SPEAKER_01: Yes, we're back, we're back, we're back.
- 0:28SPEAKER_01: We're back.
- 0:29SPEAKER_01: And we're recording at the same time as our last podcast, aren't we?
- 0:32SPEAKER_01: This time, which we don't usually do, but that's because it's like kind of part one and part two, I guess.
- 0:38SPEAKER_00: Yes.
- 0:39SPEAKER_01: So just to explain what we're doing, we are interviewing each other.
- 0:45SPEAKER_01: Interviewing sounds very formal, doesn't it?
- 0:46SPEAKER_01: We're asking each other.
- 0:49SPEAKER_01: I know.
- 0:50SPEAKER_01: Um, we're asking each other questions about your experience in relation to um reframing, reframing life.
- 1:01SPEAKER_01: Yes.
- 1:02SPEAKER_01: I was going to say all the questions then, but I guess we'll get into it in the episode.
- 1:06SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think what we were saying was it's like if we take reframe as something that has helped us have shift our perspective or shifted our trajectory in life, it's you know, it's something that almost kind of breaks us free out of habit or kind of of being in life in a way where we're unaware and we become more aware.
- 1:27SPEAKER_00: And so it changes how we then maybe kind of operate, how we behave because of what we've seen within the experience or the relationship or whatever it is that helps us to do that reframe.
- 1:39SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and also, like you said before, allows anyone listening to get to know us a little bit more as well and know our stories.
- 1:45SPEAKER_01: So I'm super excited to ask you the questions this time.
- 1:51SPEAKER_01: Oh, are we ready to go?
- 1:53SPEAKER_00: I'm a little nervous.
- 1:54SPEAKER_00: I must I must say, I'm a little nervous.
- 1:57SPEAKER_00: So um, okay.
- 2:00SPEAKER_00: That's cool.
- 2:00SPEAKER_01: I was nervous and excited as well.
- 2:04SPEAKER_01: Okay, so first question then has there been an event or experience or events or experiences that have um helped you reframe?
- 2:23SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I again there's always things, isn't there?
- 2:29SPEAKER_00: Every day, and in fact, in the we've already just discussed that how even just in a conversation we can suddenly get a reframe on things.
- 2:37SPEAKER_00: But there's a couple of things, big things that have happened to me in my life in my life that really altered, had to alter what was going on for me because literally I got became very ill.
- 2:50SPEAKER_00: So I had about, I'm trying to think now, it was about 20, 17 maybe.
- 3:01SPEAKER_00: Um I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia after years of living a very stressful family life with um my adopted children and going through some very difficult and challenging times.
- 3:17SPEAKER_00: I became really ill and I literally was I was in pain, I was in a lot of pain, I was very tired all the time, exhausted.
- 3:29SPEAKER_00: And I remember, I just remember the moment when it really hit me, and I was lying on a sun lounger, we'd gone to Greece on holiday, and I was lying there, and I was just thinking to myself, I don't think I can get up from here.
- 3:48SPEAKER_00: I was so tired and so exhausted, and then also in so much pain in my body that the thought of actually getting myself to sit up just felt really overwhelming and like too much for me.
- 4:02SPEAKER_00: And I remember thinking in this moment in that moment, this is not normal.
- 4:09SPEAKER_00: And then kind of having that realization that what I'd done was normalise how I'd been feeling, and that that was not normal in the slightest for a woman in her, I don't know, I think, mid-for mid to early 40s to be experiencing that in her body, especially considering at the time, you know, I was I'd started being a yoga practitioner, I was you know trying to live a healthy lifestyle.
- 4:40SPEAKER_00: I still had some things that were probably not as healthy as they needed to be, but a lot of what I was really trying to do was support myself.
- 4:49SPEAKER_00: Um, and I recognized that I was been living with stress, but I just hadn't really allowed it to be as obvious to me about how much it was impacting my life, and that how much dealing with all that pain and exhaustion was, and I was kind of just trying to push through and move through it, that that was making the situation worse, and I wasn't really facing it.
- 5:15SPEAKER_00: And so, in that moment on that sun lounger, I had to make a decision that I needed to do something about this, and this was pre-me being diagnosed.
- 5:26SPEAKER_00: Um, and so we came back from that holiday, and I, you know, I went to the doctors, and I just started to realize that I needed to think about how I was living my life and how I wanted to live my life differently.
- 5:41SPEAKER_00: One of the things that really helped me actually was my yoga practice.
- 5:44SPEAKER_00: I've always practiced strala yoga, which has a really central theme of softness and like moving with softness, and about the whole fact that when we move with softness, we're kind of like not straining and forcing ourselves, we allow the tension out of the body and just allow ourselves to be more in flow, that we actually get to achieve more.
- 6:06SPEAKER_00: And that philosophy just means so much to me that we don't have to strain and push to achieve, we don't have to perform to achieve, we don't have to make our bodies move in shapes that don't feel natural to us just so it looks a certain way or it looks like what the teacher's doing.
- 6:22SPEAKER_00: It's about what does it feel like?
- 6:25SPEAKER_00: And the simplest thing that I kept coming back to was how what does it feel like to be in my body?
- 6:29SPEAKER_00: Where am I holding tension?
- 6:31SPEAKER_00: Where am I really gripping things in life?
- 6:36SPEAKER_00: And how is that then impacting how I how I feel in this moment?
- 6:41SPEAKER_00: And when you start to let go of stress in your body and start to just move gently and be soft with yourself mentally, physically, it changes everything, and it did change everything for me.
- 6:54SPEAKER_00: I mean, it took a lot of time, but I I healed myself of whatever was going on in my body then, not through medication, not through what the doctors wanted me to do, but through me just listening to my body.
- 7:07SPEAKER_00: And I think that point of understanding is where I attuned to myself and my energy for the first time.
- 7:14SPEAKER_00: I didn't have language for it then.
- 7:17SPEAKER_00: I didn't understand that what I was feeling was I was sensing that heaviness of the energy in my body and how I would then work through removing that from my body or from my system, letting it releasing it out.
- 7:29SPEAKER_00: But it was the first time that I had that realization that I needed to do something about how I felt and that feeling what I was feeling was the way through, not to ignore what I was feeling.
- 7:43SPEAKER_00: So that's a quite a big moment.
- 7:47SPEAKER_01: I can imagine it sounds it, and I'm really kind of remembering a conversation that we had on the podcast a while ago where you talked about stress is really not great for you in a human design perspective.
- 8:01SPEAKER_01: Not that stress is great for you anyway, but you've particularly, I don't know if this is the right words, but you said it's like your kind of more shadow side.
- 8:09SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I have um and my my key gate or my song gate in human design is gate 52, which is the gate of stillness, where the shadow aspect of that is stress, and so it's very poignant or kind of it it's it's a bit obvious, really, is what I'm saying, is is that that stress would be my Achilles heel, the thing that really brought me down because it is really the lowest, lowest expression of that very strong energy that's in my chart, and the the kind of antidote to that is restraint to find stillness, so pulling back from life, allowing that kind of more kind of letting life kind of um, yeah, not feeling like I've got to grip onto life or push myself into life, but stepping back from that, experiencing restraint for myself, and then that allowing that softness in, and that creates an inner stillness, which is actually part of what I'm here to experience and also to share with people.
- 9:12SPEAKER_00: So, in my own journey through um understanding that quality within me, and again at the time I didn't unknow human design, I didn't, but human design helped me really open an even bigger reframe on what that experience was for me.
- 9:28SPEAKER_00: I can understand and see the energetic mechanics of everything that was happening in that particular situation for me.
- 9:36SPEAKER_01: And I'd love to hear that experience and the start of you that the words that stand out to me, the soften and the the feeling and the stillness in your body.
- 9:47SPEAKER_01: And I've said this to you before, that's something that I really love that you have always I guess encouraged in me.
- 9:54SPEAKER_01: Not that you do that, I mean that you bring that out in me, that real sense into yourself and trust your experience and what you're feeling.
- 10:02SPEAKER_01: And I guess I wonder, can you remember how it felt literally in your body?
- 10:08SPEAKER_01: Because you talk about stillness and kind of softness, and I sense that from you now, I guess.
- 10:15SPEAKER_01: Interesting to hear kind of physically the tightness, the tension, what that was like for you.
- 10:20SPEAKER_00: It was just heavy, you know, like the weightiness of carrying around and then an energy, and now I understand it as it was like dense energy in my system, and what we have to do like lower expression energy feels dense and heavy in our system, so we have to move it through our system to release it because a lot of it's emotions that we've that we've suppressed, and it's like energy in motion, emotion, energy in motion.
- 10:46SPEAKER_00: So, how do you move that through and release that from your body?
- 10:49SPEAKER_00: Release that weightiness through, and I used movement, gentle movement as a way of doing that, and um and that it was just heaviness, you know.
- 10:59SPEAKER_00: Like I literally felt like I was carrying boulders around with me every day.
- 11:05SPEAKER_00: It was just so exhausting carrying that kind of weight of I'd experienced a lot of depression in my life, and it was just like that was all stuck in my system.
- 11:18SPEAKER_00: I hadn't really moved through it, it was like looping through it all the time, coming back to it, stories in my head about what it what it meant about who I was and who I am.
- 11:28SPEAKER_00: And the moment I'd started to soften my perspective of that, like it doesn't mean anything, it's actually energy, and I just need to move the energy out of me instead of getting stuck in the stories.
- 11:39SPEAKER_00: Once I started to realize that, that really started to move things for me.
- 11:44SPEAKER_00: But it was that then it moving gradually, gradually into more lightness, and it's something I still feel I can tell when I'm kind of tensing because I start to feel heavier, and then I have to, then I, you know, I'm how do I find the lightness?
- 11:58SPEAKER_00: How do I find the lightness for myself?
- 12:00SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, so it's still some a sense of something that I sense and and again use as a way of resp something to respond to in my life.
- 12:10SPEAKER_01: And thank you so much for sharing that because I'm sure there's a lot of people that can know how that feels that heaviness, that that that stuckness, and I'm sure a lot of people will need to to hear that to know that we go through those periods and we don't always have to, and also that that remembering that we do sometimes go back there, but we don't have to stay there.
- 12:32SPEAKER_01: So thank you.
- 12:33SPEAKER_01: I'm sure a lot of people, as I say, will benefit from hearing that, which brings me on to my second question, and is there a person or people that have helped you to reframe life for you?
- 12:47SPEAKER_00: So I I thought about this one a little bit and wondered where where I would go with this question.
- 12:53SPEAKER_00: And I think having been a parent to two adopted children and how that has really altered my life, as any parenting does, but this particular experience, you know, like many experiences that we have, did not work out the way that we hoped it would.
- 13:14SPEAKER_00: You know, we ended up having something called an adoption breakdown with one of my children because we we found things that were going on too challenging for us as a whole family, had two children through adoption, and we couldn't manage some of the behaviour and keep everybody safe, and so um we had an adoption breakdown, which meant that one of my children went back into care, and that was a very, very challenging experience for me.
- 13:47SPEAKER_00: And and then because children who are adopted um often nowadays come with a lot of trauma and difficult early life experiences, you know, that really shapes how they behave and how their lives unfold for them, no matter how hard you try to not let it.
- 14:08SPEAKER_00: And seeing both of their lives kind of unfold the way they have has been challenging for my husband and I.
- 14:16SPEAKER_00: And so, whilst I talk of we talk about reframing, I think the thing to say is that you could look at those experiences, and I did for a long time look at those experiences as all negative, and you know that that that it was it had been such a challenging time for us, and that there wasn't kind of all that much hope or kind of joy left in the experience, which is just so untrue.
- 14:46SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's really untrue.
- 14:48SPEAKER_00: There's so much joy that I can still have as the memories of of things that have gone on, and and also still things, ways in which I can support and love my children now.
- 14:59SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think that what really supported me was to see them on their own journey, see them as being on their own journey and understanding that there is a part that I play on that journey, and that it's not black or white, it's very nuanced, and where you can give, you give as much as you can, but you don't have to hold everything for for them.
- 15:31SPEAKER_00: And so it taught me a lot about how to love unconditionally, but it also taught me a lot about how to love with boundaries, which is kind of sounds contradictory, but it's not really because unconditional love does not mean that you have to give all of yourself and martyr yourself to a relationship, and that's the thing that really got reframed for me in the long term was that real understanding of how to love in a powerful way that helps the other person as opposed to facilitates ongoing habits and behaviors and things that are not necessarily going to help them, and that's not the easy way to love because I think a lot of what we're taught about and shown and we see in society is um can sometimes be a lot of very overgiving in order to show that we love.
- 16:28SPEAKER_00: Um, but I you know it's about finding a really it's a relationship, it's relational, so it's about both of you, and that's the thing that I've really learned to reframe.
- 16:40SPEAKER_00: Like I would never have had the opportunity to really understand the depths of how to love in that way if I hadn't have had the experiences I've had with my children, and it's helped me reframe my like my relationship of love with myself, and it's helped me to reframe my relationships of love with all people that I love, and that I think is the great gift, and I'm so grateful for the experiences I've had for that reason.
- 17:16SPEAKER_00: Um and so, yeah, so that's so I'd say the people are my children, and and I am very grateful to them both for everything that they've taught me.
- 17:28SPEAKER_01: And I'm really glad that you said as well the the relation, the relational side of it, because when I was listening to you answer, that really stood out to me.
- 17:38SPEAKER_01: Although we're talking about your children reframing things for you, uh, I was really kind of caught on the fact of how much you would reframe for them.
- 17:49SPEAKER_01: And how, yeah, in that relationship dynamic, we can reframe for other people without intending to, without, I guess sometimes what I said before of like the conscious, how can we look at this differently?
- 18:01SPEAKER_01: The reframe, we do that naturally and we do that sometimes unintentionally as well.
- 18:07SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's quite a complex dynamic, really.
- 18:10SPEAKER_00: It is, and I think it's and I think the thing that the moment we can stand in a relationship and say, This is complex, this is nuanced, and it's unique, and every you every single relationship is that, and so there can never be any right or wrong way, and that's actually the biggest thing that came out of the that whole my relationship understanding is that there's too many, especially around parenting, and then you're parenting adopted children, so there's a lot of kind of like social care giving you advice on what you should and shouldn't do, and everything, and sometimes it's great, and yet again, other times it's just not right for you and your family and your children, and both your children can also be different, so there's like that kind of to take into consideration, you can't always treat both of them the same, and then there's this whole kind of understanding that um you have to live a little bit in kind of in the process with them in order to work that out because it's always changing, it's always always changing, and so yeah, so there's there's that to kind of like to think about that it's just the the complexity of it all.
- 19:30SPEAKER_01: And I feel like I want to ask you if there's anyone in a situation similar to how you've where you were, maybe what advice you would give to in terms of reframing for people, as I say, perhaps who are adoptive parents, but that feels a little bit unfair to kind of put you on the spot that way.
- 19:51SPEAKER_01: But I guess you might be able to answer some of that in what's your process for reframing or when you need when you recognize in yourself that you might need to reframe.
- 20:02SPEAKER_00: So I think this comes down to the the the final question, isn't it?
- 20:07SPEAKER_00: That I know that you're going to ask me about what is the process.
- 20:10SPEAKER_00: And the one thing that I always remember, and I definitely learnt this as a parent, and I still apply this constantly in my own life, and had this same conversation with my husband yesterday.
- 20:23SPEAKER_00: Um, is if something feels challenging, that is just to remember that in that moment, it's you if you can't see the answer, then you like you need to.
- 20:35SPEAKER_00: I think you know, we were we're in agreement on this, but this is it needs space.
- 20:40SPEAKER_00: It needs like you need to just walk, you need to leave it alone, and you need to think tomorrow's another day.
- 20:45SPEAKER_00: And I think that phrase for me was always like, tomorrow's another day was always the thing that helped me get through when things were really challenging.
- 20:55SPEAKER_00: Because I do know that you can wake up on an on another day and have a different perspective almost instantly.
- 21:02SPEAKER_00: If you've been able to rest and you've been able to just take care of yourself, that you can see like an answer to a problem can drop in.
- 21:12SPEAKER_00: Somebody will get in contact with you that you weren't expecting, and like say, Oh, I just thought you might need this, or you might this might be of use to you, and they come out of nowhere.
- 21:23SPEAKER_00: And I I've learned so deeply to trust in that process of if I can't see it now, I will see it at some point, or it will just naturally solve itself, like so many times when we're trying to find a solution to something, and then another part of it falls into place, and then you don't even have to solve it because it's literally solved itself.
- 21:49SPEAKER_00: And so just to be trusting that if I don't see something immediately doesn't mean I can't solve it, doesn't mean I won't solve it, but I just need to give it the space.
- 22:00SPEAKER_00: It needs, and then the important thing is to take care of myself because if that's what I always learnt with the children was what that I need to if if this needs a little bit of space, then I probably need to find some way of taking care of myself.
- 22:15SPEAKER_00: Now I wasn't always able to do that, and I didn't always um choose the right ways to take care of myself when we were in the real thick of it.
- 22:24SPEAKER_00: But that said, it was definitely something I learned in there, and I still live by today that everything is transient, nothing is fixed, and we can always find a solution to the problem eventually.
- 22:38SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 22:40SPEAKER_01: Yes.
- 22:42SPEAKER_01: And I totally agree with that space.
- 22:45SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I when I give myself that space, like you said, someone pops up, an email drops in of the exact thing that I've been trying to solve or fix.
- 22:55SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
- 22:56SPEAKER_01: And that's also a real um reminder for me of how incredible that that space is.
- 23:02SPEAKER_01: But like you said as well, self-care and looking after yourself.
- 23:05SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
- 23:06SPEAKER_01: Is so important.
- 23:07SPEAKER_01: And again, I guess that's I kind of meant that when I said about the relationship, the relational aspect of it and the complexities of it, because we can influence people without without doing so directly.
- 23:20SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 23:21SPEAKER_01: You know, we look after ourselves.
- 23:22SPEAKER_01: I think that's the biggest influence on other people that they can see we're looking after ourselves.
- 23:27SPEAKER_01: Okay, maybe it's permission that I get to look after myself as well.
- 23:30SPEAKER_01: And so sometimes, you know, we can get wrapped up in trying to help other people when really we help ourselves, that does impact and influence other people.
- 23:39SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I I really um I agree with that so much.
- 23:43SPEAKER_00: I think that um that whole thing of like when we take care of ourselves, just even by it's by modeling, by by representing, by showing, but just your energy.
- 23:56SPEAKER_00: It's like we come back to energy, it's like your energy, we're we're experiencing each other's energy.
- 24:01SPEAKER_00: So to be able to keep your own energy at a certain level of vibration is then inspiring the energy around you as well to move into that vibration.
- 24:10SPEAKER_00: You hold the higher vibration.
- 24:12SPEAKER_00: If we let ourselves all drop into the low, then that you know that's the experience.
- 24:15SPEAKER_00: And and actually, I'm one of the things I wish I'd understood was about energy when I when I was parenting my children, because to have lived through the trauma that they'd lived through obviously meant that their systems had a lot of that density in, which I've already talked about, and that then that was me holding that in my system, which is what created a lot of my own illness, and then, and that's not a blame thing, that's just the way that energy works, and when we're not aware of it, that's that's how it's kind of you know, we're we're holding on to things that aren't even ours to hold, and then that's why I knew to let it move through me without getting caught in the stories because the story attached to a lot of that energy wasn't even mine, so you just have to let the experience of it run through your system, like crying, moving, whatever, to emote to it like to move and express that out of you as a way of clearing it.
- 25:12SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, so yes, that is my kind of um yeah, my big experiences of um life-changing reframes.
- 25:24SPEAKER_01: Thank you for being so open and honest and vulnerable because it is big experiences that that you've had to go through.
- 25:32SPEAKER_01: And something that I really have always admired about you is is that openness and that vulnerability and that real connection to yourself and your emotions.
- 25:40SPEAKER_01: And I know that you would outwardly say that as well that you are someone who really does, you know, express emotions because probably because of the experiences that you've mentioned.
- 25:50SPEAKER_01: So thank you so much.
- 25:53SPEAKER_01: Final cheeky question, just on the kind of keeping similar to the the process question, we've both said that space has been useful.
- 26:01SPEAKER_01: And in the previous episode, the reframes of myself is that other people might be different.
- 26:06SPEAKER_01: So I guess, Rob, your experience of knowing human design, is there anything that you see can be useful for other people that isn't space?
- 26:15SPEAKER_01: And I don't know if there's an answer to that.
- 26:18SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I think there is.
- 26:20SPEAKER_00: I think we we touched on it in one of the other episodes, didn't we?
- 26:23SPEAKER_00: And I'll we'll maybe pop it in the show notes.
- 26:25SPEAKER_00: But the the we do one where we talk about the fact that retreating is not always your answer to recharging, that sometimes connection.
- 26:34SPEAKER_00: And I was very guilty of this, um, you know, and and my human design will show me that actually just retreating all the time is not my way to always take care of myself.
- 26:46SPEAKER_00: Connection is as helpful sometimes, finding the right connections, being around people, um, allowing people to help you and support you, not feeling like you have to do it all on your own.
- 26:59SPEAKER_00: So, space is like confusing space with that, isn't it?
- 27:02SPEAKER_00: Space and retreating.
- 27:04SPEAKER_00: It's like don't you don't need to be on your own, you don't need to hold everything on your own.
- 27:08SPEAKER_00: Learning how to be in a relationship where people can help you and support you is really important as well.
- 27:17SPEAKER_00: I think that that is, and movement can be great as well, isn't it?
- 27:20SPEAKER_00: But so for some people it might be gentle movement, for other people, a run or something more, you know, more vigorous might be what's needed.
- 27:28SPEAKER_00: Um, so I do think there's lots of different ways, and it's not to confuse that needing space with it being somewhere like again, being a full retreat and a get into the bed and under the duvet, which I will add was my retreat, which I know is not always the right thing to do.
- 27:47SPEAKER_01: Not always, but maybe sometimes.
- 27:49SPEAKER_00: Yes, exactly.
- 27:50SPEAKER_00: It's not that it's a it's an it's a no, no, no, it's just that it's a sometimes, it's a no, and there are other things that it might need to be.
- 27:59SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
- 28:00SPEAKER_01: And again, I feel like that's a nice little reframe and reflection from me as well.
- 28:03SPEAKER_01: That yeah, space doesn't always have to be lonely, space doesn't always have to be spacious, space can be filled, it's space away from the thing that you're focusing on or the problem or whatever it is.
- 28:14SPEAKER_01: It's creating the space, like you say, could be with connection, could be with love, could be with a run.
- 28:20SPEAKER_01: Yeah, not typically my process, but yeah.
- 28:23SPEAKER_01: So thank you so much, Sarah, for I say those gorgeous answers and your honesty, and thank you so much.
- 28:32SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being so for just holding the space so beautifully for me because I know that that is part of who you are and part of your chart and part of why I know you're really good at what you do, is because within your within your aura, there is an encouraging to be authentic and to be true.
- 28:51SPEAKER_00: And that's what makes being speaking about these things so easy in your company.
- 28:57SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
- 28:58SPEAKER_01: Well, you came up with the idea to do this, so another final thank you to you, and again, just a testament two or two charts working so nicely together that we are able to create this.
- 29:07SPEAKER_00: Excellent.
- 29:08SPEAKER_00: Well, um, I shall see you again soon.
- 29:11SPEAKER_01: Yes, take care, you two, and thanks anyone for listening.
- 29:15SPEAKER_01: Okay, bye.